Check It Out on the final Thursday in June offers these excerpts:

Robert Parry at Consortium News enlightens the reader about the current situation whcih can be traced back three decades including the."October Surprise" GOP dealings with Iran, the Iraq-Iran war, the Iran-Contra affair and other important historical background

"Iran’s current political divisions can be traced back to a controversy nearly three decades ago when Iran faced war with Iraq and became entwined with U.S. and Israeli political maneuvers that set all three countries on a dangerous course that continues to this day.

"In the election dispute now gripping the streets of Tehran, Iran is experiencing a revival of the internal rivalries born in the judgments made in 1980 and later that decade about how and whether to deal with the Little Satan (Israel) and the Great Satan (the United States).

"Former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims he is the rightful winner of the June 12 presidential election, was part of the group (along with his current allies former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and former House Speaker Mehdi Karoubi) that favored secret contacts with the United States and Israel to get the military supplies needed to fight the war with Iraq.

"Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s current spiritual leader and the key supporter of reelected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was more the ideological purist in the early 1980s, apparently opposing the unorthodox strategy that involved going behind President Carter’s back to gain promises of weapons from Israel and the future Reagan administration.

"Khamenei appears to have favored a more straightforward arrangement with the Carter administration for settling the dispute over 52 American hostages seized by Iranian radicals in 1979.

"Meanwhile, Israel’s Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin was furious at Carter for pushing him into the Camp David peace deal with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat that required Israel returning the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for normalized relations.

"Determined to help Iran counter Iraq – and hopeful about rebuilding at least covert ties to Tehran – Begin’s government cleared the first small shipments of U.S. military supplies to Iran in spring 1980, including 300 tires for Iran’s U.S.-manufactured jet fighters. Soon, Carter learned about the covert shipments and lodged an angry complaint.

"Questioned by congressional investigators a dozen years later, Carter said he felt that by April 1980, “Israel cast their lot with Reagan,” according to notes I found among the unpublished documents in the files of a congressional investigation conducted in 1992.

"Extensive evidence now exists that Begin’s preference for a Reagan victory led Israelis to join in a covert operation with Republicans to contact Iranian leaders behind Carter’s back and delay release of the 52 American hostages until after Reagan defeated Carter in November 1980.

"That controversy, known as the “October Surprise” case, and its sequel, the Iran-Contra scandal in the mid-1980s, involved clandestine ties between some leading figures in today’s Iran crisis and U.S. and Israeli officials who supplied Iran with missiles and other weaponry for its war with Iraq. The Iran-Iraq conflict began simmering in spring 1980 and broke into full-scale war in September.

"Khamenei, who was then an influential aide to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, appears to have been part of a contingent exploring ways to resolve the hostage dispute with Carter.

"[the late Ayatollah] Khomeini’s approval meant the end of the initiative that Khamenei had outlined....which was being pursued with Carter’s representatives in West Germany before Iraq launched its attack. Khomeini’s blessing allowed Rafsanjani, Karoubi and later Mousavi to proceed with secret contacts that involved emissaries from the Reagan camp and the Israeli government.

"The Republican-Israeli-Iranian agreement appears to have been sealed through a series of meetings that culminated in discussions in Paris arranged by the right-wing chief of French intelligence Alexandre deMarenches and allegedly involving Casey, vice presidential nominee George H.W. Bush, CIA officer Robert Gates and other U.S. and Israeli representatives on one side and cleric Mehdi Karoubi and a team of Iranian representatives on the other.

"Today, many of the same Iranian players are back at center stage in the election dispute, but it’s unclear what the power struggle might mean for President Barack Obama's desire to negotiate agreements on Iran's nuclear program and on broader Middle East peace.

"For instance, does the Mousavi-Rafsanjani-Karoubi contingent still have its more pragmatic view about the West? Does Khamenei still favor his more straightforward approach toward dealing with Washington?

"Since Khamenei holds Ahmadinejad’s political strings, one could conclude that the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad faction might be easier to deal with in a traditional diplomatic framework that seeks a direct solution and wants to avoid endless bickering. However, others might see the Mousavi-Rafsanjani-Karoubi faction as the more flexible negotiating partners.

"Whatever the case, President Obama might want to get a better grasp on the complex history of U.S.-Iranian-Israeli relations before he charges off into that negotiating thicket."

Tara Lohan at AlterNet interviews Robert Kenner, director the new film, Food, Inc. ia shocking look at the health, human rights and the environmental nightmare that lands on our plate each meal revealing the darkest secrets of the food industry.

"It turns out that figuring out the most simple thing -- like what's on your dinner plate, and where it came from -- is actually a pretty subversive act.

"That's what director Robert Kenner found out while spending six years putting together the amazing new documentary, Food Inc., which features prominent food writers Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation).

"Warning: Food Inc. is not for the faint of heart. While its focus is not on the gory images of slaughterhouse floors and filthy feedlots, what it does show about the journey of our food from "farm" to plate is not pretty.

"The story's main narrative chronicles the consolidation of our vast food industry into the hands of a few powerful corporations that have worked to limit the public's understanding of where its food comes from, what's in it and how safe it may be.

"But it's also a larger story about the people that have gotten in the way of the stampeding corporate herd -- like farmer Joel Salatin (also profiled in Pollan's Omnivore’s Dilemma), who has bravely bucked the trend to go corporate.

"There's also Barbara Kowalcyk, who becomes a tireless food-safety advocate after her 2 1/2-year-old son Kevin died from eating an E. coli-tainted hamburger. And there is the economically strapped Orozco family, which is faced with the difficult decision of whether to save money by buying cheap processed food and spend more later on medical bills, or spring for the more expensive, but healthier food options that stretch its immediate income.

"There are also the farmers who appear with their faces blacked out on screen for fear of Monsanto, or the communities ravaged by Type 2 diabetes, or the undocumented workers at processing plants who are recruited from their NAFTA-screwed homelands, illegally brought over the border to work dangerous jobs for peanuts, only to be humiliatingly sacrificed in immigration raids that only criminalize workers and never the employers.

"It's really the people that make this film so riveting. If you've read Pollan's or Schlosser's important works, then you already know a lot -- but the film is still eye-opening on so many levels. And sometimes, you really just have to see it to believe it."

"TL: So, right now, the FDA doesn't have the power to recall food?

"RK: The hamburger that killed Barb's son prompted her to help create Kevin's Law to get the USDA, which is in charge of meat, to be able to recall food. It's a complex situation -- the USDA oversees meat, but if it's a cheeseburger, then it's the FDA, because it's dairy. But neither of them have the power to recall food. The hamburger that killed Barb's son sat on the shelves for 12 days after he died when they knew where it came from, but the government couldn't recall it -- it was up to the corporation. Hopefully that one will start to be changed.

"TL: So, based on everything you've learned in this film, do you think of our food as being safe to eat?

"RK: I try not to eat industrialized foods as much. What is the bigger danger, is the idea of how they figure out how to deliver salt, sugar and fat to us. Sixty-four percent of Americans are either overweight or obese. I think, like tobacco they are trying to figure out how to sell you a product that is a bit addicting, and they are using billions of dollars of advertising, and they are training kids to do it at an early age, and they are overwhelming taste buds. So that's the scary part."

Stephen Zunes in Tikkun via Common Dreams writes about Nancy Pelosi, a war hawk in donkey clothing.

"Congressional approval to continue funding of the ongoing war in Iraq, a major segment of the $90 billion supplemental appropriate package, passed on Tuesday thanks to heavy-handed pressure by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., against anti-war Democrats.

"This has led to great consternation here in her home district in San Francisco, where anti-war sentiment remains stronger than ever. The timing of the measure is particularly upsetting given that California's record budget deficit has resulting in the layoffs of tens of thousands of teachers, the incipient closure of almost all of our state parks and draconian cuts in health care, housing, public transportation,the environment, social services and other critical programs. While unwilling or unable to get Congress to provide some financial support for the crisis here at home, our most powerful member of Congress was quite willing to work hard to insure continued financial support for war.

"What few people outside of San Francisco realize is that despite representing one of the most liberal congressional districts in the country, Pelosi has been a strong supporter of the Iraq war for most of past seven years.

"In an apparent effort to discredit those of us who -- correctly, as it turned out -- were insisting that Iraq had in all likelihood already disarmed, Pelosi categorically declared on NBC's Meet the Press in December 2002 that "Saddam Hussein certainly has chemical and biological weapons. There's no question about that."

"By giving bipartisan credence to the Bush administration's unprincipled use of such scare tactics to gain support for the U.S. takeover of that oil-rich country, she negated a potential advantage the Democrats would have otherwise had in the 2004 campaign.

"Pelosi also sought to discredit those who argued that Iraq was not a threat to the United States and that United Nations inspectors -- which had returned to Iraq a couple of months earlier and were engaged in unfettered inspections -- should have been allowed to complete their mission to confirm that Iraq had disarmed as required. She joined her Republican colleagues going on record claiming that "reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone" could not "adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq."

"As a counter to those who argued that the war was a diversion of critical personnel, money, intelligence and other resources from the important battle against al-Qaida terrorists, Pelosi tried to link the secular regime of Saddam Hussein with that Islamist terrorist network by declaring that the Iraq invasion was "part of the ongoing global war on terrorism."

"Defenders of Pelosi pointed out that, as assistant minority leader in October 2002, she was the only member of the Democratic leadership in either house of Congress to vote against authorizing the invasion. Furthermore, they noted how she subsequently raised some concerns regarding how the Bush administration had handled the occupation, such as not adequately preparing for the aftermath of the invasion, failing to utilize enough troops, not providing adequate training or body armor for U.S. forces and for backing such dubious exile figures as Ahmad Chalabi.

"However, Pelosi refused to acknowledge that the United States should have never invaded Iraq in the first place, which had been acknowledged by religious leaders from around the globe. Nor did she ever acknowledge that the invasion was a direct violation of the United Nations Charter, which the United States -- as a party to such binding international treaties -- is legally required to uphold.

"Historically, opposition leaders in Congress have helped expose the lies and counterproductive policies of the incumbent administration. Pelosi, however, to her party's detriment, decided instead to defend them."