Republicans unveiled a budget plan on Wednesday that proposed a $1.6 billion cut to the Environmental Protection Agency, an agency whose authority they have sought to curtail, while business trade groups have complained about the burden placed on them by agency regulations. Politico also reported that the GOP's proposal would hit the Energy Department hard , with a proposal to cut energy efficiency and renewable energy programs in half.

Rep. Fred Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has said he favors gutting EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions with a "legislative fix" rather than simply denying it funds. (See our overview of Upton's positions on energy.) He told the Wall Street Journal that his disagreement with the EPA is: "You don't subsidize different forms of power -- you let the market run on its own."

The war has already begun, total war is a possibility.

While the corporate owned media has the plebeians arguing over whether or not Iran should have nuclear weapons or if it intends to commit genocide against the Jews (the largest population of Jews in the Middle East outside of Israel actually resides in Iran), the debate is already over, and the war has already quietly begun. Before it began, however, someone meticulously meted out the details of how it would unfold. That "someone" is the mega-corporate backed Brookings Institute.

Background

"Which Path to Persia?" was written in 2009 by the Brookings Institute as a blueprint for confronting Iran. Within the opening pages of the report, acknowledgments are given to the Smith Richardson Foundation, upon which Zbigniew Brzezinski sits as an acting governor.

The Smith Richardson Foundation funds a bizarre myriad of globalist pet projects including studies on geoengineering, nation building, meddling in the Caucasus region, and even studies, as of 2009, to develop methods to support "indigenous democratic political movements and transitions" in Poland, Egypt, Cuba, Nepal, Haiti, Vietnam, Cambodia, Zimbabwe, and Burma. Also acknowledged by the report is the Crown Family Foundation out of Chicago.

In 2003 an MIT-educated expert in children's learning patterns, Dr Aafia Siddiqui, disappeared with her three children in Pakistan. Was she, as the Americans said, an Al Qaeda operative who in 2008 emerged after five years undercover, carrying a handbag full of chemicals and plans for major terror attacks in the US, and then attempted to shoot US soldiers? Or was she, as her family, and most people in Pakistan have always maintained, seized by Pakistani agents for reasons unknown?

Now new evidence of the kidnapping of Dr Siddiqui prises open part of one of the most shocking of the myriad individual stories of injustice in the war on terror. It also underlines the recklessness and perfidy of a key United States' partner in the war on terror, which carries its own threat of explosion.

Dr Siddiqui was sentenced in a New York court last year to 86 years for attempted murder of US soldiers in Afghanistan. Her mysterious five-year disappearance before that, her reappearance in Afghanistan in 2008, her subsequent trial in the US, and the confusion surrounding all these events, have made Dr Siddiqui's a symbolic case in much of the Muslim world. Now a senior law enforcement officer has claimed to have been involved personally on the day she was seized, with her three children, by Pakistani police agents in Karachi in March 2003 and handed over to the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI.

The FBI put out a "wanted for questioning" alert for Dr Siddiqui just before she disappeared. She was later high on the US wanted list, with the US claiming that she was living undercover as an Al Qaeda agent. She was a "clear and present danger to the US", the then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said in 2004. For all these years the Pakistani government repeatedly denied holding her, and after her arrest in Afghanistan in 2008 spent $2 million on US lawyers for her trial. After her conviction, the Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, committed himself to work for her return from a US prison. Dr Siddiqui had become, "the daughter of the nation" and the centre of a popular cause he could not afford to ignore.

US Senator John McCain warns Fox News viewers of the "virus" spreading throughout the Middle East. The "virus" McCain is speaking about is what the CIA used to call "the communists" i.e. the overwhelming majority of humanity. The irony here is that it is in fact people like McCain who are the carriers of the virus - specifically, psychopathology, which has already infected the entire planet but is particularly virulent in government structures in the US.

The US State Department has begun sending Twitter messages to Iranians in Farsi, alluding to the "historic role" social media have played in mass protests against Iran's 2009 disputed presidential polls.

The Twitter feeds in the Iranian language began Sunday as US officials accused Iran of hypocrisy by supporting the anti-government revolt in Egypt but seeking to prevent anti-government demonstrations in Iran.

On the Twitter account, USAdarFarsi, the State Department said it "recognizes historic role of social media among Iranians We want to join in your conversations."

In another tweet, the State Department said: "Iran has shown that the activities it praised Egyptians for it sees as illegal, illegitimate for its own people."

In a third tweet, it said "US calls on Iran to allow people to enjoy same universal rights to peacefully assemble, demonstrate as in Cairo."

Ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has reportedly moved his family assets from European banks to institutions in Gulf region after Swiss authorities took steps to freeze his foreign accounts.

"We're aware of some urgent conversations within the Mubarak family about how to save these assets," a senior intelligence was quoted as saying by the state-run Iranian channel Press TV.

"We think their financial advisers have moved some of the money around... If he had real money in Zurich, it may be gone by now," he said.

According to channel, former president is believed to have transferred a fortune to friendly Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Senior New York Times columnist describes Israeli cabinet as 'out-of-touch, in-bred, unimaginative and cliché-driven'; says Jerusalem unable to adjust to changes in Egypt

The Israeli cabinet is cliché-driven and Jerusalem used the crisis in Egypt to to score propaganda points to the point where the White House was disgusted with Israeli interlocutors, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote Sunday.

Friedman, who visited Cairo following the recent uprising, described the Israeli government as out-of-touch, in-bred and unimaginative. He expressed concern over Israel's future due to its inability to adjust to changes in the region as it sided with Mubarak until the very last moment.

Instead of listening to what the democracy youth in Tahrir Square were saying, Friedman says, the Israeli government frantically called the White House telling the president he must not abandon Pharaoh - and "used the opportunity to score propaganda points: 'Look at us! Look at us! We told you so! We are the only stable country in the region, because we are the only democracy.'"

Friedman continues: "Israel's government seemed oblivious to the irony of its message: 'We are your only reliable ally because we are a democracy and whatever you do don't abandon Mubarak and open the way there for democracy.'"

France will help the transition to a global financial system based on 'several international currencies', the French Economy Minister said today.

France, as current head of the Group of 20 countries, will help the transition to a global financial system based on 'several international currencies', French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said today.

Lagarde, speaking ahead of a G20 finance ministers meeting in Paris on Friday and Saturday, said the world had to move on from the 'non-monetary system' it now has to one 'based on several international currencies'.

Accordingly, France wants to see less need for countries, especially the emerging economies, to accumulate huge foreign reserves, she said.

Egyptian media sources have confirmed reports from Israeli intelligence agencies that the US has moved some of its naval forces from the Fifth Fleet closer to the Suez Canal. It is feared that the situation in Egypt could spiral out of control and threaten navigation in the Canal.

The Egyptian newspaper Al Masri Al Yawm has said that the naval personnel include 850 US Marines. They have taken up a strategic position near Ismailia, giving easy access to the main Egyptian land mass and the Sinai Peninsula. The newspaper cited Israeli sources regarding the deployment which came about following the statement by Vice President Omer Sulaiman that Egypt faces a choice between a coup d'état or dialogue.

Al Masri Al Yawm also referred to a recent report published in Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper in which Israel Defence Forces officers have called for the re-occupation of the Philadelphia corridor located between Egypt and the Gaza Strip in the event of the total collapse of the Mubarak regime.

A port official has admitted that a 'weapon of mass effect' has been found by 'partner agencies' in the U.S., raising major questions over a possible government cover-up.

The disturbing revelation came in an interview with San Diego's assistant port director screened by a television channel in the city.

The Customs and Border Protection Department tried to dampen speculation over his remarks, but doubts remained over whether he had inadvertently revealed a dirty bomb plot to attack the U.S. mainland.