An alleged transcript purporting to show details of a plot to kill Yasser Arafat released to the media by a political adversary of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is causing a major storm in the Palestinian areas.

According to the document, whose authenticity could not be verified independently, former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon suggested in a March 2, 2004 meeting with Abbas and his former security adviser Mohammed Dahlan that late and legendary Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat should be poisoned.

Abbas, according to the transcript, protested that this could cause 'serious difficulties.'

But he did not storm out of the meeting in shock.

In an impromptu news conference in the Jordanian capital, Amman , on 12 July, Fatah Secretary-General Farouk Kaddumi revealed that Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas and former Gaza strong man Muhammed Dahlan conspired to murder Yasser Arafat in connivance with Israel and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Kaddumi disclosed that Arafat had confided to him the transcript of a secret meeting involving Abbas, Dahlan , US intelligence officials as well as former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The meeting allegedly took place in March 22, 2004.

According to the document, whose authenticity couldn't be verified independently, Sharon told Abbas and Dahlan during the meeting that Arafat should be killed by way of poisoning.

The world is abuzz with the accusations made by senior Fatah member Farouk Kaddoumi (Abu Al Lutf), against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and former security minister Mohammad Dahlan for having allegedly conspired with former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to get rid of Yasser Arafat in 2004.

The meeting was aimed at eliminating Arafat and Hamas leaders Abdul Aziz Rantisi (assassinated by Israel in April 2004), Esmail Haniya and Mahmoud Zahar.

The iconic American investigative journalist I.F. Stone once said, "All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed." Stone's credo is all the more relevant today when it comes to the pronouncements of intelligence agencies and their corporate masters, particularly where official enemies are concerned.

A widespread computer attack that began July 4 took down several U.S. Government, South Korean and financial web sites, the Associated Press reported.

Multiple media reports claim that the Treasury Department, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Department of Transportation web sites were struck by a distributed denial of service (DDOS) assault that began last Saturday.

Revelations that the Central Intelligence Agency launched a world-wide assassination program, and then concealed its existence from the U.S. Congress and the American people for eight years, carries an implication that death squads may have been employed against political opponents.

The Wall Street Journal reported July 13 that "A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the matter."

Investigative journalist Siobhan Gorman writes, "The precise nature of the highly classified effort isn't clear, and the CIA won't comment on its substance."

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.

By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup - which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibilliondollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in goldenparachute payments as his bank was selfdestructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailedout insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York - which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman - not to mention ...

The day Dr David Kelly took a short walk to his death in the Oxfordshire countryside, an unopened letter lay on the desk of his book-lined study.

Sent from the heart of the British Government, the pages were marked 'personal' and threatened the world-renowned microbiologist with the sack if he ever publicly opened his mouth again.

The letter remained unopened for the seven days during the drama that would pitch Dr Kelly into the spotlight and end in his death at just 59.

Lagos, Nigeria (UPI) Jul 9, 2009 China's oil companies, buoyed by the country's foreign exchange reserves that now top $2 trillion for the first time, are on another buying spree in Africa
, further challenging the century-long domination of the continent's mineral wealth by Europe's great powers.

So intense is Beijing's drive for wider access to energy resources to fuel China's economic growth that its main state-run oil companies are now competing among themselves.

Independence Day weekend in the US started with fireworks. Political fireworks. Former Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, was not content to see Michael Jackson's death nor the infidelities of fellow conservative hypocri..er...politicians get all the media attention. On Friday she had to go drop a bombshell about her resignation. Both naysayers and rabid Palin supporters were surprised to hear that she was stepping down as governor of Alaska.

The conservative supporters seem to have been caught unaware, so much so, that they did not have an immediate talking point at hand, to explain it all away. Initial reactions to her announcement ranged from puzzlement to dismay to applause. The Sarah Palin blog lists a few. However, in the space of a few hours, the usual conservative pundits managed to come up with those handy talking points.

The US has denied a report that it has reached a compromise that would allow Israel to continue the construction of settlements that has already begun.

"That report in that Israeli media outlet is inaccurate," State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly said after the Maariv newspaper reported that the Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and US envoy George Mitchell had struck such a deal.