Avgi Tzenis, 76, is standing in the hall of her small brick row house on Bragg Street in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. She is dressed in a bathrobe and open-toed sandals. The hall is dark and cold. It has been dark and cold since Hurricane Sandy slammed into the East Coast a month ago. Three feet of water and raw sewage flooded and wrecked her home.

"We never had this problem before," she says. "We never had water from the sea come down like this."

Hurricane Sandy, if you are poor, is the Katrina of the North. It has exposed the nation's fragile, dilapidated and shoddy infrastructure, one that crumbles under minimal stress. It has highlighted the inability of utility companies, as well as state and federal agencies, to cope with the looming environmental disasters that because of the climate crisis will soon come in wave after wave. But, most important, it illustrates the depraved mentality of an oligarchic and corporate elite that, as conditions worsen, retreats into self-contained gated communities, guts basic services and abandons the wider population.

Israel has said it will not backtrack on a settlement expansion plan after Britain, France and three other European governments summoned the Israeli ambassadors to London and Paris in protest at the authorisation of 3,000 new homes in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.

An official in the office of the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said: "Israel will continue to stand by its vital interests, even in the face of international pressure, and there will be no change in the decision that was made."

Israel announced the construction of the homes after the United Nations general assembly voted to recognise the Palestinian state.

The British prime minister's spokesman said Alistair Burt, the Foreign Office minister, had met the Israeli ambassador in London on Monday morning to complain about the new building programme, and that the Foreign Office had put out its own statement about the row. Sweden, Denmark and Spain also summoned Israeli ambassadors in protest at the plan.

Ask any lawyer about the importance of being precise - or evasive - with language. Alexander Hamilton and his federal supremacists understood. So did railroad lawyer and slave-not-freer Abe Lincoln. (For those who didn't know, Abe only "freed" slaves he had no power to liberate - in the Confederate States. Slaves under his control - including slaves held by his chief warlord U.S. Grant, remained most un-free for the duration of the war.)

Bill Clinton was a masterful practitioner of the Art of Word (I did not have sex with that woman...). Which, by certain Talmudic parsings, he didn't. Not exactly. Wiggle room, you see. Of a piece with Hamilton's brilliant flim-flam about the "general welfare."

That is how it is done.

To undo it, there must be a rebirth of what they called in cowboy flicks, straight-talking. Calls things by their proper name - and challenge those who don't or won't. Make them say what they mean - openly. If you fail to do so, you've accepted their terms.

Which means, they've already won. Ask any progressive.

Or just wait. He'll soon be "asking" you to "help."

Most people are innocent victims of verbal (and written) rights-rape. For example, public schools. Well, no - they're not. Yes, they are "open" to the public - in the sense that the public is forced at gunpoint to send its children to them. Which gives us a clue as to the proper name that ought to be used in every instance of discussion: Government schools. It is what they are, in plain, direct - and thus, honest - language. Nothing less. Which of course is why honest language is not generally used to describe them. Because that might get people thinking along certain lines. "Public" sounds so much... friendlier. Free, almost - a vicious irony if ever there was. You're not free to decline to pay for them (even if you don't use them). And most kids are certainly not free to not attend them. Very much what you'd expect of a government school. Because the essential attribute of government is coercion - force. The thing that must never be openly stated - but always euphemized.

France and Britain are reportedly considering moves against Israel over Tel Aviv's decision to expand settlement construction in occupied territories, diplomats told an Israeli newspaper. This may include recalling ambassadors for the first time.

This comes as Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the construction of thousands of new homes in Jewish settlements in the area known as E1, between Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem - a step widely seen as retaliation for recognition of Palestine as non-member state by the United Nations.

"This time it won't just be a condemnation, there will be real action taken against Israel," a senior European diplomat told Haaretz daily.

The three European diplomats who spoke to the paper indicated that London and Paris were coordinating their moves against Israel, and have discussed the extraordinary step of recalling their ambassadors for consultations. The action, whatever it may be, could be implemented in the next few days.

"London is furious about the E1 decision," one of the diplomats said.

The interview below with Osama bin Laden was conducted by the Karachi, Pakistan, daily newspaper, Ummat and published on September 28, 2001, 17 days after the alleged, but unsubstantiated, al Qaeda attack of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center twin towers and Pentagon. The interview was sensational. The alleged "mastermind" of 9/11 said that he and al Qaeda had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack. The British Broadcasting Corporation's World Monitoring Service had the interview translated into English and made public on September 29, 2001.

Osama bin Laden's sensational denial was not reported by the US print and TV media. It was not investigated by the executive branch. No one in the US Congress called attention to bin Laden's refusal of responsibility for the greatest humiliation ever inflicted on a superpower.

To check my memory of the lack of coverage, I googled "Osama bin Laden's interview denying responsibility for 9/11." Some Internet sites reproduced the interview, but the only mainstream news source that I found was a 1 minute YouTube video from CNN in which the anchor, after quoting an al Jazeera report of bin Laden's denial, concludes that "we can all weigh that in the scale of credibility and come to our own conclusions." In other words, bin Laden had already been demonized, and his denial was not credible.

The sensational news was unfit for US citizens and was withheld from them by the american "free press," a press free to lie for the government but not to tell the truth.

Obviously, if bin Laden had outwitted not only the National Security Agency, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the FBI, but also all 16 US intelligence agencies, all intelligence agencies of Washington's NATO puppet states, Israel's Mossad, and in addition the National Security Council, NORAD, US air traffic control, and airport security four times on the same morning, it would be the greatest feat in world history, a movement building feat that would have made al Qaeda the most successful anti-imperialist organization in human history, an extraordinary victory over "the great satan" that would have brought millions of new recruits into al Qaeda's ranks. Yet the alleged "mastermind" denied all responsibility.

Those who fought colonial rule in the late 1950s allege they were abused by the British

Britain is facing fresh legal action from victims of alleged abuse and mistreatment by UK security forces during the fight against colonial rule in Cyprus between 1955 and 1959. Scores of veterans from the Eoka insurgency are pressing ahead with claims that they were subject to brutal treatment and are seeking an apology and damages from the British government. The move follows an earlier High Court decision to allow Kenyans to sue Britain over torture during the Mau Mau uprising in the 1950s.

Vasos Sophocleous, president of Eoka Fighters' Federation, the group bringing the action, says he still suffers from the abuse he says he received at the hands of the British. "I was tortured 10 or 15 times over 17 days, all types of torture, of the body, of the mind, everything. I cannot describe them; it's not easy for me to speak about them. I still suffer. I feel pain in my back. I feel pain in my knees. I still cannot hear out of my left ear. If there is, and I believe that there is, a real democratic court, then I'm very hopeful that we will win because I believe the court will do their duty. They have admitted already, 40 or 50 years later, that they tortured people in Cyprus."

Faked even handedness in a conflict that is not even at all is not neutrality it's deception. Jones often goes to crazy town as away of intentionally avoiding a zionist role in anything. He left israel out of 911 for 6 years and never connected them to Iraq or said a word about the anthrax lies or the fact that Palestine is occupied. He's talked more about school/theater shootings than the destruction of entire nations.

Israel exacted a price for the UN's de facto recognition of Palestine on Sunday by confiscating £75 million in revenues even as the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, triumphantly told thousands of followers: "Now we have a state."

The Israeli move, coinciding with Mr Abbas's arrival to a hero's welcome in the West Bank, came as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu baldly rejected last Thursday's resounding vote granting the Palestinians full UN observer status.

It left the Palestinian Authority (PA) facing a financial black hole that could prevent it from paying the salaries of thousands of workers, just as Mr Abbas in Ramallah exhorted his countrymen to celebrate "a decisive landmark on the path of our national struggle".

The decision was the latest sign of Israel's mounting fury over last week's vote and came two days after Mr Netanyahu's government announced it would build 3,000 new settlers' home in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, effectively annexing land the Palestinians have earmarked as part of a future state.

The US Army Corps of Engineers plans to supervise construction of a five-story underground facility for an Israel Defense Forces complex, oddly named "Site 911," at an Israeli Air Force base near Tel Aviv.

Expected to take more than two years to build, at a cost of up to $100 million, the facility is to have classrooms on Level 1, an auditorium on Level 3, a laboratory, shock-resistant doors, protection from nonionizing radiation and very tight security. Clearances will be required for all construction workers, guards will be at the fence and barriers will separate it from the rest of the base.

Only U.S. construction firms are being allowed to bid on the contract, and proposals are due Dec. 3, according to the latest Corps of Engineers notice.

Site 911 is the latest in a long history of military construction projects the United States has undertaken for the IDF under the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program. The 1998 Wye River Memorandum between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has led to about $500 million in U.S. construction of military facilities for the Israelis, most of them initially in an undeveloped part of the Negev Desert. It was done to ensure there were bases to which IDF forces stationed in the West Bank could be redeployed.

The US does nothing to punish those guilty of war crimes or Wall Street fraud, yet demonises the whistleblower

Over the past two and a half years, all of which he has spent in a military prison, much has been said about Bradley Manning, but nothing has been heard from him. That changed on Thursday, when the 23-year-old US army private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks testified at his court martial proceeding about the conditions of his detention.

The oppressive, borderline-torturous measures to which he was subjected, including prolonged solitary confinement and forced nudity, have been known for some time. A formal UN investigation denounced those conditions as "cruel and inhuman". President Obama's state department spokesman, retired air force colonel PJ Crowley, resigned after publicly condemning Manning's treatment. A prison psychologist testified this week that Manning's conditions were more damaging than those found on death row, or at Guantánamo Bay.

Still, hearing the accused whistleblower's description of this abuse in his own words viscerally conveyed its horror. Reporting from the hearing, the Guardian's Ed Pilkington quoted Manning: "If I needed toilet paper I would stand to attention and shout: 'Detainee Manning requests toilet paper!'" And: "I was authorised to have 20 minutes sunshine, in chains, every 24 hours." Early in his detention, Manning recalled, "I had pretty much given up. I thought I was going to die in this eight by eight animal cage."