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Hamas’ popularity soaring following Israel’s Gaza blitz
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.
Obama Loves his Hip-Hop: The Real Thing, Hip-Hop at its Best
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.”
Homo rapiens be damned: Savagery is not programmed into our DNA
Jason Miller
“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure.”
—Agent Smith from The Matrix
The Republicans Have Nothing to Party About
by Walter and Rosemary Brasch
Every House Republican and 11 Democrats voted against President Barack Obama's $819 billion stimulus package. It still passed by a vote of 244 to 188.
There are enough votes in the Senate to pass the bill, but the obstructionist Republican minority, still nursing the wounds inflicted by the public in the November election, can block it by endless political maneuvering and a filibuster.
The Republicans wail that the President's stimulus package is laden with spending proposals that don't directly attack the recession. However, instead of debating the merits of the package, instead of proposing amendments to add to or subtract from the $819 billion, the Republicans ganged up, voted as a bloc, and placed party loyalty above the needs of the nation.
Competing Ideologies: Davos v. Belem
Stephen Lendman
Founded in 1971, the Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF) meets annually in Davos, Switzerland to bring together top business and political leaders as well as mostly neoliberal minded intellectuals, economists, journalists, and others.
WEF calls itself "an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas." It aims for "world-class governance (read dominance)." Its motto is "entrepreneurship in the global public interest (read for the top 1%)." This year's theme - "Shaping the Post-Crisis World" - a tall order addressing what they caused that's heading the world for a calamitous depression.
A MATTER OF DEFIANCE, Let The World Rain Shoes On Israel
William C. Carlotti
A friend of mine recently sent me the following two reviews of the newly released film Defiance and recommended that I be sure to see it.
(SEE: Consider The Source, by Kim Voynar, Movie City News, Oscar Outsider Dec. 24, 2008 and Heroes in the Family, by Eric Herschthal, The Jewish Week, Dec. 12, 2008 ) www.thejewishweek.com | www.moviecitynews.com
The film Defiance is one of a group of films that have appeared this year with a similar theme involving the decade long nazi led German government's assault on humanity. The spate of films include The Boy With The Striped Pajamas, Valkyrie, and The Reader.
From Gaza to Tehran: Israel Asserting Middle East Supremacy
James Petras
"The Israeli Defense Force is the most moral army in the World!" –Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany bombed, invaded and annexed countries and territories as a prelude to their quest for World Empire. Israel's drive for regional dominance has followed in their footsteps, imitating their style: Indiscriminate aerial bombings of civilian and military facilities, a savage blitzkrieg led by armored vehicles, disdain and repudiation of all criticism from international agencies was accompanied by an open, military buildup for a new and bigger war against Iran. Like the Nazi leadership, who played on the 'Bolshevik threat', the Israeli high command has set in motion a vast world-wide propaganda campaign led by its world Zionist network, raising the specter of 'Islamic terror' to justify its preparations for a military assault on seventy-four million Iranians. Just as Nazi Germany interpreted the passivity, sympathy and impotence of the West when confronted by 'facts on the ground' as license for aggression, the Israeli military machine receives a powerful impetus for new wars by the Western governments' inaction and flaccid response to its invasion of Lebanon, the bombing of Syria and now its Nazi style blitz and conquest of Gaza. For the Israeli high command, the impotence and complicity of the Western states, marks the way to bigger and bloodier wars to establish Israel's supremacy and dominance of the Middle East, from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf.
Ceasefires, Israeli-Style
Stephen Lendman
Waging war while talking peace is customary Israeli practice. On January 19, Haaretz headlined: "Israel declares unilateral cease-fire. The security cabinet last night authorized a unilateral cease-fire (to take effect) at 2AM (Sunday morning), ending three weeks of intense fighting."
Dear Mr President, An Open Letter
Link: http://ddjango.blogspot.com/2009/01/dear-mr-president-open-letter.html
ddjango
Dear President Obama:
I am a citizen of the United States. I am one of your constituents. Since you have billed yourself as a public servant, one who is honored and even grateful for the chance to be "Leader of the Free World", you owe me. Yes, that's exactly what I said - "You." "Owe." "Me." That might seem a bit, well, cheeky, I guess, but I stand by my demand.
First, I want you to know right up front that I did not vote for you. I did not vote for your opponent(s) either. I proudly withheld my vote because there was no presidential candidate on the ballot in my state whom I believed represented my best interests as a citizen of this country or the best interests of the nation as a whole. My vote is a valuable commodity. I wasn't about to waste it by casting it against someone or for a "lesser of two evils". Evil is evil. I won't vote for it.
I didn't vote for you, sir, because, with all due respect, I didn't buy the hype. I experienced your campaign as a finely-tuned, extremely well-run exercise in creative vagueness and media manipulation. You were too disingenuous for me: "hope" doesn't feed the bulldog; "change" happens, like it or not - try to stop it. In fact, did you not declare finally that the "change" was you? I find that insulting. In a democracy, sir, the change is the people. You represent us, you do not rule us. Governing and ruling are not the same thing.
Edgar Allan Poe: A Tragic, but Talented, American Original
William Hughes
“[Poe] would dress in ‘black’...It was his color...He liked to wander through cemeteries.” - Peter Ackroyd.
Edgar Allan Poe died at the age of 40, in Baltimore, Maryland, under mysterious circumstances. The exact truth of what really happened to him has evaded historians. I think even the experts on the popular TV program, “Forensic Files,” would be baffled by the case. Poe is a both a legendary and tragic figure. He is one of America’s greatest men of letters. Was his death related to “a vote-rigging” scheme? Poe was found on Election Day, Oct. 3, 1849, “stupefied,” and dressed in shabby clothes, at or near “Ryan’s Tavern.” It was used by political thugs. Their gambit was to target an individual, get him drunk, and then run him from one polling place to another to vote for their candidates. We do know that an incoherent Poe was taken to a nearby hospital. According to the treating physician, Dr. John J. Moran, his last words, on Oct. 7, 1849, were: “Lord help my poor soul!” (1)
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