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- Democracy Now with Amy Goodman | TV Channel

- America's #1 Populist Jim Hightower On Air

- Mark Fiore Animated Political Cartoons ^

- Documentary - Bilderberg and the Obama Deception ^

Jewish TV Network - Currently - The Assault on the Gaza Flotilla ^

Al Arabiya NewsChannel - Home Page ^

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Top Stories - Israeli Blockade of Palestne

Analysis | Now Israel Is Under Siege ^
IPS News - By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler - Monday, June 7, 2010

JERUSALEM - The elemental reason for the outbreak of the seminal June 1967 Arab-Israel war was Israel's self-inflicted doom prophecy that "the Arabs just want to throw us in the sea". In effect, that prophecy never materialised.

What is certain in the aftermath of the confrontation on the high seas is that the eastern Mediterranean is headed towards a long hot summer. The summer seas are calm, warm and propitious for peace flotilla after peace flotilla to breach the Israeli blockade and reach the shallow Gaza shores.

Beneath the surface, though, a storm is gathering, the sea is boiling.

"What started as a tragic confrontation is taking on unexpected proportions with great strategic implications for the region," said Amos Gilad, a top Israel defence official speaking on Israel Army radio. "Imagine states which previously were allies literally confronting one another. We're on the brink of that."

Weekend reports from Ankara suggest that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was himself considering boarding another anti-Israeli blockade boat that would be accompanied by a Turkish navy vessel.

"If he comes here with Turkish warships there can be no doubt that it would amount to a declaration of war," warned Uzi Dayan, a major-general in the Israeli army reserve and a formed head of the National Security Council. "We need to draw a clear line and say that whoever crosses it will not be boarded, but sunk," Dayan added on Army Radio.

Also Monday it was reported that Iranian aid ships will soon set sail for Gaza with a consignment of food, medications, and medical equipment. "The ships will be sent to Gaza by end of this week," Iranian Red Crescent director Abdolrauf Adibzadeh told the IRNA news agency.

Earlier, Ali Shirazi, a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards were ready to provide a military escort to cargo ships trying to break the Israeli maritime blockade.

"Iran's Revolutionary Guards naval forces are fully prepared to escort the convoys to Gaza with all their powers and capabilities," Shirazi was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency.

Nearly a week after the confrontation on the high seas, it's not only Gaza that's besieged, also Israel.

Turkey wants summit declaration to condemn raid | Turkey heaps pressure on Israel over Gaza ^
alarabiya.net - Monday, June 7, 2010

Muslim leaders rallied round Turkey at a regional summit on Monday, backing their host's call for Israel to end its blockade of Gaza immediately and face international punishment for its deadly raid on an aid ship.

In a new bid to break Gaza blockade Iran Red Crescent to send 2 aid ships to Gaza ^
alarabiya.net / Agencies - Monday, June 7, 2010

The Iranian Red Crescent has decided to send two aid ships to Gaza this week in the latest bid to break the blockade imposed on the Palestinian territory by Iran's regional arch foe Israel.

Red Crescent director for international affairs Abdul Rauf Adibzadeh told the state IRNA news agency late on Sunday that the decision to send the ships was taken after a meeting with the foreign ministry.

"One ship will carry donations made by the people and the other will carry relief workers. The ships will be sent to Gaza by end of this week," Adibzadeh said.

A Global Civil Society Campaign to De-Legitimise Israel? ^
IPS - By Thalif Deen - Friday, June 4, 1020

United Nations | What is the next course of action? A global civil society campaign to de-legitimise Israel? Formal or informal sanctions by individual states? Worldwide arrest warrants?

All of these - and more - are in the realm of possibility, say two leading constitutional experts, Professor Richard Falk, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Michael Ratner, president of the New York- based Centre for Constitutional Rights.

The gridlock in the Security Council is likely to remind civil society forces that justice for the Palestinians will depend on bottom-up conflict resolution, and a global delegitimising campaign that worked so well in the struggle to defeat South African racism, Falk told IPS.

Asked how Israel could be punished and/or penalised for its atrocities - if action is to be taken outside the Security Council chambers - Falk said there are two sets of punitive responses outside of the U.N. system.

First, by strong diplomatic initiatives, as for instance, the deterioration of Israeli trade and security relations with Turkey, and others; and by some governments adopting informal or formal sanctions - again the South Africa analogy is relevant, he said.

Secondly, by civil society initiatives that move toward further de-legitimisation of Israel, such as a citizen tribunal on Israeli aggression on the high seas or slow genocide in Gaza; an intensifying campaign fueled by outrage, including the failure of the United Nations to uphold international law in relation to Israel, said Falk, who is also professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University.

Ratner told IPS the injured citizens from various countries can and should begin criminal prosecutions in their home countries against Israeli officials who ordered this attack in international waters.

"Worldwide arrest warrants should be issued. Israeli officials should understand that they may have impunity in Israel, but that they leave Israel at their peril," he said.

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International News

- Real clear Politics Daily Rundown ^

France & Britain urge international Gaza inquiry ^
alarabiya.net

The foreign ministers of France and Britain said an "international" inquiry was necessary to resolve the dispute over Israel's deadly raid on Gaza aid ships, after talks early Monday in the French capital.

"We think it is very important that there is a credible and transparent investigation... there should be an international presence at minimum" in the probe, said British Foreign Secretary William Hague at a press conference with his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner.

Kouchner added that the international inquiry was needed "because several countries are involved" in the incident.

Three Generation Bush family connections to Fascism ^
The Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade - Issue #54, Press for Conversion! - August 2004

This issue focuses entirely on the Bush family and, in particular, its well-documented but little-known links to fascism.

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United States Government

Doubts Grow Over Israel's Value as U.S. Ally ^

IPS - By Jim Lobe - Thursday, June 3, 2010

WASHINGTON - Israel's disastrous raid in international waters . . . on a Turkish-flagged flotilla carrying humanitarian supplies to Gaza has resurrected a long-running debate over whether Washington's close alliance with the Jewish state really serves U.S. strategic interests. Ironically, one negative answer was provided in Jerusalem Tuesday by none other than the head of Israel's vaunted foreign-intelligence agency, Mossad.

Noting, among other things, the disappearance of the Soviet and Western blocs with the end of the Cold War, Mossad chief Meir Dagan told members of the Israeli parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee Tuesday that "Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden."

That view was emphatically re-asserted the following day by one of Washington's most highly respected and centrist Middle East analysts in an essay entitled "Israel as a Strategic Liability?" that instantly became must-reading for regional specialists both in and outside the administration of President Barack Obama.

"At the best of times, an Israeli government that pursues the path to peace provides some intelligence, some minor advances in military technology, and a potential source of stabilising military power that could help Arab states like Jordan," wrote Anthony Cordesman, a long-time fixture of the foreign policy establishment at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

"It is time Israel realised that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel, and that it (has to) become far more careful about the extent to which it test(s) the limits of U.S. patience and exploits the support of Americans Jews," he went on, noting the Israeli government "should be sensitive to the fact that its actions directly affect U.S. strategic interests in the Arab and Muslim worlds..."

"This does not mean taking a single action that undercuts Israeli security, but it does mean realising that Israel should show enough discretion to reflect the fact that it is a tertiary U.S. strategic interest in a complex and demanding world," he wrote.

"Israel's government should act on the understanding that the long-term nature of the U.S.-Israel strategic relationship will depend on Israel clearly and actively seeking peace with the Palestinians – the kind of peace that is in Israel's own strategic interests," he added.

Cordesman's observations were not new. Indeed, some variant of them have been expressed with increasing frequency by a growing number of mainstream analysts over the last four years, particularly since the tactically successful but strategically disastrous military campaigns conducted by Israel in Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza 2008-9.

HELD OVER | "Those Damn Immigrants Again" - The Ethnic Mix That Launched America ^
Consortium News - By William Loren Katz - May 28, 2010

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Activism at the Ground Level

The only recognizable feature of hope is action.
-- Grace Paley

"The strength of a democracy is, as in nature, in the roots, not in the flamboyant leaves and flowers that wither and die after a couple of terms in public office."
-- Editor, homosapiens.ki

CIA Medics Honed Torture Techniques on Detainees, Group Charges ^
IPS - By William Fisher - Monday, June 7, 2010

New York - A major human rights organisation claims it has uncovered evidence indicating that the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush conducted "illegal and unethical human experimentation" and research on detainees in CIA custody.

The group, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), claims "the apparent experimentation and research appear to have been performed to provide legal cover for torture, as well as to help justify and shape future procedures and policies governing the use of the 'enhanced' interrogation techniques".

Its new report, "Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the 'Enhanced' Interrogation Programme", claims to be the first to provide evidence that CIA medical personnel engaged in the crime of illegal experimentation after 9/11, in addition to the previously disclosed crime of torture.

"This evidence indicating apparent research and experimentation on detainees opens the door to potential additional legal liability for the CIA and Bush-era officials. There is no publicly available evidence that the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel determined that the alleged experimentation and research performed on detainees was lawful, as it did with the 'enhanced' techniques themselves," PHR contends.

"The CIA appears to have broken all accepted legal and ethical standards put in place since the Second World War to protect prisoners from being the subjects of experimentation," said Frank Donaghue, PHR's chief executive officer. "Not only are these alleged acts gross violations of human rights law, they are a grave affront to America's core values."

PHR is calling on President Barack Obama to direct the attorney general to investigate these allegations, and if a crime is found to have been committed, to prosecute those responsible.

US rock band The Pixies and Other Groups Cancel Israel gigs ^
Israeli human rights activists asked band for boycott
alarabiya.net - Sunday, June 6, 2010

U.S. alternative rock band The Pixies on Sunday cancelled their first-ever performance in Israel, the Tel Aviv promoters said in a statement, without giving any reason for the last-minute decision. The group was to have performed a single gig in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, but pulled out just days after a deadly Israeli naval raid on an international aid flotilla, which has provoked a huge international backlash.

The move follows a string of cancellations by high profile musicians, including Britain's Elvis Costello, rock guitarist Carlos Santana and rap forefather Gil Scott-Heron, after they came under pressure over Israel's policies towards the Palestinians.

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Corporate Life

First car factory to use to use renewable energy | Renault Tanger announces eco-friendly factory ^
alarabiya.net - Saturday, June 5, 2010

The Renault factory at Tangiersin Morocco will reduce its carbon dioxide emissionsby 98 ercent.

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Economy and Finance

- Bloomberg Economic News ^

loomberg Current Worldwide Financial News

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Environment

Italy: Building a Sustainable Future With Straw and Wood ^
IPS - By Stefania Milan - June 1, 2010

Florence - Pescomaggiore village, destroyed by the earthquake that hit the mountain region of L’Aquila in central Italy on Apr. 6, 2009, is now being rebuilt by its 40-odd inhabitants with straw and wood.

"We wanted to rebuild a sustainable Pescomaggiore,’’ explained Antonio Cacio from MISA, the association coordinating volunteers and locals engaged in the project .

The houses have a simple wooden structure and straw padding but the roofs are clad with solar panels and there is a system to collect rainwater.
ow working abroad.

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Global Warming / Climate Change

Infrastructure battered by war, low investment | Lack of water threatens Iraq's long-term stability ^
alarabiya.net - Sunday, June 6, 2010

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Science and Technology

- Bloomberg Index of Current Science New ^

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Social Isssues

- Bloomberg Index of Current Science New ^

Green Revolution Has Little to Offer New Hungry Mouths
^
IPS News - By Marwaan Macan-Markar - Saturday, June 5, 2010

BANGKOK - As it took root in the rice fields across Asia, it was hailed as the solution to the hunger afflicting millions of people in the region. But four decades on, the much vaunted Green Revolution appears to have reached its limits, unable to meet new demands, to feed new mouths.

United Nations food experts are increasingly touting the region’s chronic hunger figures for 2009 to confirm this reality. Last year saw the proportion of people in the grip of chronic hunger hit 17 to 18 percent in the Asia- Pacific region, up from 16 percent in 2006.

It was the first time that the number of the hungry had risen since the Green Revolution spurred a downward trend. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned this week of a change in grain production since the late 1960s, which saw the output of rice, a regional staple, triple.

The Green Revolution was a series of initiatives, including the introduction of high-yielding rice varieties, launched in the late 1960s to boost agricultural production and feed a growing world population.

According to Hiroyuki Konuma, the FAO’s regional head, the high yield of rice resulting from the introduction of the Green Revolution accounted for a 300 percent increase in the past 40 years, consequently seeing a "deduction of food prices by 40 percent in real terms" and helping to "reduce the proportion of hunger from 34 percent in 1970 to 16 percent in 2006."

But with a repeat of such achievement now in question, the FAO is appealing to the heartstrings of the world’s public and private sector investors to perform a rescue act to help feed children dying of chronic hunger. Among the grim facts the FAO is laying on the table are the 14,000 children who die of hunger every day and the five million children who die every year, the majority of whom are in Asia.

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Violence - Civil and Governmental

Evidence of cluster bomb use - US killed civilians in Yemen attack ^
^
alarabiya.net - London/Cairo - Monday. June 7, 2010
A U.S. cruise missile carrying cluster bombs was behind a December attack in Yemen that killed 55 people, most of them civilians, Amnesty International said.

The human rights group says it has evidence that points to U.S. involvement in airstrikes on suspected al-Qaida hideouts in Yemen late last year, and criticizes Washington for allegedly using cluster munitions and not taking precautions to avoid civilian casualties. The group is also urging the United States to acknowledge role it played in the attack.

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Archive of Miscellany

- Dance Video | MICA | "Blame It On The Girls ^

- Musical Group Video | Neville Brothers - Yellow Moon ^

- Out of the Hills | Jesus Is Coming Soon -The Oak Ridge Boys ^

- Musicians mix Coldplay and Taylor Swift together - Enjoy ^
- Music Video | "Democracy Is Coming to the USA" - Leonard Cohen

- usic Video | Leonard Cohen | "First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin ^

- Music Video | Jordan Page - "Listen" | What If This Happened On Your Block? ^

- Music Video | Jordan Page - "Pendulum ^

-Music video - Neville Brothers performing "Fearless ^

- Video - The Arts of Peace and Violence ^

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