Already been removed- go figure

Link won't open- but the article still there- (off http://www.guardian.co.uk/world)

with the Palestinians. Kill them all!

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

...I think I understand your point. I know the story of 100 civilians being moved by Israeli soldiers to a building and then shelling said building. The day of reckoning must come; but when? That, by the way includes us as well.

look at all the pictures. Way too depressing.

Images you can't see - can't infuriate you. The policy of preventing journalists from entering Gaza is predicated on exactly this. (The image was working when I hit the link)
--
Hongpong.com

Many Likudniks are attracted to the movement precisely because these are the kind of images they want to see.

The picture shows her being buried. I may be wrong.

Gaza bloodshed continues despite UN calls for ceasefire

....

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF), said it struck 50 sites in Gaza overnight, including rocket-launching sites, buildings storing weapons, Hamas "command buildings" and groups of armed fighters. "The IDF will continue its operations against all terrorists and those who support them," it said in a statement early today.

U.S. seeks ship to move arms to Israel
09 Jan 2009 23:05:52 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Stefano Ambrogi

LONDON, Jan 9 (Reuters) - The U.S. is seeking to hire a merchant ship to deliver hundreds of tonnes of arms to Israel from Greece later this month, tender documents seen by Reuters show.

The U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command (MSC) said the ship was to carry 325 standard 20-foot containers of what is listed as "ammunition" on two separate journeys from the Greek port of Astakos to the Israeli port of Ashdod in mid-to-late January.

A "hazardous material" designation on the manifest mentions explosive substances and detonators, but no other details were given.

"Shipping 3,000-odd tonnes of ammunition in one go is a lot," one broker said, on condition of anonymity.

"This (kind of request) is pretty rare and we haven't seen much of it quoted in the market over the years," he added.

The U.S. Defense Department, contacted by Reuters on Friday in Washington, had no immediate comment.

The MSC transports armour and military supplies for the U.S. armed forces aboard its own fleet, but regularly hires merchant ships if logistics so require.

The request for the ship was made on Dec. 31, with the first leg of the charter to arrive no later than January 25 and the second at the end of the month.

The tender for the vessel follows the hiring of a commercial ship to carry a much larger consignment of ordnance in December from the United States to Israel ahead of air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

A German shipping firm which won that tender confirmed the order when contacted by Reuters but declined to comment further.

CHARTERS "RARE"

Shipping brokers in London who have specialised in moving arms for the British and U.S. military in the past said such ship charters to Israel were rare.

Israel is one of America's closest allies and both nations regularly sell arms to each other.

A senior military analyst in London who declined to be named said that, because of the timing, the shipments could be "irregular" and linked to the Gaza offensive.

The ship hired by the MSC in December was for a much larger cargo of arms, tender documents showed.

That stipulated a ship to be chartered for 42 days capable of carrying 989 standard 20-foot containers from Sunny Point, North Carolina to Ashdod.

The tender document said the vessel had to be capable of "carrying 5.8 million pounds (2.6 million kg) of net explosive weight", which specialist brokers said was a very large quantity.

The ship was requested early last month to load on December 15.

In September, the U.S. Congress aproved the sale of 1,000 bunker-buster missiles to Israel. The GPS-guided GBU-39 is said to be one of the most accurate bombs in the world.

The Jerusalem Post, citing defence officials, reported last week that a first shipment of the missiles had arrived in early December and they were used in pentetrating Hamas's underground rocket launcher sites.

Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Treaty Room
Washington, DC
January 9, 2009

SECRETARY RICE: I promised I would come back and take some questions because I did not want to take Gaza questions during the Georgian (inaudible).

QUESTION: Madame Secretary?

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

QUESTION: Why should the – why should the U.S. abstention on the Gaza resolution not being taken as ambivalence about the terms?

SECRETARY RICE: The U.S. abstention was principally because we believed that it would have been useful to have a little bit more time for the Mubarak initiative to mature. There was, in fact, just yesterday, a delegation from Israel to Egypt. And because sustainability and durability is so important for this ceasefire, knowing better the terms of durability is very critical. And we are working to support the Mubarak initiative, including offering to do whatever we can to help with the smuggling and the illegal arms trafficking. And so it was simply believed that this might have been a little premature.

But for the Council to address that there should be a condemnation of all acts of terrorism, we thought was an important feature. For the Council to express that a ceasefire, while there’s a desire for an immediate ceasefire, it needs to be a durable ceasefire and one that will be fully respected. For the Council to express that this all began with the refusal of Hamas to actually extend the tahadiya that Egypt had negotiated before, we thought these were important points, and given the situation in Gaza, that it was acceptable for the UN to speak.

I just want to say one other thing. We also – and I expressed this to my colleagues – had reservations that no one would think that there was any equivalence being drawn here between Israel and Hamas. This is not like 1701 with Lebanon, where you had a member-state, Lebanon, and a member-state, Israel. Here, you have a terrorist organization and a member-state, Israel, and there isn’t any equivalence here. Israel was defending itself because of these rocket attacks, yet we are concerned about the suffering of the (inaudible) people, the humanitarian situation, and we’re doing everything we can to alleviate that as well.

QUESTION: Do you expect to (inaudible) to push along the Mubarak initiative?

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

SECRETARY RICE: I don’t – I don’t have a timeframe (inaudible).

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

SECRETARY RICE: It’s a very good security cooperation component, and we already had an extensive security cooperation (inaudible).

QUESTION: (Inaudible) the humanitarian obligations (inaudible)?

SECRETARY RICE: It is very difficult in a circumstance like Gaza, which is a very densely populated area. I might note it’s also an area in which Hamas participates in activities like human shields and using buildings that are not designated as military buildings to hide their fighters. So it’s hard.

But I was encouraged that Prime Minister Olmert, after an extensive conversation that we had, agreed to open a humanitarian corridor. And we’re going to continue to pass the Israelis information about what we’re doing about the humanitarian situation on the ground, and to try to support in any way that we can the efforts through UNRWA and other nongovernmental organizations which are in a very difficult environment in which to work.

MR. MCCORMACK: Thanks, guys.

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you.
2009/029

Released on January 9, 2009

Remember that Joe Biden thing about "the president will be tested by an internation crisis within 90 days"?

The Israel/Neo-con axis has jumped the gun. They are punking Obama by launching a lovely little war during The Interregnum, presenting him with a fait accompli. He is in exactly the same situation that Thatcher was in when the Argentines tried to steal a few rocks in the early 80's: if she didn't stomp them into the ground, Britain was finished.

If he doesn't open the can of whupass, bring on the beatdown, and curbstomp this crew, he's finished. The most obnoxious thing I can think of is to seize Jerusalem and make it an international city, like it should be anyway.

“The Playboy reader invites a female acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.” - Hugh Hefner