America doesn't have a friendship with Israel, I have a friendship with Israel, what America has is that basically Israel is a parasite, it has attached itself to the United States and uses the United States to empower itself illegitimately. [...] It's not that we need to be educated; we need to develop intellectual curiosity. Intellectual curiosity comes from people who aren't as arrogant as the American people. We are so arrogant about who we are, the status we hold in the world today, that we don't feel the kind of curiosity to find out what's going on around us. We need intellectual curiosity and that's only going to come when we become truly a more humble people. Barak Obama spoke of being humble. He may be humble, but I can tell you that the people that he represents, the three hundred million Americans, there is no humbleness about the American people. We are arrogant.

LAGHMAN, May 24 - There are reports from Laghman province that there have been clashes between Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate and US-NATO forces for the past five days in different parts of Laghman and on Jalalabad-Kabul road. On early Sunday (May 23), Mujahideen clashed with the US-NATO invading forces after an attack by Mujahideen on the enemy's logistical convoy on Kabul-Jalalabad road. Mujahideen rockets struck and destroyed 6 oil trucks, 4 US-NATO tanks and two vehicle of ANA. Moreover, 6 Afghan and 3 foreign soldiers were killed in the clash with Mujahideen. IEA: US-NATO tank destroyed in Kandahar.

Even as the recession has put our underemployment rate to 17 percent and has wiped out trillions of dollars in aggregate wealth, those at the top have actually become richer relative to most Americans. You see many of these banking PR representatives with their sob stories of how much money they have lost. It is nonsense because money is worth what you can buy with it. So now, that millionaire banker won’t have to spend $20 million for that private home, he can have it for $10 million. So his salary might be off by 10 or 15 percent but his buying power just increased because most people are struggling with wealth destruction if they work in the real economy. Or these large banks can hire cheap labor since so many people are unemployed and use bailout funds to turbo-charge their bonuses. This is how America is looted by the corporatocracy.

Right-wing darling Sarah Palin accused US President Barack Obama on Sunday of leading a lax response to the Gulf of Mexico spill because he is too close to the big oil companies. The former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor, who champions off-shore drilling, criticized the media for not drawing the link between Obama and big oil and said if this spill had happened under former Republican president George W. Bush the scrutiny would have been far tougher.

Alan Grayson introduces bill to cut separate funding for Iraq and Afghanistan and use the money to eliminate federal income tax on first $35,000 of income. Cosponsors include Ron Paul, Walter Jones, John Conyers, Lynn Woolsey, and Dennis Kucinich.

Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state's possession of nuclear weapons. The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them "in three sizes". The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret. Al Jazeera: 'Israeli nuclear offer to S Africa'.

ABC News: Israel 'tried to sell nuclear weapons': If Obama & Co. were serious about a sustained process of nuclear diminution, an early part of that process has to be an Israel that comes out of the closet, and in the process of doing that, says yes, we've got the bomb.

The Guardian: Israel and apartheid: a marriage of convenience and military might: For years after its birth, Israel was publicly critical of apartheid and sought to build alliances with the newly independent African states through the 1960s. But after the 1973 Yom Kippur war, African governments increasingly came to look on the Jewish state as another colonialist power. The government in Jerusalem cast around for new allies and found one in Pretoria. For a start, South Africa was already providing the yellowcake essential for building a nuclear weapon. By 1976, the relationship had changed so profoundly that South Africa's prime minister, John Vorster, could not only make a visit to Jerusalem but accompany Israel's two most important leaders, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, to the city's Holocaust memorial to mourn the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. Neither Israeli appears to have been disturbed by the fact that Vorster had been an open supporter of Hitler, a member of South Africa's fascist and violently antisemitic Ossewabrandwag and that he was interned during the war as a Nazi sympathiser. Rabin hailed Vorster as a force for freedom and at a banquet toasted "the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa: the hopes for justice and peaceful coexistence".

Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistle blower is sent back to prison today for speaking to foreign media. Here is a mail he sent to Eileen Fleming before he was sent to jail. The Guardian: How telling the truth can land you in prison (Mordechai Vanunu jailed by Israeli court for "unauthorised meetings").

With hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil still spewing into the Gulf of Mexico each day, and its corporate image starting to resemble the tar-covered sea creatures now washing on to Louisiana's fragile shoreline, BP has called on Kevin Costner to help stave off environmental Armageddon. The Hollywood star has been bobbing around the Mississippi Delta helping representatives of the British oil firm and US coastguard test-drive a stainless steel device called the Ocean Therapy. In a claim which sounds as unlikely as the plot premise of Waterworld, he says it can quickly and efficiently clean oil from tainted sea water.

UK Defence Secretary Liam Fox has branded Afghanistan "a broken 13th-century country," sparking fury in a country where thousands of British troops are stationed. During an interview with The Times which was published on Saturday, Fox made the controversial statement in reference to making a distinction between the British military and humanitarian aims in Afghanistan. He proclaimed, "We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy in a broken 13th-century country. We are there so the people of Britain and our global interests are not threatened. "

[Editor's Comment:] To insult the Afghans in this way obviously is pretty bad, but to attack their country is infinitely worse. -The people of Britain of course is not threatened at all. (So here the arrogant UK Defence Secretary is lying.) The British are foolish to have any "global interests" in the first place, but the way that they go about protecting them totally lacks legitimacy. It is an extremely serious crime to start an unprovoked war against another country. The US started it, but Britain is taking part in it and so is just as guilty. Both of these countries should pull their forces out immediately and pay war indemnity for the immense destruction they have caused.

Australian investigators say Israel was responsible for forging four Australian passports that were used in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel. "These investigations and advice have left the government in no doubt that Israel was responsible for the abuse and counterfeiting of these passports," Stephen Smith, the Australian foreign minister, told Australia's parliament on Monday. Smitth said that the operation to kill Al-Mabhouh was not the first time Israel had forged Australian travel documents. He did not elaborate on previous incidents. Australian investigators concluded the fake passports were the work of Mossad, Israel's state intelligence agency. "No government can tolerate the abuse of its passports, especially by a foreign government," the foreign minister said. SMH: Israel responsible for faking Aussie passports, diplomat expelled.

Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio today was forced to issue a public apology over his failure to convince the US to abandon its military base on Okinawa. Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) took power in late August after campaigning primarily on opposition to the ruling party’s support of keeping US military presence on the southern island. But even after the DPJ was swept to power in the biggest power change in Japan since World War 2, the US made it clear that they would not negotiate with the new government, but would retain the base.

A new American intelligence analysis of a deadly torpedo attack on a South Korean warship concludes that Kim Jong-il, the ailing leader of North Korea, must have authorized the torpedo assault, according to senior American officials who cautioned that the assessment was based on their sense of the political dynamics there rather than hard evidence. The Guardian: South Korea suspends trade with North over torpedo attack. -Seoul says it will take Pyongyang to UN security council as it freezes all trade and investment with neighbour.

What Really Happened: Translation: "We cannot prove it, you are just hereby ordered to think it! PLEASE POST THE FOLLOWING EVERYWHERE THE "BLAME KOREA" STORIES POP UP.

Now that the UN is asking for a look at the evidence for the sinking, the US is admitting the torpedo debris from the sinking comes from a GERMAN torpedo, but we are supposed to somehow assume that a German torpedo still points the finger of blame at North Korea.

Pop Quiz, students; what nation gets their submarines (for free) from Germany and has a long history of using false flag dirty tricks to trick other nations into wars? Hint: Think "USS Liberty", "Lavon Affair", and the Bombing of Libya!

HISTORICAL NOTES ON HOW TO START WARS WITH SINKING SHIPS:

President McKinley told the American people that the USS Maine had been sunk in Havana Harbor by a Spanish mine. The American people, outraged by this apparent unprovoked attack, supported the Spanish American War. The Captain of the USS Maine had insisted the ship was sunk by a coal bin explosion, investigations after the war proved that such had indeed been the case. There had been no mine.

FDR claimed Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack. It wasn't. The United States saw war with Japan as the means to get into war with Germany, which Americans opposed. So Roosevelt needed Japan to appear to strike first. Following an 8-step plan devised by the Office of Naval Intelligence, Roosevelt intentionally provoked Japan into the attack. Contrary to the official story, the fleet did not maintain radio silence, but sent messages intercepted and decoded by US intercept stations. Tricked by the lie of a surprise attack, Americans marched off to war.

President Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin to send Americans off to fight in Vietnam. There were no torpedoes in the water in the Gulf. LBJ took advantage of an inexperienced sonar man's report to goad Congress into escalating the Vietnam War.

Israel has a long history of sinking other peoples' boats and then denying it happened. WE HAVE BEEN DOWN THIS ROAD BEFORE. DO NOT GET SUCKERED! THE US GOVERNMENT IS DESPERATE FOR A WAR TO DISTRACT FROM THE CRASHING ECONOMY, THE ALREADY-LOST WARS IN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ, THE GULF OIL DISASTER AND THE CORRUPTION OF WALL STREET.