Controversial bills that would slash foreign funding for dovish Israeli groups have been put on hold after objections by some Cabinet ministers, the state's attorney general and foreign governments, an Israeli official said Monday,

The bills, approved Sunday by a ministerial committee, would limit donations by foreign governments or international bodies to a single group to 20,000 shekels, or about $5,200, a year. They would also slap a 45 per cent tax rate on the contributions.

Opponents see the measure as an attempt to muzzle dovish groups critical of the government - and as such, as a dangerous infringement on Israeli democracy. Since their initial approval, the measures have figured prominently in newspaper columns and on radio talk shows.

"The government fears for the security of its regime, not the security of the state," wrote Boaz Okon in Monday's edition of Yediot Ahronot newspaper. "It therefore exploits its power of legislation to shut people's mouths."

Taking the opposing stance, the paper's leading commentator, Nahum Barnea, wrote that "not only right-wingers, but almost every Israeli feels discomfort when a state such as Norway, Britain or the European Union funds left-wing political activity within Israel's borders."

Portland Police arrested more than 50 people on Sunday as the authorities cleared out and blocked off encampments of the Occupy movement that has been protesting nationwide over economic issues.

The Portland actions were among several by authorities around the country over the weekend to try to close down encampments occupied by demonstrators for weeks.

Encampments sprang up in several cities in recent weeks in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in New York in September to protest what demonstrators see as economic inequality and undue political influence by corporate interests.

In Portland the authorities had issued an eviction notice, and then moved to empty the camps and fence them off. Many protesters left on their own after the notice, but others chose to stay.

A police statement said: "the Portland Police Bureau has cleared both Chapman and Lownsdale Square parks. During today's operation, more than 50 arrests were made of people who either wanted to be arrested or refused to leave Chapman Square."

There were no injuries during the park clearance, police said.

But demonstrators regrouped in the streets, blocking traffic for hours in a standoff with ranks of Portland Police officers in riot gear.

Are they desperate enough to pull off another false flag? Set off an atomic bomb in Chicago and blame it on Iran. We know Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons... nobody is counting those because they refuse IAEA inspections... we know there is at least one nuclear weapon still floating around somewhere in the US intelligence network from that little exercises with the nuclear armed aircraft and somewhere along the way one went missing. The money junkies are desperate. Are they desperate enough to nuke the USA to get their war? Of course they are... they did it to New York. They suckered the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor and tried to act like it was a surprise.

These people have NO SOUL. Its worship of money and a reverence for other peoples blood to be spilled across the battlefields of the world... that's whats going on here... there may be a false flag, we don't know... but what there is going to be without a shadow of a doubt is a draft. In the USA they have to... because the American people are NOT going to volunteer to fight a war that they know is based on lies.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu said "All wars are based on deception."

What worked in ancient times more than ever applies now, given instant ways of communicating globally and super-weapons Washington and Israel threaten to use like hand grenades.

In Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe mentioned "the face that launched a thousand ships." He referred to Helen of Troy (formerly of Sparta).

To win her back, Greeks launched 1,000 warships. According to Greek mythology, the Trojan War followed.

Homer's Odyssey and Iliad recounted it. So did Roman poets Virgil and Ovid. Homer said it lasted 10 years. Mythological goddess quarrels started it.

Real, mythological, or fabricated reasons work equally well. Then it was Athena and Hera v. Aphrodite. Today it's "war on terror" fear tactics.

Near its end, Greeks entered Troy in a Trojan Horse. America's perhaps was 9/11. Both were duplicitous acts used to ravage targeted enemies.

The expression, "beware of Greeks bearing gifts" originated from back then. According to Homer and other Greek literature, they burned the city, captured Trojan women, rescued Helen, and returned her to Menelaus, her husband.

Fear, misinformation, and deceit work best enlisting popular support, whether in ancient China, Greece or modern times. Television today supplies it.

From its earliest days, it lied, distracted, entertained, and provided a platform for corporate America to control thought, manipulate public opinion, and sell people junk they don't need.

In a June 1950 commencement speech, Boston University President Daniel Marsh said, "If the (television) craze continues....we are destined to have a nation of morons."

The ongoing radiation catastrophe stemming from three out-of-control nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan, has taken a back seat to far graver news events of late: Michael Jackson's doctor, fund-raising by presidential hopefuls, the World Series and Netflix stock.

Meanwhile, reporting about the on-going disaster relentlessly repeats the minimization and trivialization of radiation risk that began March 11, with the largest earthquake in Japanese history and the unprecedented tsunami that left over 26,000 people dead or missing and 80,000 still living in shelters.

Radioactive contamination of soil, tap water, rain water, groundwater, beef, fish, vegetables, animal feed and incinerator ash are almost always said to be of little or "no immediate" danger, which helps explain why Fukushima has faded from public consciousness.

Israel has refused to reassure President Barack Obama that it would warn him in advance of any pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear capabilities, raising fears that it may be planning a go-it-alone attack as early as next summer.

The US leader was rebuffed last month when he demanded private guarantees that no strike would go ahead without White House notification, suggesting Israel no longer plans to "seek Washington's permission", sources said. The disclosure, made by insiders briefed on a top-secret meeting between America's most senior defence chief and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's hawkish prime minister, comes amid concerns that Iran's continuing progress towards nuclear weapons capability means the Jewish state has all but lost hope for a diplomatic solution.

On Tuesday, UN weapons inspectors released their most damning report to date into Iran's nuclear activities, saying for the first time that the Islamic republic appeared to be building a nuclear weapon. It was with that grave possiblity in mind that Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, flew into Israel last month on what was ostensibly a routine trip.

Officially, his brief was restricted to the Middle East peace process, but the most important part of his mission was a private meeting with Mr Netanyahu and the defence minister, Ehud Barak. Once all but a handful of trusted staff had left the room, Mr Panetta conveyed an urgent message from Barack Obama. The president, Mr Panetta said, wanted an unshakable guarantee that Israel would not carry out a unilateral military strike against Iran's nuclear installations without first seeking Washington's clearance.

The two Israelis were notably evasive in their response, according to sources both in Israel and the United States.

"They did not suggest that military action was being planned or was imminent, but neither did they give any assurances that Israel would first seek Washington's permission, or even inform the White House in advance that a mission was underway," one said.

As the Supreme Court gets ready to hear oral arguments in a case Tuesday that could determine if authorities can track U.S. citizens with GPS vehicle trackers without a warrant, a young man in California has come forward to Wired to reveal that he found not one but two different devices on his vehicle recently.

The 25-year-old resident of San Jose, California, says he found the first one about three weeks ago on his Volvo SUV while visiting his mother in Modesto, about 80 miles northeast of San Jose. After contacting Wired and allowing a photographer to snap pictures of the device, it was swapped out and replaced with a second tracking device. A witness also reported seeing a strange man looking beneath the vehicle of the young man's girlfriend while her car was parked at work, suggesting that a tracking device may have been retrieved from her car.

Then things got really weird when police showed up during a Wired interview with the man.

The young man, who asked to be identified only as Greg, is one among an increasing number of U.S. citizens who are finding themselves tracked with the high-tech devices.

Today the Israeli intelligence website DEBKAfile claimed that their usual unnamed sources reported that one of the explosions in Iran was actually caused by a failed attempt to affix a nuclear warhead to a Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missile.

According to the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an organization listed as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department which is oddly characterized as an "Iran exile group" by USA Today, the explosion wasn't an accidental incident at an ammunition depot but instead was a missile base run by the Revolutionary Guard.

DEBKAfile is a site which is given a disturbing amount of credence given their less-than-stellar track record in terms of accuracy and their highly questionable links to Israeli intelligence agencies like Mossad.

The nature of most of DEBKAfile's reports is also suspicious, given that they tend to solely cite anonymous, supposedly insider sources.

I could easily claim I have insider sources and publish disinformation based on these "sources" that I have made up, but of course I'm not going to do that because this site is about getting at the truth, not clouding the discussion with even more lies.

Due to the incredibly unreliable nature of all of DEBKAfile's reports, this claim should be taken with a large grain of salt and not accepted as fact.

DEBKAfile consistently presents the hawkish Israeli position, demonizing Iran, Palestine, and any other nation that stands up to Israel's crimes.

The United States or other countries should not launch a military strike against Iran over its nuclear program based on "Mossad's lies," a US journalist says.

"No one should allow Israel or anyone else to go to war on account of flagrant deception such as the Mossad has offered," Richard Silverstein wrote in an article.

He said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) made a mistake by relying on evidence provided by the Israeli spy agency in compiling the report on Iran.

Silverstein said that the UN report claims a number of foreign scientists helped Iran in making nuclear weapons.

The report claims, a Ukrainian (not Russian) nuclear scientist, Vyacheslav Danilenko, is one the scientists employed for five years by the Iranians to work on refining their nuclear designs, Silverstein said.

The American journalist says Danilenko is not a nuclear scientist but a leading expert in producing industrial (nano) diamonds using sophisticated explosives technology.

Banks that received TARP money managed to avoid income tax

Five banks that received federal bailout funds during the financial crisis didn't pay income taxes for one or more years between 2008 and 2010, according to an iWatch News analysis of a new study of tax dodgers.

Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group, PNC Financial Services Group, Capital One Financial Inc. and State Street Corp. were among 78 of America's largest and most profitable corporations that managed to avoid paying income tax in at least one of those years.

Researchers looked at 280 corporations that reported total pretax U.S. profits of $1.4 trillion. The federal corporate tax code "ostensibly requires big corporations to pay a 35 percent corporate income tax rate, on average, the 280 corporations in our study paid only about half that amount."