Puppet Masters
Shooting attack or unintentional mishap?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned on Sunday evening the shooting incident at Joseph's Tomb in Nablus that killed 24-year-old Ben-Yosef Livnat and injured two other Hasidim, calling it a "terrorist attack."
In his statement, Netanyahu urged the Palestinian Authority "to take harsh steps against the perpetrators who committed this heinous act against Jewish worshipers who were on their way to prayer."
The little-known not-for-profit company works behind the scenes at international conferences to further its aims.
One of its key supporters headed the official investigation into the so-called "Climategate emails", producing a report which cleared experts of deliberately attempting to skew scientific results to confirm that global warming was a real threat.
Another scientific expert linked to the group came forward to praise a second independent investigation into the Climategate affair which also exonerated researchers.
Set up with the backing of Tony Blair, then the Prime Minister, and run by a group of British MPs and peers the organisation, Globe International, started life as an All Party Group based in the House of Commons.
It is now run as an international climate change lobbying group flying its supporters and experts club class to international summits to push its agenda. Last year, it said, it spent around £500,000 flying its supporters to these meetings.
The EU has drawn up a "concept of operations" for the deployment of military forces in Libya, but needs UN approval for what would be the riskiest and most controversial mission undertaken by Brussels.
The armed forces, numbering no more than 1,000, would be deployed to secure the delivery of aid supplies, would not be engaged in a combat role but would be authorised to fight if they or their humanitarian wards were threatened. "It would be to secure sea and land corridors inside the country," said an EU official.
The decision to prepare the mission, dubbed Eufor Libya, was taken by the 27 governments at the beginning of April. In recent days, diplomats from the member states have signed a 61-page document on the concept of operations, which rehearses various scenarios for the mission in and around Libya, such as securing port areas, aid delivery corridors, loading and unloading ships, providing naval escorts, and discussing the military assets that would be required.
This article, the first of a four-part series marking the first anniversary of the BP Gulf oil disaster, reviews the systematic corporate and government cover-up of the BP disaster and its consequences.
One year ago today, on April 20, 2010, an explosion on the BP-run Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed 11 workers, injured 17 more, and led to the greatest single ecological catastrophe in US history. By the time the blown out Macondo well was capped on July 15, 2010, some 206 million gallons of oil had gushed out from the wellhead located one mile beneath the ocean's surface and about 50 miles from Louisiana's southeast coast. Millions more gallons of highly toxic chemical dispersant were dumped on the Gulf's surface or released underwater.
The consequences of the disaster will be felt for decades. The spill directly impacted thousands of square miles of the Gulf of Mexico and coastline stretching from Texas to Florida, including estuaries, marshlands, and beaches. Hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents face financial hardship, including many thousands who lost their jobs as a result of damages to the fishing and tourism industries. Cleanup workers will suffer serious health problems as a result of acute exposure to toxins released by the oil and chemical dispersants. Numerous species of marine and coastal life may never recover.
In response to mounting public outrage, Pakistan's government has repeatedly denounced the US drone strikes in recent months, calling them "unhelpful" and urging that they be discontinued or at least massively scaled back. But the Obama administration and the Pentagon have brushed these complaints aside, publicly insisted that the missile strikes are a pivotal part of the AfPak War, and continued to mount such strikes at a rate of well over one per week.
While Washington postures as the foremost proponent of international law, it claims the right to violate Pakistani sovereignty at will, so as to carry out summary executions with callous disregard for civilian life.

NATO jets aim for Gaddafi's head but accidentally miss their target by 700 miles and blow up one of the few water treatment facilities in the country. Oops.
One day after the US deployed Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles and NATO warned civilians to "distance themselves from Gaddafi regime forces and equipment," Libyan state television reported that nine people were killed overnight in a NATO air attack on Sirte, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's hometown. The news bulletin of al-Jamahiriya said that some of those killed in the air strike were workers at the state water utility.
This followed a report Thursday that seven civilians were killed and 18 wounded in a NATO air raid against the southwestern Tripoli suburb of Khellat al-Ferjan late Wednesday night, and a further report that NATO warplanes struck the town of Bir al-Ghanam, about 30 miles southwest of the Libyan capital, killing four civilians.
If Ronald Reagan was known as the actor who became a president, then perhaps Barack Obama should become known as the president who became an actor.
For every facial movement evinced, every gesture of the hand, every word enunciated by the 44th president turns out to be a complete charade.
This is the guy who ran for the presidency presenting himself before the US nation, hand on heart, as the candidate who would end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; end the killing of civilians in those countries; and the brutalizing of young American men. Two years on, Obama has donned the costume of US commander-in-chief with ever-frightening zeal. Far from ending the wars, Obama has not only ramped up America's foreign wars of aggression, he has expanded them into new territories, including Pakistan, Libya and East Africa, adding countless more innocent lives to Washington's global death toll.
Dissident republicans have developed the capability to mount an attack on the British mainland, according to the latest security assessment. Senior counter-terrorism sources confirmed the threat from dissidents attacking the mainland "now goes beyond an aspiration" and that they now possess the means to mount an attack across the Irish Sea.
Amid rising tension in the province and fears of an "Easter offensive" by dissident groups, police in Northern Ireland also warned that anti-ceasefire republicans were plotting to kill more police officers.
The increased threat from republican dissidents is certain to heighten security concerns during the build-up to the royal wedding on Friday, although there is no intelligence suggesting a specific plot related to the event.
On Friday another dissident grouping, styling itself "the IRA", issued a public statement claiming responsibility for the murder of PC Ronan Kerr in Omagh this month. The group, comprising former members of the Provisional IRA, vowed to embark on a bombing campaign. It is understood that the new group includes veteran paramilitaries who were involved in transporting and later detonating the bomb that exploded at London's Canary Wharf in 1996.
In the Sunday Independent today, Mr McCarthy says that the ECB behaved in a "bullying fashion" towards Ireland by threatening to withdraw liquidity support and "fostering" a run on the banks.
Mr McCarthy also said that any further inquiry into the banking crisis in Ireland should explore the "murky role" of the ECB in events leading up to the exit of Ireland from financial markets and resort to EU-IMF financing in November 2010.
His comments follow the publication of a quite sensational account by former Finance Minister Brian Lenihan in which he claims that the ECB forced Ireland into the bailout.
Unfortunately, none of this is an exaggeration. Our politicians love to give speeches about "liberty" and "freedom", but they always seem to have excuses to justify the endless parade of liberty-killing laws that they are imposing on all the rest of us.
Almost all of the freedoms listed in the Bill of Rights have been severely eroded. In fact, a number of them are almost totally gone at this point.
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