On September 24, Jason Ditz reported on Antiwar.com that "the FBI is confirming that this morning they began a number of raids against the homes of antiwar activists in Illinois, Minneapolis, Michigan, and North Carolina, claiming that they are 'seeking evidence relating to activities concerning the material support of terrorism.'"

Now we know what Homeland Security (sic) secretary Janet Napolitano meant when she said on September 10: "The old view that 'if we fight the terrorists abroad, we won't have to fight them here' is just that--the old view." The new view, Napolitano said, is "to counter violent extremism right here at home."

"Violent extremism" is one of those undefined police state terms that will mean whatever the government wants it to mean. In this morning's FBI's foray into the homes of American citizens of conscience, it means antiwar activists, whose activities are equated with "the material support of terrorism," just as conservatives equated Vietnam era anti-war protesters with giving material support to communism.

US President Barack Obama is the latest voice from the "great and good" to bemoan the lack of achievement in the United Nation's Millennium goals, first declared 10 years ago, to drastically reduce world poverty and generate sustainable development. Earlier in the week, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and ex-UN chief Kofi Annan espoused similar sentiments of disappointment with the fight against poverty and all its miseries. Welcome to the Theatre of Absurd.

Here we have the very managers and apologists for the economic system that generates poverty and environmental destruction on a massive scale seeming to lament those manifestations. Not only that, but they affect a demeanour of brooding puzzlement over why poverty remains so entrenched across the world, with over one billion people (and counting) deprived of basic necessities for a decent life.

Obama's foray was particularly absurd and insidious. While he oversees a foreign policy involving mass murder and war crimes in several countries, Obama exhorts to the world to get serious about fighting poverty and human suffering. With his typical rhetoric of "deep concern" that sounds increasingly hollow, the US president said that we need to move beyond "managing poverty... to provide paths out of poverty". He deplored "dependence" on Western aid (sic) and called for greater accountability among poorer nations.

There are several self-serving myths here that, if inculcated, help to reduce not poverty but the public's understanding of the real cause of poverty. First of all, Obama and his ilk are projecting themselves as having some kind of moral authority because they appear concerned for humanity. This is particularly absurd in the case of Obama given his record of exacerbating poverty, suffering and death all over the planet. Thus, with rhetorical flourish, the enemies of genuine human development somehow are able to appear as guardian angels and escape accountability - accountability that Obama ostensibly recommends - for the misery that they help inflict on a daily basis.

The economy is to serve the people, not the people to serve the economy -- Manfred Max-Neef

Acclaimed economist Manfred Max-Neef, author of the award-winning book From the Outside Looking in: Experiences in 'Barefoot Economics' recently appeared in a must-see interview on Democracy Now where he says a second, more catastrophic crisis is unavoidable because our economic model is "dramatically poisonous." Max-Neef explains that "Greed is the dominant value today in the world and as long as that persists, we're done!" But he doesn't just mean done economically, he means done as a species.

Going beyond facts and figures to describe economics, his philosophy is based on a macro-world view, where he accounts for the biosphere, human creativity, security and happiness, and life in all of its manifestations. He reveals that the majority of economists have great knowledge, more than ever before, but they lack understanding. The two differ as, "knowledge is a function of science, whereas understanding is holistic," explained Max-Neef. Using the metaphor of love to simplify: we may read and accumulate great knowledge about love, but we can never fully understand it until we fall in love and experience it.

His philosophy of humanizing economics, or "Barefoot Economics," stems from spending years living in and studying the culture of poverty to better understand the economics of it. He concludes that the poverty culture has entirely different principles than our modern culture, where they must depend on enormous creativity, cooperation and solidarity of people. In poverty, "you cannot be an idiot if you want to survive," he quipped.

Yes, I know, as many readers will be quick to inform me, the West never had any morality. Nevertheless things have gotten worse.

In hopes that I will be permitted to make a point, permit me to acknowledge that the US dropped nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities, fire-bombed Tokyo, that Great Britain and the US fire-bombed Dresden and a number of other German cities, expending more destructive force, according to some historians, against the civilian German population than against the German armies, that President Grant and his Civil War war criminals, Generals Sherman and Sheridan, committed genocide against the Plains Indians, that the US today enables Israel's genocidal policies against the Palestinians, policies that one Israeli official has compared to 19th century US genocidal policies against the American Indians, that the US in the new 21st century invaded Iraq and Afghanistan on contrived pretenses, murdering countless numbers of civilians, and that British prime minister Tony Blair lent the British army to his American masters, as did other NATO countries, all of whom find themselves committing war crimes under the Nuremberg standard in lands in which they have no national interests, but for which they receive an American pay check.

I don't mean these few examples to be exhaustive. I know the list goes on and on. Still, despite the long list of horrors, moral degradation is reaching new lows. The US now routinely tortures prisoners, despite its strict illegality under US and international law, and a recent poll shows that the percentage of Americans who approve of torture is rising. Indeed, it is quite high, though still just below a majority.

CNN's Larry King's One-on-One Interview With Ahmadinejad on Larry King Live.

The United Nations' Human Rights Council concluded Wednesday that Israeli forces committed serious violations of international law when they conducted a mid-sea interception of a humanitarian aid flotilla in an incident that left nine people dead.

"The fact-finding mission concluded that a series of violations of international law, including international humanitarian and human rights law, were committed by the Israeli forces," said the 56-page report.

The report described the circumstances of the deaths of "at least six of the passengers" as being "consistent with ... an arbitrary and summary execution."

Israel has maintained its troops used force on the activists in May after they were attacked by those on board one boat. Soldiers were attacked with knives, metal poles and other objects, Israeli officials have said.

But passengers on board the boat insist Israeli troops fired on them without provocation.

The UN probe into the Israeli massacre in high seas concluded yesterday that Israeli forces violated international law and showed 'incredible violence' when they raided a flotilla attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. The UN fact finding mission also argues that Israel's naval blockade of the Palestinian territory was unlawful because of the humanitarian crisis there, and described the military raid on the flotilla as 'brutal and disproportionate.'

According to the UN probe, there is "clear evidence to support prosecutions" against Israel for "willfull killing" and "torture".

One would expect that after a publication of such a harsh report, Israel would self reflect, repent and vow to change its attitude toward international law and humanism in general.

A four-year international investigation into the backers of hundreds of child pornography websites has identified 30,000 customers in 132 countries, led to hundreds of American convictions, and landed the ring running the sites in Eastern European jails.

Law enforcement officials from around the world pulled back the curtain on the previously undisclosed probe in extraordinary detail for Scripps Howard News Service.

The agents revealed the workings of what they call the most significant commercial child porn bust in the Internet's history, in which multiple authorities from the United States, Canada, England, Italy, Belarus, Ukraine, Australia, and other countries, plus Interpol and Europol banded together to close down 230 websites, dismantling what is believed to be the most sophisticated commercial child porn operation to date.

Since the websites -- with names like "Excited Angels" and "Boys Say Go" -- went offline in January, the number of active commercial child porn sites has nosedived from perhaps 300 to the single digits, said Matt Dunn, of the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Custom's Enforcement (ICE), which was the lead law enforcement agency.

"You've taken an organization that was distributing large scale child porn and removed them," said Dunn, of the Child Exploitation Section of ICE's Cyber Crimes Center.

FBI special agent Michael Dzielak investigated the ring with Dunn and other international partners. Like Dunn, he believes the bust has dealt a fatal blow to the child-porn-for-money market -- at least for now.

A man arrested for allegedly placing a backpack he thought contained a bomb near Chicago's Wrigley Field got the fake explosive from an FBI undercover agent, authorities say - a tactic that has been used in other U.S. terrorism cases in recent years.

Sami Samir Hassoun, 22, a Lebanese citizen living in Chicago for about three years, was charged Monday with one count each of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted use of an explosive device.

Hassoun was arrested early Sunday after planting the fake explosive device in a trash receptacle near Sluggers World Class Sports Bar, a popular bar steps from Wrigley Field, FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Grant said. The Cubs were not playing at their home field; the stadium hosted Dave Matthews Band concerts Friday and Saturday nights.

It wouldn't be the first time FBI agents have posed as terror operatives and supplied suspects with bogus explosives. Last year, authorities arrested a Jordanian national after he allegedly attempted to detonate what he thought was a bomb outside a Dallas skyscraper. In an unrelated case, authorities in Springfield, Ill., arrested another man after he allegedly tried he tried to set off what he thought was explosives in a van outside a federal courthouse.

Agribusiness giant Monsanto, which genetically modifies plants to exude or tolerate pesticide or to produce nonviable seed, hired the services of the mercenary firm, Blackwater, to spy on activists, Jeremy Scahill reports. A death-tech firm weds a hit squad.

This is no doubt in response to a decade of GM crop sabotage efforts around the globe. Since the publicly-announced introduction of GM crops in 1996, concerned citizens have vandalized such crops every single year somewhere on the planet. Several thousand GM plants have been partially or wholly destroyed.

Blackwater is most notorious for its Nisour Square Massacre in 2007. Seventeen innocent civilians died when Blackwater goons opened fire in a busy market square. The hit team was later acquitted in a U.S. court.

Scahill reports that through its web of companies, Blackwater (now Xe Services) spied on and/or infilitrated groups opposing Monsanto in 2008 through early 2010. He writes: