From the air, the terrain of the Department of Energy's Nevada National Security Site, with its arid high plains and remote mountain peaks, has the look of northwest Iran. The site, some sixty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas, was once used for nuclear testing, and now includes a counterintelligence training facility and a private airport capable of handling Boeing 737 aircraft. It's a restricted area, and inhospitable - in certain sections, the curious are warned that the site's security personnel are authorized to use deadly force, if necessary, against intruders.

It was here that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted training, beginning in 2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a dissident Iranian opposition group known in the West as the M.E.K. The M.E.K. had its beginnings as a Marxist-Islamist student-led group and, in the nineteen-seventies, it was linked to the assassination of six American citizens. It was initially part of the broad-based revolution that led to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran. But, within a few years, the group was waging a bloody internal war with the ruling clerics, and, in 1997, it was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. In 2002, the M.E.K. earned some international credibility by publicly revealing - accurately - that Iran had begun enriching uranium at a secret underground location. Mohamed ElBaradei, who at the time was the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear monitoring agency, told me later that he had been informed that the information was supplied by the Mossad. The M.E.K.'s ties with Western intelligence deepened after the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003, and JSOC began operating inside Iran in an effort to substantiate the Bush Administration's fears that Iran was building the bomb at one or more secret underground locations. Funds were covertly passed to a number of dissident organizations, for intelligence collection and, ultimately, for anti-regime terrorist activities. Directly, or indirectly, the M.E.K. ended up with resources like arms and intelligence. Some American-supported covert operations continue in Iran today, according to past and present intelligence officials and military consultants.

Haaretz reported yesterday that, "Israel, Iran, Pakistan and North Korea were ranked most negatively by 24,000 people surveyed in an annual BBC poll."

It would appear that in spite of the extensive Hasbara campaign and the Jewish lobby buying every morally lax living politician, people of the world increasingly see Israel for what it is.

The broad international survey was an initiative of the BBC World Service. Over 24,000 people from 22 countries took part in the poll, which was conducted from December 2011 to February 2012.

Haaretz confirms that the survey's findings on global attitudes toward Israel are "worrying indeed." Last year's survey already confirmed that attitudes toward Israel were negative, but the situation has become more serious this year: Some 47% of participants in the 2011 survey had negative views of Israel's influence on the world, but this year the number has gone up to 50%.

Human rights campaigners have orgainsed a protest outside the Bahraini embassy in London to raise their voices against the invitation of 'Bahraini tyrant' to a Diamond Jubilee event.

Human rights activists are outraged that the King of Bahrain will lunch with the Queen at Windsor Castle - after his regime was accused of a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy campaigners.

Protestors say the guest list at today's special Jubilee lunch features a range of foreign monarchs who have been widely condemned for their human rights records, or their extravagant lifestyles.

Among the guests sitting down with the Queen is the King of Bahrain, where demonstrations calling for more democratic involvement in the country's government were violently suppressed, with the help of Saudi troops. At least fifty people have been killed in the tiny Persian Gulf island nation since February last year.

The Lebanese army has seized a consignment of weapons and explosives near the Syrian border, apparently destined for armed gangs fighting against the Damascus government.

According to Lebanese sources, the weapons were seized after the army intercepted a pickup truck in the village of Joura in the border region of Masharih al-Qaa late on Thursday.

One gunman was killed and a Lebanese soldier was injured in the exchange of fire between the two sides.

Lebanese troops also discovered a car laden with explosives in the southern city of Sidon.

Several people have been arrested in connection with the incidents.

The Obama administration is moving to remove an Iranian opposition group from the State Department's terrorism list, say officials briefed on the talks, in an action that could further poison Washington's relations with Tehran at a time of renewed diplomatic efforts to curtail Iran's nuclear program.

The exile organization, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MeK, was originally named as a terrorist entity 15 years ago for its alleged role in assassinating U.S. citizens in the years before the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and for allying with Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein against Tehran.

The MeK has engaged in an aggressive legal and lobbying campaign in Washington over the past two years to win its removal from the State Department's list. The terrorism designation, which has been in place since 1997, freezes the MeK's assets inside the U.S. and prevents the exile group from fundraising.

The international community has eased its condemnation of Iran following recent negotiations between Tehran and six other nations in Istanbul, Turkey. While the participating parties agreed to further discussions on May 23, 2012 in Baghdad, both Israel and the West have given no indication of easing the strict regime of sanctions imposed on Tehran. Following claims of the Iranian leadership that it pursues civil nuclear capabilities to generate electricity and fuel for medical reactors (allowing Tehran to divert its primary oil reserves to export markets) [1], Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued a religious prohibition on nuclear weapons in Iran [2]. During recent discussions, Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili emphasized Iran's right to a civil nuclear program, as guaranteed under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [3]. Although Tel Aviv possess between 75 to 400 nuclear warheads, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak insists that all of Iran's uranium enriched to 20% be moved to a "trusted" neighboring country [4].

For more than 30 years, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People's Mujahedeen, has survived and operated on the margins of history and the slivers of land that Saddam Hussein and French governments have proffered it. During the 1970's, while it was still an underground Iranian political movement, you could encounter some of its members on the streets of New York, waving pictures of torture victims of the shah's regime. In the 80's and 90's, after its leaders fled Iran, you could see them raising money and petitioning on university campuses around the United States, pumping photographs in the air of women mangled and tortured by the Islamic regime in Tehran. By then, they were also showing off other photographs, photographs that were in some ways more attention-grabbing: Iranian women in military uniforms who brandished guns, drove tanks and were ready to overthrow the Iranian government. Led by a charismatic husband-and-wife duo, Maryam and Massoud Rajavi, the Mujahedeen had transformed itself into the only army in the world with a commander corps composed mostly of women.

Former inspector of the International Atomic Energy Agency Robert Kelley says the IAEA includes rumors in its reports about Iran's nuclear energy program.

Kelley said that the November report of the IAEA and its appendix on the alleged military aspect of Iran's nuclear energy program was shocking since it was full of outdated information.

He said that anyone who followed Iran's nuclear energy program and the related reports could figure out that the November report contained old information.

He said that the report only covered information up until 2003 when CIA announced that Iran had stopped its alleged military nuclear program.

The former IAEA inspector said that the report was also very biased as it only selected and highlighted those explanations that were to the detriment of Iran although it contained other explanations as well that could be given for a subject in question.

A lot of people - and I am one of them - claim that personal and business freedoms are being eroded as never before. They show as evidence the roll-back of civil liberties, the over-regulation of business, the insistence on "compliance" by the various security agencies of every little rule, no matter how trivial - in short, the over-regulation of American life.

They are right: The U.S. government is guilty of over-regulating individuals and businesses - egregiously so.

On the other hand, a lot of other people - and I am one of them too - claim that certain persons and corporations act lawlessly as never before. They show as evidence the abuses of power of those in leadership - be it business, government, the military, or the intelligence/security aparatus - and they insist that something has to be done about it, some regulations have to be imposed.

They are right too: The U.S. government is just as guilty of under-regulating certain individuals and businesses as it is of over-regulating other people and businesses.

Obvious question: How can they both be right? How can it be that a few people, a few businesses, a few institutions are getting away with murder - in some cases literally - while most of us are under a crippling yoke of excessive, dishonest, petty and trivial rules and regulations that either serve no purpose, or actively pervert the welfare of our society?

Simple answer: Structural Pliancy.

Let me explain.

Gordon Gekko, the infamously cutthroat capitalist and lead character in Oliver Stone's Wall Street, captured the heady years of the 1980s with a single, indelible line: Greed is good. Today, it is Edward Conard, a friend and former colleague of Mitt Romney's at the private equity firm Bain Capital, who has offered a new mantra for the 1%, a cri de coeur for the Gekkos of the twenty-first century: Inequality is good.

In his new book Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong, Conard argues that gaping income inequality is an indication of a healthy economy, not a sick one. The more unequal we are, Conard told the New York Times Magazine, the better off we all will be. Why? Because economies grow and thrive when smart people devise solutions to our thorniest problems by inventing or perfecting goods and services. Conard singled out a group of twentysomethings sitting at a Manhattan coffee shop one afternoon, deriding them as lazy "art-history majors." Those people should be out creating businesses and taking risks, he insisted, because that's how societies prosper. And the way to encourage that risk-taking is the promise of obscene wealth for those who succeed (and, implicitly, dismal poverty for those who don't).

How obscene should that wealth be? In 2008, the top 1% commanded 21% of all income in America. Conard says our society would improve if only that figure were doubled.