Up to 50 Americans are set to sail from a Greek port on a U.S.-flagged ship that is part of an international flotilla carrying humanitarian aid and letters of support for Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinian residents. Its fate is now in limbo under the weight of U.S.-Israeli pressure and Greece's economic turmoil. Israel insists it will enforce its blockade on Gaza, which it says is aimed at stopping weapons from reaching the Hamas government. "The Israelis have a right to interdict arms traffic. We are bearing letters," says Ray McGovern, former Senior CIA analyst and passenger on the U.S. aid ship. "How can these letters be considered a threat to security of Israel?" Democracy Now! producer Aaron Maté and Hany Massoud is in Athens to cover the journey of The Audacity of Hope, named after President Obama's best-selling book. He is the only journalist with the U.S. delegation, and files this exclusive report.

To download the podcast, read the transcript, and for all of Democracy Now!'s reports on the 2010 and 2011 humanitarian aid flotilla sailing for Gaza, visit http://www.democracynow.org/

An interview Sarah Jones conducted with Vyckie Garrison, a courageous woman who left the biblical patriarchal Quiverfull movement.

Sarah Jones: Can you define "Quiverfull movement" and what you've identified as the patriarchal beliefs behind it?

Vyckie Garrison: I like to define Quiverfull as a very powerful head trip. It's an all-encompassing vision of a big, happy family which infects the mind and affects every aspect of a Believer's life. The term "Quiverfull" comes from a reference in Psalm 127 which likens children to "arrows" in the hands of a mighty man, "blessed is the man who has his quiver full of them."

Quiverfull Believers eschew all forms of birth control in favor of "trusting the Lord" with their family planning. The Quiverfull ideal embraces a "biblical" model (read, fundamentalist) of the traditional family which insists that the husband is the head of the household and the wife is the submissive "helpmeet."

Sarah Jones: How do those beliefs manifest for wives and female children? Can you give us some examples of expectations of wives and daughters that might surprise our readers?

Vyckie Garrison: In practice, the Quiverfull ideals often result in larger-than-average families (think, Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar of TLCs 19 & Counting fame) in which the woman stays at home having babies, homeschooling, homesteading, dressing "modestly," and most importantly, serving and submitting to her "lord," i.e., her patriarchal husband.

The Quiverfull lifestyle is extremely demanding and the only way a woman can hope to succeed is to rely heavily on her older daughters. It is expected that a Quiverfull daughter will be fully capable of running the household, including all meal-preparation, laundry duties, child care and homeschooling of younger siblings by the age of twelve. Many girls are doing all this by the time they're eight or ten because their mothers are so consumed with birthing more and more "arrows" to fill the quivers of their husbands.

A Quiverfull daughter is taught from a young age that her purpose in life is to serve the man whom God has placed in authority over her. She serves her father while she lives at home (she does this primarily by assisting her mother in domestic duties and child care). She absolutely must remain a virgin and is taught to expect to meet and marry her future husband through a father-led match-making process called "courtship." Her education is geared toward developing domestic skills--college is generally considered unnecessary and even dangerous for her spiritual well-being.

The Supreme Court on Monday ended its term by striking as unconstitutional California's attempt to ban the sale of violent video games to minors.

By a 7-2 vote, the court upheld a lower court's decision that California's attempt to impose a $1,000 fine on those who sell or rent violent video games to minors violated free speech rights. But there was more disagreement on the court than that tally would indicate.

Only four other justices joined in full Justice Antonin Scalia's soaring majority opinion that the First Amendment does not allow what he called "the latest in a long series of failed attempts to censor violent entertainment for minors."

"No doubt a state possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm," Scalia wrote in his 18-page opinion. "But that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed."

"Whether the arrival of WikiLeaks has fundamentally changed the way journalism is made, I will leave to others and to history," wrote Bill Keller in his sprawling account of working with Julian Assange that The New York Times Magazine published in January. "Frankly, I think the impact of WikiLeaks on the culture has probably been overblown."

Don't tell Hollywood. Or Bill Keller's agent. At latest count, at least four studios are working on at least five movies about the WikiLeaks story. And with Assange somewhat out of pocket while on house arrest, plenty of option deals are going to journalists who are covering the secretive organization.

Washington - The Supreme Court has tossed out an Arizona law that provides extra taxpayer-funded support for office seekers who have been outspent by privately funded opponents or by independent political groups.

A conservative 5-4 majority of justices on Monday said the law violated free speech, concluding the state was impermissibly trying to "level the playing field" through a public finance system.

Arizona lawmakers had argued there was a compelling state interest in equalizing resources among competing candidates and interest groups.

The cases are McComish v. Bennett (10-239) and Arizona Free Enterprise Club's Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett (10-238).

OverTheGeicoE writes:

"TSA employees at Logan International Airport believe they have identified a cancer cluster in their ranks, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and released by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. They have requested dosimetry to counter 'TSA's improperly non-monitored radiation threat.'

The dollar collapse will be the single largest event in human history. This will be the first event that will touch every single living person in the world. All human activity is controlled by money. Our wealth, our work, our food, our government,even our relationships are affected by money. No money in human history has had as much reach in both breadth and depth as the dollar. It is the de facto world currency. All other currency collapses will pale in comparison to this big one. All other currency crises have been regional and there were other currencies for people to grasp on to. This collapse will be global and it will bring down not only the dollar but all other fiat currencies, as they are fundamentally no different. The collapse of currencies will lead to the collapse of ALL paper assets. The repercussions to this will have incredible results worldwide. (Read the Silver Bullet and the Silver Shield to protect yourself from this collapse.)

Thanks to the globalization and the giant vampire squids of the Anglo-American Empire,the dollar is the world's reserve currency. It supports the global economy in settling foreign trade,most importantly the Petro Dollar trade. This money is recycled through the City of London (not to be confused with London) and New York. This fuels our corporate vampires that acquires and harvests the wealth of the world. The corporate powers suppress real assets like natural resources and labor to provide themselves massive profits. This Fascist,Statist,Collectivist model provides the money into the economy to fund an ever increasing federal government. That government then grows larger and larger enriching its minions with jobs to control their fellow citizens. Finally,to come full circle, the government then controls other nations through the Military Industrial Complex.

This cycle will be cut when the mathematically and inevitable collapse of the dollar occurs. In order for our debt based money to function we MUST increase the debt every year in excess of the debt AND interest accrued the year before or we will enter a deflationary death spiral. When debt is created,money is created. When debt is paid off,money is destroyed. There is never enough to pay off the debt,because there would be not one dollar in existence.

Gunmen in Mexico have kidnapped at least 60 people who were on a freight train trying to illegally cross the border and enter the United States.

About 250 immigrants were traveling in a train from south to central Mexico on June 24 when about 10 armed men in four vans attacked them.

Alejandro Solalinde, a priest who heads the Brothers Along the Road hostel in the southwestern state of Oaxaca, told AFP that "at least 60 or 80 people, if not more, were kidnapped" from the freight train, including women and children.

But many of the travelers managed to flee, he added.

Notorious drug cartel "Los Zetas" is believed to be behind the kidnappings since the incident occurred in a territory under its control.

Hectic scenes in Italian appeal by two of Meredith Kercher's convicted killers as lawyers swap claims of corrupt evidence

The appeal by Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito against their convictions for killing British student Meredith Kercher has taken a surreal turn with two prosecution witnesses accusing a defence lawyer of offering to pay for a witness's sex change.

In a hectic session, Rudy Guede - the Ivorian already convicted for his role in the 2007 killing - started proceedings by accusing Knox and Sollecito for the first time in court of killing Kercher, prompting Knox to rise and tell the court she was "shocked and anguished" by his accusation. "He knows we were not there and were not involved," she said.

Guede was called from Viterbo jail, where he is serving 16 years, to respond to claims by a fellow inmate that he had confided that Knox and Sollecito had played no role in the murder of Kercher, whose throat was cut in the flat she shared with Knox in Perugia.

The U.S. military forks out a whopping $20.2billion a year on keeping troops in Iraq and Afghanistan cool, it has emerged.

The alarming figure is more than Nasa's entire annual budget and trumps the amount the G-8 has pledged to aid Egypt and Tunisia.

It's even more than the clean up cost of BPs Gulf oil spill.