Major Protest Against Gaza Assault in Washington, D.C. - Friday, Jan. 2 at 3:30 pm

Major Protest Against Gaza Assault
Rally & March in Washington, D.C.
Friday, January 2 at 3:30 pm

Rally at the Israeli Embassy - 3514 International Dr, NW
(Van Ness metro on the Red line; near Connecticut & Van Ness)
Followed by march ending at the Egyptian Embassy
3521 International Ct, NW

Yesterday, over 5,000 protesters in Washington, D.C.
marched from the State Department to the White House.

Yesterday, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in scores of cities across the country and around the world demanding an immediate end to the bombing of Gaza. In Washington D.C., 5,000 people gathered at the State Department and marched to the White House. Those taking to the streets included many children, teenagers and young adults. As the nighttime march entered the White House grounds, it took over and filled all of Pennsylvania Avenue with young people raising Palestinian flags at the White House fence. For a report on other demonstrations that happened all across the country, please visit the ANSWER Coalition website (see below).

The massacre of the Palestinian people continues. Nearly 400 Palestinians have been murdered. Israel has rejected any ceasefire, and the Egyptian government continues to block Palestinians who are trying to cross the border to escape the massive bombing campaign.

The ANSWER Coalition, Muslim American Society Freedom and the National Council of Arab Americans are calling for all progressive people to come out for a large-scale demonstration at the Israeli Embassy on Friday, January 2 at 3:30 pm. We will then march to the Egyptian Embassy.

Please make an urgently needed donation today.

Please make an urgently needed donation. We need your support to continue this work. Click here to donate online, where you can also find information on how to contribute by check.

Become a volunteer.

Our work is carried out entirely by volunteers. If you would like to become a volunteer, email info@answercoalition.org.

Read a report on demonstrations that were held all across the country.

To read a full report on the many demonstrations that were held in scores of cities across the country yesterday, Dec. 30, visit www.answercoalition.org.

---

A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.answercoalition.org/
info@internationalanswer.org

Technorati Tags: ANSWER,A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition,activism,actions,protests,Gaza Strip,Gaza,Gaza protests

No Mercy for Gaza: Israel Rebuffs Call for Gaza Truce.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA (Reuters) - Israel on Wednesday rejected calls for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and stepped up preparations for a possible ground offensive.The humanitarian situation in Gaza is getting dire with almost 400 killed and 1,200 wounded.

The 1.5 million Palestinians are running out of food & drinkable water.

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Another Israeli "accident" at sea

How much more blatant and vicious do things have to get before someone in a position of power in the US says something?

Ever wonder why the US government supports the Israeli government no matter what it does?

You don't know the half of it.

To fully understand the reality of the "special relationship" between Israel and the US, this video says it all.

Details: http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/516.html

- Brasscheck

At least they didn't strafe "The Dignity" with machine gun fire

Forty years ago, the Israeli military - with cold blooded calculation - murdered US sailors at sea.

Lyndon Johnson helped them cover it up.

Probably less than one American 1 of 10,000 knows the story.

You can thank the news media for that and the Congress and the military brass which followed Johnson's orders, sat back and did nothing while its own men were slaughtered in broad daylight.

The plan was to kill every sailor on board and sink the ship.

It's only because of the astonishing survival of some of the crew that we know what happened.

Share this page...post it to blogs...help educate Americans about the extent to which their country has been subverted.

Another Israeli "accident" at sea

Technorati Tags: Israel,Israeli,The Dignity,BrasscheckTV,video,Israeli military,war crimes

Predictions of the Year 2000, from a December 1900 Ladies Home Journal

This was too interesting not to post!

The Ladies Home Journal from December 1900, which contained a fascinating article by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. “What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years”.

Mr. Watkins wrote: “These prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible. Yet, they have come from the most learned and conservative minds in America. To the wisest and most careful men in our greatest institutions of science and learning I have gone, asking each in his turn to forecast for me what, in his opinion, will have been wrought in his own field of investigation before the dawn of 2001 - a century from now. These opinions I have carefully transcribed.”

During the Year 2000, we included Mr. Watkins research in our feature articles. We invite you to comment on these predictions, whether they have been realized in some way or how they can never be accomplished! In any event, we know you’ll enjoy these entries.

Prediction #1: There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America and its possessions by the lapse of another century. Nicaragua will ask for admission to our Union after the completion of the great canal. Mexico will be next. Europe, seeking more territory to the south of us, will cause many of the South and Central American republics to be voted into the Union by their own people.”

Prediction #2: The American will be taller by from one to two inches. His increase of stature will result from better health, due to vast reforms in medicine, sanitation, food and athletics. He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five as at present – for he will reside in the suburbs. The city house will practically be no more. Building in blocks will be illegal. The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minutes only. A penny will pay the fare.

Prediction #3: Gymnastics will begin in the nursery, where toys and games will be designed to strengthen the muscles. Exercise will be compulsory in the schools. Every school, college and community will have a complete gymnasium. All cities will have public gymnasiums. A man or woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch will be regarded as a weakling.

Prediction #4: There Will Be No Street Cars in Our Large Cities. All hurry traffic will be below or high above ground when brought within city limits. In most cities it will be confined to broad subways or tunnels, well lighted and well ventilated, or to high trestles with “moving-sidewalk” stairways leading to the top. These underground or overhead streets will teem with capacious automobile passenger coaches and freight with cushioned wheels. Subways or trestles will be reserved for express trains. Cities, therefore, will be free from all noises.

Prediction #5: Trains will run two miles a minute, normally; express trains one hundred and fifty miles an hour. To go from New York to San Francisco will take a day and a night by fast express. There will be cigar-shaped electric locomotives hauling long trains of cars. Cars will, like houses, be artificially cooled. Along the railroads there will be no smoke, no cinders, because coal will neither be carried nor burned. There will be no stops for water. Passengers will travel through hot or dusty country regions with windows down.

Prediction #6: Automobiles will be cheaper than horses are today. Farmers will own automobile hay-wagons, automobile truck-wagons, plows, harrows and hay-rakes. A one-pound motor in one of these vehicles will do the work of a pair of horses or more. Children will ride in automobile sleighs in winter. Automobiles will have been substituted for every horse vehicle now known. There will be, as already exist today, automobile hearses, automobile police patrols, automobile ambulances, automobile street sweepers. The horse in harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is today.

Prediction #7: There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic. They will be maintained as deadly war-vessels by all military nations. Some will transport men and goods. Others will be used by scientists making observations at great heights above the earth.

Prediction #8: Aerial War-Ships and Forts on Wheels. Giant guns will shoot twenty-five miles or more, and will hurl anywhere within such a radius shells exploding and destroying whole cities. Such guns will be armed by aid of compasses when used on land or sea, and telescopes when directed from great heights. Fleets of air-ships, hiding themselves with dense, smoky mists, thrown off by themselves as they move, will float over cities, fortifications, camps or fleets. They will surprise foes below by hurling upon them deadly thunderbolts. These aerial war-ships will necessitate bomb-proof forts, protected by great steel plates over their tops as well as at their sides. Huge forts on wheels will dash across open spaces at the speed of express trains of to-day. They will make what are now known as cavalry charges. Great automobile plows will dig deep entrenchments as fast as soldiers can occupy them. Rifles will use silent cartridges. Submarine boats submerged for days will be capable of wiping a whole navy off the face of the deep. Balloons and flying machines will carry telescopes of one-hundred-mile vision with camera attachments, photographing an enemy within that radius. These photographs as distinct and large as if taken from across the street, will be lowered to the commanding officer in charge of troops below.

Prediction #9: Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later. Even to-day photographs are being telegraphed over short distances. Photographs will reproduce all of Nature’s colors.

Prediction #10: Man will See Around the World. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span. American audiences in their theatres will view upon huge curtains before them the coronations of kings in Europe or the progress of battles in the Orient. The instrument bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in its appropriate place. Thus the guns of a distant battle will be heard to boom when seen to blaze, and thus the lips of a remote actor or singer will be heard to utter words or music when seen to move.

(The list continues...)
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Obama's Gaza silence condemned

Despite growing pressure on Barack Obama to speak out on the crisis in Gaza, the US president-elect has remained silent on the issue.

Obama, holidaying in Hawaii, has made no public remarks on Israel's unrelenting military assault on the Palestinian territory, which has left more than 380 people there dead.



The former Illinois senator spoke out after last month's attacks in Mumbai and has made detailed statements on the US economic crisis.



But some fear that the US president-elect's reluctance to speak out on the Gaza raids could be sending its own message.



"Silence sounds like complicity," Mark Perry, the Washington Director of the Conflicts Forum group, told Al Jazeera.



"Obama has said that Israel has the right to defend itself from rocket attacks but my question to him is 'does he believe that Palestinians also have the right of self-defence?'"

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Top Ten Wars

It is nearly impossible to compile a conclusive ranking of the worst things humans have done to each other. History tends to be somewhat biased, a genocide in one nation’s eyes might be justified as worthy sacrifice in the others. Death counts are also highly varied with equally justifiable counts of the same events differing by so much that it is not possible to decide the event’s rightful rank. My list takes into the account only those wars which had multiple nations involved, as without such a criteria, a list of greatest ever wars by death toll would be overwhelmed with Chinese and Russian civil unrests.

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Obama Fires 90 Top Bush Loyalists At Pentagon

Sec. Gates to keep much of his staff, but Obama lets 90 top Bush loyalists go.

By Sam Youngman - Despite keeping Defense Secretary Robert Gates in the Pentagon, President-elect Obama’s transition team informed 90 Bush appointees their services will not be needed after Inauguration Day.

Scott Gration, a senior official on Obama’s transition team, called and emailed several of President Bush’s Pentagon appointees about 10 days ago to inform them they were being dismissed. Those calls and emails were followed up by an email from Jim O'Beirne, the special assistant to the secretary of defense for White House liaisons, who expressed exasperation that Gration informed the employees directly instead of letting O'Beirne's office know first.

"With regard to the process, I am unable to provide an explanation," O'Beirne wrote on Tuesday in the email, which was obtained by The Hill. "I played no part in it, and I will not speculate why matters were handled as they were."

A spokesman for the Pentagon said Gates was "absolutely satisfied" with the way the transition was handled.

Gates "is sensitive to the fact that a number of appointees will not be able to stay on after [Jan.] 20th," Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell said. He noted Gates did request many appointees stay on and the "Obama team was able to cooperate."

But O'Beirne made it clear in the email that in some cases of dismissal, he thinks the employee's politics played a role in their being let go.

O'Beirne said that Gates had "sought to keep virtually his entire team in place pending the availability of Obama replacements."

Out of roughly 250 political appointees, 90 were dismissed

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U.S. man pleads guilty to acting as agent for Israel

By Daniel Trotta and Randall Mikkelsen - NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An 85-year-old former U.S. Army employee pleaded guilty on Tuesday to acting as an unregistered agent of Israel and admitted he gave classified documents to the Jewish state in the 1980s.

Court documents show the defendant, Ben-Ami Kadish, reported to the same handler as Jonathan Pollard, an American who spied for Israel in the 1980s and triggered a scandal that rocked U.S.-Israeli relations.

Kadish's plea indicates the Israeli spy network that obtained U.S. nuclear secrets through Pollard spread further than previously acknowledged.

It comes as the Bush administration considers a new request by Pollard for a commutation of his life sentence.

Prosecutors say Ben-Ami Kadish provided classified documents, including some relating to U.S. missile defense systems, to an Israeli agent, Yosef Yagur, who photographed the documents at Kadish's residence.

Yagur was one of Pollard's handlers, according to court documents.From 1980 to 1985, Yagur asked Kadish to obtain classified documents, which Kadish retrieved from the U.S. Army's Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, New Jersey, according to Kadish's sworn statement.

Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, is serving life in prison term after pleading guilty to spying for Israel in 1986. His case has led Jews in the United States and Israel to plea for clemency and a new request by Pollard is under Bush administration review.

Israel gave Pollard citizenship in 1996 and acknowledged he was one of its spies in 1998.

Though the United States and Israel are close allies, the Pollard case revealed how the thirst for intelligence trumped that friendship.

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YouTube, Twitter: Weapons in Israel's Info War

Days after sending aircraft to strike Hamas militants in Gaza, the Israeli government is launching a campaign to dominate the blogosphere.

Among other things, the Israeli military has started its own YouTube channel to distribute footage of precision airstrikes. And as I type, the Israeli consulate in New York is hosting a press conference on microblogging site Twitter. It's pretty interesting to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reduced to tweets of 140 characters or less ("We hav 2 prtct R ctzens 2, only way fwd through neogtiations, & left Gaza in 05. y Hamas launch missiles not peace?"; "we're not at war with the PAL people. we're at war with a group declared by the EU& US a terrorist org").

The Jerusalem Post quotes Maj. Avital Leibovich, the head of the Israeli Defense Forces' foreign press branch on the digital media campaign. "The blogosphere and new media are another war zone," she says. "We have to be relevant there."

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How to Fix America's Image Abroad

Recognizing that America can't go it alone is the best way to boost the country's standing.

Since 2000, the United States' standing has deteriorated in all parts of the world, and anti-Americanism has grown intense. The 2008 Pew Global Attitudes survey reveals that in the past eight years, favorable views of the United States fell from 78 percent to 30 percent in Germany, 50 percent to 22 percent in Argentina and 75 percent to 37 percent in Indonesia. Yet as bad as this looks, America's image problem can still be healed—if the next administration correctly diagnoses the problem.

Many Americans want to believe things will automatically get better when George W. Bush leaves office. There is a kernel of truth in this. The Bush administration has been amazingly incompetent in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and, lately, Georgia. Yet the same administration has also improved America's relations with China and India, suggesting that not all of America's PR problems can be blamed on the 43rd president.

The discord actually dates from the end of the cold war, when Washington thoughtlessly disengaged from the world. After whipping up the Islamist mujahedin into a frenzy to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the United States walked away from them once the communists were defeated—without thinking about the consequences. This oversight led directly to 9/11. Other allies like Pakistan were also dropped, and today Pakistan is a nuclear-armed—and deeply troubled—state.

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City In Contempt Of Court For Not Giving Marijuana Back

By Sandra T. Molina - LOS ANGELES - Medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access filed legal briefs Monday accusing the city of Montebello of contempt of court for refusing to return medical marijuana wrongfully seized more than four years ago.

On Oct. 15, 2004, local police seized marijuana plants, growing equipment, and personal correspondence from the Montebello home of Terry Gene Walker.

Police criminally charged Walker, regardless of his status as a medical marijuana patient, said Joe Elford, chief counsel for Oakland-based ASA, who is representing Walker in his contempt claim.

Walker's criminal case was dismissed.

In March 2006, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ordered the Montebello Police Department to return all property seized from Walker, including 42 marijuana plants, 22 cultivation lamps and personal correspondence and books.

"Mr. Walker demonstrated that he lawfully possessed the marijuana at issue for his medical use," Elford said.

He said Walker, who suffers from cervical disc degenerative disease, presented the Police Department with the court order, but was denied the return of his belongings.

Montebello City Attorney Arnold Alvarez-Glasman said the Police Department took the position against returning an illegal substance.

"Federal law states it is still illegal to possess marijuana," he said.

Under the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, seriously ill Californians have the right to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes as recommended by a physician who has determined that the person's health would benefit from the use of marijuana in the treatment of cancer, anorexia, AIDS, chronic pain, spasticity, glaucoma, arthritis, migraine, or any other illness for which marijuana provides relief.

It also states that patients and their primary caregivers who obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes upon the recommendation of a physician are not subject to criminal prosecution or sanction.

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Why Israel Won’t Allow Journalists Into Gaza

Eyewitness: "They rammed the vessel without warning but after the ramming there was a radio message saying the Israeli patrol boat was accusing the Dignity of being involved in terrorist activities."

But this time, a reporter, Karl Penhaul from CNN, was actually on the boat - and gave the report you see above as the events were happening:

... the boat while still in international waters has been rammed by Israeli patrol boats, our vessel has been damaged ...there's been some damage to a roof section and to glass windows around the steering area and the captain says that the vessel is taking on a small amount of water, that at this stage is not life threatening but the ship was very severely rammed by one of those Israeli patrol boats, those patrol boats have been following the vessel for the half hour prior to the ramming incident ... they rammed the vessel without warning but after the ramming there was a radio message saying the Israeli patrol boat was accusing the Dignity of being involved in terrorist activities.

No wonder Israel is continuing their refusal to allow foreign journalists into Gaza.

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Dubai Cancels New Year's Celebrations

While Dubai is usually known for it's lavish parties frequented by A-list celeities, this New Year's Eve will be a downer in the United Arab Emirates.

To show solidarity with Palestinians subjected to the Israeli air attacks in the Gaza Strip, the country's prime minister, has ordered all New Year's celebrations in the city cancelled.

"According to Sheikh Mohammed's order," reads the release from official Emirates news agency WAM, "Duabi emirate will mark the New Year with a somber tone as a token of solidarity with the Palestinian people in general and Gaza strip in particular."

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13 Year-old-Boy used as Human Shield by Military

Of all the things that have been cruel and just downright wrong, the Israeli military tied a young boy to the front of their vehicle to keep them from throwing stones at them. Look at the boy's arm and you'll see that he's tied to the windshield guard.

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Americans aren't supposed to know this…

If you are a captive of the US mind control
police (i.e. the corporate news media) you'd
believe two things:

1. Israel is "defending" itself against the
Palestinians

2. All Israelis support their government's
policy of endless war against Palestinian
civilians.

It's this second lie that the US-Israeli media
mafia guards most closely - and desperately hopes
Americans never figure out.

Details:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/509.html

- Brasscheck TV

Truth from Israel

 

Contrary to Israeli war party propaganda in the US, not all Jews and not all Israelis support Israel's Nazi-like conduct in the Occupied Territories.

 

This simple fact is probably the single most censored piece of news in the United States.

 

Here are some young people heading to prison because they won't join the genocide.

 

You can support these brave kids here:

 

Write: http://december18th.org

 

One of their stories...

Name: Tamar Katz
Age: 19
Location: Tel-Aviv

 

Why I am one of the Shministim:

 

"I refuse to enlist in the Israeli military on conscientious grounds. I am not willing to become part of an occupying army, that has been an invader of foreign lands for decades, which perpetuates a racist regime of robbery in these lands, tyrannizes civilians and makes life difficult for millions under a false pretext of security."

First Sentence: 28th Sept. - 10th Oct. 2008 (12 days)
Second Sentence: 12th - 30th Oct. 2008 (18 days)
Third Sentence: 1st - 22nd Dec. 2008 (21 days)

 

Write: http://december18th.org

 

Please pass this video on to friends and colleagues.
I'd like to see us generate tens of thousands of letters.

Truth from Israel

Technorati Tags: americans,Israel,Israeli,genocide,human rights,actions,activism,Israeli military,Israeli government,US,Palestine,Palestinians,BrasscheckTV,video,america,society,racism

ei: Gaza's main hospital struggling to cope

GAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IRIN) - Gaza's main hospital, al-Shifa, is struggling to cope with the influx of people injured in the Israeli air strikes which started on 27 December, according to medical sources.

Staff and patients are also fearful Israel might target it, as the leaders of Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the enclave, have held press conferences there.

The hospital has already moved some medical facilities below ground.

The head of the international cooperation department of Gaza's health ministry, Medhat Abbas, told IRIN: "Al-Shifa has never received hundreds of patients all at once. Hospital staff are using sheets to staunch bleeding, and many patients have died because of the lack of supplies and equipment."

A statement issued by the Israeli branch of Physicians For Human Rights, a non-governmental organization, on 30 December said: "The Israeli attack finds the current health system in the Gaza Strip in a state of total collapse due to the harsh siege imposed on the Gaza Strip for a year and a half, and the closure preceding it."

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Activists urge Obama to rethink role in Mideast

Pro-Palestinian activists protest outside President-elect's vacation home

KAILUA, Hawaii - A handful of pro-Palestinian activists protested outside President-elect Barack Obama's vacation home on Tuesday and urged a new approach to the Middle East.
Eight activists marched with signs to the edge of the property's security perimeter, telling reporters that they want the incoming administration to take a fresh look at the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian territories, especially given the current fighting in the Gaza Strip. They also said Obama needs to take a more active role in the conflict, even though he doesn't take office until Jan. 20.
"We feel there's a great need for change. We need to stop giving Israel a blank check to do what it's doing," said Margaret Brown, a 66-year-old Honolulu resident who held a handmade sign that read "Yes we can change U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine."
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Needed in Gaza: US inspectors, peacekeepers, and aid workers

By Timothy Rieger - Miami Beach, Fla. – At a recent forum of the New America Foundation, scholar Walter Russell Mead reminded the audience that Israelis – and by extension all Jews – and Palestinians are the two peoples most betrayed by the history of the 20th century, albeit in vastly different scales.
The US response thus far to Israel's military operations in the Gaza Strip suggests that this double dose of human betrayal will be every bit the geopolitical phenomenon in the 21st century as it was in the 20th.
The politics are different from the past, as are the weapons, but the human willingness to shaft the lives of innocents in the name of realpolitik hasn't changed a bit.
President Bush has reflexively sided with Israel in the first days of this latest battle as he has for all of his presidency. President-elect Obama has indicated he will react according to the rules of the same domestic realpolitik playbook: giving the imprimatur of the US government to Israel's operations in the Gaza Strip, increasing casualties notwithstanding.
The message the entire Arab and Muslim world takes away from the US government is this: Dead Palestinian children are, in the larger scheme of things, an acceptable price to pay for Israel's security.
Through his senior adviser David Axelrod, Mr. Obama's response to the current crisis appears to be a reiteration of the point he made while on a trip in July to Sderot, an Israeli town often besieged by Hamas rockets.
Namely that he can understand, as the father of two girls, how besieged he would feel if Katyusha rockets were raining down on his neighborhood, threatening his own children as they sleep at night.
This raises the question: Can Obama similarly empathize with Palestinian moms and dads whose children have been killed in the violence?
Authentic empathy, and especially empathy for children killed and maimed with rockets or bombs, has no moral double standards. Well-rehearsed empathy has plenty.
No 7-year-old boy or girl, Israeli or Palestinian, should live in a universe where they are to blame for the destruction of their own little bodies. And yet that is precisely the implicit dictum, gussied up in political rhetoric soothing to some, macabre to others, that is and has been guiding American foreign policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly at moments when tensions ratchet up, as they have over the weekend.
If the US is to have any positive impact on finding a resolution to this conflict, we must stop lecturing Israelis and Palestinians about "ending the cycle of violence" and take stock of our own failures. We, the American people, need to end the cycle of abandoning all the innocent people of that region.
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Damaged Gaza aid boat docks in southern Lebanon

A boat carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza has arrived in Lebanon after being turned back by the Israeli navy.
The Dignity set off from Cyprus on Monday carrying three tons of emergency and medical supplies.
Activists on board say it was rammed by an Israeli ship but the navy says it was an accident.
Mohammed Vall reports.

YouTube - Damaged Gaza aid boat docks in southern Lebanon - 30 Dec 08

Technorati Tags: Gaza Strip,Gaza,humanitarian aid,human rights,Israeli Blockade,Israel,The Dignity,video

Israel's War Crimes

By Richard Falk
Editor's Note: This statement was issued December 27 in response to Israel's attack in Gaza by Professor Richard Falk, United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Territories and a longtime member of The Nation's editorial board.
Israel's airstrikes on Gaza are severe and massive violations of international law--and nations that have supplied weapons and supported Israel's siege of Gaza are complicit in the crimes.
The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war.
Those violations include:
• Collective punishment: The entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.
• Targeting civilians: The airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.
• Disproportionate military response: The airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.
Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza's besieged doctors and other medical workers to sufficiently treat the victims.
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Israel Revives Hamas

As Israel presses its bloody assault on Gaza, dropping broad hints that it is planning a ground attack to complement four days of bombings that have killed hundreds, it's clear that Israel's actions are likely to bolster, not weaken, the very enemy it is fighting.
Writing in the Washington Post, Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab points out that, before the latest crisis, Hamas was in sharp decline. The headline on his thoughtful piece is: "Has Israel Revived Hamas?" He says: "Israel appears to have given new life to the fledging Islamic movement in Palestine."
Over the past two years, Kuttab notes, Palestinian support for Hamas -- an ultrareligious, terrorist-inclined wing of the fanatical Muslim Brotherhood movement -- has declined sharply, from a 30 percent in 2006 to 22 percent in August, 2007, to just 17 percent in 2008 -- compared to 40 percent for Fatah, the mainstream, secular nationalist wing of the Palestinian body politic. Kuttab points out that Hamas has "turned down every legitimate offer from its nationalist PLO rivals and Egyptian mediators." Now, he says, the attacks are a "bonanza for Hamas" and says that Israel's assault will achieve "results exactly the opposite of its publicly proclaimed purposes."
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, and reflecting the views of Israel security hawks such as Bibi Netanyahu, Bret Stephens says that the Israeli campaign -- like the campaign in Lebanon that killed thousands in 2006, in the disastrous war against Hezhollah -- will not defeat Hamas. "The green flag of the movement will fly defiantly over the tallest building left standing," says Stephens. Unless, that is, the Israelis learn from Lebanon, 2006, and act decisively to crush Hamas once and for all. Problem is, that's an impossible task. Far more likely, Israel will end up radicalizing the Palestinians once again, weakening Fatah and strengthening Hamas. And that makes peace talks, and a settlement, less likely.
An intelligent news analysis piece in the Times from Stephen Farrell asks the key question:

The questions remain: Why did Hamas end its six-month cease-fire on Dec. 19?
Will it -- can it -- unleash suicide bombers into Israel in retaliation? And will the devastation in Gaza make Palestinians fall into line behind Hamas, as they reliably have in the past, or will Hamas lose their support as Gazans count the escalating cost in blood and destruction?

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Vote Now! Tell Obama to Support Iraqi Refugees

A stable Iraq requires that the U.S. work with its allies to meet the needs of nearly five million Iraqis uprooted from their homes. As President-Elect Obama crafts a new policy for Iraq, he must take concrete steps to increase funding and opportunities to help displaced Iraqis rebuild their lives. Regardless of how long U.S. forces stay in Iraq, failure to address the needs of displaced Iraqis will have dramatic impacts on security inside Iraq and throughout the Middle East. - Megan Fowler Washington, DC

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Obama Can End Homeless Veterans’ Disgrace

by Aaron Glantz - In 1973, Roy Lee Brantley filed a disability claim with the federal government for mental wounds sustained in combat overseas. Over the years, the Department of Veterans Affairs has denied his claim five separate times. "You go over there and risk your life for America and your mind's all messed up, America should take care of you, right," he says, knowing that for him and the other veterans in line for free food that promise has not been kept.
On any given night 200,000 U.S. veterans sleep homeless on the streets of America. One out of every four people -and one out of every three men -sleeping in a car, in front of a shop door, or under a freeway overpass has worn a military uniform. Some like Brantley have been on the streets for years. Others are young and women returning home wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan, quickly slipping through the cracks.
For each of these homeless veterans, America's promise to "Support the Troops" ended the moment he or she took off the uniform and tried to make the difficult transition to civilian life. There, they encountered a hostile and cumbersome bureaucracy set up by the Department of Veterans Affairs. In a best-case scenario, a wounded veteran must wait six months to hear back from the VA. Those who appeal a denial have to wait an average of four and a half years for their answer. In the six months leading up to March 31st of this year, nearly 1,500 veterans died waiting to learn if their disability claims would be approved by the government.
There are patriotic Americans trying to solve this problem. Last month, two veterans' organizations, Vietnam Veterans of America and Veterans of Modern Warfare, filed suit in federal court demanding the government decide disability claims brought by wounded soldiers within three months. Predictably, however, the VA is trying to block the effort. On December 17, their lawyers convinced Reggie Walton, a judge appointed by President Bush, who ruled that imposing a quicker deadline for payment of benefits was a task for Congress and the president-not the courts.
President-elect Barack Obama has the power to end this national disgrace. He has the power to ensure to streamline the VA bureaucracy so it helps rather than fights those who have been wounded in the line of duty. He can ensure that this latest generation of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan does not receive the bum rap the Vietnam generation got. Let 2008 be the last year thousands of homeless veterans stand in line for free food during the holiday season. Let it be the last year hundreds of thousands sleep homeless on the street.

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Mass. new pot law may also legalize hash

By GLEN JOHNSON – BOSTON (AP) — Guidelines for a new Massachusetts law that ends minor marijuana arrests say the law may also apply to other drugs with the same psychoactive ingredient, such as hashish.
The guidelines obtained Monday by The Associated Press say the law that takes effect Friday ends criminal penalties for possession of an ounce or less of THC — the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, hashish or hash oil.
Voters passed a referendum in November that instead imposes a civil penalty of a $100 fine and forfeiture of the drug.
The guidelines from the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security advise law enforcement agencies on the law's practical enforcement, but courts eventually are expected to have to settle questions on its scope.
The guidelines make clear that the law doesn't change existing regulations against drug distribution or driving under the influence, for example. In addition, all law enforcement officers with civil powers — including campus officers — have the authority to issue tickets.
The guidelines also recommend that cities and towns pass ordinances banning public use of such drugs.

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Obama's Duty To Prosecute Bush for War Crimes

by Patriot Daily at Docudharma,
Obama promised that he would investigate and prosecute Bush team for "genuine crimes" because no one is above the law, but he would not prosecute "really dumb policies." Obama plans to have his AG review the available information to determine if investigations are needed. Well, AG nominee Eric Holder knows that many crimes have been committed:
Our government authorized the use of torture, approved of secret electronic surveillance against American citizens, secretly detained American citizens without due process of law, denied the writ of habeas corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants and authorized the use of procedures that violate both international law and the United States Constitution.... We owe the American people a reckoning.
Indeed, the rule of law is the "strongbox that keeps all our other values safe." We can write laws that say we have certain freedoms and rights, and we can build courts and elect lawmakers, but if there is no rule of law, then we lose our rights bit by bit until they are no longer recognizable. While the goppies will cry "partisan witch hunt," even the Bush State Dept. recognizes that no democratic society can tolerate abuses when people are tortured or kidnapped under rendition in violation of our rule of law or tolerate the failure to prosecute in compliance with our Constitution.
Signing the petition drafted by budhydharma and Docudharma is not in defiance of our President-Elect Obama, but rather a sign of support for the difficult times that he and Holder will face when performing their clear constitutional duties.

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Gaza: The Killing Zone

This was produced in 2003…

This video documents the effect of
just ONE missile attack. 
Israel's criminally psychopathic government
is currently raining them down on one of
the most densely populated areas in the world.
Roughly half the population of Gaza is
under 18 years old.
The Israeli and US news calls it a
"war with Hammas."
Here's what conditions were like there
five years ago: 
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/515.html
- Brasscheck

A concentration camp for 1 million people

Administered by Israel, paid for by the US and tolerated by Arab rulers, Gaza is an open air concentration camp where snipers take pot shots at children, aircraft shoot missiles into crowds, and bulldozers randomly destroy homes with impunity.
The recent mass assault is only the latest in a long string of atrocities.
Dishonest news outlets like the Associated Press talk about the bombing of the Gaza tunnels without pointing out that for over a year they are the only source of food, medicine, and other necessities for one million people walled in and surrounded by homicidal psychopaths.
Approximately half of the population of Gaza is under 18 years old.

Gaza: The Killing Zone

Technorati Tags: Gaza Strip,Gaza,video,BrasscheckTV,Palestine,Palestinians,human rights,war,violence

Washington bears guilt for Gaza war crimes

By Bill Van Auken - The Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Gaza is a war crime for which not only the government of Israel but also that of the United States bears full responsibility.

The relentless bombing campaign, which in its first 48 hours has left at least 300 dead and 1,000 wounded, is a deliberate slaughter of innocent civilians and an act of state terror. The toll of casualties, many of them women and children, is certain to rise. As Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenaz put it, "This is only the beginning."

The pretense that this assault is an act of retaliation for the recent scattered rocket attacks that have been carried out against Israeli territory from inside Gaza is preposterous. Israel, with the collaboration of Washington, has been preparing the current bombing campaign and threatened ground assault for months, under the cover of the supposed cease-fire with Gaza's Hamas-led administration.

"These people are nothing but thugs," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, who insisted that Israel was only acting to "defend itself" against "terrorists."

This is the official story that is largely echoed by the mass media and endorsed by the leadership of the Democratic Party.

Few bother to point out that not a single Israeli was killed by the homemade rockets that supposedly justified Israel launching its Gaza bombardments and killing 300 (one Israeli died in a rocket attack afterwards.) Such a disproportionate response is hardly an aberration. During the last eight years, barely a score of Israelis have died in rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza. During the same period, Israeli forces have killed nearly 5,000 Palestinians.

Nor is there much concern over the fact that Israel chose to launch its bombing in the most crowded and desperately poor urban area on the face of the earth precisely at the hour that schoolchildren were making their way home. Under these conditions, ritualistic US statements urging Israel to "avoid civilian casualties" amount to mocking the victims.

Having maligned an entire people as "thugs," the White House has given the green light for a bloodbath. More importantly, it has provided the indispensable resources for carrying out this crime, assuring Israel more than $3 billion a year in US military aid and supplying the IDF with the deadly tools of its trade—F-16 fighter jets, Apache attack helicopters, TOW and Hellfire missiles and the fuel and spare parts needed to keep them in operation.

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URGENT! Israeli Navy Attacking Civilian Mercy Ship!

The Dignity, a Free Gaza boat on a mission of mercy to besieged Gaza, is being attacked by the Israeli Navy in international waters. The Dignity has been surrounded by at least half-a-dozen Israeli warships. They are firing live ammunition around the Dignity, and one of the warships has rammed the civilian craft causing an unknown amount of damage. Contrary to international maritime law, the Israelis are actively preventing the Dignity from approaching Gaza or finding safe haven in either Egypt or Lebanon. Instead, the Israeli navy is demanding that the Dignity return to Cyprus - despite the fact that the ship does not carry enough fuel to do so. Fortunately, no one aboard the ship has yet been seriously injured.

There are 15 civilian passengers representing 11 different countries (see below for a complete list). At approximately 5am (UST), well out in international waters, Israeli warships began surrounding the Dignity, threatening the ship. At 6:45am (UST) we were able to establish brief contact with the crew and were told that the ship had been rammed by the Israeli Navy in international waters, and that the Israelis were preventing the ship from finding safe harbor. We heard heavy gunfire in the background before all contact was lost with the Dignity.

It is urgent that you TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION!URGENT! Israeli Navy Attacking Civilian Mercy Ship! TAKE ACTION IMMEDIATELY!

The Dignity, a Free Gaza boat on a mission of mercy to besieged Gaza, is being attacked by the Israeli Navy in international waters. The Dignity has been surrounded by at least half-a-dozen Israeli warships. They are firing live ammunition around the Dignity, and one of the warships has rammed the civilian craft causing an unknown amount of damage. Contrary to international maritime law, the Israelis are actively preventing the Dignity from approaching Gaza or finding safe haven in either Egypt or Lebanon. Instead, the Israeli navy is demanding that the Dignity return to Cyprus - despite the fact that the ship does not carry enough fuel to do so. Fortunately, no one aboard the ship has yet been seriously injured.

There are 15 civilian passengers representing 11 different countries (see original article for a complete list). At approximately 5am (UST), well out in international waters, Israeli warships began surrounding the Dignity, threatening the ship. At 6:45am (UST) we were able to establish brief contact with the crew and were told that the ship had been rammed by the Israeli Navy in international waters, and that the Israelis were preventing the ship from finding safe harbor. We heard heavy gunfire in the background before all contact was lost with the Dignity.

It is urgent that you TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION!

CALL the Israeli Government and demand that it immediately STOP attacking the Dignity and endangering the lives of its passengers!

CALL Mark Regev in the Prime Minister's office at:+972 2670 5354 or +972 5062 3264@it.pmo.gov.il

CALL Shlomo Dror in the Ministry of Defence at:+972 33697 5339 or +972 50629 8148@mod.gov.il

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The Dignity departed from Larnaca Port in Cyprus at 7pm (UST) on Monday 29 December, bound for war-devastated Gaza with a cargo of over 3 tons of desperately needed medical supplies donated by the people of Cyprus. At our request, the ship was searched by Cypriot Port authorities prior to departure, to certify that there was nothing "threatening" aboard - only emergency medical supplies.

TAKE ACTION IMMEDIATELY TO STOP THE ISRAELI NAVY FROM ENDANGERING THE DIGNITY AND ITS PASSENGERS!

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Can't we just hang him now and get it over with?

Where's Dick Cheney?
He set the pro oil energy policy early in
the administration...
He bullied the CIA into going along with an
attack on Iraq when they knew it was not
a threat...
He authorized torture...
Now he's appearing on TV to set the record
straight on his "legacy." 
Details:
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/504.html
- Brasscheck

"The results speak for themselves"

Can someone explain to me how this weasel ended up running the US for eight years?

Can't we just hang him now
and get it over with?

Technorati Tags: Dick Cheney,Cheney,war crimes,video,BrasscheckTV,legacy

Open for Questions From Obama Transition Team: Round two

Our first run of Open for Questions was one such feature, with nearly 1,000,000 votes cast on questions from the Change.gov community.
In this round, you can still view all of the questions that have been submitted—or you can break down the questions by category for easier navigation.

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Congrats to Wasilla's newest teen mom! - 236.com - News

It's a boy! 18-year-old Bristol Palin gave birth to "Tripp," making mom Sarah a 44-year-old grandmother. Menstruating grannies are a phenomenon most commonly found in Appalachia or the ghetto. It was a busy month for the Palins. Last week, the baby's other grandmother, Sherry Johnston, was arrested on six felony counts involving Rush Limbaugh's weakness, oxycontin.
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Gaza air strikes

Israel has continued its attacks on Hamas in Gaza, with reports of more than 300 dead including at least 100 civilians

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Palestine: Bloggers in Gaza describe the fear

Against all odds, there are still blog posts coming out of Gaza, and bloggers are vividly describing the fear they are filled with in the face of ongoing Israeli attacks.

Exiled says he is no hero:

على قيد الحياة ولكني لست بخير
وقد اكون في اي لحظة على قيد الموت لاكون بخير
فالاموات وحدهم آمنون في غزة

تركت شقتي وذهبت انا وزوجتي الى بيت العائلة،ليس بحثا عن مكانا آمناً من القصف
احب ان اكون بجانب امي في هذه الاحوال

لست بطلا،كابن اخي الصغير ارتعش من الصوت المعدني المتفجر في الهواء القريب
ولكني اكبت رعشتي خجلا،فلست بطلا

 

I am still alive, but not OK.
And at any moment I may be within sight of death, and will be OK.
Only the dead are safe in Gaza.
I left my flat and my wife and I went to the family home, but not searching for a safe place from the bombing.
I want to be next to my mother in such circumstances.
I am not a hero; like my young nephew I am trembling from the explosive metal sound in the air nearby.
But I hold back my trembling in embarrassment; I am not a hero.

Laila El-Haddad, who blogs at Raising Yousuf and Noor, is in touch with her parents in Gaza:

My father just called to inform me he was ok – after warplanes bombed the Islamic University there, considered to be the Strip's premiere academic institution.

A little later I called my mother, only to hear her crying on the phone. “The planes are overhead” she cried “the planes are overhead”. I tried to calm her down – planes overhead mean the “target” is further away. But in such moments of intense fear, there is no room for rationality and logic.

Another Gazan blogger, Dr. Mona El-Farra is currently in the UK, and is watching what is happening in despair:

With an aching heart I continue to watch Gaza from a distance. I cannot turn the TV off, cannot detach myself from what is going on there. Not while my medical colleagues work hard under such extraordinarily circumstances. Not while my friends, my family, and the whole population of Gaza face such horrible atrocities and constant fear. The nightmare isn’t over.

Global Voices Online » Palestine: Bloggers in Gaza describe the fear

Technorati Tags: Gaza Strip,Gaza,Palestine,bloggers,Palestinians,fear,war,opinion,human rights

Gaza massacre - If Americans Knew What Israel Is Doing

Israel terror against Palestinians



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Gaza atrocity

By Leila Diab

As I awoke this morning and opened up my email to check my mail, I found several very disturbing and disheartening news of yet another atrocity in the Gaza Strip. As the sun rose over the Gaza Strip, on the 28th of December, 2008, the Israeli military government launched a massive wave of air attacks on the Gaza Strip people. At least 200 Palestinians have been killed, and more than 200 Palestinians have been wounded.

(Watch video: Israel launches deadly air strikes on Gaza)

(Watch video: UN calls for Israel to open Gaza border to aid)

According to an Israeli military spokesman, Avi Benayhu, he reported to the Israeli army radio that the massive bombardment of Gaza was only just beginning.

Does anyone care? "Truly don't we care? And, why don’t we care?" decried my anguished Indian friend, Bindu, upon hearing of the news in Gaza. Is this a civilized government - the bombardment of thousands of defenseless Palestinian men, women and children? They can't even possibly escape from the prison confines of its army controls and after it has starved the population for months and reduced it to absolute penury!

Does "collateral damage" of women and children justify the Israeli government's security manifestations and claims, while being - the world's fourth largest army against the people of Gaza, a race of people who both physically, psychologically, and deliriously are suffering from hunger, economic deprivation and confinement? Will American politicians, Arab and Muslim leaders and the world community's leaders condemn the Israeli military government's attacks on a defenseless Palestinian population?

The gruesome pictures sent to me this morning of the Gaza atrocity, tell yet another story of a senseless atrocity in the Gaza Strip region. Why? Can these crimes against humanity usher in a new year of a peaceful hope in 2009?

Together, all peaceful voices of conscience and goodwill in the world need to be heard while urgent and desperate action from the United Nations, world leaders, the Arab and Muslim leaders, and American politicians MUST bring justice to the offenders of these crimes against humanity. And yes, public outcry must be voiced and enacted in all sectors of society across the world to protest, and let it be known that violence does not solve problems or make peace...only political solutions can define when enough is enough and when peace is possible.

"I am ashamed that my government has remained silent. After the disheartening and senseless Bombay tragedy, not long ago, now the disturbing news of the Gaza Strip atrocity. Does anybody really care anymore? And, when will our world leaders make peace with their conscience? Truly, we don't care about humanity. Sadly, this causes me much anguish," decried my Indian friend, Bindu.

-- Leila Diab is an educator and a freelance journalist

alJazeera Magazine - Gaza atrocity

Technorati Tags: Gaza Strip,Gaza,Palestine,Palestinians,opinion,Israel,war,terror,violence,human rights

Palestine: On the Ground in Gaza

In spite of the continued attacks on Gaza, and the loss of electricity in many places, there are Gazan bloggers who are managing to write about what is going on. In addition, there are a number of foreign human rights activists in the Gaza Strip who are providing eyewitness accounts.
We start with a Gazan blogger who is actually in the United States at the moment. Laila El-Haddad, who blogs at Raising Yousuf and Noor, writes about what her parents are experiencing:

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Kucinich criticizes Israel; wants U.N. probe

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is calling for a United Nations investigation into Israel’s attacks on Gaza, criticizing Israel for a disproportionate response to Hamas rocket attacks.
The criticism stands in stark contrast to the statements of other Democrats, who have offered near-unanimous support for Israel amid the latest violence in the Middle East.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other Democrats have blamed Hamas for the violence, which has left more than 300 people in Gaza dead. One person in Israel has been killed by a Hamas rocket.
Kucinich likened the Israeli attacks on Gaza to its war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 2006. In both cases, he said, civilian populations were attacked and “countless innocents” were killed or injured.
“All this was, and is, disproportionate, indiscriminate mass violence in violation of international law,” Kucinich said in a statement. “Israel is not exempt from international law and must be held accountable.”
Pelosi and other Democrats have refrained from criticizing Israel’s government, which has responded to the Hamas attacks with a rocket assault on Gaza.
“Peace between Israelis and Palestinians cannot result from daily barrages of rocket and mortar fire from Hamas-controlled Gaza,” Pelosi said in a statement posted on the Speaker’s website on Monday.
“Hamas and its supporters must understand that Gaza cannot and will not be allowed to be a sanctuary for attacks on Israel.

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Arab Angry Protesters Demand Response to Gaza.

By Aseel Kami and Sabah al-Bazee

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Protesters burned Israeli and U.S. flags on Sunday in a string of Arab countries and demanded a stronger response from their leaders to Israel's attack on Gaza.

"Arab silence is behind the bombings," read a banner held by one of several thousand people who turned out in the Sunni Arab city of Samarra north of Baghdad.

The Israeli raids, some of the worst in 60 years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, incensed many in the Arab world, where many governments are seen by popular Islamist movements as collaborators with the United States or Israel.

"America and the Zionists are the leaders of world terrorism," read a placard held by protesters at the U.N. headquarters in the Lebanese capital Beirut. They demanded U.N. intervention to end the Israeli onslaught.

Similar protests were held in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, home to some 400,000 refugees displaced when Israel was established in 1948.

In Amman, Jordanian deputies burned an Israeli flag during a parliamentary session on Sunday to show solidarity with the Palestinians.

Deputies also demanded the kingdom, the second Arab country to sign a peace agreement with Israel, sever diplomatic ties with its neighbor and expel its ambassador.

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Brasscheck TV: Israel savages Gaza

We have yet another "Israel under allies" president headed to the White House - and the Israeli war party knows it.

Thus their recent savage and very public bombardment of civilians in Gaza by the Israeli military.

Recall the Israeli war machine would be out of money in three months without constant US subsidy.

What will President Obama do about this latest display of savagery by the Israeli war party?

Let's see...

He picked Hilary Clinton as his Secretary of State...

and Rahm Emanuel, dual US-Israeli citizen and son of an Israeli terrorist, as his chief of staff...

It doesn't look good. I'm afraid we're going to find out that selling "hope" is not unlike selling "soap," the only difference being people who sell soap actually deliver something.

The only unequivocal promise I heard Obama make during the campaign was to support Israel and my guess is that's the only one he's going to keep up.

America needs to wake up.

Details: http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/315.html

Technorati Tags: Israel,Palestine,Palestinians,video,BrasscheckTV,opinion

Take Action to Protest Israeli Attack on Gaza

Take Action to Protest Israeli Attack on Gaza

Mid-morning Saturday, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) launched a series of deadly air strikes on the occupied Gaza Strip. As we write this, an estimated 275 people have been killed. Hundreds of innocent people have been wounded. According to news reports today, Israel plans to keep these attacks going and has brought scores of tanks to the border with Gaza.

These Israeli attacks come on top of a brutal siege of the Gaza Strip which has been going on for years and has created a humanitarian catastrophe of dire proportions for Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinian residents by restricting the provision of food, fuel, medicine, electricity, and other necessities of life. All of this is happening in the most densely populated and one of the poorest areas of the world.

Israel is carrying out these attacks with F-16 fighter jets and missiles provided by U.S. taxpayers. From 2001-2006, the United States transferred to Israel more than $200 million worth of spare parts to fly its fleet of F-16's. In July 2008, the United States gave Israel 186 million gallons of JP-8 aviation jet fuel. Last year, the United States signed a $1.3 billion contract with Raytheon to transfer to Israel thousands of TOW, Hellfire, and 'bunker buster' missiles.

Israel's lethal attack on the Gaza Strip could not have happened without the active military and political support of the United States. We need to take action now to protest this attack and demand an immediate cease-fire.

The U.S. Campaign to End the Israel Occupation (a member group pf UFPJ) has issued an action alert with these suggestions -- we urge you to take action today!

• Contact the White House to protest the attacks and demand an immediate cease-fire. Call 202-456-1111 or send an email to comments@whitehouse.gov.
• Contact the State Department at 202-647-6575 or send an email by clicking here.
• Contact your Representative and Senators in Congress at 202-224-3121 or find contact info for your Members of Congress by clicking here.
• Contact your local media by phoning into a talk show or writing a letter to the editor. To find contact info for your local media, click here.
• Organize a local protest or vigil and tell us about it by clicking here.
• Sign our open letter to President-Elect Obama calling for a new U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine and find out other steps you can take to influence the incoming Administration by clicking here.

In addition, the Middle East Children's Alliance (another member group of UFPJ) is working with health organizations in Gaza to procure the most-needed medicines and send them directly to Gaza with the help of the Free Gaza Movement. You can make a secure online contribution now.

Background Information

Below are three articles you may want to read for background information and reports on the Gaza crisis.

'If Gaza Falls...', Sara Roy, Professor at Harvard's Center For Middle Eastern Studies and author of 'Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict'.

'Gaza Massacres Must Spur Us To Action', Ali Abunimah, Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of 'One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse' (Metropolitan Books, 2006).

'Report on Gaza', Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Update December 22, 2008.

UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ifGafX17%2F7al2NO1V3VkpggYeCPXf3NP 212-868-5545
PO Box 607; Times Square Station; New York, NY 10108
To subscribe, visit http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=3wiplVt%2FgTiGxlMYpyFPbQgYeCPXf3NP

Technorati Tags: Palestine,Palestinians,Gaza,Gaza Strip,Israel,protests,actions,activism,petitions

Report: Egypt stabbed Hamas in back

Egypt collaborated with Israel by deliberately misleading Hamas and allowing Tel Aviv to deal a blow to the movement, a report claims.

Citing diplomatic sources, the London-based daily al-Quds al-Arabi reported Sunday that Egyptian Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman had deceived Hamas into believing that Israel would not launch an attack on the Gaza Strip in the near future.


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'Israeli raids on Gaza violate UN Charter'

Pakistani officials have condemned the Israeli airstrikes on the besieged Gaza Strip as an apparent violation of the United Nations Charter.

Islamabad called on the international community on Sunday to promote 'a peaceful, just and durable settlement of the Palestine issue', a Press TV correspondent reported from the Pakistani capital.

In separate messages, Pakistani president Asif Ali Zaradari and Premier Syed Yousaf Reza Gilani lambasted Israel's deadliest attack on Gazans in six decades.


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Iran orders Muslims to defend Palestinians

Supreme leader issues religious decree in support of Palestinians; parliamentarian likens Israel's actions in Gaza to those of Hitler
Dudi Cohen

Israel News

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a religious decree to Muslims around the world on Sunday, ordering them to defend Palestinians against Israel's attacks on Gaza, state television said. "All Palestinian combatants and all the Islamic world's pious people are obliged to defend the defenseless women, children and people in Gaza in any way possible. Whoever is killed in this legitimate defense is considered a martyr," state television quoted Khamenei as saying in a statement outlining the fatwa.

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Ron Paul: Economic crisis may be a blessing

In an interview with press TV, Ron Paul states that he believes Obama intends to continue the neocon foreign policies of intervention, but suggests that b/c of the economic crisis, the US may be forced to abandon such policies, in much the same way the Soviets were forced to abandon Afghanistan. Paul also discusses his bill to end the Fed.

By Jihan Hafiz, Press TV, Washington

The following is an exclusive Press TV interview with US congressman Ron Paul, a unique conservative politician who wants an end to US military presence on foreign soil, advocates US withdrawal from the UN, NATO and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and opposes the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Ron Paul, House representative of the 14th district of Texas, believes that US foreign policy must be reformed to avoid conflicts around the world.

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Laura Bush's Denial:"Bush Presidency Not a Failure".

See, denial is not only a river in Egypt!!!


Bush uses final 50 days left in office to tout his" legacy".Laura Bush stands by her man and disagrees with critics who call the presidency of Bush a failure.
WASHINGTON December 28, 2008, 01:06 pm ET · First Lady Laura Bush disagrees with critics who call the presidency of George W. Bush a failure.
"I know it's not, and so I don't really feel like I need to respond to people that view it that way," Mrs. Bush said in an interview that aired Sunday. "I think history will judge and we'll see later."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took a similar view in a separate interview.
"I think generations pretty soon are going to start to thank this president for what he's done. This generation will," she said.

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Cops Arrest Activists For Documenting Ash Spill Damage In TN

Two environmental activists were detained by the Tennessee Valley Authority police for photographing the site of last weeks ash spill. While it does not appear that they will be charged with crimes, they were unable to document the ash spill’s effects on the area and its water supply.

The men, who are from the Knoxville based United Mountain Defense, say that TVA has yet to release the water toxicity results. They say they have the right to take their own measurements and photographs unless TVA shows their results. “This is an issue of national importance,” said David Cooper. “People need to know if the water is safe or not.”

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Pakistan-India War? By Accident, Maybe

A few days ago, all the experts were saying there was no chance of a war between India and pakistan as a consequence of escalating tensions following accusations of Pakistani involvement in attacks on Mumbai last month. Now, with reports that both nations are moving some troops to their mutual border, everyone is talking about the chance of conflict. But if that conflict happens, it will be inadvertent - an accidental exchange of fire arising from both sides' readiness to repel the other which then runs out of control - rather than a deliberate act.



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Bateman: Rick Warren sure is an expert on being gay

The cartoonist responds to an interview with the pastor about science and "reining in your natural impulses."



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Fiasco #1343 - US Celebrates Christmas by Killing 11 Afghans

KABUL, Afghanistan—The U.S. coalition said Friday its forces killed 11 Taliban militants, including the leader of a bomb-making cell, during an operation in southern Afghanistan.

The raid in Kandahar province on Thursday targeted a bomb-maker responsible for roadside bomb attacks that killed NATO soldiers, a coalition statement said.

Militants barricaded themselves inside a home during the raid and opened fire on the coalition forces. After giving time to allow women and children to leave, the coalition forces fired on the militants with guns and grenades, it said.

One woman who remained in the building was wounded in the leg. She was evacuated to a coalition medical facility, it said.

Coalition forces found dozens of land mines, grenades, AK-47s and bomb-making materials in the home, the coalition said.

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Another pardoned white-collar convict donated to Bush

Man who concealed ties to organized crime the second out of the 'Bush 19' confirmed to have given money to support Bush.

Another set of donations to the Republican Party made by a white-collar convict pardoned by President Bush has been revealed.

Alan Maiss, former president of Bally Gaming, made two contributions totaling $1,500 to President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. That same year, he also donated $1,000 to former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt's presidential campaign on the Democratic ticket.

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Top 10 Political Scoops of 2008

As the curtain comes down on 2008, it’s hard to let go. Political junkies couldn’t have asked for a better year — even news veteran David Broder dubbed the 2008 election the best he ever covered. Game-changing moments came from mainstream and new media outlets, traditional newsmaker interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured by amateurs.

So herewith, Politico’s take on the top ten political scoops of 2008. There’s no accounting for tastes, so we welcome your picks, too. What stories turned your engine?

1. Couric and Palin (CBS News): Charlie Gibson scored the first Sarah Palin interview, now remembered mostly for the ABC anchor’s professorial manner and his question about the 6-year-old “Bush Doctrine” of military preemption, on which Palin effectively drew a blank. But rival anchor Katie Couric proved even tougher for the vice presidential candidate, who was unable to answer such simple questions as what newspapers and magazines she regularly read. Palin’s stumbling responses were spoofed verbatim by her comedic doppelganger, Tina Fey.

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CIA 'using Viagra' to win over Afghan warlords

America's CIA has found a novel way to gain information from fickle Afghan warlords - supplying sex-enhancing drug Viagra, a US media report says.

The Washington Post said it was one of a number of enticements being used.

In one case, a 60-year-old warlord with four wives was given four pills and four days later detailed Taleban movements in return for more.

"Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people," the Post quoted one agent as saying.

"Whether it's building a school or handing out Viagra."

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US warning on South Asia tension

The United States has urged India and Pakistan to avoid unnecessarily raising tension amid reports of troop movements to the border.

Pakistan has redeployed some troops from the north-west and some leave has been cancelled, army officials said.

India earlier advised its citizens against travelling to Pakistan amid the continuing tension in the

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Time to Reboot America

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN - My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.
To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.
For all these reasons, our present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.
That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.
It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure — without building white elephants. Generally, I’d like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets. If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.

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National Poll: 75% of Americans glad that Bush is done

Seventy-five percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Friday said they're glad Bush is going; 23 percent indicated they'll miss him. "As President Bush prepares to leave office, the American public has a parting thought: Good riddance. At least that's the way three-quarters feel."

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This just in: Americans like Obama

In a new USA TODAY/Gallup poll, a sample of 1,008 Americans picked president-elect Barack Obama as the man they admire most. No president-elect has topped the poll since war hero Dwight Eisenhower 56 years ago.
Thirty-two percent of respondents picked Obama, while runner-up George Bush notched just five percent. In further parallels with 1952, that matches Harry Truman's performance in the Gallup poll. Bush has long had only Truman as company for least popular president in contemporary opinion polls. His ratings, which have long languished in the 20s and 30s, are similar to those that Truman earned during his second term, as troops were bogged down in Korea. Bush's numbers, however, have stayed lower, and for longer, than Truman's.
Obama's high numbers suggest that, in a time of national crisis, he may have the public good will to try and effect significant change. USA Today manages to find an expert who calls this historically high level of support a "two-edged sword."
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Two Dangerous Bush-Cheney Myths

As George W. Bush and Dick Cheney make their case for some positive legacy from the past eight years, two arguments are playing key roles: the notion that torturing terror suspects saved American lives and the belief that Bush’s Iraq troop “surge” transformed a disaster into something close to “victory.”
Not only will these twin arguments be important in defining the public’s future impression of where Bush should rank on the presidential list, but they could constrain how far President Barack Obama can go in reversing these policies. In other words, the perception of the past can affect the future.
Though most current thinking holds that George W. Bush might want to trademark the slogan “Worst President Ever,” America's powerful right-wing media (and its many allies in the mainstream press) will surely seek to rehabilitate Bush’s reputation as much as possible.
Even elevating Bush to the status of a presidential mediocrity might open the door for a revival of the Bush Dynasty with brother Jeb already eyeing one of Florida’s U.S. Senate seats and possibly harboring grander ambitions.
And even if another Bush in the White House is not realistic, a kinder-gentler judgment on George W. Bush at least could help the Republican Party rebound in 2010 and 2012. So evaluating the Bush-Cheney torture policies and how successful the “surge” are not just academic exercises.
Two recent articles by people with first-hand knowledge also shed important new light on these issues: one by a lead U.S. interrogator in Iraq and the other by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The interrogator – using the pseudonym “Matthew Alexander” for an article in the Washington Post’s Outlook section on Nov. 30 – wrote that the practice of humiliating and abusing prisoners had proved counterproductive, not only violating U.S. principles and failing to extract reliable intelligence but fueling the Iraqi insurgency and getting large numbers of U.S. soldiers killed

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Why Is The U.S. Military Preparing For Massive Civil Unrest?

by Shattered Paradigm ·
A new report from the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute says that the U.S. military must quickly prepare for massive civil unrest that could be precipitated by an “unforeseen economic collapse”.The following is a quote from this stunning report: “DoD might be forced by circumstances to put its broad resources at the disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility. Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States."



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Pakistan Moves Troops Near Border as India Tensions Rise.

By Bappa Majumdar and Kamran Haider - NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan canceled army leave and redeployed some troops on Friday in a sign of rising tension with India.

The United States urged both sides to refrain from further raising tensions, already high after India blamed Islamist militants based in Pakistan for attacks on Mumbai last month that killed 179 people.

The latest strains followed media reports in Pakistan and India that "several" Indian nationals had been held in the last two days after bombings in the Pakistani cities of Lahore and Multan.

The foreign ministry in New Delhi warned Indian citizens on Friday that "it would be unsafe for them to travel (to) or be in Pakistan."

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had earlier discussed tension with Pakistan during a scheduled meeting about military pay with the chiefs of the army, navy and air force, his office said.

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Dismantling the Imperial Presidency

By Aziz Huq -
Radical change is needed to re-establish legitimate bounds to executive power as defined in the Constitution. We must again place beyond the pale Nixon's famous aphorism that "when the president does it, that means it's not illegal."

President-elect Obama's first appointments to the Justice, State and Defense Departments mark no radical change. Rather, they return to a centrist consensus familiar from the Clinton years. But pragmatic incrementalism and studied bipartisanship will do little to undo the centerpiece of the Bush/Cheney era's legacy. At its heart, that regime was intent on forcing the Constitution into a new mold of executive dominance.

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Bill Maher's final comment from Religulous

Doubt is humble, and that's what people should be, given a vast history of people getting shit wrong.




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What Rick Warren and the Gay Community Have in Common

By Richard Kim , The Nation. Posted December 26, 2008.
Obama and Warren both oppose gay marriage, yet say they support full equal rights for gays and lesbians -- let's push for a federal civil unions bill.
Barack Obama's choice of evangelical pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration has provoked outrage from progressives, who have condemned it as a slap at his base and at gay and lesbian supporters in particular. Wasn't Obama's election a repudiation of the religious right? Couldn't he have picked a more progressive figure--like civil rights leader Joseph Lowery, who supports same-sex marriage and is giving the closing benediction? Why won't Democrats behave like Republicans, who reward their religious base with state spoils both symbolic and monetary?
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The US Has 761 Military Bases Across the Planet, and We Simply Never Talk About It.

By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com.

America garrisons the globe in ways that are truly unprecedented, but if you live in the United States, you rarely hear a word about it.

Here it is, as simply as I can put it: In the course of any year, there must be relatively few countries on this planet on which U.S. soldiers do not set foot, whether with guns blazing, humanitarian aid in hand, or just for a friendly visit. In startling numbers of countries, our soldiers not only arrive, but stay interminably, if not indefinitely. Sometimes they live on military bases built to the tune of billions of dollars that amount to sizeable American towns (with accompanying amenities), sometimes on stripped down forward operating bases that may not even have showers. When those troops don't stay, often American equipment does -- carefully stored for further use at tiny "cooperative security locations," known informally as "lily pads" (from which U.S. troops, like so many frogs, could assumedly leap quickly into a region in crisis).
At the height of the Roman Empire, the Romans had an estimated 37 major military bases scattered around their dominions. At the height of the British Empire, the British had 36 of them planetwide. Depending on just who you listen to and how you count, we have hundreds of bases. According to Pentagon records, in fact, there are 761 active military "sites" abroad.
The fact is: We garrison the planet north to south, east to west, and even on the seven seas, thanks to our various fleets and our massive aircraft carriers which, with 5,000-6,000 personnel aboard -- that is, the population of an American town -- are functionally floating bases.
And here's the other half of that simple truth: We don't care to know about it. We, the American people, aided and abetted by our politicians, the Pentagon, and the mainstream media, are knee-deep in base denial.
Now, that's the gist of it. If, like most Americans, that's more than you care to know, stop here.

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War as a "bad acid trip"

By Andrew O'Hehir - Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman talks about his extraordinary animated documentary "Waltz With Bashir," a trip down the nightmarish rabbit hole of memory.

Before the invention of Wikipedia, I might never have discovered that there's a recognizable history of animated documentary filmmaking (above and beyond "Schoolhouse Rock," that is) which long predates Israeli director Ari Folman's extraordinary war memoir "Waltz With Bashir." Legendary cartoonist Winsor McKay made a ripped-from-the-headlines short called "The Sinking of the Lusitania" in 1918, Max and Dave Fleischer made a film called "The Einstein Theory of Relativity" in 1923 and Walt Disney concocted several animated docs, including "Our Friend the Atom," in 1957. (I want to see those last two really, really badly.)

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Why Obama Really Might Decriminalize Marijuana

The stoner community is clamoring to say it: "Yes we cannabis!" Turns out, with several drug-war veterans close to the president-elect's ear, insiders think reform could come in Obama's second term -- or sooner


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Famously, Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved the United States banking system during the first seven days of his first term.

And what did he do on the eighth day? "I think this would be a good time for beer," he said.

Congress had already repealed Prohibition, pending ratification from the states. But the people needed a lift, and legalizing beer would create a million jobs. And lo, booze was back. Two days after the bill passed, Milwaukee brewers hired six hundred people and paid their first $10 million in taxes. Soon the auto industry was tooling up the first $12 million worth of delivery trucks, and brewers were pouring tens of millions into new plants.

"Roosevelt's move to legalize beer had the effect he intended," says Adam Cohen, author of Nothing To Fear, a thrilling new history of FDR's first hundred days. "It was, one journalist observed, 'like a stick of dynamite into a log jam.'"

Many in the marijuana world are now hoping for something similar from Barack Obama. After all, the president-elect said in 2004 that the war on drugs had been "an utter failure" and that America should decriminalize

If Obama Is Pro-Science and Honest, he'll legalize it.

By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet - Obama was frank about his own drug use, so why isn't he more honest about what a disaster war on drugs has been?
One of the many things that made Barack Obama such a refreshing candidate was his frank and unapologetic admission of drug use. True, Anderson Cooper extracted curt "yeses" from some 2004 Democratic candidates when he asked them point-blank if they had ever smoked pot. But Obama has written openly and without prompting about his experiences, not only with marijuana, but cocaine, a "hard" drug. On the campaign trail he even joked about inhaling deeply -- "that was the point," he said more than once. Unlike George W. Bush, Obama didn't hide behind evasive murmurs about "irresponsible behavior," or turn his drug experiences into a setup for some maudlin born-again conversion story.
As recounted in his memoir, Dreams From My Father, Obama was a normal American kid. Which is to say he used drugs, had fun and survived. The book doesn't romanticize the president-elect's days of smoking pot and snorting "a little blow when [he] could afford it," but it's easy to take what details he provides and imagine him with his basketball buddies on some Oahu beach blazing bowls of Maui Wowie, alternately laughing until his guts hurt and sitting in quiet wonder before a magnificent pink-and-yellow Pacific sunset. Obama has even written about his pursuit of heroin's moon-shot high. As a teenager, he went so far as to ask a junkie friend for an assisted first hit, but recoiled when presented in a deli freezer with the surgical tools of the mainliner's trade: rubber tubing and second-hand syringe.
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Obama Blagojevich Report: Team Claims Exoneration

Barack Obama's chief counsel declared on Tuesday afternoon that only one member of the President-elect's staff -- incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel -- had any communications with embattled Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his staff since Obama's election.
Emanuel's interactions, moreover, were not in any way improper, Obama's aides stressed, and the transition team was fully compliant both with the law and the U.S. Attorney's investigation into Blagojevich's alleged pay-for-play scheme.
"No one in the Obama circle was aware of what was going on in the governor's office until he was arrested," said Greg Craig, Obama's counsel. "They found out what the Governor was doing the same time the American public found out about it."
While Craig and spokesman Robert Gibbs debriefed reporters, the Obama transition team put out a five-page report detailing the extent of contacts between the Illinois governor, the President-elect, and their respective staffs.
Read the full text of the Obama report

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Blix to testify against Iraq war makers?

A former UN chief weapons inspector says he is ready to testify about the false US allegations which led to the Iraq war before a tribunal.

Hans Blix, in a Sunday interview with Al Jazeera television said he and the Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, were subjected to implicit threats from US Vice President Dick Cheney in the run-up to the Iraq war.

The former top UN inspector said Cheney had also threatened to defame ElBaradei and him if they refused to provide the "required" information on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

"The Bush administration misled Americans and the world by creating a hype about weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the invasion of Iraq," Blix added.

The Swedish constitutional lawyer had earlier in 2004 told NBC News that, "It is probable that the governments were conscious that they were exaggerating the risks they saw in order to get the political support they would not otherwise have had.''

Blix, who was the director general of the IAEA from 1981 to 1997, added that he is ready to testify about the false US allegations before an international tribunal.

After the invasion of Iraq and the US failure to find the alleged WMD in the country, intelligence officials were severely criticized for relying "too much on defectors and exercising too little critical judgment in assessing their information."

Earlier in January 2008, members of the House Judiciary Committee called for starting impeachment hearings against Cheney.

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Bush pardons 19, commutes 1 prison term

WASHINGTON (AP) — Before leaving for the holidays, President Bush on Tuesday commuted the prison sentence of a drug offender and granted 19 pardons, including one to a man who helped the Jewish resistance in the 1940s.
With this latest batch, which includes forgiveness for convictions ranging from gun and drug violations to bank and mail fraud, Bush has granted a total of 191 pardons and nine commutations. That's fewer than half as many as Presidents Clinton or Reagan issued during their two terms.
Included in the latest list is Charles Winters, who is considered a hero in Israel.
In addition to Winters, others granted pardons were:
— William Alvis III, of Flushing, Ohio.
— John Allen Aregood of Riviera, Texas.
— Eric Charles Blanke of Parker, Colo.
— Steve Doyle Cavender of The Villages, Fla.
— Marie Elena Eppens of Lynden, Wash.
— Lydia Lee Ferguson of Sun City, Ariz.
— Eduviges Duvi Gonzalez-Matsumura of Clovis, Calif.
— George Clarence Greene Jr. of Gray, Ga.
— James Won Hee Kang of South Barrington, Ill.
— Alan Stephen Maiss of Reno
— Richard Harold Miller of Tallahassee, Fla.
— Delano Abraham Nixon of Neosho Rapids, Kan.
— John H. Overholt of Black Hawk, S.D.
— Morris Keith Parker of Georgetown, S.C.
— Robert Truman Reece of Redondo Beach, Calif.
— Donald Edward Roessler of Harrison, Ohio.
— Issac Robert Toussie of Brooklyn, N.Y.
— David Lane Woolsey of St. George, Utah.
Bush also commuted the prison sentence of Reed Raymond Prior of Des Moines.
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Zimbabwe prison guards stealing prisoner food to stay alive

Zimbabwe's highways are littered with police checkpoints, which is discomforting for foreign journalists working there illegally. But they are simply a pretext for extracting food or money from drivers.

“What are we having for Christmas?”, one policeman asked The Times. “I'm hungry,” another said bluntly. A third threatened to issue me with a ticket for stopping a yard past the point where he was standing. He then said that my companions - hitch hikers - were “unlawful passengers”. Eventually he backed down, but a black driver would have had to pay.

More alarming was when I was flagged down by two police officers near Bulawayo, prompting visions of Christmas in a lice-infested Zimbabwean prison. But they just wanted a lift.

In the car they raged against President Mugabe's regime. The senior one, a sergeant of five years' standing, claimed that his monthly salary did not buy even a litre of cooking oil. His work was merely “community service”. He said that he felt sympathy for the suffering of ordinary people, and that if they rebelled he would not fire on them.

Another passenger was a warden at Bulawayo's infamous Khami prison. The previous month he had earned 200 million Zimbabwean dollars - less than US$1 at today's rate. Of that sum he could withdraw only a fraction after queueing for four hours at the bank each morning. Every day and a bit, its value halved.

He said that he had five children to support and had not eaten bread for a year. He survived by stealing the prisoners' sadza - a porridge that is now a luxury for most - or by trading favours for food brought in by families. “There's no discipline ... We depend on the prisoners to stay alive.”

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Martin Fletcher in Harare

Paul Krugman: We're In For a Year of "Economic Hell"

It may take a lot longer than many people think before the United States economy is ready to live without bubbles. And until then, the economy is going to need a lot of government help.

Whatever the new administration does, we’re in for months, perhaps even a year, of economic hell. After that, things should get better, as President Obama’s stimulus plan — O.K., I’m told that the politically correct term is now “economic recovery plan” — begins to gain traction. Late next year the economy should begin to stabilize, and I’m fairly optimistic about 2010.

But what comes after that? Right now everyone is talking about, say, two years of economic stimulus — which makes sense as a planning horizon. Too much of the economic commentary I’ve been reading seems to assume, however, that that’s really all we’ll need — that once a burst of deficit spending turns the economy around we can quickly go back to business as usual.

In fact, however, things can’t just go back to the way they were before the current crisis. And I hope the Obama people understand that.

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Blood Bling:Arabs Lavish Jewels on Secretary of State Rice

The global economic depression ( Bush calls it a recession, so you know it is a depression) is not affecting the quality of Rice's Christmas bonuses from her Arabs friends.Recently, she played piano for the Queen of England. Rice wants her exit to be stylish....
WASHINGTON December 22, 2008, 09:24 pm ET · President George W. Bush's foreign policies may be unpopular in the Middle East, but Arab leaders showered his top diplomat with jewelry worth far more than a quarter of a million dollars last year. While Bush himself didn't fare nearly as well, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice raked in at least $316,000 in gem-encrusted baubles from the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia alone, making her one of top recipients among U.S. officials of gifts from foreign heads of state and government and their aides in 2007.

In January, Jordan's King Abdullah II gave Rice an emerald and diamond necklace, ring, bracelet and earrings estimated to be worth $147,000, according to the State Department's annual inventory of such items released Monday just in time for Christmas.
The king and his wife, Queen Rania, also gave Rice a less expensive necklace and earrings along with a jewelry box valued at $4,630, the document shows.

Not to be outdone, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia presented Rice with a ruby and diamond necklace with matching earrings, bracelet and ring worth $165,000 in July. The inventory also includes a $170,000 flower petal motif necklace the Saudi monarch gave to Rice in 2005, which the department says was not previously disclosed.

From the same Arab leaders, Bush received just over $100,000 in gifts in 2007, the list shows.Other gifts include an $85,000 sapphire and diamond jewelry set and $10,000 piece of artwork depicting a desert scene of bedouins, camels and a tent made of gold given to first lady Laura Bush by Saudi King Abdullah.

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US warns Russia against selling missiles to Iran

WASHINGTON December 22, 2008, 09:24 pm ET · U.S. officials said Monday that they want answers from Russia on whether it is selling advanced surface-to-air missiles to Iran, a move the U.S. insists could threaten American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. A senior military intelligence official said that while Moscow has sent out conflicting responses to reports on the sale of long-range S-300 missiles, the U.S. believes it is taking place. However, it appears that no equipment has yet been delivered to Iran, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Russia's state arms export agency said Monday it is supplying Iran with defensive weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, but did not say whether they include sophisticated long-range S-300 missiles.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the U.S. is seeking clarification from Russia."We have repeatedly made clear at senior levels of the Russian government that we would strongly oppose the sale of the S-300," Wood said. "As the U.S. government has said before, this is not the time for business as usual with the Iranian government."

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The Seven Deadly Deficits: What the Bush Years Really Cost Us

Joseph Stiglitz -- And how President Obama can get the economy back on track.
When President George W. Bush assumed office, most of those disgruntled about the stolen election contented themselves with this thought: Given our system of checks and balances, given the gridlock in Washington, how much damage could be done? Now we know: far more than the worst pessimists could have imagined. From the war in Iraq to the collapse of the credit markets, the financial losses are difficult to fathom. And behind those losses lie even greater missed opportunities.
Put it all together -- the money squandered on the war, the money wasted on a housing pyramid scheme that impoverished the nation and enriched a few, and the money lost because of the recession -- and the gap between what we could have produced and what we did produce will easily exceed $1.5 trillion. Think what that kind of money could have done to provide health care for the uninsured, to improve our education system, to build green technology ... The list is endless.

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The Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs of 2008

Progress This Year Wasn't Just in Hardware but in Understanding the Urgency of Key Issues. The "breakthrough" in this case is not just hardware; it's a growing understanding of the urgency in solving these critical problems.

The year 2008 closes with two enormous scientific and technological challenges unresolved: How to create renewable and benign sources of energy and how to lessen the damage we're doing to the global climate system.
Those twin issues are the "greatest challenge facing modern science," according to Nobel laureate Steven Chu, the gifted physicist who has been nominated to head the Department of Energy. He will be at the center of the effort to deal with these vexing problems, and his nomination signals a new day in that effort.
Clearly, those two issues dominated the world of science during 2008, a year that also saw much progress in fields as diverse as genetic engineering, the imaging of new planets outside our solar system and the maturing of social media that has altered everything from how we meet people to financing a costly and victorious campaign for the presidency of the United States. It's difficult to pick a single scientific achievement that stands out above all others because science, as a whole, doesn't work that way.
Here's ABC News list of the top 10.
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Op-ed: Strip Governors of the Power to Appoint Senators

Let's strip governors of the power to fill empty Senate seats in all but limited circumstances, and let voters fill them. Ill. Gov. Blagojevich stands accused of trying to sell a Senate seat. In NY, Caroline Kennedy may be appointed for celebrity alone. Governors have appointed relatives and themselves. It's time to end this flawed process.

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Marijuana More Potent Than Ever

The potency of marijuana, measured by the presence of its psychoactive ingredient, THC, has tripled since 1987, according to the latest figures from the Department of Justice's National Drug Intelligence Center.

The story continues...

The new pot is certainly a superior product to the shake of the old days, but it's nowhere near as strong as some war-on-drug advocates have contended. The old White House drug czar, John Walters, has said publicly that marijuana's THC content has "increased as much as 30 times," which researchers say is not supported by the available evidence.

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Public split on Obama aides

By Paul Steinhauser - WASHINGTON (CNN) — A new national poll indicates Americans are split on whether aides to President-elect Barack Obama did something inappropriate in their contacts with embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Twelve percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Monday say Obama aides did something illegal, with another 36 percent feeling Obama aides didn’t act illegally but did do something unethical. Forty-three percent say no Obama aides did anything seriously wrong.
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10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care

Part one of a series providing basic information regarding how the health care system works, basic health care economics, and other general background to health care reform, with a single payer focus. The goal is provide a broad background that is NOT driven by specific events, news, or headlines.

DrSteveB's diary :: ::
Those 10 Excellent reasons are:
1. It's good for our health.
2. It costs less and saves money.
3. It will assure high quality health care for all Americans, rich or poor.
4. It's the best choice - morally and economically.
5. It may be a matter of life or death.
6. It will let will let doctors and nurses focus on patients, not paperwork.
7. It will reduce health care disparities.
8. It will eliminate medical debet.
9. It will be good for labor and business.
10. It's what most Americans want - and we can make it happen.
I should mention that although I am friends with some of the chapter contributers, I am not an author and have no financial stake in any of the books mentioned here.

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Could You Torture Someone?

If someone told you to press a button to deliver a 450-volt electrical shock to an innocent person in the next room, would you do it?

Replicating one of the most controversial behavioral experiments in history, a Santa Clara University psychologist has found that people will follow orders from an authority figure to administer what they believe are painful electric shocks.
More than two-thirds of volunteers in the research study had to be stopped from administering 150 volt shocks of electricity, despite hearing a person's cries of pain, professor Jerry M. Burger concluded in a study published in the January issue of the journal American Psychologist.
"In a dramatic way, it illustrates that under certain circumstances people will act in very surprising and disturbing ways,'' said Burger.
The study, using paid volunteers from the South Bay, is similar to the famous 1974 "obedience study'' by the late Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. In the wake of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann's trial, Milgram was troubled by the willingness of people to obey authorities — even if it conflicted with their own conscience.
Burger's findings are published in a special section of the journal reflecting on Milgram's work 24 years after his death on Dec. 20, 1984. The haunting images of average people administering shocks have kept memories of Milgram's research alive for decades, even as recently as the Abu Ghraib scandal.
The subjects — recruited in ads in the Mercury News, Craigslist and fliers distributed in libraries and communities centers in Santa Clara, Cupertino and Sunnyvale — thought they were testing the effect of punishment on learning.
"They were average citizens, a typical cross-section of people that you'd see around every day,'' said Burger.
In the study, conducted two years ago, volunteers administered what they believed were increasingly powerful electric shocks to another person in a separate room. An "authority figure'' prodded the volunteer to shock another person, who was playing the role of "learner." Each time the learner gave an incorrect answer, the volunteer was urged to press a switch, seemingly increasing the electricity over time. They were told that the shocks were painful but not dangerous.
Burger designed his study to avoid several of the most controversial elements of Milgram's experiment. For instance, the "shocks'' were lower voltage. And participants were told at least three times that they could withdraw from the study at any time and still receive the $50 payment. In addition, a clinical psychologist interviewed volunteers to eliminate anyone who might be upset by the study procedure.
Like Milgram's study, Burger's shock generator machine was a fake. The cries of pain weren't real, either. Both the authority figure and the learner were actors — faculty members Brian Oliveira and Kenneth Courtney.
Burger found that 70 percent of the participants had to be stopped from escalating shocks over 150 volts, despite hearing cries of protest and pain. Decades earlier, Milgram found that 82.5 percent of participants continued administering shocks. Of those, 79 percent continued to the shock generator's end, at 450 volts.
Burger's experiment did not go that far.
"The conclusion is not: 'Gosh isn't this a horrible commentary on human nature,' or 'these people were so sadistic,'' said Burger.
"It shows the opposite — that there are situational forces that have a much greater impact on our behavior than most people recognize,'' he said.
The experiment shows that people are more likely to comply with instructions if the task starts small, then escalates, according to Burger.
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Asylum's 100 Weirdest Stories on Digg in 2008

Digg, that wonderful Web site where users vote up their favorite news stories of the day in order to make them go popular, is well known as being possibly the most addictive site besides Super Obama World.
In the past year, since Asylum launched, it would be fair to say we've had some ups and downs in our relationship with Digg -- from our first, sweet vagina couch Digg hit, to some recent fair and mature feedback on our use of Flash photo galleries from Digg users like itsthebrod: "There is no f*cking way I'm clicking 50 times for one article. Rot in hell Asylum.com, and learn to make a decent f*cking website."
So it seemed only proper and right to consummate our Digg courtship with a blow-out, smack-down roundup of the wildest, most bizarre stories that Digg introduced us to this past year. So without further ado, we present:
The 100 Weirdest News Stories We Dugg in 2008
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Adam Sandler - The Chanukah Song (LIVE)

Happy belated and ongoing Chanukah to my liberal Jewish friends!

A young Adam Sandler performs his holiday classic for a very enthusiastic live audience.



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Is Islam Compatible with Liberal Democracy?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali discusses Is Islam Compatible with Liberal Democracy? with Clive Crook at the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival.



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TIME’s Person of the Year From 1927 to 2008 - TIME

See who made the grade over TIME's first eight decades — from aviators and ayatollahs to youths and, of course, You.

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