Jerusalem's Open House announces city's Pride Parade to be held next week, but says 'this year's parade will be modest event held to help decrease tension, violence of previous years'. Meanwhile rabbis holding protest rally say, 'Righteous men killed in Holocaust because they didn't protest'
Ronen Medzini
The Open House in Jerusalem announced on Monday that the city's Pride Parade would take place on Thursday of next week, with the theme of "free love". This year marks the parade's seventh anniversary in Jerusalem, and it has become well-known for sparking annual controversy among the ultra-Orthodox communities in the city.  
No More Pride?  
Let’s end pride parades / Tomer Kamerling  
By now, gay pride parades do nothing to advance rights of homosexuals    
The parade will begin in Jerusalem's Independence Park at 4 pm on June 26, and end in Liberty Bell Park with a ceremony presenting the gay community's call for equal rights, with the hope of promoting love and tolerance in the country's capital.  
"This year we expect the parade to be accepted peacefully by Jerusalem," CEO of the city's Open House Jonathan Ger told Ynet. "We are working very hard with this aspiration in ...   more »

Enraged by perceived lack of support from government, Gaza-vicinity residents launch tax strike, propose forming independent 'Western Negev State'
Matan Zuri
Hundreds of residents from Israeli communities suffering from Gaza rocket barrages have launched a campaign to actively oppose what they call the State's 'disengagement' from the western Negev. Their first order of business was staging a tax strike.  
Decisions  
Israel agrees to Gaza ceasefire / Roni Sofer  
Less than 24 hours before going into effect, officials say truce expected to be 'short-lived and fragile.' Olmert's office says issue of Gilad Shalit part of understandings. 'We want to make the most of any opportunity to bring peace and quiet to residents of the South, but no one here is cracking open the champagne and declaring Hamas has beaten its swords into plowshares'    
Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Wednesday that those behind the initiative seek to protest the government's inaction in the face of daily attacks from Palestinian terror groups. The residents fear the situation may continue to escalate despite the ceasefire agreement.
"We are not the one's breaking away from the State, it is the government that has led us to this," said members of 'The Parliament' ...   more »

President in Jordan ahead of Nobel Peace Laureates conference, briefs king on peace negotiations with Palestinians, situation in Gaza Strip and relations with Syria
Ronen Medzini and AFP
President Shimon Peres arrived in Petra on Wednesday morning, where he met with King Abdullah II ahead of the a global conference for Nobel Peace Laureates named 'Petra IV: Reaching for New Economic, Scientific and Educational Horizons.'  
The leaders discussed a series of political and defense-related issues, including the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the indirect negotiations with Syria and the complex situation in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.  
Peres is also seeking to promote the 'Valley of Peace' project and the joint Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian canal. Later in the afternoon Peres is scheduled to speak before the conference guests and then return to Israel nearly immediately.  
Abdullah: Failure to create Palestinian state 'serious mistake'
King Abdullah II warned that failure to create an independent Palestinian state this year would be a "serious mistake," calling for a stable Middle East.  
"It would be a serious mistake to miss the opportunities we have this year to establish, finally, a sovereign, independent and viable Palestinian state along with a secure and ...   more »

Israel has agreed to withdraw from the Shaba Farms, A-Sharq al-Awsat reported Tuesday, adding that Syria was exerting great efforts in negotiations between Israel and Hizbullah on a prisoner swap deal.
According to Israeli officials quoted by the London-based newspaper, as a result of the Syrian efforts, there would soon be a prisoner exchange deal.
The officials were also quoted as saying that Syria's involvement in the Israel-Hizbullah talks "will lead to the opening of new horizons on the Shaba Farms issue."
The officials reportedly claimed that Israel had agreed to withdraw from the farms "up to the last centimeter," on condition that Hizbullah agrees to a cessation of violence against Israel that the Lebanese "case" is closed
Original Source
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by Hana Levi Julian(IsraelNN.com) The number of Israelis who oppose surrendering the Golan Heights to Syria is growing, according to a new Teleseker poll published in the Hebrew-language newspaper Ma'ariv on Tuesday.
Some 85 percent of the Israeli public is opposed to ceding the Golan Heights to Syria, according to the poll.
Barely half of those living in the strategic area said they would leave their homes voluntarily if the government agreed to turn the Golan over to Syria.
Only 56 percent of respondents living in the Golan Heights agreed they would leave in return for money or equivalent property in the Galilee or Negev.
The statistics did not change significantly even when residents were offered double compensation in exchange for leaving their homes in the Golan Heights.
Envoys Yoram Turgeman and Shalom Turbovich returned to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office from Ankara following a second round of talks on Sunday and Monday with Syrian representatives through Turkish mediators with new dates for further discussions in the near future.
The pair said the latest discussions went well; however, the content of the talks was not released.
Prior to the talks there was also a majority opposed to a full withdrawal ...   more »

By Ralf Beste, Cordula Meyer and Christoph Schult
The Israeli government no longer believes that sanctions can prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons. A broad consensus in favor of a military strike against Tehran's nuclear facilities -- without the Americans, if necessary -- is beginning to take shape.
Dani Yatom, a member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, was invited to attend a NATO conference in Brussels last year. While reviewing the agenda, Yatom, a retired major general, was surprised to see that the meeting was titled "The Iranian Challenge" and not "The Iranian Threat."
When a speaker with a French accent mentioned that a US military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities would be the most dangerous scenario of all, Yatom said, politely but firmly: "Sir, you are wrong. The worst scenario would be if Iran acquired an atom bomb."
Yatom, 63, has spent most of his life in the military. He was a military adviser to former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and, in the mid-1990s, was named head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency. Nevertheless, Yatom, a member of the Labor Party, is not some reckless hawk. Unlike most Knesset members, he flatly rejects, for example, a major Israeli offensive ...   more »

By: Jim Meyer
President Bush may follow in the footsteps of his brother Jeb and convert to Catholicism, several European papers are reporting.
In the wake of the president’s visit to see Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican, Italian newspapers, citing Vatican sources, said Bush was open to the idea of converting to Catholicism.
The Italian newspaper Il Foglio referred to such talk about Bush’s possible conversion and stated that “anything is possible, especially for someone reborn like Bush.”
Noting that Tony Blair converted to Catholicism after leaving office as Britain’s prime minister last year, the paper also stated that “if anything happens, it will happen after he finishes his period as president, not before. It is similar to Blair’s case, but with different circumstances.”
President Bush welcomed Pope Benedict XVI warmly when he visited the U.S. in April. And Vatican watchers noted that Bush met privately with the pontiff in the private gardens of the Vatican last Friday — an unprecedented place for the Pope to meet a head of state. Typically, the Vatican gardens are used by the Pope for private reflection.
A Vatican spokesman said the Pope used the unusual locale to reciprocate for the “warmth” Bush ...   more »

Dialogue is the best way to move forward, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah said recently as Muslim scholars led by Saudi Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh endorsed his call for opening a dialogue with people of other faiths at the start of a historic three-day summit at the Royal Al-Safa Palace.
The king started his address with a prayer to Almighty Allah for the determination and strength to take up the Islamic mission of cordial dialogue with other faiths even if the other side is hostile. The king cited Chapter 16, Verse 125 of the Holy Qur'an: "Invite to the Way of the Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching; and argue with them in ways that are best and most gracious." The king said in his opening speech that those amidst Muslims that hold extremist ideologies have compounded the challenges faced by Islam.
"The enemies of Islam target the salient goals of Islam such as tolerance and justice. That is why your brother invited you to assemble here in order to find ways to counter the challenges of isolation, ignorance, narrow vision and convey to the world the broad Islamic messages based on humanitarian principles and away ...   more »

Another Economic Pressure Point on Tehran
By ELI LAKE,
WASHINGTON — America's economic war against Iran is now targeting the Islamic Republic's trade routes and shipping.
Tom Sperduto/U.S. Coast Guard
The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Adak patrols the North Arabian Sea off the Coast of Iraq in March 2003 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
After a little-noticed order, the Coast Guard has begun searching any shipping vessel that has docked at an Iranian port within five port calls of coming to American shores. The new Department of Homeland Security regulation places Iran on a list with seven other nations singled out by the Coast Guard because of lax antiterrorism controls.
The new measure against Iran is in keeping with President Bush's strategy of using financial pressure on the Islamic Republic to change its behavior on nuclear and terrorism issues. The Treasury Department has pressed the international body that monitors money laundering to issue circulars warning the world's banks against doing business with Iranian ones. Also, major Iranian banks have been designated as supporters of terrorism and rogue proliferation, creating a disincentive for European and Japanese banks to issue those banks credits.
The designation of Iran on the Coast Guard's ...   more »

'Biggest danger is to religious
conscience of business owners'
By Bob Unruh
When a Christian pastor in Canada wrote a commentary on the Bible's perspective on homosexuality, a government commission ordered him to renounce his faith and apologize. When a family-owned photography studio in New Mexico refused, on religious grounds, to take pictures at a same-sex ceremony, the fine for such "discrimination" was $6,600. Now the experts say Colorado is joining in the repression of the practice of Christianity.
Bill Ritter
"Getting beyond the bathroom and locker room issue, the biggest danger this law poses is to the religious or moral consciences of small business owners who may object to doing business with people whose lifestyle they do not want to promote," Bruce Hausknecht, a spokesman with Focus on the Family, told WND about Colorado's new law, SB200.
WND reported earlier when the chief of Focus on the Family, James Dobson, criticized Gov. Bill Ritter for signing the law because of its dangerous implications for anyone who provides a "public accommodation" because they no longer will be able to discriminate based on sexual orientation or even "perception."
"Who would have believed that the Colorado state legislature and its governor would ...   more »

'Ugly truth' from public districts should 'alarm' parents
By Sterling Meyers
Inaccurate textbooks, parents' rights being violated, sex education that goes too far. Found in schools in a Third World nation or a repressive Islamic society? Nope. Right here in the good ol' United States of America.hat's what Steve Baldwin and Karen Holgate, the authors of "From Crayons to Condoms: The Ugly Truth about America's Public Schools," have documented.
They've assembled a long list of horror stories about the nation's public schools, from the teachers, students and parents who have witnessed them. The book, released today, will be the subject of discussion when the authors are interviewed by Fox's Sean Hannity on Hannity Radio at 2 p.m. Eastern and on Hannity and Colmes TV at 9:50 p.m. today
American schools are "not just rife with bizarre, inaccurate textbooks and failed teaching practices – they encourage classroom activities that produce dangerous, even deadly results," they say.
Baldwin, a former California state legislator and the current director of the Council for National Policy, and Holgate, an advocate for national educational reform, believe that public schools "can be saved" if "parents are ready to fight for their children every step of the way."...   more »

by David Gutierrez
(NaturalNews) A Rhode Island school district has announced a pilot program to monitor student movements by means of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips implanted in their schoolbags.
The Middletown School District, in partnership with MAP Information Technology Corp., has launched a pilot program to implant RFID chips into the schoolbags of 80 children at the Aquidneck School. Each chip would be programmed with a student identification number, and would be read by an external device installed in one of two school buses. The buses would also be fitted with global positioning system (GPS) devices.
Parents or school officials could log onto a school web site to see whether and when specific children had entered or exited which bus, and to look up the bus's current location as provided by the GPS device.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has criticized the plan as an invasion of children's privacy and a potential risk to their safety.
"There's absolutely no need to be tagging children," said Stephen Brown, executive director of the ACLU's Rhode Island chapter. According to Brown, the school district should already know where its students are.
"[This program is] a solution in search of a problem," ...   more »

By Ellen Ratner
Yesterday on "Fox and Friends," Jim Pinkerton and I debated a Fox News Poll concerning children and the availability of contraception. Fifty-seven percent said that giving contraceptives to children as young as 11 years old "was a nutty idea"; 26 percent said it was a brilliant idea; however, a full 83 percent of those polled said that 11-year-olds were having sex.
This poll question originated from a Maine middle school that is making a "full range of contraception available to students in grades six to eight." It was shocking to those of us who grew up in schools where girls could only wear skirts that landed in the middle of the knee. However, the statistics show that it makes public health sense for the school system to make contraception available to these children.
In the state of Maine, the number of middle school children who reported having sexual intercourse dropped from 23 percent in 1997 to 13 percent in 2005. The numbers, if they are accurate, are definitely going in the right direction, but as Nancy Birkhimer, director of teen health programs for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services says, "Thirteen percent is still more ...   more »

State House defends its sovereignty from D.C. intrusion
Steamed over a perceived increase in federal usurping of states' rights, Oklahoma's House of Representatives told Washington, D.C., to back off.
Joint House Resolution 1089, passed by an overwhelming 92-3 margin, reasserts Oklahoma's sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and, according to the resolution's own language, is "serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates."
The Tenth Amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
Traditionally, this language has meant that the federal government is limited in its scope and cannot usurp the sovereign powers of states. In recent decades, however, as the size and reach of the federal government has expanded, many have come to question whether Washington has stepped on states' rights and gotten too big for its breeches.
Charles Key, the Republican state representative who authored the resolution, told WND that he introduced it because he believes the federal government's overstepping of its bounds has put our constitutional form of government in danger.
Oklahoma State Rep. Charles Key
"The more ...   more »

Lawsuit says organization is 'willing participant in price-fixing scheme'
Larry Klayman
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is a "price-fixing scheme" intent on damaging the free world with its "economic terrorism," charges the founder  and former head of Judicial Watch in a lawsuit.
Larry Klayman, who now runs an organization called Freedom Watch, has filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, asking for a jury trial to determine OPEC's actions are "an unreasonable restraint of trade or commerce" in violation of U.S. antitrust laws.
Citing crude oil prices in the range of $140 a barrel, Klayman's Freedom Watch, a non-profit watchdog that aims to promote and protects freedom in the U.S., reports it has purchased fuel "from the Defendant and its agents and co-conspirators."
The lawsuit was brought to target "the illegal actions" of OPEC, "which, as a form of economic terrorism, are designed to severely harm the economies of the United States and Western Europe."
Klayman, 56, made a name for himself as founder of Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog group that filed at least 18 suits against the Clinton administration in the 1990s alleging cover-ups.
Klayman today told WND the lawsuit, filed ...   more »

We regularly hear about Barack Obama's appeal to youth, about how he has been able to excite and mobilize a generation of young people to become politically involved, his rare ability to excite young people and about how many new voters will register (and vote Democrat) as a result.
All this seems to be true. The question, however, is whether it is a good thing for the country and not just for Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.
The answer is that it probably is not. With a few exceptions – and those exceptions are usually those rare cases when young people confront dictatorships – when youth get involved in politics in large numbers, it is not a good thing.
Of course, there are those who believe that the mass movement of America's young people in the late 1960s and early 1970s was a great thing for America – a bright shining example of young people mobilized against an unjust war and on behalf of a world filled with love.
If that is how one views the legacy of the baby boomer generation, the mobilization of youth for Obama is probably a great – not to mention nostalgia-inducing and personally ...   more »

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard,
The clash between the European Central Bank and the US Federal Reserve over monetary strategy is causing serious strains in the global financial system and could lead to a replay of Europe's exchange rate crisis in the 1990s, a team of bankers has warned.
"We see striking similarities between the transatlantic tensions that built up in the early 1990s and those that are accumulating again today. The outcome of the 1992 deadlock was a major currency crisis and a recession in Europe," said a report by Morgan Stanley's European experts.   
Jean-Claude Trichet is taking a hard line on rates
Just as then, Washington has slashed rates to bail out the banks and prevent an economic hard-landing, while Frankfurt has stuck to its hawkish line - ignoring angry protests from politicians and squeals of pain from Europe's export industry.
Indeed, the ECB has let the de facto interest rate - Euribor - rise by over 100 basis points since the credit crisis began.
Just as then, the dollar has plummeted far enough to cause worldwide alarm. In August 1992 it fell to 1.35 against the Deutsche Mark: this time it has fallen even further to the equivalent ...   more »

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation paralyses the major central banks.
"A very nasty period is soon to be upon us - be prepared," said Bob Janjuah, the bank's credit strategist.
A report by the bank's research team warns that the S&P 500 index of Wall Street equities is likely to fall by more than 300 points to around 1050 by September as "all the chickens come home to roost" from the excesses of the global boom, with contagion spreading across Europe and emerging markets.
Such a slide on world bourses would amount to one of the worst bear markets over the last century.
RBS said the iTraxx index of high-grade corporate bonds could soar to 130/150 while the "Crossover" index of lower grade corporate bonds could reach 650/700 in a renewed bout of panic on the debt markets.
"I do not think I can be much blunter. If you have to be in credit, focus on quality, short durations, non-cyclical defensive names.
"Cash is the key safe haven. This is about not losing your money, ...   more »