Happy Independence Day

French Muslim, Jewish Leaders Unite to Encourage Religious Tolerance

Let us pray for these leaders, that they can succeed in the difficult challenges they have nobly set for themselves

Europe's largest Muslim and Jewish communities, both located in France, have just elected new leaders Sunday, who both vow to make their faiths more tolerant and open to non-believers. From Paris, Lisa Bryant reports the two men assume their new jobs under difficult conditions.

Mohammed Moussaoui, the head of France's Representative Muslim Council and Gilles Bernheim, tapped to become the next Grand Rabbi of France, are both intellectuals who preside in their separate positions over Europe's largest Muslim and Jewish communities. France is home to between five to seven million Muslims and roughly 500,000 to 600,000 Jews.

In interviews on French radio and in newspapers, both new leaders call for a new openness, with Mr. Bernheim specifically talking about the need to reach out to those outside the Jewish faith

Israel Keeps Gaza Crossings Closed for Second Day

It’s a little hard for us all to keep track of the players without a scorecard, but here are some points to take note of with today’s news:

• Israeli domestic struggle: Livni: Foreign Minister, Palestine negotiator and Olmert rival “Bomb ‘m back every time.” Prime Minister Olmert: hassled by his own foreign minister while trying to make a truce work
• Gaza and West Bank: Today’s bombing - al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (Fatah based - Abbas), Tuesday’s bombing - Islamic Jihad (non- Hamas).

Complicated enough?

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert came under pressure from a strong rival, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, to act. Livni, Israel’s chief negotiator with the Palestinians, said she urged him to order “an immediate military response to every violation.”

No casualties were reported in the rocket attack, which was claimed by al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group belonging to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction.

The latest strike followed salvoes on Tuesday launched by Islamic Jihad in response to an Israeli army raid that killed one of the group’s commanders in the occupied West Bank. Israel said the raid was aimed at foiling attacks on its citizens.

Mandela refers to a "tragic failure of leadership" in Zimbabwe.

Although out of office for nearly a decade, Mandela remains a commanding and respected figure. He uses his influence sparingly, and it is particularly rare for him to publicly differ with South Africa’s current president, Thabo Mbeki. South Africans and other Africans have been increasingly questioning Mbeki’s unwillingness to publicly criticize Mugabe, so Mandela’s brief but sharp comments will have particular resonance.

Saudi Arabia increases oil output after UN pressure

Minister: Saudi Arabia can increase oil production

President George W Bush made two(!) personal(!) Middle East “peace tours,” virtually back to back. Both more or less an ineffectual chaos resulting in a string of embarassments for US standing in the region. In addition to having as his primary peace message pressure to join US aggressiveness against Iran, both tours culminated in a begging session with King Abdullah for more oil. Both times President Bush walked away from King Abdullah with arms full of bling, looking like a rapper in a pawn shop, but both times not a drop of oil.

King Abdullah told President Bush that he is doing all he can.

Why then is the Kingdom suddenly able to increase oil output within the same month that he just rejected President Bush for the second time in a row?

Saudi King Abdullah, center, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, right, and Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, left, seen during the Saudi Oil summit in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday, June 22, 2008.

From The Times

June 16, 2008

Saudi Arabia increases oil output after UN pressure

Miles Costello and Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent

Saudi Arabia has offered to increase oil production, as the world’s biggest oil exporter moves to address global fears that prices are spiralling out of control, it emerged yesterday. The Kingdom, an influential Opec member and a huge force in world oil production, is prepared to raise output by 200,000 barrels a day next month in response to requests from customers, according to Ban Ki-Moon, United Nations Secretary-General.

Olmert says truce last chance for Hamas

How foolish it is for Olmert to make such remarks in public before the launch of this truce. These show precisely the character that has led to his long list of problems, his struggle-ridden northward adventure included.

Everyone knows this truce is perilously fragile. How lacking leadership and statesmanship to bluster out, even before it starts insults and threats to the group with whom you expect to cooperate!

clipped from uk.reuters.com CANBERRA (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned Hamas on Thursday that an Egypt-brokered truce pact was the militant group's last chance to avoid another Israeli military incursion into the Gaza Strip. Hamas supporters and the people of Gaza were "pissed off with Hamas" after years of violence, Olmert said in an interview with Australia's Sydney Morning Herald. "I think the strategy of Hamas, which does not want to recognise Israel's right to exist in the first place, and the extremism, and the fanaticism, and the religious dogmatism, is the enemy of peace," Olmert reportedly told the newspaper. "We are at the end of our tolerance with regard to terror in Gaza."

US favours diplomacy in Iran nuclear row: Rice

JERUSALEM (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday that the US administration was giving priority to solving its row with Iran over its nuclear programme through diplomatic channels.

“We have made very clear, and the president has made very clear that, while taking no option off the table, the US policy is that this can work diplomatically,” Rice said during a visit to Israel.

“And that is where we have been focused and that is where all our energies are, I emphasise all our energies, because we have just, through Javier Solana, proposed a package to the Iranians,” Rice said. (via AFP: US favours diplomacy in Iran nuclear row: Rice)