Yesterday 20 of us were arrested in the lobby of the San Francisco Jewish Community Center at an event organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council’s “Israel @ 60″ Educational Symposium. Many other Jews and allies joined us inside as well as outside to voice our opposition to an organization that continually claims to speak in our name as it supports the continued project of Israeli colonialism.

Amid all the talk about the U.S. military "surge" in Iraq, little has been said about the accompanying "surge" of Iraqi prisoners, whose numbers rose to nearly 51,000 at the end of 2007. Four years after the Abu Ghraib scandal, occupation forces are holding far more Iraqis than ever before and thousands more languish in horrendous Iraqi-run prisons. This is a War Crime

The draconian measures laid out in the Welfare Reform Act 2007 are now being implemented in Britain by the Labour government of Prime Minster Gordon Brown. The Act represents a wide-ranging attack on millions of the poorest and most vulnerable people who rely on Incapacity Benefit (IB). Recipients of the benefit are deemed unable to work due to poor physical or mental health.

The catastrophe wrought by Cyclone Nargis on the Burmese people has provoked an extraordinary campaign by the US and allied powers, and in the international media, demanding that the military junta open its borders to aid and aid officials as well as to American military aircraft, troops and warships.

Last autumn, Blackwater Worldwide was in deep peril. Guards for the security company were involved in a shooting in September that left at least 17 Iraqis dead at a Baghdad intersection. Outrage over the killings prompted the Iraqi government to demand Blackwater's ouster from the country... The State Department has just renewed its contract to provide security for U.S. diplomats in Iraq for at least another year... No charges have yet been brought in the United States against any Blackwater guards in the September shooting.

In Northeast Philadelphia Thursday morning, Vice President Dick Cheney said that America’s economy “remains the envy of the world,” and that a recent economic “slowdown” could have been much worse without President Bush’s economic policies.

Then Iraqis started setting up EFPs, explosively formed projectiles that are elaborately made to penetrate armor. All five were in Bradleys when they were killed. Four of them were from the platoon with which I'm going on patrol today. Their charred bodies were found pressed against the hatch in the back of their Bradley, trying to get out. The mechanism that allows the hatch to open had melted into the body of the vehicle during the explosion.

Brazil has unveiled its plan to encourage farmers in the Amazon region to develop sustainable sources of income and turn their backs on the illegal logging that is ravaging the rainforest. The Sustainable Amazon Plan includes £300m in low-interest loans that will be made available to farmers.

Some 40,000 families who were formerly involved in logging will also get social security and unemployment benefits.

The loans will be offered at 4% annual interest, well below Brazil's benchmark 11.75% rate, said the environment minister, Marina Silva.

The lush Amazon rainforest covers 1.6m square miles, an area larger than western Europe, and most of the rainforest is in Brazil. About 20% of the original forest has been razed by ranchers, loggers and developers.

Solar energy produced from one acre of land, compared to the ethanol energy produced from one acre of corn. One acre of good corn growing land in America will produce about 140 bushels of corn during a one year growing season. As a matter of interest the all time record harvest is over 260 bushels per acre but we also have to remember that more often the all time low has been zero bushels per acre. A bushel is considered to be about 56 lbs.

A friend of mine who’s a librarian was recently reviewing job applicants. Asked his qualifications in library skills, one man put “machine-gunner.” He was a vet who’d served in Falluja. The library is in a state school here in the US that, last fall, had 650 such vets enrolled. The young man got the job but soon became irked by what he saw as the trivial preoccupations of his colleagues.

Guards for the security company were involved in a shooting in September that left at least 17 Iraqis dead at a Baghdad intersection. Outrage over the killings prompted the Iraqi government to demand Blackwater’s ouster from the country, and led to a criminal investigation by the F.B.I., a series of internal investigations by the State Department and the Pentagon, and high-profile Congressional hearings.

Secret Service supervisors shared crude sexual jokes and engaged in racially derogatory banter about blacks, and passed around an anecdote about a possible assassination of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, according to internal e-mail disclosed in a federal court filing on Friday by lawyers for black Secret Service agents.

Sen. John McCain has said he will be Hamas' worst nightmare. It's a juvenile thing to say. The line sounded more convincing when Sly Stallone said it in one of his Rambo movies. What does the senator propose to do to Hamas? Refuse to recognize the Hamas members who are the legitimately elected representatives of the Palestinians?

Seven people were killed and several others wounded on Friday in fighting between opposition and pro-government supporters in different areas of Lebanon. The Friday casualties raised the doth toll to 18. Opposition fighters, their guns blazing, seized control of west Beirut on Friday after three days of deadly street battles with pro-government foes pushed Lebanon dangerously close to all-out civil war.