The international banking consortium SWIFT for years has secretly supplied U.S. authorities with massive amounts of personal data for use in anti-terrorism investigations, violating European Union privacy rules.

Israel said the bombing of the post along the Israeli-Lebanese border was a mistake that occurred at the "operational level." But the panel investigating the attack was not allowed to interview commanders at that level to determine what happened, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

Borat, the fictional TV reporter from Kazakhstan, may have gotten under the skin of Kazakh officials but on Thursday he couldn't get past the gates of the White House.

Secret Service agents turned away British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, in character as the boorish, anti-Semitic journalist, when he tried to invite "Premier George Walter Bush" to a screening of his upcoming movie, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan."

Also invited to the screening: O.J. Simpson, "Mel Gibsons" and other "American dignitaries."

Filmmaker Oliver Stone blasted President George W. Bush Thursday, saying he has "set America back 10 years."

Stone added that he is "ashamed for my country" over the war in Iraq and the U.S. policies in response to the attacks of September 11.

Many of my friends and neighbors have no clue that today USA ceased to be a democracy. They do not realize that Congress and Courts do not have any power to stop Bush from doing whatever he wants. He never cared what they said before and did it anyway. But starting today, it became legal.

Citizens of the United States of America bear an awesome responsibility to maintain control of their government?s behavior since that government derives its powers from the consent granted it by the citizens. When the government ceases to act in accord with the dictates of the respective consciences of its citizens as determined by its foundational documents ? the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights -- , when it violates the established principles that give this nation legitimacy before the nations of the world through mutually accepted agreements, charters, and conventions, when it abrogates the inalienable rights granted the citizens by the Creator, when it declares unequivocally that the citizens cannot dissent with an action or actions taken by the government, then it is the right and the duty of the citizen to ?alter or abolish? that government.

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International has accused Pakistan's government of illegally detaining innocent people on suspicion of terrorism, secretly imprisoning them and transferring them to U.S. custody for money.

Several thousand years of attempts to control arbitrary authority and to reduce brutality were thrown overboard.

September 28, 2006 will go down as the day that the abolishment of freedom began and the torture descended on what was once a noble experiment.

The Iraqi government has declared an immediate curfew in the capital, Baghdad, to run until Sunday morning.

It may take decades to change anti-American feelings around the world that have been aggravated by war in Iraq, U.S. policy toward Israel and America's "sex and violence" culture, the State Department official in charge of dealing with the U.S. image abroad said Thursday.

It's usually described in the media in a matter-of-fact manner. The Washington Post simply referred to waterboarding a few days ago as an interrogation measure that "simulates drowning." But what does waterboarding look like?

Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday, the army and Palestinian security officials said.

As American as Apple Pie...

The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect.

"The aim of this demonstration is to send a message to the world and to those in our society that the Palestinian people are standing with their elected government."

The barrier, which hasn't been started, is part of a $12 billion package of measures including electronic sensors, security bases and physical barriers to protect the oil-rich kingdom from external threats, said Nawaf Obaid, head of the Saudi National Security Assessment Project, an independent research institute that advises the Saudi government.

Uri Avnery --> Had Hamlet been a reserve soldier in the Israeli army, he might now declare: "Something is rotten in the State of Israel!"

Le Figaro --> Some 1.4 million people, mostly children, are piled up in one of the most densely populated regions of the world, with no freedom of movement, no place to run, and no space to hide. Virtually without external access since June, Gaza is experiencing a rise in poverty, unemployment, penury, and despair. Sadly, that which Gaza most needs today is precisely what it lacks the most: hope.

Who are these people? Who are these useless hanks of bone and fat that call themselves Senators of the United States? Let?s call them what they really are, let?s speak the truth about what they?ve done today with their votes on the bill to enshrine Bush's gulag of torture and endless detention into American law.

With a smug stroke of his pen, President Bush is set to wipe out a safeguard against illegal imprisonment that has endured as a cornerstone of legal justice since the Magna Carta.

...a group of scientists and concerned citizens launch a new organization, Scientists and Engineers for America, dedicated to electing public officials who respect evidence and understand the importance of using scientific and engineering advice in making public policy.

President Bush is trying to pardon himself.

Tanks belonging to French contingent of UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon were involved in a brief confrontation with Israeli tanks Thursday on a road where Israeli troops had been erecting checkpoints. Four French Leclerc tanks with UN peacekeepers moved to the entrance of the border village of Marwaheen where at least five Israeli Merkava tanks were operating in the area for the past two days, preventing civilians and journalists from entering the village.

Standing some 50 metres from each other, the tanks of the two sides were caught in a 20-minute face-off.

Congress may give the president the power to lock up almost anyone he thinks is a terror threat.

China has secretly fired powerful laser weapons designed to disable American spy satellites by "blinding" their sensitive surveillance devices.

...unreported attacks have been kept secret by the Bush administration for fear that it would damage attempts to co-opt China in diplomatic offensives against North Korea and Iran.

Who has controlled the Middle East over the course of history? Pretty much everyone. Egyptians, Turks, Jews, Romans, Arabs, Greeks, Persians, Europeans...the list goes on. Who will control the Middle East today?

The House approved an administration-backed system of questioning and prosecuting terrorism suspects yesterday, setting clearer limits on CIA interrogation techniques but denying access to courts for detainees seeking to challenge their imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere.

The 253 to 168 vote was a victory for President Bush and fellow Republicans.

The riots centered on the Brussels Marollen quarter and the area near the Midi Train Station, where the international trains from London and Paris arrive. Youths threw stones at passing people and cars, windows of parked cars were smashed, bus shelters were demolished, cars were set ablaze, a youth club was arsoned and a shop was looted. Two molotov cocktails were thrown into St.Peter?s hospital, one of the main hospitals of central Brussels.

Veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward tells Mike Wallace that the Bush administration has not told the truth regarding the level of violence, especially against U.S. troops, in Iraq. He also reveals key intelligence that predicts the insurgency will grow worse next year.

In Wallace?s interview with Woodward, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes this Sunday, Oct. 1, at 7 p.m. ET/PT, the reporter also claims that Henry Kissinger is among those advising Mr. Bush.

"The bombing of the power plant was illegal and defined as a war crime in international humanitarian law, as the attack was aimed at a purely civilian object," B?Tselem, Israel's main rights group monitoring the Palestinian territories, said in a statement.

"It was also an act of collective punishment," it said.

A Palestinian teenage girl has been killed in an Israeli air raid on the Gaza Strip.
The attack coincides with a report by an Israeli human rights group that condemns recent Israeli military action in Gaza.

Russia recalled its ambassador, announced the evacuation of its diplomats and complained to the United Nations on Thursday after Georgia detained five Russian officers on spying charges.

If Iraq is the central front for the war on terror, it's only because the war there has made it so.

more than 1 billion people were without clean water in 2004 from sources such as wells or springs, a number which may increase as the population grows, the report said.

Oslo teens who drank the most sugary soft drinks also had more mental health problems such as hyperactivity and distress, Norwegian researchers reported on Thursday.

...a clear and direct association between soft drink intake and hyperactivity, and a more complex link with other mental and behavioral disorders.

Government documents released by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal the Bush administration is running a "shadow government" with Mexico and Canada in which the U.S. is crafting a broad range of policy in conjunction with its neighbors to the north and south.

Charles Krauthammer, guiding light of the neocon faction, predicts shock and awe waged against Iran in his latest op-ed in the CIA?s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post.

...a former Sergeant in the United States Army named Lauro "LJ" Chavez was stationed at MacDill AFB where he claims he witnessed unusual preparations for a potential airplane hitting the base on the morning of 9/11 and distinctly heard officers talking about a stand down. This has led him to go public in questioning the NORAD stand down and the demolition of the twin towers.

Standards of human rights in the Palestinian territories have fallen to intolerable new levels, says a UN expert on the Mid-East conflict.

John Dugard said Israel was largely to blame for turning Gaza into "a prison" and "throwing away the key".

U.S. researchers say they are creating an intelligent airborne fleet of small, unmanned vehicles for military use.

Nowadays, it can be said that the arms industry and permanent war have become a big part of American business, as the offshoot of a well-entrenched military-industrial complex. This is a development that previous American men of vision, men like President George Washington and President Dwight Eisenhower, have warned against as being intrinsically inimical to democracy and liberty. However, the current Bush-Cheney administration is not afraid of such a development; its principal members are part of it and are instead very busy promoting it.

When the USA's biggest newsweekly devotes five pages to scoping out a U.S. air war against Iran, as Time did in the same issue, it's yet another sign that the wheels of our nation's war-spin machine are turning faster toward yet another unprovoked attack on another country.

How the men from the ministry hid the hunt for UFOs

An Israeli warplane bombed and destroyed a home in the Gaza Strip today, killing a teenage girl in a neighbouring building and wounding 10 other people.

Russia and Iran on Tuesday signed an agreement under which Moscow will complete construction of Bushehr nuclear power plant for launch in September next year while it will start supplying fuel in March itself.

Former Minnesota Governor, actor and wrestling star Jesse Ventura has publicly questioned the official version of events behind 9/11 and gone further than ever before in citing Operation Northwoods and the Gulf of Tonkin as examples of how the government has planned and carried out staged war provocations in the past.

The United States would like other nations to join it in imposing sanctions on Syria, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview published on Tuesday.

The Bush administration accuses Syria of failing to stop anti-US guerrillas from crossing its border into Iraq, supporting terrorism generally and pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

George Bush yesterday suffered a blow to his argument that the removal of Saddam Hussein had made Americans safer after he ordered the release of an intelligence report warning the war in Iraq had become a "cause celebre for jihadists".

"Vote by Vote"...
...brings together dramatic behind-the-scenes stories related to the election of November 2, 2004. The heart of the story is a candid assessment of ways in which privatized election systems, disenfranchisement of certain populations and vulnerable voting technology are impacting our democracy.

Three retired military officers who served in Iraq called today for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, telling a Democratic "oversight hearing" on Capitol Hill that the Pentagon chief bungled planning for the U.S. invasion, dismissed the prospect of an insurgency and sent American troops into the fray with inadequate equipment.

With a civil war full of Iraqi bloodshed and over 20,000 of our men and women killed or wounded since the war started?one would think this might matter more than a simple pause.

"No one should simply assume that Israel would stay where it is now with its ambiguous capability if Iran becomes a nuclear power," said Professor Gerald Steinberg, head of the Conflict Management Programme at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv.

...we might have a nuclear showdown very soon.

Prince Bandar, secretary general of the Saudi Arabian National Security Council and former Saudi ambassador to the United States, may be the senior official at the center of reports of contacts between Riyadh and Israel, Haaretz has learned.

Early on Monday, Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had held a secret meeting with a senior Saudi official, perhaps King Abdullah.
Olmert later issued a guarded denial of the report.

Torture is immoral, ineffective, and makes a mockery of 2000 years of Western civilization. The United States Congress is currently trying to write a law that would legalize torture and put those who commit such crimes, and the law that justifies them beyond the reach of any court.

Is this what you want? Is this the America you dream of? If not, contact your Senators and representative NOW before its too late. Call them toll-free at 1-866-808-0065 and make your voices heard.

...one-gigabit-per-second-minimum speed, anywhere, anytime.
Dominant access tools will be mobile, with powerful infrastructure characteristics. All applications will come from the net.

The US Central Intelligence Agency paid Pakistan millions of dollars for handing over more than 350 suspected al-Qaeda terrorists to the United States, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has reportedly said.

Newsweek: International Editions this week

TIME: Why do you attack President George W. Bush with such jolting language?

CHAVEZ: I believe words have great weight, and I want people to know exactly what I mean. I'm not attacking President Bush; I'm simply counterattacking. Bush has been attacking the world, and not just with words--with bombs. When I say these things I believe I'm speaking for many people, because they too believe this moment is our opportunity to stop the threat of a U.S. empire that uses the U.N. to justify its aggression against half the world. In Bush's speech to the U.N., he sounded as if he wants to be master of the world.

...what appears as irrationality to experts is rationality to neoconservatives. Neocons seek maximum chaos and instability in the Middle East in order to justify long-term U.S. occupation of the region. Following this line of thought, neocons would regard the loss of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf as a way to solidify public support for the war. American anger at the Iranians could even result in support for a military draft in order to win "the war on terror."

New York Times --> Less than two years into the great cultural awakening to the vulnerability of personal data, companies and institutions of every shape and size ? like the data broker ChoicePoint, the credit card processor CardSystems Solutions, media companies like Time Warner and dozens of colleges and universities across the land ? have collectively fumbled 93,754,333 private records.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is funding a research project designed to teach computers to scan text and then sort opinion from fact.

...research on advanced methods for information analysis and to develop computational technologies that contribute to national security.

Mel Gibson has returned to the spotlight to promote his upcoming movie "Apocalypto," and to criticize the war in Iraq.

In describing its portrait of a civilization in decline, Gibson said, "The precursors to a civilization that's going under are the same, time and time again," drawing parallels between the Mayan civilization on the brink of collapse and America's present situation. "What's human sacrifice," he asked, "if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?"

Glenn Greenwald --> Only in the U.S., with its toxic mix of Bush administration propaganda and media listlessness, could it ever even be a question open to debate whether invading, bombing and occupying a Muslim country in the Middle East for almost four years would fuel Muslim radicalism, inflame anti-American resentment, and create far more terrorists than ever existed before. And only in the current political climate where up is down could the political party directly responsible for severely exacerbating the terrorism problem with a pointless, disastrous and seemingly endless war have their chances for victory depend upon maximizing the country's focus on terrorism -- the very problem they have so severely exacerbated.

Is he in Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or somewhere else entirely? As usual with Osama bin Laden, there are many questions and few answers.

The last probable sighting of Bin Laden by any Westerner dates back to the final days of the Taliban in late 2001, when special forces and their Afghan allies pursued a "tall man on a horse" into the mountains of Tora Bora.

Since the mid-1990s, when corn and soybean varieties began being injected with genes from bacteria and other unrelated species, we've been paying participants in a food experiment with potentially unprecedented effects on human health, the environment and food security.

...as Im standing there watching the towers collapse, next to me is one of my good friends and a former commander of the Army Corps of Engineers. He is a demolitions expert. He was even more surprised than me. When the towers collapsed he kept saying this isnt right, this isnt right. When I asked him what he was talking about he told me that steel buildings dont fall down that way. Even if they are struck by objects; he went on to say that in theory if the top 10 floors were hit, then possibly just that part of the building would fall over and off, but the rest would remain standing. When I asked him, not understanding the implications of demolitions, he told me that it looked as if they were brought down by controlled demolitions.

Iran's supreme leader has prohibited any use of nuclear weapons by his country, said Iranian First Vice President Parziv Davoudi.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials have said that under the Islamic thought, nuclear weapons are illegitimate.

Chris Floyd --> Bush obviously has a deep psychological need to feel that someone is being tormented at his orders at all times.

At a time when your bank tracks how and where you spend every dime, the federal government might be listening to your phone calls and your boss almost surely knows how many minutes you spend on eBay, the notion of personal privacy is changing fast.
..."we take it for granted we're being watched," Saffo said. "We all know we're being watched, but we assume no one who's watching us cares."

...while the leaders of developing nations have been seizing the opportunity to lament growing economic disparities and economically rooted rising tensions and polarizations, the United States and other Western governments have focused on the threats of terrorism, rogue states, proliferation and the like.

Scientists working at a British laboratory have achieved one of the most controversial breakthroughs ever made in the field of stem cell science by taking cells from dead embryos and turning them into living tissue.

The technique could soon be used to create treatments for patients suffering from diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, the researchers say. The breakthrough has been hailed by many scientists and ethical experts because it could circumvent opposition to stem cell experiments.

Egypt has banned editions of two French and German newspapers, Le Figaro and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, because of articles deemed insulting to Islam, the state news agency MENA said on Sunday.

Under a decree issued by Information Minister Anas el-Feki, the two editions will not be able to enter the country, it said.

"They published articles which disparaged Islam and claimed that the Islamic religion was spread by the sword and that the Prophet ... was the prophet of evil," it added.

The official, who is close to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking officials of each branch of the US military, says the Chiefs have started what is called "branches and sequels" contingency planning.

For every person who looks beyond the official story and gleans the indisputable truth about "al-Qaeda" and various other intelligence contrivances engineered by the Pentagon, CIA, MI-6, Mossad, et al, there are literally millions of people who buy into the official explanation, or rather Brothers Grimm machination?the Muslims, represented by the dead Osama and al-Zarqawi, are out to get us and an incessant "clash of civilizations" is required, with attendant police state and tyranny at home.

61 Irish academics sign letter urging colleagues to boycott Israeli academic institutions in protest at 'Israel's policy of violent repression against the Palestinians'

Too scared of losing your job? Reputation, prestige, access? What the hell are you so afraid of? You want fame, an eternal legacy? You want the ultimate story? It's right in front of your nose.

The United States is following the lead of 'dirty war' nations, such as Argentina and Chile, in enacting what amounts to an amnesty law protecting U.S. government operatives, apparently up to and including President George W. Bush, who have committed or are responsible for human rights crimes.

Eric Margolis --> Canada is also afflicted.

This is a brand new public domain 9/11 Truth documentary

In response to these allegations of fraud, what action has the Bush administration taken? None.

"When will the Bush administration stop working for Exxon - and start working for us?"

Egypt will begin building nuclear power plants soon, a cabinet minister was quoted as saying Sunday, three days after President Hosni Mubarak called on his government to pursue nuclear energy.

ROBERTSON: When somebody gives the clear, historic record and just says, "Let's have a dialogue," that person is set up for death. And now we understand the leaders of Al Qaeda are calling for a holy war between Islam and Christianity. It's going to come, ladies and gentlemen, and I hope that those of you who care about this pope will support him. He's a wonderful man.

...as you enjoy the spectacle of yet another Diebold election, fill up the old Chevy and take a scenic drive through the corporate industrial E. coli farms, feedlots, clearcuts and mined-off mountaintops of rural America; cuz, by Rove, we won't be seeing gas prices and interest rates this low or stocks this high for, uh, let me guess, two years.

According to Webster's Third New International Dictionary, an insurgent is "a person who rises in revolt against civil authority or an established government: [a] rebel." This of course begs the existence of a legitimately elected government that the "insurgent" rises in revolt against, which in Iraq we do not have. How is it possible to have a legitimate government in a country that was first illegally invaded and today is illegally occupied?
Yet, AP uses the word unquestioningly.

In 1970, health statistics for the U.S. and Canada were the same. Now Canadians are far healthier. What made the difference?

How Israel is Engineering the "Clash of Civilizations"...

This is a new debate for Americans, but there is no need for you to reinvent the wheel. Most nations can provide you with volumes on the subject.

...why would democratically elected leaders of the United States ever want to legalize what a succession of Russian monarchs strove to abolish? Why run the risk of unleashing a fury that even Stalin had problems controlling? Why would anyone try to "improve intelligence-gathering capability" by destroying what was left of it? Frustration? Ineptitude? Ignorance?

...if Vice President Cheney is right and that some "cruel, inhumane or degrading" (CID) treatment of captives is a necessary tool for winning the war on terrorism, then the war is lost already.

Shots were fired at a mosque in Melbourne, Florida as worshippers celebrated the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, but no injuries or arrests were reported, authorities said Saturday.

When macroeconomics professor Yoshi Tsurumi called on Bush to discuss how the Depression affected people, Bush answered: "Look. People are poor because they are lazy." Tsurumi said Bush "came across as totally lacking compassion, with no sense of history, completely devoid of social responsibility and unconcerned with the welfare of others."

"Georgie, as we called him then, has absolutely no intellectual curiosity about anything," said Tom Wilner, a 1966 Yale grad. "He wasn't interested in ideas or books or causes. He didn't travel; he didn't read the newspapers; he didn't watch the news; he didn't go to movies."

Bush belonged to the Rainbo Club, an "exclusive hideaway in East Texas for Dallas millionaires," Kelley writes.
Bush was party to a lawsuit filed by a former employee who challenged his firing. In a deposition, Bush admitted the club was "whites only."

...classmate, Steve Arbeit, said Bush was "so inarticulate it was frightening. The reason I say that he is dumber than dumb is not that I saw his test scores or his grades; it's the comments he made in the classes we had together that scared me."

The Toronto Star --> A Canadian Newspaper Association audit found that responses from government officials for information varied across the country, from outright denial of information to delays or requests for hefty fees.

The monument was unveiled at Phoenix's Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza near the state Capitol on the fifth anniversary of the attacks.
...visitors have said they?re shocked at some of the inscriptions, which they describe as political statements against the Bush administration and its war on terror.

One inscription states, "You don't win battles of terrorism with more battles." Another: "Congress questions why CIA and FBI didn't prevent attacks." And another reads, "Erroneous US air strike kills 46 Uruzgan civilians," referring to a wedding reportedly hit by mistake in Afghanistan.

Rolling Stone, ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. --> Fresh disasters at the polls -- and new evidence from an industry insider -- prove that electronic voting machines can't be trusted.

Iran Preparing for US Air Attacks.

A closed-door meeting of high-level government and business leaders that discussed the merger of North America was designed to subvert the democratic process, charged an attendee of the confab in Banff, Canada, Sept. 12-14.

"What is sinister about this meeting is that it involved high level government officials and some of the top and most powerful business leaders of the three countries and the North American Forum in organizing the meeting intentionally did not inform the press in any of the three countries," he said. "It was clear that the intention was to keep this important meeting about integrating the three countries out of the public eye."

Charley Reese --> President George Bush might be planning to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez staked a claim to be the world's leading anti-American voice by branding President Bush as the devil in a speech to the United Nations this week.

Chavez, who uses anti-Bush vitriol at home daily, calculated that tapping into anti-U.S. feeling worldwide could help win Venezuela a seat on the U.N. Security Council, despite U.S. objections.

Tens of thousands of people, led by Prime Minister Tony Blair's sister-in-law, held a march on Saturday on the eve of the Labour Party conference in protest at British policy over Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel.

Hungarian anti-government demonstrations continued peacefully for a seventh day yesterday, even as the largest crowd of a week marred by riots gathered in downtown Budapest and a protest leader predicted violence.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro was detained and released at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport after an apparent run-in with security personnel, the foreign minister said.
Maduro identified himself as a Venezuela government official, but they nonetheless took him to a room for a more thorough screening, he said. Maduro claims he was kept in the room for 90 minutes.

President Hugo Chavez said his foreign minister was detained by U.S. authorities at a New York airport Saturday for more than hour as he tried to return to the South American country.

"They have held him accusing him of participating in terrorist acts here," Chavez said in Venezuela.

There was no immediate comment from U.S. officials and it wasn't known if Maduro has since left for Venezuela.

Secret Republican & CIA contacts with Iran?s Islamic regime more than a quarter century ago are relevant today because an underlying theme in the current President Bush?s rationale for war is that direct negotiations with Iran are pointless. But Bush?s own father may know otherwise.

More than a dozen Arab countries were blocked by a Canadian motion in their bid to have a vote on a resolution labelling Israel's nuclear capabilities a threat on the final day of the International Atomic Energy Agency's annual meeting.

The draft resolution, which also called upon Israel to join the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, was blocked from going to a vote Friday by the Canadian delegate.

U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte said Friday that the United States is taking seriously the possibility that Al-Qaida could expand its activities into Lebanon, based on intercepted communications, among other sources.

Far-right radicals threatened to use violence to oust Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany last night.

Norwegian authorities on Friday presented details of an alleged plot to decapitate the Israeli ambassador to Oslo and blow up the Israeli and American embassies in the city.

The four suspects, three of them of Muslim background, are also charged with firing at the city's synagogue last week, causing damage but no injuries.

The evidence against the suspects was revealed in the course of extending the suspects' remand, and is based on recordings of their conversations obtained by bugging devices placed in the lead suspect's car.

...an engine that generates thrust purely from electromagnetic radiation - microwaves to be precise - by exploiting the strange properties of relativity. It has no moving parts, and releases no exhaust or noxious emissions. Potentially, it could pack the punch of a rocket in a box the size of a suitcase. It could one day replace the engines on almost any spacecraft. More advanced versions might allow cars to lift from the ground and hover. It could even lead to aircraft that will not need wings at all.

TIME --> Saudi sources tell TIME that credible reports suggest the fugitive Qaeda leader has contracted a serious 'water-borne illness,' and may have already died.

The French defense ministry on Saturday called for an internal investigation of the leak of an intelligence document that raises the possibility that Osama bin Laden may have died of typhoid in Pakistan a month ago but said the report of the death remained unverified.

U.S. intelligence officials are skeptical of reports that Osama bin Laden has died.

The government Thursday warned consumers and businesses that it is illegal to use alternative money known as "Liberty Dollar" coins, which organizers promote as a competitor to the almighty dollar.

The Justice Department has determined that use of Liberty Dollars, which come in varying denominations, "is a crime."

One Nation Under Siege is a forceful unmasking of the U.S. government and those in powerful positions who wish to dismantle the United States Bill of Rights for their own corrupt purposes.

Through the research of over a dozen internationally distinguished authors, journalists, doctors, and military experts you will begin to understand the massive and ceaseless control projected onto an unsuspecting populace by a government that has finally crossed the line from a representative republic to a fascist empire.

Make no mistake, you are being targeted, brainwashed and tracked everywhere you go. The only question is... What are "we the people" going to do about it?

Aircraft Parts as a Clue to their Identity.

You'd think George Bush would get down on his knees and kiss Hugo Chavez's behind. Not only has Chavez delivered cheap oil to the Bronx and other poor communities in the United States. And not only did he offer to bring aid to the victims of Katrina.
...the president of Venezuela made Bush the following astonishing offer: Chavez would drop the price of oil to $50 a barrel, "not too high, a fair price," he said ? a third less than the $75 a barrel for oil recently posted on the spot market. That would bring down the price at the pump by about a buck, from $3 to $2 a gallon.

But our President has basically told Chavez to take his cheaper oil and stick it up his pipeline.

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz's anti-corruption crusade could jeopardise those it claims to protect, the poor in developing nations, by letting powerful players off the hook and by not extending corruption probes to the Bank's past lending, a leading U.S. whistleblower group says.

Senators won't authorize torture, but they won't prevent it, either.

...a $2 billion government contract to develop and provide new technological means to secure the US borders and curb illegal immigration.
...a multibillion-dollar Homeland Security Department plan to help secure US borders with Mexico and Canada.

...the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran's western coast.

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz Thursday ordered the army to impose a full closure on the West Bank and Gaza during the Jewish New Year holiday, local media reported.

Israelis have been preparing for the upcoming Jewish New Year holiday, which begins from sunset Friday.

Reflecting the thinking and spirit of Noam Chomsky, Hugo Chavez delivered an impassioned speech yesterday to the assembled delegates who came to hear him. It's one likely to be favorably remembered many years from now. At its end, the delegates showed their appreciation and support by giving him a standing ovation (the longest one of all the leaders addressing the Assembly) in contrast to the cool and polite reception given George Bush the previous day who chose not to attend to hear the Venezuelan leader. Too bad he didn't as he might have learned from it if he stayed alert and paid attention.

Billionaire philanthropist Jimmy Walter and WTC survivor William Rodriguez this week embarked on a groundbreaking trip to Caracas Venezuela in which they met with with the President of the Assembly and will soon meet with Venezuelan President himself Hugo Chavez in anticipation of an official Venezuelan government investigation into 9/11.

"no person may invoke the Geneva Conventions or any protocols thereto in any habeas or civil action or proceeding to which the United States, or a current or former officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent of the United States, is a party as a source of rights, in any court of the United States or its States or territories."

Drive Out the Bush Regime!

On October 5, people everywhere will walk out of school, take off work, and come to the downtowns & townsquares and set out from there, going through the streets and calling on many more to join us - making a powerful statement: "NO! THIS REGIME DOES NOT REPRESENT US! AND WE WILL DRIVE IT OUT!"

The U.S. ambassador to Canada is quashing any hopes Prime Minister Stephen Harper may have had that new border-identification requirements will be delayed.

A federal judge on Wednesday denied a former Republican congressional candidate?s request for a restraining order barring President Bush or Vice President Richard Cheney from bombing Iran or Syria.

Mary Maxwell, 59, of 179 Loudon Road, Apt. 10, Concord, filed a lawsuit Monday against Bush, Cheney and other "unnamed defendants actively engaging in acts of war against Iran and Syria in the guise of the war against terrorism."

Welcome to Windows Media Player 11

The Pentagon's inspector general will release a report in the coming days that is expected to refute claims that an Army intelligence unit had information that could have thwarted the September 11 attacks.

In this Channel 4 documentary Tony Robinson investigates the people with powerful political friends in the White House, who are trying to bring about the end of the world.

The State Duma Council has put a bill that would allow President Vladimir Putin to stand for a third term on the agenda for November.

Two of President Bush's staunchest domestic critics leapt to his defense Thursday, a day after one of his fiercest foreign foes called him "the devil" in a scorching speech before the United Nations.

"You don't come into my country; you don't come into my congressional district and you don't condemn my president," Rep. Charles Rangel, D-New York, scolded Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

...No, you do...One must come right to your backyard...Because you are too brainwashed, and doesn't want to admit that president of the United States is EVIL and 'harmful' to everyone.
Just go into your brain for a moment...Now, tell me...In your moral understanding, was Hitler "devil"?
...Well, George W. Bush and his entourage are leaving behind them the trace of blood, fear and pain that beats Hitler in every instance...Terrorizing and policing the whole planet with fear, dollar and nukes.
...Can't you smell sulfur?
Why not?
Let me help you...
...you don't see/smell Bush and his actions as EVIL and dangerous to human health, because you are...
Stupid?
Brainwashed?
Blind?
Coward?
Sellout?
All of the above?

Harkin says, "We tend to forget that a few days after 9-1-1 thousands, thousands of Iranians marched in a candlelight procession in Teheran in support of the United States. Every Muslim country was basically on our side. Just think, in five years, President Bush has squandered all that."

The President of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, reveals in an interview to be aired at the weekend that, soon after the terror attacks of 11 September 2001, the United States threatened to bomb his country "back into the Stone Age" if he didn't offer its co-operation in fighting terrorism and the Taliban.

Nearly 7,000 civilians were killed in Iraq in the past two months, according to a UN report just released - a record high that is far greater than initial estimates had suggested. As American generals in Baghdad warned that the violence could worsen in the run up to Ramadan next Monday, the UN spoke of a "grave sectarian crisis" gripping the country.

ISRAELI soldiers shot dead five Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on the bloodiest day in the coastal territory in weeks.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted Thursday that Tehran's nuclear program is peaceful and said he is "at a loss" about what more he can do to provide guarantees. "The bottom line is we do not need a bomb," he said at a news conference on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. "The time for nuclear bombs has ended," he added.

The Bush administration had to empty its secret prisons and transfer terror suspects to the military-run detention centre at Guantánamo this month in part because CIA interrogators had refused to carry out further interrogations and run the secret facilities, according to former CIA officials and people close to the programme.

The Bush story the press won't tell...

The Torpark browser has been created by a hacking group and uses technology backed by digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Torpark uses its own network of net routers to anonymise the traffic people generate when they browse the web.
...its small, portable, clean, open-source, free of spyware/adware, and free.

Tactical nuclear weapons would be required to penetrate the defenses Iran has constructed around its nuclear facilities, according to Col. (res.) Shlomo Mofaz, an international consultant on terrorism and intelligence and a research fellow at the Institute of Counterterrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.

Mofaz argued that any preemptive action - not necessarily launched by Israel - against Iran's nuclear facilities would need to employ tactical nuclear weapons.

Baroness Tonge, who was elevated to the House of Lords after saying that if she was a Palestinian, she would consider becoming a suicide bomber, said the following yesterday at a fringe meeting of the Liberal Democrat conference:

"The pro-Israeli Lobby has got its grips on the Western World," she said. After a short pause she went on to explain exactly what sort of grips she was referring to: "its financial grips."

A Brussels court has ordered internet giant Google to pay 1 million euro a day if it does not remove all news articles and pictures from French and German language newspapers on its news site.

"Continental Prosperity in the New Security Environment" focused on "Deep Integration," which largely consists in flushing national sovereignty in favor of "Fortress North America".

The former US secretary of state Colin Powell has accused the White House of pursuing policies in the "war on terror" that have put America out of step with the rest of the world.

Dr. Emile A. Nakhleh served in the CIA for 15 years and retired on June 30, 2006, as the Director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program, the intelligence community's premier group dedicated to the issue of political Islam. His research has focused on political Islam, political and educational reform, regime stability, and governance in the greater Middle East.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday stepped up his efforts to lobby for federal laws requiring Internet providers to keep track of what their customers do online.

The World Bank receives more from developing countries than what it disburses to them says a new report released Tuesday.

Speaking at a meeting in New York earlier this week, Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff conceded that bin Laden may well be in his country, according to people who heard his comments.

"We believe he is somewhere between Bajaur, Pakistan, and the province of Kunar in Afghanistan," he said at a meeting connected to his appearance at the United Nations.

300 European Union parliamentarians and supporters took part this week in a gala celebrating the establishment of a European "Israel Lobby", the first of its kind. The lobby organization, called EFI (European Friends of Israel), includes representatives of all European states, including those that have as yet not expressed public support for Israel. The gala opening took place in Brussels, Belgium, and was also attended by Knesset members, the Israeli ambassador to the EU, and foreign ministers and parliamentary speakers from the various EU states.

What an outrage for the president to invoke the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in his address to the United Nations, a day after a Canadian government commission accused the U.S. of rendering a Canadian to Syria for torture. Did no one on his staff inform the president that Article 5 of that declaration explicitly states, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment"?

Israel has confiscated more than one million dollars during a series of pre-dawn raids on money exchange shops and banks across the West Bank, the latest crackdown on the beleaguered Palestinian territories.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said Wednesday about one million shekels (1.15 million dollars, 910,000 euros) and 170,000 Jordanian dinars (240,000 dollars, 189,000 euros) were seized, along with computers and documents, during the raids, which were carried out simultaneously across the West Bank.

Ratzinger is not stupid. Including the reference to the passage that has incited Muslim anger was no accident. It was a calculated, intentional strategy designed to help George Bush and the Republicans in the 2006 elections, just like the Catholic church systematically helped Bush and the Republicans in the 2004 elections, through Cardinals and Bishops who attacked Kerry.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq was among the "dumbest moves of all time" that ranks with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the German invasion of Russia, billionaire philanthropist Ted Turner said on Tuesday.

The founder of CNN and unabashed internationalist also defended the right of Iran to have nuclear weapons and the effectiveness of the United Nations and, in a jocular mood, advocated banning men from elective office worldwide.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told the annual U.N. General Assembly session that the international community must stand up against Iran, which she claimed is pursuing the weapons to destroy Israel, a reference to its suspect nuclear program.

Standing at the podium, Mr Chavez quipped that a day after Mr Bush's appearance: "In this very spot it smells like sulphur still." He held up a book by American left-wing writer Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, and recommended it to everyone in the General Assembly.

Hollywood made its most direct appeal to Christian audiences yesterday with the launch of a new brand dedicated to producing films on religious themes.

FoxFaith, part of the home entertainment division of Rupert Murdoch's movie studio, plans to produce as many as a dozen new films a year.

Four years ago, President George Bush appeared before the UN General Assembly and demanded that the UN rubberstamp a war against Iraq that was based on flagrant lies about Saddam Hussein?s so-called weapons of mass destruction. Today, as Bush goes to the UN to demand tough action against Iran, American claims that Tehran has a nuclear weapons program have been exposed as fabrications.

The UN's nuclear supervisory body?the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)?last week issued a stinging rebuttal of the "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated information" contained in a US congressional report entitled "Recognising Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States".

The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel hosted American political leaders in a series of secret meetings with political and business leaders from Canada, Mexico and the United States.

U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld listed as keynote speaker; critics say presence of "war criminal" should have been announced.

The full text of President Ahmadinejad's speech before the Sixtieth Session of the United Nations General Assembly -->

...since the beginning of this month, U.S. casualties in the war have passed another grim benchmark: More than 20,000 U.S. troops have now been wounded while serving in Iraq.

The total number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq through Tuesday, Sept. 18, since the start of operations to topple Saddam Hussein on March 19, 2003, was 2,678, according to official figures issued by the U.S. Department of Defense.

President Jacques Chirac has broken ranks with the US and Britain by calling for the suspension of UN Security Council action against Iran during negotiations over its nuclear programme.

In a radio interview yesterday before flying to New York for the UN General Assembly, the French President provoked a diplomatic storm by backing Iran's demand that the Security Council should halt its involvement in the nuclear dossier.

Former Israeli special forces soldiers crossed into Iraq from Turkey in 2004 to train two sets of Kurdish troops, one of the former Israeli trainers told the BBC's Newsnight program.

Hungarian police have used tear gas and water cannon to quell violent overnight protests in Budapest in which buildings were attacked and cars set alight.

TIME --> A flurry of military maneuvers in the Middle East increases speculation that conflict with Iran is no longer quite so unthinkable. Here's how the U.S. would fight such a war--and the huge price it would have to pay to win it.

Pope Benedict is being portrayed as a naive, shy scholar who has accidentally antagonised two major world faiths in a matter of months.
In fact he is a shrewd and ruthless operator, argues Madeleine Bunting - and he's dangerous.

washingtonpost --> Bush's 'Program' Disgraces All Americans.

The conflict in Gaza has attracted relatively little international attention, not least because for five weeks it was overshadowed by that in Lebanon. But the death toll has continued to rise.

The exoneration of Canada's Maher Arar is creating one more headache for President George W. Bush.

...the Arar commission report released this week is shining a light on the highly contentious U.S. extraordinary rendition program, in which terror suspects are sent to foreign countries and often tortured during interrogations.

American media organizations played the release of the Canadian inquiry report prominently on Tuesday.

A British soldier has become the first to admit to a war crime after pleading guilty to inhumanely treating Iraqi civilians, at a court martial.

A Visual Guide to Where Your Federal Tax Dollars Go...

Thousands of Iraq war protesters marched Tuesday to the United Nations, where President George W. Bush was presenting his vision for the Middle East to skeptical world leaders.

The anti-war march, organized by the group United for Peace and Justice, started in the garment district on the city's West Side and stretched along a dozen blocks to the United Nations on the East Side.

In an address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York today, Bush said the progress of democracy in the world, particularly the Middle East, is real and sometimes dramatic, even if it is gradual.

Bush used the UN stage to speak directly to the citizens of countries whose governments are at odds with the U.S.

Ahmadinejad was scheduled to speak to the world body Tuesday evening, but he was not sitting in Iran?s seat in the General Assembly chamber when Bush spoke.

Earlier this month, Ahmadinejad proposed a debate with Bush at the General Assembly?s ministerial meeting.

Thailand's army leader has taken over the powers of the prime minister, after the military revoked the constitution and imposed martial law, a spokesman for the coup leaders said.

General Sonthi Boonyaratglin signed a statement late Tuesday announcing that he had formed a 'Council for Political Reform' and ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

'As the country has no prime minister, all legal powers authorized by law to the prime minister must be transfered to the leader of the Council,' said the statement read over national television.

Earlier, a spokesman for the coup leaders said that the military had suspended the constitution and abolished the cabinet, parliament and one of the nation's highest courts.

Details emerged yesterday about the seven interrogation techniques the CIA is seeking to be allowed to apply to terror suspects.

The techniques sought by the CIA are: induced hypothermia; forcing suspects to stand for prolonged periods; sleep deprivation; a technique called "the attention grab" where a suspect's shirt is forcefully seized; the "attention slap" or open hand slapping that hurts but does not lead to physical damage; the "belly slap"; and sound and light manipulation.

Imagine an America in which school officials could strip search every student in their school based on the unsubstantiated tip that one of them might have a joint. Congress is voting on a bill Tuesday or Wednesday that could make these police state tactics more common.

The Student Teacher Safety Act of 2006 (HR 5295) is a sloppily written bill that would require any school receiving federal funding (essentially every public school) to adopt policies allowing teachers and school officials to conduct random, warrantless searches of every student, at any time, for essentially any reason they want.

TIME Magazine --> AHMADINEJAD: ...my general impression is that the people of the United States are good people. Everywhere in the world, people are good.

TIME: You recently invited President Bush to a televised debate. If he were sitting where I am sitting, what would you say, man to man?

AHMADINEJAD: I would ask him, Are rationalism, spirituality and humanitarianism and logic--are they bad things for human beings? Why more conflict? Why should we go for hostilities? Why should we develop weapons of mass destruction? Everybody can love one another.

Military Intelligence had clear information about an impending kidnap attempt by Hezbollah shortly before the Lebanese group carried out its cross-border raid on July 12, according to an internal inquiry conducted by the Israel Defense Forces.

...the national unity government being contemplated is a show of Palestinian weakness, vulnerability and irresoluteness. It is largely a desperate response to the Israeli-American-European financial embargo that is slowly starving the Palestinians. To avoid death by strangulation and malnutrition, the Palestinians must practice diplomatic submission and subservience to Israel-American positions.

It will take a few days, with thousands of sorties, satellite and laser-guided bombs will be aimed at targets ? 1,500 already planned by Pentagon ? and will try to infiltrate armed concrete.

Big Brother is not only watching you - now he's barking orders too. Britain's first 'talking' CCTV cameras have arrived, publicly berating bad behaviour and shaming offenders into acting more responsibly.

The system allows control room operators who spot any anti-social acts - from dropping litter to late-night brawls - to send out a verbal warning: 'We are watching you'.

...the 93-minute feature was awarded the 15th annual Prize of the International Critics (FIPRESCI) by a five-member panel who lauded the film for "the audacity with which it distorts reality to reveal a larger truth."
In this instance, Range combines staged and archival footage to explore, in pseudo-documentary fashion, the fall-out from the imagined assassination of U.S. President George W. Bush in 2007.

The Citizendium (sit-ih-ZEN-dee-um), a "citizens' compendium of everything," will be an experimental new wiki project that combines public participation with gentle expert guidance. It will begin life as a "progressive fork" of Wikipedia. But we expect it to take on a life of its own and, perhaps, to become the flagship of a new set of responsibly-managed free knowledge projects. We will avoid calling it an "encyclopedia," because there will probably always be articles in the resource that have not been vouched for in any sense.

Representatives of 118 Non-Aligned Movement nations condemned Israel's attacks on Lebanon and supported a peaceful resolution to the U.S.-Iran nuclear dispute in the final declaration of a summit that brought together some of the world's staunchest American foes.

The 92-page declaration also broadly condemns terrorism, and although calling democracy a universal value, says no one country or region should define it for the world.

More than 43 million children living in conflict-affected countries are not able to attend school, according to a new report released Tuesday by the International Save the Children Alliance.

Some 115 million children -- or almost 20 percent of the world's primary school-aged children -- are still not enrolled, according to Britain's foreign aid agency.

President George W Bush is coming under enormous pressure from Israel - and from Israel's neoconservative friends inside and outside the US administration - to harden still further his stance toward Iran. They want the American president to commit himself to bombing Iran if it does not give up its program of uranium enrichment - and to issue a clear ultimatum to Tehran that he is prepared to do so. They argue that mere rhetoric - such as Bush's recent diatribe, in which he compared Iran to al-Qaeda - is not enough, and might even be counter-productive.

Sister Leonella, 65, was shot in the back four times by pistol-wielding attackers as she left the Austrian-run S.O.S. hospital at lunch time after finishing nursing school for trainee medics. Her bodyguard was also slain.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, which came just hours after a leading Somali cleric condemned the pope's remarks last week on Islam and violence.

The Bush administration has declared itself exempt from nearly two decades of federal legal precedent that protects whistle-blowers under the Clean Water Act. Now, federal employees who complain about unhealthful conditions at the workplace, environmental problems, public safety hazards and other situations, could face retaliation.

Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Disappearances in the "War on Terror"



Human rights groups and several public inquiries in Europe have found the U.S. government, with the complicity of numerous governments worldwide, to be engaged in the illegal practice of extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and torture. The U.S. government-sponsored program of renditions is an unlawful practice in which numerous persons have been illegally detained and secretly flown to third countries, where they have suffered additional human rights abuses including torture and enforced disappearance. No one knows the exact number of persons affected, due to the secrecy under which the operations are carried out.

The US Addiction to War, Mayhem and Madness.

Robert Fisk --> The change to 'warrior' creed is encouraging soldiers to commit atrocities...

Israel's cabinet on Sunday approved the appointment of an investigative committee nominated by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to examine how the government and military managed the recent war in Lebanon.

Pope Benedict XVI, facing the biggest crisis of his 17-month reign, offered a guarded apology on Sunday for a speech that sparked anger across the Muslim world by suggesting there was a link between Islam and violence.

An irritated Bush, raising his voice and gesturing sharply at a Rose Garden news conference.

"The professionals will not step up unless there's clarity in the law," Bush said. "So Congress has got a decision to make: Do you want the program to go forward or not? I strongly recommend that this program go forward in order for us to be able to protect America."

Shots were fired at a synagogue in central Oslo early on Sunday and police said they were investigating whether the incident was linked to religious hatred.

President Bush's policy on how to treat people captured in the course of the war on terror is unravelling fast. In order to comply with a Supreme Court ruling, he has to get new rules for military tribunals for the suspects held at Guantanamo through Congress.

Palestinians wielding guns and firebombs attacked five churches in the West Bank and Gaza on Saturday, following remarks by Pope Benedict that angered many Muslims.

No injuries were reported in the attacks, which left church doors charred and walls pockmarked with bullet holes and scorched by firebombs. Churches of various denominations were targeted.

On the 7th of July 2005 London was hit by a series of explosions. You probably think you know what happened that day. But you don?t.

The CIA learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered bin Laden an enemy of the Baghdad regime, according to a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report.

Rolling Stone --> ...our response to 9/11 was a heroic compendium of idiocy, cowardice, callow flag-waving, weepy sentimentality (coupled with an apparently bottomless capacity for self-pity), sloth, laziness and partisan ignorance.

A convenience store videotape long-sought by September 11 conspiracy theorists does not actually show the attack on the Pentagon.

Germany's racist neo-Nazi party is poised to make a stunning breakthrough at elections this weekend, entering a regional parliament for the second time in three years, polls suggest.

According to a poll for ZDF television, the far-right National Party of Germany (NPD) is likely to win 7% of the vote in elections on Sunday in the north-east state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

POPE Benedict was condemned by Islamic leaders across the world yesterday for remarks they said encouraged the belief that early Muslims spread their religion by violence.

Some said the Pontiff was trying to revive the spirit of the Crusades in a speech he gave during his tour of Germany on Tuesday, when he quoted a conversation between the 14th-century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and an educated Persian on the truths of Christianity and Islam.

"The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war," the Pope said.

"He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached'."

THE New York Times published an editorial today, in which it called Pope Benedict XVI's latest remarks about Islam "tragic and dangerous" and urged him to apologise.

President Bush launched an impassioned counterattack on critics of his proposals to give CIA interrogators a free rein in their treatment of terror suspects yesterday, saying "it's vital that the folks on the front line have the tools necessary to protect the American people".

US President George W. Bush declared Friday that he has no intention of meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his visit to the United Nations headquarters in New York next week.

Bush and Ahmadinejad are expected to carry speeches Tuesday in front of the UN General Assembly, with Bush?s oration scheduled for the morning hours and Ahmadinejad?s for the evening.

Norman Finkelstein --> ...whenever Israel faces a public relations debacle its apologists sound the alarm that a "new anti-Semitism" is upon us.

The report defines an anti-Semitic incident as any occasion "perceived" to be anti-Semitic by the "Jewish community." This is the school of thought according to which it's raining even in the absence of any precipitation because I feel it's raining.

Six months of a crippling international embargo on the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) has brought its economy to a virtual standstill. As a result, children are being driven increasingly to find work to help support their families.

"What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war.

Loose Change Filmmakers vs. Popular Mechanics Editors of "Debunking 9/11 Myths"

The percentage of Americans who blame the Bush administration for the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington has risen from almost a third to almost half over the past four years, a CNN poll released Monday found.

The question that each individual needs to answer is what should we do as thinking, rational and reasonable people? Should we give into the herd mentality and continue to blindly believe the mainstream media version of events or should we act like truly reasonable, rational and thinking people and examine the evidence on both sides in order to ascertain the truth? After all someone had to question and and break from the herd perception and look at evidence to ascertain that the world was not flat.

An Israeli military judge has ordered the release of 21 Hamas ministers and parliamentarians detained in the wake of the seizure of an Israeli soldier by Gaza militants in June.

Union members booed and hissed British Prime Minister Tony Blair during his address to a conference Tuesday, and more than a dozen delegates walked out during his speech to protest efforts to partly privatize public services.

Four men shouting Islamic slogans tried to blow up the US embassy in Damascus last night but their plot was foiled after Syrian guards killed three of them in a shootout.

A life-size replica of a Guantanamo Bay detainee has been placed in Disneyland by "guerrilla artist" Banksy.

part1


part2

I stood before the ruins, and the tears flowed. No, it was before that scene that I stood, when the people carried the coffins walking over the rubble with the dust of death blanketing them. I couldn't feel the tears collecting at the edges of my eyes, burning them, before they fell on my cheeks. The dust covered us under the burning sun, the sweat trickling out of our pores and spreading over our bodies. I didn't realise I was crying when I did. I had never experienced weeping that came out of the whole body, mixing tears and sweat.

These photographs have not been altered. They were snapped last night by Jason Reed, working for Reuters News Agency. The captions are from Reuters, too. And the symbolism is plain enough to shout for itself, with no further comment.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the ruling Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) reached on Monday a long-awaited deal on a national coalition government.

George, are you really in the pursuit of the criminal?
Take a look in the mirror.

And yes, America will 'find' you, Mr. President.

The "war on terror" unleashed following the 9/11 tragedy has transformed the world into a battlefield ruled by the logic of naked force and nihilistic force. No limits are recognised, be they moral, legal, or political. Force governs supreme in its Hobbesian universe where only the fittest survive. There are no rules, except "might is right". There are no geographic boundaries either.

Inflammatory more on a conceptual level than for the ideas it actually advances, the skillful docudrama "Death of a President" uses an imagined assassination of George W. Bush a year hence to explore how the American government might react to such an event and to post warning signs about the dangers of a rush to judgment in a climate all too conducive to instant finger-pointing. Shrewdly blending archival footage with staged material in ways that raise a host of separate issues, pic is calculatingly controversial on the face of things, designed to provoke gobs of media coverage and automatic outrage from those who haven't seen it. Such attention should assure theatrical release in key territories, although best prospects lie in cable (at least in the U.S.) and homevid.

The exact nature and level of threat against Gabriel Range, the director of Death of A President and his producer - writing partner Simon Finch was not being disclosed yesterday but expert security officers were in attendance at the world premiere screening of the film, also known as DOAP, on Sunday night at the Paramount cinema in Toronto.

Instead, under a new wording that reflects a world of relative rather than absolute values, teachers would be asked to encourage pupils to develop "secure values and beliefs".

Gore Vidal --> What a difference five years have made!

pdf --> The leadership class in the US is now dominated by a neo-conservative group of people with the shared goal of asserting US military power worldwide. This global dominance group, in cooperation with major military contractors, has become a powerful force in world military unilateralism and US political processes. This research study is an attempt to identify the general parameters of those who are the key actors supporting a global dominance agenda and how collectively this group has benefited from the events of September 11, 2001 and irregularities in the 2004 presidential election. This study examines how interlocking public private partnerships, including the corporate media, public relations firms, military contractors, policy elites, and government officials, jointly support a US military global domination agenda.

Imperialist history is rife with buried and known stories of young men sacrificed for nothing. Not for freedom, not for democracy, not for defense. They die for rulers that are hell bent on increasing their own wealth and power.

US Vice-President Dick Cheney repeated assertions on Sunday on links between the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda despite a recent Senate intelligence committee report that concluded otherwise.

Parents cannot remove their children?s names from a Pentagon database that includes highly personal information used to attract military recruits.

Vogue Italia --> War-on-Terror-themed fashion photo spread.

The acknowledgement of a global network of 'black sites' has revealed the existence of a sinister two-tier system of interrogation.

The AP Board represents a solid corporate media network of the largest publishers in the US and provides a clear tilt towards right-wing conservative perspectives.

...in talks at the weekend in Vienna between Iran's national security chief, Ali Larijani, and the European Union's foreign policy supremo, Javier Solana, Tehran appeared to concede enough to prevent a quick move to sanctions by the UN security council.