'Learn the truth' from Robert Spencer, Frank Gaffney, David Schippers, others
Frank Gaffney 
A Dallas-area ranch will be the site of a conference featuring leading experts on the threat of radical Islam, including Robert Spencer and Frank Gaffney.
Open to anyone who wants to "learn the truth," "Exposing the Threat of Radical Islamist Terrorism" is part of a continuing series organized by America's Truth Forum, which provides registration details on its website.
The event is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 2, at Ranch of the Lonesome Dove in Southlake, Texas, which is minutes from the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. A VIP dinner and cocktail reception Friday night, Feb. 1, will precede the conference.
Jeffrey Epstein, president of America's Truth Forum, said the conference is necessary because Americans are not getting the full story about the threat they face.
"We can no longer afford to keep our heads in the sand," he said. "If you care about this country and the future of your children, and you don't want to see them living under Islamic law, then you need to come to this event."
Along with citizens who want to be informed, the event will be attended by law enforcement officials and first ...   more »

Gil Hoffman
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat appeared to soften his position Thursday but still rejected Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's call for explicit Palestinian recognition of Israel as "the Jewish state," saying he was baffled as to why Olmert wanted to "poke us in the eye" over the issue.
Asked by The Jerusalem Post whether he recognizes that the Jewish nation has historic rights here, Erekat said: "Israel has rights in the Middle East and the majority of Israelis are Jews. And when we recognized Israel, we recognized the composition of the state." Erekat had told an Arabic satellite TV interviewer earlier this week that the Palestinian Authority "will never acknowledge Israel's Jewish identity."
Erekat told the Post it was up to Israel to decide what to call itself, and that the Palestinians would recognize it accordingly. "Like the Islamic Republic of Iran," he said, "if you change your name to 'the Jewish state of Israel,' we'll call you that."
The road map and previous agreements had required the Palestinian leadership to unequivocally recognize Israel, Erekat said in a telephone interview. "We did it.... At the United Nations, you are called 'the state of Israel.' We recognize that."
Olmert has ...   more »

Israeli, Palestinian negotiations teams working on draft of joint statement to be presented at upcoming US-sponsored Mideast conference. US Secretary of State Rice due to visit region next week to observe progress in talks, may bring official invitations to summit
Roni Sofer
The Israeli negotiations team, headed by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, is expected to meet Saturday evening with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at his residence ahead of the upcoming US-sponsored Mideast peace conference.
Four members of the Israeli delegation to Washington – including the prime minister's chief of staff Yoram Turbowicz, Foreign Ministry Director-General Aharon Abramovich, and the prime minister's diplomatic advisor Shalom Turgeman – are scheduled to return to Israel on Friday from meetings with representatives of the Bush administration in Washington.
Warning 
The Israeli team and the prime minister will discuss the negotiations with the Palestinians ahead of the Annapolis summit and ahead of next week's visits to Israel by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
The Israeli and Palestinian teams may meet Saturday evening to continue to work on the draft of the joint statement which will be presented at the conference.
Will Rice bring invitations?
Israel is still waiting for ...   more »

Israelis are in uproar over what The Jerusalem Post called in its editorial headline Thursday “The recognition sham” - the Palestinian Arab’s “sudden” adopting of a position whereby they refuse to recognize Israel as a JEWISH state.
After listing some of the numerous occasions when “Palestinians” claimed to have accepted Israel’s right to exist - Arafat in 1988 and 1993; the PLO in 1998 and the PA in 2003, the paper says:
“So the Palestinians accept Israel’s existence, right? Well, perhaps not. Now, on the eve of Annapolis, we discover that all of these claims of recognition may have been a giant sham.”
It describes what happened this week:
On Monday, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said, “The problem of the content of the document [setting out joint principles for peacemaking post-Annapolis] has not been resolved… One of the more pressing problems is the Zionist regime’s insistence on being recognized as a Jewish state. We will not agree to recognize Israel as a Jewish state,” Erekat said. “There is no country in the world where religious and national identities are intertwined.”
On Tuesday, another prominent Palestinian negotiator, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said, “It is only a Zionist party that deals with ...   more »

"Israel has decided to make Annapolis a success, to bring an end to the conflict, to finally make peace between the Palestinians and ourselves."
Earlier this week, Israeli President Shimon Peres actually made this statement. I'm not joking. I'm not making it up. This is what the octogenarian statesman had to say about the upcoming Middle East peace summit in Maryland.
I could write a book about this one, inane, ridiculous, stupid sentence. Suffice it to say it illustrates what is wrong inside the psyche of today's Israeli political elite.
"Israel has decided to make Annapolis a success …"
I wonder if Shimon Peres has ever heard the expression: "It takes two to tango." Actually, it takes many more than two to tango in the Middle East. It's not like Israel has one enemy. It has dozens – any one of which is capable of sabotaging Israel's best efforts to achieve peace. And I'm not sure a single one of its enemies is actually serious about peace. In fact, I can't think of a single one.
Nevertheless, Israel has decided to make Annapolis a success.
Does Peres not understand what this sounds like to people? In all of his many ...   more »

By Dana G Smith
Keywords: WWII, America, veterans, Iran, Iraq, Afganistan
I opened the small pouch. In it contained a scalpel, medical items, tourniquet, band aids, wrappings, pills, and assorted items. These were last used in World War II, in the south pacific. They belonged to my dad, who now in his mid eighties, remembers his role as a medic in WWII. He had gone to the board as his draft number was coming up. Having just graduated from High school, his next stop was according to Uncle Sam, in boot camp, the army to be specific. But as it turned out, he enlisted just before being drafted.
I remember him telling me why he became a medic, his answer was simple. They asked me what I wanted to do. I told them, "I just don’t want to kill anyone". "Then you can be a medic and save lives" the officer told him. With that, my dad, a fresh graduate from Avalon High School on Catalina Island went to war.
The chilling parts of the war were never replayed by Dad. It seemed he had enough of it in the War itself. When the war was over, he came to ...   more »

By Migdia Chinea
Hi, my name is Migdia Chinea and I'm a recovering LAUSD "substitute."
Oh, I'm also UCLA-educated with honors, refined, empathetic, college-level Spanish fluent and a Googleable professional screenwriter.
To make ends meet during hard economic times, I became a "substitute teacher" for the Los Angeles Unified School District, or LAUSD – or to put it more kindly, a "guest teacher." As a guest LAUSD teacher I thought I would be an asset, but the system has never appreciated nor taken advantage of my educational or professional hard-earned accomplishments.
There's no teaching going on at LAUSD – only confinement of the sort one may find in a penal colony, complete with walkie-talkie-carrying wardens and bullhorns. And I have "confined" at many different schools within central Los Angeles in the last six months. Many students scream "suuuuuuuub" when they see someone like me – a "guest teacher" – in their classroom and trample anyone and/or anything as they push and shove their way inside.
Recently, I was privy to a narrative by a teacher in which he complained that after a one-day absence, his classroom was in shreds and wall posters were torn down. His VHS player and flash ...   more »

The Philippines government says it has reached an agreement with the country's main Islamic separatist group on boundaries for a Muslim homeland.
Government negotiator Rodolfo Garcia said "demarcation" was agreed after two days of talks in Malaysia with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Officials say the deal in Kuala Lumpur could pave the way for a final peace deal between the two sides next year.
MILF has been fighting for decades over land in the southern Mindanao region.
Negotiators are hopeful that a permanent peace agreement can be sealed by the middle of next year.   
The two sides did not disclose the shape of the new agreed borders, but the talks' Malaysian hosts said the territory would be greater than the present autonomous region in Mindanao.
Mr Garcia said the borders agreement was a "significant breakthrough".
MILF chief negotiator Mohagher Iqbal told the AFP news agency his side hoped "to find closure to the centuries-old problem in Mindanao which various regimes in Manila have not solved".
Formal talks began in 2003 after MILF, which is thought to have around 12,000 members, signed a fragile truce with President Gloria Arroyo's government.
It is the largest of several Muslim separatist ...   more »

By Anne Penketh,
David Miliband travelled yesterday to the Belgian city where Margaret Thatcher delivered a speech which became the creed of Euroscepticism, to set out the Government's own vision for Europe.
Although it was no hand-bagging, the Foreign Secretary took his stand in Bruges on Baroness Thatcher's ideological territory , saying that in 1988 she had been "haunted by demons: a European superstate bringing in socialism by the back door".
In his own presentation, Mr Miliband lowered the Government's European ambitions by saying that the EU "is not, and is not going to become, a superstate – but neither is it destined to become a superpower".
"An EU of 27 nation states or more is never going to have the fleetness of foot or the fiscal base to dominate," he said in his first major speech on European policy since his appointment. "There is only one superpower in the world today – the United States."
But he added: "The EU has the opportunity to be a model power. It can chart a course for regional co-operation between medium-sized and small countries." He identified these as the countries of the Maghreb, the Middle East and eastern Europe which could join ...   more »

UN nuclear report heightens tension
Julian Borger
Friday November 16, 2007
The Guardian
A construction worker assembles part of Iran's nuclear power plant in the southern port of Bushehr. Photograph: Mehr News Agency/EPA
Iran has installed 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium - enough to begin industrial-scale production of nuclear fuel and build a warhead within a year, the UN's nuclear watchdog reported last night.
The report by Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will intensify US and European pressure for tighter sanctions and increase speculation of a potential military conflict.
The installation of 3,000 fully-functioning centrifuges at Iran's enrichment plant at Natanz is a "red line" drawn by the US across which Washington had said it would not let Iran pass. When spinning at full speed they are capable of producing sufficient weapons-grade uranium (enriched to over 90% purity) for a nuclear weapon within a year.
The IAEA says the uranium being produced is only fuel grade (enriched to 4%) but the confirmation that Iran has reached the 3,000 centrifuge benchmark brings closer a moment of truth for the Bush administration, when it will have to choose between taking military action or abandoning its red ...   more »

Defense appropriations bill gives soldiers domestic responsibilities
By Jerome R. Corsi
New federal legislation shows the Bush administration has begun systematically putting in place authorization for the president to federalize the National Guard and use the U.S. military in domestic emergency situations.
A provision in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (H.R. 1585) requires the secretary of defense to prepare and submit to Congress by March 1, 2008, and each subsequent March 1 a plan to coordinate the use of the National Guard and members of the Armed Forces on active duty when responding to natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other man-made disasters.
Section 1806 of H.R. 1585 requires the secretary of defense to prepare two versions of the plan, one using only members of the National Guard, and one using both members of the National Guard and members of the regular components of the armed services.
The section also requires the secretary of defense's plan to specify "Protocols for the Department of Defense, the National Guard Bureau, and the governors of the several states to carry out operations in coordination with each other and to ensure that governors and local communities are properly informed and ...   more »