Al Jazeera English
21 October 2009

Israel is close to reaching a deal with the United States that will accommodate the so-called “natural growth” of settlements in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, the Israeli ambassador to Washington has told Al Jazeera.

Michael Oren said on Tuesday that the US had agreed with Israel to a temporary halt to settlement building activity in the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem, rather than a total freeze.

[…]

Asked if the Obama administration had given its assent to finish work on settlements already under construction before the “pause”, Oren said: “That was the understanding.”

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By Joseph Massad

For his continued wars against Pakistanis, Afghanis, and Iraqis, his support for the overthrow of democracy in Honduras, his abetting dictatorships across the Arab and Muslim worlds (which his government finances, arms, and trains in torture methods), his planning for a possible invasion of Iran, and his enthusiastic support for the racist Israeli settler colony (and its colonial wars and occupations against Palestinians), President Barak Obama received the Nobel “Peace” Prize. This comes as no surprise, as Obama joins a long list of recipients of this sham of a prize, who are distinguished for similar “peaceful” pursuits. These include terrorists like Menachem Begin, war criminals like Henry Kissinger, ethnic-cleansing colonial generals like Yitzhak Rabin, dictators like Anwar Sadat, corrupt politicians like Yasser Arafat, and imperial presidents like Jimmy Carter. Granting this overambitious power-hungry man the recognition of the Nobel committee is therefore most apt.

Obama’s most recent pursuit of peace has been to force the corrupt Palestinian Authority to discard the United Nations-issued Goldstone Report which detailed the war crimes committed by Israel in its murderous war against Palestinian civilians in Gaza ten months ago. Indeed, the first Black American President has just enjoined the Palestinians and Arab and Muslim countries from the pulpit of the United Nations to recognize Israel’s right to be a racist “Jewish State.” One wonders what the American reaction would be if Palestinian and Arab leaders would call on Obama and on African Americans to recognize the right of the United States to be a white state.

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Obama is Only Making It Worse

By Tariq Ali, Counterpunch, 20 October 2009

A few weeks ago the UN headman in Kabul, a woodenheaded Norwegian, decided that the recent Presidential elections were fine and Karzai was a legitimate ruler. His deputy, Peter Galbraith, the unofficial representative of the State Department, was enraged (since the US are unhappy with Karzai who is their own creature) and went public. He was fired.

But stories involving US reps and the UN never end like this. Yesterday the UN-supported electoral watchdog ruled that the elections had been fraudulent and ordered a new round. The Hindu Kush mountains must have resounded to the sound of Pashtun laughter.

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