Throughout history, massacres have been invented, exploited and used to inflame public opinion and discredit one side or the other. This is not to say that war crimes do not occur, and nor should they be excused, but getting the facts right is essential.

Beware the way atrocities are used in the propaganda media war that always operates alongside military conflicts."

When is a massacre a massacre, and how can we find truth in the fog of intense war propaganda?

That's a question that is being raised anew in the aftermath of the dreadful Hula massacre. The sight of dead children and torn bodies on the ground in Syria offers up sickening images that have already led to new calls for international military intervention, expulsions of Syrian diplomats, UN condemnations and self righteous finger pointing at the government in Damascus that denies responsibility with claims that most of the western media has rejected.

The Flame computer virus which is threatening to bring countries to a standstill is too sophisticated to have been created anywhere other than the U.S., it was claimed today.

As the United Nations prepares to issue its 'most serious warning' to guard against the superbug, cyber experts said it carried all the markings of a U.S. espionage operation.

Specifically, they have pointed the finger at the highly secretive National Security Agency.

UN computer security chief Marco Obiso moved to highlight the gravity of the situation after it emerged the bug had been used to hack into computers in Iran.

The sophisticated spyware - said to be about 100 times the size of most malicious software - also hacked other machines in the Middle East, including Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Egypt.

Mr Obiso said the warning will underline the danger the virus represents to the critical infrastructure of member nations.

The conclusion by Moscow-based internet security firm Kaspersky Lab ZAO that it was crafted at the behest of a national government fuelled claims that Flame was part of an Israeli-backed campaign of electronic sabotage aimed at archrival Iran.

While Israel has done little to dispute the claims, some believe they do not have the capacity to launch such an attack.

'It was (the) U.S,' one anonymous official told NBC News, although they conceded that they had no first-hand knowledge about how the virus operates or how it was fed into Iranian computers.

Another observer, computer security expert Roger Cressey, said the target would likely be Iran's nuclear program and its decision-making apparatus if indeed the virus was the work of the U.S.

'Whoever has developed this is engaged in very sophisticated intelligence-gathering on computer networks throughout the region.

"Both the Syrian and Lebanese regimes will be changed- whether they like it or not- whether it's going to be a military coup or something else... and we are working on it. We know already exactly who's going to be the replacements. We're working on it with the Bush administration."

"These guys who came to power, who rule by power, can only be removed by power. This is Machiavelli's power game. That's how it is. This is how geopolitics - the war games, power games - work. I know inside out how it works, because I come from a family of politicians for the last 60 years. Look, I have access to the top classified information from the CIA from all over the world. They call me, I advise them. I know exactly what's going on. And this will happen."

"This Bashar Al Assad-Emil Lahoud regime is going to go whether it's true or not. When we went to Iraq whether there were weapons of mass destruction or not, the key is - we won. And Saddam is out! Whatever we want, will happen. Iran? We will not let Iran become a nuclear power. We'll find a way, we'll find an excuse- to get rid of Iran. And I don't care what the excuse is. There is no room for rogue states in the world. Whether we lie about it, or invent something, or we don't... I don't care. The end justifies the means. What's right? Might is right, might is right. That's it. Might is right."

"So Saddam wanted to prove to the whole world he was strong? Well, we're stronger- he's out! He's finished. And Iran's going to be finished and every single Arab regime that's like this will be finished. Because there is no room for us capitalists and multinationalists in the world to operate with regimes like this. Its all about money. And power. And wealth... and democracy has to be spread around the world. Those who want to espouse globalization are going to make a lot of money, be happy, their families will be happy. And those who aren't going to play this game are going to be crushed, whether they like it or not!"

- Ziad Abdel Nour, 2005 excerpts from "Faking the Case Against Syria" by Trish Schuh

The Syrian government says the massacre of more than a hundred people in the Syrian town of Houla was the work of armed terrorist gangs. This, as the U.S. Secretary of State admits military planning for action in Syria is already going ahead, but Moscow has vowed to block any moves for outside interference at the UN.

Activist Sara Flounders talks to RT. She says Washington was never interested in a diplomatic solution in Syria.

The US and Israel made the Stuxnet virus as a new kind of weapon targeted against Iran, a media investigation revealed. The operation reportedly started in the Bush era, but was intensified by Obama administration.

­The top-secret massive sabotage targeting Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment facility was arguably the first episode of a new age of warfare, similar to the first use of nuclear weapons or the first military drone attack, according to an investigation by the New York Times.

The newspaper interviewed current and former American, European and Israeli officials involved in the clandestine program called Olympic Games. None of them agreed to have his name mentioned due to the highly sensitive nature of the operation.

The US and Israeli authorship of the Stuxnet virus, which caused damage to Iranian uranium enrichment effort by destroying hundreds of centrifuges at the Natanz facility, was long hinted at by the media. The virus is estimated to have pushed back the controversial nuclear program by as much as 18 months, although skeptical assessments say the impact may have been lower.

The Olympic Games operation dates back to 2006, the NYT reports. The Bush administration at the time had its credibility at a low, after being to have falsely accused Saddam Hussein of having weapons of mass destruction. This limited the amount of international pressure Washington could put on Tehran.

Detailed Investigation from ANNA NEWS (Original Russian) and syrianews.cc

Global Research Editor's Note

This incisive report by independent Russian journalist Marat Musin dispels the lies and fabrications of the Western media.

The report is based on a chronology of events as well as eyewitness accounts. Entire pro-government families in Houla were massacred. The terrorists were not pro-government shabbiha militia as conveyed, in chorus, by the mainstream media, they were in large part mercenaries and professional killers operating under the auspices of the self-proclaimed Free Syrian Army (FSA):

"When the rebels seized the lower checkpoint in the center of town and located next to the local police department, they began to sweep all the families loyal to the authorities in neighboring houses, including the elderly, women and children.

Several families of the Al-Sayed were killed, including 20 young children and the family of Abdul Razak.

The people were killed with knives and shot at point blank range. Then they presented the murdered [corpses] to the UN and the international community as victims of bombings by the Syrian army, something that was not verified by any marks on their bodies."We call on our readers to forward this report far and wide. The massacre in Houla is being blamed on the Syrian government without a shred of evidence. The objective is not only to isolate Syria politically and economically, but to develop a pretext and a justification for waging an R2P humanitarian war on Syria.

It is essential to reverse the tide of war propaganda which uses civilian deaths as a pretext to wage war, when those civilians deaths were carried out not by the government but by professional terrorists operating under the helm of the US-NATO supported Free Syrian Army.

~ Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, Montreal, June 1, 2012

Early results suggest Ireland has said 'yes' to the EU-backed fiscal treaty drawn up in response to the Eurozone debt crisis. The plan was supported by the government and trade unions, but critics worry that now, control of the country's finances will be handed to Brussels along with its sovereignty. RT's Laura Smith is following the referendum in Dublin.

Documentary about the so-called 'Father of the Sexual Revolution', Alfred Kinsey, whose works were very heavily promoted in the US despite clear indications that he character-flawed.

Obama's wars increase body counts daily. New ones planned will add more. Death squads operate in 120 or more countries. So do CIA agents licensed to kill.

US citizens may be targeted at home or abroad. No one anywhere is safe. Summary judgment means no arrests. No Miranda rights. No due process. No trial. Just a bullet, bomb or slit throat. It's official Obama policy. Diktat authority affords justice to no one ordered killed.

On May 29, the New York Times upped the stakes. Its article headlined "Secret 'Kill List' Proves a Test of Obama's Principles and Will," saying:

Obama "placed himself at the helm of a top secret 'nominations' process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical."

In other words, he appointed himself judge, jury and executioner. Despot authority is official administration policy. Diktats decide who lives or dies.

Anyone called Al Qaeda or accused of terrorist connections gets marked for death.

What "moral and legal conundrum" could he face, asked the Times. None whatever. On day one in office, he spurned rule of law principles.

He adopted George Bush's ideology. His predecessor called "the Constitution....just a G-damn piece of paper."

Obama feels the same. He's comfortable with "unitary executive" authority. It puts him above the law. Chalmers Johnson called it "a ball-faced assertion of presidential supremacy....dressed up in legalistic mumbo jumbo."

Stuxnet was never meant to propagate in the wild.

In 2011, the US government rolled out its "International Strategy for Cyberspace," which reminded us that "interconnected networks link nations more closely, so an attack on one nation's networks may have impact far beyond its borders." An in-depth report today from the New York Times confirms the truth of that statement as it finally lays bare the history and development of the Stuxnet virus - and how it accidentally escaped from the Iranian nuclear facility that was its target.

The article is adapted from journalist David Sanger's forthcoming book, Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, and it confirms that both the US and Israeli governments developed and deployed Stuxnet. The goal of the worm was to break Iranian nuclear centrifuge equipment by issuing specific commands to the industrial control hardware responsible for their spin rate. By doing so, both governments hoped to set back the Iranian research program - and the US hoped to keep Israel from launching a pre-emptive military attack.

The code was only supposed to work within Iran's Natanz refining facility, which was air-gapped from outside networks and thus difficult to penetrate. But computers and memory cards could be carried between the public Internet and the private Natanz network, and a preliminary bit of "beacon" code was used to map out all the network connections within the plant and report them back to the NSA.