The Syrian army killed 230 terrorists and destroyed 12 cars in heavy clashes with armed rebels in the Northwestern city of Aleppo.

The clashes took place near al-Kendi Hospital in Aleppo's al-Ghouta neighborhood.

Abu Hamzeh, a notorious terrorist commander, and several foreign nationals, including a Libyan and a Jordanian, were among those killed in the clashes.

Today, the Syrian army also killed dozens of terrorists with Saudi, Egyptian and Tunisian nationalities in the Western Homs province.

The terrorists were killed during the army's fresh operations to purge the Homs province of terrorists.

As is now widely known, in the early morning hours of 18 November during Israel's continued escalation of its military assault on Gaza, the army targeted two buildings in Gaza City that housed international and Palestinian media outlets. The attacks left at least eight journalists injured. Twenty-year old cameraman Khader al-Zahhar had his right leg blown off when a rocket shot through the roof. At the time of writing, Israel has killed 72 Palestinians - 26 just today - since Wednesday, 14 November.

According to a press release today by the human rights organization Adalah:

"The Israeli army bombed Al-Shoroq Tower (or the "Journalists' Tower") in Gaza City. The 15-story building housed both local Arab and international media agencies such as Al Arabiya, Al Quds TV, Sky News, France 24, and Russia TV. Local media sources reported that eight journalists were injured in the initial attack. According to [Palestinian human rights group] Al-Mezan field reports, building occupants later received warnings about the Israeli army's intent to demolish the entire building, and were told to evacuate."

By the Israeli army's own admission, they knew journalists were in the building at which they fired: "We obviously knew there were journalists in the building, so we did not attack other floors in the building. But my advice to journalists visiting Gaza is to stay away from any Hamas position, site or post for their own safety," army spokesperson Avital Leibovich told the press today (BBC Middle East Bureau Chief Paul Danahar recorded her admission).

I just returned from my latest trip to Palestine, or at least to the part of Palestine I still have access to as a Palestinian Christian. You see, we Palestinians from the Bethlehem area (the birthplace of Jesus) are now denied entry to over 90 percent of Palestine and even to our capital and major economic center, Jerusalem (which is merely 7 miles from Bethlehem).

Israeli colonies dot the landscape from the Mediterranean to the River Jordan on land stolen from the native people. Six of the 10 million Palestinians in the world are now refugees or displaced people and the remaining Palestinians live in increasingly shrinking and impoverished ghettos (à la South African Bantustans at the time of Apartheid).

As you Americans sit down with your family on this Thanksgiving Day, think of the Gazans that have nothing to thank you for. Think of the over 1500 citizens of Gaza that were murdered with weapons made in your country. Think of the additional 3 Billion dollars that will be spent on warplanes bound to Israel soon to continue the process of genocide.

In a single second, law enforcement agents can match a suspect against millions upon millions of profiles in vast detailed databases stored on the cloud. It's all done using facial recognition, and in Southern California it's already occurring.

Imagine the police taking a picture: any picture of a person, anywhere, and matching it on the spot in less than a second to a personalized profile, scanning millions upon millions of entries from within vast, intricate databases stored on the cloud.

It's done with state of the art facial recognition technology, and in Southern California it's already happening.

At least one law enforcement agency in San Diego is currently using software developed by FaceFirst, a division of nearby Camarillo, California's Airborne Biometrics Group. It can positively identify anyone, as long as physical data about a person's facial features is stored somewhere the police can access. Though that pool of potential matches could include millions, the company says that by using the "best available facial recognition algorithms" they can scour that data set in a fraction of a second in order to send authorities all known intelligence about anyone who enters a camera's field of vision.

"Live high definition video enables FaceFirst to track and isolate the face of every person on every camera simultaneously," the company claims on their website.

"Up to 4 million comparisons per second, per clustered server" - that's how many matches a single computer wired to the FaceFirst system can consider in a single breath as images captured by cameras, cell phones and surveillance devices from as far as 100 feet away are fed into algorithms designed to pick out terrorists and persons of interest. In a single setting, an unlimited amount of cameras can record the movements of a crowd at 30-frames-per-second, pick out each and every face and then feed it into an equation that, ideally, finds the bad guys.

The US Department of Homeland Security has signed a multi-million dollar contract with a global management consulting firm to boost the country's attempt to master biosurveillance using social networks.

Virginia-based Accenture Federal Services will receive $3 million in federal funds to spend during the next year as they assist with efforts from the DHS and the Office of Health Affairs (OHA) to improve the United States' ability to track health trends and potential pandemics by means of monitoring social media accounts and other online activity.

According to a statement from the company, Accenture will be working hand-in-hand with the OHA in order to test out a pilot program that hopes to manage, link and analyze crucial data submitted by individuals about diseases and perhaps even a biological attack by pulling feeds from social networks.

"Biosurveillance is the monitoring of public health trends and unusual occurrences, relying on pre-existing, real-time health data - data that is publicly available and easily obtained," says Joanne Veto, Accenture's director of media and analyst relations. "Because of the vast amount of data and information available and readily shared through social media (Facebook, Twitter, blogs) and the rapid pace information is shared, collecting and understanding information from these channels is critical."

The Israeli Defense Force has confirmed that while targeting Hamas' rocket chief it mistakenly bombed the home of the Al-Dalou family, killing at least 11 civilians, four of them children and toddlers.

"Israel has killed a family of eleven people this evening, and many, many more. If Israel wants to stop its aggression, then we can talk. But before then, how could we consider any deal?" Salama Maroof, a senior Hamas spokesman told the Daily Telegraph.

IDF said the source of the error was either a failure to laser-paint the correct target or that one of the munitions in the strike misfired, Haaretz newspaper reported. The Israeli military is investigating the incident.

The Israeli military targeted Hamas' rocket-launching unit led by Yehiya Rabiah, but apparently hit the house of a neighbor, the newspaper noted. Rabiah seems to have survived the attack despite earlier claims that he was killed.

Gilad Sharon, son of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, wrote a piece for the Jerusalem Post this Sunday that gives new weight to phrase "like father, like son". It's genocidal talk, really. Here are some quotes. Emphasis and comments are mine.

"This must not be allowed to end as did Operation Cast Lead: We bomb them, they fire missiles at us, and then a cease-fire, followed by "showers" - namely sporadic missile fire and isolated incidents along the fence. Life under such a rain of death is no life at all, and we cannot allow ourselves to become resigned to it."

Operation Cast Lead wasn't good enough for Gilad. The deaths of over 1,400 Palestinians, including 330 children, in 22 days didn't have as much of an effect as he'd hoped. The "rain of death" isn't acceptable for Israelis but it's perfectly reasonable for Palestinians. We'll see why in the following quotes.

"To accomplish this, you need to achieve what the other side can't bear, can't live with, and our initial bombing campaign isn't it."

Since Wednesday, at least 79 Palestinians have been confirmed dead, including dozens of children. One of the more recent air strikes left twelve members of the Al-Dalou family dead. Their home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City was leveled, taking with it five women, four children, and a grandfather. Israel also admitted to targeting and hitting Gaza's news media tower, injuring eight journalists and, in the process, violating Protocol 1, Article 47 of the Geneva Convention. Gilad wants Israel to up the ante.

The most striking and significant quality of our national conversation "is one of overwhelming, oppressive and suffocating unreality.

It is as if everyone knows, but will never acknowledge, that we may speak only in code, and that we may only utilize the safe, empty phrases that we have agreed are 'acceptable' -- phrases and language that are safe precisely because they have been drained of all correspondence to facts.

It is as if everyone realizes, but will never state, that we are engaged in an elaborate charade, a pageant of gesture and indication, where substance and specific meaning have been banned. ... [T]he truth is not merely unpleasant, an uninvited guest who makes conversation difficult and awkward. Truth is the enemy; truth is to be destroyed."

Gaza is a concentration camp. It is not like a concentration camp. It is not a metaphorical or figurative concentration camp. It is a concentration camp. Our culture, our political leaders, and the cacophony of voices in the media have all agreed that this truth must never be spoken.