The one and only clearest indication of just how effective the recovery and QE2 (Quantitative Easing 2) in general has been, comes courtesy of the USDA, whose just released update of April participation in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps, shows yet another record, this time 44.647 million people, an increase from May's 44.587 million. And after rising modestly in the last month, the average monthly benefit per household dropped again to a post April 2009 revision low of $282.38/month.

The neoconservatives remain powerful in Washington in large part because of their continued influence inside leading opinion-setting journals like the New York Times and the Washington Post, two prestige newspapers that have pressed ahead with the neocon agenda despite serious blows to their credibility in recent years

Sometimes the New York Times and the Washington Post behave like two vintage ocean-liners competing to see which will edge out the other in a competition to become the flagship for American neoconservatism. Think of a cross-Atlantic race between the Titanic and the Lusitania.

The Times was pouring on the coal in Friday's editions, pushing the Obama administration and NATO to finish off the war in Libya. The Times editors seemed most concerned at the prospect of negotiations to resolve the conflict without a clear-cut military victory over Col. Muammar Gaddafi.

"There has been recent talk by all sides about a possible political deal between the rebels and the government," the Times fretted. "We are eager to see an end to the fighting. But Washington and NATO must stand firmly with the rebels and reject any solution that does not involve the swift ouster of Colonel Qaddafi and real freedom for Libyans."

United Nations peacekeepers from Nepal brought the strain of cholera to Haiti responsible for an epidemic that has killed 5,500 people, according to a study published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study is the first to establish a direct link between the arrival of the Nepalese UN battalion near the small town of Mirebalais and the cholera epidemic that erupted in mid-October 2010.

On Thursday in New York, UN acting deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said the agency was "aware of the report and as with other prior reports, we will study its findings diligently."

The research, led by a group of French doctors, appeared in the CDC's July issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Irish activists say Israel sabotaged their ship; Gov't in Athens prohibits ships with Greek, foreign flags from departing from Greece to Gaza; US ship 'Audacity of Hope' turned back shortly after embarking.

Israel was not behind the engine damage caused to an Irish ship participating in the Gaza-bound flotilla, Foreign Ministry officials said on Saturday.

Last week, Saoirse, one of ten ships set to sail in the mass movement to break the Gaza sea blockade, was docked in Turkish waters when it sustained engine damage. Fintan Lane, coordinator of the Irish Ship to Gaza organization, called the act "dangerous sabotage" and said the ship he believed divers had worked underwater to cut a piece of the propeller shaft.

Word means 'clean' and is used by group planning banned rally against electoral corruption

Malaysian police have detained 14 opposition activists for wearing T-shirts promoting a planned rally against alleged electoral abuses.

It is the latest attempt by authorities to deter citizens from marching in Kuala Lumpur on 9 July in what the opposition hopes will be Malaysia's biggest protest in nearly four years.

The activists are demanding that authorities overhaul voter lists, introduce transparent procedures for ballots to be counted and make other policy changes ahead of national elections widely expected by mid-2012. Government officials say current electoral laws are fair enough.

Authorities have arrested nearly 100 activists in cities across the country since Friday. Some were handing out leaflets linked to the planned demonstration, while others were travelling to publicity events. More than half have been freed.

Rational thinking is highly unpopular in the Netanyahu government, which seems caught in the belief that catastrophe is on the way.

One of the best-known Yiddish expressions is 'Gevalt, Yiddelech, Gevalt!', a phrase best translated as 'catastrophe, Jews, catastrophe!'.

I would suggest that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition officially be named the Gevalt! Government. Listening to the utterances of our ministers, you would come to the conclusion that the State of Israel is about to be erased and the Jewish people are in danger of immediate extinction.

In fact, it is nowadays the bon ton to join the Gevalt! chorus. Those who say that all this panicking is irrational are considered to be unpatriotic. A true Zionist and a good Jew is supposed to be in constant dread and must brace for the ultimate fight for the Masada that Israel has become and that is under threat from everywhere.

Here is another way of looking at Israel's situation: Israel is quite safe and has a lot of constructive options. Palestinians were never as willing to move ahead toward peace with Israel. In the long run, the new developments in the Arab world are likely to lead to more democracy and stability; Israel still has the option of normalizing its relationships with the Arab world that has now been on the table for almost nine years, through the Arab League Peace Initiative. This is also indicated by a new poll showing that two thirds of Egyptians favor maintaining peace with Israel.

This is not the assessment of some starry-eyed idealist. It is that of the hard-headed and daring former Mossad chief Meir Dagan. The brouhaha that ensued after he gave his assessment showed that the Gevalt! Government is incapable of living with level-headed, calm and rational thought.

While its constant fear-mongering about existential threats is at times almost comic, it unfortunately has the consequence to push Israel from one blunder to the next.

This is a good time to be a Republican climate change skeptic -- at least one who doesn't live below sea level, in a flood plain or in the path of a deadly heatwave, tornado or hurricane.

It's strange, experts say, because more and more members of the party believe climate change is a real thing. But with the economy down, Americans have turned away from the issue -- leaving a Republican vacuum the tea party has filled with skepticism. And in DC this week, the skeptics are gathering to celebrate their ascendancy.

Growing numbers of Americans tell Gallup that fears over climate change are "generally exaggerated." When economic times were good, say in 2006, more said climate change was "generally underestimated."

On the campaign trail, Republicans who used to support climate change legislation are running away from that position with reckless abandon -- with former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty literally apologizing for his past support and swearing he now no longer believes humans contribute to the changing environment. Frontrunner and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said recently that humans contribute to climate change, leading Rush Limbaugh to immediately call his campaign doomed.

WikiLeaks cables have revealed that Catholic bishops played a key role in 2002's abortive military coup in Venezuela

In 1997 Eamon Duffy, president of Magdalene College, Cambridge, brought out the best one-volume history of popes that has ever been written. He called it Saints & Sinners.

In the light of the latest news from Venezuela I would respectfully urge him to set about writing a companion volume about the leaders of the church in Latin America. I suggest that he calls it Saints, Traitors & Sinners.

The church in that region has of course produced some remarkable saints - some of them unrecognised in the upper reaches of the Vatican. Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador; the six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter slain by the western-supported Salvadorean army on the campus of the Central American University; the prelates and clergy killed by the repulsive military regime in Argentina and Cardinal Raúl Silva, archbishop of Santiago de Chile at the time of Pinochet's putsch, were and are among the brightest stars in the church's firmament.

Yet the clergy had - and still has - its villains.

Among the latest revelations to emerge from WikiLeaks is that, in 2002, as plotters in Venezuela's capital Caracas were liaising with the US authorities about the conspiracy to topple President Hugo Chávez, the leaders of the Catholic church in that country were defying the instruction of Pope John Paul II to desist from having anything to do with the coup d'état. Instead they threw their lot in with Pedro Carmona, the extremist rightwing businessman, who took office for less than 48 hours during a brief military coup in April 2002.

The Obama administration appears to have given a green light to an Israeli attack on an unarmed flotilla carrying peace and human rights activists - including a vessel with 50 Americans on board - bound for the besieged Gaza Strip. At a press conference on June 24, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the flotilla organized by the Free Gaza Campaign by saying it would "provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves."

Clinton did not explain why a country had "the right to defend themselves" against ships which are clearly no threat. Not only have organizers of the flotilla gone to great steps to ensure are there no weapons on board, the only cargo bound for Gaza on the U.S. ship are letters of solidarity to the Palestinians in that besieged enclave who have suffered under devastating Israeli bombardments, a crippling blockade, and a right-wing Islamist government. Nor did Clinton explain why the State Department suddenly considers the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the port of Gaza to be "Israeli waters," when the entire international community recognizes Israeli territorial waters as being well to the northeast of the ships' intended route.

The risk of an Israeli attack on the flotilla is real. Israeli commandoes illegally assaulted a similar flotilla in international waters on May 31 of last year, killing nine people on board one of the vessels, including Furkan Dogan, a 19-year old U.S. citizen. Scores of others, including a number of Americans, were brutally beaten and more than a dozen others were shot but survived their wounds. According to a UN investigation, based on eyewitness testimony and analysis by a forensic pathologist and ballistic expert, Dogan was initially shot while filming the assault and then murdered while lying face down with a bullet shot at close range in the back of the head. The United States was the only one of the 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council to vote against the adoption of the report. The Obama administration never filed a complaint with the Israeli government, demonstrating its willingness to allow the armed forces of U.S. allies to murder U.S. citizens on the high seas.

As indicated by Clinton's statement of last week, the administration appears to be willing to let it happen again.

The Obama administration has concluded in a newly released counter-terrorism strategy that precision strikes and raids, rather than large land wars, are the most effective way to defeat Al Qaeda.

"Al Qaeda seeks to bleed us financially by drawing us into long, costly wars that also inflame anti-American sentiment," John Brennan, President Obama's counter-terrorism advisor, said in a speech Wednesday unveiling the new strategy. "Going forward, we will be mindful that if our nation is threatened, our best offense won't always be deploying large armies abroad but delivering targeted, surgical pressure to the groups that threaten us."

Brennan, a longtime former CIA officer, spoke at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, as the White House posted the new strategy on its website.

The strategy codifies policies the administration has been pursuing for 2 1/2 years, and much of it mirrors the practices of the Bush administration, Brennan said. But at its core is a repudiation of the thinking that sent large numbers of American troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. Al Qaeda's leadership has been decimated, Brennan said, thanks not to the wars but to "unyielding pressure" from U.S. operations to kill the group's leaders one by one in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

The more acute threats to the U.S. these days come from Al Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and perhaps Somalia, U.S. officials have said, and no one is contemplating sending large numbers of American troops to those countries.