Government is a destroyer, but it doesn't just destroy physical and tangible things. It also destroys intangible things like language and the meaning of words. For example, did you know that originally "liberals" were individuals that believed in liberty and were against government intervention? Today, the word "liberal" means the exact opposite.

Today, we read in the government-licensed press that President Trump has signed an executive order removing the U.S. from a "free trade agreement" known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Washington Post tells us:

A Republican president signed an executive order getting rid of a free trade deal on Monday.

That is a sentence that seemed hugely unlikely just two short years ago. Free trade, after all, has been a hallmark of the pro-free market and pro-business Republican Party. When these free trade agreements have drawn opposition, it's generally been Democrats leading the charge.

Complete nonsense.

A Chinese court Monday sentenced a former top official to life in prison for corruption involving millions of dollars, the latest high-profile conviction in President Xi Jinping's crackdown on graft.

Su Rong, 66, was a vice chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a discussion body that is part of the Communist Party-controlled government structure.

He was found guilty of bribery, abuse of power and possessing "huge amounts" of assets whose origins he could not explain, said a statement on the verified social media site of the court in Jinan city, capital of the eastern province of Shandong.

Graft has become endemic in China and Xi launched a much-publicised drive against corruption after coming to power in 2012, vowing to target both high-level "tigers" and low-ranking "flies".

Su was "one of the graft 'tigers'", the official Xinhua news agency said in announcing his expulsion from the Communist Party last February.

President Obama may have entered the White House with a desire to rein in America's global war-making but he succumbed to neocon pressure and left behind an even more dangerous world, reports Robert Parry.

Any fair judgment about Barack Obama's presidency must start with the recognition that he inherited a dismal situation from George W. Bush: the U.S. economy was in free-fall and U.S. troops were bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clearly, these intertwined economic and foreign policy crises colored how Obama viewed his options, realizing that one false step could tip the world into the abyss.

It's also true that his Republican rivals behaved as if they had no responsibility for the messes that Obama had to clean up. From the start, they set out to trip him up rather than lend a hand. Plus, the mainstream media blamed Obama for this failure of bipartisanship, rewarding the Republicans for their nihilistic obstructionism.

That said, however, it is also true that Obama - an inexperienced manager - made huge mistakes from the outset and failed to rectify them in a timely fashion. For instance, he bought into the romantic notion of a "Team of Rivals" with his White House trumpeting the comparisons to Abraham Lincoln (although some of Lincoln's inclusion of rivals actually resulted from deals made at the 1860 Republican convention in Chicago to gain Lincoln the nomination).

In the real world of modern Washington, Obama's choice of hawkish Sen. Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State and Republican apparatchik Robert Gates to remain as Secretary of Defense - along with keeping Bush's high command, including neocon favorite Gen. David Petraeus - guaranteed that he would achieve little real foreign policy change.

Prime Minister Theresa May will respond to Tuesday's Supreme Court ruling by bringing forward her Brexit timetable by two weeks, it has emerged.

According to the Telegraph, May now wants to trigger Article 50, which begins formal negotiations with Brussels, in mid-March. She was previously expected to table her European Union Withdrawal Bill on March 31.

Following the 8-3 Supreme Court ruling against the government, David Davis, the Brexit secretary, addressed the House of Commons and warned "there can be no turning back."

He said the ruling would not derail May's timetable to kick off the two-year talks process and said politicians must not use legislation for triggering Article 50 to "frustrate or delay" Brexit.

Israeli interrogators with experience in using 'special means' of interrogation, which involve inflicting physical pain on detainees, have described details of their methods to an Israeli newspaper.

Reports of Israeli intelligence services using violent methods of interrogation have been around for years, even after the country ratified the UN Convention against Torture in 1991. In a landmark case in 1999, the High Court of Justice outlawed torture, but left a loophole called "necessity of defense." This gives a waiver for cases when torture is deemed necessary to save lives or similarly dire circumstances.

Critics however say that interrogation using what Israel calls "special means" remains widespread. The UN Committee Against Torture last year cited continued complaints of torture by the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) as well as Israel's refusal to implement the convention on occupied Palestinian territories and reluctance to criminalize torture among its concerns.

Israel has come under fire for carrying out "systematic unlawful killings" of Palestinian civilians in a buffer zone near Gaza, and causing over 17,000 to flee the area due to the dire plight, in the resolution adopted by a European inter-governmental group.

The Parliamentary Assembly for the Council of Europe (PACE) voted in favor of the proposal based on the group's internal report providing harrowing details on the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

The report was initially presented to the 324 parliamentarians from 47 countries by the document's author, Swedish politician Eva-Lena Jansson, on January 4.

The document cites the death toll since 2014, saying "Over 2,200 people have died, of whom most were civilians, including 551 children," adding that more than 11,000 people have been injured in the conflict.

NATO has opened a new regional center in Kuwait, which officials say will help strengthen security co-operation with Persian Gulf countries.

The military alliance's secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, was present at Tuesday's inauguration of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) Regional Center, along with Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah and Foreign Minister Sabah Al-Khalid Al-Sabah. The new center, which is located in the Diplomatic Zone of Mishref, Kuwait City, will foster cooperation between members of NATO and ICI with respect to security, emergency planning, and public diplomacy, as well as provide training in such fields as cybersecurity.

"This is not a full-fledge military cooperation, meaning any collective security guarantees, but it is a way for NATO to work even closer with good friends, good partners in the Gulf region," Stoltenberg said at the joint press conference.

"And I think we really will benefit from closer cooperation, because the countries in the Gulf region and NATO we face the same threats, the same challenges, terrorism, failing States, cyberattacks and instability in our neighborhood," he added.

Update: This story has been updated to add details on the origin and circulation of information about potential infrastructure investments and White House comment.

President Donald Trump's team has compiled a list of about 50 infrastructure projects nationwide, totaling at least $137.5 billion, as the new White House tries to determine its investment priorities, according to documents obtained by McClatchy's Kansas City Star and The News Tribune.

The preliminary list, provided to the National Governor's Association by the Trump transition team, offers a first glimpse at which projects around the country might get funding if Trump follows through on his campaign promise to renew America's crumbling highways, airports, dams and bridges. The governor's association shared that list with state officials in December. The group told the officials the projects on that list were "already being vetted."

All we have to do to highlight the enormous hypocrisy and double standards which are the hallmark of domestic and international politics is to switch the names around.

Actions taken by Western establishment-approved countries and actors which are deemed to be totally uncontroversial-would be deemed to be 'absolutely outrageous' if done to them.

Here's a few examples:

Just imagine... if a close Russian ally, whose forces were trained by Russia, was bombing the poorest country in the Middle East, with cluster bombs supplied by Moscow. Furthermore, in the country that was being attacked, a famine threatened the lives millions of people.

Well, the poorest country in the Middle East is Yemen, and it's being bombed to smithereens by the one of the richest, Saudi Arabia, a close ally of Britain, using UK-made cluster bombs. And guess what, the West's 'something must be done brigade,' who expressed so much 'humanitarian' concern over the fighting to regain Aleppo from Al-Qaeda/Al Nusra terrorists, are silent. How strange.

Before the Inauguration, one was guarded about using the term "fascist" to describe America, as if slanderous and an exaggeration. No longer. It is not entirely Trump's doing; Obama and his predecessors were creeping up to that point with each intervention, confrontation, weakening of civil liberties, drone attack, regime change—a whole catalogue of death, defiance, destruction. But it is Trump who pulls America over the top, with the willing agreement of millions of Americans, a self-conscious, articulate mobocracy contemptuous of all who disagree with, yes, a fascist agenda.

That agenda is simple: capitalism and militarism merged, indivisible, monolithic, holding America in a death grip. Squeezing, choking, bullying: experience gained abroad, slowly taking effect at home. Root out the dissident. Empty the social safety net, so that ordinary people begin to think complicity, for fear of suffering hardship, a fusion of surveillance and foreclosure or even penury and want of basics. The Tale of Two Cities? No, two countries, with police-state attributes riding roughshod over the people.

Through all of this, Trump poses as the quintessential Nazi-like demagogue, giving assurances to the people, celebrating their sovereignty, and meanwhile already—his policies and personality an accurate preview—turning the screws. Listen to his introduction in his speech, unashamed playing up to The Folk, to ingratiate himself with them, as, behind our backs, the Billionaires Club is busily writing and presenting their wish list: the scrapping of every decent thing a government, hostile in the first instance to the needs and aspirations of working people and the poor, has done.