"The technologies that are promoted by the Gates Foundation in Africa are not farmer-friendly or environmentally friendly. Some of them have not been tested fully to determine their effects on the environment and consumers. African farmers are seeking food sovereignty, not imposed unhealthy foods and GMOs!" - Kenyan farmer and director of the Grow Biointensive Agricultural Center of Kenya (G-BIACK), Samuel Nderitu

Seattle, Washington - On the public opening day of the new Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation campus in Seattle, local activists called attention to the negative aspects of the Foundation's agricultural development efforts in Africa. Although farmers, activists, and civil society organizations throughout Africa and the US have pointed to fundamental problems with the programs of the Foundation and its subsidiary, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the Foundation has been non-responsive to these concerns

Majdal Shams, Golan Heights - Israeli troops opened fire on Sunday at Palestinian protesters in Syria who rushed toward a border fence and Syrian state television said six demonstrators were killed.

"Anyone who tries to cross the border will be killed," Israeli soldiers shouted at the crowd of several hundred through loudspeakers on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Sunday marked the 44th anniversary of the 1967 Middle East war and Israel had been on alert for a repetition of last month's storming by thousands of Palestinian protesters of Israel's frontiers with Syria and Lebanon.

Rawang - As a new bride, 22-year-old Ummu Atirah believes she knows the secret to a blissful marriage: obey her husband and ensure he is sexually satisfied.

Ummu and some 800 other Muslim women in Malaysia are members of the "Obedient Wives Club" that is generating controversy in one of the most modern and progressive Muslim-majority nations, where many Muslim Malaysian women hold high posts in the government and corporate world.

Credited with sabotaging Iran's nuclear programme and overseeing a string of high-level assassinations in the Middle East, recently retired Mossad chief Meir Dagan has levelled his sights on a surprising new target - Israel's top leaders.

In a series of remarks in recent weeks, the man who headed Israel's vaunted espionage agency for eight years has let it be known that he has no confidence in the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak.

According to Yediot Ahronot he regards them as "reckless and irresponsible individuals" capable of undertaking dangerous military adventures such as a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

"If our forefathers dreamt of an Israeli passport to escape from Europe, there are many among us who are now dreaming of a second passport to escape to Europe." -- Gideon Levy

Today it is estimated that 70%. Israelis had approached or intended to approach a foreign embassy to inquire about or apply for citizenship and a passport. Approximately 200,000 or 22% of Russians coming to Israel since 1990 have so far returned to their country. Jews who come to Israel "want to make sure that they have the possibility of an alternative to return whence they came."Israelis seeking a European passport, based on their family roots, just in case."

Perhaps historians or cultural anthropologists surveying the course of human events can identify for us a land, in addition to Palestine, where such a large percentage of a recently arrived colonial population prepared to exercise their right to depart, while many more, with actual millennial roots but victims of ethnic cleansing, prepared to exercise their right of Return.

One of the many ironies inherent in the 19th century Zionist colonial enterprise in Palestine is the fact that this increasingly fraying project was billed for most of the 20th century as a haven in the Middle East for "returning" persecuted European Jews. But today, in the 21st century, it is Europe that is increasingly being viewed by a large number of the illegal occupiers of Palestinian land as the much desired haven for returning Middle Eastern Jews.

Anti-terrorism resources are being used to target environmentalists, peace, animal and political activists who hold different views than the government.

It was recently revealed that a counter-terrorism firm spied on individuals who attended film screenings of the documentary Gasland. The film focuses on the practice of natural gas fracking and what impact it has on the environment and in the communities where it is used.

The FBI and other government agencies are cracking down on those who are not willing to say in line with the status quo.

It is expected that at the end of June, Freedom Flotilla 2 will set sail for Gaza carrying various forms of humanitarian aid, including medical, educational, and construction materials. This second flotilla will consist of 15 ships, including the Mavi Marmara sailing from Istanbul, but also vessels departing from several European countries, and carrying as many as 1500 humanitarian activists as passengers. If these plans are carried out, as seems likely, it means that the second flotilla will be about double the size of the first that was so violently and unlawfully intercepted by Israeli commandos in international waters on May 31, 2010, resulting in nine deaths on the Turkish lead ship.

Since that shocking incident of a year ago the Arab Spring is transforming the regional atmosphere, but it has not ended the blockade of Gaza, or the suffering inflicted on the Gazan population over the four-year period of coerced confinement. Such imprisonment of an occupied people has been punctuated by periodic violence, including the sustained all out Israeli attack for three weeks at the end of 2008 during which even women, children, and the disabled were not allowed to leave the deadly killing fields of Gaza. It is an extraordinary narrative of Israeli cruelty and deafening international silence, a silence broken only by the brave civil society initiatives in recent years that brought both invaluable symbolic relief in the form of empathy and human solidarity, as well as token amounts of substantive assistance in the form of much needed food and medicine. It is true that the new Egypt has opened the Rafah crossing a few days ago (but not fully or unconditionally), allowing several hundred Gazans to leave or return to Gaza on a daily basis. At best, this opening even if sustained provides only partial relief. Rafah is not currently equipped to handle goods, and is available only to people and so the blockade of imports and exports continues in force, and may even be intensified as Israel vents its anger over the Fatah/Hamas unity agreement.

Israeli media outlets have unveiled a government plan to displace 30,000 Palestinians from their villages in the Negev, which the authorities refuse to recognise. They would be forced to move to existing Palestinian towns that would be expanded, such as Rahat, Kseifa and Hura.

The plan that will be presented to the Israeli government in coming weeks for approval would involve offering the relocated Palestinian bedouins monetary compensation and alternative land in return for giving up their ownership of hundreds of thousands of dunams of land, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Thursday, June 2.

Haaretz added that "the cost of the relocation plan is estimated at somewhere between NIS 6 billion to NIS 8 billion shekels."

"In a briefing this week, Eyal Gabbai, the director general of the Prime Minister's Office, and Ehud Prawer, the head of policy planning in the office, told reporters that the existing situation of the bedouins cannot continue."

According to recent statistics, around 191,000 Palestinians currently live in the Negev, with 71,000 of them living in 36 villages that the Israeli authorities refuse to recognise.

When they bombed Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, El Salvador and Nicaragua I said nothing because I wasn't a communist.

When they bombed China, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, and the Congo I said nothing because I didn't know about it.

When they bombed Lebanon and Grenada I said nothing because I didn't understand it.

When they bombed Panama I said nothing because I wasn't a drug dealer.

When they bombed Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen I said nothing because I wasn't a terrorist.

When they bombed Yugoslavia and Libya for "humanitarian" reasons I said nothing because it sounded so honorable.

Then they bombed my house and there was no one left to speak out for me. But it didn't really matter. I was dead.¹

Israel's Ofer brothers face a backlash at home and abroad over their business dealings

Ofer Brothers Group, one of Israel's most powerful corporations, is no stranger to scandal, but until now has largely emerged unscathed. But since allegations emerged that it traded with Iran it has been facing an unprecedented domestic backlash that could profoundly shake the Israeli establishment.

Israel's hawkish government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, is the most vocal of Iran's critics, labelling its nuclear ambitions an existential threat to the Jewish state and calling repeatedly for tougher economic sanctions by the international community. But what it demands of others, it apparently fails to do itself, Israeli commentators say.

"Netanyahu, who endlessly preaches the need for firm action against Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear arms, is not lifting a finger to stop Israeli companies and individuals indirectly trading with Iran," wrote Yossi Melman in the left-leaning newspaper Haaretz.