This report examines the Rwandan genocide in a geopolitical context including the roles of Western powers, multinational corporations and International Financial Institutions. Uganda was for decades a colony of the British Empire until it achieved independence in 1962. At this time, "Uganda's was one of the most promising economies in sub-Saharan Africa, with a sound agricultural base, developing industries, and a significant mining sector. Agriculture was an important foreign exchange earner through the export of coffee, cotton and tea while at the same time providing basic self-sufficiency in food. The manufacturing sector produced inputs for the agricultural sector and consumer goods, and was becoming a significant source of foreign exchange through the export of textiles." In 1971, Idi Amin came to power in Uganda. Amin, widely considered a brutal dictator, lasted until 1979, when the Tanzanian army and the United National Liberation Front ousted him. In December 1980 Milton Obote assumed power for the second time. The economy was in a deep crisis and infrastructure was severely damaged from the war.

John Gielgud's arrest for cottaging in 1953 sparked public outrage and, for the actor, private agony. A new play tells the story of the scandal. The most terrible moment in John Gielgud's life – on which he maintained a public silence for 50 years – is about to be put on public view. Nicholas de Jongh, theatre critic of the Evening Standard, has written a play in which we will witness Gielgud, played by Jasper Britton, give the glad eye in a public lavatory to a man who then turns out to be an undercover policeman. But Plague Over England is concerned with much more than Gielgud's arrest in 1953 on the charge of "importuning for immoral purposes". The play shows the milieu Gielgud inhabited and the forces arrayed against him. Its characters include the producer who nearly ended his career, the virulently anti-homosexual Lord Chief Justice Rayner Goddard (a man, says de Jongh, "by buggery obsessed"), an American fleeing his own country's anti-Communist paranoia, and a doctor who claims to "cure" same-sex attraction with Clockwork Orange-style electric shock therapy.

Is it possible Markos Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga, leader of the “Kossaks,” that is to say followers and fawners of the Daily Kos, is a CIA operative? Francis Holland, posting on the My Left Wing messageboard, details Moulitsas’ relationship with the CIA: “Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, owner of the DailyKos website, now admits that he spent six months in the employ of the US Central Intelligence Agency in 2001,” writes Holland. “In a one-hour interview on June 2, 2006 at the Commonwealth Club, Moulitsas, also known as ‘Kos,’ admitted that he was a CIA employee and would have ‘no problem working for them’ in the present.” “I applied to the CIA and I went all the way to the end, I mean it was to the point where I was going to sign papers to become Clandestine Services,” Moulitsas admits in the interview. “And it was at that point that the Howard Dean campaign took off and I had to make a decision whether I was gonna kinda join the Howard Dean campaign, that whole process, or was I was going to become a spy. (Laughter in the audience.) It was going to be a tough decision at first, but then the CIA insisted that if, if I joined that, they’d want me to do the first duty assignment in Washington, DC, and I hate Washington, DC. Six years in Washington, DC that makes the decision a lot easier.”

USA Today's H. Darr Beiser traveled to the Gulf coast and talked to residents about how life has changed since Hurricane Katrina devastated the region. Some have rebuilt their homes and others still live in FEMA trailers, but all are optimistic about the future. Denise Thornton: "The people of this city are working very hard to come back..."Robert Green: "We lost our house. We lost our way of life. We lost a lot of family members." Shirley Windham: "Since then the bill have just piled up because we didn't get enough money to replace everything we lost." Sybil Laux: "I was the only one in the neighborhood for probably blocks and blocks and blocks and maybe a couple of miles." Jeannie Marie Smith: "So far we've been blessed. Everything's been going really slow, but everything's coming along and I thank God for that."

An Austrian Jew whose family settled in pre-war Palestine, Amos Elon became a left-wing Zionist and renowned journalist but was highly critical of Israeli expansion after the Six-Day War. He turned to writing history and, now based in Tuscany, has produced a controversial book on Jews in Germany. In a profession with many versatile generalists, surprisingly few journalists manage to bridge the gap between "home" and "foreign" news and excel at both. Amos Elon is one of the rare examples. An acclaimed reporter in Europe and Washington at a time when Israeli foreign correspondents were a novelty, he returned home to become a perceptive analyst of his own country. His 1971 book The Israelis: Founders and Sons is still a classic portrayal of how a self-reliant and often short-sighted mentality developed among native-born "sabra" Israelis which was different from the utopian vision of the early Zionist settlers who arrived from Europe.

Once he was Israel's preeminent journalist, the chief chronicler of the Israeli story. Now he is known throughout the world but has become nearly anonymous here. After seven decades, Amos Elon is packing up his Jerusalem apartment for a permanent move to Tuscany.

Elon was born in Vienna in 1925 and migrated to Palestine in 1933. In the 1950s and later, Elon served as a European and American correspondent for the newspaper Haaretz. Except for the period 1971-1978, he worked for Haaretz until 2001. For many years, he was widely regarded as one of Israel's leading journalists.

Amos Elon's most recent book is The Pity of It All: German Jews Before Hitler. He is a Fellow at the Center for Law and Security at NYU. (February 2008).

Amos Elon, the best-selling author of many books that deal with Israeli life, discusses his latest product, a picture-book of Israel. He tells Don Swaim in this 1985 interview how he unearthed the pictures for The Israelis: Photographs of a Day in May. They also discuss the use of firearms in Israel and the turmoil that is indicitive of the area. Amos Elon has also written A Blood-Dimmed Tide, Founder: A Portrait of the First Rothschild and Israelis: Founders and Sons.

Amos Elon tells how German Jews fell in love with their host country in The Pity of It All. Amos Elon, an Israeli historian born in Europe, has written a beautifully balanced history of a tragic, one-sided love affair. As he says: "Before Hitler rose to power, other Europeans often feared, admired, envied and ridiculed the Germans; only Jews seemed actually to have loved them". No other group of European Jews tried so hard to become a part of their host country.

“You always used to iron my army uniform!” is something a child would say to a parent. In fact, it is an exclamation of wonder by Israeli filmmaker Danae Elon to Mahmoud “Musa” Obeidallah, the Pal-es-tinian man who had been her caregiver, and who was, in two decades with the Elon family, more like a third parent to her. It is a statement that lies at the crux of her documentary, An-other Road Home. The film chronicles the deeply personal story of an Israeli woman’s quest to find her Palestinian caregiver, and places a human face on a situation that most of us are acquainted with only through troubling headlines. Elon notes, “Our hearts and lives are shaped by the people who have always surrounded us, those who have nourished and loved us. Musa became part of our family, part of the way I formed my perception and grew to understand my surroundings; no war could take that away from me.” This hopeful message informs every frame of Another Road Home.

Based on chemical analysis of WTC structural steel residue, a Brigham Young University physics professor has identified the material as Thermate. Thermate is the controlled demolition explosive thermite plus sulfur. Sulfur cases the thermite to burn hotter, cutting steel quickly and leaving trails of yellow colored residue. Prof. Steven Jones, who conducted his PhD research at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and post-doctoral research at Cornell University and the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility, has analyised materials from WTC and has detected the existence of thermate, used for "cutting" the steel support columns, as evident in the photo. Dr. Jones is a co-founder of Scholars for 911 Truth. Dr. Jones in earlier work pointed to thermate as the likely explosive that brought down the WTC1, WTC2, and WTC7 skyscrapers. But only recently was physical material analysed in the lab and the presense of thermate announced. The samples were provided Dr. Jones team from redundant sourses.

The saga of an American who spent 39 years on the run, most of it hiding under an assumed name in Mississauga, Ont., for the shooting of a Chicago police officer ended Friday in a U.S. court, where he was sentenced to 30 days in jail, two years probation and a $250,000 fine, a Chicago newspaper reported. Joseph Pannell, who lived in Canada for 17 years under the name Gary Freeman, gave up fighting his extradition to the U.S. earlier this month under the plea bargain and pleaded guilty to aggravated battery for shooting police officer Terrence Knox in 1969. "I wish the events which led to Mr. Knox's injuries had never occurred," Pannell said in court, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Joseph Pannell in 1969, when the then-19-year-old was charged with shooting and wounding a Chicago police officer. Knox, who almost lost his arm as a result of the shooting, came up with the unique deal which will see Pannell's fine be paid to the Hundred Club of Cook County, a charity for surviving spouses and children of police, firefighters and paramedics who die in the line of duty. The money will go toward a scholarship fund. "If he were to have served 15 years in prison he'd be 75 when he got out: he wouldn't survive that," Knox told the National Post in a telephone interview from his Chicago-area home. "I couldn't tolerate that. I'm not out for blood."

What punishment should be imposed on a man who shot a police officer almost 40 years ago and fled to Canada, but went on to live an upstanding life as a husband and father who worked in a library? Terrence Knox, a Chicago police officer, was hospitalized after being shot. There was a rare answer here on Friday: Require him to give $250,000 to a foundation that helps the families of injured Chicago police officers.

Joseph Pannell, 58, pleaded guilty to an aggravated battery charge in the shooting of then-Chicago police officer Terrence Knox. Pannell, who was a 19-year-old member of the militant group at the time, shot Knox three times in the right arm. Pannell was sentenced to 30 days in jail and two years' probation. He also agreed to give $250,000 to the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation, a fund for the families of injured or fallen officers. Money for the donation came from Pannell supporters in Toronto and defense attorneys in the Chicago area, according to his attorneys.

On the fifteenth anniversary of the discovery of the Archive of Terror in Paraguay, the National Security Archive posted Spanish-language documents that reveal new details of how the Southern Cone military regimes collaborated in hunting down, interrogating, and disappearing hundreds of Latin Americans during the 1970s and 1980s. The collaboration, which became officially known as “Operation Condor,” drew on cross-border kidnapping, secret detention centers, torture, and disappearance of prisoners—rendition, interrogation and detention techniques that some human rights advocates are comparing to those used today in the Bush administration’s counterterrorism campaign. The selection of documents posted today included uncensored records relating to the pivotal case of Chilean Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcón and Argentine Amílcar Santucho, who were detained in Paraguay in May 1975, and whose interrogation under torture led to the decision by Chilean secret police chief Manual Contreras to formalize coordination against the left among the Southern Cone military states. One document posted today for the first time is the list of questions created by Argentine intelligence agent José Osvaldo Ribeiro [Alias Rawson] to be used in the interrogation of Santucho and Fuentes Alarcón in Paraguay. Chilean agents subsequently rendered Fuentes Alarcón to a secret detention camp in Santiago from where he was disappeared.

This is the underground history of the international Dirty Wars by U.S. allies in South America. It is the first "War on Terrorism" and the parallels to the current wars are a cautionary tale. For much of a decade, six allied military governments engaged in secret warfare intended to wipe out their enemies, kidnapping and murdering up to 30,000 people. At the initiative of Chilean president General Augusto Pinochet, and with initial encouragement from the CIA, they set up a multinational terrorist organization, Operation Condor, to pursue those who escaped to other Latin American countries, Europe and the United States.

Former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Chief Hamid Gul tells Harinder Baweja of Tehelka Magazine, India, the U.S. has Pakistan on the verge of civil war. Tehelka: Is Benazir Bhutto’s assassination a death knell for Pakistan? Hamid Gul: Accidents and wars don’t destroy a country. It is the political process that can damage it. Fortunately the emerging leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party has shown solidarity with the federation. Tehelka: But the assassination of a former prime minister indicates the growing threat to Pakistan from the jehadis. Hamid Gul: It is not the jehadis who have killed her. She was rather protective of the jehadis in the past. Benazir was never soft on the Kashmir issue, let me tell you that. I served as the ISI director-general under her. … It was not the jehadis but that is what the Americans would have us believe. They have designs for Pakistan and I strongly believe that the Americans have got her eliminated because this is the way they deal with countries like Pakistan. They either use them or subdue them. In the case of Pakistan, it is both. The Americans worked out a model during the days of Zia-ul-Haq. Junejo was brought in to give the label of democracy and to gradually ease Zia out of office after he had been used but it didn’t work out. Zia got wind of it and removed Junejo from office. The Americans got very upset and destroyed Zia. I make no bones about saying this. I’ll quote from Nixon’s book In the Arena (page 109) in which he says when Zia-ul-Haq’s plane went down, “instantly it came to my mind that why we Americans destroy our friends after we have used them”. America is a very important player in our domestic politics.

I’ve got one guess, it starts with a C, ends with an A and encompasses an I. For those a bit challenged, C.I.A. Now, why would the CIA kill Bhutto? Aside from a torrid past of getting rid of any sort of pro-western government in that area, see Operation: Ajax and the overthrow of Moussadeq, the answer is simple, the CIA likes military-run, terrorist friendly dictatorships. Especially those in control of the CIA middleman known as the Pakistani ISI, a long used front for state-sponsored terror operations. Though, it could also have something to do with her having a great chance of winning the election and her knowing “too much.” Specifically, in an interview on Frost Over the World, Benazir Bhutto stated something that conspiracy folk have known for a while, Osama bin Laden is dead.

The "dodgy dossier" on Iraq which the Government claimed gave the intelligence agencies' case for war bore a striking resemblance to a draft by a Government spin doctor, it emerged on Monday. The public was finally allowed to compare the two documents more than six years after they were drawn up after the release of a draft by John Williams, a former Foreign Office press officer. Opposition politicians said the report proved that the case for war had been based on the arguments and rhetoric of spin doctors rather than an impartial analysis by intelligence experts. When the final dossier was published on Sept 24 2002, six months before the start of the war, Tony Blair, then prime minister, said the intelligence services had left him in no doubt that Saddam posed a "serious and current" threat. He also claimed the dictator was capable of launching weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of giving the order. Neither allegation was later substantiated by the intelligence services.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband has published an early draft of the UK's infamous dossier on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The document, by Foreign Office press chief John Williams, was an unpublished draft of the September 2002 dossier. The Foreign Office (FCO) had refused to hand over the document, saying that its publication would "inhibit the free and frank provision of advice and the free and frank exchange of views for the purposes of deliberation".

The battle over the Iraq dossier draft has followed a familiar pattern of Whitehall attempts to block freedom of information requests. When a researcher first applied to the Foreign Office for the release of the draft dossier, it turned the request down. The ministry then failed to conduct the required internal appeal against its decision. Its next move was to try to persuade the information commissioner, Richard Thomas, that the document - including the word "Israel" - was exempt under section 36 of the Freedom of Information Act, concerning free and frank discussion.

Was BBC Andrew Gilligan's Original Source a Senior Member of Her Majesty's Government? The importance of identifying Andrew Gilligan's "original" source (for his infamous BBC Radio 4 Today programme story on the sexing up of the September 2002 dossier, which was later used to justify the UK's, and thereby the US's, illegal invasion of Iraq) is not immediately obvious, but we think, after painstaking research, cannot be over-emphasised. Suffice to say that the BBC eventually did what the UK Government had wanted them to do all along i.e. name Kelly as their source (the Government seemed determined to make Kelly the source from the moment that Kelly came forward and admitted to the Ministry of Defence that he had talked to Gilligan). It seems highly likely to us that Kelly was indeed the fall guy, that he was indeed set up, as was suggested to him at the Foreign Affairs Committee when he gave his evidence on 15 July 2003.

No es la primera vez que el Foreign Office británico se niega a publicar documentos para no dañar las relaciones internacionales, señala 'The Guardian'. El periódico recuerda que el año pasado se negó a que el Foreign Office publicase ciertos documentos sobre las Malvinas, algunos de los cuales datan de hace ochenta años, porque podrían perjudicar las relaciones con Argentina e incluso con España, que rechaza 'la ocupación similar' de Gibraltar.

The Dallas County district attorney's office has unearthed a treasure trove of memorabilia from the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in an old safe on the 10th floor of the courthouse. It includes personal letters to and from former District Attorney Henry Wade, a gun holster, official records from the Jack Ruby trial, letters to Ruby and clothing that probably belonged to him and Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, said Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins. And conspiracy theorists will rejoice over one find: a highly suspect transcript of a conversation between Ruby and Oswald plotting to kill the president because the mafia wanted to "get rid of" his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. "It will open up the debate again about whether there was a conspiracy," said Mr. Watkins, who at 40 was born four Novembers after Kennedy was killed in 1963.

In his controversial new book, Nick Davies argues that shadowy intelligence agencies are pumping out black propaganda to manipulate public opinion – and that the media simply swallow it wholesale. On the morning of 9 February 2004, The New York Times carried an exclusive and alarming story. The paper's Baghdad correspondent, Dexter Filkins, reported that US officials had obtained a 17-page letter, believed to have been written by the notorious terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi to the "inner circle" of al-Qa'ida's leadership, urging them to accept that the best way to beat US forces in Iraq was effectively to start a civil war. The letter argued that al-Qa'ida, which is a Sunni network, should attack the Shia population of Iraq: "It is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis." Later that day, at a regular US press briefing in Baghdad, US General Mark Kimmitt dealt with a string of questions about The New York Times report: "We believe the report and the document is credible, and we take the report seriously... It is clearly a plan on the part of outsiders to come in to this country and spark civil war, create sectarian violence, try to expose fissures in this society." The story went on to news agency wires and, within 24 hours, it was running around the world.

One third of children in remote and hard-to-reach areas (28 out of 117 districts) were cut off from health outreach services, including immunization, as a result of insecurity.

Only 40% of children nationwide had reliable access to safe drinking water, and only 20% outside Baghdad had a working sewerage service

An estimated 600,000 children had been displaced since 2006, the vast majority unable to return home. By the end of the year, approximately 75,000 children and their families were living in temporary shelters. A few
families did begin to return: 50,000 refugees and 10,000 IDPs were registered between September and December 2007, according to the Iraq Ministry of Displacement and Migration (MoDM) and International
Organization for Migration (IOM).

SAN JOSE, CA - A federal court yesterday bowed to pressure from the Bush administration and dismissed a case against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. for the company’s role in the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program. The lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, charged that Jeppesen knowingly aided the program by providing flight planning and logistical support services for aircraft and crews used by the CIA to transport victims to U.S.-run prisons or foreign intelligence agencies overseas, where they were subjected to harsh interrogation techniques and torture. The government intervened in an attempt to block the case, contending that litigation of the case would reveal “state secrets” and harm national security.

Americans are worried about the impending recession and the Wall Street crisis, as well as the exhilarating and unpredictable presidential contest. But another threatening force is bearing down on the nation: our out-of-control military machine. The ever-voracious Pentagon is using this fragile moment as cover for seizing an even greater share of the nation's dwindling resources--trillions more in federal indebtedness to fight a phantom "war on terror." In constant dollars, next year's proposed military budget will be the largest since World War II--around $700 billion.

Tony Blair wrongly influenced due legal process when he used "irresistible pressure" to end the Serious Fraud Office's investigation into alleged bribery and corruption involving arms deals between BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia, it was alleged in the High Court yesterday. When he was Prime Minister, Mr Blair "stepped over the boundaries of what was permissible" and interfered in the highly sensitive criminal investigation because of threats by the Saudis, said the barrister representing two anti-corruption campaign groups challenging the decision to drop the case. The High Court challenge centres on the decision in December 2006, announced by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, to end the Serious Fraud Office's investigation into the £43bn Al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia in 1985, which provided Tornado and Hawk jets and other military equipment. At the time, the Government had used arguments about national security to justify the decision.

Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday. Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence. Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.

On January 10, 2008, the Federal District Court in Chicago issued a permanent injunction against me on the grounds that I was falsely telling people the 16th Amendment was not ratified. The Court refused to look at the evidence of the non-ratification of the 16th Amendment, deciding the facts to prove my statement was true were "irrelevant," What has America come to when the government can accuse you of lying and prohibit you from presenting a defense in a so called court of law? My attorney, Jeffrey A. Dickstein, will be filing an appeal to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. I urge you to review the pleadings filed in this case so you can see for yourself the tyranny being practiced in our courts.

In this historic 16th Amendment litigation, the Government has sued Bill Benson seeking an injunction prohibiting him from falsely telling people the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was not ratified and therefore people are not required to file an income tax return. The Government contends it is entitled to an injunction because Benson is promoting an abusive tax shelter, conduct made subject to a penalty per 26 U.S.C. Section 6700.

[Illustration: "Millionen stehen hinter mir."] Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism. His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy. The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.

As the Guardian Newspaper wrote it: "Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades". Of course they were alledged to be "Conspiracy Theory" though such author as Tarpley in his book "George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography" did provide some material proofs when he wrote "On Oct. 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City which were being conducted by Prescott Bush... under the Trading with the Enemy Act"

There is no historic parallel that can be drawn, nothing compares with the accomplishments of the Bush family. No dictator or tyrant can equal the suffering and destruction they have wrought on humanity, as they are not mere tyrants themselves, but the makers and breakers of tyrants, the organizers and profiteers of war and death. They are not alone and solely responsible for creating the present day military industrial complex, however since 1915 the Bush family has been directly involved in World War One and Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, numerous CIA secret wars, the Gulf War, and now a “Never Ending War”. The past four generations of this one family have had a hand in promoting and profiting from most of major wars that America has waged since the beginning of the industrialized age. [PART 2 HERE]

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez classified the intention of the worlds largest oil company, ExxonMobil, to freeze assets of state-owned Venezuelan oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), as part of a US government backed "economic war" and destabilization campaign against his government and the people of Venezuela. Chavez vowed that the Venezuelan government would not be intimidated. "They will never rob us again, those bandits of ExxonMobil, they are imperialist bandits, white collar criminals, corruptors of governments, over-throwers of governments, who supported the invasion and bombing of Iraq and continue supporting the genocide in Iraq," he said on his weekly TV show ‘Alo Presidente.'

We play highlights of an exclusive interview with Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa. In a wide-ranging conversation with journalist Greg Palast, President Correa talks about the $12 billion lawsuit against Chevron, ending his country’s debt, and his relationship with the United States and Venezuela. [includes rush transcript].

When the Zionist leaders heard of Bernadotte’s peace plan they became furious, considering it to favour the Arabs and against their goals, especially in respect to Jerusalem, Jewish immigration and the return of refugees and now considered Bernadotte to be an enemy. The Israeli government hated the idea of giving up Jerusalem and bent on military victory rejected the Bernadotte plan." “In the Qatamon Quarter we were held up by a Jewish army-type jeep, placed in a road block and filled with men in Jewish Army uniforms. At the same moment I saw a man running from this jeep…he put a tommy gun through the open window on my side of the car and fired point blank at Count Bernadotte and Colonel Serot. I also heard shots fired from other points and there was considerable confusion…the man was still firing. Colonel Serot fell in the seat at the back of me and I saw at once that he was dead. Count Bernadotte bent forward…I asked him “are you wounded?” He nodded and fell back. I helped him lie down in the car. I now realized that he was severely wounded…The Jewish liaison officer was urging…us to get to the hospital as quickly as possible…When we arrived I carried the Count inside …We had sent for a medical officer, but while waiting…I saw that he was wounded around the heart…When the doctor arrived I asked if anything could be done, but he replied that it was too late.” [Xymphora]

Jewish terrorist groups plotted to assassinate Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary in the post-war Labour government, as part of a bombing campaign on the British mainland inspired by the IRA. MI5 warned Clement Attlee, the prime minister, that the Stern Gang and Irgun intended to establish five terrorist cells in London to mount a bombing campaign aimed at driving Britain out of Palestine. Bevin, who was opposed to the creation of the state of Israel, was a prime target. Security Service files also contain details of an outlandish plan by the followers of an American Zionist rabbi to bomb London from the air. Details of that plot have been heavily censored. [Xymphora]

"There appears to be no evidence that the American people themselves are even aware of the catastrophic events soon to overtake them." — Steve LeFemine, independent candidate for Congress

"Our worst fears confirmed! We are suffering a coup d’etat in America. It is in the final stages of completion...the program to abrogate American Sovereignty...May God have mercy on America." — Lawrence Patterson Criminal Politics (May-June 2006)

The evidence is overwhelming. There is absolutely a wicked and devastating plot and conspiracy to overthrow America. The traitors are now confident they will soon wash over 225 years of American tradition and history down a sinkhole. If their foul plan suceeds, the vision we as patriots once had of a strong, prosperous nation of liberty, freedom and prosperity will soon vanish beneath a cavernous cesspool of forgotten dreams.

AMY GOODMAN: Four years ago this week, the Army launched its first investigation into allegations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. This investigation by Army Major General Antonio Taguba, along with photos leaked by the media, eventually helped expose the widespread abuse and torture taking place inside the US-run jail.

In the four years since Taguba began his investigation, not one officer or civilian leader has been held criminally responsible for the abuses. Last month, the US Army threw out the conviction of the only officer court-martialed in the torture scandal. Meanwhile, several soldiers who helped expose the torture have been punished.

Today, we spend the hour with Abu Ghraib whistleblower and former Army sergeant, Samuel Provance. From September 2003 to the spring of 2004, Provance ran the top-secret computer network used by Military Intelligence at Abu Ghraib. He was the first intelligence specialist to speak openly about abuse at the prison and is the only Military Intelligence soldier listed as a witness in the Taguba report.

When Provance defied an order not to speak to the media about what happened at Abu Ghraib, the Army stripped him of his security clearance, demoted him in rank and threatened him with ten years in jail. Eventually, Samuel Provance was forced to leave the armed forces. When we spoke to him late last year, Samuel Provance was struggling to find a job and was working as a private security guard at a mall.

I began by asking him how he learned of the abuses taking place inside Abu Ghraib.

A United Nations military observer sent e-mails home to Canada reporting that Israel was bombing schools and waging "a campaign of terror against the Lebanese people" shortly before he was killed by an Israeli bomb in Lebanon, said his widow. Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener of Kingston, Ont., a member of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, was one of four UN military observers who died when the Israeli Defence Forces bombed a marked United Nations post on July 25, 2006. Cynthia Hess-von Kruedener said her husband's mission was to report on the hostilities in the area and she believes that is why Israeli forces attacked the Israeli United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) post, despite Israel's claims that the bombing was accidental. "Obviously they were unhappy with what they were observing. Maybe that post was in the way as well," she said. "I know my husband was reporting war crimes. And I guess they don't want to deal with that."

“A United Nations military observer sent e-mails home to Canada reporting that Israel was bombing schools and waging ‘a campaign of terror against the Lebanese people’ shortly before he was killed by an Israeli bomb in Lebanon, said his widow. Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener of Kingston, Ont., a member of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, was one of four UN military observers who died when the Israeli Defence Forces bombed a marked United Nations post on July 25, 2006.

Fallujah is more difficult to enter than any city in the world. On the road from Baghdad I counted 27 checkpoints, all manned by well-armed soldiers and police. "The siege is total," says Dr Kamal in Fallujah Hospital as he grimly lists his needs, which include everything from drugs and oxygen to electricity and clean water. The last time I tried to drive to Fallujah, several years ago, I was caught in the ambush of an American fuel convoy and had to crawl out of the car and lie beside the road with the driver while US soldiers and guerrillas exchanged gunfire. The road is now much safer but nobody is allowed to enter Fallujah who does not come from there and can prove it through elaborate identity documents. The city has been sealed off since November 2004 when United States Marines stormed it in an attack that left much of the city in ruins.

On the days before the bombing, the Koreans had been working on the second floor, and were using a tarp on top of the building to shield the site from rain and sun. “It was just the North Korean way of working,” the Syrian senior officer said, adding that the possibility that the Israelis could not see what was underneath the tarp might have added to their determination. The attack was especially dramatic, the Syrian senior officer said, because the Israelis used bright magnesium illumination flares to light up the target before the bombing. Night suddenly turned into day, he told me. “When the people in the area saw the lights and the bombing, they thought there would be a commando raid,” the senior officer said. The building was destroyed, and his government eventually concluded that there were no Israeli ground forces in the area. But if Israelis had been on the ground seeking contaminated soil samples, the senior officer said, “they found only cement.”

Of course, you could also read this as just more ‘Iran talk’, useless words intended to scare the Iranians into bowing to the Empire. If so, it has been a spectacular failure. If the Iranians have learned anything from the attack on Syria, it is that the Russian air defense system works quite well. The bottom line is that the Israelis won’t be able to knock out enough rocket emplacements in their next illegal and unprovoked attack to prevent a rain of Hell from falling on Israeli civilians. Duck and cover!

Colin Powell made his Iraq presentation at the UN five years ago, on February 5, 2003. As much criticism as Powell has received for it—he calls it "painful" and something that will "always be a part of my record"—it hasn't been close to what's justified. Powell was far more than just embarrassingly mistaken; the evidence is conclusive that he fabricated evidence and ignored repeated warnings that what he was saying was false. Unfortunately, Congress has never investigated Powell's use of the intelligence he was given. Even so, what's already in the public record is extremely damning. So while the corporate media has never taken a close look at this record, we can go through Powell's presentation line by line to demonstrate the chasm between what he knew, and what he told the world. As you'll see, there's quite a lot to say about it.

It is a difficult anniversary to “celebrate” – Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity’s first publication, a same-day critique of Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003, UN address – since what he said helped grease the skids for incalculable death and destruction in Iraq and brought shame on our country.

Yesterday was a difficult day for Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. It was hard to celebrate the fifth anniversary of our first corporate memorandum, a same-day critique of Colin Powell's Feb. 5, 2002 UN address, when we could not escape the reality that this speech greased the skids for death and destruction in Iraq and brought unprecedented shame on our country. We found no solace in the realization that those who saw our analysis should have seen disaster coming.

Few took notice in January, but the 31st was the fortieth anniversary of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, an event that changed American history. During the Chinese New Year’s celebration called Tet, Hanoi launched broad attacks across South Vietnam that came very close to winning the war in one massive stroke, using only Viet Cong (VC) forces (the South Vietnam indigenous communist force), except in the northern provinces where North Vietnamese Army units were dominant. For months, as a junior officer in the highest intelligence offices in Saigon, I and many others saw numerous evidence of the coming nationwide offensive, which was highly convincing to analysts, but not so to career-minded generals and colonels. Their imposed mantra was “light at the end of the tunnel,” and almost all of our reports and statistics were tailored by them to support that political goal of convincing America that victory was at hand. Because we did not use that intelligence to prepare ambushes or, typically, even harden our defenses, the Viet Cong reached most of their targets and created devastation.

In an article entitled "Carol Brightman on the 1960s" (Truth-Dig, January 3, 2008), Ms. Brightman reviews three books, including Ravens In the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960's Anti-War Movement by Carl Oglesby. The article is replete with falsehoods and disinformation concerning the work of the International Tribunal on U.S. War Crimes in Indochina, of which I was Secretary-General, and of my role within it. Ms. Brightman's errors, large and small, embellish the pattern of distortion in Mr. Oglesby's book. The most egregious of these fabrications concerns the views of Jean-Paul Sartre, Executive President of the Tribunal and of other Tribunal members on the question of genocide. Ms. Brightman's claims regarding her own role are instructive, not merely for their petty misrepresentations but for what she conceals. She writes, "Early in 1967, I had gone on the second of the tribunal's two fact-finding teams to North Vietnam, the only American and only woman."

Lack of universal health care in the United States has left an estimated 47 million Americans with little or no access to medical and dental care, or affordable access to prescription drugs. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Americans seek cheaper and more readily available health care outside the United States.

More than 250,000 Americans cross their country's southern borders to Mexico ever year in search of everything from prescription drugs to alternative cancer treatments - many of which are illegal in the US. Cheating to Live looks at the determination of average Americans who need medical care to continue their lives, who are willing to cross borders and sometimes act in defiance of their US-based doctors just to stay alive.

Cheating to Live airs from Saturday, February 2, 2008 at the following times GMT:

Saturday, February 02: 14:30, 22:30
Sunday, February 03: 02:30, 12:30
Monday, February 04: 00:30, 07:30
Tuesday, February 05: 13:30
Wednesday, February 06: 19:30
Thursday, February 07: 05:30
Friday, February 08: 03:00, 10:30
Saturday, February 09: 06:30

Americans must steal over the borders of their own debt ridden country like refugees escaping a third world hell to obtain proper medical care… In Bush's new three trillion dollar budget there is plenty of money for Halliburton, Bechtell, and the military industrial banking complex, but what about the people? The people’s government does not exist to serve them; it is the people who serve their corrupt government. The leaders of the government serve the corporations who loot and exploit the country and the people into economic servitude and debt. The people are expendable assets in the corporation, the cost of doing business, acceptable losses in the getting of more power and profit.

Today, the Bush administration took its third swipe in recent weeks at opening protected areas in America’s national forests to logging before it leaves office. A Bush plan announced today puts a “for sale” sign on trees in vast swaths of the nation’s largest national forest – the Tongass rainforest in Alaska.

This move by Bush officials to reverse roadless area protections joins two others made recently in the national forests located in Idaho and Colorado.

“The few remaining roadless areas of our national forests are some of the only safe harbors for America’s wildlife. As global warming threatens to change dramatically the landscape we must have the foresight to preserve these last remaining pristine forests for future generations,” said Mary Beth Beetham at Defenders of Wildlife. “It’s folly for the Bush administration, in its last few months, to work to destroy these areas.”

The bronze medallion embedded in the pavement behind the Commercial Bank of Texas is easy to overlook. About the size of a DVD, it barely registers as a bump for the cars pulling into the drive-thru window. But it is there — engraved with the name of the space shuttle Columbia and the date five years ago Friday that the spacecraft exploded over the skies of eastern Texas. The metal disc serves as a quiet tribute to the spot where a piece of the shuttle's wing crashed to Earth in downtown Nacogdoches, and the day this tranquil town of about 30,000 was catapulted into national consciousness. Five years after Columbia disintegrated 39 miles over Texas as it returned from a 16-day mission, it's clear the identity of this community will be forever twinned with the fate of the shuttle.