A Hamas official on Sunday said that Israel has several undercover spies operating in "sleeper cells" in the Gaza Strip, awaiting instructions to carry out special operations.

Speaking on Hamas television station Al-Aksa TV, the official said that the organization had a recording of one such operative speaking with Israeli intelligence officials.

The recording allegedly proves that Israel and Fatah cooperate to gather information on Hamas activities.

The Hamas official said that through the discovery of the "sleeper cells" Hamas has learned Israel's methods for connecting with spies in Gaza.

Major-General Yuri Ivanov, 52, was the deputy head of Russia's foreign military intelligence arm known as GRU which is thought to operate the biggest network of foreign spies out of all of Russia's clandestine intelligence services.

His badly decomposed body was found washed up on the Turkish coast by local fishermen earlier this month after he disappeared in the Syrian coastal resort of Latakia further south. The Russian army's in-house newspaper, Red Star, did not report his death until last Saturday when he was quietly buried in Moscow.

The circumstances of his death are reminiscent of a John Le Carre novel and have therefore fuelled theories that he may have been murdered in Syria and his body then thrown into the Mediterranean where it drifted for days.

According to the Kremlin, he was on holiday in Syria and died in a tragic swimming accident. However, other reports have suggested he was on official business and the location where he is reported to have disappeared was only about fifty miles from a strategically vital Russian naval facility in the Syrian port of Tartus which is being expanded and upgraded to service and refuel ships from Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

The facility is Russia's only foothold in the Mediterranean Sea, and Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency, is know to be concerned that Moscow will use the upgraded facility as a base for spy ships and electronic espionage directed at the Middle East.

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.

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

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 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.

In early January, two black Audi A6 limousines drove up to the main gate of a building on a small hill in the northern suburbs of Tel Aviv: the headquarters of Mossad, the Israeli secret intelligence agency, known as the "midrasha".

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, stepped out of his car and was greeted by Meir Dagan, the 64-year-old head of the agency. Dagan, who has walked with a stick since he was injured in action as a young man, led Netanyahu and a general to a briefing room.

According to sources with knowledge of Mossad, inside the briefing room were some members of a hit squad. As the man who gives final authorization for such operations, Netanyahu was briefed on plans to kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a member of Hamas, the militant Islamic group that controls Gaza.

Mossad had received intelligence that Mabhouh was planning a trip to Dubai and they were preparing an operation to assassinate him there, off-guard in a luxury hotel. The team had already rehearsed, using a hotel in Tel Aviv as a training ground without alerting its owners.

Figuring out exactly how 9/11 was done is the work of crime investigators or conspiracy hobbyists who will endlessly go on discussing and debating every minuscule and intricate detail of the event to no avail. It doesn't take a structural engineer to tell you that two 110 story buildings and a 47 story steel skyscraper plummeting to the ground at nearly free-fall speed requires the assistance of explosives. All you need is two eyes that can see and a brain that thinks to come to that sound conclusion. This is why it is of my opinion that more emphasis should be placed on the "who" instead of the "how". It should be obvious to anyone that discovering 'who did 9/11′ is infinitely more important than discovering how they did it.

An Uncanny Prediction Comes True

First we start off with an unusual and eerie prediction that was made by a most suspicious individual. This prediction, in unison with the status of the person of who made it, is extremely indicative and foretelling of who planned and executed 9/11.

In 1979, twenty-one years before September 11, 2001, Isser Harel predicted with uncanny accuracy the events of 9-11 to Michael D. Evans, an American supporter of Zionist extremists of the Jabotinsky sort.

On September 23, 1979, Evans visited Harel at his home in Israel and had dinner with him and Dr. Reuven Hecht, a senior adviser to then prime minister Menachem Begin.

London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), is the world's leading think tank for military affairs. It represents the top echelon of defence experts, retired officers and senior military men, spanning the globe from the United States and Britain to China, Russia and India.

I've been an IISS member for over 20 years. IISS's reports are always authoritative but usually cautious and diplomatic, sometimes dull. However, two weeks ago the IISS issued an explosive report on Afghanistan that is shaking Washington and its Nato allies.

The report, presided over by the former deputy director of Britain's foreign intelligence agency, MI-6, says the threat from al-Qaeda and Taliban has been "exaggerated" by the western powers. The US-led mission in Afghanistan has "ballooned" out of all proportion from its original aim of disrupting and defeating al-Qaeda. The US-led war in Afghanistan, says IISS, using uncharacteristically blunt language, is "a long-drawn-out disaster".

Just recently, CIA chief Leon Panetta admitted there were no more than 50 members of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Yet US President Barack Obama has tripled the number of US soldiers there to 120,000 to fight Al Qaeda.

There's a difference between being paranoid and being suspicious. Paranoia is mental disturbance; suspicion is a rational deduction.

For example, if you suspect that America's economy, politics, government, media, judiciary and practically every other system has been wired to favor corporate interests over every other interest in our country, you're deducing, not hallucinating. From the infamous Wall Street bailout to the Supreme Court's shameful decree that corporations have more political rights than humans, we see again and again that corporate might overwhelms what's right.

This is not by accident, but by the deliberate, relentless efforts of corporatists to bend our nation's institutions to their will. Take one huge corporation you've probably never heard of, even though your consumer dollars are financing its right-wing agenda.