Len Hart

It may not be the Twilight of the Gods, but, with any luck, it could be a permanent brownout of the GOP --not a political party but a crime syndicate, an evil cult, a the body politic'.

Even the New York Times concedes that election Day exit polls may have sent shivers down the GOPs notochord. According to to the numbers, the GOP is literally 'withering away'.

More than six-in-ten Americans (62%) say they have a positive opinion of the Democratic Party, compared with 40% who say they have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party. The current Democratic favorability advantage is the largest measured in nearly two decades. The widening gap is primarily a result of an increase in favorable views of the Democratic Party since the election, up from 57% in late According to a poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News this month, only 21 percent of respondents said that they consider themselves Republicans. This was the lowest percentage for that response since The Times started asking the question in 1992. By comparison, nearly twice as many respondents said that they consider themselves Democrats.

--Pew Report

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Karin Friedemann

Gideon Levy a Ha’aretz newspaper reporter recently asked: “If Israelis were so sure of the rightness of their cause, why the violent intolerance they display toward everyone who tries to make a different case?”

In "Survival Instinct or Jewish Paranoia?" my favorite shrink, ex-Israeli Avigail Barbanel writes that, “The implications of seeing the conflict from within the lens of Jewish trauma are very serious. Can we really negotiate with this? Can we explain to Israelis that their perspective on life and on the conflict is seriously flawed? If we tried will they listen, and do the Palestinians have time to wait until they do?”

It seems that Americans are kind of in an abusive marriage situation with Israel, where because love and friendship are assumed to be there, the abused partner keeps feeling guilty and acting hyper-responsible, and tries even harder to please the abuser. Many Americans maintain friendships with pro-Israel Jews and simply decide not to discuss politics; however there is an emotional blackmail going on because if you did mention Israel or Jewish-American genocidalism, the relationship would be over.

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Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah

The latest public opinion survey in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has shown a dramatic rise in Hamas’ popularity among Palestinians, with a significant decline in Fatah’s public standing.

Moreover, the poll showed that a majority of Palestinians believed that the advent of the Obama administration in the U.S. wouldn’t make a big difference with regard to American efforts to resolve the Palestinian issue.

According to the poll, Turkey, Venezuela and Iran as well as Hezbullah are the most popular regional forces among Palestinians.

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Jonathan Cook

'When you show mercy .. you are being
cruel to pure and honest soldiers.' (Getty)

Extremist rabbis and their followers, bent on waging holy war against the Palestinians, are taking over the Israeli army by stealth, according to critics.

In a process one military historian has termed the rapid “theologisation” of the Israeli army, there are now entire units of religious combat soldiers, many of them based in West Bank settlements. They answer to hardline rabbis who call for the establishment of a Greater Israel that includes the occupied Palestinian territories.

Their influence in shaping the army’s goals and methods is starting to be felt, say observers, as more and more graduates from officer courses are also drawn from Israel’s religious extremist population.

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Karine Mac Allister

Photo : Gaza janvier 2009, un femme tient
son enfant devant un bâtiment détruit.

L’état d’Israël a été créé en 1948. Israël est né du mouvement sioniste qui voulait un état pour les juifs après les pogroms et la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale. À cette époque, des Musulmans, des Chrétiens et des Juifs cohabitaient en Palestine. La Société des Nations (ancêtre des Nations Unies) a donné à la Grande-Bretagne un mandat ayant deux objectifs difficiles à concilier : (1) réaliser le droit à l’autodétermination des Palestiniens et (2) créer un « foyer national » pour les juifs en Palestine.

En 1947, pris avec ce dilemme et face aux violences croissantes sur le terrain, la Grande-Bretagne a demandé aux Nations Unies de décider de la question de la Palestine. Les Nations Unies ont donc recommandé de diviser la Palestine en deux: un état juif et un état arabe, avec un statut international pour Jérusalem.

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Linda S. Heard

Israelis go to the polls next Tuesday to choose a new leader. Ahead is Benjamin Netanyahu, a right-wing hard-liner who has little time for the two-state solution, was vehemently against Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and, who, for years, has been banging the drums of war against Iran. This silver-tongued, ruthless individual is highly dangerous. Choosing him is tantamount to choosing war. What are they thinking?

Successive Israeli governments have proved over and over again that they’re not interested in relinquishing land for peace. Instead, “peace process” has become nothing more than a carrot held up as balm for Palestinian discontent and to appease the international community. Israelis have lived in a state of conflict for so long it has become the norm. For most, the status quo is safe and familiar.

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Khalid Amayreh

When the Israeli High Court recently ordered Jewish squatters to leave an Arab house they had illegally seized in al-Khalil ( Hebron) a few years ago, settlers and their supporters converged at the contentious site, vowing to put up a showdown with the Israeli army and police.

Among the settler leaders arriving at the site, apparently to incite the squatters to resist evacuation, was Daniela Weise, a charismatic settler leader who preaches blood and fire against the Palestinian community in Israel-Palestine, demanding that they either be enslaved, expelled or outright exterminated.

Weise didn’t content herself with invoking the usual mantras, such as “God gave us this land,” and “We are only reclaiming our country.” She actually quoted heavily from the Old Testament, telling hundreds of Jewish fanatics that it was a Mitzvah (good religious deed) to attack Arabs, even murder them, and damage their property, because “their lives have no sanctity and their property belongs to us.” “The Bible shows us the way as to how we should be dealing with the Arabs. The Bible can’t be wrong.”

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by chycho

Recently I came across the following video from President Obama, at the time a Senator, answering some questions regarding hip-hop, its message, and its potential.

Obama states:

“… honestly, I love the art of hip-hop, I don’t always love the message of hip-hop. There are times where even with the artists I named, the artists I love, there is a message that is not only sometimes degrading to women, not only uses the N word a little too frequently but also something I’m really concerned about is always talking about material things. It’s always talking about how I can get something.”

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