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In Unruly Gaza, Clans Compete in Power Void By STEVEN ERLANGER GAZA CITY - Tawfiq Abu Khoussa is the spokesman for the Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza.... But when some of Gaza's many gunmen fired shots at his office, Mr. Khoussa did not seek protection from the Palestinian police or security services. He called gunmen from his own powerful hamulla -his clan or tribe - to protect him. .. ....the mess in Gaza is real, and it presents fundamental problems for Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority he inherited from Yasir Arafat. After 38 years of occupation, Israel pulled its...

Come Monday, Sept. 19, fans of New York Times columnists Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, and David Brooks will have to break out their credit cards. Sept. 19 is the launch date of TimesSelect, a new subscription service designed to diversify the newspaper's revenue stream beyond traditional Web site advertising. The popular Op-Ed columnists are the main selling point behind the $49.95 a year subscription. (The service will be free for the paper's home delivery subscribers). The paper's news, features, editorials, and analysis will remain free, as will interactive graphics, multimedia, and video. TimesSelect subscribers will also have the ability to...

French Woman to Ordain Herself a Catholic Priest, Facing Automatic Excommunication The Associated Press LYON, France Jul 2, 2005 — A French woman defied a threat of excommunication by the Roman Catholic Church and held a ceremony proclaiming herself a priest on Saturday. In a small ceremony on a boat, Genevieve Beney was joined by other women from around the world who have taken similar dramatic action to draw attention to the church's policy against women priests. "This is not a rupture with the Roman Catholic Church," Beney said in a statement read aloud before she boarded the boat.. The...

For some historical background link to http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1335495/posts Don't blow me off too fast. I am pretty up to speed on my radical (alleged) Indian groups and their activities.

After spending Christmas Day in a liberal home I can report that this was not a happy holiday for liberals. There was at least one thing to celebrate, though: the courage of San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom in standing up to the bigots and allowing people to do what comes naturally: fall in love and get married. Otherwise things did not look too good to my liberal neighbors. They saw hate everywhere they turned; one woman admitted to waking up most days and wanting to cry. How could Americans elect a president like George W. Bush? It just didn’t make...

Posted tonight 11/30 >>WE ARE GOING TO WIN THIS, I GUARANTEE YOU.... Kerry will be in the White House as long as we keep up the pace we have been at the last few weeks. We need to keep the emails going, keep the protests going...as long as we do this more and more leaders will fall in line as they see the movement grow. I can't say this enough: 1) Protest, Protest, Protest If you have time to attend any protest in your area, DO IT. Get out there. Especially in Ohio and Florida. We did one in CO...

Throughout the 2004 campaign, Sen. John Kerry maintained his proposed health-care plan could not be labeled as "socialized health care." Arguably, his plan would have at least partially de-privatized the American health-care system. Only through massive insurance pools in which everyone had a vested interest would Kerry have been able to fulfill his bold promise to expand coverage to "96 percent of Americans and 99 percent of all children." But a majority of voters refused to buy into Kerry's health-care plan. This plan introduced us to the "collectivist" ideology that acts as the driving force behind so many socially liberal...

When Senator John Kerry finally came out of hiding on Friday, Nov. 19, and posted a new message on his Presidential campaign Web site, who was holding their breath? An army of barefoot, pajama-wearing bloggers—and their general, the host of MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann. "Regardless of the outcome of this election," intoned Mr. Kerry in a video clip linked to the site, "once all the votes are counted—and they will be counted—we will continue to challenge this administration." "It looks like an M.C. Escher drawing," Mr. Olbermann said in an interview the following Monday. "Is it past or future...

''No one would be more interested than me in finding out that we really won, but that ain't the case," said Jack Corrigan, a veteran Kerry adviser who led the Democrats' team of 3,600 attorneys who fanned out across the country on Election Day to address voting irregularities. ''I get why people are frustrated, but they did not steal this election," Corrigan said. ''There were a few problems here and there in the election. But unlike 2000, there is no doubt that they actually got more votes than we did, and they got them in the states that mattered." http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/11/10/internet_buzz_on_vote_fraud_is_dismissed/

JOHN KERRY'S IRAQ DELUSIONS~PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE 2 POURQUOI JOHN KERRY EST DANGEREUX POUR L'AMÉRIQUE   by Mia T, 10.09.04 IRAQ DELUSIONS (viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE) UNFIT #23: THUMBSUCKER SERIESJohn "One Position on Iraq" Kerry's 1971 Replay (viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE) NEW! compleatjohnkerry.blogspot.com NEW! unfitforcommand.blogspot.comjohnkerryisdangerousforamerica.blogspot.com KERRY DOESN'T HAVE THE JUDGMENT TO BE PRESIDENT Senator Kerry's contradictions on Iraq are the wrong signal to send to our troops on the ground, to our coalition partners, to the Iraqi people and to the terrorists seeking our destruction. On the eve of Prime Minister Allawi's visit...

Anyone who follows the developments in the Arab Islamic world will be struck by the complete absence of self-knowledge and introspection that characterizes these vexed cultures. Almost every problem is attributed to hostile external forces. The poverty and underdevelopment that plague most of the Arab world are the result of malicious machinations of Americans and Jews. This is no less true of the disaster in Darfur. Last week UPI reported that the Sudanese foreign minister Mustafa Osman Ismail had told journalists in Cairo that his government possessed "information that confirms media reports of Israeli support (for the rebels in Darfur)."...

When I think of spies in the Defense Department, I think of the pitiful debt-ridden Ron Pelton, who worked for 14 years at the National Security Agency, quit in 1979, and began selling secrets to the Soviets until he was arrested in 1986. I heard it was to complete construction on a home he had been building for years and years. Construction projects can be like that

The cigar seemed to be the same as any other. These was a rush of hot smoke, but it was followed by a familiar, yet disturbing sweetness. It was like setting fire to a packet of grape Kool-Aid and taking a deep breath. Not an experience most people would remember fondly. But candy-flavored cigars, like the grape one I bought at a neighborhood grocery store, have become the hippest thing to hit the streets since neck tattoos and color-coordinated cell phones. The experience, said a crowd of teenage boys and girls gathered on the corner near the store, is far...

Sen. John Kerry made his first forays into Cambodia during the Vietnam War as a Navy lieutenant on clandestine missions to deliver weapons to anticommunist forces. When he returned last week, the mission was official, but dicey nonetheless. At the request of the United Nations, Kerry is trying to broker a compromise on how to try leaders of the former Khmer Rouge regime, whose late 1970s reign of terror claimed the lives of some 1.7 million Cambodians. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen wants to control any court looking into genocide charges, but U.S. and U.N. officials have demanded an international...

BOSTON - John Kerry bounced the ceremonial first pitch during last night's Red Sox-Yankees game at Fenway Park, but he said he was just going easy on the National Guard soldier and Iraq war veteran standing in as catcher. "I held back," Mr. Kerry told reporters early this morning, on the plane ride after the game. "He was very nervous. I tried to lob it gently."

IT IS THE prerogative of former presidents to write self-serving memoirs casting themselves in heroic terms. We don't begrudge Bill Clinton, who presided over an administration of significant accomplishments in many areas, a book-length (or even a two-book-length) highlighting of the ups, and a breezing-over of the downs, of his presidency. Yet Mr. Clinton's new book, "My Life," is also part of a long effort on its author's part to deny, and not just breeze over, his profound disrespect for the law when it inconvenienced him. In Mr. Clinton's alternate universe, in which many Democrats have also decided to live,...

Baghdad – Saddam Hussein failed to anticipate the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and even after hostilities had started, deluded himself that he was winning the war and could clinch a negotiated settlement through French and Russian mediation. According to newly uncovered secret documents, the former Iraqi regime never contemplated its imminent defeat and continued to function normally under Saddam's direct control, even as American tanks were closing in on Baghdad. While much has been made about intelligence failures in the West, it seems that Saddam's own senior officials, diplomats and spies offered him such a warped vision of the outside...

Abortion Provider's New Chaplain Posits Pro-Choice Jesus Pro-Lifer Says Planned Parenthood's Pastor Contradicts Mainstream Christianity By Jim Brown and Jenni Parker March 11, 2004 (AgapePress) - A conservative Protestant activist says he is appalled but not surprised that a United Methodist minister has been hired to serve as chaplain of the nation's largest abortion provider. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America has selected Pastor Ignacio Castuera to fill the newly created position and communicate "the theological justification for choice, sexuality, and contraception." Castuera serves as pastor at St. John's United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, California, and has been a...

<p>LAST WEEK I suggested that President Bush had reached a tipping point in his credibility with the broad public and the press. I speculated that we would soon see newsmagazine covers depicting Bush in trouble. Well, Time magazine obliged. Its new cover depicts a two-faced Bush and asks: "Does Bush Have a Credibility Gap?"</p>

Democrats Abroad Japan Press Release Submitted by Heather on 9 February, 2004 - 05:59 UTC. - For Immediate Release - "Dean Takes Tokyo, Sweeps Past Kerry on Third Count" A record 156 participants gathered at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Yurakucho Tokyo, on Sunday 8 February for the Democrats Abroad Japan Caucus. The purpose of the Caucus was two-fold: firstly to elect delegates to the Democrats Abroad Convention in Edinburgh in March, members of which will in turn be elected to the Democratic National Convention in Boston, and secondly to propose and debate resolutions to be adopted...