More Hamas/Fatah Marriage woes

(Hamas ditches Assad, backs Syrian revolt | Fair Weather Friends Back the Winning Horse) Hezbollah loses Syria, gains Iraq, Obama and his Muslim Brotherhood get Syria... and the Jews get five rockets. @IDFSpokesperson: During the night a total of 5 rockets were launched from Gaza at southern Israel

(EOZ)From AFP:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his rival Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal on Thursday postponed talks on forming a unified government, a Fatah official said, in a further delay to ending an almost five-year rift.
The official with the Abbas-led party said the talks were postponed “because Hamas continues to prevent the election committee from registering voters in Gaza,” the Islamist-ruled Palestinian territory.
He added that Hamas, which has been split internally on agreeing the unity government with the secular Fatah, has “not yet informed Abbas of its formal approval to end internal disputes on forming the government.”

Reuters reports it this way:

Hamas has set new terms for implementing a reconciliation deal with President Mahmoud Abbas's rival Fatah group, an official said on Thursday.
Abbas and Khalid Mashaal, Hamas's political chief in exile, agreed in Qatar earlier this month to form a unity government led by the Western-backed president.
But in a rift with the Islamist group's leadership outside the Gaza Strip, officials in the Hamas-ruled enclave swiftly criticized the accord, particularly its call for Abbas to serve as prime minister as well as president.
At an internal meeting chaired by Mashaal in Cairo on Wednesday, Hamas officials united behind new demands, said a Palestinian official involved in the talks. The terms seemed certain to be rejected by Abbas.
"Hamas demanded to keep the key ministries in the new government, including the ministry of interior," said the official. "It also demanded no change in the structure of security services in the Gaza Strip."
The interior ministry oversees the Hamas-run security services, and Palestinian political analyst Samir Awad said the new terms proved the group "was not prepared to abandon control of Gaza", territory it seized from Fatah in fighting in 2007.
Abbas has been seeking a unity government staffed by independents and technocrats to ensure it would not be boycotted by the West, which donates essential funds to his Palestinian Authority and refuses to deal with Hamas.
Other demands that emerged from the Cairo meeting included naming a Gaza-based deputy to Abbas and making his appointment as prime minister conditional on a vote of confidence in the Palestinian parliament.

Meanwhile, Hamas is again accusing Fatah of arresting its members in the West Bank - the one basic issue that was supposed to be resolved since May.
They are also squabbling over the Gaza power plant issue, as Hamas has bypassed the PA in order to try to secure a deal with Egypt to get a supply of cheap diesel, with Haniyeh effectively acting as if he is the head of government - after supposedly agreeing to Abbas being prime minister.
They agree on one thing, though: stopping any chance of a "Palestinian spring" against their respective leaders. They'll plan meeting after meeting and photo-ops galore for the next decade to try to fool their people that they actually care about them rather than their own hold on power, which is what prompted this whole "unity" farce to begin with.

Goodnight MoonBat

MoonBat

Bar Refaeli at Gun Range

(they just had to crop this pic. I can't see her ass)

I'm behind you!

Hamas ditches Assad, backs Syrian revolt | Fair Weather Friends Back the Winning Horse

(Reuters)

Shi'ite Hezbollah still supports the Assad family, from the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, which has maintained authoritarian rule over Syria's Sunni majority for four decades but now may have its back to the wall.

Leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas turned publicly against their long-time ally President Bashar al-Assad of Syria on Friday, endorsing the revolt aimed at overthrowing his dynastic rule.
The policy shift deprives Assad of one of his few remaining Sunni Muslim supporters in the Arab world and deepens his international isolation. It was announced in Hamas speeches at Friday prayers in Cairo and a rally in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas went public after nearly a year of equivocating as Assad's army, largely led by fellow members of the president's Alawite sect, has crushed mainly Sunni protesters and rebels.
In a Middle East split along sectarian lines between Shi'ite and Sunni Islam, the public abandonment of Assad casts immediate questions over Hamas's future ties with its principal backer Iran, which has stuck by its ally Assad, as well as with Iran's fellow Shi'ite allies in Lebanon's Hezbollah movement.
"I salute all the nations of the Arab Spring and I salute the heroic people of Syria who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform," Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, visiting Egypt from the Gaza Strip, told thousands of Friday worshippers at Cairo's al-Azhar mosque. more

This is what the Arabs did during WWII with the Nazis. Most of them were allied with Hitler till it became clear he was a loser. Our CIA then covered all those Nazi henchmen up and gave them states.

Israel prepares for Syria refugees after Bashar al-Assad's predicted fall | News | National Post

(Taking Damascus, One, Two, Three | Advancing a Free Society) Saudi Arabia and Qatar—the two Wahhabi states that are vying with each other for prominence among burgeoning Sunni Arab fundamentalist movements—appear ready to deliver weaponry to the Syrian opposition. They both know how devastating to Shiite Iran the loss of Syria will be. The Turkish-Syrian border is porous. Masoud Barzani, the Kurdish chief of western Iraqi Kurdistan, has already signaled that he’s willing to help his rebellious Kurdish cousins in neighboring Syria.

(National Post)Israel is making preparations for the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and a flood of refugees from his minority Alawite sect into the Golan Heights, Israel’s military chief told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday.(MORE)

Huh? What? These guys been trying to kill you for years... and you want to bring them into your home? This is stupid. I'm hoping it is just a public relations stunt, but the world will hold Israel accountable for it's false claims if it is bullshit. I'm not sure why Israel needed to have it's own state if every time there is a minority bullied in the Arab world... Israel brings home the losing party. Why is Israel responsible for the Alawite? Their allies are the Iranians. Let A'jad take them in.

Ryan Braun – The Hebrew Hammer (UPDATES)

(Fox) Braun painted a plausible scenario in a late-morning news conference today, hinting strongly that his urine sample was tampered with before being shipped to a Montreal laboratory for analysis. But the unvarnished truth remained elusive, as Braun declined to answer specific questions about the collector who was in possession of his sample for nearly 48 hours.
Braun maintained his innocence, saying, “If I had done this intentionally or unintentionally, I would be the first to step up and say I did it … I would bet my life this substance never entered my body at any point.” Braun didn’t mention the “substance” by name, but ESPN previously reported that it was synthetic testosterone.
Parra said he’s disappointed that “a player’s privacy was not respected at all. Everybody has a right to privacy, to a certain extent. That’s what bothered me. … This is justice. He went through the process. You have these rights, and you have them for a reason. I respect the way it went. I’m extremely happy that he’s going to be with us.”

(JS)...Ryan Braun may be an innocent man" and "may be exonerated."If this happens, obviously it would be tremendous news for the Brewers and Braun, who tested positive for a banned substance in October and appealed the finding before an arbitration panel in New York last week. It also would make it an even bigger atrocity that news of the positive test was leaked to ESPN, which reported it in early December.

(Hipster Jew) It’s been 48 years since Tribesman, Sandy Koufax, was named MVP of the National League. Thankfully the Hebrews are getting back into the game and representing us well. Kevin Youkilis has a few championship rings. Ian Kinsler is a former all star and a World Series loser. Danny Valencia is a solid 3rd baseman. And Jason Marquis is… well.. forget I mentioned him.
But the man that gets all the praise today is Ryan Braun aka The Hebrew Hammer. The former Rookie of the Year and current NL MVP finished the 2011 season with 33 home runs (6th in the league) and a .332 batting average (2nd in the league). ...that was till he was accused of juicing....

(JS) Patrick said he was told Sunday, again, by "somebody involved in the process" that the MLB test might be at fault and that Braun could be found innocent. The arbitration panel, with independent arbitrator Shyam Das expected to cast the decisive vote, has 25 days to render a verdict but it could come as soon as later this week. Some of Patrick's comments: "There were whispers that this was a personal medical issue, that he was taking something for that, that may have spiked his test. I since found out (Sunday) that that is not the case. "Ryan Braun may be exonerated here. He may be found innocent. And judging from all of the information I was told, there's a good chance that he should be."Patrick went on to say that MLB is "cut and dried" about what is allowed to be in a player's system but said what Braun tested positive for "wasn't a masking agent." "The bigger issue here is the testing and was Ryan Braun a victim of the testing by Major League Baseball," added Patrick. "Let's see how this plays out... The feeling I got (Sunday) from somebody involved in the process in this, it's not as cut and dried as people would think. And Ryan Braun may be an innocent man."

Obama: Use Algae as substitute for oil

(Examiner)President Obama admitted today that he does not have a "silver bullet" solution for skyrocketing gas prices, but he proposed alternative energy sources such as "a plant-like substance, algae" as a way of cutting dependence on oil by 17 percent.
"We’re making new investments in the development of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance, algae -- you've got a bunch of algae out here," Obama said at the University of Miami today."If we can figure out how to make energy out of that, we'll be doing alright. Believe it or not, we could replace up to 17 percent of the oil we import for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in America."
The Department of Energy (DOE) currently spends about $85 million on 30 research projects "to develop algal biofuels," according to the White House, which announced that Obama is committing another $14 million to the idea.
Obama did not say when he expected algae-based fuel to reach that level, but the federal government has a dodgy track record with respect to developing alternative vehicle fuels. Biodiesel, for example, accounted for less than 1 percent of the diesel fuel market as of 2008, according to the Energy Information Administration. And of course there's ethanol -- after four decades, tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, and draconian mandates that force it on unwilling consumers, ethanol was five percent of vehicle consumption (by volume) as of 2008. Although algae-to-gas is a very different idea, it is still in its early stages.
"We're not going to transition out of oil anytime soon," Obama added, before touting the record high domestic gas production right now and the agreement with Mexico to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, while still calling for expanded investment in alternative energy.
Oil industry leaders reject Obama's claim to have given significant support to oil production. "These have been the most difficult three years from a policy standpoint that I've ever seen in my career," Bruce Vincent, president of Swift Energy, an oil and gas company in Houston, said yesterday. "They've done nothing but restrict access and delay permitting."
Obama affirmed the need to protect the planet by developing clean energy alternatives, but The Washington Examiner's Michael Barone argues that he hasn't been consistent even on that front. "We’ve prohibited a pipeline, the safest way to transport oil, from Canada, but we’re aiding Mexico in offshore drilling, which is riskier, and by a firm that lacks the experience of the U.S. firms we have been trying to prevent drilling in the same body of water," Barone wrote yesterday. "Does this make any sense at all?"

Running on fumes