Link: http://www.paltelegraph.com/opinions/views/4273-israeli-assassinations-a-crime-against-humanity

US, February 21, 2010 (Pal Telegraph)-Dominating the world news, even in the United States, is the Al-Mabhouh assassination. Israel has a long history of engaging in targeted killings and assassinations, so why has this one sparked media frenzy? Many outlets are focusing on the use of fake passports, while others are condemning the lack of action by those governments whose passports were used. Very few are actually focusing on the act of assassination itself and its consequences under international law. Assassinations are not acceptable under international law. Was the murder of Al-Mabhouh an assassination? If so, is this another Israeli crime against humanity?

Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article7034945.ece

BRITISH scientists have drawn up plans to build the world’s first nuclear fusion power station. They say it could be pouring electricity into the National Grid within 20 years. Nuclear fusion, the power that lies at the heart of the sun, offers the prospect of clean, safe, carbon-free power with a minimum of radioactive waste. But despite decades of research the technical problems have seemed insurmountable.

Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7034913.ece

HE remembers the women sunbathing naked on the deck of a passing yacht. He remembers, too, the lurking menace of a Russian intelligence-gathering trawler, watching from afar as one of the most audacious American coups of the cold war unfolded on the ocean floor, 16,500ft beneath the Pacific surface. David Sharp recalls every detail of the 1974 mission known as Project Azorian, one of the most ambitious, expensive and politically volatile clandestine operations launched by the CIA.

Link: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50412

To halt the planet's declining biodiversity and loss of critical natural resources, both the economy we live in and communication about science needs to be changed profoundly, says a prominent Dutch ecologist.

Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn02192010.html

Thirty years ago, driving across the hill country in the South, every 50 miles I’d pick up a new Pentecostal radio station with the preacher screaming in tongues in a torrent of ecstatic drivel – “Miki taki meka keena ko-o-ola ka” – the harsh consonants rattling the speakers on my Newport station wagon. I had a friend, a “shouter” – whose trailer featured by way of cultural uplift only the Bible and a big TV set tuned to the Christian Broadcasting Network, on which Pat Robertson used to denounce New Age paganism on an hourly basis.

Link: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article19579

What It’s Like to Chill Out With Whom the World Considers the Most Ruthless Men in the World Ratko Mladic, Radovan Karadzic and Goran Hadzic (+) Confessions of a Female War Crimes Investigator... considered the world’s most ruthless war criminal since Adolf Hitler, still at large and currently having a five million dollar bounty on his head for genocide by the international community. Yet there I was...

Link: http://www.reallibertymedia.com/content/cnn-broadcasts-major-cyber-war-game-propaganda

CNN rolled out a slick propaganda presentation this evening. It is called “Cyber Shockwave” and it posits a cyber attack on the United States. CNN will air a two-hour production, We Were Warned: Cyber Shockwave, based upon exclusive television access to a national security cyber “war game” scenario. The simulated event was developed by The Bipartisan Policy Center and will debut Saturday, Feb. 20 and Sunday, Feb. 21 at 8pm, 11pm and 2am ET on CNN. The scenario was created by Fmr. CIA Director, General Michael Hayden (ret.) as well as the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, Fmr. Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-IN) and Fmr. Gov. Thomas Kean (R-NJ).

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/02/20102219289545873.html

Hamas officials said al-Mabhouh may have created a "security breach" that led to his death. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, is alleged to have given the green light for last month's assassination of a senior Hamas figure, according to a British newspaper. The Sunday Times, citing "sources with knowledge of Mossad", reported on Sunday thatNetanyahu visited the Israeli intelligence headquarters in early January and, after being brief, authorised the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

Link: http://seekingalpha.com/article/189649-wealth-disparities-in-u-s-approaching-1920s-levels?source=from_friend

What a time to be an oligarch! All I wanted to do was vomit when I saw this. Folks, there is no way we can have economic prosperity in this country when the top 1% has all of the money. The middle class is basically being destroyed right in front of our very eyes. Consumption economies die when the consumers have no money to consume! I see growing signs of desperation and anger as the wealth of this nation continues to get transferred to the elite of this nation. People are starting to "lose" it as a result. This past week's airplane event in Austin was a disturbing development. I must admit that I really am not surprised. The government shouldn't be either. Things are only going to get worse in the violence department as the taxpayers continue to get violated and more desperate as a result of this economic cataststrophe. The news media tried to downplay the actions in Austin.

Link: http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/usa/US-Concerned-by-Threat-of-Domestic-Extremists-84925877.html

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says authorities are becoming more concerned about American citizens or legal residents becoming involved in terrorist plots against the United States.

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/rahms-parting-shot-at-oba_b_470671.html

It looks Rahm Emanuel is done. Dana Milbank transcribed an article written by Rahm Emanuel today in The Washington Post. Never has an article been more clearly written to support a political benefactor.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/feb/21/hobbit-rewriting-history-human-race

The discovery of the bones of tiny primitive people on an Indonesian island six years ago stunned scientists. Now, further research suggests that the little apemen, not Homo erectus, were the first to leave Africa and colonise other parts of the world, reports Robin McKie. It remains one of the greatest human fossil discoveries of all time. The bones of a race of tiny primitive people, who used stone tools to hunt pony-sized elephants and battle huge Komodo dragons, were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/opinion/22krugman.html

O.K., the beast is starving. Now what? That’s the question confronting Republicans. But they’re refusing to answer, or even to engage in any serious discussion about what to do. For readers who don’t know what I’m talking about: ever since Reagan, the G.O.P. has been run by people who want a much smaller government. In the famous words of the activist Grover Norquist, conservatives want to get the government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

Link: http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2010/02/20/walled-disappearing-story-al-numan

Imagine being a 5 year-old, like Sulaiman Jamal. In order for Jamal to get to school in the morning, hell – snow – or sunshine, he must walk around 4 kilometres to get to school because his school bus can't get anywhere close to his house. And since he doesn't have an Identification Card, little Sulaiman must always have his birth certificate handy; because a soldier at the gate to his village must verify it before allowing him out to school in the morning or back home in the afternoon. Now you can begin to imagine what life is like for Sulaiman and dozens of children like him who live in Al-Nu'man, a dwindling village on the outskirts of Bethlehem…