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POPSTime to walk away from Israeli-Palestinian conflict? FTA: "We should stop feeling as though we have to apologize for our friendship with Israel, or pretend that the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors didn’t create their own misery through a series of wars against Israel which they lost. Let the Palestinians and the Israelis tend to their own interests, and we should tend to our own as well. When the Palestinians figure out that we are not interested in beating our heads against the wall by dealing with terrorists uninterested in actual negotiations, then perhaps they’ll produce effective leadership with more interest in coexistence rather than annihilation." I think I agree.
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POPSFt. Hood Shooting, 'This is a Domestic Terrorist Attack' Gen. Barry McCafferty (CNN) -- An owner of a 7-Eleven convenience store in Fort Hood, Texas, said Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan came in for coffee and hashbrowns most mornings, including the morning he allegedly shot dozens of soldiers. Surveillance video from the store obtained by CNN shows a man who, according to the store owner, is Hasan at the cashier's counter at about 6:20 a.m. Thursday (7:20 a.m. ET) -- about seven hours before the mass shooting -- carrying a beverage and dressed in traditional Arab garb. View video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZWuTSuw9Nw more here: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/06/fort.hood.suspect/index.html
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POPSUSA Prepares to Attack Russia in 3 or 4 Years? “I would also like to pay your attention to the fact that the US Military Academy at West Point has recently launched extensive courses to study the Russian culture and language. They started teaching the Iraqi culture and the Arab language three years before invading Iraq.
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POPSU.N. on Israeli War Crimes
The Goldstone Report now has been approved overwhelmingly by the UN General Assembly. The report calls for Israel to investigate it's war crime accusations...and for the Palestinians to investiage theirs -- and says the slow starvation of over a million and half people in the Gaza Strip should stop. Now, it seems it goes to the Security Council. Which means, if things go as usual, the USA will veto it and it will end there. The USA has does similar actions at the UN for decades, protecting Israel, no matter what. The USA House of Congress has even gone on record, this week, opposing this war crimes report. Israel yesterday seized a ship with weapons and said they come from Iran and this was a war crime...also pointing out that Russia, the USA, China, etc. are all guility of war crimes. The conclusion appears to be that war is a war crime. Everybody's guilty. And let's just forget it. ...um, except when talking about the Nazi's of WWII or the Bosnian Serbs curre
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POPSHillary Clinton: US Wants Israel To Stop Building West Bank Settlements 'Forever' But Clinton has had to do a lot of explaining since last Saturday, when she stood with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and praised his offer to limit settlement construction without halting it. Clinton has since tried to clarify the remarks, saying that the Israeli offer does not got far enough. Still, she has indicated that the Palestinians should resume negotiations with Israel without a full settlement halt as they demand.
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POPSJewish Settlers Move Into East Jerusalem Home, Evict Arab Family Israel has built homes for more than 180,000 Jews in new east Jerusalem neighborhoods since the 1967 annexation. The U.S. and others have criticized Israeli settlement in east Jerusalem and urged Israel to stop evicting Palestinians and demolishing their homes there, saying such moves disrupt peace efforts.
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POPSMore USA-ME Double Talk
The USA pretenses for ME peace stumbled a few days ago when Sec. of State Hilary Clinton was praising Israeli's latest sham offers to maybe-someday-for a while, perhaps slow down construction on new settlements. She called this sham an "unprecedented offer," and then tried to press the Palestinians into accepting it as enough good faith to renew so-called peace talks. But even the puppet Palestinian government said no: Freeze all settlement expansion now is their condition to restart so-called peace talks. This Israeli favoritism also angered every Arab who could read. So Clinton had to backtrack, double-talk and was given a script to read: this clip. The truth is Israeli's policy is to kill as many Palestinians as necessary, destroy their homes, farms, industry, water and power supplies, sacred sites -- hinder travel and work, starve the Gaza strip to death until all Palestinians give up and move out. That IS the policy. Negotiations should be called: Eviction Talks,
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POPSAlternate Iraq War Universe … Obama Won!
Never mind that the surge was initiated by President George Bush, and the current withdrawal was negotiated by the Bush administration with a sovereign, elected Iraqi government which his actions allowed to come into being, in place of the prior despot he had deposed, while Democrats, including Obama, were howling for abandonment. Obama deserves some credit, of course. For staying Bush’s course and throwing his own boneheaded pandering demands for a precipitous pullout under the bus. OK, I thought Friedman had got about as weird as he could. Silly me. This next step is particularly important, which is why we cannot let Afghanistan distract U.S. diplomats from Iraq. Remember: Transform Iraq and it will impact the whole Arab-Muslim world. Change Afghanistan and you just change Afghanistan. Fascinating. The big clamor for the last few years of course has been that Iraq was distracting us from Afghanistan, and now every jackanape out there, to include Friedman . . .
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POPSArab White House correspondent disses U.S. White House reporters Hmmm, I wonder who are considered third and fourth class citizens. And, why YouTube remove the video? I haven’t read anything from her or from the Dubai-based MBC but I’m willing to bet that they are not sucking up to Obama like the American main stream press is. You gotta play by the rules, baby.
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POPSRights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast The organization is expressly concerned mainly with how wars are fought, not with motivations. To be sure, even victims of aggression are bound by the laws of war and must do their utmost to minimize civilian casualties. Nevertheless, there is a difference between wrongs committed in self-defense (Israel) and those perpetrated intentionally (Hamas and Hezbollah).
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POPSMercedes-Benz Offering Sharia Loans in Middle East There are several methods of investing that comply with Islamic law. For example, instead of offering a loan with interest to buy a car, the financial firm could purchase the car outright at an inflated price that includes the interest portion and then sell it to a customer who can then make fixed payments on a regular basis. Mercedes-Benz picked Dubai for its new offices as the United Arab Emirates, which Dubai is the most popular state in, represents the most important passenger car market in the Middle East for Mercedes-Benz. In 2008, Mercedes-Benz sold 7,800 passenger cars and 3,100 commercial vehicles in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah and the Northern Emirates.
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POPSSaudi Arabia Wants Compensation if Global Warming Bill Passes Saudi Arabia, which sits atop the world's largest proven oil reserves, is seeing economic growth slide because of fallout from the global meltdown, but experts still expect the country, flush with cash from oil's earlier price spike last year, to be better able than other nations to cope with the current crisis. Al Sabban accused Western nations of pursuing an agenda against oil producers, under the guise of protecting the planet. “Despite the variability in the region, the current Arab position is mainly focused around protecting the oil trade rather than saving the planet form the adverse impacts of climate change,” said Wael Hmaidan, the executive director of IndyACT.
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POPS Debacle in Moscow by Charles Krauthammer
And what's come from Obama's single most dramatic foreign policy stroke -- the sudden abrogation of missile defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had virulently opposed? For the East Europeans it was a crushing blow, a gratuitous restoration of Russian influence over a region that thought it had regained independence under American protection. But maybe not gratuitous. Some brilliant secret trade-off to get strong Russian support for stopping Iran from going nuclear before it's too late? Just wait and see, said administration officials, who then gleefully played up an oblique statement by President Dmitry Medvedev a week later as vindication of the missile defense betrayal. The Russian statement was so equivocal that such a claim seemed a ridiculous stretch at the time. Well, Clinton went to Moscow this week to nail down the deal. What did she get? "Russia Not Budging On Iran Sanctions: Clinton Unable to Sway Counterpart."
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POPSUrge World Leaders: Vote No to Biased Goldstone Report I'm here at the emergency session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, facing a draft resolution by the Arab and Islamic blocs that seeks to endorse the biased Goldstone Report"a 500-page document that falsely accuses Israel of “deliberate attacks” against civilians during its defensive war against Hamas rocket attacks last January. (For details, see www.unwatch.org/goldstone.) Adoption of this dangerous text will trigger proceedings toward the indictment and prosecution of Israeli leaders and officers in the International Criminal Court. What’s at stake is the very survival of democratic societies under the assault of terrorists"enemies of human rights who cynically invoke its protective cover. The debate began yesterday and reaches its climax today. UN Watch will be there to address the assembled delegates. Representing us will be none other than Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan,
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POPSCheap Airlines To Sydney Get cheap airlines to Sydney . Prices are updated daily to provide you with the best fares available. You can be assured that only the finest airlines you know and trust will be booked for your trip.
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POPSStratfor: Hezbollah Gets Punk'd There were three men on board, one of whom said they represented EDL and that the purpose of their visit was to upgrade electricity meter switches in the neighborhood... The explosion occurred three hours after the presumably fake EDL van had left the building... ...Hezbollah uses numerous basements in the south Litani area as weapons depots in violation of U.N. Resolution 1701, which ended the 33-day military campaign by Israel against Hezbollah forces in Lebanon in July 2006 and called for Hezbollah’s disarmament. UNIFIL lacks the capability to enforce the resolution, and the Lebanese army lacks both the capability and the will to confront Hezbollah over this explosive issue... ...Hezbollah’s rearmament is naturally a concern for Israel, but the Israeli intelligence apparatus has ways to derail Hezbollah’s plans, and blowing up a munitions depot is not beyond its means.
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POPSSuspension Lifted for 1st grader Finally a common sense decision. When i read about this yesterday it made my blood boil and i did email the school. More people should express their pinions, sometimes it helps. Not that they paid any attention at all to my rambling. But i did point out that schools have gone to far. IT'S one thing to protect our kids but common sense needs to be used as well. Otherwise the terrorists did accomplish their mission by placing this country in such a paranoid state we may as well have let the Nazi's win. "Do as we say and like it" is what i thought we we fighting against in Arab world and other countries. Point is never feel complacent and like anything you have to say don't matter. Maybe as single input it don't but when merged with hundreds of others people take notice. Speak up and fight for what you think is right otherwise we are no longer a free country. Rather led by the hand being told what and what not to do.
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POPSAmreeka: The Movie As luck would have it, Muna has come to the US at the start of the Iraq War. Anti-Arab sentiment is raging in some quarters. Her brother-in-law, a doctor, has lost patients due to backlash, and her sister is quickly losing patience with the hatred and fear that mars their lives. Though educated and with experience in banking, Muna is unable to find work in her field, but knowing that she must become independent, continues to search for employment, finally finding a job at a local fast food restaurant. Tensions build as Muna, ashamed, tries to hide her place of work from her son and sister; as Fadi deals with bullying bigots at school; and as her sister's family begins to unravel in response to the pressures of the war, and the enormous hardships resulting from anti-Arab bias. Through it all, Muna not only survives, but remains hopeful and thankful for each kind gesture from strangers and new-found friends who come to her assistance in ways small and not so small.
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POPSGOP member shoots target with Democratic opponent's initials More: Many of the targets were basic silhouettes, though others were figures wearing traditional Arab head scarves, called kaffiyeh, and holding rocket-propelled grenades. Napolitano said the faces of those figures appeared to be white, though he understood why they would be assumed to be Arabs. He said critics of the event are simply angry that a Republican minority continues to exist in such an overwhelmingly Democratic area. "I absolutely have no regrets. I don't care what the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or any of them say — I know that they're offended by the simple fact that we're here and we won't go away and we won't be quiet," he said. "For the Democrats, who are supposed to be the party of minority rights, they're not being very sensitive to our rights." These people live in bizarro backwards-world, I swear.
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POPSU.S. Fails To Make Top 10 Quality of Life Index Sure, it's easy to claim a higher quality of life when you live in a place like France, where you get 30 days of paid vacation every year. Never mind that their productivity numbers nearly equal ours. Where's the index for rugged individualism and personal responsibility? How good do ya think them Frenchies would do on that, huh? They just don't have the stuff to accept a shorter life expectancy and crappy health care. (The lifespan for African-Americans in the former French city of New Orleans is about the same as that of people living in North Korea.) But, hey, they're not who we mean when we talk about Americans, anyway. I don't want your damn pinko health care. And keep your hands off my gun. Oh, and, U.S. outta the U.N., dammit!
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POPSPackage Deal! Arab Puppet Dictators Made in USA
Special bonus !!! All benefits for the average Joe and the average Mohammed ! Buying them will help the Arab people in their quest for freedom and justice, it will end the petro-dollar recycling system and it will end the inhuman, barbaric wars waged by the US empire against poor people and small resistance groups, it will defuse all extremism, it will force a profound change in the economy, giving resources back for the real economy, for life, for social and human development in North America and in the Middle-East and not for greedy war makers, weapon sellers and mercenary firms. Buy your puppet dictator full kit now ! In the name of hundreds of millions of Arab citizens and in the name of a billion Muslim men women and children, thank you in advance. We will be very happy to send them anywhere in the US (or elsewhere, even Antartica) with FREE shipping ! Don't miss the opportunity. We may even pay you to get them in a package deal. I love the seller's name. .:p
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POPSThe cost of supporting Israel
These have cost the U.S. $1.5 trillion, excluding the additional costs incurred since 2001. The cost of supporting Israel increased drastically after the 1973 Israeli-Arab war. U.S. support for Israel during that war resulted in additional costs for the American taxpayer of between $750 billion and $1 trillion. When Israel was losing the war, President Richard Nixon stepped in to supply the Jewish state with U.S. weapons. Nixon’s intervention triggered the Arab oil embargo, which cost the U.S. as much as $600 billion in lost GDP and another $450 billion in higher oil import costs. The 1973 oil crisis cost the U.S. economy no less than $900 billion, and probably as much as $1.2 trillion. As a result of the oil embargo the U.S. government created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to “insulate Israel and the U.S. against the wielding of a future Arab “oil weapon.” The billion-barrel SPR has cost taxpayers more than $134 billion so far. Making things worse, Israel gets “first