Link: http://mycatbirdseat.com:80/2010/06/the-arab-flotilla-to-gaza-now-scheduled-for-wednesday-june-30/

Yasser Kashlak, a Syrian of Palestinian decent, businessman, and chairman of Lebanese Institute of International Studies heads the international group Free Palestine Movement that is organizing the trip. Twenty-two American citizens will be among the more than two hundred persons who will be sailing aboard the Arab flotilla to Gaza, now scheduled for Wednesday, June 30. The flotilla of Arab ships are hoping to break the blockade on Gaza, despite the harsh Israeli reaction to an earlier flotilla from Turkey and other Mediterranean states killing

Link: http://socialistworker.org/2010/06/25/making-of-a-catastrophe

ALMOST EVERYTHING you need to know about the warped priorities of capitalism is contained in the following contradiction: Unprecedented national resources were marshaled to fight a war for oil in the Persian Gulf, yet an oil spill on our doorstep in the Gulf of Mexico is left to gush for weeks.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/gill-j25.shtml

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard—installed yesterday through a series of unprecedented manoeuvres by a cabal of right-wing factional apparatchiks and trade union bureaucrats—has been issued with a clear set of instructions by the corporate and media interests that orchestrated her predecessor Kevin Rudd’s ousting. She is preparing to carry them out by substantially revising, if not shelving, the Labor government’s proposed 40 percent Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT) on the mining industry, returning the budget to surplus by slashing public spending, and quickly moving to implement a series of far reaching “free market” economic reforms.

Link: http://socialistworker.org/2010/06/25/making-of-a-catastrophe

ALMOST EVERYTHING you need to know about the warped priorities of capitalism is contained in the following contradiction: Unprecedented national resources were marshaled to fight a war for oil in the Persian Gulf, yet an oil spill on our doorstep in the Gulf of Mexico is left to gush for weeks. Two months into the disastrous spill from the Deepwater Horizon well, and BP is still clueless about what to do, as it announces one half-baked plan after another and is essentially allowed to get on with it.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/gulf-j25.shtml

Gulf Coast residents are seething in anger at BP and the federal government for their inability to contain the oil spill and deal with its consequences. Residents are nearly unanimous in their dissatisfaction with BP’s conduct of the cleanup, and many see the official response as incompetent and riddled with corruption.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/skil-j25.shtml

The US Supreme Court has significantly restricted the ability of federal prosecutors to bring criminal charges against corrupt politicians and corporate CEOs who plunder their own companies, setting strict limits on the use of a 1988 law making it a crime for such officials to deprive constituents or shareholders of their “intangible right of honest services.”

Link: http://www.alternet.org/news/147325/obama_making_bp_pay_is_good_government%2C_and_that%27s_why_republicans_and_the_corporate_media_are_freaking_out/

Obama's hardline move on BP is exactly what government is supposed to do; whatever it can, within the limits of the law, to protect its citizens’ interests. Reactions from the Right have been predictable and typically absurd. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, famously apologized to BP for all the inconvenience the company had endured, Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., warned that the fund was a covert plan to “redistribute wealth,” and Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul called Obama’s tough talk about BP “un-American.”

Link: http://www.bollyn.com/12279

A revolution is brewing in the United States of America. The public discontent surrounding the costly and disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the firing of General Stanley A. McChrystal, and the BP oil spill in the Gulf are all indications that a revolution is nearing. There are, of course, many other grievances, such as the trillion dollar bail-out and taxes, but there is one issue that makes a revolution inevitable: the government lies and cover-up about what really happened on 9-11.

Link: http://www.kawther.info/wpr/2010/06/24/what-lies-ahead-a-new-massacre-or-a-genocidal-war

Will the Lebanese ship attempting to break the siege imposed on Gaza be the spark that ignites the fire of war in the Middle East? Whether the vessels attempting to break the siege of Gaza or any other insignificant as preposterous and contrived reasons will be the last straw that Israel holds as a justification for a bloody war against what it calls the “new alliance” (Syria, Turkey and Iran), this new Israeli war and the flood of human blood is inevitably coming. At the national, political and military levels, Israel has made sufficient effort to convince its American, European and some Arab and Islamic allies to take part in or support this dirty war. It has also completed its training and tactical planning for this new coming war.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/06/201062514249781872.html

Venezuela has nationalised a fleet of oil rigs owned by a US-based company which had been shut down in a dispute over payments. In a statement the Venezuelan government said that seizing control of the 11 rigs was the only way to get them restarted after a year of idleness.

Link: http://mycatbirdseat.com:80/2010/06/william-cook-the-golden-rings-of-betrayal/

NOTE: On the 21st of June Haaretz published an article, “Lebanon allows Gaza-bound ship to sail to Cyprus.” Two ships may be involved, one with a contingent of Americans, approximately 10, another with a group of women including Nuns, named, the Miriam. This new effort at breaking the Israeli siege of Gaza follows the attack on the boats that sailed from Turkey where 9 people were killed by Israeli naval forces.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/pers-j25.shtml

Reactions within the US establishment to the firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal indicate that disparaging remarks by McChrystal and his aides concerning President Obama and other civilian officials published in a Rolling Stone article were not the principal cause of his dismissal.