Obama just received the endorsement of Colin Powell. This is a pretty big endorsement for Obama and it should be interesting how it affects the direction of the election from here on out.

Barak: Israel Considering Saudi Peace Plan

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ioi_0jtO9RjMwPNRoXNCndRPRq3gD93TKQA01

Barak: Israel considering Saudi peace plan

By ARON HELLER – 2 hours ago

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli leaders are seriously considering a dormant Saudi plan offering a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Arab world in exchange for lands captured during the 1967 war, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Sunday.

Barak said it may be time to pursue an overall peace deal for the region since individual negotiations with Syria and the Palestinians have made little progress.

Barak said he has discussed the Saudi plan with Prime Minister-designate Tzipi Livni, who is in the process of forming a new Israeli government, and that Israel is considering a response.

Saudi Arabia first proposed the peace initiative in 2002, offering pan-Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from Arab lands captured in 1967 — the West Bank, Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

The 22-member Arab League endorsed the plan last year.

Israel has said the plan is a good basis for discussion, but expressed some reservations.

“There is definitely room to introduce a comprehensive Israeli plan to counter the Saudi plan that would be the basis for a discussion on overall regional peace,” Barak told Israel’s Army Radio.

He noted the “deep, joint interest” with moderate Arab leaders in containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions and limiting the influence of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

While Israel’s outgoing prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has welcomed the Saudi plan, he and other leaders want to keep small parts of the territories captured in 1967. Israel also objects to language that appears to endorse a large-scale return of Palestinian refugees to lands inside Israel. Israel says a massive influx of Palestinians would destroy the country’s Jewish character.

Israel’s ceremonial president, Shimon Peres, proposed putting Israel’s various peace talks on one track last month at the United Nations, calling on Saudi King Abdullah to “further his initiative.” He has since been pushing the idea in meeting with Israeli, Arab and Western officials, his office said.

While Peres has no formal role in Israeli foreign policy, he is a Nobel peace laureate and well respected in the international community.

In Sunday’s interview, Barak said he was in full agreement with Peres.

“I had the impression that there is indeed an openness to explore any path, including this one,” he said of his talks with Livni.

Barak, who leads the Labor Party, is expected to play a senior role in the next administration.

Livni’s office refused to comment on her talks with Barak.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat noted that pursuing the Saudi peace initiative did not necessarily undermine the direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians and he encouraged Israel to pursue this track.

“I think Israel should have done this since 2002. It is the most strategic initiative that came from the Arab world since 1948,” he said. “I urge them to revisit this initiative and to go with it because it will shorten the way to peace.”

“… as reported in the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Jarida on Friday.”

When I grow up, I would like to do something creative, exciting, and controversial. Maybe I’ll be an avant-garde theater director, and live on La Rive Gauche. Or perhaps an acrobat with the Cirque de Soleil, turning tumbling feats in the air and making the ladies faint with delight and terror.

Or maybe I will be an editor of a Kuwaiti newspaper. Yes, I think that is the ideal venue to exercise my creativity.

I will let my imagination wander free, inventing stories while I sip my morning coffee. I can just see the headlines now, at my lovely Kuwaiti newspaper, provocatively titled al-Wahm.

MUAMMAR QADDAFI DROPS BOMBSHELL: He enjoys cross-dressing and is planning to invade Italy

EXCLUSIVE: German investigators discover dynamite fuse running from Hariri bomb site to presidential palace in Damascus

HOT OFF THE PRESS: Iran reportedly tried to pay Arab League to officialy change name of “Arabian Gulf” to “Persian Gulf”, but was rebuffed!!

I can’t wait.

what can’t you wait for?
The German investigators dicovery? didn’t Mehlis said that before?

Qifa,

Al-Wahm : ) will have to compete with the more experienced creative teams at Al-Syassa and Al-Jareida

Joshua,

Last time Haaretz quoted a Kuwaiti newspaper was when Syria supposedly kicked Meshaal out of Damascus.

I wrote to the journalists who reported that story at the time to express my surprise that he believed the story, he told me that he agrees it looks like a hoax, but he said these stories, once published, acquire a life of their own, so he decided to publish it simply because others will.

Actually he said that by now he realizes that 1) a Kuwaiti newspaper 2) quoting an unidentified Palestinian source, is the most suspicious combination.

I think our ‘great’ government and authorities are quickly loosing its credibility and willingness to change when it comes to local issues:
(Corruption on the Rise in Syria) are Syrians really want to change? Is the government doing anything regarding corruption? What a bunch of looser they are. from 93 to 147!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Amnesty slams probe into Canadians jailed in Syria) what does those trio want from the Canadian govt, they said that they’ve been tortured in Syria, well, why don’t they sue the Syrian government and make an example of it instead of bugging Canadians with their stories.
(Syria indicts opposition figure for spreading ‘lies’) they must stop this ridiculous game; it’s getting unbearable and so annoying.

Jad
“(Amnesty slams probe into Canadians jailed in Syria) what does those trio want from the Canadian govt, they said that they’ve been tortured in Syria, well, why don’t they sue the Syrian government and make an example of it instead of bugging Canadians with their stories.”

Maher Arar got 10.5 million dollars of compensations for his ill treatment by Syria and neglect by Canada. Wouldn’t the trio try to get something from the canadian government?

WD,
I didn’t mention the money issue because I don’t want my comment to sound unfair and judgmental.
I’ll argue that they just want to have justice no more and I think blaming the Canadian for what the Syrian authority did to them is not right, it’s unfair for Canadians and unfair for Syrians, since the Syrian should be the one paying for what they did not the government that accepted those people to be it’s citizens and treating them with dignity like any other Canadians.
If they are looking for a fair game they have to put the Syrian authorities accountable even thought they probably won’t win anything but they make their story meaningful and they will get support not sympathy.
From my side, I feel sorry for what Mr. Arrar went through but my feeling toward him is more out a pity than respect.

Jad
Will the US pay or even apologize to what they did to the Guantanamo prisoners, ill treated for 7 years? The US has much more money to support their claims of democratic justice than Syria. Do you seriously expect Syria to apologize and pay compensation for the sake of “Justice”?

WD
No, I don’t expect Syria to do that, I just want Syrians in any position they are to know that they are going to be hold responsible for any bad decision or harm they do and that they are not going to get away with it.
Don’t you think that we are loosing justice in many level of our normal daily life because of that? Starting with a shopkeeper who steel from his customers to the policeman who beat people in the street to the engineer who you can bribe to build an illegal and ugly room, what I want is just to make people feel afraid of the “law” not their bosses and The “state” not the moukhabarat.
To be very clear, I’m not even convince about the trio story, I just feel that many Syrians now are loosing their dignity and the pride of being Syrian because of not dealing with the situation the right way.
We are not looking into our internal issue the same way we look at our international ones, there should be a starting point for that and everyday we don’t do it we are loosing a fight for a better Syrians.

The real news is the absence from the news of any new thinking or initiative in the Arab and Muslim world.

Let me explain the situation: in Africa a traditional method of catching a monkey is to put a lump of salt in a hole in the base of a tree big enough for the hand to enter and small enough for the fist that holds the salt to remain stuck. The monkey will not let go of the salt and will doom itself to capture. This is the only news that comes out of the Arab world: the monkeys are holding on to power no matter what.

Siniora wants to remain prime minister of an empty goverment where the state has effectively ceased to exist.

The Maronites are celebrating the Festival de la Francophonie just when France has lost its ability to have an independent foreign policy without the cover of the EU.

The family country of Saudi Arabia is funding Sheikh Tufaili in an effort to weaken Nasrallah as they failed to create an effective Sunni militia that is a militia that takes orders and is disciplined rather than a Salafist nihilist organization that is uncontrollable

La Vache qui Rit Mubarak is making the Sphinx look young in comparison to the total immobilism in that country.

Qaddafi is just experimenting with a new wardrobe from Nigerian tailors.

Boutaflika has gone apoplectic as he lost a few more hairs to the wind.

The worst of them all is of course Abbas who does not even have permission to wipe his behind without an OK from Livni.

As for Syria, at least the computer games are running to keep everyone entertained.

The worst of them all is of course Abbas who does not even have permission to wipe his behind without an OK from Livni.

Observer,

Apparrently Livni and Olmert gave Abbas permission to celebrate the glorious Palestinian resistance fighters (aka “terrorists” in Zionist parlance).

I suppose once in while, you have to throw meat to the tigers…

http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=palestinian&ID=SP199108

Here is an interesting article:

Weekly Standard) This column was written by Hassan Mneimneh.
Seven years after 9/11, Washington policymakers remain fundamentally confused about the nature of Islamist extremism, the ideas behind it and the states that manipulate it. In few places is this problem more obvious than in the U.S. relationship with the secular Assad regime in Syria.

After the most recent iteration of the on-again off-again Washington-Damascus relationship–a meeting between the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice–Muallem described the meeting as a “positive beginning of a dialogue” while the state-controlled Syrian press heralded it as the United States coming to its senses and joining Syria in the fight against the common threat of radical Islamism. Never mind that some of those radical extremists threatening us are in the employ of the Assad regime and may well have been behind a recent bombing in Damascus that killed 17. Never mind, also, that the price that Syria is actively seeking for its promise of cooperation is the restoration of its influence on Lebanon–a dominion that it had to abandon in the aftermath of the Cedar Revolution of 2005.

Damascus has long epitomized a “nuanced” understanding of Islamist terrorism. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah have earned Syria’s endorsement and significant material backing. Similarly, authorities in Damascus have fueled the insurgency in Iraq, a platform championed as praiseworthy “resistance to U.S. occupation.” Under the watch of Syria’s intelligence services, the most virulent radical jihadist networks have relied on Syria as a thoroughfare through which to channel streams of suicide bombers and other jihadists into Iraq. And while they have vociferously denied official leverage over such networks, Syrian authorities, when exposed, have displayed an astonishing ability to redirect radical jihadists to less conspicuous terrain such as to Northern Lebanon.

Damascus has nurtured jihadism as a bogeyman at home and abroad, an insurance policy against the specter of regime change, and a scapegoat for crimes otherwise traceable to its state security forces. To be sure, a dangerous strain of the Muslim Brotherhood has menaced the Assads from the shadows for many years. But since a Syrian military massacre in the Brotherhood enclave of Hama in 1982, their specter has been far fainter than the government has allowed.

The Syrian regime perfected its bifurcated approach to Islamist militancy over the course of its decades-long occupation of Lebanon. Groups such as Hezbollah were managed by the dominant Syrian security services. Other factions such as Asbat al-Ansar and the 2000 Dinniyeh group were deemed more useful when employed as proxies from controlled enclaves–Palestinian refugee camps and remote mountain refuges–to be unleashed at key tactical moments. The February 2005 assassination of Syrian rival and former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri occurred in an environment saturated with Syrian services, though in the pro-Syrian narrative it was a crime attributed to a jihadist cell.

In 2006, shortly after Damascus was forced to withdraw its forces from Lebanon, in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared in northern Lebanon, a pro-Syrian faction delivered a Syrian-supplied arsenal to the Sunni Jihadist group Fatah al-Islam. The group, under the command of Jordanian terrorist Shakir al-Absi (who had just completed an unusually short stint in Syrian jail), launched a costly challenge to the struggling democratic government of Lebanon. Only American, Arab, and international support enabled the Lebanese armed forces to prevail.

In the Syrian government’s lengthy record of employing radical jihadism, it has deemed the repercussions of this approach counterproductive only when its interests have in turn been targeted. And even then, attacks inside Syria have been intentionally recycled to tighten the regime’s grip on Syrian society and to underline Syria’s notional role in fighting global terrorism. But the most recent terrorist act committed in Damascus indicates that trafficking with jihadists has indeed become an increasingly risky mechanism for Syria.

Syria’s leadership may have overestimated its ability to ride the tiger. It is not clear who bears responsibility for the terrorist attack in Damascus–whether it is Fatah al-Islam or jihadists destined for Iraq. Contemplating a return to Lebanon, Damascus lays the blame on Islamists in Northern Lebanon. Either way, it clearly marks the backfiring of Assad’s manipulation of radical Islamists.

And what do all these machinations matter to Washington? Assad and his circle see a possible rapprochement with the United States playing into a new role for the regime: partnership in the war on terror. But Condoleezza Rice, her employees and her successors should remember that as Syria turns the full force of its tyrannical regime on one jihadist enemy, reinserting itself into the frail democracy that is Lebanon, it will continue to nurture Hamas, Hezbollah, and others who are little different. Syria’s choice should be simple: an end to support for all terrorism and respect for Lebanon’s independence, or America will sit on the sidelines and watch a dictatorship that lived by the sword die by it.

By Hassan Mneimneh

Akbar Haaretz tells us
Police arrest 9 Jews over recent assaults on Arabs in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv

By the way the Haaretz and Israeli officials language is little disturbing in this case. Jewish fire bombers are called hooligans. Palestinians throwing fire bombs are called always terrorists and the religious police doesn’t bother to arrest them. They shoot them, minor or not. Surely the there is no difference with a Molotov cocktail if it is thrown in a house by a Jew, Muslim or Christian. Well it seems that in Israel there is, why Akbar?

Lets call these Israeli Jews also terrorists in the name of equality and fairness. Well Israeli Mossad, the tool of the religious regime, knows everything that is going on in Israel. So the regime must be behind these recent fire bombings. Akbar as we know USA supports and finances Israel. So can we call in your “Memri language” USA a terrorism supporting and financing country?

NYU poll: Two-thirds of U.S. Jews back Obama over McCain

By Haaretz Service

A new poll commissioned by researchers at New York University reveals that American Jews favor Democratic presidential frontrunner Barack Obama over his Republic rival, John McCain, by a 67 – 33 margin.

The survey, which sampled the opinions of over 3,000 respondents – half of them being Jewish – also found that Jews as an ethnic group will support Obama by almost 30 percent more than other white, non-Hispanic voters.

The poll sought to gauge the importance Jewish voters’ attach to Israel as a consideration in whom they would vote for, with some surprising results. Of all the Jews surveyed who said that Israel is of “high” importance, 63 percent said they would vote for Obama. In constrast, just 42 percent of Jews who said Israel has “very high” importance intend on voting for Obama.
Advertisement
Not surprisingly, the Jewish vote swings heavily in McCain’s favor among the Orthodox. According to the survey, the Arizona senator can count on support from 75 percent of Orthodox Jewish voters.

The poll was conducted this past September, when the gaps in poll numbers between Obama and McCain were smaller. Given the recent numbers heavily favoring Obama, the survey’s authors project that the ratio of Jewish voters backing the Illinois Democrat would swell from 2-to-1 to 3-to-1.

I couldn’t resist..check the photo…
http://www.champress.net/?page=show_det&select_page=6&id=31345

Dear Jad and WD

The three Canadian-Syrians are going after Canada for its role in their detention.

Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki and Muayyed Nureddin were arrested separately when entering Syria between 2001 and 2003. They say they were tortured and interrogated, and some of the questions they were asked were based on information that could only have come from Canada.

This is extremely important. Canada, the US, and the rest of the western world can not claim clean hand when they outsource ill-treatment and illegal torture to countries that do not have the same guards and protections as they do. By making the canadian government pay a heavy price, and hopefully soon other western governments, several things can be accomplished
1. You can not claim that you are pro-freedom and at the same time outsource torture
2. As an immigrant with citizenship, or as a minority citizen, you are entitled to the same protection and advocacy provided to native and/or majority citizens
3. It is not convinient to discriminate against arabs and muslims,

off course, the Canadian authorities blocked the probe and that is why amnesty is upset about the issue. As for the money, government are much like poeple, their pocket books is where hurts and if you want to prevent them from doing bad things, you have to use any legal means to make the price very expensive.

Dear Jad
The champress photo is funny. But at the same time, i must say that having been educated in Syria (pre-school to Bachelor degree), we started using latin symbols for chemistry since 8th grade. So if one assumes that most of the younger generation is at least with 9th grade education, CO2 should not be a foriegn language. Those who do not understand CO2, will probably not know what is “thani oxeed alcarbon” as well. 🙂

Here’s a little something to cheer everyone up… http://www.palinaspresident.us/
(click on the door at least 3-4 times).

LOL

And don’t forget the bridge on her desk!

I’m just wondering .. what if Sarah gets the last laugh.

Hi OTW, It’s always nice to read your comments.
Regarding Champress photo; I didn’t mean the CO2, I find the sentence itself to be funny since it doesn’t give any message neither to have a real meaning to it.
It sounded like a joke..

Here’s a perfect example of the Neocons’ apocalyptic belief in Armageddon, and its subsequent adoption and execution of dangerous policy. Bush Jr. and his neocon buddies are no different than Gen. Curtis Lemay was during WWII, the Cold War, and especially the Cuban Missile Crisis. When you believe in the inevitability of a clash between “us” and “them”, you are ready to risk this very clash by carrying out a policy which may well bring it about. It gets even worse, if you happen to believe God is telling you to do so… http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1030262.html

Dear Jad
Sorry for rushing to claim “wisdom”. I confess that I often put my foot in my mouth, especially being slow in catching ironies and smart jokes. 🙂 I now see the Joke exactly and it is both sad and funny. You are absolutely right. What is the message in the banner?, may be it is on the banner next corner (or as they say in aleppine) 3awgeh 🙂