informant38
.

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...But of these sophisms and elenchs of merchandise I skill not...
Milton, Areopagitica

Except he had found the
standing sea-rock that even this last
Temptation breaks on; quieter than death but lovelier; peace
that quiets the desire even of praising it.

Jeffers, Meditation On Saviors


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31.1.09

Digna Rabia:

Is it useful to say something? Do our cries stop even one bomb? Does our word save the life of even one Palestinian?

We think that yes, it is useful. Maybe we don't stop a bomb and our word won't turn into an armored shield so that that 5.56 mm or 9 mm caliber bullet with the letters "IMI" or "Israeli Military Industry" etched into the base of the cartridge won't hit the chest of a girl or boy, but perhaps our word can manage to join forces with others in Mexico and the world and perhaps first it's heard as a murmur, then out loud, and then a scream that they hear in Gaza.

We don't know about you, but we Zapatistas from the EZLN, we know how important it is, in the middle of destruction and death, to hear some words of encouragement.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico January 4, 2009
mywordismyweapon via xymphora > counterpunch
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Now we see and we feel not only the rebellious resistance that, as sister and comrade, stays at our side and encourages our steps.

Now there is something that before wasn’t there, or that we weren’t able to see before.

There is a creative rage.

A rage that paints all of the colors of the paths of below and to the left on the five continents…
EZLN announce First Global Festival of Dignified Rage
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Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional
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EZLN Announces First Global Festival of Dignified Rage 23.Sep.08
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Galerías del Primer Festival de la Digna Rabia
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original text of Marcos speech, in Spanish

29.1.09

Responding to the call of Palestinian civil society to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement against Israel, we are a U.S. campaign focused specifically on a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions
U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel
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via MondoWeiss

28.1.09

cryptogon:

UN Crime Chief Says Drug Money Flowed Into Banks

Why Are Top Political Leaders From Both Parties So Out-Of-Touch With The Public’s Demand For Marijuana Law Reform?

Why does marijuana prohibition continue despite its obvious failings?

Regrettably, one need only point to this single, but poignant example, demonstrated by this Pelosi-Boehner cannabis conundrum: Leaders who will not lead.

NORML via digg 27.Jan.09
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Okay, but then why won't those leaders lead?
If this is right, the majority of voters favor one thing yet their leaders keep going the other way - but it's right in line with everything else they're doing.
2006 elections, out of Iraq, the groundswell hit Washington like a tsunami, yet the leaders elected to end the Iraq occupation didn't. Why?
Same reason as this. Because the leaders are responding to the dictates of the same essentially invisible forces in both cases, and for the same reasons. Extortion, blackmail, coercion.
Marijuana is big business as long as it's kept illegal, really big business generating lots and lots of money. Demand is no pun intended very high, supply is no problem, and the bottleneck created by illegality is immensely lucrative for those controlling it.
Who runs the international drug trade?
Who wanted Iraq broken in the dust?

27.1.09

England:

these articles are related, not just because they're happening at the same time - they're the results of the actions of the same people in different venues
Mobile phone oligarch flees Russia for new life in Britain
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[UK]Government must release cabinet minutes on lead-up to Iraq war
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Britain on the brink of an economic depression, say experts
The way the economy went to shit in tandem with the rise of awareness at how thoroughly the US has been compromised, used, drained.
A minor version of this the rise of broad-stroke anti-Semitism as the foundations of normal business shake and crumble under the feet of the irritated and half-awake who blame "the Jews" for what's happening.
Yes it's that, no it's not. Parasitic template, but within the parasite's little desperate brain, another one. With its own sickened consciousness driving it forward.
Each triumph creates a god that demands worship and provides guidance, because it exists outside the timeline, or outside the finite dot we're trained to think of as the only reality there is - the present. Which somehow magically becomes the past without our seeing it happen.
Same pattern of insertion into the middle of the transaction all the way up and down the line, get in between someone and what they want, the opposite of providing a service, interrupt the provision, interrupt the reaching toward, so now people want to get next to God, hey we have that, discount prices too, just give us half the money up front, or the energy, or the credultiy, you know that stuff, the blind faith in the middleman that he'll come through, because what else do you have?
I'd rather put something here that confirms, lifts up, but it's all being ripped off now, sucked at by pigs, in between the keyboard and the server farm a gantlet of swine, the thoughts polluted by the suck of mindless attention, diverted into the sewer lines of the dominance hierarchies and their unravelling skeins of organization, little clots of basically nice people going sour and bitter with being denied, and fed yours truly, all set up and awaiting the Messiah. Any Messiah.
The Messiah that will deliver the swine to their kingdom without demanding change, without demanding they stop acting like and being pigs. Pig heaven.
People wake up to that, the scam at the center of it, the magician's redirection and fast talk, all the tricks of the trade television and and film and story make plain, CGI hope, virtual possibilities, Second Afterlife. At the same time they wake up to the grandeur of how fucked they are, virtually step by step their economic security dissipates.
So that if you extend the process out far enough, and up the timeline far enough, you can see people who understand completely what's going on, and at the same time have no economic power to do anything about it. Or who if they do have economic power are so thoroughly compromised by having it and keeping it they end up working for the thing they know is dooming us, eating us, fucking our children right in front of us while we stand there paralyzed with shame and confusion.
Good folks still make a sizable chunk of who's here. But the varieties of goodness are hyper-distinct to the point of mutual repulsion. The ones who say but there are decent Muslims and Jews and Christians and atheists and everything in between and they all have that in common are themselves ridiculed to a degree that's assault, that hamstrings them, stunts the growth of anything really unifying, blocks the light.
Good folks who either get so caught up in feeding themselves and their relatives they can only hobby through the dreck and shitstorm information like HAM radio amateurs, or who have no voice because they have no information-expanding energy. (Me I have this big podium, invisible and unrewarding as it may be, but a nest of vipers all around it hissing and biting, and outside that a bunch of sheep staring, and outside that a bunch of angry cynical children staring, and outside that a bunch of cops staring, and outside that who the fuck knows.)
England grinds to an economic halt while its people wake up to Blair's utter complicity in an agenda - Iraq - that had no regard at all for the best interest of the country he was ostensibly leading. None. Zero. The husk of what it might have become with all these tools and resources gathered itself bled dry now, the husk drained of every last scrap of nutrients, all gone toward the parasite hive and its insect god.
It was all along about the interests and well-being of the people who drove the BBC into the same ditch they drove CNN after they bought Ted Turner out.
In the sense that a puppet held before a mindless crowd can be said to lead them, Blair led England to this.
Albion, Babylon.

25.1.09

Obama will close Gitmo:

Senators vow to keep Gitmo inmates from coming to South Carolina
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Murtha: OK to send Gitmo prisoners to Pennsylvania
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Murtha's Gitmo idea called 'ludicrous'
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No Gitmo Prisoners In Colorado Cry Many Republican Lawmakers
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From Gitmo to Super Max? Be careful what you wish for.
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Iraq will reopen the notorious Abu Ghraib prison next month, but it's getting a facelift and a new name, a senior justice official said Saturday

Pigs is pigs, the wide world o'er:

Since the Tigers wear vials of cyanide around their necks in case of capture, surrender seems unlikely.
ReutersUK 25.Jan.09
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Jewish Humor:

BBC resisting pressure over Gaza
BBC 25.Jan.09
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It seems the idea might be to keep lowering the mind bar, so that you end up with a minority that will accept anything you tell them, but a minority drawn from a billion can still be a sizable pool from which to draw your slaves and servants.
The BBC was pressured into not offering a charitable appeal for humanitarian relief in Gaza, and now they're valiantly resisting pressure to accept and run that appeal. Brave Jews! Brave BBC!

21.1.09

Switzerland to consider hosting Guantanamo inmates
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Israel denies using depleted uranium arms in Gaza
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Israel Denies Using Cluster Munitions in Gaza
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Israel denies using white phosphorus in Gaza
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Israel denies targeting civilians
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Israel denies shooting UN relief trucks
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Israel Denies Ramming Gaza Relief Boat
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Israel denies torturing Fatah activist
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Israel denies fatal bulldozer attack
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Israel denies humanitarian crisis
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Israel denies entry to UN rights investigator
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Israel denies timing of war linked to change in US presidents
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Israel denies snubbing Blair
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Israel denies selling weapons to Burma
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Israel Denies Cooperation In Indian Nuclear Tests
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Israel Denies Dumping Toxic Waste In Golan
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Israel denies journalists entry based on ethnicity
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Israel denies encouraging Jews to leave Germany
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Israel denies Temple Mount excavation
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Israel denies hidden agenda
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Israel denies access of Sudanese Doctors' Mission
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Israel denies nuncio entry to Gaza
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Israel denies Italian delegation entry into Gaza
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Israel Denies Entry to UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk
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Israel denies causing beach deaths
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Israel denies firing missile into crowded street
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Israel denies allegation of commandos killing hostages
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Israel denies UN access to facility for Weapons of Mass destruction
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Israel denies 94 percent of requests for West Bank building permits
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Israel denies 21-year-old cancer patient medical treatment
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Israel denies spying
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Israel Denies Spying Against U.S.
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Israel denies link with US spy
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Israel denies it kept files
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Israel Denies '100%' Any Spying Against the U.S.
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Israel denies Abbas claim that it negotiated with Hamas
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Israel denies ‘early information’ about attacks
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Israel denies claims by Egypt of involvement in espionage
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Israel denies planning nuclear attack on Iran
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Israel denies report on asking for "air corridor" to attack Iran
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Israel denies air force trains in Iraq for strike against Iran
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Israel denies Iran attack plans
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Israel Denies Claims It's Preparing Nuke Attack on Iran
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Israel denies planning attack on Iran
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Israel denies planning Iran nuke attack
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Israel denies plan to attack Iran with nukes
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Israel denies nuclear strike plan
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Israel denies negotiating for US permission to fly over Iraq
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Israel denies plan to nuke Iranian nuclear facilities
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Israel Denies It Has Nuclear Strike Plans
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Israel Denies British Report It Plans Iran Attack
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Israel denies UK report on planing nuclear strike on Iran
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Israel Denies It Tested Nuclear Bomb
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Israel neither denies nor admits having nuclear weapons

18.1.09

Here:

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
MLK 04.Apr.67
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via

God is watching you:

A Jacksonville kindergarten teacher charged with drug possession has been assigned to another position with no student contact, authorities said.

Duval County public schools spokeswoman Jill Johnson said Friday that 38-year-old Gina R. Cevasco was assigned a non-teaching job at Cedar Hills Elementary pending an internal investigation. Cevasco had been with the school for three years.

Police said Cevasco was arrested after an officer came to her home Tuesday to investigate a drug complaint.

Police said officers found marijuana and prescription pills in her bedroom.

England:

Gaza protesters raid arms factory
Police said extensive damage was caused during the break-in
Seven men and two women have been arrested after a group of protesters attacked an arms factory in Sussex.
EDO MBM Technology in Moulsecoomb was broken into overnight by the Smash EDO group in response to the action by the Israeli military in Gaza.
Protesters say weapons components made at the site are used by Israeli aircraft on bombing missions.
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Robbers kill pensioner's budgie

11.1.09

Official Notification of Intent to Enter

January 11, 2009

To: The Israeli Ministry of Defense, Fax: 972-3-697-6717

To: The Israeli Navy

To: The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Fax 972-2-5303367

From: The Free Gaza Movement:
This letter serves as a formal notification to you as the Occupying Power and belligerent force in the Gaza Strip that on Monday, January 12 we are navigating the motor vessel, Spirit of Humanity, from the Port of Larnaca to the port of Gaza City. Our vessel will be flying the Greek flag, and, as such, falls under the jurisdiction of Greece.

We will be sailing from Cypriot waters into international waters, then directly into the territorial waters of the Gaza Strip without entering or nearing Israeli territorial waters. We expect to arrive at the Gaza Port on Tuesday, January 13, 2009.

We will be carrying urgently needed medical supplies in sealed boxes, cleared by customs at the Larnaca International Airport and the Port of Larnaca. There will be a total of 30 passengers and crew on board, among them members of various European Parliaments and several physicians. Our boat and cargo will also have received security clearance from the Port Authorities in Cyprus before we depart.

As it will be confirmed that neither we, the cargo, any of the boat’s contents, nor the boat itself constitute any threat to the security of Israel or its armed forces, we do not expect any interference with our voyage by Israel’s authorities.
International Solidarity Movement
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Voices from Gaza as Israeli Attacks Continue
Ten year old Reem Abu Fager, whose home is Mashrua Beit Lahia said this morning,

"We were sleeping when a missile hit our house. My mother's leg was hurt, but we escaped outside. My father told me to take some clothes. My five younger sisters took our school clothes and our school books. When we got outside my father asked me why we did not take more clothes because it is winter. I told him that books are more important. Then another missile hit. We can't get any more of our things."

"The Israeli occupation forces have been dropping leaflets over Gaza. Leaflets that encourage civilians to leave their homes and flee.To where? There is no safe place in Gaza and Gazans cannot cross the borders because of the ongoing Israeli siege. People hope to find shelter, but every place has the same chance of being targeted. The army is getting closer to Al Quds Hospital and nothing can prevent them from striking here."
Vittorio Arrigoni (Italy) – International Solidarity Movement.

"As I speak the Israelis have just dropped another stack of leaflets threatening more attacks. Hundreds and hundreds of houses have been bombed along the border. Where can people go? This coul not be more horrific."
Jenny Linnel (Britain) - International Solidarity Movement.

"We have been assisting the Red Crescent ambulances as they attempt to collect the killed and wounded. So many victims are rom smoke inhalation, a strange chemical smoke which seizes the lungs and air passage, and suffocates the victims. They were the ones we could reach, there are hundreds of calls for help that are let unanswered as the Israelis wil not let the ambulances up there"
Eva Bartlett (Canada) - International Solidarity Movement
ISM/ScoopNZ 12.Jan.09
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ISM

10.1.09

Israeli leaflets warn Gaza of escalation in violence
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Some in Gaza need no longer worry:


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Soldiers point guns at us from behind the earth mounds. Snipers cover us from occupied houses. We all hope Mr Walkie Talkie is saying the right things.
He’s very polite, and isn’t in fact saying any of the things I would be saying if I was on the phone to the IOF right now. I guess that’s why he has his job and I don’t.
tales to tell Gaza 08-10.Jan.09

9.1.09

a list of twelve major tactics of modern terrorism and the dates of their first introduction into the conflict over Palestine
Qumsiyeh: A Human Rights Web

8.1.09

BDS
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BDS

NYTimes:
Although it has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, it has almost one-quarter of the world’s prisoners. And for the first time in history, more than 1 in 100 American adults are behind bars.

AFP:

Rocket attack jolts Israel as Gaza war blazes on
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CSM:
Hamas rockets rain on Israeli towns
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Israel finds more sympathy in Europe
Also
CSM:
Obama said to pick a spy chief with little intelligence
experience
AP:
Former Sen. Larry Craig dropping further
appeals

7.1.09

we believe there is still work to do:

Remarks After Meeting with the P3 + Arab Group

Secretary Condoleezza Rice
United Nations Headquarters
New York, New York
January 7, 2009

QUESTION: Secretary Rice, (inaudible)?

SECRETARY RICE: Let me just say that we believe that there is still work to do. The ministers, Minister Kouchner, Foreign Secretary Miliband and I are extending our stays, and we believe there is still work to do. Thank you.
ScoopNZ 08.Jan.09

one could hardly point to a more finished specimen of the corruption of heart in question

4.1.09

Jabalia 6pm Sat til Sun midday
Posted January 4, 2009 by talestotell:


7.30: Ambulances called out. We are unable to pass a huge crater in the road into which a car has already nosedived. Taking the long way round, we collect a man in traditional dress, in his 60s, from what seems to be his family farm. He is bleeding from the face and very frightened. On the way to Karmel Adwan hospital a particularly close explosion rocks the van. I mustn’t have jumped enough, beacuse the driver mimes “did you hear that?” to me. I am beginning to realise Palestinians are fond of rhetorical questions, such as “how do you find Gaza at the moment?”

8pm: We collect a man in his 30s from a family house in a main street. He is continually bleeding from the face near his eye and also has wounds to his hand and upper and lower legs. He has made makeshift bandages for himself. We take him to Al Awda hospital. On the way back we pick up a woman and her daughter who are in danger having gone to collect water.

8.20: Bread and tea at the Centre. Ambulances called out.

8.40: Medic worries “we are taking too long; ten minutes.” However at our dangerous and darkened destination no-one arrives in response to the ambulance loudspeaker, the electricity lines are down, and smoke fills the air. The ambulances retreat, describing it as a no-go area. Immediately beside it, a peasant family of about 10 emerge from the smoke, looking bewildered. Some of the children are crying, everyone is holding tight to each other’s hands. One woman is pregnant. The medics shout at them to leave the area, then decide to evacuate them in the ambulances. We drop them in the nearest town, to go god knows where.

Times Square Rally Protests Fighting in Gaza
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Pro-Israel groups, angry at how the media are portraying their country in the Mideast conflict, are battling back [2002]
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Daniel Craig’s new film turns him from chilly Bond action man into a thoughtful leader of Jewish partisans fighting the Nazis. [2009]
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As tens of thousands of protesters in European cities and world leaders called for an end to the invasion of Gaza, Israeli military officials told The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) their objective was "taking control" of the rocket launching sites Hamas has used to fire at southern Israel. They reiterated it is not their aim to fully reoccupy Gaza, as Israel did until 2005, the Times reported.
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Police made eight arrests during a demonstration by thousands against Israel in Berlin.
Berlin's Jewish community also filed charges of incitement to hate based on posters displayed at a separate protest on Dec. 29.
An estimated 7,000 people turned out for Saturday's march, one of several held in European cities over the weekend protesting Israel's military operation in the Gaza Strip
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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited Ashkelon on Sunday and expressed his support of the IDF's Operation Cast Lead in the Strip.
Speaking at a press conference in Ashkelon, the Jewish mayor said that if he was the State of Israel, he would do anything to defend his residents, and they would expect no less from him.
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Demonstrators took to the streets across Britain on Saturday to protest against Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.
The biggest rally was in London, where organisers were expecting thousands of protestors including singer Annie Lennox and former London mayor Ken Livingstone to march through the British capital.
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the Moral Cowardice of the World
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Israel's tank and troop assault on the Gaza Strip provoked worldwide cries of alarm on Sunday, but Israel won heavyweight US backing and moves for an immediate ceasefire foundered at the United Nations.

2.1.09

same guys behind all three:

American aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean Sea are assisting the Israeli occupation forces in the military campaign on Gaza Strip, a well informed source in the Russian intelligence said on Wednesday.

The source explained that the American aircraft carriers were extending information and logistical support to the IOF air force in its savage raids on the Strip.

The source, who requested anonymity, said that the White House had endorsed a proposal by senior staffers to offer a batch of advanced weaponry to the IOF on condition that the deal would not be disclosed at present due to the current sensitive conditions in the USA such as transfer of power and the economic crisis.
PIC/ScoopNZ 02.Jan.08

What I really wanted to write about today was time. Time and eternity. The way we seem to move through time physically as if it were a kind of liquid, the illusion of that the way our bodies are solidly in each undiminished phase of the continuum, never going on always there, each moment not discrete but fluid and each moment what we call moment not cut away from that flow filled with a physical presence that consciousness moves on from but only consciousness the physicality never stops being there, the way our bodies never leave that - how could they? - but something deeper in moves through it, and the way that what we move through is eternal not mumbo-jumbo go-to-church eternal but factually, physically, scientifically endless.
But instead I get to choose carefully what not to put here, what aspect of the butchery in Gaza to set aside for now, how much or how little of the eyewitness to let in, the heroes there now at the other end of the swine weaponry, sleepless and scared past hunger, testifying, and how much of that to set aside as I said, say again, how much to not say. Because it gratifies them, it makes them feel strong and holy when we scream.

everyone is in danger:

No one is safe from the Israeli air strikes. 
I saw two girls, ages 4 and 12 hit by a bomb from an F16. They were outside clearing some rubbish around their homes. The 4 year old girl died and the 12 year old girl was being taken to the hospital on a donkey cart. The people of Gaza have nothing left from the ongoing siege: there is not even an ambulance to take a child to the hospital.
ISM/ScoopNZ 02.Jan.09

SL forces capture Kilinochchi town:

The Sri Lankan military says troops have taken the northern town of Kilinochchi, the headquarters of the Tamil Tiger separatist group.
Shortly after the claim on Friday, a powerful explosion went off in Sri Lanka's capital.
[...]
There has been no response from the Tamil Tigers about the military claim.
It was also not possible to independently verify the army's claims as journalists are not permitted in the vicinity of military operations.
Al Jazeera 02.Jan.09
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The Kilinochchi town, where most of the buildings are either partially or fully destroyed now by continuous air strikes and artillery barrage by the Sri Lankan forces, once again fell into the hands of Sri Lankan forces 12 years ago.
The SLA captured the Kilinochchi-Paranthan area from the Tigers after fighting for more than a month in 1996 after losing more than 600 soldiers. The LTTE recaptured part of the town in February in 1998.
After several months, in September in that year (1998), the LTTE overran the Brigade Headquarters guarded by a 15 km long defence line, destroying the whole establishment in a two-day long major operation code named 'Oayaatha Alaika'l-2' (Unceasing Waves-2).
Eelam Nation Latest Reports 02.Jan.09
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Eelam Nation

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