On the surface it appears that president Obama has given up on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and, frankly, given the evidence, it is difficult imagining that there is something different beneath the surface. To wit:

Special Envoy George Mitchell resigned, clearly angry at the lack of support his peace efforts received from the White House - and his resignation letter was about as curt and cold as any in recent memory. The announcement of his resignation followed reports that the president's Thursday speech on the Middle East will, amazingly, say virtually nothing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A day after Mitchell's resignation came news that the president had decided that he will speak at this month's AIPAC conference, the traditional setting for pandering to the Israeli government and, more significantly, to Israel-centred political donors. The most significant sign that the president has abandoned any pretence of being an "honest broker" in favour of gung-ho support for the status quo came in February, when Obama instructed UN ambassador Susan Rice to veto a Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement expansion.

Guatemala has declared a state of emergency after the murder of 27 people in the northern part of the country. The Zetas of Mexico are accused of the worst massacre since the end of the country's civil war.

A massacre in northern Guatemala, which has left at least 27 people dead, is another reminder of the growing influence exerted by powerful Mexican drug gang, the Zetas, in Central America. The Zetas may have first entered Guatemala at the invitation of two drug bosses, Otoniel Turcios and Hearst Walter Overdick. But instead of partnering with local Guatemalan smugglers, the Mexicans became intent on displacing them. The Zetas cemented their presence in Guatemala in 2008, when they ambushed and killed local crimelord Juan Jose Leon. Dislodging the Leon clan gave the Zetas power over key trafficking routes in the northern departments of Zacapa, Alta Verapaz, and Peten. It was in the latter that the recent massacre took place. In Peten, the government has now declared a "state of siege" similar to the security surge that failed to drive Zetas from Alta Verapaz at the end of last year.

Embedding deactivated "by request"... (Welcome to blue pill country!)

Morpheus shows Neo two pills: a blue and a red one. If Neo chooses the blue pill, he will wake up in his bed anf forget about everything that happened. If he takes the red one he will see "how far the rabbit hole goes". Subs in Portuguese.

The US operation that allegedly killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan has actually led to the death of a clone of the al-Qaeda leader, working under CIA operative Raymond Davis, an American editor says.

"The real bin Laden died years ago after receiving treatment in American hospitals for his various illnesses," said Gordon Duff, senior editor of Ohio-based Veterans Today, in an interview with Press TV's US Desk. "His [bin Laden] body was frozen and kept in storage for a date when it would be of advantage to the United States to use it for maximum advantage," Duff wrote in a May 9 article titled 'Was Raymond Davis CIA's Bin Laden Handler?' Duff also emphasized on the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has failed to present any evidence linking bin Laden to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US soil about ten year ago.

Gordon Duff: Selling the Bin Laden Lie - I pity those who cheered or felt relief at the announced death of Osama bin Laden. It isn’t just that the real bin Laden died years ago. It’s that Osama bin Laden was never a terrorist in the first place. Nearly a decade of investigation failed to connect bin Laden to 9/11 with a single shred of evidence. Instead, when that original cover-up, the 9/11 Commission proven categorically to be a “white wash,” to the extent that even Fox News reported it openly, all evidence pointed to the Bush White House and Israeli intelligence services.

Joe Wolverton: Does a CIA "Asset" Own the bin Laden Compound?
Allen L. Roland: Obama Myth Making / Designed For Sheeple
Gordon Duff: Bin Laden Operation Discredits U.S. Armed Forces (Updated)

GOP 2012 hopeful Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) thinks U.S. troops will soon be on the ground for an occupation of Pakistan — and he said so on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Wednesday morning. Paul called America's relationship with Pakistan "an impossible situation," where the U.S. hailed both its friendship with and suspicion of the country. "I think we are going to be in Pakistan, I think that's going to be our next occupation, and I fear it," Paul said. "It's ridiculous. I think our foreign policy is such we don't need to be doing this."

Asif Haroon Raja: OBL's alleged killing: Pakistan Stabbed In Back

Heart disease is supposedly a modern affliction, the result of a diet rich in animal fat and too many hours spent on the sofa. But recent discoveries suggest that strokes and heart attacks may have been bedeviling humans for millenia.

Dr. Greg Thomas is part of a team of scientists that recently discovered the earliest known case of atherosclerosis — clogged arteries — in ancient Egyptian mummies. The startling findings mean scientists may not understand heart disease as well as they think they do.

Thomas tells Weekend All Things Considered host Linda Wertheimer that his team began by running mummies through a CT scanner.

"Our hypothesis was that they wouldn't have [heart disease], because they were active, their diet was much different, they didn't have tobacco," he says. But they were wrong.

One of the mummies the team scanned was a princess in her 40s, who presumably ate fresh food and wasn't sedentary. "That she would have atherosclerosis," Thomas says, "I think we're missing a risk factor. Right now we know that high blood pressure, smoking, cholesterol, inactivity and other things cause athersosclerosis, but I think that we're less complete than we think." Ancient Egyptians did have access to meat, though Thomas says their diet consisted mostly of grains, fruits and vegetables.

NATO has escalated its war against Libya, widening air strikes to hit civilian government buildings and economic infrastructure.

Early Tuesday, bombs and missiles once again pounded the capital of Tripoli, destroying buildings near the compound of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. The repeated attacks on the area have all the earmarks of an attempt to bring about “regime change” by assassinating the Libyan leader. British air and naval forces have taken the lead in the latest round of aggression, with Tornado warplanes carrying out air raids and the submarine HMS Triumph firing Tomahawk missiles at the Libyan capital and other cities.

Harriet Sherwood’s View from Jerusalem (Guardian) highlights a particularly revolting story that appeared in the London-based Jewish Chronicle newspaper in which an historian by the name of Geoffrey Alderman professes his ‘pleasure’ at the killing of pro-palestine activist Vittorio Arrigoni. The salafists and the Zionists are indeed made for each other.