The following item ran in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on June 6:

Participants at an anti-Zionist conference in Kiev called for the deportation of Jews from Ukraine.
The call came from one of the participants in the June 3 meeting in the Ukrainian capital. David Duke, a U.S. white supremacist, presided over the one-day conference, titled "Zionism as the Biggest Threat to Modern Civilization." A number of Ukrainian politicians and public figures took part in the conference, including Levko Lukyanenko, a member of Parliament from the bloc headed by Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko.

President for life Saparmurat Niyazov, the self-styled Turkmenbashi, or "leader of all the Turkmen," has made good on a pledge to order all hospitals outside the Turkmen capital Ashbagat shut.

This comes on the heels of his decision to close the country's libraries. "No one goes to libraries and reads books anyway," explained Niyazov. Opera, ballet and circuses, among many other things, were already banned in Turkmenistan. (IWPR, Apr. 21) Required study, at work, in schools, and in mosques, is Ruhknama, the spiritual treatise penned in Turkmenbashi's own hand. Now, for all devotees of this Central Asian post-communist insect that preys upon the lives of his people, Rukhnama is available online in English.

A June 2 AP article reports that North Korea called Vice President Dick Cheney a "bloodthirsty beast" and lambasted him for calling the Democratic People's Rebublic (DPRK) leader Kim Jong Il "irresponsible." Said an unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry source, "What Cheney uttered at a time when the issue of the six-party talks is high on the agenda is little short of telling [North Korea] not to come out for the talks." In a May 29 interview on CNN, Cheney called the reclusive buffont-haired Jong Il "one of the world's most irresponsible leaders" who runs a police state and leaves his people in poverty and malnutrition. The DPRK responded that Cheney was "hated as the most cruel monster and bloodthirsty beast as he has drenched various parts of the world in blood."(AP, June 2)

Topping the charts recently in North Korea was the mega-hit, "Fucking USA," which among other things, complains that the US stole a gold medal. The song ends with an explosion.

Yonatan Ben Artzi, an pacifist Israeli who the IDF refuses to recognize as such, was again denied conscientious objector status by Israel's High Court of Justice on June 1. The army and state have been wrestling with Ben Artzi, who is the nephew of hawkish Israeli Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyau, for several years, jailing him seven times for a total of 19 months. The IDF wants Ben Artzi jailed again for another two months and fined 2,000 shekels. Because he refuses to pay the fine, he will probably have to serve four months. However, in a bit of seemingly unselfconscious whimsy, the court did recommend "that the IDF send Ben Artzi a letter explaining that the fact that the exemption is based on him being unsuitable does not contest the fact that he is a pacifist."

The following June 2 article is from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

Waxman: Investigate anti-Semitism charges
A Jewish lawmaker asked the U.S. Defense Department to investigate charges of anti-Semitism at the Guantanamo Bay military prison. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) on Wednesday asked the Pentagon to investigate allegations that American interrogators made anti-Semitic remarks in order to drive a wedge between detainees and their attorneys.

A May 27 article in The Forward, Uzbek Unrest Shines Light on Leader's Ties to Jewry, highlights the cozy relationship between the repressive Uzbek regime led by President Islam Karimov, organized American Jewry and that great moral authority on democracy, Natan Sharansky:

Earlier this month, Karimov unleashed his security forces to quell an opposition demonstration in the east of the Central Asian republic, causing hundreds of civilian deaths. Even before the latest violence, in recent years the State Department, the United Nations and major human rights organizations all have criticized the Uzbek regime for alleged abuses, including the systematic use of rape and torture against opponents.

Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), darling of the liberal left, made an extraordinary observation to the crowd at the AIPAC convention on May 24:

"There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This is absolute nonsense. In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist." (US Newswire, May 24)

Pelosi should have a look at the following piece by Ha'aretz' Palestinian affairs analyst Danny Rubinstein:

The village of Bil'in in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which is losing more than half its land due to Israel's "separation barrier," wrote the following letter for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to give to President Bush. On their way to present the letter to Abbas at the Muqata in Ramallah, his troops fired warning shots at the villagers, moderately injuring one of them. Almost daily protests have been held in Bi'lin against the fence for the last three months.

See our last post on Bi'lin.