The fiscal compact is a "dangerous experiment" that will be "extremely painful" if implemented, an Oireachtas committee was told yesterday.

Prof Terrence McDonough of the school of business and economics at NUI Galway told the Committee on European Affairs the compact was "completely without historical precedent".

Forcing a country at the bottom of a depression to run budget cuts and tax increases year after year, and forcing the same policy on its neighbours, was not "the safe option".

"If the Irish people are against permanent austerity they should reject this treaty."

The fiscal compact, on which Ireland will vote in May, aims to place financial limits on how much countries can borrow in proportion to their revenue.

The European Commission called for direct euro-area aid for troubled banks, and touted a Europe- wide deposit-guarantee system and common bond issuance as antidotes to the debt crisis now threatening to overwhelm Spain.

The commission, the European Union's central regulator, sided with Spain in proposing that the euro's permanent bailout fund inject cash to banks instead of channeling the money via national governments. It also offered Spain extra time to squeeze the budget deficit.

The use of the rescue fund to recapitalize banks "might be envisaged" and would "sever the link between banks and the sovereigns," the commission said today in Brussels. Jose Barroso, the commission's president, said "it is important to use all possibilities offered in terms of flexibility."

Proposals for more liberal use of European bailout money are likely to face resistance in creditor countries such as Germany, Finland and the Netherlands, the scenes of growing taxpayer opposition to more aid.

As such a useful tool of exchange, money is not inherently evil. Money can be a springboard to such evil as bailout-begging banks too monstrous to fail gambling with taxpayer wealth - you know, private profits, public risk. Casino financialization with taxpayers as a backstop. The $700 billion TARP bailout actually being a $23.7 trillion bailout. But the root of all evil is the human brain.

New research has exposed, shall we say, the root of the problem. Pathocracy is its flower.

Definition: pathocracy (n). A system of government created by a small pathological minority that takes control over a society of normal people (from Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes, by Andrew Lobaczewski).

A small minority of people are born psychopaths; they inherit a genetic deviance linked to certain structural abnormalities of their social brain.

The physical dynamic that exposes psychopaths is a reduction of gray matter in the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and temporal poles. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is able to image this deviation fundamental to psychopathy. Potential benefits to humanity are immense; imagine something like a TSA screening (without the bureaucracy, groping and humiliation) to keep psychopaths from boarding the flight to power.

Peshawar, Pakistan - A Pakistan doctor who assisted the CIA in tracking down Osama bin Laden was sentenced to 33 years in prison for conspiring with an Islamist militant commander, not his involvement the American spy agency.

A copy of the verdict obtained by The Associated Press Wednesday adds to questions about Pakistan's treatment of Shakil Afridi.

Afridi was sentenced last week in a tribal court. Few details were released about the verdict, but officials did nothing to challenge the widely held assumption he was punished for his role in helping the CIA.

The five-page document, first reported by Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, says Afridi was guilty of conspiring with militant commander Mangal Bagh.

Afridi's family says he is innocent and will appeal.

Source: The Associated Press

French President Francois Hollande has said the use of armed force could be possible in Syria if it is backed by the United Nations Security Council. Hollande was speaking to France 2 television on May 29 following the massacre of 108 people -- most of them children and women -- in the Syrian village of Houla last week.

"[An armed intervention] is not excluded on the condition that it is carried out with respect to international law, meaning after deliberation by the United Nations Security Council," Hollande said. In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the United States had not taken any options off the table, but believed armed action was not the right course at present.

"We do not believe that militarization -- further militarization -- of the situation in Syria at this point is the right course of action. We believe that it would lead to greater chaos, greater carnage," Carney said. Meanwhile, the United States, Canada, Australia, and a number of European countries, said they were expelling senior Syrian diplomats in response to the May 25 killings in Houla. The United Nations says most of the victims were executed. UN monitors said spent tank and artillery shells, as well as fresh tank tracks on the ground, were clear signs that Syrian government forces had shelled the town. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed concern that "certain countries" were beginning to use the Houla massacre as "a pretext for voicing demands relating to the need for military measures to be taken." Speaking to UN special envoy Kofi Annan by telephone, he urged an end to violence on all sides, and called for an "impartial" UN-led probe into the massacre. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland welcomed Lavrov's call.

Cairo - Mohamed Ibrahim el-Sayyed, 42, lost a lot to Egypt's revolution - his brother was killed during the initial 18-day uprising that led to former president Hosni Mubarak's ouster, and his son was killed in one of the many bouts of clashes between protesters and police that have marked the post-Mubarak transitional period. So when el-Sayyed heard that the Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission (SPEC) had rejected all appeals challenging last week's election results, thus pitting Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi and Mubarak minister Ahmed Shafiq against each other in the runoff, he came straight to Cairo's Tahrir Square.

"Disqualify Shafiq!" he chanted, raising his shoe in the air. El-Sayyed, who voted for Nasserist candidate Hamdeen Sabahi in the country's first post-Mubarak presidential elections, said that Egypt would not tolerate a return of the old regime. He was joined in Tahrir by hundreds of other Egyptians enraged by the realization of what many called the "nightmare scenario:" a contest for the country's top post being played out between an Islamist and a felul, or "remnant" of the old regime, thus sidelining more secular, independent forces.

"War with Iran is already here," wrote a leading Israeli commentator recently, describing "the combination of covert warfare and international pressure" being applied to Iran.

Although not mentioned, the "strategic prize" of the first stage of this war on Iran is Syria; the first campaign in a much wider sectarian power-bid. "Other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself," Saudi King Abdullah was reported to have said last summer, "nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria."¹

By December, senior United States officials were explicit about their regime change agenda for Syria: Tom Donilon, the US National Security Adviser, explained that the "end of the [President Bashar al-] Assad regime would constitute Iran's greatest setback in the region yet - a strategic blow that will further shift the balance of power in the region against Iran."

Shortly before, a key official in terms of operationalizing this policy, Under Secretary of State for the Near East Jeffrey Feltman, had stated at a congressional hearing that the US would "relentlessly pursue our two-track strategy of supporting the opposition and diplomatically and financially strangling the [Syrian] regime until that outcome is achieved".²

What we are seeing in Syria is a deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down the Assad government so as to replace it with a regime "more compatible" with US interests in the region.

Sakhr al-Taifi led foreign insurgents and directed attacks against Nato and Afghan forces, according to alliance
Al-Qaida's second-in-command in Afghanistan has been killed, according to Nato.

Sakhr al-Taifi, also known as Mushtaq and Nasim, led foreign insurgents and directed attacks against Nato and Afghan forces, the alliance said.

The air strike that killed Taifi and another al-Qaida militant took place on Sunday in the Watahpur district of Kunar. A later assessment of the area determined that no civilians had been harmed, Nato said.

The coalition declined to reveal the name of al-Qaida's top leader in Afghanistan "due to ongoing operations and security concerns".

Western states have announced they are expelling senior Syrian diplomats following the killing of 108 people in the Houla region of Syria on Friday.

The United States, France, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Switzerland all took action.

Most of the victims in Houla were summarily executed, the UN says.

UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan said, after talks with President Bashar al-Assad, Syria was at a "tipping point".

He said he had asked Mr Assad to take "bold steps" to see that his peace plan was implemented.

President Assad blamed the violence on "terrorists". His remarks were quoted by state TV.

Earlier, UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said initial investigations had suggested that most of those killed in the village of Taldou, near Houla, were summarily executed.

At the G8 Summit held two weeks ago at Camp David, President Obama met with private industry and African heads of state to launch the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, a euphemism for monocultured, genetically modified crops and toxic agrochemicals aimed at making poor farmers debt slaves to corporations, while destroying the ecosphere for profit.

And Bono, of the rock group U2, is out shilling for Monsanto on this one.

It's phase 2 of the Green Revolution. Tanzania, Ghana, and Ethiopia are the first to fall for the deception, with Mozambique, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso and other African nations lining up for the "Grow Africa Partnership," under Obama's "Global Agricultural Development" plan.