Regarding the current controversy about Rev. Wright and U.S. Presidential candidate Barack Obama, Rev. Wright is actually quite correct about the U.S. government's exploitation of black Americans for medical experiments (and worse). What Rev. Wright is saying about the way the U.S. government has treated blacks in the last 200 years is remarkably accurate to anyone who has bothered to actually study American history. For starters, I recommend you read A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, which will give you quite a horrifying account of how the FBI sought to assassinate black leaders, how law enforcement authorities looked the other way when crimes were committed against blacks, and many other difficult-to-believe (but true) facts about the history of America. But that's just the beginning. The real horrors become even more clear when you look at the history of blacks being used for medical experiments in the United States. The Tuskegee experiments only scratch the surface. In reality, the history of conventional medicine in the U.S. is filled with true accounts of black women, black prisoners and black babies being openly used in extreme medical experiments where they were injected with deadly substances, denied medical treatment to see what might happen as the disease progressed, and even used in government-sanctioned experiments like the EPA's recent experiments on toxic chemicals in low-income children, which happened just a few years ago in New York.

After police fished the body of Riad Hamad out of Lady Bird Lake in East Austin, Texas, they told the media the non-violent Palestinian activist and directing coordinator of the Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund had committed suicide. “Right now, the indications are that this was not, there was not foul play involved,” police Sgt. Joseph Chacon told KXAN, never mind Mr. Hamad was found bound with duct tape. “Parkgoers who saw the body said the death did not look accidental. They said the man’s face was wrapped with duct tape, and his arms appeared to be tied in front of his body.” KXAN did not bother to explain how Hamad managed to wrap himself in duct tape.

We Are Change UK Question former BBC Report Phil Hayton-- who is 'amazed' that such a 'significant' event has no official explanation. Members of We Are Change UK questioned ex-BBC reporter Phil Hayton about the early reporting of WTC 7's collapse during a speaking appearance. Hayton failed to recollect even being in the studio on the day of 9/11-- at first-- but then recalls the situation when it is described in detail, including the actions of Jane Standley, who reported the collapse some 26 minutes in advance with WTC Building 7 still visible in the background. "A lot of eyebrows were raised," We Are Change reporters point out in summary, because many saw it as a clear controlled demolition, including a number of engineers. Hayton responded, pointing out that he was not aware of the situation with WTC 7. "This sounds so significant-- I'm just amazed I didn't know about this... This is completely news to me." "So, is there no official explanation?" Hayton further probed.

Farmers and food executives appealed fruitlessly to federal officials yesterday for regulatory steps to limit speculative buying that is helping to drive food prices higher. Meanwhile, some Americans are stocking up on staples such as rice, flour and oil in anticipation of high prices and shortages spreading from overseas.

Their pleas did not find a sympathetic audience at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), where regulators said high prices are mostly the result of soaring world demand for grains combined with high fuel prices and drought-induced shortages in many countries.

The regulatory clash came amid evidence that a rash of headlines in recent weeks about food riots around the world has prompted some in the United States to stock up on staples.

For the first time in U.S. history, more than one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report documenting America's rank as the world's No. 1 incarcerator. It urges states to curtail corrections spending by placing fewer low-risk offenders behind bars.

Using state-by-state data, the report says 2,319,258 Americans were in jail or prison at the start of 2008 - one of every 99.1 adults. Whether per capita or in raw numbers, it's more than any other nation.

The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said.

In the final part of its special series on Veterans, Al Jazeera visited Argentina and found that for both politicians and former soldiers alike the Falklands, or the Malvinas as they are known, remain an obsession. During a three-week strike by soy farmers and the first real crisis of her presidency, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the Argentinian president, reacted as many of her predecessors have when faced with trouble – she staked her country's claims to the Falklands islands. "The sovereign claim to the Malvinas Islands [as they are known to Argentineans] is inalienable," de Kirchner said on April 2, during a speech to mark the 26th anniversary of a war that lasted 74 days and cost 649 Argentinean lives. Although the conflict ended in a humiliating defeat for Argentina more than a quarter of a century ago, the Malvinas have never left the public consciousness and sovereignty remains an article of faith for every president, whether they are from the left or right. One prominent Argentinean writer once said the conflict on the windswept islands, 500km from the Argentinean mainland and home to 3,000 British citizens, was akin to "two bald men fighting over a comb". However the war was anything but pointless to the men who fought in it.

Chronology based on Morrison, D. & Tumber, H. (1988) Journalists at War (London:Sage Pub.) and Femenia, N. (1996) National Identity in Times of Crises: the scripts of the Falklands War (N. Y. Nova Science)

Guerra de las Malvinas: Ciento cincuenta años más tarde, los dirigentes de la dictadura argentina idearon la reconquista de las Islas Malvinas. Fuerzas argentinas recuperaron el control de las islas el 2 de abril de 1982. Comenzada la Guerra de las Malvinas, los británicos respondieron con una fuerza expeditiva que desembarcó seis semanas más tarde y después de duros combates forzaron la rendición argentina el 14 de junio de 1982.

For the last three centuries Protestants have fancied themselves the heirs of the Reformation, the Puritans, the Calvinists, and the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock. This assumption is one of history's greatest ironies. Today, Protestants laboring under that assumption use the King James Bible. Most of the new Bibles such as the Revised Standard Version are simply updates of the King James. The irony is that none of the groups named in the preceding paragraph used a King James Bible nor would they have used it if it had been given to them free. The Bible in use by those groups, until it went out of print in 1644, was the Geneva Bible. The first Geneva Bible, both Old and New Testaments, was first published in English in 1560 in what is now Geneva, Switzerland. William Shakespeare, John Bunyan, John Milton, the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620, and other luminaries of that era used the Geneva Bible exclusively. Until he had his own version named after him, so did King James I of England. James I later tried to disclaim any knowledge of the Geneva Bible, though he quoted the Geneva Bible in his own writings.

It has often been emphasised that Christianity is unlike any other religion, for it stands or falls by certain events which are alleged to have occurred during a short period of time some 20 centuries ago. Those stories are presented in the New Testament, and as new evidence is revealed it will become clear that they do not represent historical realities. The Church agrees, saying: "Our documentary sources of knowledge about the origins of Christianity and its earliest development are chiefly the New Testament Scriptures, the authenticity of which we must, to a great extent, take for granted." (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. iii, p. 712.)

Canadian Forces personnel learned to operate Canada's newest military plane, the giant Boeing C-17, by training on American jets, including flying those planes into Iraq in support of the U.S. war, according to a memo written by Canada's top general and obtained by Canwest News Service. Gen. Rick Hillier, the chief of Canada's defence staff, wrote to Gordon O'Connor, then-minister of national defence, in May 2007 that in the summer and fall of that year, Canadian military aircrew would fly into Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. That decision was taken without informing Parliament. "Canadians have been very clear from the beginning that they wanted no part of George Bush's war on Iraq," said NDP MP Dawn Black, her party's defence critic, "and they certainly don't want to see Canadians getting involved through a back door." The flights into Iraq were part of the second phase of training for Canadian crews, a phase referred to by the military as "seasoning."

Hillary Clinton’s book, Living History, could be titled Lying History. It is loaded with lies, a fact that most reviewers have overlooked. This Report will focus on the lies she tells about two major scandals, Travelgate and Fostergate. Travelgate, the first major scandal of the Clinton administration, erupted on May 19, 1993 when the White House Travel Office staff of seven were told they would be terminated on June 5. The director, Billy Dale, and his deputy had been with the Travel Office for nearly 30 years. The other five had worked there from 8 to 26 years. Except for two who were out of town, they were all escorted out of their offices and expelled from the White House grounds. Their treatment shocked the White House reporters, who knew them well because they made the travel arrangements for the reporters to cover the President when he went on trips. The media coverage was so negative that the White House was forced to revoke the dismissals and to acknowledge that they were “insensitive and unnecessary.”

The USA Today/Gallup survey clearly explains why Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is losing. Asked whether the candidates were "honest and trustworthy," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) won with 67 percent, with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) right behind him at 63. Hillary scored only 44 percent, the lowest rating for any candidate for any attribute in the poll. Hillary simply cannot tell the truth. Here's her scorecard:

YouTube caption: 2 weeks before war, Code Pink meets with Hillary Clinton. (+ Transcription)

CBS news exposes the real story of Hillary Clintons 1996 trip to Bosnia.

Newly released Ministry of Defence documents state that: — The arrests took place in waters that are not internationally agreed as Iraqi; — The coalition unilaterally designated a dividing line between Iraqi and Iranian waters in the Gulf without telling Iran where it was; — The Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ coastal protection vessels were crossing this invisible line at a rate of three times a week; It was the British who apparently raised their weapons first before the Iranian gunboats came alongside; — The cornered British, surrounded by heavily armed Iranians, made a hopeless last-minute radio plea for a helicopter to come back and provide air cover. Iran always claimed that it had arrested the Britons for violating its territorial integrity. Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, repeatedly told the Commons that the personnel were seized in Iraqi waters.

The Conservatives said that Des Browne was “less than frank” after The Times disclosed Ministry of Defence papers showing that the Britons were seized in disputed waters, not Iraqi territory. The MoD also rejected an application under the Freedom of Information Act to provide details of the location. Mr Browne has told the Commons repeatedly that the patrolling Britons, who were held for a fortnight and paraded on Iranian television, were seized boarding a vessel in “Iraqi waters”.

Fifteen British sailors and marines captured by Iran last year were not in Iraq's maritime territory as the UK government claimed, official documents released under the Freedom of Information Act confirm. The sailors were apprehended in March 2007 because the US-led coalition designated a sea boundary for Iran's territorial waters without telling the Iranians where it was, according to internal Ministry of Defence (MoD) briefing papers. At the time, Defense Secretary Des Browne repeatedly insisted to parliament that the military personnel from their mother ship HMS Cornwall were seized in Iraqi waters.

Body of 15 year old Palestinian boy found mutilated in Israeli settlement
April 18th, 2008 | Posted in Reports, Nablus Region, Photos
At 3pm on Wednesday, 16th April, the mutilated body of 15 year old Hammad Nidar Khadatbh was found in lands of the illegal Israeli settlement of Al-Hamra by his father, who was out searching for his missing son.

Hammad had left the house at 9am on Tuesday, 15th April to work on the family’s land, located near the stolen agricultural lands of the settlement. As the second eldest son, he was picking cucumbers for the family rather than going to school, to help with the income of his struggling family. At evening he failed to return home, and so his father and other family members immediately went searching for him. They found nothing. They set out again the next day, Wednesday, and found his body in a place they had searched the day before - clearly dumped overnight.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter called the blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip a "crime and an atrocity" on Thursday, and said U.S. attempts to undermine the Islamist movement Hamas had been counterproductive.

Speaking at the American University in Cairo after talks with Hamas leaders from Gaza, Carter said Palestinians in Gaza were being "starved to death", receiving fewer calories a day than people in the poorest parts of Africa.

"It's an atrocity what is being perpetrated as punishment on the people in Gaza.It's a crime... I think it is an abomination that this continues to go on," Carter said.

Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza after the Islamist group Hamas seized power over the impoverished coastal strip last June. Since then, Israel has allowed only basic staples to be transported through the border crossings it controls, into Gaza.

When some people hear the word "conspiracy" they start thinking of a tinfoil hat crowd and invoke images of space aliens, paranoia, or a variety of cults and nonsense. Well there are a lot of wacky conspiracies about many things but that does not mean that conspiracies don't or can't happen. For example, the Iran Contra Affair was a massive government conspiracy hidden from the press and public for years. It happened in my life time and it involved billions of dollars and multiple countries. It has since been admitted to but many of the people involved did not get into trouble. They were given presidential pardons either by Bush Sr. or Bill Clinton. Most of them still have jobs and are working in the government right now! That is a fact. The CIA and Mossad have gotten away with countless covert operations and false flags. There are too many to name. So for those who think a covert operation or conspiracy can't happen, you need to open a history book, or at the very least start doing some online research. To just reject conspiracies as a whole just because there are some kooks who think the moon landing was fake or Elvis or Tu Pac are still alive etc is not a reason to just reject the concept all together. I have had people tell me conspiracies never work and that they can't be done because someone always snitches. Well that argument just does not float in reality. There are way too many counter examples of successful conspiracies and Hoaxes. See here CIA's Secret Wars and that's only a fraction.

The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem. The Prime Minister's Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a "bonus" the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram.

Crisis of fuels in Gaza due to the Israeli siege. Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Escalate Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)

The most elementary requirement of legal certainty demands that you know the case against you. And yet considerable numbers of young men, and some women, are being held in our prisons without any idea of why they are there. They are detained under yet more provisions, for the present deemed lawful, which either forbid or demand no meaningful explanation being given to the accused. The concept of secret evidence and accusations so vague and undefined as to be meaningless has now bedded down in our system of justice.

On Wednesday the US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 to reject a challenge to execution by lethal injection. The case was brought by two Kentucky death row prisoners, who argued that the method exposes those condemned to die to the risk of cruel and unusual punishment.

The dollar is in a tailspin, the trade deficit is growing and a recession is on the horizon. The American way of life is in serious danger. But the head of the Federal Reserve keeps on pumping easy credit into the system -- a crazy policy that will worsen the crisis.

Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke have more in common with the big cat entertainers Siegfried & Roy than any of us can be comfortable with.

The Las Vegas magicians call themselves "Masters of the Impossible" and have been fascinating audiences for decades by getting snow-white tigers to leap through burning rings.

The legendary Federal Reserve Chairman and his successor were equally adept at fascinating their audiences -- with a policy of miraculous monetary growth that gave America one of the longest periods of economic expansion in modern times. Many saw them as "Masters of the Universe." It seemed as if the central bankers had tamed predatory capitalism with their constant interest rate cuts.

In early Babylonian inscriptions, all western lands, including Syria and Canaan, were known as "the land of the Amorites", who twice conquered Babylonia (at the end of the 3rd, and the beginning of the 1st millennia.) The old name is an ethnic term, evidently connected with the terms Amurru and Amar used by Assyria and Egypt respectively. In the Sumerian spelling MAR.TU, the name is as old as the first Babylonian dynasty, but from the 15th century BC onwards, its syllabic equivalent Amurru is applied primarily to the land extending north of Canaan as far as Kadesh on the Orontes. In unison with the decline of the Sumerian language in Mesopotamia, the Levant archeological era known alternately as either MB1 or Intermediate EB-MB was the time of their most famous incursions. Though herdsmen, the Amorites were not peaceful pastoralists. They were fierce tribal clansmen who apparently forced themselves into lands they needed to graze their herds. The urban Sumerians or Akkadians considered their nomadic way of life with disgust and contempt. At first the Amorites were merely a regular irritant to the Ur-III empire, but eventually they undermined it to such an extent that the position of last king Ibbi-Sin was weakened, enabling his Elamite subjects to overthrow his rule. Amorites seem to have worshipped the moon-god Sin and Amurru. Known Amorites (mostly those of Mari) wrote in a dialect of Akkadian found on tablets dating from 18001750 BC showing many northwest Semitic forms and constructions. Presumably their original tongue was a northwest Semitic dialect (see Amorite language.) The main sources for our extremely limited knowledge about the language are proper names, not Akkadian in style, that are preserved in such texts. Many of these names are similar to later Biblical Hebrew names.

The Republican Congress, with the votes of all too many Democrats, has emasculated the Constitution and given the President dictatorial powers which have been denied even to English Kings since the 12th Century.

The basic principal of Habeas Corpus is that the executive (whether king, president or prime minister) cannot imprison a person or hold him or her indefinitely without trial without the imprisoned person having a right to come before a court for a determination of whether the executive has a right to hold such person. Its basic principal is that the executive cannot be prosecutor, judge and jury. The great 19th century English jurist Albert Dicey wrote that the Habeas Corpus Acts "declare no principle and define no rights, but they are for practical purposes worth a hundred constitutional articles guaranteeing individual liberty."

The first Writs of Habeas Corpus were issued in the 12th Century during the reign of Henry II and have been a part of common law ever since. The right to petition for Habeas Corpus was first codified into parliamentary law in England in 1679. An earlier act of 1640 said that the command of the King was not a sufficient answer to deny a petition of Habeas Corpus. In other words, a King could not arbitrarily hold a person without an opportunity to petition a court.

Gary Rinehart clearly remembers the summer day in 2002 when the stranger walked in and issued his threat. Rinehart was behind the counter of the Square Deal, his “old-time country store,” as he calls it, on the fading town square of Eagleville, Missouri, a tiny farm community 100 miles north of Kansas City... As Rinehart would recall, the man began verbally attacking him, saying he had proof that Rinehart had planted Monsanto’s genetically modified (G.M.) soybeans in violation of the company’s patent. Better come clean and settle with Monsanto, Rinehart says the man told him—or face the consequences... But Rinehart wasn’t a farmer. He wasn’t a seed dealer. He hadn’t planted any seeds or sold any seeds. He owned a small—a really small—country store in a town of 350 people... Rinehart says he can’t remember the exact words, but they were to the effect of: “Monsanto is big. You can’t win. We will get you. You will pay.”

Dumpster-diving firm collected Social Security numbers of activists.

A private security firm managed by former Secret Service officers spied on myriad environmental organizations throughout the 1990s and the year 2000, thieving documents, trying to plant undercover operations and collecting phone records of members, according to a new report.

Documents obtained by James Ridgeway, a Mother Jones correspondent formerly with the Village Voice, reveals the contractor collected confidential internal records -- donor lists, financial statements -- even Social Security numbers, for public relations outfits and "corporations involved in environmental controversies."

Beckett Brown International also offered "intelligence" services to the Carlyle Group, the controversial DC-based investment company; "protective services" for the National Rifle Association; "crisis management" for the Gallo wine company and for Pirelli; "information collection" for Wal-Mart.

Given the following lessons from history, how can we not launch a new investigation into what really happened on 9/11?►It is widely accepted that the Nazis, in Operation Himmler, faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland. ►It has now been persuasively argued — as shown, for example, in this History Channel video — that Nazis set fire to their own government building and blamed that fire on others (if you have trouble playing the clip, it is because the website hosting the clip requires you to download the clip before playing it). The fire was the event which justified Hitler's seizure of power and suspension of liberties. ►In the early 1950s, agents of an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind "evidence" implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers). Israel's Defense Minister was brought down by the scandal, along with the entire Israeli government. See also this confirmation. ►The Russian KGB apparently conducted a wave of bombings in Russia in order to justify war against Chechnya and put Vladimir Putin into power (see also this short essay and this report). ►The Turkish government has been caught bombing its own and blaming it on a rebel group in order to justify a crackdown on that group. ►The well-respected former Indonesian president said that the government had a role in the Bali bombings. ►As documented by the New York Times, Iranians working for the C.I.A. in the 1950's posed as Communists and staged bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected president (see also this essay).

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News. The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said. Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding. The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic. The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy. At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Navy veteran and movie star savages official story, says media covering up truth about attacks. Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura vehemently savaged the official 9/11 story on a syndicated national radio show today, saying the WTC collapsed like a controlled demolition and was pulverized to dust as he also highlighted the impossible 10 second free fall speed of the towers. Appearing on The Alex Jones Show, Ventura said that his initial reaction to 9/11 was much like most people at the time, and he accepted the official story outright, a response he now regrets because he was in a position of power and could have used it to raise a lot of pointed questions. "I kicked myself when it initially happened that the light didn't go off but I was so shocked that this thing had even taken place that I apologize for not being more aware," said Ventura, adding that watching Loose Change at the insistence of his son was part of the catalyst for his wake up call. Host Alex Jones is executive producer of Loose Change (get it here), the most watched Internet movie of all time. Ventura said he ran through a rollercoaster of emotions when he saw the film. "When I finally did watch it I went through every emotion you could imagine, from laughing, crying, getting sick to my stomach, to the whole emotional thing," said the former Governor. "To me questions haven't been answered and are not being answered about 9/11," said Ventura, before highlighting the collapse of Building 7, a 47-story tall skyscraper that was not hit by a plane but collapsed in its own footprint in the late afternoon of September 11. "Two planes struck two buildings....but how is it that a third building fell 5 hours later?" asked Ventura, "How could this building just implode into its own footprint 5 hours later - that's my first question - the 9/11 Commission didn't even devote one page to that in their big volume of investigation," added the former Governor.

Why is he getting all this air time? Are the masses of people waking up to the fraud of 9/11, are the perps are getting a little worried and the more main stream media suddenly needs a somewhat familiar face to give some talking points? I like Ventura and he does get some points across but what's interesting to me is what he doesn't talk about and that would be the Israeli connection. All of the above mentioned media outlets seem to be controlled by a certain minority segment of our population and if Ventura was also speaking about Israel and the Mossad and their involvement in 9/11 I doubt that he would be getting the face time. Is this another "limited hangout", blame Bush and Cheney and leave it at that? The truth about 9/11 needs all the facts, all the names and all the players. It's not happening with Ventura and I think that is why he is the 9/11 celebrity of the hour.

If audacity were wealth, John C. Yoo would be richer than Croesus. But then, if wisdom were breath, he would have died of asphyxiation long ago. Yoo has become properly notorious as a key legal architect of the Bush Regime's version of fuhrerprinzip -- the doctrine that the powers of a "war president" are essentially limitless, and include the right to order the torture of anyone upon whom he chooses to inflict such treatment, including innocent children. He is the chief author of the so-called "Bybee Memorandum," the August 1, 2002 document that provided pseudo-legal justification for torture under the color of supposed presidential authority. (Jay S. Bybee, who signed the memo composed by Yoo, was the assistant Attorney General for the White House Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the time; he has since been appointed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.) In recent days, thanks to the commendable persistence of the ACLU, the Bush Regime has been compelled to disgorge another torture memorandum written by Yoo, this one composed on March 14, 2003. (Part one is here; part two, here.) Building seamlessly on the previous memo, this second installment in Yoo's apologia for torture was written for the apparent purpose of trumping objections to torture offered by high-ranking military personnel.

Subliminal advertising has gone mainstream - fake news, mind control scripts, propaganda and stealth voicemail are in wide use by corporations, government bodies and industry groups. When it's time to launch a war or promote an unpopular policy, the government needs special help to sell the idea through the media. Opinion engineers are paid to "manage" public perception of inconvenient facts, and turn them around for better. Using the universal tools fear, patriotism, and phrase repetition, these high flying spin doctors can easily sway the population. The most successful public relations campaigns aim to change public perception without our awareness of the campaign. They are typically launched by governments, institutions and countries who need to change their public image, restore their reputation or manipulate public opinion. There are PR firms today who advise dictatorships, dishonest politicians and corrupt industries to cover up environmental catastrophes and human rights violations.

On March 4th, your vote will decide who will be in the White House to pick up the phone when it rings at 3 AM.

A subliminal message is a signal or message embedded in another medium, designed to pass below the normal limits of perception. These messages are unrecognizable by the conscious mind, but in certain situations can affect the subconscious or deeper mind and later actions or attitudes. Subliminal techniques have occasionally been used in advertising and propaganda; the purpose, the effectiveness, and the frequency of the application of such techniques is debated.

Here is a video of an amazing experiment carried out by the brilliant Derren Brown. Using extremely subtle subliminal suggestion he is able to guide the creative ideas of two top advertising designers as they create a new campaign, supposedly from their own imaginations. You will be shocked by the conclusion.

April 1st I participated in a debate in San Francisco that raised the question of US aid to Israel.

It was highly appropriate that this debate was held two weeks before tax day, since in Israel's sixty years of existence, it has received more US tax money than any other nation on earth.

During periods of recession, when Americans are thrown out of work, homes are repossessed, school budgets cut and businesses fail, Congress continues to give Israel massive amounts of our tax money; currently, about 7 million dollars per day.

On top of this, Egypt and Jordan receive large sums of money (per capita about 1/20th of what Israel receives) to buy their cooperation with Israel; and Palestinians also receive our tax money (about 1/23rd of that to Israel), to repair infrastructure that Israeli forces have destroyed, to fund humanitarian projects required due to the destruction wrought by Israel's military, and to convince Palestinian officials to take actions beneficial to Israel. These sums should also be included in expenditures on behalf of Israel.

When all are added together, it turns out that for many years over half of all US tax money abroad has been expended to benefit a country the size of New Jersey.

It is certainly time to begin debating this disbursement of our hard-earned money. It is quite possible that we have better uses for it.

19-year old Tove Johansson a Swedish human rights worker from Stockholm walked through the Tel Rumeida checkpoint with other human rights workers (HRWs) to accompany Palestinian schoolchildren to their homes. They were confronted by about 100 Jewish extremists in small groups. They started chanting in Hebrew “We killed Jesus, we’ll kill you too!” — a refrain the settlers had been repeating to internationals in Tel Rumeida all day.

One settler then hit Tove on the left side of her face with an empty bottle, breaking it on her face and leaving her with a broken cheekbone. She immediately fell to the ground and the group of Jewish extremists who were watching began to clap, cheer, and chant.

Tove is still in hospital where she will remain for the next few days before returning to Sweden to receive ongoing treatment there. As well as a broken cheekbone Tove has a fractured skull and damage to her eye muscles. A complaint was filed with the police in Kiryat Arba where eye-witness statements and photo evidence was submitted. However, according to a report by Israeli human rights group Yesh Din 90% of complaints filed against Israelis to the “Samaria and Judea District” police were closed without indictments being issued.

The Swedish Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. “We’re concerned that this hasn’t been followed up, and we intend to speak to the relevant authorities and ask for more information about the incident,” said Petra Hansson, a spokeswoman for the Swedish Foreign Ministry.” Scroll down for pictures

Preachers can say the darndest things, as perhaps you've heard. "God damn America," to take one recent controversial example, is pretty mild compared with other recorded pulpit snippets. Consider this denunciation of U.S. military behavior abroad: "[W]e are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world." Or, similarly, calling the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" and condemning it for creating "concentration camps." It sounds like the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. decrying the Iraqi civilian death toll and the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, right? Sorry, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. made those remarks in February 1968 and April 1967, attacking U.S. conduct in Vietnam. Indeed, here's a historian's question for YouTube warriors on all sides of Sen. Barack Obama's presidential candidacy. "Is Obama Wright?," as one video has been titled? A powerful return volley could be "Is Obama King?" -- which thousands of voters may be asking themselves. In fact, if all the relevant film footage of King's sermons were readily available for viewing, the most accurate and instructive title would be "Is King Wright?" Or, better yet, "Is Wright King?"

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968. Within hours, Life magazine photographer Steve Schapiro was on that balcony and through the door of King's room. "The physical body of Martin Luther King Jr.," writes Schapiro in a new book of his photographs, "Schapiro's Heroes," "was forever gone, leaving a few small material remains behind: a wrinkled shirt, a book, a Soul Force magazine, an old Styrofoam coffee cup. The half-drunk coffee cup gave me a moment of pause. He had left his room planning to return." The TV was on. When King's face appeared on a newscast, Schapiro took this photograph -- history preserved. Now the two motel rooms that housed the King party, along with parts of the rest of the Lorraine Motel, have been turned into the National Civil Rights Museum. In 2006, Schapiro went back to the scene. "The wall on which the television had been mounted was ... gone, replaced with a sheet of thick clear plastic," he said. "Visitors could peer into King's room, but no one will ever get to see that eerie image that is forever imbedded in my mind."

Westhusing, 44, had been found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad airport in June 2005, a single gunshot wound to the head. At the time, he was the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq. The Army concluded that he committed suicide with his service pistol. Westhusing was an unusual case: "one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics, a full professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to be able to better teach his students. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor," as Christian Miller explained in a major Los Angeles Times piece. "In e-mails to his family," Miller wrote, "Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military." His death followed quickly. "He was sick of money-grubbing contractors," one official recounted. Westhusing said that "he had not come over to Iraq for this." After a three-month inquiry, investigators declared Westhusing's death a suicide.

With the Iraq invasion, USIS obtained lucrative Pentagon private security contracts in Iraq. At a 2004 job fair in Falls Church, Virginia, USIS was advertising for "interrogators" and "protection specialists" for "overseas assignments." While he was in Iraq training Iraqi police and overseeing the USIS contract to train police as part of the Pentagon's Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, Westhusing received an anonymous letter that reported USIS's Private Services Division (PSD) was engaged in fraudulent activities in Iraq, including over-billing the government. In addition, the letter reported that USIS security personnel had murdered innocent Iraqis. After demanding answers from USIS, Westhusing reported the problems up the chain of command. After an "investigation," the Army found no evidence of wrongdoing by USIS. That decision signed Col. Westhusing's death sentence. USIS and Carlyle have powerful allies in the administration, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Princeton roommate of Carlyle Chairman Emeritus and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci. Former President George H. W. Bush, former Secretary of State James Baker, an