Victor Thorn

More sinister than Karl Rove and potentially deadlier than Dick “Darth Vader” Cheney, his name is Rahm Emanuel, and he was recently appointed chief of staff in the president-elect’s White House. This first official act should send waves of alarm through people because Barack Obama promised change, but what we’re getting is the exact same cabal that brought us 9-11 and endless war in the Middle East.

Initial media reports described Emanuel as a vulgar, Chicago-based enforcer who had an aggressive, in-your- face, pit-bull style. Others painted him as a partisan Washington insider with strong ties to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).Although these labels seem harsh, the reality is far worse.

Rahm Emanuel, nicknamed “Rahmbo,” is a pro- Israel Orthodox Jew who was educated in a Talmudic yeshiva and served as a volunteer in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). He is a dual citizen of Israel, which his office refused to deny when AFP inquired. Israel is the only nation where Americans can apply for and obtain citizenship without automatically renouncing U.S. citizenship.

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Mickey Z.

Why not embrace your outrage and frustration and let it challenge you, inspire you...

“One of the good things about everything being so fucked up—about the culture being so ubiquitously destructive—is that no matter where you look—no matter what your gifts, no matter where your heart lies—there’s good and desperately important work to be done.” - Derrick Jensen

In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law was passed and both Northerners and Southerners were now legally required to turn in runaway slaves. One year later, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin (or Life Among the Lowly) as a serial in an antislavery paper, The National Era. In 1852, the Boston publishing company Jewett published it as a book and, as they are wont to say, the rest is history.

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Len Hart

The GOP has dominated American economic policy since 1980 and with the exception of a brief period in Clinton's second term, the rich have gotten exceedingly richer and the poor, much, much poorer.

This gaping, growing inequality married to Bush's 'bailout', a failed example of corporate welfare and outright theft, has proven Karl Marx to have been absolutely correct. The nation now faces another Great Depression because it had not learned the lessons of Coolidge, Hoover, Reagan and Bush.

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Gilad Atzmon

Waltz With Bashir is a breath-taking new Israeli film, an animated documentary directed by Ari Folman.

In 1982, Folman was a 19-year-old IDF infantry soldier. Twenty four years later, in 2006, Folman is surprised to find out that he does not remember a thing from that war or the massacres in Sabra and Shatila. The film is a journey into Folman’s lost past.

The documentary is set as a chain of animated interviews and conversations between Folman and his military associates, psychologists and Ron Ben Yishai, the legendary Israeli TV reporter who was among the first to report on the Sabra and Shatila Massacres. The setting aims at building a coherent personal past narrative out of the broken memories of others.

The film is highly sensitive and emotionally moving. To a certain extent, it is a very brave individual attempt to deal with the devastating collective Israeli past, and the massacres in Sabra and Shatila in particular. However, we are asked to remember that the massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps, though set up by the Israeli Army, were physically carried out by the Lebanese Christian Phalangists.

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Les Visible

It’s been two years now since the attacks in Houston and Seattle. Then, a month later, Denver was gone as well. Even I found it hard to get my head around what happened. As for the American people, well, they couldn’t process it at all; Muslims rounded up and necklaced with tires on city and suburban streets… burning in the dark nights of the American outrage. All it took was to tell them that Iran was behind it and then Iran was gone too. There isn’t much news out of what’s left of the Middle East these days. No one knows what’s going on there.

In the early days there was some pretty fierce resistance but it didn’t come to much. Executive order 525 put an end to most of it after it became law to kill the entire families and all known associates of anyone caught fighting back. Then came Bloggernacht and the public executions of anyone convicted of terror-speech. The arrival of the IDF and its merger with Blackwater and the New American Army put ‘shoot to kill’ storm troopers on every street corner. The bounty paid to children for informing on their parents, with food and fuel so scarce, was a crackerjack idea. No one knows what happened to those informed on. They just disappeared.

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Ramzy Baroud

There are a few buzzwords that every American politician, aiming for high office must utilize, even if disingenuously, to have a reasonable chance at getting elected.

President-elect, Barak Obama’s constant use of terms like ‘hope’ and ‘change’ contributed greatly to the overwhelming support he has experienced by the American public. Many, admiringly so, have overcome a legacy of racial division and prejudice that has defined America for decades, if not centuries. In that regard, voting to office a bi-racial candidate is truly an historic event.

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Stephen Lendman

Since taking office in February 1999, America's dominant media have relentlessly attacked Chavez because of the good example he represents and threat it might spread in spite of scant chance it will in today's climate.

Yet some of his fiercest critics maintain pressure and show up often on the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page. Most recently on November 10 by its America's columnist, Mary O'Grady. Her style is agitprop. Her space a truth-free zone. Her latest in an article headlined "Hugo Chavez Spreads the Loot" referring to what The New York Times calls "Suitcasegate."

It played out in a Miami show trial that concluded on November 3 with Franklin Duran found guilty of acting as an unregistered agent of the Venezuelan government in the US. He's co-owner of the private Venezuelan motor oil company, Venoco. It's unconnected to the government, but that's not what prosecutors charged, what jurors were pressured to conclude after initially being deadlocked, and what O'Grady picked up on and claims.

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Les Visible

What I am about to say has been said before. Anything that can be said has been said before… ignored before and understood before.

One thing that confuses a great many people is; how do you approach that which is everywhere and everything, is both the creator and the product, is you and everything that surrounds you and which creates, sustains and destroys every temporary thing while remaining unchanged itself?

Every religious text concerns itself with this. You’ve got more guidelines; rules of conduct, points of focus and forms of worship than you could possibly use and the more you tried, the more confusing it would become. Scholars immerse themselves in information their whole lives and wind up knowing less than they did when they began. The chaos and confusion in the ever changing world, with its myriad attractions and electro-magnetic impact on the senses and then upon the mind, makes for a real circus.

What to do… what to do if you really do want to achieve self-realization. Let’s take self-realization as the catch-all term for however anyone and everyone define that state which is union with the all pervasive unknowable. Let’s assume that following a religion can eventually take you to a point of better understanding. Let’s also assume that following a religion can also take you into a greater darkness. We have ample proof of this by looking at what history shows us. I do not need to elaborate here. I do not mean to diminish religion and what may or may not be possible. I take it for granted that many hearts have found succor there.

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Khalid Amayreh

There is no doubt that Hamas, the main Palestinian Islamic movement, is becoming more rational, more pragmatic and more moderate, at least in comparison to its formative years. This is why it is imperative that member-States of the European Union (EU) either collectively or individually should initiate a meaningful dialogue with Hamas as soon as possible. Needless to say, such a dialogue would be expedient to all parties involved as well as to the cause of peace and stability in the Middle East.

Israel, along with her guardian-ally, the United States, and the bulk of EU States, sought to destroy Hamas by imposing an especially harsh blockade on occupied Palestine following Hamas’s electoral victory in 2006.

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Dan Shelley

I first got into journalism because I thought I could make a difference.

I wrote for the school newspaper and did “news” reports on a radio station a friend and I started at my high school in Springfield, Mo. I got my first professional job at age 20, while still in college, at a local radio station’s news department. Three years later, I became a news director, and 12 years after that, in 1995, I was recruited to move to Milwaukee to become news director at WTMJ, one of the largest and most successful news/talk radio stations in America.

That was where my real education occurred.

I worked for three years as news director, and then, in 1998, gained the additional title of assistant program director, a role I held until leaving the station in July 2006. From that position, I worked closely with our talk show hosts and became intimately familiar with how they appeal to listeners and shape their vision of the world. Let me tell you some of the lessons I learned.

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