In a brazen attempt to sugar coat Israel’s flagrant violations of the Geneva Convention, specifically Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which is intended to protect civilians, the corporate media continues to spin the situation in the Gaza Strip.

“Israel Steps Up Raids in Bid to Free Soldier,” headlines the New York Times, reporting that “Israeli aircraft intensified their attacks on Palestinian targets in Gaza.”

In fact, the Israelis are inflicting relentless collective punishment on the Palestinians, as B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, documents.

For the last day and a half, I have not read or watched the news. I was in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, with family, enjoying a small holiday. On my return, I expected the worse for the Palestinians, hemmed in by racist Israels, who are prepared to begin slaughtering them in earnest.

“Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his Cabinet that the military had been ordered to ‘do all it can’ to return the captured 19-year-old corporal, and cautioned that arrests of senior Hamas officials could spread to Gaza, the Islamic militant group’s power base, a government official close to the prime minister said,” reports ABC News International.

Now that firebrand and apparent gatekeeper of the official version of nine eleven, Ward Churchill, is in the process of losing his job at the university of Colorado, another academic, Kevin Barrett, has come under the gun.

“A state lawmaker is calling on the University of Wisconsin-Madison to fire a part-time instructor who has spoken out on his beliefs that figures in the U.S. government, not al-Qaida, were behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,” reports WFRV, a CBS affiliate.

If we are to believe the line fed to us by the corporate media, “al-Qaeda” abducted and killed Russian embassy staff in Iraq earlier this month, never mind that if this is true Osama’s branch of the “insurgency” consists of political retards, as killing the Russians does absolutely nothing to further the resistance against U.S. occupation.

“Four Russian embassy workers were abducted June 3 after an attack on their car in Baghdad’s Mansour neighborhood,” reports MosNews. “A fifth Russian was killed in the incident. The captives include the embassy’s third secretary, Fyodor Zaitsev, and three other staffers: Rinat Agliulin, Anatoly Smirnov and Oleg Fedoseyev.”

Now that Israel has attacked Gaza and the West Bank and kidnapped members of the democratically elected government there, it will be interesting to see if the United Nations condemns these criminal acts and moves to pass another worthless resolution.

Israel’s “Operation Summer Rain” is not specifically intended to win the release of prisoner of war corporal Gilad Shalit so much as continue the nearly sixty year aggression against the Palestinian people. “According to some Western analysts, the military action, rather than being aimed at rescuing the captured Israeli soldier, is aimed at preempting the consequences of a recent agreement [to recognize Israel] reached by the Fatah block and Hamas,” notes the Arab Monitor.

Now that the Pentagon has murdered the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi myth, it is time to roll up “al-Qaeda in Iraq” for propaganda purposes, especially considering the miserable condition of the Iraq occupation and the increasing demands of the Iraqi “leadership” that the United States leave the country.

It was obvious from the start the University of Colorado intended to fire professor Ward Churchill. Colorado governor Bill Owens, state lawmakers, and the neocon choir in the corporate media, most notably Fox News attack dog Bill O’Reilly, leaned unrelentingly on CU to fire the professor.

“Today, I issued to Professor Churchill a notice of intent to dismiss him from his faculty position at the University of Colorado Boulder,” declared CU Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano, according to Denver’s ABC 7 News. “A committee last year began to look at his writings including his essay on 9/11,” DiStefano continues. “We determined his writings were protected under the First Amendment. However, during that process there were allegations of research misconduct.”

Michelle Malkin, neocon blogger and concentration camp advocate, has posted a spate of converted WWII posters on her site, taking the New York Times to task for reporting the news, albeit a year late.

According to Malkin and New York representative Peter King, the New York Times stands accused of treason “for reporting last week about a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace alleged terrorists” and disclosing “a secret domestic wiretapping program,” according to CBC News, never mind both programs violate the spirit and the letter of the Constitution. “No one elected The New York Times to do anything,” King told the New York Daily News. “They’re breaking the law to satisfy their own arrogant, liberal agenda.”