Had Steve Jobs been an Israeli, Apple's slogan would not have been "Think Different." It would have been "Think Like Everyone Else."

(Inspired by the bestseller Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson )

1. Had Steve Jobs been an Israeli, his father - who was of Syrian extraction - would have been hunted by the Oz immigration police. Instead of completing a doctorate in international relations at the University of Michigan, Abdulfattah "John" Jandali would have been shoved into some prison truck in the middle of the night and from there thrown into the "prison facility" near Hadera. Jobs wouldn't have been born at all and, even if he had, he would quickly have been spotted in the gunsight of Interior Minister Eli Yishai and kicked out of here, the sooner and the further the better.
2. Had Steve Jobs been an Israeli, it is doubtful whether his fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Hill, would have noticed his exceptional talents. It is also doubtful whether his literature teacher would have taken him, in his senior year, on an "inspiring snow hike in Yosemite National Park." Instead, Jobs would have been required to memorize the difference between "chalky soil" and "clay soil"; to swallow, every year, the pornography of violence toward children called "Holocaust studies in school"; and, in his last year in high school, to be preoccupied with only one question - whether to enlist in the elite Maglan unit or the elite Duvdevan unit in the Israel Defense Forces.

President Obama signed on Saturday the defense authorization bill, formally ending weeks of heated debate in Congress and intense lobbying by the administration to strip controversial provisions requiring the transfer of some terror suspects to military custody.

"I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists," Obama said in a statement accompanying his signature.

The White House had originally threatened to veto the $662 billion bill, considered must-pass legislation, over the language that requires mandatory military custody for suspects linked to al-Qaida or its affiliates, even if they are captured in the U.S. Just before the House and Senate passed the bill comfortably, the White House said it would support the bill's compromise language that, as tweaked by conference committee, would not impede the administration's ability to collect intelligence or incapacitate dangerous terrorists.

Still, administration officials have admitted publicly the final provisions were not the preferred approach of this administration.

Lawmaker wants rules for performances at schools

Oh, say can you . . . sing?

And, more importantly, can you sing it the "right" way -- the way one Indiana lawmaker thinks the national anthem should be sung?

Sen. Vaneta Becker, R-Evansville, has introduced a bill that would set specific "performance standards" for singing and playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at any event sponsored by public schools and state universities.

The law also would cover private schools receiving state or local scholarship funds, including vouchers.

Performers would have to sign a contract agreeing to follow the guidelines. Musicians -- whether amateur or professional -- would be fined $25 if it were deemed they failed to meet the appropriate standards.

The dawn of a new year is usually a time of hope and ambition, of dreams for the future and thoughts of a better life. But it is a long time since many of us looked forward to the new year with such anxiety, even dread.

Here in Britain, many economists believe that by the end of 2012 we could well have slipped into a second devastating recession. The Coalition remains delicately poised; it would take only one or two resignations to provoke a wider schism and a general election.

But the real dangers lie overseas. In the Middle East, the excitement of the Arab Spring has long since curdled into sectarian tension and fears of Islamic fundamentalism. And with so many of the world's oil supplies concentrated in the Persian Gulf, British families will be keeping an anxious eye on events in the Arab world.

There are some distinct geopolitical rumblings occurring in the general region surrounding Iran that is quite concerning for someone like myself and I'm sure Tehran as well.

This includes a major sale of cutting-edge F-15SA fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, Iran spotting the John C. Stennis aircraft carrier entering the Strait of Hormuz, a sale of advanced missile interceptor systems to the United Arab Emirates, warnings from the Russian envoy to the United Nations of global destabilization in 2012 and new awards for Raytheon for the AESA radar system and contracts for US/NATO missile systems.

After Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz if the West continued to push for sanctions on Iranian oil exports, the United States' Fifth Fleet out of Bahrain countered with similar saber-rattling.

The Iranian navy chief, Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, stated that closing the Strait of Hormuz would be "easier than drinking a glass of water."

"You are part of an unbroken line of heroes spanning two centuries - from the colonists who overthrew an empire, to your grandparents and parents who faced down fascism and communism, to you - men and women who fought for the same principles in Fallujah and Kandahar, and delivered justice to those who attacked us on 9/11.

The most important lesson that we can take from you is not about military strategy - - it's a lesson about our national character. Because of you, we are ending these wars in a way that will make America stronger and the world more secure."

- President Barack Obama, Address to Troops at Fort Bragg, December 14, 2011

The lies of war are forgotten as easily and readily as the wrappings of Christmas or the resolutions of a new year. Like a child still in diapers, the lessons of war must be learned again and again until finally they are taken to heart.

More than 270,000 organic farmers are taking on corporate agriculture giant Monsanto in a lawsuit filed March 30. Led by the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, the family farmers are fighting for the right to keep a portion of the world food supply organic - and preemptively protecting themselves from accusations of stealing genetically modified seeds that drift on to their pristine crop fields.

Consumers are powerful. For more than a decade, a cultural shift has seen shoppers renounce the faster-fatter-bigger-cheaper mindset of factory farms, exposéd in the 2008 documentary Food, Inc. From heirloom tomatoes to heritage chickens, we want our food slow, sustainable, and local - healthy for the earth, healthy for animals, and healthy for our bodies.

Newt Gingrich today wiped away tears and was handed a tissue by an audience member in Des Moines when he became emotional onstage while talking about his mother.

"I get teary eyed every time we sing Christmas carols," Gingrich said before his speech was overcome with emotion at an event hosted at Java Joe's Coffee in Des Moines by CafeMom.com, a secular, bipartisan organization.

The crowd - roughly 100 people in a jam packed room - expressed a compassionate sigh of emotion.

He explained that his mother loved singing in the choir and when he was very young she made him sing in the choir.

He then told the crowd that he remembers his mother as happy, enjoying life and her friends but noted that late in her life she was in a long-term care facility and battled with a bipolar disorder.

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes" (attributed to Mark Twain)

Meet another of Israel's undesirables, Yuli Edelstein.

He is the regime's Propaganda Minister (or to be more precise, Minister for Disinformation and Diaspora) and he runs the biggest lie machine in the world.

His task is to make the Israel "brand" smell sweeter. The reason it stinks, of course, is the regime's putrid morals and murderous conduct, which the lie machine works overtime to try to justify and excuse. It will always fail. You cannot build a decent brand image on lies, obnoxious behaviour and a massive attitude problem.

The racist squatter minister

Edelstein hit the headlines over Christmas when he told everybody that the Arabs are "a deplorable nation". He was speaking at a public diplomacy event (incredible as it may seem!) at Yor Yehuda, which I'm told means "light of Juda".

He said that "as long as the Arab nation continues to be a deplorable nation, which continues investing in infrastructure for terrorism, education to hate and welfare for the families of shaheeds [martyrs], there will be no peace."

The reporter asked Edelstein's office if the minister was aware that there are some 80 [sic - in fact, the population of the Arab world is about 280 million, excluding the diaspora] ] million Arabs in the world, from Sudan to Syria. A spokesman replied: "Yes, there are - and the minister meant them all."

It comes as no surprise that the fake food safety bill passed here in the US in what was clearly a staged event that required the complicity of the other 99 Senators who voluntarily vacated the US Senate chamber to allow "Dirty Harry" to cast the only vote as "unanimous" is being mirrored, replicated and implemented in many other countries. Canada passed its C-36 bill shortly after "Dirty Harry" completed his task here in the US, and now it appears New Zealand food rights are on the chopping block too.

What are the chances that New Zealand Retailers Association would come up with what appears to be a line of propaganda nearly identical to the crap foisted on the American public as their rights to produce and consume foods of their choice were attacked relentlessly by Big AG and the bio-pirates along with other corporate interests who stand to profit immensely at the expense of the public? These are the same interested party's and stakeholders who rammed C-36 through Canada's parliament.

And here we see the same limp arguments coming out of New Zealand, promoted by yet another retailers association intent on convincing New Zealanders that their food supply and production, needs "modernization". Modernization with regards to food can be easily defined as centralization of food production and supply to provide market monopolies to multi-national corporations. The greatest threat to food supply chains around the world is industrialized food which provides neither safe food, nor nutritious food. Progress on the food bill: