Stephen Lendman

A Palestinian vendor displays a poster of Hamas leader in the Gaza
Strip Ismail Haniya (L) and Palestinian president and Fatah head Mr.
Abbas in front of his shop in Gaza City today. (M. Abed/AFP/Getty)

On April 27, the International Middle East Media Center headlined, "Rival Palestinian Factions Reach Reconciliation Agreement," saying:

Meeting in Cairo, Palestinian media sources announced a Hamas - Fatah reconciliation draft agreement, signaling hope for rapprochement between the two sides.

Both parties agreed to form a transitional government soon. The two delegations, headed by Fatah President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal discussed security issues and ways to coordinate forces on both sides. They also chose an election date, but didn't disclose it.

"A Hamas official (Izzat Ar-Rishiq) reported that all points of differences with Fatah have been overcome....Egyptian sources said that the two parties will be invited into Egypt soon (for an) official signing ceremony."

Egypt's official MENA news agency confirmed "a complete understanding after talks on all the points, including the formation of a transitional government with a specific mandate and setting a date for elections."

Fatah delegation chief Azzam Al-Ahmad confirmed the report, saying both sides agreed to a "government of independents....tasked with preparing for presidential and legislative elections within a year."

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Stephen Lendman

It's a sad testimony to a two centuries old experiment that failed because absolute power corrupted too many with it wanting more.

What distinguished experts long knew (timetables aside), the IMF just recognized, saying China's economy will surpass America's in 2016. If so, it will signal an end to the "Age of America," and no wonder after decades of heedless profligacy. More on that below.

The IMF's 2011 World Economic Outlook shows China overtaking America in five years based on purchasing power parity (PPP) - a criterion for an appropriate exchange rate between currencies as measured by the cost of a representative basket of goods in one country v. another.

IMF's 2016 PPP GDP estimate:

● China - $18,975.7 trillion
● America - $18,807.5 trillion

In current dollar terms, America retains its lead, but it's slipping noticeably.

IMF's 2016 dollar GDP estimate:

● America - $18,807.5 trillion
● China - $11,220.2 trillion

Economic forecasts, of course, vary. Moreover, long-range ones combine extrapolated trends with reasoned judgments. However, as economist Alec Craincross (1911 - 1998) once observed:

"A trend is a trend is a trend. But the question is, will it bend? Will it alter its course through some unforeseen force and come to a premature end?"

Not China's for over three decades, "growing 17-fold in real (inflation-adjusted) terms since 1980," according to economist Mark Weisbrot. As a result, it's been the world's fastest growth engine, a pace it's maintained during the current global economic crisis in contrast to America in decline.

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Nahida Izzat
Exiled Palestinian

The world has almost become desensitized to hearing horrible news; there isn't a day that passes without being bombarded with horrific reports; of some killed in a street in Pakistan, more are blown up in a village in Iraq, a drone dropped over a wedding in Afghanistan, a child shot in the back in Palestine, a bomb exploded in Libya, a "new and improved" version of an Israeli threat to Iran…etc…etc.

However, some types of news might still have some sort of an impact; the type that catches the eye causing it to flood with tears, the type that grabs the soul by the throat causing it to choke, the type that contains within an oxymoron; the kernels of extinction and the seeds of annihilation, the type that feels like throbbing, suffocating pain running through every cell of the body, the type that smells of burnt death, radiates with isotopes and gamma-rays and looks like dark smoky mushroom-cloud.

For example:

● On 28 September 2010, the "Israeli" Newspaper Haaretz reported that a virus targeted a large nuclear facility in Iran
● On 16 January 2011, Haaretz reported that Israel tested the destructive Stuxnet worm in Dimona nuclear plant
● On 20 February 2011, Haaretz reported a further attack on 'Iran nuclear facilities in Natanz, Bushehr sites'
● On 27 April 2011, the Iranian Government computers were attacked yet again by the highly specialized aggressive computer virus, Stuxnet, a new generation of software programs that can fail entire production lines.

The German cyber-security expert Ralph Langner, has been working to unravel the mystery of the Stuxnet virus. In March this year, Langner told his audience that the Stuxnet worm could be used as a "weapon of mass destruction against targets in the West"

In his speech, Langner warned of "the plot behind Stuxnet" calling its mode of operation "creepy."

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Tom Burghardt
Antifascist Calling

As the United States morphs into a failed state, one unwilling and soon perhaps, unable, to provide for the common good even as it hands over trillions of dollars to a gang of financial brigands engorged like parasitic ticks on the wealth of others, keeping the lid on is more than just an imperial obsession: it's big business.

Earlier this month, New Scientist reported that "a new way of working out where you are by looking at your internet connection could pin down your current location to within a few hundred metres."

Although similar techniques are already in use, they are not very accurate in terms of closing the surveillance trap. "Every computer connected to the web has an internet protocol (IP) address, but there is no simple way to map this to a physical location," reporter Jacob Aron informs us. "The current best system can be out by as much as 35 kilometres."

However, Yong Wang, "a computer scientist at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu, and colleagues at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, have used businesses and universities as landmarks to achieve much higher accuracy."

According to New Scientist, "Wang's team used Google Maps to find both the web and physical addresses of such organisations, providing them with around 76,000 landmarks. By comparison, most other geolocation methods only use a few hundred landmarks specifically set up for the purpose."

With geolocation tracking devices embedded in smartphones (and, as we'll see below, this data is stored without their users' consent), all of which is happily turned over to authorities by telecoms (for the right price, of course!), as privacy researcher Christopher Soghoian revealed in 2009, it becomes abundantly clear that sooner than most people think they'll be no escaping Big Brother's electronic dragnet.

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