JAPAN PRESS SERVICE NEWS

JCP calls for suprapartisan cooperation in return of Korean cultural asset

– JCP publishes appeal for cancellation of introduction of harsh medical-care system for the elderly

– Government scenario on future tax burdens uses tricks to compel consumption tax hikes: JCP Koike

Special measures bill

– Government's deceptive rhetoric justifying Japan's refueling mission is         unacceptable – Akahata editorial

– Fukuda Cabinet submits new bill to continue MSDF refueling operations

– Refueled ships may carry out operations in Iraq as long as they are active in         Afghan: defense minister

– Diet must discuss basic prerequisite for ending terrorism: JCP Shii

– MSDF covered up 'mistaken' amount of oil supplied to U.S. ships

– MSDF was aware that government used wrong data about amount of fuel

I wasn't able to speak to any policy people in Pelosi's office but I was given a name and number to follow up, and I did so. The call last week was the most recent in a game of telephone tag.

Psychologists and Torture in Iraq, Afganistan and Guantanamo

On May 18, the Department of Defense (DoD) declassified an August 2006 report by the departments' Office of the Inspector General (OIG) entitled Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse. In this report is conclusive evidence from the oversight division of the DoD confirming that psychologists played a central role in the development of the regime of psychological torture used at the US detention facilities at Guantánamo and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Alexander Cockburn and George Monbiot debate climate change issue

2 from Z: Abunimah- Hamas and Hizballah and Miles- Israeli-Palestine Question

Indian ‘slave’ children found making low-cost clothes destined for Gap (by Dan McDougall ZNET)

Child workers, some as young as 10, have been found working in a textile factory in conditions close to slavery to produce clothes that appear destined for Gap Kids, one of the most successful arms of the high street giant.

Speaking to The Observer, the children described long hours of unwaged work, as well as threats and beatings.

Gap said it was unaware that clothing intended for the Christmas market had been improperly subcontracted to a sweatshop using child labour. It announced it had withdrawn the garments involved while it investigated breaches of the ethical code imposed by it three years ago.

Putting the ‘Israel Lobby’ in Perspective (Alternet)

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's 82-page paper "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" has entered the canon of contemporary political culture in the United States. So much, positive and negative, has been written about the March 2006 essay that the phrase "the Mearsheimer-Walt argument" is now shorthand for the idea that pro-Israel advocates exert a heavy—and malign—influence upon the formulation of U.S. Middle East policy. To veteran students of Middle East affairs, this idea is hardly new, of course. But the fact that two top international relations scholars affiliated with the University of Chicago and Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, respectively, have espoused this analysis has lent it unprecedented currency. Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish a book-length version of the professors' argument in late 2007. Along with President Jimmy Carter's volume Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, "The Israel Lobby" (as the paper is commonly known) has opened up a debate that many members of the lobby have long sought to suppress.

Weapons Industry Dumps Republicans, Backs Hillary (from Alternet)

The U.S. arms industry is backing Hillary Clinton for President and has all but abandoned its traditional allies in the Republican party. Mrs Clinton has also emerged as Wall Street's favourite. Investment bankers have opened their wallets in unprecedented numbers for the New York senator over the past three months and, in the process, dumped their earlier favourite, Barack Obama.