Just a couple of days ago I was mentioning to someone how Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho inadvertently turned out to be the single best chronicle of the entire ethos of the 1980s. What was initially repudiated as relentlessly ugly, hyper-violent nihilism has, in hindsight, taken on a strange air of both sly subversiveness and surprising prescience. What makes American Psycho so subversive is that it imagined soulless consumption and craven materialism taken to its seemingly inevitable conclusion. Patrick Bateman was what you would get if you removed all societal and moral restraint and left only the gooey center buried deep within our rapidly dissolving culture. What makes it prescient, however, is that it imagined a Wall Street populated by indifferent monsters willing to literally kill to get what they want.

True, the barons and minions of today's Wall Street don't connect car batteries to people's genitals or scoop out their eyes with pen knives (as far as we know). But if you've ever seen the documentary The Smartest Guys in the Room, about the rise and fall of Enron, and listened to recordings of commodities traders laughing to each other at the prospect of the elderly going broke and California burning up as they strangle the state's power supply in the name of huge profits, you know that there are more subtle forms of sadism.

I bring this up because another conversation I had this past weekend was with a friend of mine who represents Howard Dean's group "Democracy for America" and she was rightfully complaining about the need for our nation's MBA programs to begin putting more emphasis on business ethics. And two days ago the St. Petersburg Times highlighted how one business school, Florida State University's, is coming under fire for a move that could very well be in exactly the opposite direction.

Donald Trump to self: You're fired.

Out of the presidential race before he was officially in it, the celebrity real estate mogul announced Monday he would not seek the 2012 Republican nomination. He could have won the White House, he said, but instead will continue to steer his business empire and remain host of his reality show Celebrity Apprentice.

The announcement, ending a colorful and attention-grabbing chapter in the unfolding GOP nominating race, surprised some strategists who said Trump had been assembling a campaign team and had been expected to announce his candidacy soon. This spring, Trump had gained considerable attention by stirring renewed controversy over President Barack Obama's Hawaii birth, leading the White House to persuade the state to release a copy of Obama's long-form birth certificate after two years of dismissing the issue.

Trump revealed his decision Monday at a meeting of advertising executives who had come to learn about NBC's fall television lineup. The network had been pressing him for a decision, fearing the loss of millions of dollars in ad revenue if Celebrity Apprentice didn't return next year.

"I will not be running for president as much as I'd like to," Trump said to cheers from the audience.

Nearly 5,000 Haitians have died from cholera since October 22, with another 300,000 made ill by the disease. As the spring rainy season begins in Haiti, the number of new cholera cases is ballooning.

The leading medical journal, The Lancet, recently predicted that there would be nearly 800,000 cases of cholera and 11,000 deaths this year by the end of November. (Thelancet.com, March 16)

On May 4, the United Nations put out a 32-page, "Final Report of the Independent Panel of Experts on the Cholera Outbreak in Haiti," carefully claiming that a "confluence of circumstances" - which is not the fault of any group or individual - was responsible for the fast-moving outbreak (un.org)

However, cholera had not been known in Haiti for more than a century. This outbreak began near the Mirebalais garrison of Minustah, the U.N. occupation forces, which have been in Haiti since 2004. They replaced U.S., French and Canadian troops who were sent there after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped earlier that year.

Complaint against Syria and Lebanon's 'violation of international law' follows similar Lebanese complaint to UN against Israel.

The Israeli delegation to the United Nations announced Monday that it will file a complaint to the UN Security Council against Syria and Lebanon regarding Sunday's Nakba Day border clashes, Army Radio reported.

Israel said it wants to file a complaint against Syria and Lebanon for violating international law and violating UN Security Council resolutions when Nakba Day protesters from Syria and Lebanon clashed with IDF forces and infiltrated into Israel.

Earlier, the Lebanese delegation to the UN filed a complaint against Israel after the Lebanese army said that 10 people were killed and 112 were wounded in Maroun a-Ras when IDF troops opened fire on demonstrators trying to cross the border.

Afghanistan's former intelligence chief says he knew Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan four years ago, but Pakistan's leaders rejected his claims.

In an interview broadcast Sunday on CBS' 60 Minutes, Amrullah Saleh says Afghan intelligence thought bin Laden was in the Pakistani city of Mansehra - about 12 miles away from Abbottabad, where the terrorist leader was eventually found and killed by U.S. Navy SEALs.

Saleh has become a prominent critic of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's efforts to start peace talks with the Taliban. He says Pakistan should be recognized by the United States as "a hostile country."

He told CBS: "They take your money. They do not co-operate. They created the Taliban. They are number one in nuclear proliferation."

After more than 100 Palestinians breached Israel's border with Syria on Sunday, knocking down a fence and striding into a village in the Golan Heights, overmatched Israeli security forces scrambled to glean what they could from the protesters who had just, without so much as a sidearm, penetrated farther into the country than any army in a generation.

Under close questioning, the infiltrators closed the intelligence gap with a shrug and one word: Facebook. The operation that had caught Israel's vaunted military and intelligence complex flat-footed was announced, nursed and triggered on the social networking site that has figured in every uprising around the Arab World - and is helping young Palestinians change the terms of their fight against Israel.

The headlines Sunday were all about the violence of the day: at least four people were shot dead by Israeli forces on the Syrian fence line, and as many as 10 were killed either by Israeli or Lebanese army gunfire at a similar demonstration on the nearby frontier with southern Lebanon. The death toll, along with the accounts of stone-throwing and tear gas, comport with the familiar narrative of the conflict, one constructed over years of Israel describing efforts to defend itself. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu encouraged that narrative on Sunday, arguing that the protesters were undermining the very existence of the State of Israel.

A turbulent and deadly weekend has given considerable impetus to Palestinians' drive for statehood.

Emboldened by Arab uprisings across the region, young Palestinians triggered widespread clashes at several Israeli border posts Sunday, making this May 15 - the day Palestinians mourn as the catastrophe when their people fled from the nascent state of Israel - as a day unlike any other.

"There's never been a Nakba Day like this," said an experienced Palestinian observer, referring to the event by its Arabic name.

Israel's frontiers sizzled with confrontation as never before during peace time; from Qalandia refugee camp, north of Jerusalem, where a couple thousand very young people, including young women, attacked the Israeli checkpoint; to Gaza, where hundreds of Palestinians were shelled by Israeli tanks as they attempted to march on the Erez border crossing; to Lebanon, where Palestinian refugees stormed the Israeli border fence and as many as 10 people were shot dead.

Global Research has been in contact with the Spirit of Rachel Corrie, a Malaysian ship carrying a humanitarian aid cargo to Gaza, which has been attacked in international waters by Israel.

The vessel left the Port of Piraeus, Greece on Wednesday, May 11 carrying 7.5 kilometers of UPVC (plastic) sewage pipes to help restore the devastated sewerage system in Gaza. The humanitarian initiative is sponsored by Perdana Global Peace Foundation (PGPF) and participating in this mission includes anti-war activists and journalists, consisting of 7 Malaysians, 2 Irish, 2 Indians and 1 Canadian.

The Spirit of Rachel Corrie is an initiative of The Perdana Global Peace Foundation (PGPF) chaired by Malaysia's former Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamed. The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) (Global Research) is also participating in this mission.

MF chief and potential French presidential candidate Dominique Strauss-Kahn was just arrested for allegedly assaulting a hotel maid.

This is far from the first sexual allegation concerning "DSK", as he is known. Relatively well known is the story of his affair with an IMF subordinate in 2008.

But perhaps the most serious one, especially in light of what just happened, is the allegation that he tried to rape, or at least sexually assault, a French journalist, Tristane Banon, in 2002, and then covered it up.

The story comes via the French online citizen media Agora Vox.

Strauss-Kahn's attorney says he 'denies all the charges against him'

New York - Dominique Strauss-Kahn's reputation with women earned him the nickname "the great seducer," and not even an affair with a subordinate could knock the International Monetary Fund leader off a political path pointed in the direction of the French presidency. All that changed with charges that he sexually assaulted a maid in his hotel room, a case that generated shock and revulsion, especially in his home country.

NBC station WNBC reported on Sunday that the victim identified Strauss-Kahn, 62, in a police lineup as her attacker. Investigators recovered bodily fluid from the hotel room, which would be sent for DNA analysis, a source told the station.

Strauss-Kahn consented to a medical exam of his body, which would push back his court appearance until Monday, his defense attorney said late Sunday.

"Our client willingly consented to a scientific and forensic examination," Strauss-Kahn's lawyer William Taylor said. Strauss-Kahn is "tired, but he's fine."