Israel using permanent base in northern Iraq to launch intelligence missions in Iran in search of nuclear evidence, Western intelligence sources say.

Israel is using a permanent base in Iraqi Kurdistan to launch cross-border intelligence missions in an attempt to find "smoking gun" evidence that Iran is building a nuclear warhead, the Sunday Times reported Sunday.

According to Western intelligence sources, Israel has used sensitive equipment during its covert operations to monitor the radioactivity and magnitude of explosives tests. It was also reported that Israeli special forces used Black Hawk helicopters to carry commandos disguised as members of the Iranian military and using Iranian military vehicles.

Or: 7000 admitted accidents and counting.

Repsol the Spanish oil company infamous for more than 7000 oil prospecting related accidents, not least of which in Nigeria and now off the coast of Brazil, has just signed the convening of a BP style deepwater prospecting contract with the Spanish Govt off the tourist islands of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, Canary Islands, both of which are designated UNESCO Biospheres.

Notable not least for their high economic dependency on year round tourism, both have high levels of marine and terrestrial protections under both Spanish and European laws (please don't laugh) which relate as much to the marine environments as well as the beautiful beaches (notably Fuerteventura) along the eastern seaboard, the designated prospecting sites.

The Gulf style deepwater prospecting in 1600mts of water within the Canary Current will extend down to 3,500mts in some 19 different areas along a seaboard of some 100kms (64miles) and as close as 12kms offshore from the tourist venues of Caleta Fustes and Gran Tarajal.

The potential was laid off for some years during the socialist Zapatero government, but now that the PP - Popular Party or Conservative (Aznarist) Rajoy administration has taken over the reins with over 5million unemployment and rising, it's up to the usual corruptive activities of money first, environment & islands nowhere!

Nashville, Tenn. - A federal judge has delayed the start of a trial for more than a dozen people accused in a sex trafficking ring run by Somali gangs that reached from Minnesota to Tennessee.

Opening arguments were scheduled to start Monday, but over the weekend the U.S. attorney's office released to defense attorneys hundreds of pages of investigator notes and hours of telephone recordings of one of the juvenile female victims.

The indictment said three gangs called the Somali Outlaws, the Somali Mafia and the Lady Outlaws were forcing teenage girls into prostitution and operated in St. Paul, Minn.; Minneapolis; Columbus, Ohio; and Nashville.

The Oxford Mail and The Oxford Times has been gagged from reporting details of a hearing involving an Oxford businessman which took place in a neighbouring court room.

The hearing was held at High Wycombe Magistrates' Court at the same time as the six men accused of being part of the alleged child prostitution ring.

The Oxford Mail believes the hearing is linked to the Operation Bullfinch investigation but the man at the centre of it - who is in his mid-30s - is not one of the six charged.

Israel cut working relations with the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday and will bar a U.N. team from entering Israel or the West Bank for a planned investigation of Jewish settlements, the Foreign Ministry said.

Israel accuses the council of having a pronounced anti-Israel bias because of what it says is its disproportionate focus on Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

Israeli leaders have been in an uproar over the council's adoption of a resolution last week condemning Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and its decision to send a fact-finding mission to investigate.

On Monday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced Israel was severing working ties with the council.

"It means that we're not going to work with them. We're not going to let them carry out any kind of mission for the Human Rights Council, including this probe," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki said he was not surprised by the Israeli move.

Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn faced preliminary charges Monday of "aggravated pimping" and procurement in an illegal prostitution ring in France.

The preliminary charges came as DSK was summoned for eight hours of questioning Monday by French judges investigating an illegal prostitution ring operating out of the northern French city of Lille, Bloomberg News reported. The former IMF chief was later allowed to leave after paying 100,000 Euros in bail, and agreeing not to talk to others being investigated in the case, the Associated Press reported.

French prosecutors in Lille have been investigating an illegal prostitution ring that is alleged to have brought prostitutes from Belgium to luxury hotels in France and abroad to have sex with VIP clients, France's Radio France International reported in October. At least five men have already been jailed as a result of the inquiry, including the director and PR chief of one of the city hotels.

An attorney for Strauss-Kahn adamantly denied Monday that his client had broken any law. "He firmly declares that he is not guilty of these acts and of never having the least inkling that the women he met could have been prostitutes," Richard Malka, a lawyer for Strauss-Kahn, told Agence France Press.

With few exceptions the news that will shape public discourse is subject to a de facto censorial process of powerful government and corporate elites beyond accountability to the public. It is here that Sigmund Freud's notion of repression is especially helpful for assessing the decrepit state of media and public discourse in the United States. In Freud's view, one's collective life experiences are registered in the subconscious, with those particularly disturbing or socially impermissible experiences being involuntarily suppressed, only later to emerge as neuroses. Whereas suppression is conscious and voluntary, repression takes place apart from individual volition.

With opinion polls indicating at least half of the public distrusting the official account of September 11th, the foremost basis for the "war on terror", no public event has been more repressed in public consciousness via the mass media than 9/11. The enduring usefulness of Freud's theory is suggested in repeated manifestations of the repressed episode to haunt the public mind for which a surrogate reality has been crafted.

"From 1950 to 1962, the C.I.A. ran a massive research project, a veritable Manhattan Project of the mind, spending over $1 billion a year to crack the code of human consciousness, from both mass persuasion and the use of coercion in individual interrogation." - Professor Alfred McCoy, author of A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. This quote is from Prof. McCoy's interview with Democracy Now on February 17, 2006.

"Our brain is domineering when it comes to coping with reality. We sometimes see things not as they really are, sometimes invent categories that do not exist and sometimes fail to see things that are really there. There are people who have never seen or heard of an aircraft and will not be able to imagine it and a real airplane overhead will be distorted in their minds, creating alternative realities.

To recognize that what we call reality is only a consensus reality (only what we have agreed to call reality) is to recognize that we can perceive only what we can conceive. Captain Cook's ship was invisible to the Tahitians because they could not conceive of such a vessel. Joseph Pearce explains this best: "Man's mind mirrors a universe that mirrors man's mind."" - Bharati Sarkar, "Consciousness - Our third eye."

"Remember: those who are at the top of the heap will always take whatever steps are necessary to maintain the status quo. It is obvious that they cannot completely control the propagation of the information. So, how do they "keep secrets?" They don't. Everything is right out there in the public domain. Anybody who wants to can do the research we have done and come to the realizations we have in this process. BUT, not everyone is able to withstand the OTHER weapon of Mass Control: the fear of being labeled a "suspected or potential supporter" in a world where the Grand Inquisitor has total control over life and death." - Laura Knight-Jadczyk, "Mass Mind Control?"

Before the CIA and NSA decided it was a good idea to invade your home without your knowledge to spy on you with advanced appliances, smart phones, computers, and other electronics, they invaded your mind to manipulate your understanding of reality and history, especially of epochal events like the JFK assassination and the 9/11 attacks.

It is disturbing to know that the CIA has been inside the public mind for half a century, and is now using its unthinkable technological capabilities to invade private homes to document and categorize each individual's behavioural patterns, lifestyle choices, information preferences, and daily habits.

Of course, state surveillance spooks cannot track and data-mine every space of information in this vast social ocean that we call the virtual world. But, that problem can be managed because the sharks of the state don't need to be aware of the entire environment to strike fear in the fishes and other creatures. Just the fact that sharks are buzzing around is enough to make any thinking fish freeze and adapt his thoughts, views, opinions, and patterns in order to placate the sharks' appetite for domination and total control.

Creve Coeur, Mo - The Lorax has infiltrated the lives of most Americans by way of movie trailers and over 70 promotional partnerships with everything from the Mazda CX-5 to disposable diapers. Now add Monsanto to the list. Friday afternoon the chemical giant announced the affiliation with the Universal Films animated star and further stated the Dr. Seuss icon would soon become its spokesperson in an upcoming image campaign.

Monsanto has been victim of negative image problems for many years. Environmentalists have long claimed Monsanto is poisoning our planet. Corporate response has labeled them

"troublemaking hippies who screwed over Chinese restaurateurs with their protests about monosodium glutamate decades ago".

The Lorax, who proclaims "I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues." will now speak for Monsanto. Environmentalists love the Lorax, so Monsanto hopes in addition to hugging trees, these eco-warriors will give their frankencorn an embrace as well. No word if the Lorax will also stump for Dow's agent-orange corn.

Frontline's Lowell Bergman appeared on The Takeaway this morning to reflect on the news that James Murdoch, son of media titan Rupert, stepped down from his role as CEO of News International, the British press arm of News Corporation. The younger Murdoch has slowly been transitioning to the company's New York offices.

"I don't think it's really that significant a move, he's been back in the United States for quite a while," says Bergman. "He's never really expressed, apparently, that much interest in the newspaper business. His real interest is in BSkyB TV and other broadcasting ... aspects of News Corporation."