Link: http://www.thenation.com/article/36608/hole-world

Now Everyone gathered for the town hall meeting had been repeatedly instructed to show civility to the gentlemen from BP and the federal government. These fine folks had made time in their busy schedules to come to a school gymnasium on a Tuesday night in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, one of many coastal communities where brown poison was slithering through the marshes, part of what has come to be described as the largest environmental disaster in US history.

Link: http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=294219

Bethlehem - Ma'an - The Free Gaza Movement says it will take the State of Israel to the International Criminal Court over last month's raid on an aid ship that left nine civilians dead. Twelve lawyers from countries whose citizens took part in the voyage are collecting evidence and testimonies from passengers, human rights lawyer Audrey Bomse told Ma’an.

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/06/24-10

Sperm whales feeding even in the most remote reaches of Earth's oceans have built up stunningly high levels of toxic and heavy metals, according to American scientists who say the findings spell danger not only for marine life but for the millions of humans who depend on seafood.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/24/peru-president-blocks-conservation-law

Indigenous groups in Peru responded with fury after the country's president, Alan Garcia, blocked a law which would have helped them stop oil, gas and mining projects on tribal land. Amazon tribes and other groups said the intervention would hinder efforts to protect their way of life and to control the multibillion dollar rush for natural resources in the rainforest.

Link: http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0624/biologist-ocean-pollution-threatening-human-food-supply/

Sperm whales feeding even in the most remote reaches of Earth's oceans have built up stunningly high levels of toxic and heavy metals, according to American scientists who say the findings spell danger not only for marine life but for the millions of humans who depend on seafood.

Link: http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0624/senator-reintroduces-legislation-shift-tax-burden-billionaires/

Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is sick of the super-rich avoiding estate taxes. On Thursday, he made good on his word: he today introduced legislation to restore the estate tax on the wealthiest Americans, which he says would bring in at least $264 billion in the next ten years to help reduce the national debt.

Link: http://www.rense.com/general91/pred.htm

Report by Clif High of www.halfpasthuman.com "The oceans are described as being not as before." "oceanic nightmare." "many areas of costal habitat are forecast to be effectively forbidden for use." "Destruction of life support systems." "humans and other life directly impacted by large clouds of drifting complex methane..." "Substantial changes within our planetary environment under ocean" "The un-natural disasters are showing as being a particular problem over July through August"

Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/mcclintock06242010.html

In the Gulf, the forever spill has become the forever war. A calamity of untold magnitude is unfolding and, alongside it, a strange militarization has emerged, as the language for managing the crisis becomes the language of war. War-talk is firing from the mouths of local officials, TV pundits, the Coast Guard and journalists. Campaigning frantically to protect Louisiana, Governor Bobby Jindal urges the TV cameras: “We need to see that this is a war….a war to save Louisiana…a war to protect our way of life.”

Link: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article19949

Call me a conspiracy theorist. I have speculated since the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963 that the true source of power in this country is neither the people nor those we elect to public office. It is neither the governors nor the congress nor the regal senators nor the president of the United States that call the shots on national policy. It is rather the corporate aristocracy that is neither elected nor American by any standard.

Link: http://news.antiwar.com/2010/06/24/petraeus-expected-to-tone-down-attempts-to-avoid-civilian-deaths/

Though the replacement of Gen. Stanley McChrystal with Gen. David Petraeus as the commander in Afghanistan isn’t expected to have any major positive effects, like ending the war or at least slowing the escalation, it seems that it is having some negative effects.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/rudd-j24.shtml

In extraordinary events over the past 24 hours, Rudd was removed through a campaign orchestrated by multi-national mining companies, the Murdoch media and other corporate interests and implemented through a series of backroom manoeuvres by right-wing factional warlords and union bureaucrats.

Link: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m67345&hd=&size=1&l=e

June 24, 2010 - "Where is my daddy? Why is he not coming home? I want my daddy," sobs seven- year-old Yasmin, her big blue eyes filling with tears. She wakes up crying every night. "My life only began when I met him. I will never meet such a wonderful man again," Yasmin's mother Moira Julani tells IPS. While it is just another statistic for the Israelis, another Palestinian family has been torn apart. U.S. citizens, 17-year-old Hannah, 15-year-old Mirage and seven-year-old Yasmin are now fatherless. Former Texan Moira, nee Reynolds, who left the U.S. 17 years ago to start a new life with her husband in Jerusalem, has lost her soul mate...

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/24-2

The cops were on all sides —on foot, on bikes or motorcycles, in paddy wagons or unmarked minivans. The protest was boisterous and peaceful. People danced and sang and talked to strangers — which is the greatest thing about protests. Still, it’s hard not to feel anxious when you are surrounded by guns.

Link: http://my.auburnjournal.com/detail/153055.html

Earlier this week Reuters reported on a massive amount of methane discovered in the Gulf of Mexico. Texas A&M University oceanography professor John Kessler said methane gas levels in some areas are “astonishingly high.” Kessler recently returned from a 10-day research expedition near the BP oil gusher. Kessler’s team measured both surface and deep water within a 5-mile (8 kilometer) radius of BP’s destroyed wellhead. “There is an incredible amount of methane in there,” Kessler told reporters. He said the level may be as much as one million times the normal level.

Link: http://revolutionradio.org/?p=2244

Buried in an article on Gulf of Mexico scenarios and predictions, Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post quotes Matthew Simmons, founder and chairman emeritus of Simmons & Company International. In response to a tropical storm brewing in the Caribbean, Simmons says: “We’re going to have to evacuate the gulf states. Can you imagine evacuating 20 million people?… This story is 80 times worse than I thought.”

Link: http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0624/part-enron-bosss-conviction-quashed-supreme-court/

Two high-profile prosecutions criticized; Conrad Black's fraud conviction vacated; Part of Enron boss’s conviction vacated

Link: http://www.infowars.com/kagan-calls-israeli-judge-dredd-my-judicial-hero/

New video has emerged on the eve of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings which shows Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan praising an Israeli activist judge as “my judicial hero,” underscoring Kagan’s alarming hostility to the Constitution and her views on empowering appointed judges with political agendas. Under Kagan’s definition of the government’s role in policing free speech, the state would also have a remit to censor things like newspaper editorials, as well as the political opinions of radio talk show hosts or television reporters.

Link: http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0624/government-ron-paul-stands-oil-spill-subpoena-power/

When the House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to grant subpoena powers to a presidential commission formed to investigate the BP oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, the sole "no" vote was cast by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). A Paul spokeswoman declined to comment on the vote, but the Texas libertarian is well known as a supporter of offshore drilling.

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25806.htm

In an interview with the ABC's Foreign Correspondent, Mr Assange said cryptically of WikiLeaks' current project: "I can give an analogy. If there had been mass spying that had affected many, many people and organisations and the details of that mass spying were released then that is something that would reveal that the interests of many people had been abused."

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25801.htm

The superpower under whose patronage we shelter is becoming increasingly weak and increasingly distant, and the Middle East is becoming unstable.

Link: http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/who-is-behind-the-terrorists-one-guess/

Just for a moment, I want you to consider the possibility that maybe 99% of the terrorists in the world are manufactured fakes, a bloody theater to serve the interests not of fringe groups, but of entire nation-states?

Link: http://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/innocent-until-proven-indigent

The numbers are staggering: 90 percent of all criminal defendants fall below the poverty line; incarceration rates have increased 800 percent in the last 30 years; and the statistics continue to pile up as the disparity between resources for public defense and prosecution widen. The ability for indigent defenders to find a state-provided defense, with the time and money to offer a thorough representation, has become increasingly rare.

Link: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51946

Escalating Washington's growing confrontation with Iran, both houses of Congress Thursday approved a sweeping unilateral sanctions package designed to pressure Tehran into curbing its nuclear programme.

Link: http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/06/anti-iran-bill-in-house-makes-claims-with-no-basis-in-fact/

Representative Jim Costa (CA) sponsored a bill introduced into the U.S. Congress on Tuesday “Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives on the one-year anniversary of the Government of Iran’s fraudulent manipulation of Iranian elections, the Government of Iran’s continued denial of human rights and democracy to the people of Iran, and the Government of Iran’s continued pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.”

Link: http://www.paltelegraph.com/diaries/85-diaries/6500-the-zionist-undercover-hasbara-

In their endeavor to beautify occupation and killing the children, to legitimize the Gaza siege and starving a whole people of ethnically cleansed refugees, the zionists are inventive in recruiting a huge army of undercover internet “surfers” to clean the mess and wash the blood shed by the zionist occupiers !!!