WMR's intelligence sources in Asia suspect that the March attack on the South Korean Navy anti-submarine warfare (ASW) corvette, the Cheonan, was a false flag attack designed to appear as coming from North Korea. One of the main purposes for increasing tensions on the Korean peninsula was to apply pressure on Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to reverse course on moving the U.S. Marine Corps base off Okinawa. Hatoyama has admitted that the tensions over the sinking of the Cheonan played a large part in his decision to allow the U.S. Marines to remain on Okinawa. Hatoyama's decision has resulted in a split in the ruling center-left coalition government, a development welcome in Washington, with Mizuho Fukushima, the Social Democratic Party leader threatening to bolt the coalition over the Okinawa reversal.

HuffPo: North Korea: We're Heading To 'The Brink Of War'. North Korea's most powerful state organ said Friday that South Korea faked the sinking of one of its own warships and warned that the Korean peninsula was edging ever closer to war. North Korea has denied any responsibility and warned that retaliation or punishment for the sinking would mean armed conflict.

The Japanese premier fires a minister for rejecting Tokyo's recent compromise with Washington on a controversial US air base on Okinawa Island. Japan's Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama dismissed consumer affairs minister Mizuho Fukushima, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Tokyo and Washington have issued a statement, saying that the Futenma air station in the southern island of Okinawa would be relocated to a new site on the same island. Fukushima told a press conference that she "could not betray the people of Okinawa," Press TV's Michael Penn reported. The former minister added that she "could not accept the plan to create a new US airbase on the island which would increase the burden for Okinawan people." Fukushima said that politics demanded trust and that if she betrayed her campaign promises to the people, she would be breaking that trust.

Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has hailed a UN nuclear non-proliferation document calling on Israel to open its undeclared atomic facilities to international inspection. "It is a step forward in creating a world without atomic weapons," Iran's Ambassador to the IAEA Ali Asghar Soltanieh told IRNA on Saturday. Soltanieh went further to explain that the United States, despite its opposition to the NPT deal on Israel, would have to fall in line with other members of the international community. "The US reservation is only political sloganeering and it is obliged to go along with the global request that Israel join the NPT and open its installations to IAEA inspectors," he added. BBC: Nearly 200 nations, signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), have agreed to work towards a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East. AntiWar: US Signs, Then ‘Regrets’ Call for Nuclear Free Mideast.

PressTV: US rages at NPT over Israel decision: In a statement issued on Friday, US President Barack Obama said the agreement reached at the 2010 NPT review conference singled out Israel with regard to a nuclear weapons-free Middle East. "We strongly oppose efforts to single out Israel and will oppose actions that jeopardize Israel's national security," President Obama said.

[Editor's Comment:] The NPT review conference has correctly singled out "Israel" because the Zionist Entity is the only power in the Middle East that actually has any nukes. Mr. Obama is a windbag and a Zionist stooge. The world does not listen to him anymore. "Israel" is a lost cause. Mr. Obama should try and save the US instead.

It's happening again. The same forces – with a few new additions and minus a few smart defectors – who pushed the United States into a needless and deadly war with Iraq are now organizing for the next war. This time the target is Iran, which, just like Iraq, is said to be on the verge of creating weapons of mass destruction. Also, just like Iraq, its president is a supposed madman determined to destroy Israel.

Earlier in May, Turkey and Brazil -- after months of intense negotiations -- persuaded the Iranian regime to accept a deal that would have vastly reduced its ability to produce a nuclear weapon. The Turkish-Brazilian deal was almost identical to the one President Obama and our allies pushed the Iranians to accept back in October. Only this time, it wasn't good enough. The Obama administration ignored the Turkish-Brazilian breakthrough, saying its goal was crippling sanctions and that it was close to achieving them. Of course, few believe sanctions will have any significant effect other than to punish ordinary Iranians, people who are suffering quite enough under a monstrous regime. But the administration seems to have been sold a bill of goods that leaves the U.S. with only two choices: sanctions or war.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has conceded that there is a “very serious” split with Brazil over the third party enrichment deal on Iran, saying it is her belief that Iran will only negotiate once the sanctions are in place. The hypocrisy of the US position, and the absurdity of Clinton’s claims considering Brazil and Turkey just finished negotiating successfully with Iran is not lost on either nation, and both have taken the US and other members of the P5+1 to task for their sudden opposition to diplomacy. “Who are they to talk against the idea of having nuclear weapons,” Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council all have significant nuclear weapons arsenals.

As the aid convoys approach Gaza by the Mediterranean, the media outlets step up its propaganda and PR campaign. The propaganda portrayed in these media outlets will never succeed to changing the damaged image of Israel. The whole world knows the concrete facts about the state of Israel. The state of Israel has been built through blood, violence, ethnic cleansing, political betrayal and guerrilla wars against the unarmed Palestinians in 1948 and prior to that. More than 7 wars have been launched by Israel against their Arab neighbors in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and Egypt. Even, the attacks of Israel reached Tunisia and Iraq thousands of miles from that state!

GOOGLE TRANSLATION: media sources said on Wednesday, said that Turkey warned "Israel" from exposure to the "fleet of freedom," bound to the besieged Gaza Strip to deliver humanitarian aid, pointing out that the Turkish army will protect the aircraft fleet if encountered troops, "Israel." And move the location of "the right of the Sioux," the Turkish site, "DEBKAfile," close to the intelligence, "Israel" that Ankara called "Tel Aviv" by a confidential letter to avoid interference in the vessels destined for the Gaza Strip and warned that if Turkey is refusing to be treated similarly. "The DEBKAfile that" Turkey's position and directing its message to "Israel" is a warning for "Israel," saying that, in this warning message "if it intervenes," Israel "and prevented ships from entering Gaza, the Turkish Government supports those ships and will be helicopters a Turkish army patrol over the ships to prevent interference "Israel" on it. "

PLEASE LINK TO THIS AND SPREAD IT. Subject: SUPPORT URGENTLY REQUIRED - TEMPLATE LETTER AND EMAIL. As you may be aware that Israel has confirmed that they will stop the flotilla by any means necessary and news of temporary prision being set up for all individuals that are taking part to provide vital aid to the Palestinans. Now we need your help urgently please send out letters, emails to all addresses below, the more people that are involved the more chance we will get noticed and possibly have a chance to influence someone whom is able to do so for a safe passage for all individuals on the convoy.

As the much anticipated departure of the Freedom Flotilla nears, Israel has been busy issuing statements and press releases as how it intends to deal with the humanitarian aid convoy of ships bound for Gaza. Israel's military says it has completed the construction of a mass detention centre in Ashdod where it plans to hold the 800 or so activists, humanitarians and journalists on board the nine ships. Tel Aviv has declared the waters off the shores of Gaza a military zone, deeming any unauthorised entry "tresspassing".

A travel agent from Finland was humiliated at the Eilat airport. She was stripped, her bra was taken for x-ray by a man and her personal effects were corrupted. She claims the reason for the nightmare is that she has an Egyptian fiancé. Coteret: The new frontiers of Israeli diplomacy, ctd.: Czech Foreign Minister “humiliated”.

Russia will not support efforts to punish North Korea for sinking a South Korean warship until it is fully convinced Pyongyang was behind the incident, a foreign ministry spokesman said Thursday. "We need to receive 100 percent proof of North Korea's role in the sinking of the corvette," the spokesman, Igor Lyakin-Frolov, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. "Our specialists are currently studying the materials of the investigation. We need to draw our own conclusions about what happened. Everything will depend on the situation and the body of evidence." The comments came a day after Russia announced that it was sending a team of experts to South Korea to assess the evidence about North Korea's involvement in the sinking of the warship, which left 46 sailors dead.

69 minors complained of being beaten, four minors reported being sexually assaulted, and 12 said they were threatened with sexual assault. Most Palestinian children arrested by the Israel Defense Forces and police are intimidated, abused and maltreated in custody, according to the sworn testimonies of minors who were arrested last year. This happens both before and during interrogation, and several minors have been sexually assaulted. Sixty-nine minors complained of being beaten by soldiers (slaps, kicks, sometimes blows with a rifle stock or club ). Nearly all - 97 percent, including children aged 12 to 15 - were held for hours with their hands cuffed, and 92 percent were blindfolded for long periods of time. Twenty-six percent said they were forced to remain in painful positions.

In its annual report, the rights group accuses Israel of continually violating human rights in Gaza with its ongoing economic siege. Amnesty International complained in its annual report released Thursday that the U.S. and members of the European Union had obstructed international justice by using their positions on the UN Security Council to shield Israel from accountability for war crimes allegedly committed during last year's Gaza war. The rights group also accused Israel of continually violating human rights in the Gaza Strip. It cited Israel's ongoing economic blockade as violating international law, leaving Gaza residents without adequate food or water supplies

The White House press conference Thursday, the first held by President Barack Obama in nearly ten months, was devoted to presenting his administration as an active crisis manager in the Gulf oil catastrophe, rather than a handmaiden for BP, the giant oil company whose profit drive is responsible for the worst ecological disaster in US history. Despite the now ritualistic reference to being “angry and frustrated,” however, Obama exuded indifference. Shortly before he spoke, reports emerged of new estimates confirming that the amount of oil already released into the Gulf far surpasses the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill—a fact that Obama failed to mention in his opening remarks. Ann Telnaes/WP: BP CEO Tony Hayward thinks environmental impact will be 'modest' [Cartoon] WSWS: Obama makes PR stop on Gulf Coast. Ann Telnaes/WP: BP and Obama respond to the gulf oil spill [Cartoon].

Video of the mass grave below. Warning: not for the faint of heart. We walked along the northwest end of Grand Isle, Louisiana and spotted pockets of oil not cleaned up along the beach and rock jetties. We apparently walked too far south and attracted the attention of a four-wheeling sheriff who told us to walk off along the dunes.

On our walk back, we stumbled across a mass grave of huge, dead, rotting fish covered in oil set a few feet back in the dune weeds. They were recently deceased and clearly coated with black oil, evidently dumped there by clean up crews several days earlier. You Tube: TOP KILL Fails - Gulf oil spill BOP Blown A Huge Hole. Washington's Blog: Third Giant Underwater Oil Plume Discovered.

Democracy Now: Renowned Marine Biologist Carl Safina on the BP Oil Spill’s Ecological Impact on the Gulf Coast and Worldwide: As we continue our discussion on the BP oil spill, we turn to its long-term ecological impact. Carl Safina, the founding president of Blue Ocean Institute, warns the ecological fallout from the spill may be felt across much of the world. [Video + rush transcript]