Communicating with Israelis may leave one bewildered. Even now when the Israeli Air Force is practicing murder in broad daylight of hundreds of civilians, elderly persons, women and children, the Israeli people manage to convince themselves that they are the real victims in this violent saga.

The federal hate crimes bill has been narrowly defeated five times since 1998. Today, it enjoys its highest chance ever of passage, strongly supported by President-elect Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress. It could be reintroduced into Congress this week.

If the hate bill's powerful supporters succeed, America will begin to establish a dual-justice system, as Canada did in 1971. Traditional law will still cover general crime, but a parallel "bias-motivation" system (and supporting federal bureaucracy) will be erected. Crimes of "prejudice" will be vehemently prosecuted. Inevitably, such crime will include "verbal violence" (i.e. criticism) against federally protected groups, such as Jews and homosexuals. Those who commit "speech crimes" will face harsh fines and even imprisonment, as now threaten the politically incorrect in Canada, Australia, and many European countries.

What can lovers of freedom do to hold back the iron curtain of hate laws?

UN General Assembly chief Miguel d'Escoto has criticized the Security Council for its inability to curb Israel's "monstrosity" in Gaza.

D'escoto criticized the UN Security Council for not showing enough tenacity in ending Gazans suffering in the wake of the weeklong Israeli offensive in the coastal strip.

"I think it's a monstrosity; there's no other way to name it," D'escoto said Saturday when asked about the Israeli incursion on Gaza.

The UN Security Council again failed to call for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip due to US intervention. The statement would have called on Israel to end its ground incursion into the region.

"Once again, the world is watching in dismay the dysfunctionality of the Security Council," D'escoto argued.

The two previous UN draft resolutions seeking an end to the violence in the region have been blocked by Washington. The United States has so far vetoed over 40 anti-Israel resolutions at the UN.

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is the most stubborn and indeed the most volatile political dilemma facing the world. Today, as in its inception over sixty years ago, the victims are denied their day in court. The cruelly caged, oppressed people of Palestine have a story to tell in the court of history…if only history would lend them the opportunity to be heard.

The saga of the oppression suffered by the people of Palestine does not begin with “…we became under rocket attack and we reacted accordingly,” unless, of course, the narrative is controlled by the oppressor.

Now that Israel is one of the mightiest military powers on the face of the earth; now that it has routinely been exercising that power without sense of proportionality and restraint and thus putting world security at a greater risk, it is high time to hold it accountable.

It is about time that the state of Israel is pressured to comply with the Geneva Convention or be dealt with as a rogue state.

With president-elect Barack Obama already taking command of the financial crisis, it's tempting to think that regime change in America is a done deal. But if George Bush has his way, the country will be ruled by his slash-and-burn ideology for a long time to come.

In its final days, the administration is rushing to implement a sweeping array of "midnight regulations" - de facto laws issued by the executive branch - designed to lock in Bush's legacy. Under the last- minute rules, which can be extremely difficult to overturn, loaded firearms would be allowed in national parks, uranium mining would be permitted near the Grand Canyon and many injured consumers would no longer be able to sue negligent manufacturers in state courts. Other rules would gut the Endangered Species Act, open millions of acres of wild lands to mining, restrict access to birth control and put local cops to work spying for the federal government.

Russ Baker's new book presents an account of the U.S. government that is both remarkably new and extensively documented. According to this account, George H. W. Bush, the father of the current president, devoted his career to secret intelligence work with the CIA many years before he became the CIA director, and the network of spies and petroleum plutocrats he began working with early on has played a powerful but hidden role in determining the direction of the U.S. government up to the current day.

The news keeps reporting that the Israeli air force bombed refugee camps in Gaza.

Did you ever wonder how those refugee camps got to be in Gaza? Cont'd . . .

I mean, where are they refugees from? There didn't used to be refugees in Gaza, before 1948, after all. The grandparents of today's refugees were living in their own homes, which their ancestors had lived in for centuries if not millennia.

After Germany created Jewish refugees in WW II, it was made to pay reparations to the victims, right?

Israel hasn't paid a dime to any of the Palestinian families it expelled in 1948, [pdf] which is itself a violation of international law.

The breaking of their dollar pegs by the Gulf Arab nations is clearly dollar negative. Any inclusion of gold either as a part of the monetary basket, or in the reserves of the new GCC Central Bank will create additional demand for the precious metal.

From http://seekingalpha.com/article/112731-will-the-new-gcc-s......:

Gulf Cooperation Council leaders yesterday concluded their 29th annual summit meeting in Muscat, Oman with a final approval for the creation of a single currency for the six-nation economic bloc, still targeted for 2010.

Saudi Arabia is the largest economy in the GCC and boasts substantial gold reserves. But whether gold will be included in the currency basket has not yet been decided.

~~~SNIP~~~The destruction of Gaza has nothing to do with Hamas. Israel will accept no authority in the Palestinian territories that it does not ultimately control. Any individual, leader, faction or movement that fails to accede to Israel’s demands or that seeks genuine sovereignty and the equality of all nations in the region; any government or popular movement that demands the applicability of international humanitarian law and of the universal declaration of human rights for its own people will be unacceptable for the Jewish State. Those dreaming of one state must be forced to ask themselves what Israel would do to a population of 4 million Palestinians within its borders when it commits on a daily, if not hourly basis, crimes against their collective humanity while they live alongside its borders? What will suddenly make the raison d’etre, the self-proclaimed purpose of Israel’s reason for being change if the Palestinian territories are annexed to it outright?