two things

I should have said this a while ago but Gus Van Zant and Sean Penn made one hell of a fucking movie.

Joseph Lowery's speech was awesome too. Do yourself a favor and don't read the comments.

The United Nations Relief and Workers Agency (UNRWA) has suspended aid to Gaza after one of it's contractors was shot dead and two other's wounded by Israeli tank fire on their way to pick up goods from a border crossing. The contractors had coordinated their movements with the Israeli military and were driving UN flagged vehicles, as reported in this NYT article.

Israel bombed a UN monitoring post on the Israeli/Lebanese border during the war of 2006 killing four peacekeepers despite a reported 10 calls to cease fire around the position before it was finally hit.

The Guardian has reported that unnamed sources close to the Obama transition team believe he will pursue low-level or clandestine diplomatic relations with Hamas and that a consensus is slowly growing in Washington that the Bush administrations policy of isolating Hamas has clearly failed.

I like this Tariq Ali piece from December 30th.

and on a lighter note:

Al Franken is good enough, smart enough, and dog-gonnet, people do like him.