Chris Floyd

I'm not "writing Obama off" -- whatever that means. I'm just looking at what he is actually saying, his actual positions, and what he has actually done -- and not done -- in the U.S. Senate.

Yesterday, Arthur Silber pointed us to a most learned Theban with an observation apt for inauguration day:

You're living in a world of make-believe, with flowers and bells and leprechauns and magic frogs with funny little hats. -- Homer Simpson, Ph.D., M.D., Psy.D., D.O., D.S.W., Ed.D., D.C.M., D.Min., J.D., D.C.H., from his seminal work, Meditations on the Transmigrational Nature of Perambulating Observances (sometimes referred to more informally as, Don't Bullshit a Bullshitter.)

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Mary Shaw

Inauguration Day 2009 was almost perfect. I'm still moved by it all.

I was impressed by the fact that an African American became President of the United States of America in my lifetime.

I was impressed by the crowd of almost two million people who braved the brutally cold weather to stand for hours and hours in Washington, DC, to witness history in the making.

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Carolyn Bennett

In the Twenty-Fourth Day Al Jazeera is reporting “Israeli troops and tanks were on the move on heading away from some key points in Gaza towards the border but it remained unclear whether they would withdraw completely from the Palestinian territory: …The Israeli military says it will not draw up a timetable to leave until rocket fire ceases and will not have a deadline dictated to them by Hamas: … ‘The operation is not over. This is only a holding of fire’.”

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Joe Quinn

[This was written in Aug. 2007.] Cute, cuddly, harmless-looking, liberal Barack Obama. Now there's a guy to get the U.S. back on track! If he can just 'win' the primary (s)election process, and then the (s)election process after that, what's it called...oh yeah, the (p)residential (s)elections, he'll bring an end to the mindless massacring of innocent civilians for profit that has come to define the "war on terror", and the American people need never again be stirred out of their mind-numbing complacency by stories of small brown children being decapitated by a brave American teenager with a .50 caliber machine gun. I mean, Viet-nam and My Lai was containable, it was successfully pitched as an "American tragedy", but this Iraq business is getting out of hand! After all, the harsh realities of war 'over there' are meant to stay 'over there', not ooze out of the carefully manipulated American daily broadsheets and into the fragile mind of the average American. So Obama's the man to fix it all, right? He'll stop the Republican rot! Or am I missing something? Yeah, you guessed it, I'm missing something.

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Steve Amsel

You may have noticed that my Associate, Khalid Amayreh, has not posted on this Blog (Desert Peace) for the last few days. The following report will tell you why.

In collaboration with the occupational forces operating in the Palestinian territories, he has been arrested. His crime? Speaking out against injustice and corruption.

The following was just sent to me by one of my readers in Palestine….. I will report updates on this situation as they become available.

I am very disturbed by this news. We need an open, unequivocal condemnation of this Zio-imperial vomit called the Palestinian Authority (PA). I cannot express enough the rage I feel. This truly courageous Palestinian journalist/ patriotic voice is being abused and tortured in an attempt to silence him no doubt by the US-paid, US-armed, US-Arab stooge-trained Palestinian Security Apparatus/goons/ ‘Contras’ , under President Falafel/Abbas his Mafia crew and the unelected Fayyad-led Junta of collaborators, thieves and scum that have established a brutal police state with all that this means, without even the need of a state, not even a Falafel State/Bantustan/ ethnic people’s reserve or “warehouse for excess Arabs”. The PA is a Palestinian Judenrat in the service of Empire and the Zionist occupation of Palestine. It is composed of quisling, stooge Palestinians, implementing anti-Palestinian policy on behalf of the Zio-Nazi occupation and this occupation’s Master and regional partners. Palestinians are made to disappear wholesale but in practice, it is done, one at a time. This is a Palestinian that Palestine cannot afford to lose. Please advise as to what can be done to secure the release of this noble voice.

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DetainThis

"Israelis . . . see themselves as a besieged nation surrounded by enemies who want them dead. Given the rocket attacks from both Hezbollah and Hamas — and the suicide bombing campaigns that killed hundreds of Israelis — their fears are not misplaced.

"Many Israelis believe Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas can never be diverted from their stated goal of eliminating the Jewish state no matter how much goodwill Israel might show." [1]

To a vast majority of readers, that excerpt is just a typical analysis from one of the world's largest, oldest, and most trusted news organizations. But to any honest person adequately versed in the contemporary history of Israel-Palestine, those two paragraphs are typical hasbara, a.k.a., Israeli propaganda. But it's actually both: it's the Israeli-centric analysis of Steve Gutkin, West Jerusalem bureau chief for The Associated Press.

Gutkin, like any hasbaranik, omits the most vital and basic facts: that Israel illegally and belligerently occupies and colonizes Palestinian land; that Israel has practically "eliminated" any chance for Palestinian self-determination; and that Israel is the regional superpower subsidized by the world's superpower and, thus, it is ridiculous to even entertain the notion of its being eliminated by army-less, navy-less groups. Under international law, the first fact legitimates violent Palestinian resistance. But AP is not bothered by legal and moral restraints — at least not the ones that restrain the allegedly-Jewish state.

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Stephen Lendman

World outrage continues over Israeli war crimes and Washington's complicity. Gazans are now immortalized. Hamas is more popular than ever and remains resolute despite everything the IDF threw against it.

Democrats and Republicans share equal guilt. They fund Israeli state terror, are partnered in its aggression, and have collaboratively planned, supported, and/or agreed to it for the past 41 years. Continuity under Obama is assured. The current Gaza carnage is the worst since 1967. In spite of its "unilateral" ceasefire, sporadic Israeli attacks continue. The IDF merely redeployed. Gaza remains under siege, and human suffering is overwhelming and unrelieved.

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Chris Floyd

I understand there's a big party going on in Washington this week, where hundreds of thousands of people are gathering to celebrate Bob Gates' retention as Pentagon chief. I mean, that is what this shindig is all about, isn't it? Hope and.... continuity? [See Arthur Silber for more.]

We've got Bush's man still driving the war machine, we've got Bush's generals still waging the "War on Terror" all over the world. We've got a president who is eager to spend his "political capital" on slashing "entitlements," because everyone must sacrifice, everybody's "going to have to have some skin in this game" -- everyone, that is, except for the president's Wall Street backers, who are about to receive yet another tranche of billions of taxpayer dollars in what they are now calling openly -- and rightly -- "opportunity funding." We've got a president honoring homophobic right-wing preachers who urge their followers to imitate the mindless zeal of Nazis and Bolsheviks in doing "whatever it takes" to establish Christianist dominion. We've got a president whose education chief believes in turning over the teaching of America's children to corporations -- and the military. We've even got a president who follows Dick Cheney's "good advice" on interrogating Terror War captives.

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Najwa Shiekh Ahmed Nusierat Camp-Gaza Strip

They said that the war on Gaza has finished, how amazing, that a war can be started in one single meeting, and finishes in one single sitting, neglecting all the pains, sorrows, fears and worries a war can leave in the souls and minds of those who attend it's woes, and pain.

Palestinians in Gaza have witnessed many wars against them by the Israelis from the first Intifada, to the second one, the regular invasions, the closure imposed on my people, a closure that doesn’t have any mercy on the people harvesting their lives without any regret, or consideration to any thing to finally the great war against innocent people, children, elders, houses, lands, every thing that is Palestinian.

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Juan Santos

In loving memory of the late Mayan priestess Jo’b No’j Chomiha (Rosa Maria Cabrera)

It can no longer be hidden. What is happening in Gaza is, transparently, ethnic cleansing - genocide.

That genocide has been ongoing for sixty years, sometimes in intense, rapid, and explosive junctures, sometimes more slowly, routinely – but always, it has been executed methodically.

To see clearly the historical and cultural trajectories toward genocide in Palestine or elsewhere, one has only to map the intersection of the stated intentions of the perpetrators and their actions over time – or experience a sudden revelation or flash of deep insight.

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