Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/21/overconsumption-environment-relationships-annie-leonard

Story of Stuff creator Annie Leonard's new book examines the high price of the western world's obession with all things material

If you really want to understand a country, a society, or even a civilization, don't turn to its national museums or government archives. Head to the tip. According to Annie Leonard – former Greenpeace activist, unwavering optimist and waste obsessive – the tip is akin to society's secret journal. "Stuff" became a fascination for Leonard in her teens, choosing field trips to landfills while at university when she began to question how we came to build an economy based purely on resources.

Link: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m67261&hd=&size=1&l=e

"The earth is not dying, it is being killed. And those who are killing it have names and addresses." Utah Phillips. Call me a cynic, but as soon as I hear of the latest "rogue state", declared by the US and endorsed, invariably, by UK and Israel - a "rogue", always far away, invariably either poverty stricken, or embargoed - I reach for a 1993 "Encyclopaedia of Word Geography", turn to the page on the latest declared "enemy", and look at the box which lists: "Major resources."

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25782.htm

Journalism and the Israeli government are in love again. It's Islamic terror, Turkish terror, Hamas terror, Islamic Jihad terror, Hezbollah terror, activist terror, war on terror, Palestinian terror, Muslim terror, Iranian terror, Syrian terror, anti-Semitic terror... But I am doing the Israelis an injustice. Their lexicon, and that of the White House – most of the time – and our reporters' lexicon, is the same. Yes, let's be fair to the Israelis. Their lexicon goes like this: Terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror.

Link: http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0610/Large_majorities_on_Hill_back_Israels_flotilla_raid.html

Even as Israel shows signs of loosening its blockade of Gaze, large majorities in the House and Senate have signed off on letters supporting the blockade and defending Israel's enforcement of it against a Turkish vessel. Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, along with 83 other senators, have signed the Senate version of the letter, which is backed by AIPAC; 298 members of the House have signed on.

Link: http://www.truthtellers.org/alerts/israelsbiglie.htm

With incredible audacity, the government of Israel (as well as the hugely popular “We Con the World” video) claims there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. This falsehood, promoted worldwide by Israel’s PR arm, the Anti-Defamation League, is obediently repeated by Christian conservative media and leadership.

Link: http://www.wbtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=12680124

A man says he found oil inside his oysters while eating at a restaurant located north of Charlotte this weekend. Matthew Robertson is fascinated at the thought that an oyster from the Gulf Coast that was possibly soaked in oil made it onto his dinner plate.

Link: http://beforeitsnews.com/news/83/012/Sheep_For_Slaughter:_Is_the_Elite_Really_Trying_to_KILL_us.html

There has been much in the mainstream news recently about population control. In fact, there seems to be a concerted effort by the Elite to introduce the idea as a legitimate debate about dealing with the “problem” of over-population. It appears the elite are trying to legitimize these claims using the global warming argument that CO2, which humans exhale, must be minimized at all costs.

Link: http://thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/the-collapsing-western-way-of-life/

The Age of Enlightenment was born sometime around the beginning of the eighteenth century. A mere three-quarters of a century later, industrialization ushered in the Age of Endarkenment, and human life has grown more and more perilous ever since. The Golden Age of capitalism cannot be recreated merely by applying the right mixture of spending, subsidies, re-regulation, and international agreements. Because the economic advantages of industrialization rely on overproduction and profit, balanced trade is impossible if the advantage is to be preserved; it entails no economic profit. Industrialism is a Hegelian synthesis which embodies the forces for its own destruction. The greatest threat to the Western Way of Life is the Western Way of Life itself.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/econ-j21.shtml

The oil eruption in the Gulf of Mexico—the worst environmental disaster in US history—is devastating local economies. Tens of thousands of fishermen, tourist-industry and oil workers are directly affected. The indirect ramifications are incalculable.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/bphe-j21.shtml

Grand Isle, LA visitors look onto the contaminated beachTwo months since the start of the Gulf Coast oil spill, residents, fishermen and experts throughout the Gulf of Mexico are reporting respiratory problems and other illnesses attributable to oil contamination. “We’re getting sick down here. People are losing their voices; our noses are running and our eyes are crying all the time,” said Dean Blanchard, operator of a Grand Isle, Louisiana-based shrimp distribution company. “I went down to Bourbon Street in New Orleans and the urine on the cement smelled better than the air does down here.”

Link: http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0621/internal-bp-document-claims-gulf-oil-gusher-jetting-100000-barrels-day/

US outrage mounted against BP as the oil spill reached its two-month mark and an internal BP document showed as many as 100,000 barrels of oil could be gushing daily into the Gulf of Mexico. The document showed the energy giant's own worst-case scenario of the amount of leaking oil at possibly 20 times more than its early public estimates.

Link: http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1381.htm

In our January 1, 2005 report titled “Now Visible Comet Heralds Warning of Doom to World” we had stated that the appearance of the newly discovered Comet Machholz was a harbinger of ill tidings for humanity as this green astral visitor to our Solar System was well known by our ancient ancestors to be directed by the messenger of the god’s Hermes whose duty was to guide the souls of the dead down to the underworld. In April, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon, sitting 5,000 feet above the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico, drilled to a depth of 18,000 feet (5,486 meters) and unleashing a catastrophe of such proportions it now endangers our entire World.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/06/20106213322754222.html

A US congressman has accused BP of playing down its concerns about the volume of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. Representative Ed Markey, the chairman of a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, released an undated, internal BP document, which estimates a worst-case scenario oil flow of 100,000 barrels (15.9 million litres) of oil per day.