1. Another consequence of the Israeli war crime of bombing the UN with white phosphorus:
“Thousands of tonnes of desperately needed food and humanitarian supplies were destroyed”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/outrage-as-israel-bombs-un-1380407.html
2. “‘War on terror’ was wrong
The phrase gives a false idea of a unified global enemy, and encourages a primarily military reply“
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/15/david-miliband-war-terror
3. Why Egypt also hates Hamas, and wants to destroy them:
“The US-Israeli-Egyptian-British plan to eradicate Hamas, which is the Arab world’s only democratically elected government, has another important objective. Hamas was founded in 1987 by a group of Islamic charities linked to Egypt’s venerable Muslim Brotherhood movement. The new Hamas movement gained widespread popular support by promising to defend Palestinian rights to their lost lands and by providing a broad range of social welfare to destitute Palestinian refugees subsisting in squalid slums.
Hamas, in essence, is a democratic revolutionary movement that threatens all of the Mideast’s US-backed dictatorships and monarchies. Its biggest threat is to Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood remains the unofficial opposition to the regime of President Husni Mubarak, who has ruled his nation with an iron fist for 28 years.
Mubarak’s dictatorship is the keystone of US domination of the Mideast. Egypt holds almost a third of the Arab world’s total population. Gen. Mubarak is now 81. Egypt faces regime change soon. The last thing Washington wants is for Hamas’ revolutionary ideas and zeal to infect Egypt’s quiescent, nonviolent Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition to Mubarak, and risk seeing the US-backed Cairo regime replaced by a nationalist or Islamist government.
So it was essential, in the US-Israeli-Egyptian view, to once and for all crush the Hamas movement and keep Gaza’s Palestinians – who were ethnically cleansed from their homes in what became Israel in 1948 – safely penned up in the Gaza prison. A high-ranking Vatican official just called Gaza a “concentration camp.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis132.html
4. Good for him:
“British MP: Israel exploiting Holocaust
Jewish lawmaker says gentiles’ guilt providing Israeli government with excuse to murder Palestinians
A British lawmaker declared Thursday that Israel was taking advantage of the guilt many non-Jews feel over the Holocaust to ruthlessly press ahead with its offensive in Gaza.
Gerald Kaufman, a governing Labour Party legislator, sharply criticized Israel in a House of Commons debate on Gaza, arguing that the Jewish state has exploited guilt that much of the world feels for having ignored the slaughter of millions of Jews during World War II.
“The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from Gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians,” he said.“
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3657024,00.html
5. “William Poole, who recently left his post as president of the St. Louis Fed, is essentially calling Bernanke a communist:
Poole said he was very concerned that the Fed could simply lend money to anyone, without constraint.In the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the Cold War era, economies were inefficient because they had a soft-budget constraint. If a firm got into trouble, the banking system would give them more money, Poole said.The current situation at the Fed seems eerily similar, he said.“What is discipline – where are the hard choices – when does Fed say our resources are exhausted?” Poole asked.
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/01/2-fed-bank-chiefs-slam-bernanke.html
6. “De facto, the Israeli massacre in Gaza has managed to divide the Arab world in a way now practically irreversible. On one side are Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia Saudita, Morocco, Tunisia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and the forces that support Mahmoud Abbas on the West Bank. On e the other side are Syria, Lebanon, Qatar, Yemen, Libya, Mauritania (despite its having diplomatic relations with Israel), Sudan, Algeria, Djibouti, Somalia and the Comorros Islands.
Of these countries, Algeria, Yemen and Qatar began distancing themselves form the other bloc in an Arab League meeting, in May 2008, dealing with the situation in Lebanon after the takeover of Beirut by Hezbollah and its allies. That marked closer ties between them and Syria since they were not in agreement with the repeated refrain of the pro-Western reactionary Arab regimes about Iranian interference in the area and the strategy of containing “Shi’ite expansion”. The Gaza massacre makes it difficult to continue that refrain since Hamas is Sunni. But now the reactionary regimes are saying that Hamas has become “an Iranian pawn”.
But to this split one has to add the one in the non-Arab Islamic world. Here it is worth mentioning Turkey. Its agreement to sponsor the alternative plan supported by Hamas indicates that its strategic alliance with Israel is cracking and that something is changing in the Arab and Islamic regimes regarded as “moderates” and as closer to Israel and the West. After the Gaza massacre, nothing will stay the same.
The resistance of Gaza’s inhabitants and the intelligent strategy of Hamas has taken the reactionary Arab regimes by surprise. They have to face their peoples given that their survival depends on it.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11823
7. “Jay Rosen on the media’s control of political debates
Rosen begins by citing a chart from the 1986 book, The Uncensored War, by Daniel Hallin, which defined the three categories of arguments which the media defined during the Vietnam War: (1) those within the ”Sphere of Consensus“ (ideas deemed so plainly true that they required no debate or examination); (2) those within the “Sphere of Legitimate Controversy“ (ideas deemed reasonable enough to be debated and disputed within mainstream discussion); and (3) those within the “Sphere of Deviance” (ideas so plainly wrong, radical and fringe that they deserved no hearing at all):
According to Rosen, the diagram depicting these three spheres is “easily the most useful diagram [] found for understanding the practice of journalism in the United States, and the hidden politics of that practice.” Rosen argues — quite persuasively — that American journalists, usually unthinkingly (i.e., without even realizing that they do it), control and restrict political discussions by using these categories for virtually every political issue of any significance. No theory regarding how the media controls political debate is complete without reference to Manufacturing Consent, but Rosen’s explanation is quite compatible with it and, standing alone, has great value.“
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
8. “The often asked question, when it comes to the Palestinians, is about the role of Arab countries in the Palestinian struggle for freedom. The people not familiar with the political landscape of the area often see the Middle East as two camps, Arab countries on one side and Israel on the other. The reality is totally different. Israel has seldom been alone. Beside its usual American, French, British and other staunch allies, she has had the hidden backing of several Arab countries.
For close to 30 years now, many Arab countries have been collaborating with Israel; some like Egypt (gained independence: 1922) and Jordan (gained independence: 1946) openly while others like Saudi Arabia (founded: 1932), UAE (founded: 1972) and Kuwait (founded: 1961) from behind the scenes.
The reasons for this collaboration vary from country to country but they all have one thing in common: the rulers of these countries are all dictators and need foreign protection from their own people. Some such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and UAE were put in power by the British. The founder of Saudi Arabia, Abdul-Aziz bin Saud (the kingdom is name after him) was put in power by the British. The same goes for the others, except Egypt which experienced a coup by the army officers in 1952 resulting in the ousting of the monarchy and the accompanying British influence.
But the Western influence returned with Anwar Sadat. All these countries are dictatorships and all are under pressure from their people. What they cannot accept is any democratically elected form of government in their mist. They fear that if an Arab government becomes democratic they may have to become one themselves, hence losing power.
But as soon as Hamas took over, the U.S. and the Europeans put an embargo on Hamas. Israel closed the borders and refused to let anything into Gaza. Egypt also did the same.
What is not mentioned much in the media is that this was done with the complete approval of the Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. After all, Egypt could have opened its border for transfer of food and fuel.
…
In a statement Saudi Arabia blamed Hamas for Israel’s continuing offensive in the Gaza Strip. Saudi Arabia, after blaming Hamas, declared that it will not even consider an oil embargo on Israel’s supporters. She then again blamed Hamas.
By this time, the three Arab countries along with Kuwait and UAE began singing the old song: international community is not doing anything about the catastrophe that is taking place in Gaza. It seems that these Arab tyrants have no shame at all. This reminds me of a quote from Marquis De Sade (1740-1814): “One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush.”
These Arab leaders (many are indeed too old to blush) are complicit in the murder of so many civilians, especially young children. According to Agence France-Presse, quoting the medics on the ground, fully one third of all people killed have been children. How can these Arab leaders justify this to their people?
The answer is that they cannot. Israel knows this and for the second time can show the Arab street that their leaders are nothing but a bunch of old hypocrites. These Arab leaders are now exposed and can do nothing but to cooperate fully with Israel and U.S. What stand between them and their people’s rage is their army and secret services; which in turn are supported by U.S.
Israel has cleverly exposed these leaders for what they are: collaborators of the worst kind. These Arab leaders have brought an unimaginable shame to their people. To quote Lucien Bouchard: “I have never known a more vulgar expression of betrayal and deceit. Our hope is now with the people of these countries to clean this stain from their honor.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21766.htm
9. “Israel’s war with Hamas looks set to end today as it was confirmed that Israel had “Maybe two dozen targets left, give or take an orphanage or two.” Israeli military spokesman Ehud Ebbsfleet stated “Armed hostilities will taper off by the end of today as we finish off the last few missile-worthy targets. There’s a greengrocers near the Tel al Hawa area we’ve had our eye on and I know a lot of the lads have really been looking forward to flattening a massive big shed in downtown Gaza that’s somehow still upright. Once those sites have been reduced to a smoking heap of twisted rubble we’ll probably call it a day.”
The UN were in talks with Israel, looking for alternative solutions to end the war. One proposal was for the UN to build fake settlements out in the desert, complete with lifelike dummies of screaming women and children. There would then be an agreement to allow Israeli forces to unleash metallic fiery hell at the model encampment to their heart’s content. “They do love a good shelling, those Israeli fellers” said one UN delegate. “We thought if we gave them something else to blow up, they might lay off Palestine for a bit. Between you and I, it does really beg the question what exactly their problem is, doesn’t it?”
http://pushjelly.blogspot.com/2009/01/israel-runs-out-of-things-to-bomb.html
