Cherrie Heywood

Israel has imposed a virtual news blackout on the Gaza Strip. For the last ten days no foreign journalists have been able to enter the besieged territory to report on the escalating humanitarian crisis caused by Israel's complete closure of Gaza's borders for the last two weeks.

Steve Gutkin, the AP bureau chief in Jerusalem and head of Israel's Foreign Press Association, said that he personally "knows of no foreign journalist that has been allowed into Gaza in the last week."

Gutkin said that "while Israel has barred foreign press from entering Gaza in the past, the length of the current ban makes it unprecedented." He added that he has received no "plausible or acceptable" explanation for the ban from the Israeli government.

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Tony Parsons

The Open Secret communication can only point to the simple wonder of being, and attempt to illuminate the futility of seeking for it. It does not accept or reject the teachings of spiritual path or process but it will expose, without compromise, the singular and fundamental misconception that drives the belief that there is something called a seeker that needs to find something else called enlightenment.

The Open Secret does not compromise with the needs and expectations of the seeker. Neither does it attempt to attract or please with promises of an easy and pleasant experience of liberation. Who could promise that and who would experience it?

Because the idea of individual free will and choice is seen as an illusory dream, there is no agenda or intention to help or change individuality. As far as the apparent individual is concerned, there is nothing for sale here.

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Les Visible

It has got to be said and I am going to say it as simply and clearly as I can. I’m not going to put a lot of links up. If you want information then just go to the sidebar and click on one of the news sites. There’s plenty in our alternative news about it… most especially at What Really Happened in the last few days.

What I am going to say, I am going to say because it needs to be said and I need to say it. What I am going to say is true. What you read in the mass media is a lie. All of the complex argument that is used to mask and justify the torment and genocide being practiced by Israel upon the Palestinians is for the purpose of confusion. I hope to dispel some of that confusion today. I may explain a few things but, for the most part, I’m just going to state them. It’s up to you to study and consider if what I say is true.

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William Bowles

"The BBC’s Tim Franks in Jerusalem says we have no clue as to when or where this video was shot and it is impossible to know just how frequently such incidents occur." — 'BBC: Israel army studies 'abuse video’

But right below this it says,

"But a leading Israeli human rights group says "many instances of abuse are not exposed because they have become the norm"".

But is this all this group said? Why isn’t the group named? Why is the source not identified? It seems the 'rules’ that allegedly govern reportage are as flexible as Mr Franks interpretation of events are.

So it is possible to know how often such abuses occur and if Mr Franks bothered to subscribe to the excellent (and 'balanced’) Palestinian Centre for Human Rights regular reports on events in the Occupied Territories, he would not need to qualify his comments about "just how frequently such incidents occur." So much for our intrepid journalists in their never-ending search for the 'truth’.

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Mark Glenn

Dear God,

I know you’ve got your hands full these days, what with the world barreling head-long into Armageddon, but there is something I would like to share with you in the hopes you might give me some advice. I am, as they say in a real pickle here and find myself being forced to choose between 2 masters.

It was a difficult moment for sure when I received the call from Dave the auto mechanic saying it was done, meaning the old 22 yr-old GMC Suburban–the ‘family truckster’ that we affectionately refer to as ‘the Beast’. I wanted to be happy it was finally repaired but at the same time knew that it being operable again opened up a whole new can of worms I didn’t feel like dealing with in the least, namely the business of doing my ‘Christian thing’ of going to church on Sundays. It–the Beast–had been down now for a good 4 months with a laundry list of problems making it unsafe to drive on North Idaho’s highways, leaving me with the little 25-year old Olds Cierra to tool around town, also not suitable for the business of going to see God, unless your idea of seeing Him is to do so in a manner up close and personal as a result of getting killed in it.

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By Kevin Zeese

People Need to Organize to Break the Bailout and Demand the Economy We Want

October saw an increase in bankruptcies -- 108,595, an average of 4,936 every business day.

President Bush hosted the G-20 summit –the official menu included fruitwood-smoked quail, thyme-roasted rack of lamb and baked Vermont brie with walnut crostini, along with three wines . . .

More than a quarter million U.S. households received a foreclosure filing in October. A total of 279,561 properties got a default notice, were warned of a pending auction or were foreclosed.

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Seth Freedman

With every cruel and unusual punishment meted out against West Bank villagers, Israel is fomenting more and more hate against its own people.

"When Israel was first created, I had a lot of admiration and respect for the Jews; now I want to throw them all into the sea." The choice of phraseology was no accident on the part of the speaker, who wanted to make crystal clear the effects that more than 40 years of Israeli occupation have had on him and his family.

We were sitting in his tent in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Kheir, situated just outside the perimeter fence of the West Bank settlement of Karmel. Thanks to Karmel's proximity, the Bedouins suffer almost daily harassment at the hands of the settlers and their security team, resulting in the vitriolic volte-face performed by the head of the family in terms of his feelings towards Israelis.

The residents of Umm al-Kheir, and several other villages in the area, are prevented from building on their own land, or from grazing their flocks in the pastures nearby, due to the severe restrictions imposed on them by the army and police. In order to protect the ever-expanding settlements, more and more land is annexed under the guise of erecting "security zones", effectively strangling the natural growth of the Palestinian communities, and destroying their livelihoods in one fell swoop.

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Stephen Lendman

It's a minority but growing view, including from 86-year old former Goldman Sachs chairman, John Whitehead, at the November 12 Reuters Global Finance Summit in New York. As disturbing evidence mounts, he said: "I think it would be worse than the depression. We're talking about reducing the credit of the United States of America, which is the backbone of the economic system. I see nothing but large increases in the deficit, all of which are serving to decrease the credit standing of America.

Before I go to sleep at night, I wonder if tomorrow is the day Moody's and S & P will announce a downgrade of US government bonds. Eventually (they'll) no longer be the triple-A credit that they've always been. I've always been a positive person and optimistic, but I don't see a solution here." Powerful words from a man who "want(s) to get people thinking about this, and realize (we're on) a road to disaster."

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Pakistan Daily

Bill Kristol, a Fox Television commentator and arch American neoconservative revealed recently what many had long suspected was US thinking about the current international situation.

Kristol recounts that in a 90-minute, mostly off-the-record meeting with a small group of journalists in early July, President Bush “conveyed the following impression, that he thought the next president's biggest challenge would not be Iraq, which he thinks he'll leave in pretty good shape, and would not be Afghanistan, which is manageable by itself… It’s Pakistan.” We have “a sort of friendly government that sort of cooperates and sort of doesn’t. It's really a complicated and difficult situation.” Right on cue, presidential candidate Barack Obama took the baton from Bush in his speech on July 15, in which he argued that more focus and resource were required on both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

With fanfare, fireworks, military parades and a lot of rhetorical overindulgence, the American-backed Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas has been celebrating the 20th anniversary of the so-called “Independence Day.”

In 1988, the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who, too, had a hard time distinguishing reality from fiction, declared Palestine “an independent state,” although he knew well, as did the rest of the world, that a country thoroughly occupied and savaged by a Nazi-like foreign power can’t be truly independent, let alone sovereign, until it is fully liberated from the Jaws and claws of the foreign occupiers.

That was the same Arafat who in the mid 1990s toured the West Bank using his Egyptian-donated Russian-made helicopter, declaring one city after the other “liberated, liberated, liberated.” (The two helicopters, dubbed by Israel as the Palestinian air-force were later destroyed by the Israeli air force).

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