Last week the United States announced an initial contribution of $40 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN agency dedicated to providing food, jobs and education in the Palestinian territories. According to a U.S. State Department press release, the money will "provide critical health, education, and humanitarian services to 4.7 million Palestinians across the region."

This United Nations agency, which receives the lion's share of its funding from the U.S. government, has in recent years come under fire due to at least one of its employees' admission that it employs members of Hamas.

Last month, due to concerns Hamas had infiltrated UNRWA, the Canadian government quietly decided to redirect funding away from the agency; instead, the $300 million in aid Canada has pledged to the Palestinians for the next five years will go to food aid and the support of the Palestinian justice system in an effort to help the Palestinians build a civil society.

Perhaps the U.S. should follow Canada's lead.

In recent years, watchdog organizations have shone a light on the content of books in schools run by UNRWA in the Palestinian territories - and what they illuminated was a consistent pattern of propaganda denying Israel's right to exist, dehumanizing Israelis and Jews, and stifling any perspective that would promote tolerance and peace. UNRWA schools use the same text books as those that are used in Palestinian schools run by the Palestinian Authority - and by Hamas.

In 2007, Senator Hillary Clinton joined Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, an organization that translates and publishes online the contents of Palestinian media, in presenting a report to Congress analyzing eight textbooks used in Palestinian schools.

In a press conference on Capitol Hill, then-Senator Clinton said, "These school books together with the media are profoundly poisoning the minds of these children."

(Clinton also convened a Senate subcommittee hearing on the subject at which Marcus testified in 2003).

In the aftermath of last week's State Department announcement of its plan to give UNRWA $40 million, I spoke with Marcus and asked whether text books in UNWRA schools continue to incite intolerance and hatred.

He said that, the wake of consciousness-raising including Hillary Clinton's stand, the Palestinian Authority had removed overt anti-Semitism from a new crop of text books. But the new books do not acknowledge Israel's right to exist and, perhaps even more chilling, are laden with content that romanticizes suicide martyrdom to children.

He shared with me some examples: In a textbook used in United Nations' UNRWA schools called "Our Beautiful Language" used for sixth and seventh graders, this verse appears:

"I see my death but I hasten my steps toward it."

In a textbook for eighth grade students called "Reading and Text Part II--Grade 8":

"O heroes, Allah has promised you victory... Don't talk yourselves into flight... Your enemies seek life while you seek death ... Death is not bitter in the mouths of the believers."

In addition to glorifying jihad martyrdom, the new textbooks make intolerance politically correct by avoiding direct mention of violence toward Jews--and instead de-legitimize Israel and Zionism, according to Marcus.

"The new approach is to demonize 'Zionists' and 'Israel,'" he said. "All of Israel is defined as Islamic land, and they say this is part of their historical narrative ...the new schoolbooks call the war against Israel a religious war."

Asked if he feels UNRWA is contributing to this problem of incitement, including incitement of children to suicide martyrdom, Marcus spoke of what he believes is passivity on the part of UNRWA in the face of child exploitation.

"Regarding the incitement of Palestinian children to martyrdom, [UNRWA] does not do anything to put pressure on Palestinian leadership to stop that practice [of encouraging children to become suicide martyrs]--nothing to make it better," Marcus said. "U.N. workers [in the Palestinian territories] for the most part are local Palestinians and for them the issue of hatred is not seen as a problem."

Last week I contacted UNWRA's office in New York and spoke with Andrew Whitley, its director.

Citing Peter Hansen's October, 2004 statement in that there were members of Hamas on the payroll, I asked Whitley if it remained the case that UNRWA does not vet potential employees to ensure they are not members of Hamas. Whitley responded that, while the agency has rules about its employees not bringing politics in to work and not engaging in certain "after-ours behavior," UNRWA does not vet its employees based on whether they belong to Hamas "in the same way, [interviewing for a U.N. job] people don't ask if you're a Democrat or a Republican."

Regarding the contents of textbooks used by UNRWA, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas, Whitley acknowledged that all three bodies use the same text books in their schools, saying that is because "all Palestinians take the same matriculation exams" but said the books "have been found to be clear of anti-Semitic content."

Whitley said that in recent years the Palestinian Authority has made changes to their textbooks "of their own volition" and disputed that there was a cause and effect relationship between the congressional hearings chaired by then-Senator Clinton and the content of Palestinian textbooks. "A few years ago ... [there was] a great deal of pandering to the usual lobbyists," Whitley said. "In the past, elements which could have been considered anti-Semitic [have been removed] ... my understanding is changes were made seven or eight years ago so contents are ones that could be considered appropriate for children of these ages."

In response to an e-mail including excerpts of the verses Marcus quoted to me and asking why the U.N. is using books that extol jihad martyrdom to children, Whitley responded that he would have to "check with our education colleagues to see if those quotes are accurate."

He added, "The second one [from "Reading and Text Part II--Grade 8"] sounds like it could be Koranic. The point comes back to, what is the context and what is it used for?"

(The rest of the poem is as follows: "O heroes, Allah has promised you victory... Don't talk yourselves into flight... Your enemies seek life while you seek death. They seek spoils to fill their empty stomachs while you seek a Paradise as wide as are the heavens and the earth... Death is not bitter in the mouth of the believers. These drops of blood that gush from your bodies will be transformed tomorrow into blazing red meteors that will fall down upon the heads of your enemies.")
[Reading and Texts Part II, Grade 8, p. 16]

Whitley added, "I don't think it's an absolutist issue. Are there problems with Israeli textbooks that deny the green line? Textbooks with people in a state of conflict are often [politically incorrect]. I'm from the U.K. and some of the textbooks we had [in earlier eras] would be completely obnoxious [by today's standards]. We need to look not from a moralistic point of view but look at the actual circumstances under which people are living."

Whitley went on to say that UNRWA has a compulsory program in its schools in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories "to inculcate tolerance and respect for human rights," and he suggested I report on a project UNRWA recently organized that brought Palestinian teens to the U.S. to talk about human rights.

I replied that that does sound like a worthy story. But I thought privately that once a child's mind is poisoned early on by hatred and fanaticism, I question whether later efforts, however well-intentioned, can undo it.

As Hillary Clinton said, "These textbooks don't give Palestinian children an education, they give them an indoctrination."

Between what is appearing on Palestinian television, what is being preached in the mosques, and what is taught in Palestinian schools, Palestinian leadership is doing its best to insure there will be no peace in the middle east in this generation.

As long as the U.S. and others continue subsidizing that indoctrination, how can the world expect peace in the middle east?

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MIDDLETOWN, Conn. — Multiple people have died in an explosion at a power plant in Connecticut and an unknown number of people are injured.

Al Santostefano, the deputy fire marshal in Middletown, tells The Associated Press the explosion happened at 11:17 a.m. Sunday at the Kleen Energy power plant there and portions of the building blew away.

He says 50 workers were inside.

He and Betsy Hard, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, say they do not know how many people were killed or injured.

Hard says Middletown authorities have asked surrounding communities for help, and urban search and rescue teams are on their way.

Democratic operative John Podesta on Sunday offered one of the most stinging rebukes yet of Republican claims that law enforcement agents mishandled their investigation of the Christmas Day bomb plot.

Podesta, the former White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration called it "unconscionable" for GOP leaders to "attack the FBI for their conduct" in the underwear bomber case. Podesta's comments appeared to be in refernce to remarks made recently by Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) who declared that CNN softball interviewer Larry King would have done a "better" job interrogating Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

"They did interrogate him before they put him under for an operation to deal with his wounds," Podesta said, during a roundtable on ABC's "This Week." "And when he came out, the FBI had said -- the intelligence committee could go into this --- the FBI said he decided he wasn't going to talk anymore and at that point they gave him his Miranda warnings. It's a question of how long do you go on for? I think that's a question of judgment.... I tend to listen to the professionals and other people tend to listen to Governor Palin."

Podesta, who heads the left-leaning think tank, the Center for American Progress and is a close adviser to President Obama, didn't stop there. He also took swipes at Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) who put a blanket hold on 70 presidential nominees -- including two high-level intelligence officials -- because he was angry with the state of a tanker contract for his home state.

"I mean what gives," Podesta asked." Are these people serious? Or are they just playing politics?"

His co-panelist, Bloomberg's Al Hunt, did his best to provide an unvarnished answer.

"Senator Shelby is totally fraudulent on this to being with," Hunt said. "He was concerned about pork for his home state of Alabama. This is as bad as the Nebraska carve out. It is outrageous what he did. I think it's an abuse of senatorial prerogative."

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Like so much in my life, I blame it on Richard Nixon.

If Nixon had not purported to be such a fanatic football fan that he designed a special play for Washington Redskins coach George Allen... If, at the height of the Vietnam War, official Washington had not embraced the Redskins and pro football with a bipartisan bellicose frenzy unmatched since the Roman Senate worshipped at the Temple of Mars... If the Redskins under Allen, reflecting the theocratic excess of the sport, did not get down on their knees in the locker room to offer a prayer of gratitude after defeating the Dallas Cowboys...

Nah, it probably would not have made any difference.

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Super Bowl 44 -- Colts vs. Saints -- is here! Follow the action LIVE with Twitter lists.

Know someone we should add to the lists? Email us at twitterlists@huffingtonpost.com.

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Google and the National Security Agency are engaging in a cooperative investigation to determine who exactly from China was trolling through Google's proprietary networks, including e-mail exchanges of Chinese dissidents. They are also joining together to develop new defenses against malicious intrusion and attacks on America's cyber-infrastructure.

Though America's cyber-vulnerability has long been a concern of the intelligence agencies, the Google episode has catapulted it to a national security priority.

No one knows more about China's cyberwar capacities than Mike McConnell, who was director of National Intelligence, the supreme authority over all U.S. intelligence agencies, from Feb. 2007 to Jan. 2009, and director of the National Security Agency from 1992 to 1996.

After attacks last Spring on the Pentagon and the New York Stock Exchange, I sat down with him to discuss the chief suspect, then also China, and to get the lay of the cyberwar battlefield.

Some defense analysts say that 90 percent of the probes and scans of American defense systems as well as commercial computer networks come from China. So I asked McConnell what he thought about that estimate.

"I don't know if it is 90 percent," McConnell hedged, "but they are determined to be the best. Probably the best in the world in the cyber realm are the United States, then the Russians, the British, the Israelis and the French. The next tier is the Chinese.

"The Chinese," he continued, "are exploiting our systems for information advantage -- looking for the characteristics of a weapons system by a defense contractor or academic research on plasma physics, for example -- not in order to destroy data and do damage. But, for now, I believe they are deterred from destroying data both by the need to export to the U.S. and by the need to maintain a stable currency and stable global markets.

"But what happens if we have a war? A capability for information exploitation could quickly be used for information attack to destroy systems on which the U.S. depends."
Surely, though, I suggested, China is not the only one trolling around for information and probing security vulnerabilities in cyberspace?

"Every nation with advanced technology is exploring options to establish policy and rules for how to use this new capability to wage war. Everyone. All the time," McConnell acknowledged.

China is on the screen now because of Google. But, I asked, what about the terror threat?
"Terrorists groups today are ranked near the bottom of cyberwar capability. Criminal organizations are more sophisticated. There is a hierarchy. You go from nation-states, who can destroy things, to criminals, who can steal things, to aggravating but sophisticated hackers.

"At some point, however, the terrorists will get a couple of graduates from one of the best universities with skills in cyber capabilities.

"Sooner or later, terror groups will achieve cyber-sophistication. It's like nuclear proliferation, only far easier. Once you have the knowledge, you don't have to spend years enriching uranium and testing long-range missiles. It wouldn't take long to obtain a sophisticated attack capability. Unlike nation-states that have an interest in a stable globe with stable markets, the terrorists will not be deterred from damaging our data to achieve their goals."

One of the things Google and the NSA are trying to determine is who in China is launching this continuing series of cyber-probes? Is it the government? The People's Liberation Army?
"Their intelligence collection is coordinated," the former spymaster surmised before the Google attacks. "But just as in the U.S., there are competing bureaucracies carrying out the cyber-exploitation mission. In China today, there are thousands of people in a sustained effort to collect intelligence, many of them on an entrepreneurial basis, as it were, within a competing bureaucratic structure."

Are these ever more frequent probes some kind of aggressive initiative on China's part, I wondered, or do they somehow feel threatened by the U.S. and thus are building their own defenses?

"China understands that a strategic vulnerability of the United States is its soft cyber underbelly. I believe they seek to 'own' that space," says McConnell. "The Chinese received a big shock when watching the action of Desert Storm (during the first Iraq war). They saw the power of the U.S. linking computer technology with weaponry to attain precision. We had dropped 1,000 bombs in World War II to destroy targets effectively. In Vietnam, it took hundreds of bombs. Today it takes one.

"One target. One bomb. We dominated the warfare sphere. We owned the ability to locate and see targets through navigation and satellite imagery others did not have. We had air superiority. We could take a valuable target out with one bomb at the time of our choosing.

"I believe the Chinese concluded from the Desert Storm experience that their counter approach had to be to challenge America's control of the battle space by building capabilities to knock out our satellites and invading our cyber networks. In the name of the defense of China in this new world, the Chinese feel they have to remove that advantage of the U.S. in the event of a war. "

For this old intelligence hand who has been listening in on China for years and probing their intentions, that nation's cyberwar capacity is part and parcel of their growing military might.
"The Chinese have developed the capacity to shoot down satellites. They have developed over-the-horizon radar capabilities. They have missiles that can be retargeted in flight. In short, they are seeking ways to keep us at bay in the event of a conflict, to not let us approach China. In time, as their power, influence and wealth grow, China likely will develop 'power projection' weapons systems."

Summing up, McConnell left little doubt about the challenge the U.S. faces from China.
"They see the Middle Kingdom as the center of the world," he said. "They will have gone from what they describe as 'the century of shame' to 'our century' going forward. And they want to protect that from the U.S. or anybody else. The Chinese want to dominate this information space. So, they want to develop the capability of attacking our 'information advantage' while denying us this capability."

Only a year ago China joined readily with President Obama at the G-20 in a coordinated effort to stem the economic meltdown and keep the world economy afloat. Now, suddenly this winter, the U.S. and China seem headed toward some kind of clash. Google has been added to the list of contentious issues along with Taiwan, Tibet and Tiananmen. It might be wise in the circumstances to heed Mike McConnell's considered worries.

(C) 2010 GLOBAL VIEWPOINT NETWORK, TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin didn't cage her answer when pressed Sunday morning as to whether she would consider a run for president in 2012.

"I would, I would if I believe that is the right thing to do for our country and the Palin family. Certainly I would do so," she told "Fox News Sunday," in an interview that was taped before she addressed a Tea Party convention the night before. "I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I could potentially do to help our country ... . I won't close a door that perhaps could be open for me in the future."

In her first Sunday show appearance, the 2008 vice-presidential candidate predicted that, if the election were held today, President Barack Obama would actually lose the office he won just a year-and-a-half ago. But -- citing a column written by Pat Buchanan -- she left open the possibility that his fates could change, particularly (she seemed to wish) if a major attack were to be launched against Iran.

Palin also used her platform to continue a call for the president to rid himself of his closest advisers. On Attorney General Eric Holder, she labeled his handling of captured terrorists -- "allowing them our U.S. constitutional protections when they do not deserve them" -- a firing offense. On Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel, she said his comments calling liberal groups "f-ing retards" was "indecent and insensitive" and cause for his dismissal.

But the former governor went to great and sometimes awkward lengths to insist that when conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh used the same exact term to describe the same exact group, it was simply in the role of political humorist.

"They are kooks, so I agree with Rush Limbaugh," she said, when read a quote of Limbaugh calling liberal groups "retards." "Rush Limbaugh was using satire ... . I didn't hear Rush Limbaugh calling a group of people whom he did not agree with 'f-ing retards,' and we did know that Rahm Emanuel, as has been reported, did say that. There is a big difference there."

In the 30-minute sit down with host Chris Wallace, Palin addressed a wide swath of largely political topics -- the policy minutia, undoubtedly, saved for another time and place.

She dismissed charges that her husband Todd played an unacceptably active role in guiding her administration as governor, after it was revealed in recently disclosed emails that the "first dude" was often consulted on weighty matters.

She acknowledged moderate successes in Obama's foreign policy -- specifically towards Afghanistan and Pakistan -- but still questioned why the president "pals around" with domestic terrorists (Bill Ayers).

Finally, she declined several attempts to weigh in on other perspective 2012 candidates, citing only Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) as someone who she admired and found intriguing.

The impression, in the end, was left that she was charting out a candidacy of her own. Pressed about reports that she was being consulted by a group of Washington-based advisers -- those insider elites she often bemoans -- on issues both domestic and foreign, she didn't exactly shoot down the idea that it was prep work for a White House run.

"Ever since our PAC was formed we have had good people contributing, some, many volunteers, I guess you would call them advisers yes, fire away emails to me every morning saying this is what happened in Washington overnight, you need to be aware of this," Palin said. "I have no idea how conventionally people [run for the White House]. How they open a door that perhaps isn't even open. ... I don't know how any of that stuff works. I'm just appreciative of having some good information at my fingerprints now."

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