Rachel Shabi

Murad al Khofash, from the West Bank village of Marda,
attended the climate change talks in Copenhagen to argue
on behalf of the Palestinian Territories. Daniel Bar On for
The National

As a means to counter the creeping expansion of illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, a permaculture farm might not seem like the obvious approach. But for Murad al Khofash, who runs Marda farm in the northern West Bank, it is the natural choice.

Squashed between some of the largest and most powerful settlements, Mr al Khofash’s three-year-old eco-friendly farm is a Palestinian template of how to grow-your-own resistance, from the roots upwards.

“There are many ways to resist the occupation,” explained Mr al Khofash, who has just returned from the climate change summit in Copenhagen where he demanded the international community put the Palestinian Territories on the environmental map.

“Some resist with weapons and violence, others choose the path of negotiation. My way is to encourage Palestinians to grow trees, and to encourage them not to leave their land.”

Permaculture – an organic, holistic and sustainable system of working the land – is Mr al Khofash’s preferred weapon at a time when swathes of Palestinian land and water resources have long been appropriated or contaminated by Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which are illegal under international law.

Ayman Quader

The harrowing experience of the siege prevents the children of the Gaza Strip from having any kind of normal childhood. Children become more acquainted with the names of the dead rather than the names of games.

One year has passed since Israel’s cruel 23-day war on the 1.5 million people of the Gaza. 1,400 people were brutally killed and tens of thousands were seriously wounded. It was 23 days that violated Palestinian human rights and put justice further out of reach. It was a war that utilized ‘state of the art’ phosphorous missiles to achieve levels of suffering and destruction that had not been seen in a generation. Tens of thousands of Gazans were made homeless and schools and hospitals were directly targeted.

The horrific 23-day bombardment of Gaza finished last January. However, the siege of Gaza and the suffering of its people continue. While UN and NGO reports describe the bombardment of Gaza and its aftermath in the abstract, talking to Gaza’s children provides an important reminder of the human side of the pain inflicted by Israel.

Stephen Lendman

On February 1, 2009, the International Solidarity Movement reported that Israel continues its E 1 area homes and infrastructure work that includes linking its Ma'ale Adummim settlement with East Jerusalem and other settlements around it. It said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, while in office, promised to expand E 1 development - the land northeast of Jerusalem, west of Ma'ale Adummim comprising about 12 square kilometers, all of it illegally annexed.

Stephen Lendman

For decades, Israel has met peaceful Palestinian protesters disruptively with violence, arrests and at times unprovoked killings. It's no surprise that targeting them and their leaders is now common practice in cities and villages like Jayyous and Bil'in.

On August 3, 200 Israeli soldiers raided five Bel'in homes at 3AM arresting eight Palestinians, including Mohammad Khatib, a leader of the Bel'in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements. It's part of Israel's repressive routine - late night arrests and imprisonment without charges for indefinite periods. Khatib faces trial, but was released on August 17 on condition he report to a police station with a monitor each Friday until 5PM for its duration. He told supporters:

"The Israeli authorities are worried that the model of popular nonviolent resistance is spreading. They are targeting the popular committees to try to crush (them) but they cannot destroy the spirit of the demonstrations in Bil'in with the arrests of individuals. The whole village is part of the nonviolent resistance and the military would have to arrest (everyone) to stop us from protesting against the Occupation and the theft of our land. Even then, when we all come out of jail, we would continue our struggle."

On September 22, Jayyous resident Mohammad Othman was arrested because of his "Stop the Wall Campaign" activism and efforts on behalf of dispossessed farmers. He's now administratively detained without charge after a military court rejected the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association's appeal on his behalf, citing "secret evidence" that he's a "security threat in the area."

Sharon Jayson

The moral compass of some public figures clearly went awry in 2009. Now new research better explains why some in the public eye don't think like the rest of us.

Power increases "moral hypocrisy," says Adam Galinsky, a behavioral psychologist at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and co-author of a study published today in the journal Psychological Science.

NARCISSISM: It can make politicians leaders ... and cheaters

Power does indeed go to your head, making those in the limelight such as celebrities, politicians, CEOs and athletes more prone to a double standard: They're stricter in their moral judgment of others but are more lenient about their own behavior, the study suggests.

"We gave people the opportunity to cheat, and those in a position of power were more likely to cheat," says Galinsky, who conducted the study with researchers from Tilburg University in the Netherlands.

Stephen Lendman

A December 2009 report prepared by Oxfam International, Amnesty International UK, United Civilians for Peace, Christian Aid, and a dozen other international NGOs (called NGOs below) titled, "Failing Gaza: No rebuilding, no recovery, no more excuses" is hard-hitting and to the point.

It says a year after Operation Cast Lead, extensive damage hasn't been repaired and thousands "are being prevented from rebuilding their shattered society." It's not from a lack of commitment or enough resources with over $4 billion in pledged aid. It's because Israel blocks goods and equipment from entering Gaza. The world community and Arab world do nothing to stop them, so much of the Strip still lies in ruins.

Following Hamas' January 2006 electoral victory, all outside aid was cut off. Sanctions and an economic embargo were imposed, and the democratically elected government was falsely designated a terrorist organization and isolated. Stepped up repression followed as well as regular IFD attacks, killings, targeted assassinations, property destruction, and more. Gazans have been imprisoned ever since.

Stephen Lendman

[In 1967, the Israeli Army occupied Imwas without resistance. In spite of that, they immediately started evacuating the village forcing its inhabitants to leave to the city of Ramalla under gunpoint. The late Israeli prime minister, Rabin, confessed that he had personally given the order to destroy Imwas (this is documented in a video tape). Ozi Narcis, the commander of the middle region then, also boasted that he had offered for the destruction of Imwas. Imwas, alongside with the rest of latrun villages, yalu and Beit Nuba, were demolished to shorten the distance between Jerusalem and the Coast. Imwas is in the heart of its people generation after generation. It will never go into oblivion as the Israeli leaders dream. THE CRIME OF DESTROYING IMWAS]

On June 6, 1967, when Israeli forces invaded Gaza and the West Bank, on the second day of the so-called Six-Day War (June 5 - 10, 1967), they entered three Palestinian villages in the Latroun salient - Imwas, Yalo and Beit Nouba, forcibly expelling the residents, numbering over 10,000 at the time. By the next day, most were gone while Israel began razing village lands and erasing their memory in an area well-known for its water resources and fertility, located northwest of Jerusalem along the Green Line. One soldier at the time explained that they:

"were told to take up positions around the approaches to the villages in order to prevent those villagers - who had heard the Israeli assurances over the radio that they could return to their homes in peace - from returning to their homes. The order was - shoot over their heads and tell them there is no access to the village," even though Fourth Geneva's Article 49 states:

"Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive." Doing so is a "grave breach," and those responsible are criminally liable.

Forty-two years later, their former homes gone and land expropriated, the survivors remain displaced, unable to return in violation of international law and Article 11 of UN Resolution 194:

"Resolv(ing) that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible." Israel never complied even though its admission to the UN was conditional on accepting this and other relevant UN resolutions.

Eric S. Margolis

Washington is finally getting some of the democracy it has long been calling for in Pakistan. The result is a disaster for US “Afpak” policy.

The Obama administration is fast discovering that its man in Islamabad, President Asif Ali Zardari, may be an even bigger ethical and managerial liability than its overseer in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai.

Over the years, I’ve met every Pakistani leader save the current one, President Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto. But I’ve written for decades about corruption charges that relentlessly dog him. At one point, I was threatened with having acid thrown in my face if I kept writing about the Bhutto-Zardari’s financial scandals.

Asif Ali Zardari became known to one and all as “Mr 10%” from the time when he was a minister in his wife’s government, in charge of approving government contracts. Critics say the 10% and other brazen kickbacks produced millions for the Zardari-Bhutto family.

Saleh Al-Naami

A Palestinian woman walks past buildings destroyed during Israel’s 22-day offensive in Gaza which was launched
on 27 December. On the anniversary of the tragic slaughter of Palestinians by Israelis, the world remembers that no
less than 30,000 Palestinian homes were destroyed during the Israeli onslaught, which killed more than 1,400 people

On the first anniversary of Israel’s war on Gaza, shocking revelations are appearing on the methods and reasoning behind the war, writes Saleh Al-Naami.

Mahmoud Hussein tries to hold back his tears as he looks at his 30-year-old brother Ahmed who suffers from colon cancer. The family is impatiently waiting for the Gaza border to open so Ahmed can travel abroad for treatment, since in light of the Israeli imposed siege, medical facilities in Gaza cannot treat his condition. Ahmed, who lives in Gabalya, north of Gaza, is not the only Palestinian who developed cancer at a relatively young age.

Stuart Littlewood

Stuart Littlewood argues that time is running out for Egyptian President Husni Mubarak to prove that he is not an Israeli stooge and allow the Viva Palestina international humanitarian aid convoy to reach the besieged Gaza Strip in time for the first anniversary of Israel’s mass slaughter of Gazans.

”The convoy’s request for easy passage was Mubarak's big chance to show that he was not, after all, the cruel and unprincipled Zionist stooge that civilized people across the world had already consigned to the dustbin of history. It is not too late to make amends. But if he doesn’t act quickly he’ll blow it for everyone, including himself.”

Gee, thanks President Mubarak. Thanks for ruining Christmas for so many.

But that’s par for the course in the cesspit of treachery that is the Middle East.

The human tragedy of Gaza just gets worse and worse. Nobody seriously believed the Viva Palestina convoy would get through unmolested; and so it came to pass. It is stranded at Aqaba, and its precious cargo is spoiling in the heat, because Mubarak’s henchmen will not allow it to enter Egypt through the port of Nuweiba.

Peter Smith

Tainted science and Al Gore don’t justify the benefit of the doubt

“A majority of voters are prepared to give the planet the benefit of the doubt and they want something done about global warming”; so ran part of a recent editorial in the Australian newspaper. Nothing unique about this, you can find the same kind of sentiment most places you care to look. It has two substantive parts: the opinion of voters and giving the planet the benefit of the doubt.

The opinion of voters on global warming; what does that amount to? Knowledge, according to Samuel Johnson, is of two kinds: “We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can get information upon it.” What do voters know about the science of global warming? Of course, on the whole, they know nothing at all. Most voters could not get to first base in explaining why CO2 emissions might cause warming. Would they know where to find the knowledge? They certainly have access to opinions but on the whole not to the scientific research which underlies those opinions. More to the point, if they located the scientific research they would be unable to understand it. In the normal course, their opinion on arcane scientific theory would not be sought. For example, we would not ask voters about the feasibility of generating power through cold fusion because we know that their opinion would be worthless. This is all a long way of saying that the opinion of voters on global warming adds nothing to the debate. Voters can have worthwhile opinions on issues which are within their experience or competence or ability to understand; e.g., the republic versus the monarchy, interest rates, government expenditure; the need for a bill of rights and so on; but on issues like global warming their opinion becomes the plaything of opinion leaders. The plaything of Al Gore? Well, there is no accounting for taste.

Lori Price

Bogosity reaches critical mass!

In 2008, the ACLU estimated the US 'No Fly List' to have grown to over 1,000,000 names --heck, even Cat Stevens and the late Senator Ted Kennedy was on it -- and it continues to expand. But, suspected terrorist Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was curiously able to obtain military-grade high explosives -- 80 grams of PETN (gee, where'd he get that?) -- managed to escape airport security and detonate his underwear bomb!

In April 2009, American authorities reportedly refused an Air France flight from Paris to Mexico entry into US airspace because a left-wing journalist writing a book on the CIA was on board. Hernando Calvo Ospina, who works for Le Monde Diplomatique and has written on revolutionary movements in Cuba and Colombia, figured on the US authorities' 'no-fly list.' Air France said the April 18 flight was forced to divert to the French Caribbean island of Martinique before continuing its journey (telegraph.co.uk). Got it? Write a book critical of the CIA --you cannot fly. Carry explosives on board when the US is trolling for an excuse to invade and occupy Yemen for its oil --yes you can!

Bill Steigerwald

[A writer friend of mine, Bill Steigerwald, has created an interesting serial story, a Christmasy “docu-fable” as he calls it. I’ll be running this over the next 12 days. Here’s the foreword on it. While I’ve had a bit of a detour today on Christmasy type things, tomorrow we’ll see our regular science features resume. – Anthony Watts]

George Orwell used satire and talking pigs in “Animal Farm.” Now, just in time for the Copenhagen climate conference, ClimateGate and the coming ice age, veteran libertarian journalist Bill Steigerwald shamelessly steals Orwell’s idea and uses talking polar bears to poke fun at global warming alarmists and their fellow travelers in Washington and the media.

Twisting the title of director Frank Capra’s movie masterpiece to his own ends, Steigerwald and his son Joe have created “G.P. Bear Goes to Washington: The True Story of a Freedom-Loving Carnivore.”

A 12-part serialized “docu-fable,” “G.P. Bear Goes to Washington” features real issues and real people. It stars Grandpa, a magical, media-savvy and proudly skeptical polar bear who understands his species is in far greater danger from the interventions of the federal government, Barbara Boxer, Al Gore, Leonard DiCaprio and overzealous wildlife scientists than from anthropogenic climate change.

This version includes the final two episodes, Parts 11 and 12. For our newspaper clients, our suggestion is to start the serial in print in your opinion section (Part 1 or Parts 1 & 2) and then jump it to your Web edition and serialize it there until completion (while cross-promoting it from the print side). The serial is timed to end Christmas Day and can easily be broken into six, four or three parts, if you wish, which would allow you to wait until closer to Christmas to begin running it.

William Dalrymple

Globalisation has been good for gods in the Indian subcontinent. As the region has remade itself, it has grown more devout, and its religions are becoming ever more entangled with politics.

On a foggy winter's night in November 1998, Om Singh, a young landowner from Rajasthan, was riding his Enfield Bullet back home after winning a local election near Jodhpur, when he misjudged a turning and hit a tree. He was killed instantly. As a memorial, his father fixed the motorbike to a stand, raised on a concrete plinth under the shelter of a small canopy, near the site of the crash.

“We were a little surprised when people started reporting miracles near the bike," Om's uncle Shaitan Singh told me on my last visit. "Om was no saint, and people say he had had a drink or two before his crash. In fact, there was no indication whatsoever during his life that he was a deity. He just loved his horses and his motorbike. But since his death a lot of people have had their wishes fulfilled here - particularly women who want children. For them, he has become very powerful. They sit on the bike, make offerings to Om Singh-ji, and it is said that flowers drop into their laps. Nine months later they have sons. Every day people see him. He comes to many people in their dreams."

Stuart Littlewood

[Stuart Littlewood welcomes Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams's belated decision to visit the Gaza Strip – more than what “that expensively frocked individual”, the Pope, is prepared to contemplate – but wonders what steps the archbishop will take when he returns to publicize the plight of the besieged Gazans.]

”When Archbishop Rowan gets home from his historic visit, what will he do? He and 25 of his colleagues sit in the British parliament's House of Lords. They have clout. But in a quick search through theyworkforyou.com I could find no recent record of these ‘super-clerics’ raising questions about Israel's murderous onslaught, the unending persecution of the Christian and Muslim communities and the unlawful restrictions imposed on the Holy Land generally. No criticism of the British government’s inaction either.”

Dignitaries, emissaries, human rights delegations, fact-finding trippers – they come and go, but Gaza's suffering continues and day by day gets worse, thanks to the corrupted leadership of the international community who are the scandal of our age.

But here's a spot of Christmas cheer for the starving, desolated Palestinians imprisoned in the tiny coastal enclave.

S. Frederick Starr

It was once the “land of a thousand cities” and home to some of the world’s most renowned scientists, poets, and philosophers. Today it is seen mostly as a harsh backwater. To imagine Central Asia’s future, we must journey into its remarkable past.

In AD 998, two young men living nearly 200 miles apart, in present-day Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, entered into a correspondence. With verbal jousting that would not sound out of place in a 21st-century laboratory, they debated 18 questions, several of which resonate strongly even today.

Are there other solar systems out among the stars, they asked, or are we alone in the universe? In Europe, this question was to remain open for another 500 years, but to these two men it seemed clear that we are not alone. They also asked if the earth had been created whole and complete, or if it had evolved over time. Time, they agreed, is a continuum with no beginning or end. In other words, they rejected creationism and anticipated evolutionary geology and even Darwinism by nearly a millennium. This was all as heretical to the Muslim faith they professed as it was to medieval Christianity.

Aleksandr Shustov

The launch of a new gas pipe on December 14 to connect Turkmenistan and China became one of the key moments in a geopolitical game aimed to win new routes of exporting Central Asian oil and gas resources. The launching ceremony for the gas pipe took place at the Samandep field in Turkmenistan and was attended by Presidents Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, Islam Karimov (Uzbekistan) and Nursultan Nazarbayev (Kazakhstan). The new gas pipe will be the first route to deliver the Turkmen gas (up to 40 bln cubic meters per year) to external markets bypassing Russia. Until recently Russia has purchased the lion's share of Turkmen gas but now it plans to buy four times less.

The new pipe is expected to supply to China 150 million cubic meters of gas, but it will reach full capacity by 2012. It will pump gas mainly from the gas fields located on the left bank of the Amu Darya River, while the lacking amounts of gas will be taken from the Bagtyyarlyk gas-rich territory on contract basis. The pipeline is about 7 km long, with 184,5 km being on the Turkmen soil, and 490 km, 1300 km and 4500 km in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and China respectively.

Nicole Belle

That beautiful, sunny, smiling face belongs to Jessica Bucher, a twelve year old middle school student in Northern California.

At a time when most parents are worried about their twelve year old's grades, or first forays with the opposite sex, or cell phone usage, Jessica's parents have a much more urgent goal: keeping Jessica alive and pain-free.

Jessica Bucher was diagnosed with a rare disease that is almost always fatal: juvenile onset Sandhoff Disease. Thankfully, Jessica has responded well to an experimental umbillical cord stem cell treatment, but not without saddling her parents with astronomic health care bills. Those bills are now threatening their home to foreclosure. It's every parent's Faustian nightmare: save your child and lose your home or save your home and watch your child die. Jessica's classmates have opted to run regular fundraisers to help offset these medical costs because we as a country offer no such safety net to the Buchers.

Marco Villa

A new joint report by the United Nations Development Programme and the Arab League - issued ahead of the September 2010 international gathering to mark the tenth anniversary of the Millennium [poverty-reduction] Goals - does not reflect well on the Arab world.

The region is singled out for the incredibly high degree of poverty between the 25 Arab countries and Palestinian occupied territories. In an Arab world of 358million, 140million live in poverty. That’s 40% of Arabs.

Poverty levels vary from one nation to the next, but even oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia have high percentages of their population living below the poverty line. Egypt, the most Arab populous country with 80million people, records a poverty level of 40% - defined as living on less than $2 a day.

More depressingly, the report noted that “there has been no decrease in the rates of poverty in the Arab region over the past 20 years.” Caveat: the face of poverty has changed in the region. Extreme forms of poverty has been greatly reduced in many nations. Nonetheless, the percentage has not changed, but this is in larger measure due to the high level of population growth. Many people move out of poverty, but many are also born into poverty as birth rates remain high in the region. Either way, the statics are unfortunate.

Stephen Lendman

Obama Year One: Betrayal and Failure (Part I)

Part II concludes an account of Obama's betrayal, not promised change. Obamacare Plans to Ration Healthcare and Enrich Big Providers

After House passage in November, the Senate is now about to pass a stealth scheme to ration care and enrich insurers, the drug cartel, and large hospital chains, the way Washington always works.

It plans market-based solutions, featuring cost-containing measures, mostly affecting working Americans, the poor, elderly, and chronically ill to make a dysfunctional system worse, under the guise of reform, the most dangerous and deceptive word in the language to take cover from when announced.

Besides enriching providers, Obamacare will force millions to pay more, get less, with millions still uninsured and left out. Employers will be able to opt out of providing coverage, but since insurance for most will be mandated, those without it will have to buy it or face hundreds of dollars in penalties, whether or not they can afford it. Even with a public option, looking less likely, insurers will get to skim off the cream, charge what they wish, profit handsomely at low risk, and leave Washington stuck with ones industry doesn't want. For providers, it's a win-win under any version being considered.

Most disturbing are planned Medicare cuts, around $400 - $570 billion, depending on which numbers are most accurate, and these are for starters, a foot in the door if enacted, toward the long-term aim ending Medicare, then Medicaid and Social Security because, at $106 trillion in unfunded liabilities, budget constraints can't sustain them.

The Congressional Budget Office's June 2009 "Long-Term Budget Outlook" suggests a nation in decline, eventual hyperinflation, possible bankruptcy because of a greater national debt than during the Great Depression and near-surpassing WW II. The administration's solution - end entitlements over 100 million Americans rely on, but it still may be too little, too late given an overstretched budget, a weakening dollar, and foreign investors looking for safer returns on their capital, so are less willing to fund Washington's excesses.

In Obama's America, the least advantaged will carry the load, not privileged elites, but don't expect congressional opposition to stop him or news reports to explain it.