I urge you to reject the Obama health care bill. This is not reform; it is a bailout of bankrupt insurance companies at the expense of average working people, obtained through coercion and extortion. Forcing Americans to buy insurance from private, for-profit, deregulated companies is clearly unconstitutional. The idea of a mandate to purchase insurance is a reactionary Republican invention, and we want no part of it. Furthermore, this bill’s $500 billion in Medicare cuts are a direct attack on the economic rights of Americans implemented under the New Deal and the Great Society, and will cause incalculable suffering and human tragedy. These colossal Medicare cuts will inevitably result in rationing, delay, and the denial of care, causing patients to die needlessly. The spirit of this bill is that of OMB Director Peter Orszag, the sinister Malthusian bureaucrat who is behind recent attempts to deny Americans Pap smears, mammograms, and PSA tests – as cost-cutting measures.

Israel 'approves' 1600 homes in occupied East Jerusalem homes - just as 'peace talks' start, whilst the US vice president is visiting, following on from the 100+ new homes in the occupied West Bank. No doubt it will again be the fault of the Palestinians the "peace process" fails? BBC: Israel announces East Jerusalem homes as Biden visits. Al Jazeera: At least 3,000 protesters, including Israelis and Palestinians, have rallied in an Arab quarter of east Jerusalem to protest the eviction of Palestinians from their homes there in favor of Jewish settlers. PressTV: New Israeli settlements could derail talks: PA. Alan Hart: Two humiliations – Can Obama live with a third? Marco Villa: Israel Announces 1,600 Settlements as VP Biden Lands in Tel Aviv. AntiWar: Israel Shames Biden With Massive New Settlement Announcement Latest Announcement Came After Biden Praised Israel.

Talk To Action: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and John Hagee Share Stage as Biden Arrives in Israel: The late Jerry Falwell claimed in an interview with Vanity Fair that the Mayflower Hotel event in 1998 was planned by Netanyahu.

ockquote>

"I put together 1,000 people or so to meet with Bibi and he spoke to us that night," recalls Falwell. "It was all planned by Netanyahu as an affront to Mr. Clinton."

That evening, Falwell promised Netanyahu that he would mobilize pastors all over the country to resist the return of parts of the occupied West Bank territory to the Palestinians. Televangelist John Hagee, who gave $1 million to the United Jewish Appeal the following month, told the crowd that the Jewish return to the Holy Land signaled the "rapidly approaching ... final moments of history," then brought them to a frenzy chanting, "Not one inch!"--a reference to how much of the West Bank should be transferred to Palestinian control.

Israel is to begin officially monitoring "incitement" in the Palestinian Authority and will periodically issue a report on it, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee last week. "We will set parameters by which to measure the level of incitement," Netanyahu told the committee. "People must know exactly what is happening on this issue, because for a peace agreement, education toward peace and acceptance of Israel are needed."

[Editor's Comment:] And this is from a state that callously murdered 1400 people , of whom 300 were children. This war criminal state may have the power to one-sidedly decide about the "parameters of incitement" but clearly lacks the moral authority to say even a single word about the "parameters of peace". -True peace would include dignity & justice. Israel's sociopathic leaders are incapable of knowing what this means. What they want is ever more Palestinian land, and that accomplished, "peace", i.e. the silence of the ethnically cleansed and the vanquished. This has nothing to do with peace at all.

Goldstone Report: ISRAEL WAR CRIMES GAZA 3/5 -Mass Killings in Gaza -Video.

The government protested to the US over the torture of terror suspects, the former head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller revealed last night. She also said the Americans concealed from Britain the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 2001 attacks. "The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing," Lady Manningham-Buller told a meeting at the House of Lords.

[Editor's Comment:] This lady's being disingenuous. -Any intelligence agency worth its salt will pass this hurdle easily. After all, can they reasonably expect people from the dog-eat-dog underworld of intelligence to hand it to them on a silver plate? Either the MI5 is not worth shit or this lady's lying through her teeth.

Craig Murray: E-liar Manningham Buller. AWIP: Stomach-churning details of CIA waterboarding crimes - Internal CIA documents reveal a meticulous protocol that was far more brutal than Dick Cheney's "dunk in the water".

Reports continue to come in since the weekend that US surveillance drones have been flying overhead in the Somali capital city of Mogadishu, providing intelligence to the self-proclaimed government that soon hopes to launch a major attack across the city. Global Research: Decade Of The Drone: America’s Aerial Assassins.

An Observer investigation reveals how rich countries faced by a global food shortage now farm an area double the size of the UK to guarantee supplies for their citizens. "We are seeing dispossession on a massive scale. It means less food is available and local people will have less. There will be more conflict and political instability and cultures will be uprooted. The small farmers of Africa are the basis of food security. The food availability of the planet will decline."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused the US of playing a "double game" in Afghanistan after the US used the same term to condemn Iran's role. Mr Ahmadinejad said the US had "created terrorists and now say they are fighting them", as he appeared with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul. PressTV: Iran urges Germany to end support for terrorists. BBC: US woman indicted on terror charges.

(FULL VERSION-with Schulz & Farage reply)

Do you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man?' asked Massa. He described the scene: 'I am showering, naked as a jaybird, and here comes Rahm Emanuel, not even with a towel wrapped round his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me because I wasn’t going to vote for the president’s budget.' Marco Villa: The Biggest Congressional Phony. HuffPo: Nancy Pelosi: Massa Is 'A Very Sick Person'.

When a tsunami crashed into an asylum in Chile, two unlikely heroines, one schizophrenic, the other mentally disabled, formed a team to save their friends' lives. With water up to their necks, they dragged other patients to safety. Boston.com: The Big Picture: Chile, nine days later (41 photos total).

Non-doctors would be trained to administer a lethal potion to elderly people who 'consider their lives complete'. The radical move would be a world first and push the boundaries even further in the country that first legalised euthanasia. The Dutch parliament is to debate the measure after campaigners for assisted suicide collected 112,500 signatures in a month.

A public inquiry opened in London yesterday into claims that up to 20 Iraqis were unlawfully killed and others tortured by British troops after a firefight in 2004. The inquiry, chaired by a retired High Court judge, got under way less than 24 hours after the armed forces minister, Bill Rammell, announced a wide-ranging investigation into all allegations of abuse by UK forces after the 2003 invasion. It means that there will now be three separate inquiries going on simultaneously into claims that British troops ill-treated and even murdered Iraqi prisoners, prompting fears that the glut of investigations could undermine the reputation of the country’s armed forces.

WikiPedia: GLOBAL ANTI-SEMITISM REVIEW ACT OF 2004. GovTrack.us: Text of H. Res. 364: Condemning all forms of anti-Semitism and reaffirming the support of Congress for the mandate of... JudeoFascism.com: Orwellian "Global Anti-Semitism Review Act" makes it a crime in America to tell the truth about Zionism.