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French President Nicolas Sarkozy could be excused for being very annoyed at Egypt’s precipitate action in forcing the cancellation of this month’s meeting of the Foreign Ministers from the 43 countries that comprise the Mediterranean Union.

Afghan university students shout anti-U.S. slogans as they burn an effigy of President Barack Obama during a demonstration in Kabul, Oct. 25, 2009. Afghans protested over allegations that Western troops fighting the Taliban had set fire to a copy of the Koran. (UPI Photo/Hossein Fatemi)

I do not envy the country, whose leader becomes a Nobel Laureate. The majority of such leaders brought their peoples nothing, but misfortunes, failures, defeats and humiliations.

“We cannot for a second abandon propaganda. Propaganda is vital—propaganda is the heart of all struggles.”
(Fidel Castro in a letter to a revolutionary colleague in 1954)

So Obama’s Communications director, Anita Dunn, bashes Fox as a “propaganda arm”  for the Republican party?

Declarations of virtual Palestinian statehood by asking the UN and international community for diplomatic recognition are a blunt way of avoiding the requirements for statehood. According to the Montevideo Convention this includes: “(a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other state … The primary interest of states is the conservation of peace.”

The veiled threat by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to approach the United Nations (UN) Security Council to seek its consent to the establishment of a new Arab state between Jordan, Israel and Egypt has received the short shrift it deserved from the European Union (EU).

Last August, PM Salam Fayyad released a Plan to “establish Palestine as an independent, democratic, progressive, and modern Arab state, with full sovereignty over its territory in the West Bank and Gaza, on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.” within two years.  Israel took little notice of it. 

Forbes
It made headlines last week when federal prosecutors moved to seize assets of the Alavi Foundation, a New York-based nonprofit that is allegedly a front for the U.S.-sanctioned government of Iran. Sidelined in the excitement was another blockbuster aspect of this case: the alleged role of a series of Iranian ambassadors to the UN—including the current envoy, Mohammad Khazaee—in managing the affairs of the Alavi Foundation.

By Joseph Klein
Israel’s United Nations ambassador, Gabriela Shalev, accurately described the Islamic Republic of Iran, in her remarks at Yeshiva University last week, as a “convergence of terrible elements,” including aggressive nuclear ambitions, sponsorship of terrorism, and Holocaust denial.

The celebrations are now over. Leaders from 28 nations—President Obama sent Hillary Clinton—commemorated the fall of the Berlin wall, which initiated the collapse of the Soviet Union. The fall of the wall was the beginning of the end of the Cold War and the dawn of a new freedom for all humanity - or was it?

Monday, Nov. 9, 2009 was indeed a remarkable day. For obvious reasons, it had to be: after all, Germany, and the world, were celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the “fall” of the Berlin Wall.

BEIJING, /Christian Newswire/—At 7:40 AM (Beijing time) on Nov. 19, Jiang Tianyong and his wife attempted to leave their home to take their daughter to school, when they were barred from leaving the apartment building by Public Security Bureau officers assembled at the gate.

BEIJING, /Christian Newswire/—At 10:13 AM (Beijing time), nearly 200 nervous-looking Public Security officials seized two Chinese human rights lawyers outside the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, who were trying to establish a meeting with President Obama before the end of his visit to China.