Adalah-NY: At Leviev Store, Protesters Tell Business Leaders “No Business as Usual with Apartheid Israel”http://palsolidarity.org/2009/12/9592

New York, NY, December 4, 2009 – 25 New York City human rights advocates caught the Israel Business Leaders Delegation to the United States by surprise this morning with a noisy protest outside their “breakfast reception amidst the Leviev jewelry collection” at the Leviev store on Madison Avenue. Groups worldwide have conducted a successful campaign for the boycott of Leviev’s companies due to their involvement in Israeli settlement construction in violation of international law, and human rights abuses in the diamond industry in Angola.

Propaganda disguised as academic inquiry at the University of Illinoishttp://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10928.shtml

Chancellor Richard Herman of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently resigned due to his cooperation with political influence-peddlers seeking to gain admission for less qualified but privileged applicants. But Herman also participated in a more acceptable form of political corruption -- publicly displayed with the invocation of high principle -- in his cooperation with the Israel lobby in opposition to the British boycott of Israeli academics, and in the funding of the Israel Studies Project at the Urbana campus. David Green writes for The Electronic Intifada. Report: 14000 Palestinian olive trees subjected to Israeli aggression in 2009http://uruknet.info/index.php?p=m60780&hd=&size=1&l=e

In a report issued following the completion of the olive harvest in the occupied West Bank, the Land Research Centre said that the occupation authorities burned and uprooted about 1455 olive trees during the harvest season this year, and washed away around 7000 trees since the beginning of the year for the sake of settlement expansion, while settlers attacked more than 5500 other trees. The centre said that the occupation authorities and settlers not only attacked the Blessed Tree, but they also prevented Palestinian farmers, who are the land's owners, from accessing the trees to harvest the olives, as the occupation authorities closed the gates; built the apartheid wall to prevent farmers from reaching their land that is located behind the wall; and physically abuses Palestinian farmer.  

keep in mind us taxpayers inadvertently fund these settlers

US taxpayers fund Israeli settlershttp://remarkz.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/us-taxpayers-fund-israeli-settlers/

Dr David Kelly: doctors start legal action for new inquesthttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/6735670/Dr-David-Kelly-doctors-start-legal-action-for-new-inquest.html

Six senior doctors have begun legal action to force a new inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly, the scientist who died days after being exposed as the source of a controversial BBC story on the Iraq war.The action is being taken because six doctors are convinced that the original verdict of suicide is unsafe and should be overturned. Some suspect that Dr Kelly, 59, was murdered shortly after it was revealed that he was the source of a BBC story which alleged that evidence against Iraq had been "sexed up" by the Government in order to justify the 2003 invasion.

Europe's waning liberalismhttp://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/12/2009124171829382892.html

Excerpts: Last year, at a European meeting of intelligence officials from the US and Europe, a Swiss participant commented on a proposed referendum on minarets. He was sure it would go nowhere since, as he said, Switzerland is a very pluralistic society; its Muslim population is relatively small and there are few mosques with minarets.Enlightened Switzerland has now become part of an "Enlightened Liberal Europe" that is increasingly not all that liberal.The stunning Swiss vote - 57 per cent - approving a referendum to ban minarets, should not have been all that surprising, considering the growing power of Islamophobia.In both Europe and the US, right-wing politicians, political commentators, media personalities, and religious leaders continue to feed a growing suspicion of mainstream Muslims by fuelling a fear that Islam, and not just Muslim extremism, is a threat.

The Fair Tax Act (HR 25, S 296)http://hubpages.com/hub/FairTax-Act

It Is the nonpartisan legislation. It abolishes all federal personal and corporate income taxes , gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, and self-employment taxes and replaces them with one simple, visible, federal retail sales tax administered primarily by existing state sales tax authorities. (Fairtax.org, 2009a)Therefore, the Fair Tax is a single-rate of 23% of federal retail sales tax collected only once, at the final point of purchase of new goods and services for personal consumption only (it is the final sellable product). Furthermore, all used items, and business-to-business purchases for the production of goods and services are not taxed.The Fair Tax Act (H.R. 25) has several objectivesIncluding tax simplification and economic growth. It abolishes the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the federal agency that currently collects and administers federal taxes, and shifts the vast majority of these responsibilities to the individual state sales tax authorities.Adopting such a fundamental reform would have implications for the entire process of collecting and administering taxes in the United States. The roles and responsibilities of governments at all levels, businesses, and individuals would change under the FairTax.Individuals would no longer file tax returns, businesses would be responsible for collecting and remitting the tax to the states, and state governments would process the revenue collections and forward the appropriate revenue amount to the federal government.

GRACE: India's groundwater critically depletedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7CQzIF9tP4

Groundwater is not being replenished fast enough to keep up with demand and population. This is a direct result of the monsoons not coming as usual, melting of the Himalayas as a result of global warming/climate change, pumping of water by companies like Coca Cola, and massive waste of water through wasteful irrigation practices. We are reaping what we are sowing.

Canadian Man Heralded for Curing Cancer Raided by RCMP > Seeks Asylum in Europehttp://hempnewstv.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/canadian-man-heralded-for-curing-cancer-seeks-asylum-in-europe/

About five years ago, Rick Simpson made the shocking claim to have cured cancer. As unbelievable as that sounds, there is viable evidence to support his claim. Simpson makes and distributes a medicinal cannabis extract popularly known as “hemp oil”. Under Canadian Prime Minister Harper's Neo-Conservative Government, Medical Marijuana Activists are being persecuted in an apparent show of 'get-tough' on crime.

Watergate redux: Break-ins reported at another top climate research centerhttp://bit.ly/5T6buV

Australia-Israel forum protest turns uglyhttp://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/06/2763375.htm?section=justin

Police say the three were removed from the Park Hyatt Hotel in east Melbourne as up to 200 protesters tried to breach police lines at a side entrance to the hotel, which is hosting the Australia Israel Leadership Forum. Hundreds of Jewish delegates are inside where Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Israeli senior Vice Prime Minister Slivan Shalom are due to attend.