Inside the secretive Bilderberg Group - BBC NEWS

How much influence do private networks of the rich and powerful have on government policies and international relations? One group, the Bilderberg, has often attracted speculation that it forms a shadowy global government. As part of the BBC's Who Runs Your World? series, Bill Hayton tries to find out more.

For Taiwan, American rock, Chinese hard place by Todd Crowell

"We always cite the Taiwan Relations Act [TRA] because it is good policy and it's the law. However, inherent in the intent and logic of the TRA is the expectation that Taiwan will be able to mount a viable self-defense. For too long, the Taiwan Relations Act has been referenced purely as a US obligation. Under the TRA, the US is obligated to 'enable' Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense, but the reality is, it is Taiwan that is obligated to have a sufficient self-defense.

The impending Cakewalk in Iran by Mike Whitney

"Top-ranking Americans have told equally top-ranking Indians in recent weeks that the US has plans to invade Iran before Bush's term ends. In 2002, a year before the US invaded Iraq, high-ranking Americans had similarly shared their definitive vision of a post-Saddam Iraq, making it clear that they would change the regime in Baghdad." Calcutta Telegraph 9-25-05

Mossad Assassinates Sweden's Anna Lindh

She was a popular outspoken critic of Israel's occupation, and their constant slaughtering of Palestinians. She openly questioned Israel's nuclear arsenal. She was instrumental in blocking Sweden's adoption of the Zionist financial cabal's Euro currency.

U.N. to grab the Internet? by Craige McMillan

The United Nations is living proof of why colonialism is still necessary. Wearing a fresh coat of whitewash from the Volker Commission's Oil for Fools investigation, Kofi and Company have a new gig in the works. The Internet, we are informed, could be a really useful tool in the hands of the "world body."

The coup that wasn't by Scott Ritter

Scott Ritter was the former US marine captain tasked with finding Saddam Hussein's weapons. Now, in this first detailed account, he reveals how the CIA plotted to use a UN weapons inspection to overthrow the Iraqi regime - and how fiasco turned to tragedy when it failed

Britain still dreaming of empire

There are many ulterior motives behind the British government’s adoption of this type of attitude. Britain’s ideological affinities and special relationship with the United States have obliged it to follow its offspring and implement and support U.S. policy in the international arena.

It has been proven politically and historically that the British government is seeking to weaken Muslim countries. Britain’s role in the establishment of the treacherous Zionist regime in the Middle East is further proof.

Controlled Asset of the New World Order Part II by Daniel L. Abrahamson

Population control by any means necessary is a major, some would say the major goal of the New World Order, perhaps even paramount to their goal of a cashless society control grid with microchipped slaves. The chief architects of population control are Bilderberg elitists like David and Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Prince Philip, Ted Turner, Alexander Haig, and Cyrus Vance. Their Malthusian nightmare requires killing 90% of the "useless eaters" through war, genetically engineered viruses, and engineered starvation. Declassified documents like NSM 200 and Global 2000 lay the plans out with cold precision.

Sinister Events in a Cynical War by John Pilger

The Anglo-American goal of "federalism" for Iraq is part of an imperial strategy of provoking divisions in a country where traditionally the communities have overlapped, even intermarried. The Osama-like promotion of al-Zarqawi is integral to this. Like the Scarlet Pimpernel, he is everywhere but nowhere. When the Americans crushed the city of Fallujah last year, the justification for their atrocious behavior was "getting those guys loyal to al-Zarqawi." But the city’s civil and religious authorities denied he was ever there or had anything to do with the resistance.

Trashed: Some myths about Iraq by Sudha Ramachandran

A new study by a Washington-based think tank has trashed American and Iraqi government claims that foreign fighters dominate the insurgency in Iraq.

The report, which was brought out by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an independent think tank, says that foreign militants - mainly from Algeria, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia - account for less than 10% of the estimated 30,000 insurgents in Iraq.

America is Running Out of Time by Paul Craig Roberts

An intelligent government sincerely concerned with homeland security would find a way to halt the global labor arbitrage that is stripping the American economy of high value-added jobs and manufacturing capability, thereby causing the US trade deficit to explode. The loss of tax base that results when US companies outsource jobs and relocate production abroad makes it ever more difficult to balance a budget strained by war, natural disasters, and demographic impact on Social Security and Medicare.

Lessons from a fallen empire by James Carroll

Across the canyon walls of stripped brick and broken columns, connoisseurs of history declaim with spray paint, ''Stop the war on Iraq!" To the American eye, the word ''on" leaps out of that slogan. Wasn't it in Latin class that subtleties of the preposition first showed themselves? In the United States, George Bush's war is defined as ''in" Iraq, but in Rome, as always, the harsher truth of the imperial impulse is clear.

Britain to pull troops from Iraq as Blair says 'don't force me out' by Peter Beaumont and Gaby Hinsliff

British troops will start a major withdrawal from Iraq next May under detailed plans on military disengagement to be published next month, The Observer can reveal.

Blackwater Down by Jeremy Scahill

The frightening -- and possibly illegal -- presence of heavily armed private forces in New Orleans only demonstrates what everyone already feared: the utter breakdown of the government.

Right in theory, right in practice by Sir Malcolm Rifkind

Over the last ten years Conservative beliefs in liberty combined with responsibility; in free enterprise as the main source of wealth; in choice and competition as the provider of quality; and in strong defence and law and order; have become the common currency of other political parties even if their commitment is superficial and opportunistic. The Tory Party, however, remains, for the time being, in the doldrums, as silent as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.

Part of the explanation is that we have not fully understood how the political firmament has been shifting underneath our feet. It has been conventional, for many years, to think of political opinions as running along a one-dimensional line, from left to right. At the moderate left sat the Labour Party; at the moderate right the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats popped up at various points, according to the mood of the day. To the victor in the battle for the central part of the line went the spoils of electoral success.

This has been a powerfully entrenched image. But it no longer applies as it did.

Before It's Too Late by Alan Bock

According to "The Iraq Quagmire: The Mounting Costs of War and the Case for Bringing Home the Troops," the Iraq war, in the words of IPS research fellow Erik Leaver, is "the most expensive military effort in the last 60 years." According to Leaver (in an interview with longtime drug-law-reform and recently Nader operative Kevin B. Zeese), "Operations costs in Iraq are estimated at $5.6 billion per month in 2005, while the average cost of U.S. operations in Vietnam was $5.1 billion per month, adjusting for inflation."

This attack on free speech will fuel Muslim hostility by Salim Lone

The threat posed to freedom of expression aside, it is alarming that Blair seems to be focusing only on Muslim actions. Indeed, writers such as Friedman explicitly state that it is religious figures advocating violence who should be exposed. The many western scholars and writers who incite their countries to undertake wars of aggression are not to be affected by anti-incitement legislation. Such incitement is more deadly due to the awesome destructive power of the states that are being urged, invariably, to attack a much weaker country.

Promise and Peril in North Korea Deal by Jim Lobe

The deal reached by the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, the U.S., and China nonetheless sets out a comprehensive framework. If successfully implemented, it would not only defuse a three-year-old crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear intentions, but also ensure that nuclear weapons are effectively banned from one of the world's most militarized hotspots and bolster the badly battered Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

An anti-American military confederacy may loom in Asia

This raises an important question: with SCO leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Hu Jintao and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad openly embracing military modernization and improved synergies, is the organization destined to become a military confederacy with the U.S. as its main target?

British "Pseudo-Gang" Terrorists Exposed in Basra by Kurt Nimmo

Of course, this unfortunate and embarrassing incident in Basra will fall off the front page of corporate newspapers and websites soon enough, replaced with more appropriate, if fantastical, propaganda implicating the Iraqi resistance and intel ops such as al-Zarqawi for the violence, obviously engineered to create a civil war in Iraq and thus divide the country and accomplish the neocon-Likudite plan to destroy Islamic culture and society.

The failed mission to capture Iraqi oil by Michael T Klare

It has long been an article of faith among America's senior policymakers - Democrats and Republicans alike - that military force is an effective tool for ensuring control over foreign sources of oil. Franklin D Roosevelt was the first president to embrace this view, in February 1945, when he promised King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia that the United States would establish a military protectorate over his country in return for privileged access to Saudi oil - a promise that continues to govern US policy today. Every president since Roosevelt has endorsed this basic proposition, and has contributed in one way or another to the buildup of American military power in the greater Persian Gulf region.

Iraqi defense officials have embezzled $1.27 billion

Iraq has depleted its defense procurement budget due to widespread corruption, torpedoing plans to end the military's dependence on the United States.

An official Iraqi audit said $1.27 billion allocated by the Defense Ministry for military procurement in 2005 was embezzled by officials and suppliers. In a report completed in May, the Board of Supreme Audit blamed the theft on U.S.-appointed senior Defense Ministry officials, including a former defense minister.

THE WAR ON IRAQ: CONCEIVED IN ISRAEL, part one by Stephen J. Sniegoski

U.S. Realpolitik

In the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. Middle Eastern policy, although sympathetic to Israel, was not identical to that of Israel. The fundamental goal of U.S. policy was to promote stable governments in the Middle East that would allow oil to flow reliably to the Western industrial nations. It was not necessary for the Muslim countries to befriend Israel — in fact they could openly oppose the Jewish state. The United States worked for peace between Israel and the Muslim states in the region, but it was to be a peace that would accommodate the demands of the Muslim nations — most crucially their demands involving the Palestinians.

Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V and Conclusion

Et Tu, Greg Palast? by George Galloway

I did not benefit financially. Not by one thin dime! I said voluntarily and on pain of prosecution under oath to the US Senate committee -- another body which doesn't let the facts get in the way of a good smear -- and I say it again.

Iraqi police detain two British soldiers in Basra

Two persons wearing Arab uniforms opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the attackers and captured them to discover they were two British soldiers," an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua.

The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said.

Wake Up! by Cindy Sheehan

It is time for all of us to stand up and be counted: to show the media, Congress, and this inept, corrupt, and criminal administration that we mean business. It is time to get off of our collective behinds to show the people who are running our country into oblivion that we will stand for it no longer. That we want our country back and we want our nation's young people back home, safe and sound, on our shores to help protect America. That it is time for a change in our country's "leadership."

Confusion as both Merkel and Schroder claim chancellorship by Luke Harding

Germany was plunged into uncertainty last night when the leaders of the two main parties claimed they could become chancellor after neither won a majority in the general election. The result was a blow to the conservative challenger, Angela Merkel, whose party started the campaign with a 21-point lead. Although Mrs Merkel could still become the country's new leader, she can now probably only do so as part of a "grand coalition" with Gerhard Schröder's Social Democratic party.

A surprise that leaves Germany in limbo

The German election has ended in deadlock, with Gerhard Schröder's party snatching nearly as many votes as Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU, which had been expected to win comfortably. The result is bad news for Europe's largest economy, and for the continent as a whole.

North Korea agrees to give up nukes by Gerard Young

It was the first time in four rounds of six-party talks that participants have come close to coming up with a joint statement. The statement issued in Beijing, home to all four rounds of the talks, also includes provision that the United States, Russia, South Korea, Japan and China have agreed to provide energy assistance to North Korea.

Splitting Islam by James Kurth

The United States should never have invaded Iraq in its vain effort to impose an external and alien development upon the Muslim world. The best course it can now take is to get out of Iraq and to allow the internal and natural contradictions within the Muslim world to take their course. The wise strategy of any truly great power in extending its influence to other countries is not to try to erect utterly new and bizarre constructions that have no foundation in the local realities. It is rather to try to turn to its own advantage those local realities and the inherent tensions within and between them.

Welcome to civil war by Pepe Escobar

Utopias can become deadly. Up to now, the Bush administration's "war on terror" has done nothing to puncture the myth. Four years after September 11, bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri - both apparently alive and well - continue to inspire Salafi jihadis with their iconic status, while "Zarqawi" causes increasing havoc in Iraq.

Sharon: Palestinians must show their desire for peace by Mike Rivera

Let's see, 38 years of occupation, a wall, hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers on stolen lands, IDF shooting Palesintians at random, Shin Bet p[osing as terrorists to justify further military actions by Israel, and Sharon says the Palestinians are supposed to show a desire for peace?
Sharon seems to forget that it takes two to make peace, but only one corrupt arrogant war criminal to make war.

Here are some examples of the desire for peace by the Israelis

1. "There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies ­not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy." Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001

2. "The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more".... Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000

3. " [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs." Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the Beasts". New Statesman, 25 June 1982.

4. "The Palestinians" would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls." " Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988

5. "When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.

6. "How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." Golda Maier, March 8, 1969.

7. "There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed." Golda Maier Israeli Prime Minister June 15, 1969

8. "The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war." Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972.

9. David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): "If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?" Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121.

10. Ben Gurion also warned in 1948 : "We must do everything to insure they ( the Palestinians) never do return." Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes. "The old will die and the young will forget."

11. "We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves." Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.

12. "Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." - Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio. (Certainly the FBI's cover-up of the Israeli spy ring/phone tap scandal suggests that Mr. Sharon may not have been joking.)

13. "We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours." Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces - Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 13 April 1983, New York Times 14 April 1983.

14. "We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do return" David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.

15. "We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai." David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.

16. "We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum"

17. "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 1969.

18. "We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'" Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.

19. Rabin's description of the conquest of Lydda, after the completion of Plan Dalet. "We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters" Uri Lubrani, PM Ben-Gurion's special adviser on Arab Affairs, 1960. From "The Arabs in Israel" by Sabri Jiryas.

20. "There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. [I] tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument:...the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish...with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary." Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department. From Israel: an Apartheid State by Uri Davis, p.5.

21. "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

22. "It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism,colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aahronot, of 14 July 1972.

23. "Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine,Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry.

24. "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." -- Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, Feb. 27, 1994 [Source: N.Y. Times, Feb. 28, 1994, p. 1]

25. "We Jews, we are the destroyers and will remain the destroyers. Nothing you can do will meet our demands and needs. We will forever destroy because we want a world of our own." (You Gentiles, by Jewish Author Maurice Samuels, p. 155).

26. "We will have a world government whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that government will be achieved by conquest or consent." (Jewish Banker Paul Warburg, February 17, 1950, as he testified before the U.S. Senate).

27. "We will establish ourselves in Palestine whether you like it or not...You can hasten our arrival or you can equally retard it. It is however better for you to help us so as to avoid our constructive powers being turned into a destructive power which will overthrow the world." (Chaim Weizmann, Published in "Judische Rundschau," No. 4, 1920)

Drawing up a new world order by Shmuel Rosner

Here's an opening sentence that could be used by rivals of both Israel and the United States, but at its foundation is a fact that cannot be avoided: If the American maneuvering succeeds and it manages to find agreement for sweeping UN reforms, no country will gain from it as much as Israel.

The reconstruction of New Oraq by Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse

Along with their service in Iraq, the Katrina reconstruction companies are tied together in another important way. They tend to be particularly well linked to the Bush administration and the Republican Party. As former Oklahoma Republican governor Frank Keating said of Allbaugh, "Joe ... knows how elected officials and appointed officials like me think and work, and that culture is a fraternity." Halliburton, for instance, picked off "another high-level Bush appointee, Kirk Van Tine, earlier this year to work as a lobbyist. Similarly, in 2001, Bush appointed Robert G Card, then a senior vice president at CH2M Hill, under secretary at the US Department of Energy, a position he held until 2004. Today, Card is the president and group chief executive of the International Group at CH2M Hill.

Globalization And Its Discontents

In a world where "globalization" means spreading the culture of corporate brand names, Rogue States are those which refuse to embrace this order.

Those resisting corporate globalizing violently and non-violently don't yet have clear alternatives, but they are absolutely justified in saying BASTA YA!

The Iran trap by Scott Ritter

In the complicated world of international diplomacy surrounding the issue of Iran's nuclear programme, there is but one thing that the United States, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the so-called EU-3 (Germany, France and Great Britain) and Iran can all agree upon.

Why Iran can't become the new China by Pepe Escobar

Yazdi appreciates how "the Chinese divorced themselves from the Cultural Revolution. They put Mao's [Zedong's] widow and her cohorts in prison. They released liberals, and invited them to government. The Communist Party decided to remove any ideology. Only nationalism remained. Can Iranian authorities divorce themselves from Islam? No. They do have a problem." He adds, "The Chinese understand the world superbly, how to explore all international opportunities in favor of implementing their goals. They have extended their economic relationship with the US." He compares it with Iran's Kish Island, a free zone in the Persian Gulf shores that is "a separate entity, and was not supported enough to set an example".

Latin America Rethinks Nuclear Energy by Eugenio Fernández-Vázquez and Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra

In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez announced on May 21 that his government will start to work on the research and construction of nuclear reactors for energy production. It is, he said, “one of the ways to diversify energy sources” and a possible solution to global warming and to the necessity to find alternatives to oil and other fossil fuels.

WMD Postmortem by Gordon Prather

Drawing upon the findings of the (a) Iraq Survey Group, (b) U.S. and British official investigations, (c) contemporary Iraqi official documents, and (d) personal memoirs of UN officials and others, Associated Press reporter Charles Hanley has constructed a highly regarded postmortem of Saddam's nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction" threat to us.

Creating Catastrophe from Disaster: The Fourth Anniversary of 9/11 by Jim Kirwan

What really awaits the nation on this Fourth Anniversary of 911? Given that every major endeavor that the administration has undertaken has failed, from wars for peace, to tax-cuts for prosperity, all the way to outsourcing 3 million the jobs to improve this stricken economy. Anarchy has millions of new adherents, the world has become far more unstable and gas prices have never been higher. Domestically we have been strangled by policies and programs and tax codes that have stripped us of our individuality our freedoms and the core of our way of life: But we have HOMELAND Insecurity to protect us from phantoms, while the real bandits break every law and enjoy immunity in the two tiered system of the CRIMINAL Justice system.

For U.S. 'experts', China will never be a threat by Lev Navrozov

Obviously, the West will be subverting, by its very existence, the dictatorship of China unless and until the West has been annihilated by the dictatorship of China or turned into its docile colony. It may be relevant to recall that Marx, Lenin, and Mao taught that the future of mankind is a single global Communist society, and Chinese military superiority may well be its midwife.

WTO Entry to Boost Foreign Investment by P.K. Abdul Ghafour

Saudi Arabia’s forthcoming accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) following Friday’s landmark trade agreement with the United States has brought mixed reactions from Saudi officials and businessmen while press reports said Saudi Arabia would continue its boycott of Israeli products.

Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan by Walter Pincus

The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Why We Fight, and Why We Shouldn't by Ron Paul

A powerful bureaucratic military state negates all efforts to preserve these conditions that have served America so well up until recent times. That is not what the American dream is all about. Without a change in attitude, the American dream dies: a simple change that restates the principles of liberty enshrined in our Constitution will serve us well in solving all the problems we face. The American people are up to the task; I hope Congress is as well.

Shi'ite supremacists emerge from Iran's shadows

When mild-mannered former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami lashed out in a post-election sermon at the "powerful organization" behind the "shallow-thinking traditionalists with their Stone-Age backwardness" currently running the country, it became clear that Iran's political establishment is worried by the ideology propelling the government of new hardline President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

A Time for Action by Justin Raimondo

Come home, America – from Pat Buchanan to Russ Feingold, the cry is being heard. From right to left, in the South and in the North, in the board room and the back room – the realization is spreading that we have taken on too much, that we cannot sustain this tremendous outpouring of energy and resources, that something's got to give. The nation is finally awakening, and not only to the massive deception carried out by the war propagandists and their fifth column in the American media, but to the fact that we have the power to change all this – that things don't have to be this way. We don't have to live in a predatory empire: we can have our old republic back. But only if we are willing to act now…

Wicked Crime

Tracking down Moussa’s killers, however, is only part of the story. Those extremists who are still wedded to violence have to be made to accept the message that turning the streets of Gaza and West Bank into a Palestinian-made blood bath only wins victories for the Israelis and for everyone else who wants to present the Palestinian state as a lawless haven for extremist violence. This applies as much to Hamas and Abu Jihad as it does to the PRC. The majority of Palestinians will understandably be dubious about the chances of peace.

New Orleans as a portrait of ourselves and our future by John Kaminski

Welcome to Bantustan, Louisiana, where the first stage of creating a large, armed, New World Order fortress, complete with gated communities and an Israeli wall against the sea and the riffraff, has begun. It is the inevitable course of human history, playing like a bad rerun of humanity’s medieval nightmares.

In the meantime, the chief sephardic rabbi in Jerusalem declared that the hurricane that obliterated New Orleans was God’s punishment because President Bush supported the eviction of Israeli settlers from Gaza. < http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3138779,00.html >

America's meltdown - get ready for next unnatural disaster by Lynn Landes

All these moves are clearly designed to leave Americans completely defenseless against their own government. The rest of the world is also at risk. With Congress in a coma, our military officers and enlisted personnel might consider their options. It looks like we're all are being set up for a take-down of epic proportions. They've done it before. The free-market fanatics at the helm of this nation have a decades-long track record of death and destruction around the world. We are a nation ruled by thugs. They start wars on helpless countries, outsource American jobs and resources, and pollute the planet for profit. They are relentless.

Katrina: Another Deliberate 9-11? by Lisa Guliani & Victor Thorn

If the weather modification angle is too conspiratorial for you, how do we explain pending congressional legislation S 517, which was introduced on March 3, 2005 by Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison? This bill, which will be voted on in October, 2005, is specifically entitled The Weather Modification and Research Technology Transfer Authorization Act of 2005. Its purpose is to “develop and implement a comprehensive and coordinated national weather modification policy, along with a national cooperative federal and state program of weather modification research and development.” In addition, the term “weather modification” means: changing or controlling, or attempting to change/control by artificial methods the natural development of atmospheric cloud forms or precipitation forms which occur in the troposphere.”

Opium gold unites US friends and foes by Syed Saleem Shahzad

A senior US Pentagon official who has been involved in US-supported low-intensity war operations and insurgencies since the Vietnam war and involved in the reorganization of the Northern Alliance [1] in Afghanistan to effectively pitch them against the Taliban, admitted to Asia Times Online that the drug economy in Afghanistan was more powerful than the official one.

Iraq War Costs Now Exceed Vietnam's by Jim Lobe

The U.S. Treasury is paying out more each month to sustain the war in Iraq than it did during the Vietnam War, according to a new report that calls the ongoing conflict "the most expensive military effort in the last 60 years."

The 84-page report, "The Iraq Quagmire: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War and the Case for Bringing the Troops Home," says that the total bill for the war in Iraq has come to some $204 billion, or an average of $727 per U.S. citizen, not counting an additional $45 billion which is currently pending before Congress.

How New Orleans Was Lost by Paul Craig Roberts

[A]rticles in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and public statements by emergency management chiefs in New Orleans make it clear that the Bush administration slashed the funding for the Corp of Engineers’ projects to strengthen and raise the New Orleans levees and diverted the money to the Iraq war.

How the US got its neoliberal way in Iraq by Herbert Docena

To get its preferred provisions in the constitution, the US, as in the previous steps in Iraq’s political transition process, once again huddled with those Iraqis who were willing to go along with the US’s wishes; these Iraqis for their part accommodated US demands because this would be the only way they could also get what they wanted for themselves. Other Iraqis who insist on ending the occupation first before writing the constitution refused at the outset to join the process.