As the political science department at a major Israeli university has been threatened with closure in the 2013 school year, professors and students say the move reflects the politicisation of Israeli academia, and threatens basic freedoms.

"These are very dark days for academic freedom in Israel and freedom of speech generally," Tamar Zandberg, a PhD student at the politics and government department of Ben Gurion University told IPS. The university is located in Be'er Sheva in Israel's Negev desert.

"Even if the department ends up not being closed, I think that a lot of damage has already been done. I feel that the government is threatening us, just to deliver a message saying, 'Beware. Don't be critical. Be careful of what you say, with your research, (and) with your political opinions.' Since when is it a crime to be a scholar or an academic and to be left-wing?" Zandberg said.

A senior Iranian air defense commander stressed Iran's capability to confront US spy planes and drones, and said his forces have so far warned tens of US spy planes, including the advanced Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft, to keep away from Iranian airspace.

"In the last ten years, we have issued countless warnings even to those US AWACS airplanes which were flying over Iraq's airspace or along the free airspace of the Persian Gulf," Commander of Khatam ol-Anbia Air Defense Base Brigadier General Farzad Esmayeeli told FNA, and noted that the spy planes received immediate warnings when they tried to approach Iran's airspace in violation of the international regulations.

He further reiterated Iran's high capabilities for combating enemies' electronic warfare, saying the country has electronic jamming devices which can destroy the GPS systems of hostile aircraft.

Esmayeeli also hailed the successful performance of the Iranian air defense units in pushing back enemy spying operations and shielding the country's airspace against penetration of enemy spy planes.

Have you heard the news? A self-proclaimed CIA time traveler named Andrew Basiago says he teleported to Mars with Barack Obama, and was once nearly devoured by a carnivorous Martian plesiosaur. And if that isn't enough for you, Basagio adds that he once traveled back in time to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania just minutes after Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, and was photographed there - the proof is a blurry picture from some Civil War archive.

Basiago's unhinged tales have been taken seriously by Alfred Webre, a Yale-educated (Scroll and Key) lawyer and self-proclaimed expert on not only international law, but extraterrestrial law and "exopolitics."

Webre has managed to spread Basiago's bizarre anecdotes all over the internet. The question is, why? Who invented these fantasies, and to what end?

The answer emerged last week, as Webre attempted to wreck the Vancouver 9/11 Hearings, and sabotage Italian Supreme Court Justice Ferdinando Imposimato's attempt to prosecute 9/11 in the International Criminal Court, by skunking up both proceedings with the odor of Andrew Basiago.

On October 6, Haaretz headlined "IDF shoots down drone that penetrated Israeli airspace," saying:

An "unidentified aerial vehicle" entered Israeli airspace Saturday. Israel shot it down over the Negev, south of Mount Hebron.

"The IDF said Saturday that the drone arrived in Israel from the west after flying over the Mediterranean and the Gaza Strip. It said the incident is under investigation.

IDF spokesman Yoav Mordechair said Israel tracked it "throughout the course of its flight." Fighter jets were dispatched. After getting approval, they downed it over Yatir forest. It's in Negev's northeast. Wreckage was recovered for further examination.

Hezbollah operates drones. Is it responsible or should fingers point elsewhere? It's hard imagining why Hezbollah, Iran or Syria would be provocative any time. Now seems extremely unlikely. Doing so would achieve nothing. It would also beg for retaliation.

Nonetheless, Israel's YNet News said Lebanon-based "Hezbollah-affiliated" Al-Mayadeen television reported that the drone was its UAV. A senior Hezbollah official denied involvement.

No information suggests Hamas had anything to do with it. It doesn't likely have access to drones or ability to operate them. Israeli officials claim it originated from Lebanon.

On October 6, Haaretz headlined, "The immediate suspect behind the drone that penetrated Israel: Hezbollah," saying:

The UAV "that was shot down by the IDF on Saturday came from the direction of Gaza - but it does not appear that Palestinian groups are behind it."

Israel revealed few details. All that's known is the drone "penetrated Israeli airspace from the direction of the Mediterranean, around the Gaza Strip."

During the 2006 Lebanon war, it's believed Hezbollah launched several Ababil drones capable of carrying explosives. Reportedly they were intercepted and downed.

In 2004, another drone penetrated Israeli airspace. Hezbollah was named responsible. Whether or not it's true, who knows. In 2010, Israel claimed it downed an unmanned balloon near Dimona.

All that's known is what Israel said each time. Best to take its reports with a grain of salt. They rarely have credibility.

St. Louis, Missouri - Doris Spates was a baby when her father died inexplicably in 1955. She has watched four siblings die of cancer, and she survived cervical cancer.

After learning that the Army conducted secret chemical testing in her impoverished St. Louis neighborhood at the height of the Cold War, she wonders if her own government is to blame.

In the mid-1950s, and again a decade later, the Army used motorized blowers atop a low-income housing high-rise, at schools and from the backs of station wagons to send a potentially dangerous compound into the already-hazy air in predominantly black areas of St. Louis.

Local officials were told at the time that the government was testing a smoke screen that could shield St. Louis from aerial observation in case the Russians attacked.

But in 1994, the government said the tests were part of a biological weapons program and St. Louis was chosen because it bore some resemblance to Russian cities that the U.S. might attack. The material being sprayed was zinc cadmium sulfide, a fine fluorescent powder.

The continued slide in median earning power, rather than public obfuscation or even lack of jobs, is America's real problem. It is the wood as distinct from the trees. It tends to loom larger when the television is off. Edward Luce - Financial Times

What we are witnessing in Europe - and what may loom for the United States - is the exhaustion of the modern social order. Since the early 1800s, industrial societies rested on a marriage of economic growth and political stability. Economic progress improved people's lives and anchored their loyalty to the state. Wars, depressions, revolutions and class conflicts interrupted the cycle. But over time, prosperity fostered stable democracies in the United States, Europe and parts of Asia. The present economic crisis might reverse this virtuous process. Slower economic expansion would feed political instability and vice versa. This would be a historic and ominous break from the past. Robert J. Samuelson - Washington Post

For almost two centuries, today's high-income countries enjoyed waves of innovation that made them both far more prosperous than before and far more powerful than everybody else. This was the world of the American dream and American exceptionalism. Now innovation is slow and economic catch-up fast. The elites of the high-income countries quite like this new world. The rest of their population like it vastly less. Get used to this. It will not change. Martin Wolf - Financial Times

Israeli forces and Palestinian militants exchanged fire on Monday in the most serious flare-up in months along the border with the Gaza Strip, officials said.

The latest exchange came after Israel targeted two men in an airstrike into southern Gaza on Sunday night, killing one and wounding the other. Israel said they were militant jihadists responsible for attacks.

Then, militants of the Islamic group Hamas that rules Gaza and a smaller hardline offshoot, Islamic Jihad, fired some 30 rockets toward Israel's southern border on Monday morning, causing some property damage but no casualties, said an Israeli military spokeswoman. She spoke on condition of anonymity, citing military rules.

Gaza's interior ministry said Israel's military launched around 20 tank shells and an airstrike, mostly toward targets around the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

Palestinian health official Ashraf al-Kidra said five people were injured after a strike near a mosque. Another mosque was targeted nearby and a factory was targeted in east of Gaza City, according to the interior ministry.

Sustainability pioneer Vandana Shiva speaks to Jo Confino about campaigning against seed slavery, corporations and patents

Vandana Shiva, one of the Guardian's Top 100 most inspiring women, is currently leading a campaign to create a global citizens' response on the issue of seed freedom.

In 1991, Shiva founded Navadanya, a movement which aims to protect nature and people's rights to knowledge, biodiversity, water and food. It does this by setting up community seed banks that generate livelihoods for local people and provide for basic needs.

Shiva, a scientist, philosopher, feminist, author, environmentalist and activist, explains why the two week campaign on seed freedom against major corporations, which culminates on World Food Day later this month, is so important and the consequences of failure.

Shiva calls for civil disobedience, quoting Gandhi who said that "as long as the superstition that unjust laws must be obeyed exists, so will slavery exist".

© Abedin Taherkenareh/EPAAn Iranian man counts his banknotes after Iran's currency, the rial, crashed to a record low

Yet again, the US and its allies spread mass human misery though a policy that is as morally indefensible as it is counter-productive

The Economist this week describes the intensifying suffering of 75 million Iranian citizens as a result of the sanctions regime being imposed on them by the US and its allies [my emphasis]:

"Six years ago, when America and Europe were putting in place the first raft of measures to press Iran to come clean over its nuclear ambitions, the talk was of "smart" sanctions. The West, it was stressed, had no quarrel with the Iranian people - only with a regime that seemed bent on getting a nuclear bomb, or at least the capacity for making one. Yet, as sanctions have become increasingly punitive in the face of Iran's intransigence, it is ordinary Iranians who are paying the price.

Turkish Yurt Newspaper said that the government of the Development and Justice Party has to take a neutral stance on the events in Syria instead of supporting the groups of the so-called the armed opposition.

"Turkey was inevitably affected by the events in Syria... so it was very necessary for it to adopt new polices and be aware that instigating others will bring nothing but more damages.. The Turkish government was wrong at seeing the whole region through a sectarian vision," Journalist Ali Sirmen wrote in an article published by the newspaper.