What 'ceasefire'?

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Gaza ceasefire broken with Hamas rockets
The Gaza ceasefire has already been broken, just hours after the unilateral truce took hold, as Hamas militants fired a volley of rockets into southern Israel.
This is announced as 'Breaking News' by the Times. But the truth is that there is no ceasefire, Israel has decided to stop it's incessant bombardment of Gaza, claiming as it's reason, that it has crippled Hamas and destroyed it's military capabilities. Whoops! But having listened to Israel telling the world that they had been crushed would Hamas have done anything BUT fire rockets at Israel if they still had the capacity to do so?

Of course, this will now be seen by some as as an irresponsible act which will leave Hamas taking the blame for any further Israeli bombardments. Just as there were those who blamed Hamas for 'provoking' Israel in the first place. Like all sensible rape victims, Gaza should lie still and take it. Don't struggle, lady, or you might make it worsefor yourself!

Remember this date. You will, without a shadow of a doubt, see it mentioned by Zionists in the future as the day that Hamas 'broke the ceasefire', no doubt forcing a reluctant and fundamentally humanitarian Israel to murder a few more women and children.


Intentional and planned

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The plot against Gaza


Jonathan Cook

Israel has justified its assault on Gaza as entirely defensive, intended only to stop Hamas firing rockets on Israel's southern communities. Although that line has been repeated unwaveringly by officials since Israel launched its attack on 27 December, it bears no basis to reality. Rather, this is a war against the Palestinians of Gaza, and less directly those in the West Bank, designed primarily to crush their political rights and their hopes of statehood.

The most glaring evidence contradicting the Israeli casus belli is the six-month ceasefire between Hamas and Israel that preceded the invasion. True, Hamas began firing its rockets as soon as the truce came to an end on 19 December, but Israel had offered plenty of provocation. Not least it broke the ceasefire by staging a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas members. Even more significantly, it maintained and tightened a blockade during the ceasefire period that was starving Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants of food, medicine and fuel. Hamas had expected the blockade lifted in return for an end to the rockets.

A few days before Israel's attack on Gaza, Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel's domestic security service, the Shin Bet, noted Hamas' commitment to the ceasefire and its motives in restarting the rocket fire. "Make no mistake, Hamas is interested in maintaining the truce," he told the cabinet. "It seeks to improve its conditions -- a removal of the blockade, receiving a commitment from Israel that it won't attack and extending the lull to the Judea and Samaria area [the West Bank]." In other words, had Israel wanted calm, it could have avoided invading Gaza simply by renegotiating the truce on more reasonable terms.

Israel, however, had little interest in avoiding a confrontation with Hamas, as events since the Islamic group's takeover of Gaza in early 2006 show.

Crime's Gleeful Abandon in Gaza

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Chris Floyd - Empire Burlesque
More and more, comment on Israel's savage attack on the people of Gaza seems superfluous. The facts -- even the modicum of facts that can be gleaned through the deadly wall of Israeli censorship and the perverse and sinister distortions of the American media -- speak loudly, with horrifying clarity, for themselves. We are witnessing monstrous crimes, committed with cold deliberation: a bloodthirsty spectacle of unbridled terrorism, openly celebrated by the political and media elites of Israel and America.

You'll miss him

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Thank you George for sabotaging the US Empire
I have always been a fan of George Bush, on the simple grounds that the American empire needs taking down several notches and George Jr has been the right man for the job.

Bush leaves America a poorer but in many ways a better place, moreconscious of its blessings. Just as it took bad King John to force thedrafting of the Magna Carta, on Bush's watch Americans have learned,amidst the threat of losing them, that they have constitutionalprotections.

A commander in-chief who made Jerry Ford sound like Demosthenes hasgiven them a fresh sensitivity to language, even the dream that theymight have a president who can speak in whole sentences.

The Scots are..erm...'prudent'

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So who would claim a £1 donation on expenses?

Expense claims rejected by the Scottish Parliament authorities:
  • Bill Butler, the Labour MSP for Glasgow Anniesland and a former candidate for deputy leader, listed a £1 claim for a "charity donation".

  • Senior Labour MSP, Malcolm Chisholm, tried and failed to get £3 back for a charge on a pay-as-you-go smart card.

  • David Whitton, Labour's finance spokesman, who wanted £290 in expenses for printing Christmas cards.

  • Alex Fergusson, the Presiding Officer, wanted to recover the £132.78 cost of a "congratulatory advert" for a constituency charity for disadvantaged children.

Prescient or what?

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Jews sans frontieres: Benefit of foresight
The theory that the Jews are to come into Palestine and oust the Moslem cultivators by 'equitable purchase' or other means is in violation of principles of sound policy, and would, if accepted, arouse violent outbreaks against the Jewish minority. It would, moreover, arouse fierce Moslem hostility and fanaticism against the Western powers that permitted it. The effect of this hostility would be felt all through the Middle East, and would cause trouble in Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India. To this might be ascribed by future historians the outbreak of a great war between the white and the brown races, a war into which America would without doubt be drawn.
Anstruther Mackay, Military Governor of Ramleh, Palestine.
The Atlantic Monthly, July 1920.