UK

Pro-Israel lobby group bankrolling Tories, film claims
(50% of MPs in the shadow cabinet are Conservative Friends of Israel members, according to Channel 4's Dispatches).

Pro-Israeli organisations in Britain look set to see their influence increase if the Conservatives win the next election, a film scrutinising the activities of a powerful but little-known lobby warns today.

At least half of the shadow cabinet are members of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), according to a Dispatches programme being screened on Channel 4. The programme-makers describe the CFI as "beyond doubt the most well- connected and probably the best funded of all Westminster lobbying groups".

Inside Britain's Israel Lobby claims that donations to the Conservative party "from all CFI members and their businesses add up to well over £10m over the last eight years". CFI has disputed the figure and called the film "deeply flawed".

Can India Expect sane behavior from Pakistan?
Prof Dr Colonel K Prabhakar Rao (Retired)

Joanna Blythman at the UK Guardian has won my respect; she's one of the few journalists working at mainstream Western papers who is openly supporting the boycott-Israel movement.

And even more good news; a report of some results of the boycott. And another one here.

Channel4, a channel which seems to pride itself for programming which challenges the UK mainstream (including broadcasting a questionable doumentary last year called The Great Global Warming Swindle) has now broadcast a Christmas message from the president of Iran.
Although I think that a lot of the stupid comments Ahmedinejad has made regarding Holocaust denial and wiping Israel off the map have been really counterproductive, his Christmas message is not a bad one. I've always wished that the powerful non-violent and charitable messages of Jesus was more frequently contrasted with the aggressive foreign policies and poverty-producing economic policies of the so-called "Christian" nations; and he doesn't do a bad job of this.

INDIA IS OVER EXPECTING FROM PAKISTAN

Prof Dr Colonel K Prabhakar Rao (Retired)

Thousands of people have marched in the Sudanese capital Khartoum to call for UK teacher Gillian Gibbons to be shot.
Mrs Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, was jailed by a court on Thursday after allowing children in her class to name a teddy bear Muhammed.

Nice to know that the first Muslim in the UK's House of Lords has his head screwed on right:

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Lord Ahmed of Rotherham called for a sensible and sensitive debate among Muslims on whether veils were needed in today's society...

"But there's nothing in the Koran to say that the wearing of a niqab is desirable, let alone compulsory. It's purely cultural. It's an identity thing which has been misinterpreted.

"They were supposed to be worn so that women wouldn't be harassed.

Nothing is more fun than listening to the US government try to deflect our attention away from the Saudis towards Iran as if Iran were the source of all that is scary.  Not that the Saudis are the source of all that is scary, but dagnabit if they don't give it all they got!  Those wacky Saudis.  Watch this exquistely painful interview with the head of a British Muslim school that uses books saying that all other religions are worthless, etc....  

The Guardian has an interesting report about how quite a few well-known British Jews are speaking out against their community spokespeople for being unrepresentative of the community's diverse views on Israeli policy:

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"We come together in the belief that the broad spectrum of opinion among the Jewish population of this country is not reflected by those institutions which claim authority to represent the Jewish community as a whole," the letter says. Jewish leaders in Britain, it argues "put support for the policies of an occupying power above the human rights of an occupied people" in conflict with Jewish principles of justice and compassion.

The Guardian has the story. A refreshing change from newspaper reports criticising mosques for being 'hotbeds of radicals'.

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Although his mosque is tiny, Satardien has attracted a loyal following from 20 nationalities of Muslims now living in Ireland. Haris Puskar, 19, fled from Bosnia to Ireland with his family while he was still at primary school. A victim of Serb ethnic cleansing in Banja Luka in the early 1990s, Puskar now speaks English with a Dublin accent and is an ardent Gaelic football fan.