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Beach bum: Obama to holiday in Hawaii

Obama on Holiday
© Associated PressDemocratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama is on vacation this week in Honolulu. But his campaign has not taken a break; 16 of the 18 states it deems as battlegrounds will see the new ad.

President Obama and his family will leave Washington Dec. 20 for a 17-day holiday vacation in Hawaii.

The White House announced Friday that the Obamas will depart next week after what is expected to be a light work schedule for the president in Washington.

The president and his family traditionally spend their Christmas break in a rented home on Oahu with spectacular ocean views.

For his first three years in office, Mr. Obama rented a $24,500-per-week gated Plantation Estate, which offers security and privacy on the white sand beach of Kailua Bay.

Last year, renting a similar house in the same locale, Mr. Obama was forced to cut short his vacation and fly back to Washington on the day after Christmas to resume negotiations on an emergency budget deal with Congress.

This year, Congress is on track to approve a two-year budget deal before the Christmas holiday.

Bell

Mandela, Palestine and the fight against apartheid

mandela
Nelson Mandela, a courageous resistance fighter, is dead. Mandela died 5 December, aged 95. He devoted his entire life to the struggle for his people's freedom, spending 27 years in prison for both his unarmed and armed resistance to South Africa's brutal and racist apartheid regime.

With the death of this courageous resistance fighter, we are now greeted with a sickening spectacle that whitewashes his history and the fact that Mandela was first and foremost a freedom fighter. Politicians and commentators in Australia, the United States, the UK, Israel, Europe and elsewhere, many of whom who had previously labelled him a terrorist, supported his incarceration and the South African apartheid regime, are now pretending they did no such thing and are falling over themselves to laud him as a hero, a great man and a man of peace.

Their eulogies insult the South African anti-apartheid struggle and Mandela's actions. They have rinsed clean, from their histories of him, that Mandela was a radical who worked with and was inspired by communists both in South Africa and Latin America (Today, in the wake of Mandela's death, the African National Congress [ANC] and the South African Communist Party [SACP] have issued a statement confirming that Mandela was a member of the SACP in 1962 when he was arrested and imprisoned - something that had been previously denied for political reasons).

In order to create a non-threatening caricature of Mandela, these revisionists are attempting to rewrite history and the fact that Mandela's resistance and struggle against apartheid encompassed all forms of disobedience and defiance, both violent and non-violent.

Comment: Perhaps we should ask ourselves, what, if anything, the world has really learned from the life struggles of Nelson Mandela.


Brick Wall

UNRWA calls Gaza 'disaster area,' pleads for end to Israeli blockade

gaza crisis
© Maan Images
UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness said that large regions of the Gaza Strip are a "disaster area" and called on the world community to lift the Israeli blockade in order to allow recovery efforts to proceed, in a statement sent to Ma'an.
"Large swathes of northern Gaza are a disaster area with water as far as the eye can see. Areas around Jabalia have become a massive lake with two meter high waters engulfing homes and stranding thousands,"
the statement read.

"Four thousand UNRWA workers are battling the floods and have evacuated hundreds of families to UNRWA facilities. Our sanitation, maintenance workers, social workers and medical staff have been working through the night and round the clock to assist the most vulnerable, the old, the sick, children and women," the statement continued.

"We have distributed five thousand of litres of fuel to local pumping stations, but the situation is dire and with the flood waters rising, the risk of water borne disease can only increase. This is a terrible situation which can only get worse before it gets better," it added, referring to major fuel shortages across the Gaza Strip that have dramatically worsened in the last few months.

Gunness also highlighted the need for an end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip in order to allow the region recover from the current crisis.

Comment: The extraordinarily difficult daily existence of the Palestinian people due to illegal Israeli military occupation and blockade, has been compounded in recent months with the collusion of the Egyptian government in the destruction of most of the smuggling tunnels leading into Gaza, which allowed for transfer of necessities into the Gaza Strip. As winter looms, the world continues to sit in silence, watching as Palestinians persevere and try to subsist daily amid raw sewage, left completely on their own in squalor, forced to endure in darkness for significant portions of each day without electricity. With the onset of winter, what has been long been described as an Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people has now morphed into an environmental genocide, exacerbated by the worsening of disease-causing conditions and decreasing access to medicines and treatment.

See also: Gaza receives first fuel shipment in weeks as storm causes havoc


Nuke

Russia warns of nuclear response to US global strike program

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© RIA Novosti. Sergei KazakWarhead
A senior government minister warned Wednesday that Russia could retaliate with a nuclear strike if a new US military strategy threatened its security.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said that Russia was "preparing a response" to plans by the United States to develop a new fast-strike weapons platform capable of hitting high-priority targets around the globe.

He told the State Duma that the development of a global strike program was "the most important new strategy being developed by the United States today."

Bandaid

Getting off lightly? Iceland jails banksters for between 3 and 5 years

$
© BBC newsKaupthing was the largest of the Icelandic banks to go into administration in 2008.
Four former bosses from the Icelandic bank Kaupthing have been sentenced to between three and five years in prison.

They are the former chief executive, the chairman of the board, one of the majority owners and the chief executive of the Luxembourg branch.

They were accused of hiding the fact that a Qatari investor bought a stake in the firm with money lent - illegally - by the bank itself.

Kaupthing collapsed in 2008 under the weight of huge debts.

For years, Kaupthing and other Icelandic banks had aggressively pursued overseas expansion plans, but when they went into administration, they brought the country's economy to its knees.

Star of David

Israeli-American judge "settles" ludicrous 9/11 lawsuit

The latest shoddy parody of a 9/11 lawsuit was "settled" yesterday in New York, where Judge Alvin Hellerstein ordered American Airlines to pay Cantor Fitzgerald half a billion dollars. The upshot: The right hand of the financial forces behind 9/11 will slip the left hand some chump change with a nod and a wink.

Phoney
© Veterans TodayJudge Alvin Hellerstein
The New World Order financial elite's death-grip on American government and media is exemplified by its total control of all 9/11 litigation - and of all mainstream news stories "reporting" that litigation.

Virtually all 9/11 litigation has been funneled into the courtroom of Judge Hellerstein, whose many ties to Israel were exposed by Ellen Mariani's lawsuit last year. (Hellerstein slapped sanctions on Mariani's attorneys for pointing out the obvious conflict of interest.)

A few of the cases, like Mariani's, were genuine attempts to get 9/11 justice. But almost all honest cases were weeded out by Hellerstein and his team of coverup criminals before they could be litigated. The vast majority of 9/11 family members were bought off, and the few who resisted, with a few notable exceptions like Mariani, were coerced into silence.

Footprints

Active shooter drills in Littleton, Colorado same day as school shooting

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Holy coincidence, Batman! It's another Drill-Gone-Live in unlucky Colorado! In response to the shooting Friday at Arapahoe High School, Peter J. Kuehlen has unearthed two screenshots of 'security consultants' conducting active shooter response drills in the same location -- and on the same day, no less - of the school shooting in Colorado. Peter noted, "On the anniversary of Sandy Hook, they are conducting a Lone Wolf Active Shooter Drill at the exact same location that they claimed yesterday three people lost their lives. Are you kidding me??? They are even telling you black on white. In your face now! Obvious drill is obvious."

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Chess

Washington drives the world toward war

bird of prey
© unknown
Washington has had the US at war for 12 years: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, and almost Syria, which could still happen, with Iran waiting in the wings. These wars have been expensive in terms of money, prestige, and deaths and injuries of both US soldiers and the attacked civilian populations. None of these wars appears to have any compelling reason or justifiable explanation. The wars have been important to the profits of the military/security complex. The wars have provided cover for the construction of a Stasi police state in America, and the wars have served Israel's interest by removing obstacles to Israel's annexation of the entire West Bank and southern Lebanon.

As costly and destructive as these wars have been, they are far below the level of a world war, much less a world war against nuclear armed opponents.

The fatal war for humanity is the war with Russia and China toward which Washington is driving the US and Washington's NATO and Asian puppet states. There are a number of factors contributing to Washington's drive toward the final war, but the overarching one is the doctrine of American exceptionalism.

Boat

Chinese warship nearly collided with USS Cowpens

USS cowpens
© Paul Kelly/U.S. Navy file photoThe Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Cowpens, in the Pacific during a live fire weapons shoot in 2012
On Dec. 5, a Chinese warship nearly collided with a U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser, according to U.S. Pacific Fleet.

"While lawfully operating in international waters in the South China Sea, USS Cowpens (CG 63) and a PLA Navy vessel had an encounter that required maneuvering to avoid a collision. This incident underscores the need to ensure the highest standards of professional seamanship, including communications between vessels, to mitigate the risk of an unintended incident or mishap," the Pacific Fleet said in a statement.

A U.S. military official confirmed the incident and said the PLA ship tried to get the Cowpens to stop in international waters. No shots were fired, according to the official, who asked not to be identified.

Comment: This reminds us of the following urban legend ;)
This is the transcript of a radio conversation of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10-10-95.

Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a Collision.

Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.

Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States' Atlantic fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels. I demand that YOU change your course 15 degrees north, that's one five degrees north, or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.



Eye 1

Did the FDA ban trans fat to benefit Monsanto and biotech?

monsanto
The FDA trans fat ban may be more than simply a health-based initiative.

The proposed Food and Drug Administration rule would ban trans fats (partially hydrogenated oils - PHOs) in processed food. But the Alliance for Natural Health is but one food related organization that feels the FDA ban may actually have been crafted to benefit a new Monsanto GMO product.

According to the group, the government ban impacts not all trans fats - only the artificial ones that are created when vegetable oils and hydrogen are added during processing in order to make the product semi-solid. As it turns out, biotech companies are beginning to promote a GMO-laced soybean oil they say is healthier than oils that have trans fat.

The timing of the FDA trans fat ban is of particular interest to Monsanto and biotech industry watchers, the Alliance for Natural Health noted. The announcement reportedly comes at a time when banning PHOs would no longer irritate the biotech giants, which are also major election donors to both political parties. As previously reported by Off The Grid News, former Monsanto executives and attorneys now hold key positions within a host of federal agencies, including the FDA, USDA, and EPA.

Comment: For more information on GMO soy, check out:

The Dangers of Soy Are Real - and Much Worse Than You Might Think
Genetically Modified Soy: The Invisible Ingredient 'Poisoning' Children
Confused About Soy?: Soy Dangers Summarized
Soy Lecithin and the GMO Secret
Soy: Dark Side of a "Health Food"
Genetically Engineered Soybeans May Cause Allergies
Food Myths: Bamboozled By The Soy Hype
GMO soy repeatedly linked to sterility, infant mortality, birth defects
Beware: Genetically Modified Omega 3 Oils to Appear in Foods