Obama to Forge a Greater Role on Health Care  By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG Published: June 6, 2009

WASHINGTON — After months of insisting he would leave the details to Congress, President Obama has concluded that he must exert greater control over the health care debate and is preparing an intense push for legislation that will include speeches, town-hall-style meetings and much deeper engagement with lawmakers, senior White House officials say. Mindful of the failures of former President Bill Clinton, whose intricate proposal for universal care collapsed on Capitol Hill 15 years ago, Mr. Obama until now had charted a different course, setting forth broad principles and concentrating on bringing disparate factions — doctors, insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, labor unions — to the negotiating table.

Tunnel fraud leaves Gazans on verge of financial ruin

  For years, a network of underground smugglers' routes from Egypt to the Gaza Strip has supplied a besieged population with everything from cement to cattle. But now a series of major scams has destroyed the dreams of desperate investors who saw the tunnels as a path out of poverty Peter Bradshaw in Gaza City The Observer, Sunday 7 June 2009 Jawad Tawfiq, a 52-year-old Gazan actor and director, was dubious at first, but his nephew insisted. If they could scrape together enough money, the nephew said, large profits could be made from investing in the tunnels that snake beneath the Egyptian border. "They were liars," Tawfiq said bitterly last week. "They took my money to put in their own pockets. And we are being offered a fraction of what we gave them." At first the tunnels emerged as smuggling routes; then they became the vital lifeline for a Gaza under economic siege by Israel. But many people who invested in the tunnels now see them quite differently - as a source of ruination. The tunnel schemes were advertised as opportunities for doubling and trebling money by unscrupulous figures linked to powerful businessmen in Gaza and, allegedly, to senior officials in Hamas, but have instead led to huge losses for ordinary residents of the Strip.

 

President Ahmadinejad's future could be bound up with the fortunes of the national soccer team Ian Black in Tehran

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This is a report by Felice Gelman of a trip that she took to Gaza last month that was organized by Code Pink. She was part of a delegation from the Wespac Middle East Committee. It is posted with her permission. More reports and pictures can be  foundon her site.

The Destruction

A friend, jeeidunno, has been doing a little bit of part time volunteer radio reporting and has been running a series of interesting interviews. Here is a Noam Chomsky Radio Interview from February 20, 2009, that is about 15 minutes long and in two parts. I think you will enjoy it because he asks great questions and gives the people he talks to plenty of time to answer. Something that you may no longer be used to from our sound bite media. Grab yourself a cup of java and enjoy:

"Noam Chomsky discusses the Israeli Elections, the War on Gaza, Hamas, US Policy, Obama and Activism."

Part I:

Part II is below the fold.

GRITtv with Laura Flanders

Gaza rebuild 'to cost billions'

 "Leave them nothing but their eyes to cry with."

-- Attributed to a Union colonel of the Civil War serving as an adviser to the Prussian General Staff during the Franco-Prussian War.

The United Nations has called for an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza strip. Pope Benedict XVI has also called for a ceasefire, and senior Vatican official Cardinal Renato Martino describes Gaza as "a big concentration camp."

The Senate has passed a resolution endorsing Israel's invasion of Gaza and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) says the U.S. "must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally."

There you have the difference between the U.N., the Catholic Church and the U.S. Congress; the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) doesn't own the U.N. or the Catholic Church.

Thanks to investigative journalist Gareth Porter we know that in January 2006, when Hamas won a 56 percent majority in the Palestinian parliamentary election, the Bush administration initiated actions to overturn the election results. It coerced the UN, the European Union and Russia into demanding that Hamas "disarm" before a political solution could be reached between Palestine and Israel.

This is a signal characteristic of administration's behavior in foreign affairs: require the target to cede its bargaining chips as a precondition of negotiations. In the case of Iran, the "offer they must refuse" is the demand that they give up their UN guaranteed "inalienable right" to peaceful nuclear development. The administration gave Hamas an ultimatum to bare its throat to an armed and U.S. backed Israel, a move that would have been suicidal. Given the overwhelming preponderance of the Israelis' actions and rhetoric over the past three years, I see no way to avoid the conclusion that they consider genocide of a defenseless adversary to be a perfectly legitimate course of action.

And it looks like they can get away with it for at least as long as George W. Bush is in office.

The “children of Israel” takes on new meaning as the Palestinians are bludgeoned into a stupor that is yet another example of a shock and awe campaign. While Hamas is mired in old style guerilla warfare, Israel unveils the newest paradigms of military strategy. 

Michael Scheuer has an interesting series of articles at the Asian Times from the The Jamestown Foundation. A window in the coming Blowback, that has already reared it's ugly head in many places and is stoked by throwing intense flames onto the already started fire?

The latest report is called MUJAHIDEEN BLEED-THROUGH, Part 4 with a subtitle "Palestine and Israel: The ring of terror tightens"

In an interview this morning, Zbigniew Brzezinski condemned the Israeli assault on Gaza. While admitting that missiles fired at Israel over the past months were a provocation by Hamas, he said that there had been no Israeli's killed and that the Israeli response has been disproportionate with more than 400 Palestinians killed so far. While laying blame on the Israeli government, he strongly condemned the Bush Administration for failing to seriously engage in the peace process but instead giving Israel unqualified support.

Palestinian civilians run during an Israeli airstrike in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza on Monday, CNN News report.

 

"It's very bad -- people are running in all directions because of the bombings that are happening everywhere," Karen AbuZayd said from Gaza City.

She spoke as Israeli planes fired missiles on Gaza City. Militants in Gaza had fired more than 40 missiles into southern Israel on Monday, killing one person, Israeli police said.

"People are very agitated because the bombings are now concentrating on individual houses and individual families, apparently," AbuZayd said. "So one's never quite sure where it's going to be."

"People are beginning to fight among themselves, and it's just a chaotic time, she said.

This is the third day of that Israeli's having been pounding population dense Gaza, Israeli troops have sealed in the area, creating seige conditions and a looming huminatarian disaster.

by Jeff Huber

Last week, at a meeting of his country's ruling party, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak accused Iran of "trying to devour the Arab states." Don't worry, Hosni. Iran won't eat you. It can't. It can't sit on you either. It's too far away.

What led Mubarak to say such a mean thing about Iran? Well, it seems that a bunch of Iranian students shouted a bunch of mean things at the Egyptian embassy in Tehran, including their apparently genuine wish that someone would hang Mubarak. The Iranian students shouted mean things about Mubarak because Egypt wouldn't let the Iranian Red Crescent sneak around Israel's blockade of the Gaza strip and deliver food and supplies to Palestinians, who have been reduced to eating grass.

So Iran wasn't trying to eat Arabs; it was trying to feed them. Gee, how did Mubarak get that story all backwards?