Who are the Palestinian refugees?

"Palestinian refugees are the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, the majority of whom were dispossessed, were forced to run away or were expelled when the state of Israel was created in 1948. This dispossession and expulsion has continued since with the second largest such event in Palestine taking place during the 1967 war, which Israel launched on its Arab neighbors and which resulted in the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank."

And, I bet you thought the Arabs attacked Israel, didn't you?

Amazon.com has just reclassified "The Israel Lobby" by Harvard and Chicago U profs as a "conspiracy theory" book

Amazon can reclassify "The Israel Lobby" anyway they want, it won't put the sh*t back inside the horse.

Test of Faith at Oral Roberts University

""I'm sure there is corruption everywhere," said freshman Ben Conners, one of a number of people interviewed before the resignation. "But if you're holding students to such a high standard, making them sign an honor code and live by these strict principles, I expect the administration to be living an even stricter set of principles. To see something like this, it feels empty, like an elaborate masquerade party.""

Islamic Academy Under Attack

"On Nov. 15, a dozen U.S. senators, including Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., wrote a letter to the State Department urging it to act on the commission's recommendations. And on Tuesday, Reps. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Steve Israel, D-N.Y., introduced legislation to write the commission's recommendations regarding the academy into law."

The usual Zionists suspects are at it again. They won't be satisfied until every Arab/Muslim everywhere is pissed with the US.

Rising Rates to Worsen Subprime Mess

"Now the real crest of the reset wave is coming, and that promises more pain for borrowers, lenders and Wall Street. Already, many subprime lenders, who focused on people with poor credit, have gone bust. Big banks and investors who made subprime loans or bought securities backed by them are reporting billions of dollars in losses."

Good riddance to John Howard

"Like most foreign elections, the humiliating defeat of Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, was driven largely by their own domestic concerns, and it had little (though not nothing) to do with the U.S. Still, it is worth celebrating Howard's defeat in light of how pernicious a presence he was, as one of the very few remaining world leaders who loyally supported the worst and most war-loving aspects of the Bush/Cheney foreign policy."

Giuliani's Critics Point to Cronyism

William J. Bratton, now Los Angeles police chief, clashed with Giuliani over who should get credit for a drop in New York crime. Photo Credit: By Lauren Victoria Burke -- Associated Press

""Surround Yourself With Great People" was the title of a chapter in "Leadership," Rudolph W. Giuliani's best-selling celebration of his management style, but to critics of his performance in two terms as mayor of New York, it was an admonition he too often ignored."

Eyes Will Be on Bush At Talks on Mideast

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joins President Bush in his meeting at the White House with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Photo Credit: By Charles Dharapak -- Associated Press

"When the Middle East peace conference kicks off Tuesday in Annapolis, President Bush will deliver the opening speech and also conduct three rounds of personal diplomacy with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Such an active role is notable for a president who has never visited Israel while in office, who has made only one trip to Egypt and Jordan to promote peace efforts, and who has left the task of relaunching the peace process largely in the hands of his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice."

US to arm Pak tribes to fight al-Qaeda

"The US is planning to enlist tribal leaders in Pakistan's border regions to allegedly fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants."

Howard's reign in Australia is over

Australian Prime Minister John Howard walks past a campaign poster promoting his opposition, Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd, outside a polling station before casting his ballot at a suburban Sydney school in the federal election Saturday, Nov. 24, 2007. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

"Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd earned a sweeping victory in Australia's elections Saturday, ending an 11-year conservative era and promising major changes to policies on global warming and the Iraq war."

One by one the "coalition of the willing" is falling like dominoes as "another one bites the dust."

Finding Mandela

"Several years ago, a high-level Israeli official asked me to tell him everything I could about how the Israelis might find their Palestinian Mandela. His question was interesting and appropriate but also troubling because the Afrikaners didn’t really “find” Mandela. It took several months before the answer came to me. Show me the Palestinian to whom you Israelis are willing to lose, and I will to show you your Palestinian Mandela. My friend had overlooked the fact that Mandela and the African National Congress had won in South Africa."

Censored Images of War

"What US citizens should not see."

Apartheid Israel - A Call To Action for Black Folks

"Johnathan Scott in a piece entitled the “Niggerization of Palestine” asks “how Americans might respond politically if they came to know that a significant portion of their tax dollars is funding the most brutal system of racial oppression the world has seen since American Jim Crow and apartheid in South Africa.”"

$100 oil: the terrible truth

"As the price of crude oil sets records almost daily, the British government remains stunningly complacent. With the $100 barrel a real and constant threat, the prime minister's website blithely proclaims "the world's oil and gas resources are sufficient to sustain economic growth for the foreseeable future". Officials refuse to define what is meant by "foreseeable", but it is clear they suffer from extreme myopia, or worse."

Gaza's Reality

"Could you live like this?"

An endless pool of prisoners

"Why is Israel releasing 440 Palestinian prisoners specifically ahead of the Annapolis conference, and not 500 or 300, or 2,000 as the United States had expected? The impression is that no one is exercised by the security risk entailed in releasing prisoners - aside from politicians who want to make political capital off of it - and that all the wheeling and dealing revolves around the question of how many prisoners "are worth wasting" on this or that event."

Israeli settlers claim they will not budge, no matter what’s decided in Annapolis

"“The only viable solution is to leave security fully in the hands of the Israelis from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. Jews have a historical and religious right to be here," said Dayan. "This is the heart of the Jewish homeland ... To uproot Jews from here would break the backbone of Jewish society and end the country's reason for being.""

Richard Perle: ‘I Don’t Believe I Was Wrong’ About Iraq

"Appearing on BBC’s Hardtalk with Stephen Sackur this weekend, Iraq war architect Richard Perle attempted, on the one hand, to distance himself from the failures of the Iraq war, and on the other hand, to claim it was a fantastic success."

Facts regarding Israel's Fuel and Electricity Cuts to the Gaza Strip

"Israel's claim that it can cut electricity without harming hospitals and other vital services is inconsistent with the facts on the ground. In Gaza, main lines of electricity serve hospitals, water wells, pumping stations, treatment plants, schools, pharmacies, and local clinics, as well as ordinary homes and buildings, without differentiation. As a result, when power is cut to the main lines, ensuing electricity outages also impact essential public services."

Britain's Brown on a down after bruising week

"British Prime Minister Gordon Brown faced more discouraging polls Saturday after a bruising week that brought his honeymoon period to a grinding halt. A string of setbacks have rocked his government and surveys suggest his initial burst of popularity since taking over from Tony Blair in June is well and truly over."

Exit polls point to Australian gov't defeat

"The Sky News poll also points to a humiliating defeat for Prime Minister John Howard in his own seat of Bennelong in Sydney."

Looks like another one is about to bite the dust!

The Financial Tsunami: Sub-Prime Mortgage Debt is but the Tip of the Iceberg

"Even experienced banker friends tell me that they think the worst of the US banking troubles are over and that things are slowly getting back to normal. What is lacking in their rosy optimism is the realization of the scale of the ongoing deterioration in credit markets globally, centered in the American asset-backed securities market, and especially in the market for CDO’s—Collateralized Debt Obligations and CMO’s—Collateralized Mortgage Obligations. By now every serious reader has heard the term “It’s a crisis in Sub-Prime US home mortgage debt.” What almost no one I know understands is that the Sub-Prime problem is but the tip of a colossal iceberg that is in a slow meltdown."

Paul Expects to Raise More Than $12 Million in Fourth Quarter

"Paul said he has begun "spending generously'' in key early- primary states. He is competing in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada, and said he expects to have money to campaign through Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, when at least 22 states may hold primaries and decide the nomination."

Ron Paul: Smear Attempts Reflect "Frightened," "Insecure," "Panicking" Establishment

""I think they represent a philosophical position which is diametrically opposed to us and our interpretation of the Constitution - I think it's serious business when people strike out like that and start using names like Islamic fascism - they're working on fear," the Congressman told the Alex Jones Show this week."

Six Imams kicked off flight win a round in court

"Six Muslim imams arrested on a U.S. Airways jet in Minneapolis last November after a passenger raised suspicions about their pre-flight prayers and boarding activities won an early victory Tuesday in their federal lawsuit against the airline and the Metropolitan Airports Commission."

No More Holocaust Reparations, Says German Finance Minister

Steinbrück pays his respects at the Yad Vashem memorial

"Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück said in Jerusalem Thursday that Germany had no plans to renegotiate a Holocaust reparations deal signed with Israel in 1952."

No, No, No! You CAN"T refuse! You MUST feel guilty and pay reparations until WE say you can stop.

Study claims Jewish poverty rate in the U.S. is higher than in Israel

"Every day at 6 P.M. 72 Jews come to the Ezra Center in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. They come to eat dinner. Although the meal is provided by a respectable caterer and served in a place called Uptown Cafe, this is unmistakably a soup kitchen."

E-mail snub to Israel by Prince Charles' aides sparks furor

"Senior aides to Britain's Prince Charles said there is "no chance" the prince would ever visit Israel as such a visit would boost Israel's international image. The aides wrote the comments, in August E-mails, after outgoing Israeli ambassador to Britain Zvi Heifetz extended an invitation to the prince via principal private secretary Sir Michael Peat and deputy private secretary Clive Alderton."

Robert Fisk: Darkness falls on the Middle East

"In Beirut, people are moving out of their homes, just as they have in Baghdad."

Sleight of Hand Surge

"The neocons are making hay out of the reduced number of roadside bomb attacks, despite that fact that on November 12th four American soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb. That same day, an American soldier was killed while conducting combat operations in Anbar, but that didn't stop the neocons from continuing to chortle how well things are going in that province. You'll also hear congratulatory rumblings about how well Iraq's security forces are progressing, despite six Iraqi policemen in a town outside Mosul being gunned down in front of their own police station recently. The gunmen? They got away, of course. How's that for police work?"

Hands Off Iran

"This war, and especially Iranian retaliatory strikes on American targets, will be used to silence domestic dissent and abolish what is left of our civil liberties. It will solidify the slow-motion coup d'état that has been under way since the 9/11 attacks. It could mean the death of the Republic."

We fret over Europe, but the real threat to sovereignty has long been the US

"American influence has had far more portentous consequences. As Timothy Garton Ash recently remarked on these pages, people in Britain are subject to some of the most extensive official surveillance in the world. One excuse for this is the threat from terrorism. Would this threat be as great without our participation in the Iraq war? And would Britain have participated in that war had it not been so accustomed to following Washington's foreign-policy lead?"

Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

Na’el al-Kurdi, 21, who died on 17 November 2007 as Israeli occupation forced denied him access to medical treatment outside the Gaza Strip.

20,000 vets' brain injuries not listed in Pentagon tally

"At least 20,000 U.S. troops who were not classified as wounded during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found with signs of brain injuries, according to military and veterans records compiled by USA TODAY."

Decpetion as Truth

"This week the forces of good will assemble in the city of Ann, the Queen who presided over her colonies, an apt gesture as the Israeli colonialist state meets to consider the fate of its Palestine colony, the one carefully preserved behind its apartheid wall of infamy, to attempt once again the fraud perpetrated on the American people and the United Nations that Israel is sincere in wanting peace. The moguls that control our press and TV channels sing the praises of Ehud Olmert and the Israeli Knesset as custodians of peace seeking to bring justice to the war weary peoples of Palestine. Thus are sown the seeds of discord that will reap the whirlwind of bitter disappointment, followed by the weeping and gnashing of teeth by these perpetrators of deceit."

Envoy: Iran's UN referral 'illegal'

"Iran's IAEA envoy says ElBaradei's new report proves that the Islamic Republic's referral to the UN Security Council was illegitimate."

Yea, but so was the war in Iraq but that didn't stop Bush and the gang.

Admiral 'perplexed' by snub at Hong Kong

In this photo provided by the U.S. Navy, the USS Kitty Hawk, home-ported in Yokosuka, Japan, transits in formation during a multinational exercise that includes naval forces from India, Australia, Japan, Singapore, and the United States, Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2007, in the Bay of Bengal, near India. Thousands of sailors aboard the USS Kitty Hawk and its carrier battle group had to mark the Thanksgiving holiday at sea after they were denied entry to Hong Kong for a port call that had been planned months in advance, U.S. Navy officials said Friday, Nov. 23, 2007. (AP Photo/U.S. Navy, Seaman Stephen W. Rowe, HO)

"The top U.S. military commander in the Pacific said he's "perplexed and concerned" by China's last-minute decision to deny a U.S. aircraft carrier entry to Hong Kong for a previously scheduled port visit."

Well, like grandma use to say, "you can't give folks your behind to kiss and expect to be welcomed at Sunday dinner."

Rightist manifesto: Settler evacuation is 'crime against humanity'

Former Yesha Council spokeswoman Emily Amrusi

"About 150 right-wing activists, including academics and Israel Defense Forces reserves officers, have signed a manifesto to be published Friday calling on security forces to refuse evacuating West Bank settlers on the grounds that it is a "crime against humanity." "

Can you believe this? These Israelis are claiming it's a "crime against humanity" to stop them from committing "crimes against humanity."

An unwinnable war

"Six years on and there is a real danger that the Taliban could retake Kabul, and large parts of Afghanistan caught in all-out civil war, with reach well beyond the country's fragile borders to the Asian republics to the north, Pakistan to the south, and Iran to the west."

Bush's Plame-gate Cover-up

"In early fall 2003, George W. Bush joined in what appears to have been a criminal cover-up to conceal the role of his White House in exposing the classified identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson."

Law and Resistance: The Republic in Crisis and the People’s Response

"After September 11, 2001 the United States of America has vilified and demonized Muslims and Arabs almost to the same extent that America inflicted upon the Japanese and Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor . As the Nazis had previously demonstrated with respect to the Jews, a government must first dehumanize and scapegoat a race of people before its citizens will tolerate if not approve their elimination: Hiroshima and Nagasaki . In post-9/11 America we are directly confronted with the prospect of a nuclear war of extermination conducted by our White Racist Judeo-Christian Power Elite against People of Color in the Muslim and Arab worlds in order to steal their oil and gas. The Crusades all over again. But this time nuclear Armageddon stares all of humankind right in the face!"

Radioactive Ammunition Fired in Middle East May Claim More Lives Than Hiroshima and Nagasaki

"By firing radioactive ammunition, the U.S., U.K., and Israel may have triggered a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East that, over time, will prove deadlier than the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan."

Manufacturing Consent for World War III

“All the ideological signposts for attacking Iran are in place. The country has been thoroughly demonized because it is not nice to women, to gays, or to Jews. That in itself is enough to neutralize a large part of the American ‘left’. The issue of course is not whether Iran is nice or not – according to our views – but whether there is any legal reason to attack it, and there is none; but the dominant ideology of human rights has legitimized, specifically in the left, the right of intervention on humanitarian grounds anywhere, at any time, and that ideology has succeeded in totally sidetracking the minor issue of international law.” - Jean Bricmont (2007)

First Woman, First Black, First Latino, or First Honest President?

"The phrase honest politician has become an oxymoron. We should not be impressed by the prospect of having the first woman, first black or first Latino president. What would be far more radical would be to have the first honest president, if not ever, certainly in a very long time."

IDF Major charged over bid to spy for Iran, Hamas

David Shamir, indicted over espionage charges, at Tel Aviv District Court on Friday. (Motti Kimche)

"Tel Aviv District Court on Friday indicted over espionage charges a psychiatric doctor who serves as a Major in the Israel Defense Forces reserves for offering information to Iran, Russia and Hamas."

US storm over book on Israel lobby

"The power of America's "Jewish lobby" is said to be legendary."

Cheering for Ron Paul

"Given that the overall defense budget is now double what it was when President Bush's father presided over the end of the cold war--even though we don't have a militarily sophisticated enemy in sight--you have to wonder how this president has managed to exceed cold war spending levels. What has he gotten for the trillions wasted? Nothing, when it comes to capturing Osama bin Laden, bringing democracy to Iraq or preventing oil prices from tripling and enriching the ayatollahs of Iran while messing up the American economy."

NATO Insists Their Killings of Civilians 'Not Equivalent' to Taliban's Killings of Civilians

"Gen Scheffer appealed for understanding on this issue and said there was no moral equivalent between the civilians killed by the Taleban and those killed by Nato."

I'm not sure the subtle difference being discussed here matters a helluva lot to those civilians who have been killed. Or, to their family members who have now joined the Taliban to get some pay-back.

UN official says Israel's siege of Gaza breeds extremism and human suffering

"A senior United Nations official has issued an unprecedented appeal to British MPs to use their influence to try to alleviate the impact of "indiscriminate" and "illegal" Israeli sanctions in Gaza which display "profound inhumanity" and are "serving the agenda of extremists"."

No, NO! You have it all wrong! The Palestinians don't hate us because we are taking their land, destroying their crops and homes, putting their children in prison, and mudering them. They hate us because we are good and free. If you don't agree with that, you are ANTI-SEMITIC!

Wingnut Awareness Week

"You know that feeling people get when they drive past a car accident? It’s clear that the wreckage is terrifying, but they can’t bring themselves to look away. That’s how I felt wandering into DePaul University’s Cortelyou Commons on a rainy Chicago night in mid-October to attend “War With Iran?”"