Posted By Joshua Keating

Top story: Israeli authorities have sealed off the West Bank for 48 hours, preventing Palestinians from entering Israel, over fears of unrest. The government is concerned about violence this weekend in reaction to Israel's announcement that it will build 1,600 new settler homes in disputed East Jerusalem.

There have also been clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian worshippers and mosques in Jerusalem in recent weeks. Israeli police have also barred men under 50 from attending Friday prayers at the al-Aqsa mosque. The order went into effect at midnight on Thursday and will last until midnight on Saturday. 

In response to Israel's construction announcement, the Arab League withdrew its support for indirect talks between the two sides. U.S. envoy George Mitchell called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday to urge him to go ahead with talks, but Abbas reportedly demanded a freeze on the new settlement project before the Palestinians would return to the table. 

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden left Israel yesterday after a visit that was supposed to reaffirm U.S.-Israel ties, but ended up straining them further. Netanyahu apologized on Thursday for the timing of the East Jerusalem construction announcement. 

Whale wars: The Japanese Coast Guard arrested an anti-whaling activist who boarded a whaling ship in the Southern Antarctic last month.


Asia and Pacific

  • At least 39 people were killed when suicide bombers struck a crowded marketplace in Lahore, Pakistan. 
  • 32 asylum speakers were rescued off the Australian coast. 
  • Thousands were evacuated after two dams burst in Kazakhstan, causing massive flooding.  

Middle East

  • Parties are claiming fraud as early results show a tight race in Iraq. 
  • An American man suspected of being an al Qaeda member  allegedly went on a shooting spree at a hospital in Yemen over the weekend.
  • Two Israeli soldiers were indicted for using a Palestinian boy as a human shield during the Gaza War. 

Europe

  • The Pope met with the Archbishop of Germany to discuss a spiraling child abuse scandal.
  • French President Nicholas Sarkozy is holding separate meetings with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Conservative leader David Cameron today. 
  • The trial began for four British legislators accused of theft by false accounting. 

Africa 

  • Mogadishu's mayor warned residents to flee as fighting between government forces and Shabaab rebels continued. 
  • The Red Cross says  Zimbabwe is on the brink of another food crisis.
  • Gambia's opposition is protesting a wave of arrests of high-ranking officials.

Americas

  • Three strong earthquakes shook Chile yesterday as new president Sebastian Pinera was sworn in. 
  • Mexico City's began marrying gay couples yesterday after legalizing same-sex marriage last December. 
  • The European Parliament voted to condemn Cuba for the death hunger striker Orland Tamayo. 



HAZEM BADER/AFP/Getty Images
EXPLORE:MORNING BRIEF
 
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PYTHAGORUS

3:46 AM ET

March 14, 2010

Israel Seals of West Bank

Is it not truly nauseating to see America's latest Presidential train still bowing and scraping to its master Israel? Emanuel, the seriously unstable "aid" born in USA, names after a Zionist terorist with whom his father "worked" he served military time in the IDF. If a Muslim served in Afghanistan he'd be pilloried and tortured. Mossad has assassinated probably 100,000 innocent people it considers "in the way" and is the grreatest criminal on the planet...naturally as Meyer Lansky of murder inc. was a proime benefactor of Israel as was the organism which began the American Civil War and WW1and WW11to name but three. This rotten "nation" is loathed by moral Jews and non Jews and in fact is NOT a jewish state at all. It is a zionist stae created during the 20's and '30's largely and all through WW11 with the massive assistance of the German Reich. It is not Jewish and it is not any natural product of the "holocaust" it is a politicial sham and the single greatest impediment to peace on earth...Israel not the crazy Mohammedans

Emanuel runs the whitehouse...he comes in before all the rest of them he organises their foreign policy as Israel dictates it.. This is the New World Order in control of all of us, except those with the courage to resist. The sooner you realise it the better for us all..It's time you got your heads around this fact too... that Khazar zionists homeland is not Palestine but Georgia...and all but one of their P.M.s have been Khazar.There is not a single true reason for Israel to have one square inch of Palestine and given 57% of it they began their 61 years of massacres and dispossessions and tortures to get almost all the rest...and we sat here sucking our thumbs and ignoring the screams and the blood and the immorality.The USA doesn't it has given them over $400 billion and all the weapons of horror and mass destruction they want.

Bidan has the gall to commit ALL Americans to serve at Israel's "barbecued Palestinian" party....the Palestinians are still being murdered by the IDF and by obsessed and killer expat. zionists. The USA and its satellites are desperate to keep hidden the truths of Israel's world wide terroism (note how the recent "passport" murders have disappeared already??), the slowly leaking secrets of the holocaust and their slimy deals of WW1 and WW11. Their conspiracy with Israel in offering its own "holocaust" the blood sacrifice of the USS Liberty and its crew to join Israel's phony war in 1967 whilst Israel massacred some 1000 egyptians a la S/S was exposed but has been avoded by the media.Thus we see Netenyahu, a proven genocide specialist saying "sorry we didn't keeep the 1600 newest illegal, UN condemned, provocative settlement houses in land stolen from Palestine, including their cemetries a secret but nice to see you brown-tonguing us like a good little American serf.

How much must the Palestinians take...how much must the rest of us take as Israel and USA turn our planet into a cess pit of blood and gore and nuclear deformed children as it has already and how long must we tolerate what these monsters are fdoing to our environment with their weaponry and explosions, fuel pollution, atomic weapons, chmical and biological pollution and ge volumes of fuel pollution, poisons and much more? How long will it be before you get off the longe and begin to resist and blitz your politicians saying "get them out or get out". Voila

 

THEIDESOFMARCH

12:40 PM ET

March 14, 2010

For Samantha and Pythagoras and those who comment later

Hearts rend. Revenge is written brazenly across the desert up in the sky! But the issues are really basic. Complicating them is methodical distraction. A device not all actually perceive. Needless to say there are wonderful people all over the world who feel the pain and suffering of sprawling chaotic humanity lying at the feet of intensely organized POWER wielded by a mere sliver of the rest - men who will NOT enter where a camel might easier pass! Words of wisdom - metaphorical of course. Demography? Rabbi saul of Tarsus begets a messianic faith adopted by close to today's 2 billion. A gautama meditates and essentially appeals to another near 2 billion today. An arab orphhan cries "O abraham" and accounts now for like 1 and a half billion. Jews comprise today totally about one/seventh of one billion, nearly half of whom are entrenched in their holy land of the United States. We see the picture? This is a new century- Not the 'Bill Krystal new "american century". Tom Harpur Christopher Hitchens and the like are gasping at the blind prevalence of an 'a priori ' conservatism that defies translationary fumblings of various claims to be possessors of the absolute truth ! Is there a stick that can fathom the depths of individual delusion. Despite a somewhat hypocritical Renee Descartes' personally converting the Queen of Sweden to Catholicism ! A 'creative force' assigns the land of milk and honey to a collection of warring tribes, provided they bow to this force in perpetuity! From nobody? Is democracy secular by intrinsic nature? Proclaimed one woman "The Earth is the LORD's and All that there-in IS"

 

THEIDESOFMARCH

1:18 PM ET

March 14, 2010

Continuing The Ides of March here - Pythagoras and Samantha

The long and the short of it. The recently created State of Israel is itself in the process of a belligerent struggle for survival. A resurvival that decries the Jews' long history of persecutions at the hands of POWER. Does that give it the license to perscute others - 'democratically' as it claims. The rapidly progressing growth of the Paletinian people is seen as a cause to adopt measures that will keep Israel Jewish in character. Is this democratic secularism in this century of the freedom of mankind. Mr. Mitchell your adherence to the impossible is outstandingly absurd. There is NO way in which your and your mentors' concept of a 2 state hypothesis in that land can ever proceed neither succeed. The claims of both people need serious evaluation on the touchstone of realities. That piece of land is indivisible George. So re-think this mangled issue on "a posteriori" evidence. Your Foreign Policy not-withstanding, it is not handed to you from the heights of Mt Sinai carved in stone. The earth is the Lords and the two peoples involved must share it without making a mockery of their religiously 'dis-oriented ' cravings. The yarmulke attracts the light of a tribal god to enter into the skull of the wearer ! Come on ! Have we heard of carbon dating? I s there DNA evidence that the Hebrew peoples were in Egypt in abrahamic times? Please let us become reasonable. Commonsense tells us to live together yet respect our obvious differences. Let us proclaim this the world over and loudly - peacefully. This not a storm in a teacup It's simple commonsense. I Know Infuriating counters WILL follow. We will hear and respect your views juast the views of all merit respect. The watchword IS Negotiation. But on what "that IS the question George". It is no more just "to be OR Not to be". I rest my case, with your permission

 

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