How to survive a Gaza refugee camp

BY RAMZY BAROUD (Palestine Chronicle)

29 April 2008

WE WAITED breathless. Breathing heavily was hazardous under these somewhat exceptional circumstances. The army, my father often advised, was sensitive to the slightest movements or sounds, including a whisper, a cough, or God forbid, a sneeze.

Thus we sat completely still. Muneer, my younger brother was entrusted with the mission of peering through the rusty holes in the front door. It bothered me that I was not the one elected for the seemingly perilous mission.

My father explained that Muneer was smaller and quicker, he could negotiate his way back and forth, seamlessly, between the observation ground and the room where everyone was hiding. The house's main door was riddled with holes; the upper half spoke of past battles between the neighbourhood's stone throwers and Israeli soldiers.

The holes on the lower half, however were not those of bullets, but rust and corrosion. These holes often served us well. Muneer would lie on his belly and peek through them; he followed the movement of the soldiers as their military vehicles often used the space in front of our house. They pondered their moves from there, and often used our house' front step as a spot for lunch or tea. Worse, they often released their frustrations on the house's helpless residents, that being my family.

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Today's Topic: A different tack in Middle East

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Former President Carter is seen at the grave of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah April 15, in advance of Carter's meeting with Syrian and anti-Israel Hamas leaders.

Our View

In one fell swoop, former President Carter may have brought more attention to the Middle East peace process than the Bush administration has achieved in almost eight years.

Carter met with exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal recently in Damascus, and Carter reported that Hamas may see conditions under which it would accept Israel's right to exist. Carter emphasized that he was acting as a single concerned citizen of the United States, had only the prospects of peace in mind and that he was not negotiating on behalf of this nation. He stated his belief that peace cannot be reached unless Hamas is brought into the discussion.

Reaction was fast and furious, and it included criticism, scorn and ridicule for Carter. The Bush administration insisted Carter had been warned not to meet with Hamas, a point Carter says is simply untrue. Hamas itself said it might not accept a peace referendum, and Mashaal said later that Hamas would not recognize Israel. Everyone dug in to restate past positions.

The United States, like Israel, considers Hamas to be a terrorist organization, which is certainly the case. But it ignores the fact that Hamas was put into power in Gaza in popular elections, which must count for something. Voters disliked the corruption they saw in the rival Fatah party.

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Breaking News! : Hillary Clinton Required to Testify in November to FEC Fraud!

By Potus Obama 2008 - April 28, 2008

To All Super Delegates! : This is very disturbing news!

In the landmark civil fraud case against Bill Clinton in Los Angeles, where the former President is charged with defrauding a Hollywood dot com millionaire to help Hillary Clinton obtain more than $1.2 million from him for her 2000 Senate campaign, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Aurelio Munoz ruled on Friday, April 25 that Hillary Clinton would not be required to testify in a sworn deposition as a material witness in the case until AFTER the November election!

While Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Al Gore, Ed Rendell, Barabara Streisand, Cher, Stan Lee, Brad Pitt, Mike Wallace, Larry King et al may be called to testify and be deposed starting in May, Hillary alone has been protected from explaining her role in her husband’s fraud charges.

In an astonishing ruling by the Judge, Hillary Clinton may NOT be deposed about her role in the illegal solicitation and cover up of the largest contribution made to her Senate campaign until after the presidential election. This is the same contribution Hillary denied knowing about or receiving when Lloyd Grove of the Washington Post asked her specifically about it and her relationship with the donor, Peter Paul, in August 2000. Its the same contribution her finance director David Rosen was criminally tried in May, 2005, or hiding from her and her campaign. Its the same contribution the FEC fined her campaign for hiding from the voters in three false FEC reports by her treasurer between 2000-2006. (www.paulvclinton.com)

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No use reporting any funny money Johnny Boy got from the Rothschild's, since the agency in charge of looking after elections, the FEC, is all but dead.

It's missing a head commissioner, since the Bush/Cheney Junta wanted to appoint another of their towel boys and the Dems said no.

It's also missing another commissioner or two, meaning that any meetings they have are null and void, since they don't have a majority of members to meet and look into monkey business in regard to elections.

Of course, this is only a coincidence and is not any type of conspiracy, you dunderheads.

"Now, back to Wolf and the latest on what Obama's pastor said back in 1978. ..... Wolf?"

"Thanks, Shlomo, CNN has unearthed a tape recording allededly of Senator Barack Obama's controversial preacher, Jeremiah Wright, said to a gas station attendant back in 1978....."

BARF....

DNC Ad on John McCain and Iraq: "100"

Democratic National Committee Ad. President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years... Senator McCain, President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years. Maybe 100. That would be fine with me. 100 years in Iraq President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq 50 years... 5 years $500 Billion Spent over 4,000 dead Maybe 100. If all he offers is more of the same...is John McCain the right choice for America's future? Is John McCain the Right Choice for America's Future? http://www.democrats.org/FundIraqAd

Please note

CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS

has a new address.

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"...the next bubble is already being branded. Wired magazine, returning to its roots in boosterism, put ethanol on the cover of its October 2007 issue, advising its readers to forget oil; NBC had a “Green Week” in November 2007, with themed shows beating away at an ecological message and Al Gore making a guest appearance on the sitcom 30 Rock. Improbably, Gore threatens to become the poster boy for the new new new economy: he has joined the legendary venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which assisted at the births of Amazon.com and Google, to oversee the “climate change solutions group,” thus providing a massive dose of Nobel Prize–winning credibility that will be most useful when its first alternative-energy investments are taken public before a credulous mob."

Eric Janszen

PUBLISHED February 2008

is a market aberration manufactured by government, finance, and industry, a shared speculative hallucination and then a crash, followed by depression. Bubbles were once very rare—one every hundred years or so was enough to motivate politicians, bearing the post-bubble ire of their newly destitute citizenry, to enact legislation that would prevent subsequent occurrences. After the dust settled from the 1720 crash of the South Sea Bubble, for instance, British Parliament passed the Bubble Act to forbid “raising or pretending to raise a transferable stock.” For a century this law did much to prevent the formation of new speculative swellings.

Nowadays we barely pause between such bouts of insanity. The dot-com crash of the early 2000s should have been followed by decades of soul-searching; instead, even before the old bubble had fully deflated, a new mania began to take hold on the foundation of our long-standing American faith that the wide expansion of home ownership can produce social harmony and national economic well-being. Spurred by the actions of the Federal Reserve, financed by exotic credit derivatives and debt securitiztion, an already massive real estate sales-and-marketing program expanded to include the desperate issuance of mortgages to the poor and feckless, compounding their troubles and ours.

That the Internet and housing hyperinflations transpired within a period of ten years, each creating trillions of dollars in fake wealth, is, I believe, only the beginning. There will and must be many more such booms, for without them the economy of the United States can no longer function. The bubble cycle has replaced the business cycle.