The Magnes Zionist: Two More (Palestinians) for the Road – The Ethnic Cleansing Continues
Jerry on Israel’s ‘ethnic cleansing lite’ and how Palestinian-Americans who choose to live in Jerusalem can only ever do so using ‘tourist’ visas, which have to be renewed every 3 to 6 months, until that is they’re inexplicably revoked.

Annals of National Security: Preparing the Battlefield: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
The US Congress is funding covert operations within Iran says Seymour Hersh, who also suggests that McCain’s view agrees with the Bush Administration, while Obama prefers ‘tough and principled diplomacy’. For both an attack is never off the table.

There’s a long and no doubt bitter election campaign still ahead before we can start talking about “President Obama”. But sober observers of the US political scene are confident enough to predict that the first African-American to get this close to the White House is going to win - and win big.
Immanuel Wallerstein argued recently [...]

New Statesman - How to be a carbon vigilante
Often the price of carbon permits is just too low to make a difference, so they have largely been ignored. Now there’s a site where ordinary people can group together to buy up carbon trading permits, and increase their price and value.

Michael Tomasky: Barack Obama must compromise his liberal principles in order to get elected | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
the question here is about how far a candidate for president can go to inoculate himself against likely attacks – attacks that have a proven track record of working – before he’s no longer the candidate [...]

Open Europe blog: EU = environmentally unfriendly
A post on a EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme report which talks up the success of the first phase. OE argues that there are no baseline figures to measure the initial phase by and also emissions have gone up by 2% since figures have been available.

Patrick Cockburn: Who’s Actually Winning in Iraq?
Cockburn on the similarities between US occupation of Iraq and British rule after WWI, The Iraqi-American security agreement, Nouri al-Maliki’s government, what a new US president would do and the tactics of al-Sadr.

Sam Gardiner of Spinwatch on the Let’s Attack Iran spin
"It’s overwhelming. I recall a conversation on the buildup up to the Iraq invasion with an investigative reporter. He said the odds are stacked against journalists. The machine involves hundreds of people and sophisticated access to the media. A jou

Everybody Want to Rule the World, says Jim Corr!
Everyone in Europe is in a blind shit-filled panic after the lovely fascist public of Ireland mistakenly voted NO by accident in the Eurovision Elections the other week, and now the hunt is on for the Scapegunts to take the blame for why they gave the wrong [...]

MIDEAST: Israel Training to Attack Iran
Israeli defence experts were not surprised by a New York Times report over the weekend that the Israeli air force had recently conducted what appeared to be a rehearsal for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. However, their capability to do anything is exaggerated and this is more part of [...]