He may have taken a step up in the world this week but Iraq's incoming prime minister was once known for his downs as well as his ups, as the man in charge of servicing BBC's lifts, the British broadcaster has said.

Haider al-Abadi was this week appointed to replace outgoing prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.

In a profile of Mr Abadi, the BBC news website said the electrical engineer was for several years "in charge of the company servicing the lifts at the BBC's Bush House, then the home of the World Service, and was known by several journalists there."

Former BBC Arabic journalist Hamid Alkifaey has recalled meeting the future prime minister during his time as a lift engineer.

"He used to come to oversee the work and see how it progresses," Hamid Alkifaey told BBC World Service's The Fifth Floor today.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, a potential Republican Presidential candidate in 2016, has announced that he will fight allegations of power abuse against him, calling the accusations a political move that rips away the very fabric of the US constitution.

"This indictment amounts to nothing more than an abuse of power and I cannot, and I will not allow that to happen," Perry said in Austin, Texas, adding that he stands by his use of the veto power which ended in charges being laid against him.

"We don't settle political differences with indictments in this country. It is outrageous that some would use partisan political theatrics to rip away at the very fabric of our state's constitution," he added.

"I wholeheartedly and unequivocally stand behind my veto, and will continue to defend this lawful action of my executive authority as governor."

He called the case against him a "farce of a prosecution" that he intends to fight against and win.

A possible Republican presidential candidate in 2016, Perry was indicted on Friday in Travis County, a Democratic nucleus in a mainly Republican state, on two counts of abuse of power and coercion. Perry was indicted for fulfilling a veto threat that consisted of $7.5 million withholding funds for the state's anti-corruption group, the Public Integrity Unit.

Anglo-Saxon agression against Russia is taking the form of financial and economic warfare. However, Moscow is preparing for armed hostilities by developing its agricultural self-sufficency and multiplying its alliances. For Thierry Meyssan, after the creation of the caliphate in the Levant, Washington would lay down a new card in September in St. Petersburg. The ability of Russia to maintain its internal stability will determine the course of events.
The offensive led by Anglos-Saxons (USA, UK and Israel) for world domination continues on two lines simultaneously: both the creation of the "Greater Middle East" (Greater Middle East) by attacking simultaneously Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, and separating Russia from the European Union through the crisis they organised in Ukraine.

In this sprint, it seems that Washington wants to impose the dollar as the single currency in the gas market, the energy source of the twenty-first century, the way it imposed it on the oil [1] market. The Western media hardly cover the war in Donbass and their population is ignorant of the scale of the fighting, the US military presence, the number of civilian casualties, the wave of refugees. On the other hand, Western media have a delayed reaction to events in North Africa and the Levant, presenting them either as the result of a so-called "Arab Spring" (that is to say, in practice, a takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood), or as the destructive effect of a civilization which is inherently violent. More than ever, it is necessary to help the Arabs who are incapable of living peacefully in the absence of Western settlers.

Russia is now the leading power capable of leading the resistance to Anglo-Saxon imperialism. It has three tools: BRICS, an alliance of economic rivals who know they can not grow up without one another, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a strategic alliance with China to stabilize Central Asia and finally, the Organization for Collective Security Treaty, a military alliance of former Soviet states.

This week on SOTT Talk Radio we spoke with Peter Kuznick, Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, DC. Kuznick received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1984 and was active in the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. He is author and co-author of several books on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the use of nuclear power, and the Cold War.

Kuznick and Oliver Stone co-authored the 10-part documentary film series and book - The Untold History of the United States - which explores some of the under-reported and darkest parts of American 20th century history using little known documents and newly uncovered archival material.

We explored with Professor Kuznick the creation of the U.S. National Security State during WW2, the real reasons behind the Cold War and the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan, and the side-lining of 'the man who would be president', Henry Wallace.

Running Time: 01:55:00

Download: MP3

A Canadian international lawyer says the war crimes committed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against Gaza civilians are posing "the greatest threat to Israel's survival."

The remarks come days after William Schabas was elected to head the UN Human Rights Council commission investigating Israel's war on the besieged Gaza Strip.

The UN Human Rights Council has recently condemned the Israeli attacks on Gaza as disproportionate and indiscriminate. The council says it has launched an international inquiry into Israel's violations of human rights in its month-long war on the Palestinian territory.

Thousands of Israelis have also held a rally in Tel Aviv to protest the war-mongering policies of Premier Netanyahu.

The biggest problem in our world today is that the vast - and I mean vast - majority of people have no - again, I mean no - idea of how the world actually works and has been working for centuries. Let's take Putin's Russia as an example. Most people in the West, including those who are relatively well-informed about the geo-political context, see Putin as a 'dictator', a cold-eyed ex-FSB agent who is running Russia with an iron fist. There is only one reason why anyone can have ever formed this opinion: they are massively ignorant of how the world works. Putin is ex-FSB, and it is he, along with the upper echelons of Russian intelligence, that runs Russia. This is seen as 'anti-democratic' in the West and in those Russian minds infected by Western 'values' and propaganda. Yet US and British intelligence (among others) have been running not only the USA and UK for decades, but, indirectly, much of the rest of the world also.

It's difficult (in a face-palm kind of way) to listen to people, even well-informed educated people and 'experts', opine on global politics when they are clearly ignorant of (or studiously ignore) this most important fact. There is no 'democracy' in this world, and there has not been for, oh... forever. Western populations are so damn dumbed down and dissociated that they actually can't figure out that nothing of any significance changes with a change of government, despite all the evidence before them. In fact, it's worse than that, things do change, but for the worse from the point of view of the average citizen. Who will argue that Western warmongering and the divide between rich and poor has increased dramatically over the past 40 years? How many administrations does that period comprise, about 10? Democrat, Republican, Democrat, Republican... Whoopee frickin' doo. In the UK, it's Conservative, Labour, Conservative, Labour... In both countries, the supposedly 'bleeding-heart lefty' Democrat and Labour governments fronted by Tony Blair and then Obama actually out-warmongered their supposedly traditionally uber-warmongering opposition parties.

How do you explain that? Easy. There is no difference between them because neither of them, as parties or Presidents or Prime Ministers, actually control anything of any significance. Someone else does.

Richard Nixon was a traitor. The new release of extended versions of Nixon's papers now confirms this long-standing belief, usually dismissed as a "conspiracy theory" by Republican conservatives. Now it has been substantiated by none other than right-wing columnist George Will.

Nixon's newly revealed records show for certain that in 1968, as a presidential candidate, he ordered Anna Chennault, his liaison to the South Vietnam government, to persuade them refuse a cease-fire being brokered by President Lyndon Johnson. Nixon's interference with these negotiations violated President John Adams's 1797 Logan Act, banning private citizens from intruding into official government negotiations with a foreign nation. Published as the 40th Anniversary of Nixon's resignation approaches, Will's column confirms that Nixon feared public disclosure of his role in sabotaging the 1968 Vietnam peace talks.

Will says Nixon established a "plumbers unit" to stop potential leaks of information that might damage him, including documentation he believed was held by the Brookings Institute, a liberal think tank. The Plumbers' later break-in at the Democratic National Committee led to the Watergate scandal that brought Nixon down. Nixon's sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks was confirmed by transcripts of FBI wiretaps. On November 2, 1968, LBJ received an FBI report saying Chernnault told the South Vietnamese ambassador that "she had received a message from her boss: saying the Vietnamese should "hold on, we are gonna win."

A new study, conducted jointly by the University of Hong Kong and Indiana University, has found that Mississippi is the most corrupt U.S. state. Personally, given all the negative publicity, I would have expected Louisiana to top such a chart. Boy, would I have been wrong - Louisiana comes in at the far more prestigious second place!

According to Fortune, the researchers have examined more than 25,000 convictions of public officials for various violation of federal corruption laws between 1976 and 2008. The huge number means that data collected for the study include many small cases, which would not have been widely publicized.

As a result, the findings may come as a surprise to many people - some of the states in the top 10 do not necessarily have a reputation for being crooked. Moreover, states which do have a reputation for corruption, such as New Jersey and New York, do not even make the list. The researchers - Cheol Liu and John L. Mikesell - stated that:

"States with higher levels of corruption are likely to favor construction, salaries, borrowing, correction, and police protection at the expense of social sectors such as education, health and hospitals."

The report suggested that the need for correctional officers is higher in corrupt places because "the overall extent of corruption will be higher in states with higher numbers of convictions of public officials". Very interesting...

The superficially coincidental images coming from both Gaza and Ferguson this month have created some surprising and sudden currents of solidarity. Many have looked on with amazement, for example, as Gazans offer tips via twitter to those who have been involved in the uprising and faced the absurd and excessively militarized response to it by Ferguson police. And participants in "peaceful" vigils and more militant confrontations in Ferguson have invoked Gaza by now a dozens times.

Few have looked at images coming out of Ferguson and not been tempted to draw the same allusions between the 2/3 Black suburb policed by a nearly all-white police force, and Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. It would be difficult not to draw that comparison at the moment given the spectacle of the massive armory gifted to the FPD by the federal government in the name of stopping "terror" - which has so often been given a Palestinian face in the US - and the revelation that the former police chief of Ferguson studied "counter-terror" measures in Israel in 2011. Ironically, it seems Black Americans are now the target of anti-terror funding and training, which was ostensibly meant to target those from the Muslim and Arab world.

While there is nothing happening within the US anything like the now-cyclical Israeli slaughter of thousands of Gazans, the reality is that life for Black Americans in places like Ferguson does not vary in much from blockaded Gaza, and West Bank Bantustans in off-attack times. The similarities are not just coincidental in terms of the timing of the events - they are in fact, concurrent and historical.

As Moscow banned food imports from the West, Turkey voiced its readiness to increase its exports of agricultural products to Russia, Turkish economy minister has said.

"Turkey is a major supplier of food and agricultural produce to Russia. It is ready to increase its food exports to Russia if necessary," Turkish Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci said in an interview with Itar-Tass.

The two countries have recently reached an agreement to increase the number of Turkish food suppliers to Russia. A delegation from Russia's agricultural watchdog, Rosselkhoznadzor (the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phyto-Sanitary Control), visited Ankara for negotiations in the search for alternative food supply sources following the sanctions imposed on Russia by the EU, Russia's top food supplier, the US, the EU, Australia and Canada.

To reciprocate, on August 6 Russia introduced a full ban for imports of beef and pork (fresh, chilled, refrigerated, pickled, dried or smoked meat), poultry and any poultry edible products, fish, cheese, milk, dairy products, vegetables, including root vegetables and tuber crops, and fruit from Australia, Canada, the EU, the US and Norway.

Moscow is now set to ensure country's food supply security by finding new suppliers in countries that have not joined the sanctions against Russia. Some of the country's closest neighbors, China and Turkey, have been among the first candidates for a lucrative offer to extend their share of the Russia market.