Puppet Masters
Binyamin Netanyahu's cartoon nuclear bomb certainly grabbed attention, but not necessarily the kind he wanted. No doubt it was intended as a bold and graphic way of presenting the Iranian nuclear threat, but much of the initial response - on Twitter, at least - was ridicule.
In his speech to the UN general assembly, the Israeli prime minister adopted the persona of an elementary school science teacher talking to a particularly dim class to explain Iran's nuclear programme and the point at which it must be stopped.
Having incessantly talked about "red lines" for the past few weeks, he literally drew one across the bomb to illustrate the point at which the international community should take decisive action. Netanyahu set his literal red line at the 90% threshold of uranium enrichment, a point which he said could be reached by next spring or summer.
In an explosive interview with the Kremlin-funded RT media broadcaster, the former Times correspondent, who was based in the Balkans during his stint at the newspaper, offered an inside look at how it all works. What appears to have bothered him more than anything was how the supposed paper "of record" was so determined to sell the Iraq war to the American people, even if it meant basically lying or repeating government lies to do so.
"It seemed pretty glaringly obvious to me that the 'news fit to print' was pretty much the news that's fit to serve the powerful," Simpson explained, citing the warmongering over Iraq as a prime example. "The way that the paper's senior staff think is exactly like those in power - in fact, it's their job to become their friends."

Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 67th United Nations General Assembly at the U.N. Headquarters in New York, September 27, 2012.
Addressing the U.N. General Assembly, Netanyahu appeared to pull back from any threat of an imminent Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, saying the Islamic Republic would be on the brink of producing an atomic weapon only next summer.
Comment: Netanyahu's laughable cartoon presentation makes Colin Powell's grainy pictures to support the case for war on Iraq years ago seem 'serious' in comparison - and Powell's UN performance was as ridiculous as it could get.
Is Bibi as idiotic as he is coming across or does he think the public is stupid and needs to be addressed in such terms? Either way it is very worrying that such a man - who has already proven to have no conscience - is in control of the red button of the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East.
Today, Reuters rolled out a serious eye-grabber: In New York, defiant Ahmadinejad says Israel will be "eliminated"
Just sounds like par for the course when it comes to Iran's dangerous doom-dealer, right?
Well, there is a bit of a problem.
You see, the headline doesn't quite match the actual quote in the story. Rather than delivering on their big tease with a blustering rant about destroying Israel with a hail of newly-minted nuclear weapons, Ahmadinejad's quote in paragraph eleven of the story comes across a bit differently:
"We don't even count them as any part of any equation for Iran. During a historical phase, they (the Israelis) represent minimal disturbances that come into the picture and are then eliminated."
I have been working as a journalist for the past 25 years or so, focusing mainly on human rights and the environment.
What struck me was the number of people I encountered who kept uttering a single name: Monsanto, the giant U.S.-based multinational biotechnology company.
I grew up on a farm in France, hence my keen interest in agricultural issues.
I decided to find out more about Monsanto's global reach.
Comment: The World According to Monsanto: The History of Agent Orange
This is a clip from the French documentary The World According to Monsanto. It summarizes the history of Agent Orange, a toxic herbicide produced by Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and other companies.
Late in the evening on 6 June this year an unmanned drone was flying high above the Pakistani village of Datta Khel in north Waziristan.
The buzz emitted by America's fleet of Predators and Reapers are a familiar sound for the inhabitants of the dusty hamlet, which lies next to a riverbed close to Pakistan's border with Afghanistan and is a stronghold for the Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur.
As the drone circled it let off the first of its Hellfire missiles, slamming into a small house and reducing it to rubble. When residents rushed to the scene of the attack to see if they could help they were struck again.
According to reports at the time, three local rescuers were killed by a second missile whilst a further strike killed another three people five minutes later. In all, somewhere between 17 and 24 people are thought to have been killed in the attack.
The Datta Khel assault was just one of the more than 345 strikes that have hit Pakistan's tribal areas in the past eight years but it reveals an increasingly common tactic now being used in America's covert drone wars - the "double-tap" strike.
More and more, while the overall frequency of strikes has fallen since a Nato attack in 2011 killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and strained US-Pakistan relations, initial strikes are now followed up by further missiles in a tactic which lawyers and campaigners say is killing an even greater number of civilians.
Nader told Politico.com that President Obama is worse than President george W. Bush, who invaded two countries during his term.
Nader said: "He's gone beyond George W. Bush in drones, for example. He thinks the world is his plate, that national sovereignties mean nothing, drones can go anywhere. They can kill anybody that he suspects and every Tuesday he makes the call on who lives and who dies, supposed suspects in places like Yemen and Pakistan and Afghanistan, and that is a war crime and he ought to be held to account."

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks during the 67th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, September 26, 2012.
In his eighth address to the U.N. General Assembly's annual gathering of world leaders, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad painted a gloomy picture of a world driven by greed rather than moral values.
"The current abysmal situation of the world and the bitter incidents of history are due mainly to the wrong management of the world and the self-proclaimed centers of power who have entrusted themselves to the devil," Ahmadinejad said, in what is expected to be his last address to the world body.
There was no reiteration of his comments to journalists in New York on Monday that Israel has no roots in the Middle East and would be "eliminated."
However, in a clear reference to Israel, he told the assembly: "Continued threat by the uncivilized Zionists to resort to military action against our great nation is a clear example of this bitter reality."
These activists weren't just reading tea leaves. On the campaign trail, Obama said:
"Let folks know when their food is genetically modified, because Americans have a right to know what they're buying."Making the distinction between GMO and non-GMO was certainly an indication that Obama, unlike the FDA and USDA, saw there was an important line to draw in the sand.
Beyond that, Obama was promising a new era of transparency in government. He was adamant in promising that, if elected, his administration wouldn't do business in "the old way." He would be "responsive to people's needs."
Then came the reality.












Comment: People like Bibi can't help it - they always show their level of intelligence. Scary thing is that this man is in charge of a murderous state which already has hundreds of nuclear weapons!