Irish Gaza aid activist Ken O'Keefe has been abducted along with companions and a dozen Libyan policemen by the captain of their chartered ship (which was supposed to transport the activists and their cargo of humanitarian aid to Al-Arish port in Egypt, from where the convoy would continue their journey by land to the besieged people of Gaza). The captain apparently pulled out of port in such a hurry that mooring ropes were snapped and one of the convoy's vehicles was left stranded at a 45 degree angle on the ship's loading ramp. Somebody, it seems, got to him at the last minute. The 'Road to Hope' organisation had paid $75,000 to the captain to sail their cargo of humanitarian aid to Egypt. Below O'Keefe speaks to Hasan Ghada of Press TV about the incident.

According to Ken's facebook updates, the aid workers are now being held by Greek authorities on suspicion of terrorism, even though it was THEY who were abducted from Libya!

The United States Department of Justice (sic) routinely charges and convicts innocents with bogus and concocted crimes that are not even on the statutes book. The distinguished defense attorney and civil libertarian, Harvey A. Silverglate, published a book last year, Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, which conclusively proves that today in "freedom and democracy" America, we have punishment without crime.

This same Justice (sic) Department, which routinely frames and railroads the innocent, argued in Federal Court on November 8 that the US government, if approved by the president, could murder anyone it wishes, citizens or noncitizens, at will. All that is required is that the government declare, without evidence, charges, trial, jury conviction or any of the due process required by the US Constitution, that the government suspects the murdered person or persons to be a "threat."

The US Justice (sic) Department even told US Federal District Court Judge John Bates that the US judiciary, formerly a co-equal branch of government, has absolutely no legal authority whatsoever to stick its nose into President "Change" Obama's decision to assassinate Americans. The unaccountability of the president's decision to murder people is, the US Justice (sic) Department declared, one of "the very core powers of the president as commander in chief."

If we cannot trust what the government tells us about weapons of mass destruction, terrorist events, and the reasons for its wars and bailouts, can we trust the government's statement last Friday that the US economy gained 151,000 payroll jobs during October?

Apparently not. After examining the government's report, statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reported that the jobs were "phantom jobs" created by "concurrent seasonal factor adjustments." In other words, the 151,000 jobs cannot be found in the unadjusted underlying data. The jobs were the product of seasonal adjustments concocted by the BLS.

As usual, the financial press did no investigation and simply reported the number handed to the media by the government.

The relevant information, the information that you need to know, is that the level of payroll employment today is below the level of 10 years ago. A smaller number of Americans are employed right now than were employed a decade ago.

Think about what that means. We have had a decade of work force growth from youngsters reaching working age and from immigration, legal and illegal, but there are fewer jobs available to accommodate a decade of work force entrants than before the decade began.

A lot of people can see that today's politicians and corporate heads are a pretty corrupt bunch. At the same time however, most people don't worry too much about that particular problem because, at the end of day, those guys still work for 'we the people', right? I mean, they're not called 'public servants' for nothing and we put them in office! ... right? If things get really bad we'll just expose them through the media or, if things get really bad, we might even start a revolution! ...right?? ... Or failing that, God will save us??!

The extent of the corruption in our world today goes far beyond what most people know or could even imagine in their darkest, most politician-phobic nightmares. And arming ourselves with the simple idea that 'power corrupts' hasn't exactly acted as a check or balance to the excesses of these 'captains of industry'. In order to even hope of standing up for and protecting our rights and lives in this increasingly draconian world, we need to understand the nature of the problem we are facing, or, to be more specific, we need to understand the nature of those corrupt leaders. We need, to some extent, to get inside their heads and know what makes them 'tick'. We need to ask ourselves, 'do their actions match their words'? If you have been paying attention, you know that the answer is 'hardly ever...if ever'. Many answers to this question can be found in Andrew Lobaczewski's scientific study on the nature of evil, Political Ponerology. His work identifies the pathological nature of our leaders and the governing bodies that they create around themselves. Although it is written in the framework of politics, Political Ponerology just as easily applies to all the structures that make up our global society.

The unfortunate result of humanity being invaded by pathological thought, is a weakness in discerning healthy conditions from pathological ones. Our tyrants follow no rules to maintain their position of control over humankind, yet they set the conditions that men and women follow 'for a better life'. Revolution, protest, elections, free speech, and religion are just a few things touted as means by which me might find our humanity. And yet we exist as we have for millennia, suffering at our own hands, at the hand of our fellow man and, at the source, at the hands of pathocrats.

Despite all the talk over the past 15 years or so about the US and coalition forces being engaged in various 'wars', there haven't actually been any. To have a war you need two sizable armies representing two opposing nation states both with the capability to wage war on each other. I'd be impressed if anyone can point to the US or any Western nation being involved in such a conflict over the past 15 years, anywhere in the world.

During those last 15 years however, a very different type of war has been waged. It has been a much more subtle, stealthy and insidious war, and the mind of every Western citizen with two active neurons to rub together has been the target.

Do you know who Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is? She's a American-educated Pakistani cognitive neuroscientist and mother of three children, but she hasn't seen her children for 7 years. Aafia and her children were abducted in Pakistan in 2003 by US and Pakistani intelligence agents and incarcerated on trumped up 'terrorism' charges.

During her long 'rendition' she was held in various locations, including the infamous US Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan, where she was regularly tortured, raped and ultimately shot and wounded.

The British House of Lords is commonly understood as the place where career politicians get to snooze away their twilight years on plush red-leather seats to the faltering drone of their fellow Lords and Ladies. Things proceed at a slow pace in the 300 year old chamber, particularly given that its members have no real influence over the government and limited power to veto any bills sent their way from the lower House of Commons.

It was with some surprise therefore that the remarks of 'Lord James Blackheath' aka plain old David James were received on Nov 1 2010.

Lord Blackheath began his 15 minute speech with a breakdown of the woes of the British economy and the retail sector in particular and appeared to forecast a "massive collective bankruptcy". The most intriguing elements of his discourse however were, a reference to a "Foundation X" which, he claims, is prepared to bail out the UK economy to the tune of hundreds of billions of British pounds, and a very candid admission that, on behalf of the Bank of England, he, Lord Blackheath, had laundered money for the IRA and "North African terrorists". As regards the latter group, Blackheath claimed that he could not say any more because it was "still a security issue".

Transcript and video below:

In his historical novel, The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa writes that things have to change in order to remain the same. That is what happened in the US congressional elections on November 2.

Jobs off-shoring, which began on a large scale with the collapse of the Soviet Union, has merged the Democrats and Republicans into one party with two names. The Soviet collapse changed attitudes in socialist India and communist China and opened those countries, with their large excess supplies of labor, to Western capital.

Pushed by Wall Street and Wal-Mart, American manufacturers moved production for US markets offshore to boost profits and shareholder earnings by utilizing cheap labor. The decline of the US manufacturing work force reduced the political power of unions and the ability of unions to finance the Democratic Party. The end result was to make the Democrats dependent on the same sources of financing as Republicans.

I'm seeing a lot of hoopla about 'voting', which is not surprising given that today is 'Voting Day'. But there are a few things about voting we should all acknowledge before we head off to the ballot box, or rather, the unaccountable electronic voting machine.

1.) Voting doesn't make a difference in state policy. A few prime examples of this are: the Wars in Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan; Invasion of Privacy (having our phone calls, emails, websites, forum posts, naked bodies scanned, recorded, and filed by alphabet agencies); universal support of the terrorist state of Israel - even after it kills American citizens, deliberately; Poor Food/Medicine Quality Control Standards; Bank Bailouts... etc.

2.) Voting can, and often is rigged. Take a few minutes and research these newfangled voting boxes... hackers have been able to alter the outcome of elections with a usb jump drive without violating the machines internal controls. Diebold is likely responsible for GWB getting reelected in 2004. Thinking that it doesn't happen locally is naive and ignorant.

3.) We live in neither a democracy nor a republic, and therefore your vote doesn't make a difference. While on paper, we're supposed to elect representatives to represent us, more often than not they represent themselves and uber-rich folks who donate large sums of money to their campaigns. There's also the strangle-hold AIPAC has on all branches of congress, insuring that Pro-Israeli sentiment is the status quo. How can we justify believing that we're a sovereign nation when another government from another country influences our state policy without our consent?

4.) Elections are bought. It's simple math really, when one guy can outspend another he can easily acquire more name recognition, he can also tar the other guy. More money = More ads, more staff, more TV time. Obama was outspending McCain 3:1 when it came to TV ads in the last few weeks of the 2008 Election.

My conservative and Republican acquaintances believe that the "liberal media" is destroying America. When I ask them to identify the liberal media, the usual reply is, "all of it!" I ask them about Fox "News," CNN, and point out that the TV networks are no longer independent but parts of large corporate conglomerates and that all of the "liberal" news anchors have been fired or died off.

At that point my acquaintances fall back on the New York Times and the Washington Post.

I remind them that the invasion of Iraq would not have been possible without the New York Times leading the way. Judith Miller filled that newspaper with the neoconservative/Bush regime propaganda that was orchestrated to make the public accept US aggression toward Iraq. The Times later sort of apologized and Miller departed the paper.

That left the Washington Post, apparently long a CIA asset, as the "liberal media" that is destroying America, until on October 31 the paper's long-time pundit, David Broder, wrote that Obama should spend the next two years disarming the Republicans and renewing the economy by orchestrating a showdown with Iran. Going to war with Iran, "the greatest threat to the world," would simultaneously unite Republicans with Obama and restore the economy. By following Broder's prescription, Obama "will have made the world safer and may be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history."

Yawn. Here we go again. Two days ago, senior figures in the British airline industry, including the Chairman of British airways, said that Britain should stop "kowtowing" to excessive US security demands that were "completely redundant". Then today, in a crass and very obvious attempt to refute the BA Chairman's statements and reaffirm the fake reality of a 'terror threat', two 'suspect packages' are found on planes in the East Midlands and Dubai, both planes originated in Yemen and were destined for the US, specifically, Jewish synagogues in Chicago, or so we are told.

Initial reports stated that the package found in the East Midlands, a toner cartridge, had tested negative for explosives. Apparently that was the wrong conclusion for bomb disposal experts in the UK to arrive at however, because Obama later declared that the printer cartridge(s) constituted a "credible terrorist threat to our country" and that "initial examination of those packages has determined that they do apparently contain explosive material."

As with most other such terror alerts, evidence is simply made up as they go along in the interest of political gain:

Barack Obama accused of exaggerating terror threat for political gain.

The main goal appears to have been achieved though because, "the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Americans could expect yet more security in and around air travel". That's the point, the reason, the motivation. Everything else is charade.

The fact that one of the packages was found in Dubai is not surprising, given that Dubai is essentially the playground of the Mossad and the CIA and has been ever since the CIA checked up on their spokesman Osama bin Laden in a Dubai hospital just before he didn't carry out the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

But the true litmus test of just how obviously false these terror alerts are is when you hear dyed-in-the-wool mainstream media pundits questioning the timing and likely motivation: