It's all about the company you keep...

The government published a blacklist on Tuesday of people recently banned from the country including a Hamas lawmaker and a Jewish extremist, as well as anti-gay protestors and a far-right US talk show host.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she decided to publish the "name and shame" list -- which identifies 16 people banned since last October -- for the first time to clarify what behaviour Britain will not tolerate.

"I think it's important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here, the fact that it's a privilege to come and the sort of things that mean you won't be welcome in this country," she said.

"If you can't live by the rules that we live by ... we should exclude you from this country and, what's more, now we will make public those people that we have excluded," she told the GMTV broadcaster.

Ouch. That's gotta hurt. Michael Weiner Savage is up there with fellow hatemongers Fred and Shirley Phelps, as well as a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, two Russian skinheads responsible for 20 racially motivated murders and -- I'm sure this is just killing Weiner Savage -- several Muslim clerics accused of whipping up hate and fomenting terrorism within the Muslim community. Full list here.

Weiner Savage had a predictably snide response and is planning on suing...someone. (link goes to WorldNetDaily)

"Darn! And I was just planning a trip to England for their superior dental work and cuisine," he recalled thinking.

"Then it sank in," he told WND, "and I said, 'She said this is the kind of behavior we won't tolerate? She's linking me with mass murderers who are in prison for killing Jewish children on buses? For my speech? The country where the Magna Carta was created?'"[..]

Savage said he wants top First Amendment attorneys to represent him "in a major international case."

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This is an interesting piece on how the Gaza war has actually strengthened Hamas in the Palestinian political hierarchy.

Hopefully this will be successful:

Prime Minster Ehud Olmert on Saturday night announced that Israel's government has voted in favor of a unilateral cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, and will halt its fire from 2 A.M.

The announcement comes after three weeks of fighting in the coastal strip, as Israel launched a massive offensive aimed at halting years of daily rocket fire on its southern communities.

A strong hint at the announcement came earlier Saturday, when Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that Israel was very close to meeting the objectives of its 22-day-old offensive in Hamas-ruled Gaza. "After three weeks of Operation Cast Lead, we are very close to reaching the goals and securing them through diplomatic agreements," Barak said during a visit to the south of the country, according to a statement from his office.

The cabinet is meeting now and will hold a vote on Saturday evening to decide whether to enact a unilateral cease-fire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

January 16, 2009 C-SPAN
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni spoke about the prospects for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Gaza Strip. She responded to questions from reporters at the National Press Club.
See more CSPANJunkie Videos here.

January 12, 2009 BBC World

In an interview Thursday with the AP, Vice President Cheney neatly summarized the failed Bush presidency. Comparing the financial meltdown and implosion of the American economy with the 9/11 attacks, Cheney insisted, "I don’t think anybody saw it coming." As it turns out, from 9/11, sectarian conflict in Iraq and the election of Hamas to the Bush recession and the drowning of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, the leading lights of the Bush administration claimed they never saw it coming. Call it the "Nobody Could've Predicted Presidency."

As ThinkProgress detailed, Cheney deflected blame for the calamity on Wall Street and the deepening recession by declaring, "nobody anywhere was smart enough to figure that out" and "I don’t know that anybody did." Then, Cheney magically converted failure into a virtue and ignorance into a shield in explaining away the Bush presidency:

"No, obviously, I wouldn’t have predicted that. On the other hand I wouldn’t have predicted 9/11, the global war on terror, the need to simultaneous run military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq or the near collapse of the financial system on a global basis, not just the U.S."

At every turn, of course, voices both inside and outside the government warned a Bush administration asleep at the switch.

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A rather pertinent fact that seems to have been left out of the official story:

WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (IPS) - Contrary to Israel's argument that it was forced to launch its air and ground offensive against Gaza in order to stop the firing of rockets into its territory, Hamas proposed in mid-December to return to the original Hamas-Israel ceasefire arrangement, according to a U.S.-based source who has been briefed on the proposal.

The proposal to renew the ceasefire was presented by a high-level Hamas delegation to Egyptian Minister of Intelligence Omar Suleiman at a meeting in Cairo Dec. 14. The delegation, said to have included Moussa Abu Marzouk, the second-ranking official in the Hamas political bureau in Damascus, told Suleiman that Hamas was prepared to stop all rocket attacks against Israel if the Israelis would open up the Gaza border crossings and pledge not to launch attacks in Gaza.

The Hamas officials insisted that Israel not be allowed to close or reduce commercial traffic through border crossings for political purposes, as it had done during the six-month lull, according to the source. They asked Suleiman, who had served as mediator between Israel and Hamas in negotiating the original six-month Gaza ceasefire last spring, to "put pressure" on Israel to take that the ceasefire proposal seriously.

Suleiman said he could not pressure Israel but could only make the suggestion to Israeli officials. It could not be learned, however, whether Israel explicitly rejected the Hamas proposal or simply refused to respond to Egypt.

The readiness of Hamas to return to the ceasefire conditionally in mid-December was confirmed by Dr. Robert Pastor, a professor at American University and senior adviser to the Carter Centre, who met with Khaled Meshal, chairman of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus on Dec. 14, along with former President Jimmy Carter. Pastor told IPS that Meshal indicated Hamas was willing to go back to the ceasefire that had been in effect up to early November "if there was a sign that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza".

January 09, 2009 C-SPAN

As feared and expected, looks like Hezbollah is now attacking Israel from Lebanon:

Lebanese militants fired at least three rockets into Israel early Thursday, threatening to open a new front for the Jewish state as it pushed forward with a bloody offensive in the Gaza Strip that has killed nearly 700 people. Israel responded with mortar shells.

The rockets that exploded in Israel's north raised the specter of renewed hostilities with Hezbollah, just 2 1/2 years after Israel battled the guerrilla group to a 34-day stalemate. Hezbollah started the 2006 war as Israel was battling Palestinian militants in Gaza.

No group claimed responsibility and Lebanon's government, wary of conflict, quickly condemned the rocket fire, which lightly injured two Israelis.

For a second straight day, Israel said it suspended is Gaza military operation for three hours to allow in humanitarian supplies. Shortly before the pause took effect, however, the U.N. said one of its aid trucks came under Israeli fire, killing the driver.

U.N. spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna said the U.N. coordinated the delivery with Israel, and the vehicle was marked with a U.N. flag and insignia when it was shot in northern Gaza. The Israeli army said it was investigating.

The allegation was sure to raise tensions with the United Nations, which has already demanded an investigation into Israel's shelling of a U.N. school in Gaza that killed nearly 40 people. At the time, Israel said it opened fire after militants hiding in the crowd shot mortar shells at Israeli troops.

Before the lull on Thursday, Israel killed at least 11 people in Gaza, including five militants, raising the death toll from its 13-day offensive to 699 people, according to Palestinian medical officials. The offensive is meant to halt years of Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel, but with roughly half the dead believed to be civilians, international efforts to broker a cease-fire have been gaining steam.

[...] Israel has repeatedly said it was prepared for a possible attack on the north since it launched its bruising campaign against Hamas militants in Gaza on Dec. 27. Israel has mobilized thousands of reserve troops for such a scenario, and leaders have warned Hezbollah of dire consequences if it enters the fighting.

"We are following what is happening in the north. We are prepared and will respond as necessary," Defense Minister Ehud Barak told reporters.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora condemned both the attacks and Israel's retaliatory fire. The attacks are "the work of parties who stand to lose from the continued stability in Lebanon," Saniora said.

With apologies to Talking Heads.

The Israeli Defense Force is using white phosphorus on built up areas in Gaza. They've denied it, sort of, by saying only that Israel is using "munitions that are allowed for under international law". Israel isn't a signatory to key arms control treaties, upheld by most of the rest of the world, which govern the use of WP and other chemical weapons. So those treaties can be ignored in favor of long-planned PR spin. Both the US and Israel claim that using WP as a smokescreen generator isn't prohibited by any treaties and they're correct - as long as the WP isn't being employed over built up areas, at which time the indiscriminate nature and incendiary anti-personnel effects of these airbursts make them illegal by the Geneva Conventions governing responsibilities towards civilian non-combatants and by article two, protocol III of the 1980 UN Convention on Certain Weapons. That is, a war crime.

That distinction came up in Fallujah, Iraq during 2004 when US forces initially said they were using white phosphorus only as a smokescreen, later on admitting reluctantly that it had also been used as an anti-personnel weapon on insurgents. The US military never officially admitted to using WP on civilian areas, however, despite numerous reports of second and third degree chemical burns consistent with WP use.

Incandescent particles of WP cast off by a WP weapon's initial explosion can produce extensive, deep (second and third degree), burns. Phosphorus burns carry a greater risk of mortality than other forms of burns due to the absorption of phosphorus into the body through the burned area, resulting in liver, heart and kidney damage, and in some cases multi-organ failure.[26] These weapons are particularly dangerous to exposed people because white phosphorus continues to burn unless deprived of oxygen or until it is completely consumed.

Earlier, the Bush administration had no problem with saying that Saddam's use of WP on civilian areas had been an atrocity, a war crime. Somehow I doubt they'll say the same about Israel.

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The explosions marked the second time in hours a U.N. school came under attack.

The Israeli Defense Force has shelled a UN school in the Gaza strip, killing 30 and injuring 55. Israel claims that Hamas militants were using the school as a base to mortar their troops, but the UN says that all the dead and injured were civilians. Even if the IDF were correct, something the Right accepts unquestioningly because the IDF never, ever lies like their enemies do, then Israel would only be responding to Hamas' war crime by committing another war crime. You can't get to the moral high ground - let alone win a COIN operation - by allowing the rules of war to be set by barbarians, something that the intellectually and morally bankrupt Right never seems to acknowledge.

And there are good reasons to believe that the IDF is simply lying as part of a propaganda war it admits has been eight months in the planning: the use of indiscriminate white phosphorus airbursts, in contravention of international law as it is understood everywhere except the US and Israel (the 1980 Protocol III to the Convention on Conventional Weapons containsa blanket restriction on dropping incendiary weapons from the air against military objectives "located within a concentration of civilians"); the way in which the IDF is throwing explosives around so freely that almost as many of its people have been killed by its own "errant' tank shells as by enemy action.

Of course they cannot acknowledge this - otherwise their only recourse for all the warmongering they've cheerled in the last eight years would be to commit symbolic sepukku and fall on the swords of their own punditry before vanishing from our public discourse forever.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

If this mess explodes on two fronts, the volatility of the situation increases exponentially. Just another piece of the BushCo legacy!

Lebanon's parliament majority leader Saad Hariri on Monday claimed that Hezbollah would not respond to Israel's devastating offensive against Hamas in Gaza.

Hariri said that Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told him that Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant organization, would not attack Israel from Lebanon.

"What Jalili said greatly calms us," Hariri said.

The lawmaker's remarks came despite the fact that observers in both Lebanon and Israel are starting to believe some kind of escalation along the Lebanese border is likely if the military operation in Gaza continues.

It is far from clear what form this escalation might take. One possibility is relatively small-scale rocket launches, either by Lebanese groups affiliated with the cause of global jihad or by Palestinian groups in Lebanon, which generally coordinate their activities with Hezbollah.

Another option is an operation by Hezbollah itself, which would probably be broader in scope.

That Hezbollah has been increasing its forces' preparedness in recent weeks is no secret: The organization's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, announced it publicly the day Israel's operation in Gaza began, and Sheikh Nabil Kauk, the Hezbollah official in charge of south Lebanon, reiterated it Monday.

Lebanese analysts believe there is disagreement within Hezbollah: Some senior members favor restraint, while others charge that mere speeches in support of the Palestinians are insufficient, and must be backed up with attacks on Israel.

The prevailing view, however, is that if Hamas appears to be weakening, pressure on Hezbollah to intervene would intensify greatly. "Hezbollah cannot allow Hamas to lose this war," said Ibrahim al-Amin, editor of the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, who is considered close to Nasrallah.

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Looks like the ground war has begun:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli ground forces crossed the Gaza border in an expansion of Israel's week-old offensive against Hamas, Israel's military confirmed Saturday.

Israeli TV channels broadcast images of troops marching into Gaza after nightfall. NBC News reported that Israeli troops were taking some fire as they moved forward.

Artillery units had joined Israel's Gaza offensive for the first time Saturday, while warplanes and gunboats pounded more than 40 Hamas targets and a mosque where 10 people were killed.

It's clear that international leadership, particularly from the United States, is required to help sort out this ugly mess. And it's similarly clear that none is forthcoming from the Bush Administration.

Fortunately, we're at 18 days and counting.

http://cspanjunkie.org/
December 29, 2008 CBC The National

HuffPo has obtained exclusive video from an interview McCain gave two years ago in which he implied that he would be willing to work with Hamas.

James Rubin, the reporter who interviewed McCain writes:

Given that exchange, the new John McCain might say that Hamas should be rooting for the old John McCain to win the presidential election. The old John McCain, it appears, was ready to do business with a Hamas-led government, while both Clinton and Obama have said that Hamas must change its policies toward Israel and terrorism before it can have diplomatic relations with the United States.

Even if McCain had not favored doing business with Hamas two years ago, he had no business smearing Barack Obama. But given his stated position then, it is either the height of hypocrisy or a case of political amnesia for McCain to inject Hamas into the American election.

We can't go around the world claiming to "spread democracy" and then demonize the groups that get elected when we don't agree with them. Hamas certainly needs to change it's tune before we talk to them, but it doesn't change the fact that they were democratically elected. And as Rubin says, it's the height of hypocrisy (or a serious senior moment) for McCain to attack Obama when it turns out that Obama's position is even harsher than one McCain espoused just two years ago.

Just further proof that Senator McCain and Presidential Candidate McCain are two entirely different people, I guess.