"While all parties need these talks for different reasons, the fact remains that they are unlikely to produce any major breakthrough."

"Clearly, sanctions are currently the only available tool in the hands of Washington but behind-the-scene efforts are being made to prove that sanctions cannot mollify the threat in the long run and that the threat of the so-called nuclear Iran will only be eliminated through a war thus justified thanks to the sinister powers long at work."

"One must remember this: We human beings are of nature as well. Accordingly, within us lies an indomitable self, encoded with the grace and fury of the natural world, and, if acknowledged and respected, our authentic nature will awaken and arise. Then the real dogfight begins: The fur will fly, as we fight, fang and claw, to retake the lost landscape of our collective humanity, and, by extension, begin the struggle to restore health, imagination and empathy to a nation of cage-accepting, imperium-countenancing, sick puppies."

"In an effort to avoid disaster, the Republican Party’s leadership is making an effort to mobilize support for former Governor Mitt Romney. But the establishment alone can't close the deal for Romney, whose conversion to conservatism is not convincing to the Tea Party and whose Mormon faith is a deal-breaker for many born-again Christians. And so Romney, who cannot get above 25% support from Republican voters, is not assured victory. And should he win the nomination, cannot be assured the support of the party's base....Add to this, the chaos in Congress where the House Republican leadership is unable to control the rebellious Tea Party-backed caucus and you have a recipe for disaster for the party and the country....The lesson in all this is clear: the GOP played with fire, and they are getting their hands burned. They unleashed a monster they hoped to turn against Democrats, but it has turned on them first."

"More recently, however, the settlers' attacks have been intended to penalize Palestinians for the smallest political developments in peace talks. The hard-liners, in particular, are so blinkered by their religious-nationalist fundamentalism that they have failed to grasp the reality that Israel's leaders, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, voided the peace process long ago....It was almost certainly not a coincidence that the two attacks inside Israel came a short time after Mahmoud Abbas submitted an application for statehood to the United Nations, in defiance of both Israel and the U.S. The Palestinian Authority president raised the stakes on Palestinian statehood—and so did the settlers."

"It is not about any religion and how much you choose to practice the rites and rituals of your faith – that should always be left up to the individual. It is a matter of imposing this faith or at least one group’s narrow interpretation of it that is so dangerous."

"By claiming the power to interpret a law in line with the Constitution, Bush and Obama have each on numerous occasions asserted the view that the Constitution grants presidents far-reaching powers that cannot be restricted by legislation.  If Obama had wanted to deny that this law could be applied to U.S. citizens (or legal residents), the above paragraph would look very different, although equally unusual in that it would then be rejecting power rather than claiming it."

"What is much more important than excluding “a conflict that can be resolved by means of territorial compromise,” is that the Israeli politics of exclusion in Jerusalem, which could be summarized by Judaization of the holy city, is a roadmap to de-Arabizing, de-Islamizing, de-Christianizing, de-historizing and de-humanizing Jerusalem, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, and this could not be anything but a roadmap to hell."