Another Netanyahu con, Seamus Heaney, Leaving Fingerprints by Imtiaz Dharker, Gaza Freedom March,Arundhati Roy Disturbs Democratic Daydreaming

Another Netanyahu con: The fact that some of Netanyahu's most fanatic cabinet ministers strongly support this proposal is proof that it is a sham. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Likud Minister Beni Begin and Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon are among the most politically extreme and yet enthusiastic about the proposal. Begin told Israeli Radio on Sunday that his enthusiasm stems from the fact that the proposal ensures the expansion of settlements and achieves a marked acceleration in construction. Begin explained that it legitimises the building of 3,000 new residential units in the West Bank, which would house a record breaking 15,000 new settlers to the area within 10 months. In addition, infrastructure construction will continue uninterrupted, which will augment settlement projects after the 10- month freeze is over.

A field day for Seamus Heaney fanatics A tour through County Derry, whose landscape inspired many of the poet's best-known works - Passing Laurel Villa, you'd never suspect it was a Tardis. You have to enter this modestly proportioned house on the outskirts of the County Derry town of Magherafelt to taste its magic. Your first impression is of a beautifully kept B&B. Then you notice the photographs and paintings lining the walls: James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney. There are poems printed on linen, and first editions in glass cases. Upstairs you pass bedroom doors: the Kavanagh Room, the MacNeice Room, the Heaney Room. Laurel Villa is a shrine (though a very unstuffy one) � a genuine House of Poetry.

Leaving Fingerprints by Imtiaz Dharker - If the poet pitches it right, a collection's title can be made to act as a shop window: a place to signpost intentions, gesture at the frame of mind in which the poems were conceived, the wider landscape to which the poet was referring. They tend, of course, to be suggestive rather than prescriptive (think of Larkin's High Windows, or Don Paterson's Landing Light), but if you're after a quiet hint on how to approach the poems inside, this is the place to start. In Imtiaz Dharker's latest collection, however, the title doesn't so much hint as holler. From its subject matter and imagery right down to the pen-and-ink sketches of whorled, undulant landscapes with which she punctuates the poems, this volume is larded and smudged with fingerprints.

The Height Of Kitsch Uri Avnery

Obama- Israels Puppet By Paul Craig Roberts - It didnt take the Israel Lobby very long to bring President Obama to heel regarding his prohibition against further illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Obama discovered that a mere American president is powerless when confronted by the Israel Lobby and that the United States simply is not allowed a Middle East policy separate from Israels

Gaza Freedom March less than one month away - The Gaza Freedom March that will take place in Gaza on 31 December is an historic initiative to break the siege that has imprisoned the 1.5 million people who live there. Conceived in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and nonviolent resistance to injustice worldwide, the march will gather people from all over the world to march -- hand in hand -- with the people of Gaza to demand that the Israelis open the borders.

Arundhati Roy Disturbs Democratic Daydreaming By Trond �verland Listening to Grasshoppers; Field Notes on Democracy, Arundhati Roy, Hamish Hamilton, Penguin, India 2009, 240 pages, 499 rupees. - Arundhati Roy is an unusual Indian woman. Instead of acting the graceful upholder of traditional values, she goes on challenging the hard core of establishment thinking. Roy is India's leading commentator on such evils as militaristic imperialist capitalism, Hindu-supported genocide of Muslims, and dam disasters. In her latest book, Listening to Grasshoppers; Field Notes on Democracy, she hammers at perhaps the most central of all contemporary sacred pillars, i.e. that of democracy, which in her words �have metastasized into something dangerous�.