A vote for the Tories this time could mean the end of Canada as we know it.

It's been a long five years for Stephen Harper, his gaggle of ex-Reformers and the gang of three from Harris-era Ontario -- Jim Flaherty, John Baird and Tony Clement. Long and infuriating, I am sure, because for all that time they had to pretend that they were a government. They had to masquerade as people who believed that government could be a force for good. They even "stimulated" the economy. They were a minority government and the big ticket items they really wanted to get their teeth into were out of reach.

They couldn't slash Medicare or gut the Canada Health Act. They couldn't cut transfers to the provinces, or further weaken EI. They left the public services unions with their rights intact. They had to leave education alone (more or less). And they didn't risk slashing the civil service they hate so much. Even the CBC has been spared (though they raised millions from their loyalists attacking it in fundraising letters).

The frustration level, especially for Harper, must have been almost unbearable. Remember, this is a man who got so frustrated being in Opposition as right-hand man to Preston Manning that he bolted from politics altogether. The place he chose to cleanse himself after all those years having to play the democrat was the National Citizens Coalition, by a big margin the most right-wing organization on the national scene. He said he was glad to be out of politics so he could say what he really thought.

Harper was hoping for revenge in the last election and blew it by attacking culture. He's eager for another try, making Jack Layton an offer he had to refuse. And if you want to see what real revenge looks like, give this crowd a majority and they will unleash the most destructive, nation-changing blitzkrieg in living memory. I can still remember the night that Brian Mulroney won the historic free trade election 1988. It was devastating. But Mulroney was a kindergarten teacher compared to Stephen Harper. Free trade started us down the road to Americanization. Harper will take us to the end of that road and beyond.

The Knesset enacted the Nakba Law on 22 March 2011. The law authorizes the Minister of Finance to reduce funding or support provided by the state to an institution if it holds an activity that contradicts the definition of the State of Israel as a "Jewish and democratic" state, or that commemorates "Israel's Independence Day or the day on which the state was established as a day of mourning." Read further

Some Laws are made to be broken ..... this is definitely one of them!

I am sorry. But, after the past decade of lies, distortions, obfuscations, and out and out deception surrounding 9/11 and every other damn issue under the sun, I don't believe anything they say about anything anymore. (And, I know this shite ain't new, but as the brazeness elevates due to our unquestioning acceptance of information that is tenuous at best, and out and out provable lies at worst, it gets more surreal by the day).

So, when I heard there was a unexpected press conference about national security and knowing that they never tell any truth about REAL issues that threaten our national security, my gut reaction?...

'Don't tell me, they got Bin Laden. What a way to kick off Obama in 2012 corporate campaign'!

I choked on my grapes when the NYT pre-released the story.

Kafkaesque Machinery of Suspicion

The US prison at Guantanamo houses the worst of the worst of international jihad. But as the detainee assessments recently made public by WikiLeaks show, it is a description that can be applied to US evidence gathering as well.

There was a champagne brunch at the US military's Bayview Restaurant on Easter Sunday -- $14.95 a person, with a view of the bay included. Before the brunch, the soldiers' families met for an Easter egg hunt on the golf course, near the white officers' houses with their manicured front lawns. Inflatable castles were set up for the children.

On weekends like this, Guantanamo looks relatively normal. Residents can take snorkeling lessons or attend a picnic on Windmill Beach, which, like the 10 other beaches on the base, is equipped with volleyball nets, showers and barbecue stations.

It is a place that has become a symbol worldwide for the failure of a modern constitutional state -- and its weekend activities are reminiscent of a Mediterranean resort hotel. The military base has one of the best funded programs for "Morale, Recreation and the Common Good," including a range of activities more commonly found at a Club Med, like Pilates and belly-dancing lessons, angling, paintball and Ironman competitions.

Israeli forces injured an American activist and detained three other foreign nationals Sunday, as they attempted to stop Israeli bulldozers from razing Palestinian agricultural land east of Qalqiliya, witnesses said.

International solidarity activists gathered in Izbat At-Tabib in the northern West Bank on privately-owned Palestinian property, which Israel seeks to confiscate for the construction of a wall around Jewish-only settlements in the area.

Soldiers pushed over a 60-year-old American woman with the Michigan Peace Team, who fell and was taken to hospital with a suspected broken wrist, witnesses said.

They added that Israeli forces detained two British activists and one Swedish activist.

It was a fitting end for the America's most wanted man. As President Barack Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan told it, a cowardly Osama bin Laden used his own wife as a human shield in his final moments. Except that apparently wasn't what happened at all.

Hours later, other administration officials were clarifying Brennan's account. Turns out the woman that was killed on the compound wasn't bin Laden's wife. Bin Laden may have not even been using a human shield. And he might not have even been holding a gun.

The narrative first unfolded in a televised briefing at the White House.

"Thinking about that from a visual perspective, here is bin Laden, who has been calling for these attacks, living in this million dollar-plus compound, living in an area that is far removed from the front, hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield," Brennan said. "I think it really just speaks to just how false his narrative has been over the years."

"We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves." - Goethe

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer


What happens this week is pitiful and laughably absurd.

Following the September 11, 2001 inside job, there has been speculation on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

According to research with the reported resources, such as the news media (Fox News and CBS-TV News), What Really Happened and Veterans Today chief editor Gordon Duff, Osama has been dead for a long time.

I can only speculate that the episode is a psyop exercise to provide the soothing peace of mind for the American public subject to full-throttle media propaganda, while continuing, unabatedly, one of the greatest, deadliest, and most expensive hoaxes of all time -- "The War on Terror."

In a propaganda piece reeking of US Triumphalism, two alleged journalists, Adam Goldman and Chris Brummitt, of the Associated Press or, rather, of the White House Ministry of Truth, write, or copy off a White House or CIA press release that "Osama bin Laden, the terror mastermind killed by Navy SEALs in an intense firefight, was hunted down based on information first gleaned years ago (emphasis added) from detainees at secret CIA prison sites in Eastern Europe, officials disclosed Monday."

How many Americans will notice that the first paragraph of the "report" justifies CIA prisons and torture? Without secret prisons and torture "the terror mastermind" would still be running free, despite having died from renal failure in 2001.

After giving contradictory versions of events for two days following the killing of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, including misidentifying which of his sons was killed and wrongly saying bin Laden's wife died in gunfire, the White House Tuesday said bin Laden was unarmed when Navy SEALs burst into his room and shot him to death.

Over two days, the White House has offered contradictory versions of events, including misidentifying which of bin Laden's sons was killed and wrongly saying bin Laden's wife died in gunfire, as it tries to sort through what the president's press secretary called the "fog of combat" and produce an accurate account.

In latest twist to the events the White House Tuesday said Osama bin Laden was unarmed when Navy SEALs burst into his room and shot him to death, another change in the official account that raised questions about whether the U.S. ever planned to capture him alive.

Egypt has urged the United States to recognise a united Palestinian state as warring factions Fatah and Hamas prepare to sign a landmark reconciliation pact in Cairo.

The appeal comes as the Palestinians indicated that they will ask the United Nations in September to recognise an independent state based on 1967 borders, a move condemned by both Israel and the United States.

Nabil al-Arabi, Egypt's Foreign Minister, told visiting US congressman Steve Chabot that recognising the state "would correspond with previous statements by the American administration supporting peace based on two states".