Recent comments by U.S and Israeli military leaders indicate that the intelligence services of the two countries agree that Iran has not decided to build a nuclear bomb, a crack in the Western narrative that the U.S. press corps won't accept, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern explains.

Has Iran decided to build a nuclear bomb? That would seem to be the central question in the current bellicose debate over whether the world should simply cripple Iran's economy and inflict severe pain on its civilian population or launch a preemptive war to destroy its nuclear capability while possibly achieving "regime change."

And if you've been reading the New York Times or following the rest of the Fawning Corporate Media, you'd likely assume that everyone who matters agrees that the answer to the question is yes, although the FCM adds the caveat that Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. The line is included with an almost perceptible wink and an "oh, yeah."

However, a consensus seems to be emerging among the intelligence and military agencies of the United States - and Israel - that Iran has NOT made a decision to build a nuclear weapon. In recent days, that judgment has been expressed by high-profile figures in the defense establishments of the two countries - U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is getting into the television game.

Assange, who has made headlines with his disclosure of government secrets along with allegations of sexual misconduct, will host a TV series comprising "in-depth conversations with key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries from around the world," WikiLeaks said late Monday.

The title of the series has not been announced yet, but the theme will be "the world tomorrow."

The series -- which is scheduled to premiere in mid-March -- "will draw together controversial voices from across the political spectrum -- iconoclasts, visionaries and power insiders -- each to offer a window on the world tomorrow and their ideas on how to secure a brighter future," WikiLeaks said.

It wasn't all that long ago the Al Jazeera news network was considered, quote 'evil' by Washington. But the White House has certainly changed its tune, recently praising its ground breaking coverage. That's little surprise, say critics, after Wikileaks revelations exposed the director general of the Qatar based network of having links to the CIA, and promoting him to hurriedly quit. RT's Anissa Naouai takes up the story.

The US government is so full of self-righteousness that it has become a caricature of hypocrisy. Leon Panetta, a former congressman who Obama appointed CIA director and now head of the Pentagon, just told the sailors on the USS Enterprise, an aircraft carrier, that the US is maintaining a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers in order to project sea power against Iran and to convince Iran that "it's better for them to try to deal with us through diplomacy." (Source)

If it requires 11 aircraft carriers to deal with Iran, how many will Panetta need to project power against Russia and China? But to get on with the main point, Iran has been trying "to deal with us through diplomacy." The response from Washington has been belligerent threats of military attack, unfounded and irresponsible accusations that Iran is making a nuclear weapon, sanctions and an oil embargo.

Washington's accusations echo Israel's and are contradicted by Washington's own intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Why doesn't Washington respond to Iran in a civilized manner with diplomacy? Really, which of the two countries is the greatest threat to peace?

A US appeals court Tuesday rejected an effort to revive a lawsuit by Jose Padilla, a US citizen arrested in 2002 for an alleged "dirty bomb" plot who claims he was illegally detained and tortured.

The federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, affirmed a lower court decision which said former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and current Pentagon chief Leon Panetta are immune from the suit for actions taken in their official capacity.

"The political branches, exercising powers explicitly assigned them by our constitution, formulated policies with profound implications for national security," the appeal panel decision said.

"One may agree or not agree with those policies. One may debate whether they were or were not the most effective counterterrorism strategy. But the forum for such debates is not the civil cause of action pressed in the case at bar."

Padilla, who is incarcerated at a high security jail in Colorado, previously sued in an attempt to hold Rumsfeld and other US officials accountable for his alleged suffering, but a district court judge dismissed the case.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) claimed in the suit that Padilla was imprisoned without trial for four years and subjected to a range of abuse.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has backed down from a possible court battle with the European Union and pledged to alter laws that have jeopardised Budapest's bid to secure vital financial aid.

His climbdown yesterday came as neighbouring Romania braced for an eighth night of protests against the government and its austerity measures, and Croats prepared to vote whether to join the EU at a time of economic uncertainty and political tension between members.

"If we take stock of the issues that have emerged, I do not see any particularly difficult issues . . . Naturally, several laws may have to be modified, but the government cannot do it, this can be done only by parliament, and we will make proposals to this end," Mr Orban said.

The EU and International Monetary Fund have refused to start aid talks with Hungary until Mr Orban scraps plans to merge Hungary's central bank and financial regulator, which critics say will deeply undermine the bank's independence from government meddling.

"Regarding the central bank law . . . the easiest will be to abandon the merger of the two institutions," Mr Orban said, in a conciliatory tone that was long absent from his robust dealings with the EU and IMF.

On 25 June 1992, Dr. D. Corydon Hammond of the University of Utah delivered a talk at the Fourth Annual Eastern Regional Conference on Abuse and Multiple Personality at the Radisson Plaza Hotel in Alexandria, Virginia. It was entitled 'Hypnosis in MPD: Ritual Abuse'. In it, he described a strange set of symptoms that he and other clinicians had discovered (often independently) in patients, which indicated a massive, nationwide, well-coordinated program of systematic abuse and mind control, which was often, although not always, indicated in family members of NASA, CIA and military personnel. Using ideomotor responses elicited under hypnosis, Dr. Hammond and his colleagues uncovered layers of 'programs' that were installed in victims (often starting in infancy) via repeated abuse (really amounting to torture), sensory deprivation, disorientation, hypnosis, hallucinogens and other drugs.

Many different layers of programming were found, each with a different purpose, e.g. sexual, suicidal (i.e., 'self-destruct'), ritual and 'psychic killing' programs, as well as built-in shutdown codes, among others. Victims were also programmed with booby traps (called the 'green bomb'), so that if they ever began to recover they would go insane. Incidentally, the number and frequency of individuals 'going off' and killing for no reason seems to have been increasing in recent years. Virginia Tech gunman Seung Hui Cho in 2007; Vince Li, the man who decapitated another man on a Greyhound bus in Canada in 2008; and the Fort Hood shooter(s) of 2009 are just a few examples who have made big headlines and show indications of possible mind programming.

The story Hammond pieced together in his practice goes as follows. At the end of World War II, Allen Dulles and others from the U.S. intelligence community recruited Nazi scientists and doctors who were conducting mind control research in concentration camps and brought them to the United States, where they began doing similar research for military intelligence in military hospitals. A teenager raised according to Hasidic Jewish tradition and with a background in Kabbalistic mysticism (themes from the Kabbalah turned up repeatedly in the programming), saved himself by collaborating and assisting in the death-camp experiments, and he was brought to the United States as well. The boy Americanized his name, obtained a medical degree, became a physician and continued work that appears to be at the center of cult programming today. Patients throughout the country know him by the name 'Greenbaum'. Of course, this is just a story. Hammond apparently had no means of verifying what he was able to piece together from the victims.

How did Newt Gingrich win the South Carolina primary? Answer: there are no free elections in the USA. There is no 'democracy' in the USA. There hasn't been for a long time.

When sites like Wikipedia and Reddit banded together for a major blackout January 18th, the impact was felt all the way to Washington D.C. The blackout had lawmakers running from the controversial anti-piracy legislation, SOPA and PIPA, which critics said threatened freedom of speech online.

Unfortunately for free-speech advocates, censorship is still a serious threat.

Few people have heard of ACTA, or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, but the provisions in the agreement are just as pernicious as anything we saw in SOPA. Worse, the agreement spans virtually all of the countries in the developed world, including all of the EU, the United States, Switzerland and Japan.

Many of these countries have already signed or ratified it, and the cogs are still turning. The treaty has been secretly negotiated behind the scenes, with unelected bureaucrats working closely with entertainment industry lobbyists to craft the provisions in the treaty. The Bush administration started the process, but the Obama administration has aggressively pursued it.

Indeed, we've already signed on to the treaty. All it needs now is Senate ratification. The time to stop the treaty is now, and we may need a second global internet blackout to call attention to it.

Does the "key to future wealth" divide along racial lines? OR is it more of a representation of a system entrenched in marginalization of our communities? It seems there would need to be an attitude adjustment.

Washington - At the height of his career in Congress, Newt Gingrich used to tell audiences that renewing American civilization was "the central challenge of the rest of our lives."

He first laid out this theory in January of 1993, in a hand-written treatise outlining the "five pillars of American civilization": 1) quality, 2) technological advance, 3) entrepreneurial free enterprise, 4) principles of American civilization, and 5) psychological strength. Over the next five years, the thesis would serve as a speech, a political framework, and a battle cry for Gingrich, who said the pillars would "allow [Americans] to break out of the welfare state dilemma of more taxes or less government."

But before Gingrich could deliver his grand new theory to the public in a speech later that month, his deeply divisive racial stereotypes would need to be removed.