The Obama administration's attempts at seducing Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, are getting embarrassing. Netanyahu has made it very clear he is not interested. According to Ha'aretz, the latest (and most cringe-worthy) moment in the saga came this week when Dennis Ross, the president's top adviser on Israel-Palestinian issues, convinced Obama that Israel would only agree to an extension of the settlements freeze if Obama would "come off as friendlier" to Bibi. So Ross and his aides (working with the Israelis) drafted a letter to Netanyahu in which the US would give Israel everything it could possibly want in exchange for a two-month freeze. The details of the letter were revealed by researcher David Makovsky on the website of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Xymphora: "Netanyahu Humiliates Obama Again". Dennis Ross, Israel's lawyer, said to Barry, 'let's give Bibi everything he could possibly want and present it on a silver platter, all in return for a few more weeks of the phony settlement freeze'. Barry said 'great, but could we make a it a solid gold platter, as I'd hate for my Jew-bosses to think I'm stingy'. Bibi took a big dump on the solid gold platter and sent it back. Obama is going to be the first American President whose official portrait will have him wearing a brown-paper bag over his head.

WARNING: GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING IMAGES

A satirical promotional video for the 10:10 initiative shows global warming skeptics being brutally killed at the push of a button. The sponsors have subsequently apologized and removed the video. From the 1010uk website: "With climate change becoming increasingly threatening, and decreasingly talked about in the media, we wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue back into the headlines whilst making people laugh. We were therefore delighted when Britain's leading comedy writer, Richard Curtis - writer of Blackadder, Four Weddings, Notting Hill and many others – agreed to write a short film for the 10:10 campaign. Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn't and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended. As a result of these concerns we've taken it off our website. We won't be making any attempt to censor or remove other versions currently in circulation on the internet."

Talking to Jumoke Fashola BBC Radio London by Gilad Atzmon

I was talking this morning to Jumoke Fashola, BBC Radio London. We discussed music, Gaza, Jazza, OHE's new album, Robert Wyatt, Israel, Palestine and life in general. You may find it interesting.

ALL it took was some 30,000 Republican primary voters in a tiny state to turn Christine O’Donnell into the brightest all-American media meteor since Balloon Boy. For embattled liberals, not to mention the axis of Comedy Central, “Saturday Night Live” and Bill Maher, she’s been pure comic gold for weeks: a bottomless trove of baldfaced lies, radical views and sheer wackiness. True, other American politicians have dismissed evolution as a myth. Some may even have denied joining a coven. But history will always remember her for taking a fearless stand against masturbation, the one national pastime with more fans than baseball.

AWIP: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama

The CIA is using an arsenal of armed drones and other equipment provided by the U.S. military to secretly escalate its operations in Pakistan by striking targets beyond the reach of American forces based in Afghanistan, U.S. officials said. The merging of covert CIA operations and military firepower is part of a high-stakes attempt by the Obama administration to deal decisive blows to Taliban insurgents who have regained control of swaths of territory in Afghanistan but stage most of their operations from sanctuaries across that country's eastern border.

The US government is to issue a travel alert, warning its citizens to be vigilant while travelling in Europe because of the threat of an al-Qaeda CIA commando-style attack. US and UK officials have confirmed that updated guidance will be issued because of the current terror threat. A UK official said the travel advisory would not be country-specific. [= general terror] It would also not go as far as advising against travel to Europe, the official said.

When Army investigators tried to interrogate Staff Sgt. Calvin R. Gibbs in May about the suspected murders of three Afghan civilians, he declined to answer questions. But as he was being fingerprinted, Gibbs lifted up his pant leg to reveal a tattoo. Engraved on his left calf was a picture of a crossed pair of pistols, framed by six skulls. The tattoo was "his way of keeping count of the kills he had," according to a report filed by a special agent for the Army's Criminal Investigations Command. Three of the skulls, colored in red, represented kills in Iraq, Gibbs told the agent; the others, in blue, were from Afghanistan. Gibbs said he acted in self-defense each time, but Army officials came to a different conclusion. They have charged him with conspiring with other soldiers from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division to murder three unarmed Afghans, allegedly for sport, and dismembering and photographing the corpses.

The war-crimes investigation is the gravest to confront the Army in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. In echoes of the Abu Ghraib scandal that unfolded from Iraq in 2004, the Army is scrambling to locate dozens of digital photographs that soldiers allegedly took of one another posing alongside the corpses of their victims. Military officials worry disclosure of the images could inflame public opinion against the war, both at home and abroad.

The Desk of Brian: Rare photo of elusive Calvin Gibbs, soldier charged with murder

Freedom of information request into 21 incidents where UK forces shot Afghan civilians rejected by MoD officials. The Ministry of Defence yesterday refused to disclose any details of its investigations into the shooting of innocent civilians by troops in Afghanistan. This follows the disclosure in the Guardian of the existence of 21 separate such cases which have apparently been covered up. The cases emerged following the publication by WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing website, of thousands of classified US military field reports. These included accounts of units of the Coldstream Guards and Royal Marines firing on civilians.

An estimated quarter of a million people have staged a rally at The Lincoln Memorial in Washington against US President Barack Obama's policies. Some 250,000 protesters from all over the US attended the rally, themed 'Jobs, Justice and Education,' to mobilize those who support the Democrats to turn out and vote in the mid-term elections and demonstrate against the billions of dollars being spent on war instead of jobs. With over 400 groups participating in the march and rally, it was a diverse crowd of democratic-leaning organizations demanding that the government improve public education, do more to protect civil and human rights, and end the spending on war.

"We have a large contingent ... here as part of an anti-war march to say, 'lets take the money out of war and put it in investing in America'," [CODEPINK member Medea Benjamin told a Press TV correspondent in Washington.]

The largest numbers, however, were from unions demanding Congress produce jobs for the high number of jobless Americans.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has once again renewed a call for a probe into the 9/11 US terror attacks, insisting that facts about the event must be clearly established. The US and its allies used the September 11 incident as a pretext to come to the Middle East region and carried out whatever they wanted, President Ahmadinejad said on Sunday. The Iranian chief executive urged the United States to respond to hundreds of questions that still remain unanswered regarding the 9/11 attacks. He emphasized that the US started a game in order to "attack our region," adding that Washington seeks to plunder regional assets and dominate the entire region.

Microsoft founder and one of the world’s wealthiest men, Bill Gates, projects an image of a benign philanthropist using his billions via his (tax exempt) Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to tackle diseases, solve food shortages in Africa and alleviate poverty. In a recent conference in California, Gates reveals a less public agenda of his philanthropy―population reduction, otherwise known as eugenics. Gates made his remarks to the invitation-only Long Beach, California TED2010 Conference, in a speech titled, “Innovating to Zero!.” Along with the scientifically absurd proposition of reducing manmade CO2 emissions worldwide to zero by 2050, approximately four and a half minutes into the talk, Gates declares, "First we got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That's headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent."[*] (author’s emphasis). In plain English, one of the most powerful men in the world states clearly that he expects vaccines to be used to reduce population growth.