Stay true to the dreams of thy youth

• Va Republican party condemns Loudoun GOP e-mail with an image of Obama shot in the head - Virginia Politics - The Washington Post

  The Republican Party of Virginia is strongly condemning an e-mail sent by Loudoun County’s GOP committee that shows President Obama as a zombie with part of his skull missing and a bullet through his head. “The disgusting image used today on a mass e-mail has no place in our politics. Ever,’’ said Pat Mullins, chairman of the state party. “The Republican Party of Virginia condemns the image and its use in the strongest possible terms.”

• Another Cain Gaffe: He Questions the Existence of the Palestinians - The Daily Beast

  ** Cain is an idiot. He should go back to making pizza and sexually harassing women **

  To Palestinian ears, Republican contenders for the presidency can sound a lot like far-right Israeli politicians when discussing the Middle East. Most oppose concessions by Israel and advocate the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. But now Herman Cain has managed to outdo even the most hawkish Israelis by referring to residents of the West Bank and Gaza as the “so-called Palestinian people.” The formulation appears to cast doubt on not just the Palestinians’ right to statehood but on their very existence as a nation.

• Online hackers threaten to expose cartel's secrets - Houston Chronicle

  ** Amazing, rather incredible. A group of anonymous hackers taking on a drug cartel **

  An international group of online hackers is warning a Mexican drug cartel to release one of its members, kidnapped from a street protest, or it will publish the identities and addresses of the syndicate's associates, from corrupt police to taxi drivers, as well as reveal the syndicates' businesses. The vow is a bizarre cyber twist to Mexico's ongoing drug war, as a group that has no guns is squaring off against the Zetas, a cartel blamed for thousands of deaths as well as introducing beheadings and other frightening brutality.

• Moshe Dayan's Widow Ruth: Zionist Dream Has Run Its Course - The Daily Beast

  ** Ruth Dayan speaking on the destruction of the Zionist dream and the racism and war mongering of the current Israeli regime **

  This political transformation is not lost on Ruth. “For Netanyahu, peace is just a word, and that [current Foreign Minister Avigdor] Liberman?...?he is the most terrible man in this country. The way he speaks about our Arabs, our Israeli Arabs, is unacceptable! I call Liberman ‘Doberman’: how can a man like that represent our country?!”

• Saudi in $10.6bn desalination plant spend - ArabianBusiness.com

  Saudi Arabia is planning to spend SR40bn ($10.6bn) on building a number of desalination plants in the kingdom, a senior official said on Sunday. The governor of the Saline Water Conversion Corporation also announced plans to privatise SWCC next year, state news agency SPA reported.

• How a letter on Hitler’s stationery, written to a boy in Jersey, reached the CIA - The Washington Post

  At CIA headquarters in Langley, one of the newest artifacts in the agency’s private museum is a message from a father to his 3-year-old son. The gold-embossed letterhead features a swastika and the name Adolf Hitler. “Dear Dennis,” the seven-sentence letter begins. “The man who might have written on this card once controlled Europe — three short years ago when you were born. Today he is dead, his memory despised, his country in ruins.”

• US condemns UNESCO over Palestine vote - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

  ** Israeli lobby at its worst/best **

  The US government has cut off tens of millions of dollars in annual funding to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) after it voted to admit Palestine as a full member. Victoria Nuland, the US state department spokeswoman, said payments to the Paris-based organisation would be stopped immediately. She said Washington would refrain from making a $60m payment it planned to deliver in November. "Today's vote by the member states of UNESCO to admit Palestine as a member is regrettable, premature, and undermines our shared goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East,'' Nuland said.

• Kuwait delays privatisation of ailing flag carrier - Transport - ArabianBusiness.com

  State-owned Kuwait Airways has delayed plans to privatise the airline and will now push ahead with the restructuring of the ailing carrier, a committee formed for the privatisation plan said on Sunday. Kuwait Airways was offering 35 percent of its share capital of KD220m ($805.3m) to potential long-term investors, amounting to around $280m, as part of the plan.

• Oil’s new world order - The Washington Post

  For more than five decades, the world’s oil map has centered on the Middle East. No matter what new energy resources were discovered and developed elsewhere, virtually all forecasts indicated that U.S. reliance on Mideast oil supplies was destined to grow. This seemingly irreversible reality has shaped not only U.S. energy policy and economic policy, but also geopolitics and the entire global economy. But today, what appeared irreversible is being reversed. The outline of a new world oil map is emerging, and it is centered not on the Middle East but on the Western Hemisphere. The new energy axis runs from Alberta, Canada, down through North Dakota and South Texas, past a major new discovery off the coast of French Guyana to huge offshore oil deposits found near Brazil.

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