Filed Under: The Last paragraph Tells Me Everything I want to Know!

(Headline) Gaza boat aid organizers say they won’t be stopped

By MENELAOS HADJICOSTIS (AP) – 49 minutes ago

LARNACA, Cyprus — They were well-to-do, liberal California residents who bonded over the plight of Gaza’s Palestinians.

Four years after forming the Free Gaza movement, a handful of American and Australian core members remain bent on breaching Israel’s military blockade of the narrow coastal strip, despite the bloody Israeli raid that killed nine activists on an aid flotilla that the group helped organize.

Another Free Gaza-sponsored aid ship set sail Friday from Cyprus with a Nobel Peace laureate among its 11 pro-Palestinian activists and thousands of tons of aid on board.

Spokeswoman and founding member Greta Berlin, 69, said Cyprus-based Free Gaza is assembling another convoy to sail in the early fall. “We can do things that the Palestinians can’t. We can stand up to the Israeli soldiers,” she told The Associated Press.

…Although U.S.-born, Berlin is a self-professed “internationalist” who doesn’t identify herself as an American and no longer lives in the U.S. despite owning a Los Angeles-based engineering company.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iTtMxwaxIJuG4WMil0Nuv6kOxZ-QD9G4K9080

What Did He Say?

The Washington Post, under the title, “Well, That Clears Thins Up…” posts the transcript of the Gibbs explanation of the White House offer to Joe Sestak.

If you want to read a few lines of what can only be described as “dissembling” – in the Abbott and Costello fashion, just read the WaPo brief article at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304920.html

Filed Under: Another Reason to Get Out of the United Nations

Reporting from Geneva —

The campaign of CIA drone strikes against suspected militants in Pakistan has made the United States “the most prolific user of targeted killings” in the world, said a United Nations official, who urged that responsibility for the program be taken from the spy agency.

Philip Alston, a New York University law professor who serves as the U.N.’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, made the comments Wednesday as he released a report on targeted killings. The report criticizes the U.S. for asserting “an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe” in its fight against Al Qaeda and other militant groups.

Alston acknowledged that the right to self-defense may justify drone strikes in Pakistan, where the planners of the Sept. 11 attacks are thought to have fled. But he questioned whether that right extended to other countries where links to the attacks are more remote, such as Yemen or Somalia. He urged the U.S. to be more open about the program.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-cia-drones-20100603,0,6430644.story