In saying her critics ''manufactured a blood libel'', Sarah Palin used a phrase linked to the false accusations made for centuries against Jews, often to malign them as child murderers who coveted the blood of Christian children.

Blood libel has been a central fable of anti-Semitism in which Jews have been accused of using the blood of Gentile children for medicinal purposes or to mix in with matzo, or unleavened bread traditionally eaten at Passover.

The NSW Labor Party asked political donors to pay $3500 a head to join Premier Kristina Keneally at a U2 concert on December 14 in a last-ditch bid to raise funds ahead of the election - but did not get a single taker.

In the end, Ms Keneally did not show up on the night, sources said, and Labor head office and government staffers were left to enjoy the sounds of Bono and the Edge.

Ms Keneally was to host the box in one of the final fundraisers of the year before new laws on January 1 restricted donations from corporations to $5000 a year or $2000 per candidate.

Julia Gilliard ended the parliamentary year relieved to have survived, but clearly aware that mere political survival will not be enough in 2011.  Voters want more from their Prime Minister than boasts about sustaining a minority government.

She is confident. During Monday's brief House of Representatives sitting an Opposition heckler called out to Gillard : "How are you going in Victoria?" The Prime Minister replied: "How are you going here?"

Sara Palin aide Rebecca Mansour says the map Palin published targeting Congresswoman Giffords was just . . . "a political tool" ...

"And I just want to clarify again, maybe it wasn't done on the record enough by us when this graphic came out, the graphic is, we never, ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply crosshairs."

Bruce then interjected, describing the marks on the map as a "surveyor symbol," & Mansour agreed. "It is a surveyor symbol."

Um hmm.

There is a sickness at the heart of American society. That sickness is the American ruling class, that one per cent who make 24 percent of the country's income; the same one percent who have received 4/5ths of the total increase in US income since 1980. The level of inequality in America puts the country on a par with Russia and Turkey.

The elite in America will do anything to protect their privileged position. Their strategy is twofold - to subdue enemies abroad and to attack those at home who might resist and so make the world safe for US capital.

On New Year's Day, a devastating terrorist bombing at a Coptic church in Egypt killed 21 people and injured 79 others.

Although the identity of the culprits was not known, it was assumed that they were Muslim extremists, intent on targeting those they saw as heretics. Religious tensions immediately rose in the country, and angry Copts stormed streets, battled with police, and even vandalized a nearby mosque.

A police officer who for seven years lived deep undercover at the heart of the environmental protest movement, travelling to 22 countries gleaning information and playing a frontline role in some of the most high-profile confrontations, has quit the Met, telling his friends that what he did was wrong.

PC Mark Kennedy, a Metropolitan police officer, infiltrated dozens of protest groups including anti-racist campaigners and anarchists, a Guardian investigation reveals.

America's international standing as a fair and just country does not match its superpower status as the world's greatest democracy.

When it comes to basic human rights it is there in the gutter alongside some of the world's most toxic, tinpot dictatorships and authoritarian regimes.

So there's little surprise that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange fears being extradited to The States where some politicians and Pentagon officials have already called for his execution and Attorney General Eric Holder admits his government may invoke the US Espionage Act.

A shocking report prepared for Prime Minister Putin by the Foreign Military Intelligence Directorate (GRU) states that one of the United States top experts in biological and chemical weapons was brutally murdered after he threatened to expose a US Military test of poison gas that killed hundreds of thousands of animals in Arkansas this past week.

Bank of America Gears Up for WikiLeaks Fallout; Wall Street Takes Note

By Justin Grant January 03, 2011 URL:

Bank of America is gearing up to defend itself in the event that it proves to be the bank that WikiLeaks' Julian Assange has pledged to take down.

After seeing its stock swoon last November amid rumors that Assange was in possession of an executive's hard drive containing potentially damning information about the firm, Bank of America has been on high alert.

An Inquiry into the government's $5.3 billion power sale is to be held only weeks before the state election after its chairman, Fred Nile, said fresh legal advice did not affect its plans and the President of the Legislative Council, Amanda Fazio, revealed that her ''inclination'' was not to intervene.

The Premier, Kristina Keneally, yesterday released new legal advice from the Crown Solicitor, Ian Knight.

The US embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any European Union country which opposed genetically modified (GM) crops, newly released WikiLeaks cables show.