Time to end nuclear defence policy by Tony Benn

The most immediate danger may well be US — or even Israeli — air strikes against Iran, justified on the grounds that Tehran is in breach of the non-proliferation treaty, while protecting, and arming, Israel which is the most fully equipped nuclear power in the Middle East.

FBI seeks to probe senior Israeli diplomat in Pentagon spy case by Aluf Benn

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is demanding that Naor Gilon, head of the political department at the Israeli embassy in Washington, be interrogated in connection to the Pentagon spy case.

The demand to investigate Gilon's role and possibly also that of other Israeli representatives is the clearest indication that the Americans believe Israel is involved in the Franklin case, which until now has been presented as an internal American affair.

New Jewish Settlement in Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem Old City near Al Aqsa Mosque could ignite a Third Intifada

Palestinian and some Israeli officials call these plans a blatant attempt to create facts on the ground and ethnically cleanse the Old City’s historic Muslim Quarter, an act of overt incitement, while the world is distracted by the Gaza Disengagement. Israel’s tactic of seizing Palestinian lands and declaring them “green areas,” which Palestinians are forbidden from building on, and later turning these lands over to settlements is one of its most insidious tools for strangling East Jerusalem with illegal settlements in an attempt to take the city off the negotiating table, in clear violation of international law.

Bilderberg Oil Tax Could Cost Billions by James P. Tucker Jr.

Such global tax proposals have been pending before the UN for more than three years while the mainstream media collaborates in a cover up. Bilderberg wants people to learn about the tax only after it is imposed. Annex II of the Gleneagles G-8 communique reveals that the United States agreed to create a UN working group to consider “innovative financing mechanisms” to “help deliver and bring forward the financing needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals” designed to throw more money at world poverty.

You Call This a War? by Joseph Sobran

Expensive “security” measures, most of them useless, will be a permanent feature of our lives and economies, like the huge military budgets of the Cold War. We are still paying hundreds of billions in taxes for weapons systems we never needed; more to the point, we pay most of the money for military salaries and pensions that have become an ineradicable part of modern existence, like a second welfare state.

Israel's security service may put far-right leaders in administrative detention

Israeli Shin Bet domestic security service is considering placing leaders of extreme right-wing movements in administrative detention prior to the Gaza disengagement, local newspaper Ha'aretz reported on Tuesday.

Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin told the Knesset (parliament) Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the security service "has boosted its surveillance of extreme right-wing cells working to harm public order and life."

Conspiracy Theorists by Jolly Roger

Conspiracy theories arise from evidence. After the government releases an explanation of a particular event, a conspiracy theory is only born because evidence exists to disprove their explanation, or at least call it into question. There's nothing insane about it, unless you define sanity as believing whatever the government tells you. In light of the fact that our government lies to us regularly, I would define believing everything they tell you as utter stupidity.

Iraq: This is now an unwinnable conflict by Patrick Cockburn

Before Iraq, those who undertook suicide bombings were a small, hunted group; since the invasion they have become a potent force, their ideology and tactics adopted by militant Islamic groups around the world. Their numbers may still not be very large but they are numerous enough to create mayhem in Iraq and anywhere else they strike, be it in London or Sharm el Sheikh.

The Iraq war is over, and the winner is . . . Iran bBy Juan Cole

More than two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, it is difficult to see what real benefits have accrued to the United States from the Iraq war, though a handful of corporations have benefited marginally. In contrast, Iran is the big winner. The Shiites of Iraq increasingly realize they need Iranian backing to defeat the Sunni guerrillas and put the Iraqi economy right, a task the Americans have proved unable to accomplish. And Iran will still be Iraq's neighbor long after the fickle American political class has switched its focus to some other global hot spot.

In London, the war against Iran has started by MICHEL COLLON

Why is Iran the next target? Because it has an important Petrolium Stock. Because it’s the biggest power of the region still refusing to submit to Israel. Because the recent efforts to control Tehran have failed.

Twisted Silhouette Government by Gianni DeVincent Hayes, Ph.D.

Understanding that Americans would never willingly forfeit their freedoms and rights as guaranteed by the Constitution--and likely the same for the masses of other democratic countries--the Elite (wealthy, politically-inclined, well-connected, influential stratum) deliberated over a plan to do this In 1991, George Bush, Sr. referred to it as "The New World Order." The Elite implemented it to covertly destroy our sovereignty and have U.S. citizens ceding their rights without even realizing it--all for the purpose of merging America with other countries under a single, umbrella-style government.

Jihad without borders by Syed Saleem Shahzad

The resistances in Iraq and Afghanistan have united to take their fight against foreign occupation forces to the home countries of the occupiers. The London bombings were the first salvo in this wider struggle. Meanwhile, a steady supply of recruits from around the world is arriving at Pakistani and Iraqi training camps.

How did Greenspan Know about the London Bombings Two Days before? by Mike Whitney

Two days before the London subway bombings, Fed-Master Alan Greenspan flushed nearly $40 billion in liquidity into financial markets. The sudden activity was an astonishing departure from the current policy of tightening interest rates to stifle inflation. The Chairman has not explained his erratic behavior, but there’s growing speculation that Greenspan may have had information about the likelihood of terrorist attacks and decided to “preemptively” head-off a run on the markets. As it turns out, his actions may have been a positive factor in stabilizing the market following the incident, (check: The Cunning Realist; “following the money” for more on the Fed’s unusual action: but that doesn’t address the larger issue of whether Greenspan had inside information that an attack was imminent.

Now America accuses Iran of complicity in World Trade Center attack by Julian Coman

The all-party report by the 9/11 Commission, set up by Congress in 2002, will state that Iran, not Iraq, fostered relations with the al-Qa'eda network in the years leading up to the world's most devastating terrorist attack.

'He always hated Jews and Israelis' by Hagit Kleiman and Yaakov Lappin

On Tuesday, Livingstone held a press conference in which he justified Palestinian terrorism against Israelis, saying, “The Palestinians don’t have jets and bombs, they only have their bodies to use as weapons."

Livingstone also compared Hamas to the ruling Likud party and laid into Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who as defense minister managed Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

End of the US-China honeymoon by Bonnie S Glaser and Jane Skanderup

The list of thorny international issues on which the US and China are on opposing sides or are partially at odds keeps growing: UN reform, US presence in Iraq, Iran's nuclear programs, Uzbekistan's crackdown, East Asian regionalism, the Proliferation Security Initiative, genocide in Sudan, North Korea's nuclear programs, the US-Japan alliance, Taiwan, and the militarization of space.

It's full steam ahead for EU constitution, even after 'No' votes by Daniel Hannan

Formal ratification by all 25 states is regarded in Brussels as a technicality. To all intents and purposes, the EU is carrying on as though the constitution were already in force. Most of the institutions that it would have authorised are either up and running already, or in the process of being established. My researches have produced the following non-exhaustive list:

Border Crossings Prompt US Concern Following Attack In United Kingdom by Mike Blair

Widespread reports that Israel and the United States are planning military operations targeting Iran’s developing nuclear capabilities, have prompted some to speculate about the possibility that Iranian agents may be crossing into the United States over the Mexican and Canadian border to strike back against the United States in the event of an attack on their country.

A Muslim Problem by M. SHAHID ALAM

In desperation, Mr. Friedman has now issued two new threats. He is warning Muslims living in the West, 'If your coreligionists do not stop their terrorist attacks against us, we will hold you hostages here.' To the Muslims living outside the Western world his message is equally sanguine, "Smash the terrorists or forget about ever setting foot in the United States."

Preventing Nuke Proliferation by Gordon Prather

If the EU-Iranian negotiations fail, and Iran turns to Russia or China for assistance with its nuclear programs, will Bush continue to press the NSG – which includes Russia and China – to deny Iran its inalienable rights under the NPT, all the while flouting NSG guidelines himself, to provide Westinghouse nuclear power plants and the fuel therefor to India?

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEIR "TERRORISM” AND OUR 'WAR'"?

What is the difference between a war or a bombing campaign launched by America or Britain and a terrorist attack, often conducted in response to these attacks in the first place? The answer to this question is very pertinent in the wake of the recent London bombings and is also very simple. Whenever America and Britain, the politically correct “good guys”, attack and bomb, killing tens of thousands of civilians around the world, it is a justified “war” in “self-defence” against often exaggerated or phantom enemies. Whenever others in response give them a taste of what they readily dish out to many others, it is a different story. The most horrific aspect of the London bombings from the West’s point of view is not so much the carnage itself. It is the fact that Britain, the great imperialistic warmonger, has been attacked at all, despite being immune for centuries from the hatred they have generated among the people they have attacked and oppressed.

War comes to the heart of Europe by Pepe Escobar

This new generation of Euro-jihadis is now turning it all upside down, profiting from widespread revulsion against the Anglo-Americans takeover of Iraq to retaliate as well as advance a Salafi worldview. This could all have been prevented by a very simple move: a real democratic project for the Middle East - before indiscriminate support for every one of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's excesses; before Guantanamo; before Abu Ghraib; before the leveling of Fallujah.

Zionists finally strike London by Colin Deane

The near simultaneous explosions that rocked London today look more like the handiwork of the Zionist, British intelligence services rather than the phantom terrorist network, Al-Qaeda.

ITALIAN NEWS OF "CONTROL LINKS" BETWEEN U.S. AND TERRORIST GROUPS BROKE TWO DAYS BEFORE LONDON TRANSPORT BOMBINGS by Wayne Madsen

TRAIN BOMBINGS IN MADRID AND LONDON SIMILAR TO ITALIAN FASCIST/U.S.-BACKED BOMBING OF BOLOGNA TRAIN STATION IN 1980. THAT BOMBING LEFT 85 DEAD AND 200 INJURED. A PREVIOUS FASCIST BOMBING OF THE ITALICUS EXPRESS TRAIN NEAR BOLOGNA IN AUG. 1974 KILLED 12 AND INJURED 48. ITALIAN SOURCES ARE NOW REVEALING DETAILS OF U.S. "LEVEL OF CONTROL" FOR TERRORIST GROUPS, INCLUDING THOSE LINKED TO AL QAEDA. KIDNAPED IMAM ABU OMAR AND SISMI DEPUTY CHIEF NICOLA CALIPARI HAD DISCOVERED THESE TIES. THESE LINKS INVOLVE PARALLEL INTELLIGENCE NETWORKS THAT HAVE BEEN OPERATIONAL FOR DECADES AND WHICH ARE BEING EXPOSED BY THE ITALIAN MEDIA.

Fighting the wrong war by Jim Lobe

Bush's renewed efforts to associate the Iraq war with the "war on terror", which drew loud complaints from Democrats and the media, may not be as effective as in the past. However, a succession of polls in recent months has shown that the public has come increasingly to see the two wars as separate.

Indeed, for the first time since the US invasion of Iraq, a majority of the public, by a 50-47% margin, sees Iraq as distinct from the "war on terror", according to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll released last week. The same poll found that a similar plurality believes the war in Iraq has made the US less safe from terrorism, and a 53% majority now believes that the Iraq invasion was itself a mistake.

Scoop: Was Israel Warned Ahead of First Blast?

The Israeli Embassy in London was notified in advance, resulting in Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu remaining in his hotel room rather than make his way to the hotel adjacent to the site of the first explosion, a Liverpool Street train station, where he was to address and economic summit.

Explosions In London: Who Stands To Gain?

Just like the events of 9/11, ask yourself, who stands to gain from this? Could this have been organized by any group other than one who has direct unlimited access to all areas of London's transport grid at all times?

This has MI5 written all over it. Just watch that national ID card legislation sail through. Only 15% of the country supported the government after the last election, this will ensure total fealty to a smarmy Blair and whatever he wants to do. Ken Livingstone and the opposition parties will now have no grounds to reject ID card legislation, especially with the Olympics coming to London in 2012.

It's imperialism, stupid by Noam Chomsky

If the United States can maintain its control over Iraq, with the world's second largest known oil reserves, and right at the heart of the world's major energy supplies, that will enhance significantly its strategic power and influence over its major rivals in the tripolar world that has been taking shape for the past 30 years: US-dominated North America, Europe, and Northeast Asia, linked to South and Southeast Asia economies.

The legacy of hatred toward Muslims underpinning American imperialism by Yusuf Al-Khabbaz

Among the Christian right today this attitude has not changed, and although many pin hopes on the Americans to arbitrate peace in the region, they need only examine the American legacy of support for zionism to realize that the Americans have much the same attitude as the zionists, that Palestine has always been the “land of promise.”

Revolution, geopolitics and pipelines by F William Engdahl

A close look at the map of Eurasia begins to suggest what is so vital here for China, and therefore for Washington's future domination of Eurasia. The goal is not only strategic encirclement of Russia through a series of NATO bases ranging from Camp Bond Steel in Kosovo to Poland, to Georgia, possibly Ukraine and White Russia, which would enable NATO to control energy ties between Russia and the EU.

Washington policy now encompasses a series of "democratic" or soft coup projects which would strategically cut China off from access to the vital oil and gas reserves of the Caspian, including Kazakhstan.

Russia, China vow to build a multi-polar world

Admitting that the new world order will be "a long and thorny process," Russia and China stated that "the tasks facing mankind can be achieved only under a just and rational world order based on the universally accepted principles and norms of international law."

How to End the War: Negotiations Now! by Justin Raimondo

The Americans are stalemated in Iraq, and they now face a choice: negotiations or endless conflict. The administration may wake up tomorrow to the fact that there will be no military solution to the problem of the insurgency, or it may take a year or so: in the end, however, the American people are going to rebel against the rising carnage and the lack of a clear objective, no matter how many times Bush (or his successor) conjures the specter of 9/11. The president's recent peroration was a rather ineffective attempt to hold back that tide, but the increasingly visible face of the Iraqi insurgents – not that of Zarqawi, or Osama bin Laden, but the nationalist Samarie – is undermining his contention that we're fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq.