Bethlehem – Ma’an - The Women’s Coalition for Peace sent a letter on Wednesday to Israel’s former Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, calling on her to cooperate with international investigations into her role in the assault on Gaza last winter, after a British court issued an warrant for her arrest on Monday.

The Israeli organization wrote in the letter, which was attached to a translated copy of the Goldstone report on alleged war crimes in Gaza, “We are convinced that if you refer to the report you will understand why British citizens and organizations have turned to the courts with a request to issue a warrant for your arrest.”

President Obama, the Afghan war escalator, received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, and proceeded to deliver his acceptance speech outlining the three criteria for a "just war" which he himself is violating.

The criteria are in this words: "If it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence."

Consumerism in the U.S. was and is intentionally created to subjugate us and enrich the Corporations.Simple and easily understood explanation of the entire process.

Fewer Canadians are putting money into retirement plans, according to the Royal Bank's annual RRSP poll.

It says 32 per cent of Canadians have not started saving for retirement yet, compared to 24 per cent in 2008. The study also found only 36 per cent say they are planning or have planned for retirement, down from 42 per cent in 2008.

===

I know several Canadians that are working through their retirement years.

Iran successfully test-fired a long-range, upgraded Sejil 2 missile on Wednesday, state television reported, a move likely to add to tension with Western powers worried by Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the launch was of serious concern to the international community and underlined the case for tougher sanctions against Iran, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.

===

Well, now. Isn't that interesting?

The west has a habit of attacking "enemies" who cannot mount any significant form of retaliation. The significance of this event is the fact that the West is unable to attack Iran knowing that they CAN and WILL retaliate in a VERY big way.

Gordon Brown had better put his tail between his legs and crawl off under a rock somewhere.

Less than a month ago I wrote a short story about Florida’s Serious Unemployment Problem. Today I came across an article which adds a new twist to the issue. According to the St. Petersburg Times on November 1st thousands of jobless Floridians who were receiving unemployment benefits had their payments expire...

We came across this one over the weekend. At the time, there was not much objective coverage so I was surprised to see one of the below articles. This story really breaks the model. You know the model of our peace-loving, poor, poor, premier victim, the Jew and the hateful rest of the world...

I rise in strongest opposition to this new round of sanctions on Iran, which is another significant step toward a U.S. war on that country. I find it shocking that legislation this serious and consequential is brought up in such a cavalier manner. Suspending the normal rules of the House to pass legislation is a process generally reserved for "non-controversial" business such as the naming of post offices. Are we to believe that this House takes matters of war and peace as lightly as naming post offices?

Sen. Joe Lieberman’s latest threat to scuttle health-care reform – vowing to join a Republican filibuster to block an over-55 buy-in to Medicare, a proposal that he has long championed – is raising questions about his motives. But no one is mentioning the unmentionable, the cause that has come to define Lieberman’s career: Israel.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday approved legislation to impose sanctions on foreign companies that help supply gasoline to Iran, a move lawmakers hope will deter Tehran from pursuing its nuclear program.

An Act Of War?

Iceland, Latvia and Greece are all in a position to call the bluff of the IMF and EU. In an October 1 article called "Latvia - the Insanity Continues," Marshall Auerback maintained that Latvia's debt problem could be fixed over a weekend, by a list of measures including (1) not answering the phone when foreign creditors call the government; (2) declaring the banks insolvent, converting their external debt to equity, and having them reopen with full deposit insurance guaranteed in local currency; and (3) offering "a local currency minimum wage job that includes healthcare to anyone willing and able to work as was done in Argentina after the Kirchner regime repudiated the IMF's toxic package of debt repayment."

Issuing and lending currency is the sovereign right of governments, and it is a right that small European countries lose when they join the EU. Argentina is a large country with more resources than Iceland, Latvia or Greece, but new technologies are now available that could make even small countries self-sufficient.

It is agonizing to observe the national debate on healthcare insurance reform and realize there is an elephant in the debate room that nobody wants to discuss – self-care and preventive medicine.

Known to many people in his neighborhood as a gentle and talented man – a successful musician and artist before the onset of his mental illness – Chasse was beaten so severely by the bold and valiant guardians of the public that nearly all of his ribs were fractured. Several of them had been pulverized. He was also treated to a dose from law enforcement's favorite "non-lethal" toy, the portable electro-shock torture device (more commonly called a Taser).

LONDON — Britain pledged Tuesday to reform a peculiar legal power that lets judges order the arrest of visiting politicians and generals – a threat currently focused on Israeli visitors that, one day, might be invoked against Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin.

Lawyers working with Palestinian activists in recent years have sought the arrest of senior Israeli civilian and military figures under terms of "universal jurisdiction." This ill-defined legal concept empowers judges to issue arrest warrants for visiting officials accused of war crimes in a foreign conflict.

Rightist reestablished rabbinical body says agreement to free hundreds of terrorists for kidnapped soldier is treasonous. Their recommendation: Another war against Hamas, threat to kill prisoners if captive is not returned to Israel

"If Gilad Shalit, Heaven forbid, is executed or not returned in peace, prisoners will be executed immediately," ruled the court of the reestablished "Sandhedrin" organization, in a ruling published last week on the backdrop of the negotiations to release the captured Israeli soldier.

More than two years late, Boeing's 787 Dreamliner jet took to the skies Tuesday, in a critical milestone for the problem-plagued aircraft seen as key to the US aerospace giant's future.

Under dreary skies, the Dreamliner took off at 10:27 am (1827 GMT) to loud applause from those gathered at Paine Field near Boeing's plant in the western state of Washington, returning just over three hours later.

===

Does anyone have the heart to tell them that air travel is a dying business?

The Miami Herald began Tuesday asking readers of its Web site to voluntarily pay for the privilege, a new wrinkle in newspapers' ongoing battle to increase revenue from their online operations...

*hyperlinks and video live at source*

Orwellian Peace Prize winner President Obama is instructing his Department of Justice (DOJ) to block prosecution of torture. The Supreme Court is upholding this "defense."

Impeachment is the constitutional recourse against President Obama and civil officers for their criminal complicity after the fact in torture. Covering-up a crime is a crime. The fact that Congress has not impeached to enforce US law, Constitutional law, and international law is gradually overcoming Americans' blindness to the obvious admission of fact that the US government is a de facto fascist state; a constitutional republic in empty rhetoric only.

Health Secretary Andy Burnham was under fire last night after his department admitted spending almost £2,500 on a Christmas tree for its London offices.

Opposition MPs and health campaigners condemned the ‘astonishing’ expenditure at a time when ministers have ordered health chiefs to find £20billion of savings.

The Department of Health confirmed it had spent £2,485 on a ‘dressed tree’ at its Skipton House offices in London, where 950 staff work.

A further three trees costing £250 each have been bought for the department’s Whitehall HQ.

More than £8million of taxpayers' money is being spent on goods such as cakes, stress balls and Frisbees decorated with government propaganda messages.

Only a week after Gordon Brown promised to slash spending on marketing, Whitehall officials have unveiled new contracts for 'vanity marketing' projects.

The money will go towards buying items such as umbrellas, mouse mats, beanie hats and even food branded with the logos of quangos and Whitehall departments.

One company awarded the right to produce branded food specialises in making sticky cupcakes.

...but money for soldiers kit in Afghanistan is really tight.

The Federal Government has announced it will proceed with controversial plans to censor the internet after Government-commissioned trials found filtering a blacklist of banned sites was accurate and would not slow down the internet.

But critics, including the online users’ lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam, said the trial results were not surprising and the policy was still fundamentally flawed.

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, said today he would introduce legislation just before next year’s elections to force ISPs to block a blacklist of “refused classification” (RC) websites for all Australian internet users...

Alex Jones welcomes back to the show martial artist, actor and media personality Chuck Norris.

The RAF and Royal Navy will bear the brunt of swingeing cuts in defence spending to pay for the rapidly rising cost of the war in Afghanistan.

The Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth, also announced that 7,500 civil servants will lose their jobs and that the size of the armed forces would be slimmed down.

“Who do you know? Do you have a boyfriend? Is he Arab, Egyptian, Palestinian? Why do you live in Egypt? Why not Israel? What do you know about the ‘conflict’ here? What do you think? They quizzed me on Judaism, which I know nothing about,” she continued.

Moments later a man came to her and introduced himself as the manager on duty. “I’m sorry but we had to blow up your laptop,” Sussman said he told her.

Stuart Littlewood views the justification given by Israel’s UK embassy for the terrible treatment meted out to 21-year-old Palestinian student Berlanty Azzam, who was abducted, blindfolded, handcuffed and dumped in Gaza just weeks before she was due to complete her degree at Bethlehem University in the occupied West Bank.

”It’s a classic example of how Israel’s administrative 'laws' are framed to ride rough-shod over citizens’ rights, as enshrined in international law, and to disregard its own obligations entirely...

“They say the consideration with which a country treats the young and the elderly is a mark of its moral standing in the civilized world. Israel, evidently, has yet to emerge from the swamp.”

There’s plenty of stories about how Arctic sea ice is now “rotten”. There’s darn few that talk about yearly comparisons or what other scientific outlets are saying about the claim.

As many WUWT readers know, 2007 was the minimum year of summer extent in sea ice, a year that is routinely held up as a cause for alarm. Another cause for alarm has been the “decline of multi-year sea ice”. Most recently we’ve gotten claims of “rotten ice” in the news media. That “rotten” ice is “duping the satellites” they say. This all from one fellow, Dr. David Barber on a ship that took a short expedition in the Arctic and observed what he called “rotten ice”.

In its headlines for December 14, Democracy Now followed the report on Blair’s confession about his committment to regime change in Iraq regardless of the absence of WMDs [...]

The wording is careful: it appears to suggest a connection between what Blair said and the Iraqi oil contracts. The war in other words was for oil. That is a remrkable conclusion to draw from news about an auction in which US companies were the big losers (hence DN’s careful choice of the words ‘foreign companies’). Unless Democracy Now is suggesting that the US waged a war for Russia, Norway and China — biggest winners in the auction — it is not clear why it continues to insist on the discredited “war for oil” argument? Why is it so difficult to admit who actually conceived the war?

Ethanol, often promoted as a clean-burning, renewable fuel that could help wean the nation from oil, would likely worsen health problems caused by ozone, compared with gasoline, especially in winter, according to a new study led by Stanford researchers.

Ozone production from both gasoline and E85, a blend of gasoline and ethanol that is 85 percent ethanol, is greater in warm sunny weather than during the cold weather and short days of winter, because heat and sunlight contribute to ozone formation. But E85 produces different byproducts of combustion than gasoline and generates substantially more aldehydes, which are precursors to ozone...

Aadel Suad, a Palestinian resident of the town of Mitzpe Ramon in southern Israel, has been prevented for twelve years from building on his own land, and continues to live in a temporary shack with his family.

When Suad first applied for a permit to build a home in 1997, he says a senior official told him “Don’t waste your time. We’ll keep you waiting for 30 years.”

He said that they made the reason very clear: they do not want Palestinians in their otherwise all-Jewish town...

Maybe it’s not about winning and losing as much as it is to profit financially from the conflicts. The people who start the wars don’t fight in them. War is a very profitable business and perhaps we should see it as just that; not an unfortunate condition that is due to border disputes or the spread of a preferable ideology, religion or ancient racial hatred but due to economics. War is like any other industry. It creates jobs and markets and a cornucopia of opportunities for collective and personal enrichment. As long as you can get enough people together to fight them you’ve got a cash cow.

What would you do?…..you make the choice. Don’t look for a punch line, there isn’t one. Read it anyway. My question is: Would you have made the same choice?

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves children with learning disabilities, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question:

“Because CO2 is heavier than air, it doesn't readily rise into the atmosphere and, instead, tends to pool in low areas.”

Ice in the Arctic is often twice as thick as expected, report surprised scientists who returned last week from a major scientific expedition. The scientists - a 20-member contingent from Canada, the U.S., Germany, and Italy - spent one month exploring the North Pole as well as never-before measured regions of the Arctic. Among their findings: Rather than finding newly formed ice to be two metres thick, "we measured ice thickness up to four metres," stated a spokesperson for the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research of the Helmholtz Association, Germany's largest scientific organization.

Much was made about the irony of awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to a president overseeing one war while escalating another. But with breathtaking boldness, in his speech accepting the award, Barack Obama marched past the irony and into a declaration of war on much of the rest of the world.

I’ve read many articles regarding “survival “ and “preparedness” topics, my conclusion is that an important area has been missed. Lots of planning seems to focus on food storage, water, supplies, and so on, yet I have not seen or read anything about “survival tools -- how to be prepared for anything mechanically”. So after considering this topic for several years, I’ve decided to introduce my own topic as far as tools for the self-reliant individual.