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[click image]Sliming penguins....
Doomed dairy....
Goldstone gives in....
BP drilling in the Gulf....
The war drones on as though it's stopping tomorrow....
Polymer didn't work....
Information that will not land on your synapses....
Worse than Dubya....
Corbett Report....
The banks....
UNSPEAKABLE....
Fidel....
For Phil....
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In a distinct echo of the tactics they pursued to encourage US intervention in the Balkans and Iraq, a familiar clutch of neo-conservatives appealed Friday for the United States and NATO to "immediately" prepare military action to help bring down the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and end the violence that is believed to have killed well over a thousand people in the past week.
The appeal, which came in the form of a letter signed by 40 policy analysts, including more than a dozen former senior officials who served under President George W. Bush, was organised and released by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a two-year-old neo-conservative group that is widely seen as the successor to the more-famous – or infamous – Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
Warning that Libya stood "on the threshold of a moral and humanitarian catastrophe", the letter, which was addressed to President Barack Obama, called for specific immediate steps involving military action, in addition to the imposition of a number of diplomatic and economic sanctions to bring "an end to the murderous Libyan regime".
In particular, it called for Washington to press NATO to "develop operational plans to urgently deploy warplanes to prevent the regime from using fighter jets and helicopter gunships against civilians and carry out other missions as required; (and) move naval assets into Libyan waters" to "aid evacuation efforts and prepare for possible contingencies;" as well as "(e)stablish the capability to disable Libyan naval vessels used to attack civilians."
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[click image]The interior ministry of Hamas said in a press statement emailed to reporters that its security forces in Gaza are preventing any Palestinian individual from approaching the fence of the borders with Egypt.
"The security forces are controlling the borderline between the Gaza Strip and Egypt," said the statement, which denied earlier reports saying that some Gazans infiltrated from Gaza into the Egyptian territories.Meanwhile, the Palestinian state-run news agency Wafa reported that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had telephoned his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak.
The news agency report said that Abbas reiterated to Mubarak the Palestinian leadership's interests to keep the security of Egypt stable.
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In a joint committee meeting on fugitives in October 2005 [LINK] in Tel Aviv between Shaul Mofaz, the then-Israeli defence minister, and Nasser Youssef, the PA minister of interior, the PA was asked to kill al-Madhoun.Mofaz: “[…] Hassan Madhoun, we know his address and Rasheed Abu Shabak [chief of the Preventative Security Organisation in Gaza] knows that. Why don't you kill him? Hamas fired [Qassam rockets] because of the elections and this is a challenge to you and a warning to Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president].”
Youssef: “We gave instructions to Rasheed [Abu Shabak] and will see.”
Mofaz: “Since we spoke, he has been planning an operation, and that's four weeks ago, and we know that he wants to strike Qarni or Erez [another border crossing between Gaza and Israel]. He is not Hamas and you can kill him.”
Youssef: “We work, the country is not easy, our capabilities are limited, and you haven't offered anything.”
Mofaz: “I understand that nothing has been accomplished in the [Gaza] Strip.”
Less then a month after this meeting, on November 1, 2005, al-Madhoun was killed in his car by a missile fired from an Israeli Apache helicopter over the skies of Gaza. The attack also killed a wanted Hamas activist and wounded three other people.
The very next day, Mofaz, who by that time was in Washington, pledged to ease the lives of Palestinians and to pursue peacemaking with President Abbas.
[click image]One of the things that shocks me the most about this kind of thing is how willing everyone seems to be to bend over and just take it. We’ll carry guns to rallies and have a genuine freak-out if someone suggests raising the top marginal rate a point, but there are honest to goodness abuses of authority and prosecutorial misconduct every single day, and only a few people really speak up about it. Hell, even at this website, where the commenters mainly identify as center to center-left, when allegations of misconduct and abuse by our government are put forward, the reaction among a fair number of people is to get their panties in a bunch about the blogger who mentioned it, or to simply swallow the government line. It’s insane. WikiLeaks is a perfect case in point — I know when I find out that my government is lying to me, my first reaction is to get really mad at Julian Assange and Bradley Manning and Glenn Greenwald, and to spend several months talking about whether or not Assange’s ego is too big or if Glenn uses too many words.
Just craziness.[O]ne of the more noteworthy developments is an accelerating campaign to remove the mojahedin-e khalq, or MEK, from the U.S. Government’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. Over the last few months, a number of prominent Republicans—including John Bolton, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former White House homeland security and counterterrorism coordinator Fran Townsend, and new House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen—have been publicly agitating to delist the MEK. But this effort has now gone bipartisan and big time, including engaging the services of a Washington, DC consulting firm.
To document this last point, we link here to the video of an event held in Washington last week, clearly designed to build public support for delisting the MEK as part of a U.S.-led campaign for regime change in Tehran. The event was organized by Executive Action, LLC, which describes itself as “a McKinsey & Company with muscle, a private CIA and Defense Department available to address your most intractable problems and difficult challenges”. (Exactly who engaged Executive Action’s services for this event is not clear.) Featured speakers included not only Republican figures like Mukasey, but also retired U.S. Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni; former New Mexico Governor, Clinton Administration cabinet officer, and Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson; former Democratic New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli; and retired Marine Corps General James Jones—who just stepped down, in November 2010, as President Obama’s first national security adviser. [And particularly scary, go to video hour 1:16 and see for yourself.] All of the speakers argued for bringing down the Islamic Republic and forging a new political order in Iran—and for embracing the MEK as the foundation of a new Iranian “opposition” capable of bringing about both of these objectives.
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[click image]Members of Switzerland’s parliament are demanding the ouster of US diplomats who are believed to be involved in illegal spying activities out of their Geneva embassy, a revelation which came out of a WikiLeaks cable from 2005.
The cable, released by Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, cited US embassy officials “checking out” a Middle Eastern-looking couple on the grounds that they were near the embassy and had the word “Islam” on a sign inside their car.
The Swiss Justice Ministry is investigating the program, and says there is evidence of the same sort of widespread surveillance out of the Geneva embassy as the US was found to be conducting in Norway and Denmark.
However while Norway eventually conceded that certain of its officials had secretly approved of the spying (while not telling the officials launching the investigation), Swiss officials say the US approached them on the possibility of launching such operations and was rebuffed at least twice. The evidence now is that they decided to go through with it anyhow.Coleen Rowley....
Damn right, Helen....
Nick Turse....
LEAVE CHILE RIGHT NOW....
COMPLETELY doesn't matter WHAT we say... ever....
Oh, fucking hell, I guess I can stop worrying about lifesaving pharmaceuticals drying up in the crash....
.The CIA is "out of control" and often refuses to cooperate with other parts of the national security community, even undermining their efforts, said former National Security Agency head William Odom, according to a recently released record of a 9/11 Commission interview.
"The CIA currently doesn't work for anyone. It thinks it works for the president, but it doesn't and it's out of control," says a report summarizing remarks made by Odom, a retired three-star general who served as director of the NSA from 1985 to 1988.
Odom, who also served on the National Security Council staff during the Carter administration, was known as an outspoken advocate for intelligence reform. He died in 2008.
William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, was known as an outspoken advocate for intelligence reform.
The 2003 interview, among others conducted by the 9/11 Commission, was posted on the website Cryptome, which is often compared to the secret-spilling WikiLeaks website. The report was not a leak, however, but one of many records relating to the 9/11 Commission that have been released and made available on the National Archives website.
"Quite a few remain 'access restricted' for classification review," John Young, who runs Cryptome, told AOL News in an e-mail about the records, some of which he has reposted. "We expect to make an FOIA [Freedom of information Act] request for their release once we have a full listing of those restricted."
In the commission interview, Odom portrayed CIA officers as individualistic, saying they were interested in writing "exposes." He also accused the CIA of not sharing "humint," meaning intelligence collected through contact with people, and of trying to sabotage the Pentagon's own work in this area.
"The director of the CIA has as much reason to brief the president as the man on the moon," Odom told the staff of the commission investigating the failure to prevent the terror attacks.
Odom also believed that intelligence officials weren't held sufficiently accountable for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He said he believed that the heads of the NSA and the CIA should both have been fired by the president after 9/11 for "symbolic purposes."
Ravingly-jealous old fuck is either poisoning the well or warning compatriots... which?
Something else to heap sleeping powder on the masses and come to naught....
Today's Keiser Report....
Austerity hits home....
Got food?
Whut, restoring their buddhas and installing satellite dishes?
Third millennium opium den....
Gorgeous toxic soup....
Stuxnet not so threatening... but nice try....
HAIL MEDVEDEV....
Hail Mary....
Yuh, "rambling" probably was more like "sputtering" over the psychedelia we call "policy" nowadays....
It's come to this....
In the early months of Obama's presidency, the American Right did to him what they do to every Democratic politician: they accused him of being soft on defense (specifically "soft on Terror") and leaving the nation weak and vulnerable to attack. But that tactic quickly became untenable as everyone (other than his hardest-core followers) was forced to acknowledge that Obama was embracing and even expanding — rather than reversing — the core Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism. As a result, leading right-wing figures began lavishing Obama with praise — and claiming vindication — based on Obama's switch from harsh critic of those policies (as a candidate) to their leading advocate (once in power).
As early as May, 2009, former Bush OLC lawyer Jack Goldsmith wrote in The New Republic that Obama was not only continuing Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies, but was strengthening them — both because he was causing them to be codified in law and, more important, converting those policies from right-wing dogma into harmonious bipartisan consensus. Obama's decision "to continue core Bush terrorism policies is like Nixon going to China,"Goldsmith wrote. Last October, former Bush NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden — one of the most ideological Bush officials, whose confirmation as CIA chief was opposed by then-Sen. Obama on the ground he had overseen the illegal NSA spying program — gushed with praise for Obama: "there's been a powerful continuity between the 43rd and the 44th president." James Jay Carafano, a homeland-security expert at the Heritage Foundation, told The New York Times' Peter Baker last January: "I don’t think it's even fair to call it Bush Lite. It's Bush. It's really, really hard to find a difference that's meaningful and not atmospheric."
Those are the nation's most extreme conservatives praising Obama's Terrorism policies. And now Dick Cheney himself — who once led the "soft on Terror" attacks — is sounding the same theme. In an interview last night with NBC News, Cheney praised Obama for continuing his and Bush's core approach to Terrorism:He obviously has been through the fires of becoming President and having to make decisions and live with the consequences. And it's different than being a candidate. When he was candidate he was all for closing Gitmo. He was very critical of what we'd done on the counterterrorism area to protect America from further attack and so forth. . . .
I think he's — in terms of a lot of the terrorism policies — the early talk, for example, about prosecuting people in the CIA who've been carrying out our policies — all of that's fallen by the wayside. I think he's learned that what we did was far more appropriate than he ever gave us credit for while he was a candidate. So I think he's learned from experience.
Cheney was then specifically asked whether he stood by his early attacks on Obama's national security policies — "You said you believe President Obama has made America less safe. That he's actually raised the risk of attack. Do you still feel that way?" — and Cheney, not exactly known for changing his mind, essentially said that, thanks to Obama's continuity, he now does not:Well, when I made that comment, I was concerned that the counterterrorism policies that we'd put in place after 9/11 that had kept the nation safe for over seven years were being sort of rapidly discarded. Or he was going to attempt to discard them. . . . As I say, I think he's found it necessary to be more sympathetic to the kinds of things we did.
It overstates the case to say there are no differences. There were some: Obama formally ended the "enhanced interrogation program" (the authorization for which had been withdrawn when he took office); banned CIA black sites (which were empty when he took office); and has not invoked the Article II lawbreaking theories of Bush's first term (Bush largely abandoned them as well in his second term as Congress began legalizing his programs). And there is a more conciliatory tone, and some greater technocratic efficiency, in some foreign policy pronouncements. But the crux of Bush/Cheney radicalism — the mindset and policies that caused much of the controversy — continues and has even been strengthened. Gen. Hayden put it best, as quoted by The Washington Times:"You've got state secrets, targeted killings, indefinite detention, renditions, the opposition to extending the right of habeas corpus to prisoners at Bagram [in Afghanistan]," Mr. Hayden said, listing the continuities. "And although it is slightly different, Obama has been as aggressive as President Bush in defending prerogatives about who he has to inform in Congress for executive covert action."
And that list, impressive though it is, doesn't even include the due-process-free assassination hit lists of American citizens, the sweeping executive power and secrecy theories used to justify it, the multi-tiered, "state-always-wins" justice system the Obama DOJ concocted for detainees, the vastly more aggressive war on whistleblowers and press freedoms, or the new presidential immunity doctrines his DOJ has invented. Critically, this continuity extends beyond specific policies into the underlying sloganeering mentality in which they're based: we're in a Global War; the whole Earth is the Battlefield; the Terrorists want to kill us because they're intrinsically Evil (not in reaction to anything we do); we're justified in doing anything and everything to eradicate Them; the President's overarching obligation (contrary to his Constitutional oath) is to keep us Safe; this should all be kept secret from us; we can't be bothered with obsolete dogma like Due Process and Warrants, etc. etc.
Aside from the repressiveness of the policies themselves, there are three highly significant and enduring harms from Obama's behavior.
First, it creates the impression that Republicans were right all along in the Bush-era War on Terror debates and Democratic critics were wrong. The same theme is constantly sounded by conservatives who point out Obama's continuation of these policies: that he criticized those policies as a candidate out of ignorance and partisan advantage, but once he became President, he realized they were right as a result of accessing the relevant classified information and needing to keep the country safe from the Terrorist threat. Goldsmith, for instance, claimed Obama changed his mind about these matters "after absorbing the classified intelligence and considering the various options. GOP Sen. Susan Collins told the NYT's Baker that Obama "is finding that many of those policies were better-thought-out than they realized." Cheney boasted that Obama "obviously has been through the fires of becoming President and having to make decisions and live with the consequences." Predictably — and understandably — here's the headline Cheney's interview generated in The Hill this morning.
This has settled in as orthodoxy: one could criticize Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies only out of ignorance and/or being free of the solemn obligation to Keep America Safe.
Second, Obama has single-handedly eliminated virtually all mainstream debate over these War on Terror policies. At least during the Bush years, we had one party which steadfastly supported them but one party which claimed (albeit not very persuasively) to vehemently oppose them. At least there was a pretense of vigorous debate over their legality, morality, efficacy, and compatibility with our national values.
Those debates are no more. Even the hardest-core right-wing polemicists — Gen. Hayden, the Heritage Foundation, Dick Cheney — now praise Obama's actions in these areas. Opposition from national Democrats has faded away to almost complete nonexistence now that it's a Democratic President doing these things. What was once viewed as the signature of Bush/Cheney radicalism is now official, bipartisan Washington consensus: the policies equally of both parties and all Serious people. Thanks to Barack Obama, this architecture is firmly embedded in place and invulnerable to meaningful political challenge.
Third, Obama's embrace of these policies has completely rehabilitated the reputations and standing of the Bush officials responsible for them. Yesterday, J. Gerald Herbert — a long-time DOJ official — told The Raw Story that Obama's refusal to investigate or prosecute Bush era crimes is both a violation of DOJ's duties and sets a "dangerous precedent" by vesting lawbreaking elites with immunity. The active protection of torturers and other high-level lawbreakers both signals that they did nothing seriously wrong and, independently, ensures that such conduct will be repeated in the future.
But Obama's impact in this area extends far beyond that. Dick Cheney is not only free of ignominy, but can run around claiming vindication from Obama's actions because he's right. The American Right constantly said during the Bush years that any President who knew what Bush knew and was faced with the duty of keeping the country safe would do the same thing. Obama has provided the best possible evidence imaginable to prove those claims true.
Conservatives would love to bash Obama for being weak on Terrorism so that, in the event of another attack, they can blame him (and Cheney, in last night's interview, left open that possibility by suggesting Obama may suffer from unknown failures). If it were at all possible, they'd be out accusing him of abandoning critical programs that Keep us Safe; that's what they do best. But they cannot with a straight face claim that Obama has abandoned their core approach, so they do the only thing they can do: acknowledge that he has continued and strengthened it and point out that it proves they were right — and he was wrong — all along. If Obama has indeed changed his mind over the last two years as a result of all the Secret Scary Things he's seen as President, then I genuinely believe that he and the Democratic Party owe a heartfelt, public apology to Bush, Cheney and the GOP for all the harsh insults they spewed about them for years based on policies that they are now themselves aggressively continuing.
Obama has won the War on Terror debate — for the American Right. And as Dick Cheney's interview last night demonstrates, they're every bit as appreciative as they should be..
[click image, mp3, nearly two hours]JERUSALEM – An Israeli court has convicted former President Moshe Katsav on two counts of rape.Pretty ridiculously light sentence for not one but TWO counts of rape, but, well, innit odd that Israel keeps convicting their presidents and prime ministers of things like corruption and rape, when we can't even get an INVESTIGATION for torture and war crimes? I mean, right, I know they don't do torture or war crimes either, but....
Thursday's conviction means Katsav will face a minimum of four years in prison. The verdict marks the climax of a four-and-a-half year saga that has riveted the nation as it watched its top citizen face the most serious charges ever leveled toward an Israeli public official.
The 65-year-old Katsav is also facing charges of lesser sex crimes involving two other former employees. A verdict on those charges is expected later in the day.
Israel's presidency is a largely ceremonial position. But the allegations roiled the country by portraying the man supposed to be Israel's moral compass as a predatory boss who forced himself on female employees.
Katsav resigned in 2007 and was replaced by Shimon Peres.
[click image]A killing in DubaiJust sparkling Peace Laureatesque assassinating, don't you think?
Posted By Charles Homans
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
On Thursday, Julian Assange told reporters that WikiLeaks would be releasing State Department cables concerning the assassination of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January, and he has made good on the promise with a couple of short dispatches from the U.S. embassy in Abu Dhabi. They don't offer any more insight into the still-unsolved killing, but they do paint a picture of the diplomatic conundrum the incident posed for the United Emirates and the United States.
Mabhouh, a Hamas military commander who had orchestrated the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers and was suspected of smuggling arms into the Gaza Strip, died in his room at the Al Bustan Rotana hotel in Dubai on Jan. 19, after being injected with the muscle relaxant succinylcholine and then suffocated. Although Israelhas denied itwon't confirm or deny it, the list of people who don't believe that Mossad agents did the job is vanishingly short. The hit squad had deftly plotted and executed the assassination, using encrypted cell phones and passports from half a dozen countries, and quickly scattered themselves from Hong Kong to Paris once their work was done. Their one mistake, however, was a big one: failing to account for the hotel's CCTV cameras, which caught their faces on tape.
The story was first reported 10 days later by Reuters, and as it happened, U.S. Ambassador Richard Olson was at a social event with UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed when it broke, according to one of the two embassy cables, signed by Olson. An unnamed UAE media advisor, Olson reports in the Jan. 31 cable, "after making a few calls reported back that the UAE's public posture was being discussed between Dubai Ruler Mohammed bin Rashid and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. The two options discussed were to say nothing at all, or to reveal more or less the full extent of the UAE's investigations."
The UAE was no friend of Hamas — the emirate's discontent with Hamas patron Iran is a recurring theme in the WikiLeaks corpus — but its government was, of course, not exactly eager to be seen as enabling an Israeli incursion on the sovereignty of an Arab state, either. The cable describes the UAE officials' reasoning, and decisionSaying nothing would have been perceived as protecting the Israelis and in the end, the UAE chose to tell all. The statement was carefully drafted not to point any fingers, but the reference in the document (see below) to a gang with western passports will be read locally as referring to the Mossad.American officials had their own decision to make about where their loyalties were — one documented in the second cable, signed by Olson deputy Doug Greene, several weeks later. Greene reports that UAE officials requested the embassy's help in acquiring account data for credit cards, issued by a bank in Iowa, that investigators had linked to suspects in the assassination. The request was apparently turned down, and as Haaretz reports, the State Department denied at the time that any requests had been made. "By not accepting the request," Haaretz's Yossi Melman writes, "the Obama administration harmed the Dubai investigation efforts and assisted Israel instead." The U.S. government did eventually assist in the investigation, however, identifying American companies that may have been used to finance the operation.
[click image]Foreign Financing of Venezuelan Political Organisations Illegal under New LawSomebody has learned the lesson of Piggy Number Three and is applying it.
By TAMARA PEARSON | Venezuelanalysis
24 December 2010
Mérida — On Wednesday morning the Venezuelan National Assembly approved the Defence of Political Sovereignty and National Self Determination Law, making foreign funding of political organisations illegal. It also passed a reform to the Political Parties law, bringing in a penalty for legislators who change political parties.
The political sovereignty law is a short law of 10 articles, that aims to protect Venezuelan political life from foreign interference through financial support or donations to political organisations.
It applies to political organisations, which are organisations that promote citizen participation in public spaces or control of public power or that promote candidates aspiring for election. It also applies to organisations that promote and defend citizens’ political rights.
Penalties include fines of double the amount received and the expulsion from Venezuela of foreigners who participate in such financing. Presidents of the organisations breaking the law would be barred from political positions for five to eight years and organisations would likewise be banned from electoral processes for five to eight years.
Also, political organisations who invite a foreigner to express their opinion in a way that “offends state institutions, civil servants or the exercise of sovereignty” will be penalised with fines of 5-10,000 tax unites. The current tax unit is worth 65 bolivars (US$15).
United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) legislator Rafic Souki said the law prevents political parties and non government organisations from receiving external financing with the aim of destabilising the country.
Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV) legislator Edgar Lucena said his party reserved their vote of support, saying that while the law was important in preventing “imperialist intervention through financing and any type of resources coming from drug trafficking”, the law does not “guarantee...the consolidation of proletarian internationalism... expressed by international cooperation of workers, of the people, and of revolutionary movements of the world.”
Opposition parties Podemos and Frente Humanista voted against the law because they believed it is “another act of persecution of dissidence”.
Correo del Orinoco International pointed out that the law is not unique to Venezuela, and that the “US also forbids foreign funding for political campaigns or parties, and highly regulates all foreign financing for other activities, including lobbying, public relations and NGOs”.
The passing of the law follows years of funding for opposition political groups and media agencies through U.S entities such as USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The National Assembly also reformed the Political Parties, Public Meetings, and Protests Law so that legislators who change political parties during their legislative period will be penalised.
The aim of the reform is to “respect the will of the people who chose the legislators during the parliamentary elections,” Telesur reported.
In the last week the National Assembly has approved or reformed over 20 laws, according to legislator Dario Vivas.
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[click image]Brazil recognizes Palestinian stateI love him.
The Associated Press
Friday, December 3, 2010; 12:15 PM
SAO PAULO — Brazil says it has recognized the state of Palestine based on borders at the time of Israel's 1967 conquest of the West Bank.
The Foreign Ministry says the recognition is in response to a request made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas last month to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Silva sent a letter to Abbas on Dec. 1, saying Brazil recognizes Palestine and hopes that the recognition will help lead to states of Israel and Palestine "that will coexist peacefully and in security."
The foreign ministry says that the recognition is "in line with Brazil's historic willingness to contribute to peace between Israel and Palestine."
The announcement was posted Friday on the Foreign Ministry's website.
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[click image]Gaza: Donated Vans Driven From EgyptWe can thank Egypt for this small favor. At least that.
By FARES AKRAM
Published: October 21, 2010
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists drove scores of donated vans into Gaza on Thursday after Egypt let them pass through. Kevin Ovenden of Viva Palestina, a group in London that sponsored the aid convoy, said at a news conference in Gaza that Middle East peace could be achieved only by including Hamas, the Islamist group that governs Gaza. The convoy of 140 vans started its journey last month in London. A ship picked up the convoy in Syria this week and docked in the Egyptian port of Al-Arish in the northern Sinai. Egypt is set to send the rest of the cargo to Gaza via ground crossings with Israel. Israel and Egypt have imposed an embargo on Gaza because of their dispute with Hamas, but international outcry, especially after the killings of nine activists in a Turkish flotilla last May, has caused some easing in the policy.
No one has to "marry" anyone else politically; no one has to embrace every tenet or belief that an anti-imperialist ally might hold. You simply have to say: "All of us, regardless of our other views, believe this truth to be self-evident: dismantling the empire will bring immediate and enormous benefits to our nation and to the world."
If in your travels you meet the Buddha, throw him through your tv set.
—Davis Fleetwood
I've found that culture, however useful and important, is neither the foundation nor the ceiling of human experience, even if it is commonly used for walls.
I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family. So I hope to see him often here in Egypt and in the United States. —Hillary Clinton
