Everyone is an "Illegal Immigrant" -IMAGE. AntiWar: South of the Border.

Between 1947 and 1973, the typical American family’s income grew 200% in real terms. Between 1973 and 2007, it grew by only 22%. In mid-2008 the typical family’s income was lower than in 2000 while the richest 10% earned half of all income, surpassing their previously highest share in 1928.

Seeing definitely is believing for a group of 15 religious explorers who claim to have uncovered a jaw-dropping glimpse into biblical times. And, following the discovery of seven large wooden compartments on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey, it’s being argued that the quest to find remnants of ancient history’s most famous ship could now be over. Apparently, the legendary Ark that housed Noah, his family and a menagerie of creatures during a global flood some 4,800 years ago, has finally docked.

Bethlehem – Ma'an – A 19-year-old Hebron resident was detained by Israeli forces Tuesday night, removed from the West Bank and expelled into Gaza, security sources confirmed. Representative of the Wa’ed Prisoners Society Abdulla Qandil said the expulsion was carried out using Israel's controversial military order number 1650. He demanded a task force be created with Palestinian officials from the West Bank and Gaza to "counter this threat which has now become a terrible reality." AWIP: The West Bank expulsion order is merely the latest step in a long process.

(Baghdad) - Detainees in a secret Baghdad detention facility were hung upside-down, deprived of air, kicked, whipped, beaten, given electric shocks, and sodomized, Human Rights Watch said today. Iraq should thoroughly investigate and prosecute all government and security officials responsible, Human Rights Watch said. The men's stories were credible and consistent. Most of the 300 displayed fresh scars and injuries they said were a result of routine and systematic torture they had experienced at the hands of interrogators at Muthanna. All were accused of aiding and abetting terrorism, and many said they were forced to sign false confessions. BBC: Routine torture, including electric shocks and sexual abuse, was inflicted on detainees held in a secret prison in Baghdad -Video. AWIP/Stephen Lendman: Iraq Today: Afflicted by Violence, Devastation, Corruption, and Desperation.

WASHINGTON — Goldman Sachs reaped "billions and billions of dollars" in profits by secretly betting in 2006 and 2007 that the U.S. housing market would crash, a strategy that conflicted with the interests of its clients who were still buying the firm's risky mortgage securities, Senate investigators said Monday. "The evidence shows that Goldman repeatedly put its own interests and profits ahead of the interests of its clients," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich, the chairman of the Permanent Investigations Subcommittee, told a news briefing. "I think they've been misleading to the country." AWIP: Palin on Goldman. You Tube: Carl Levin: "How much of that shitty deal did you sell to your clients?" Goldman Sachs Hearing

International investors fear Ireland will be the next country to seek financial bailout from the IMF. Following Greece’s application for financial aid of €45bn from the IMF and the Eurozone countries, Ireland is now under the spotlight. A former IMF economist and Harvard economics professor, Ken Rogoff said Ireland was "conspicuously vulnerable" to defaulting on its debt. It was announced late last week that Ireland had the largest deficit in the Eurozone at 14.2 per cent of gross domestic product. This is primarily the result of the government’s bailout of the banking sector and, in particular, Anglo Irish Bank in June 2009. The investment of €4bn in Anglo Irish Bank was reclassified as debt by Europe last week putting the country in a precarious position.

Stock markets in Europe, the US, and other regions closed sharply lower yesterday after ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded its sovereign credit rating for Greece to “junk” status and also lowered Portugal by two notches. The downgrades reflected growing fears that the southern European governments will prove unable to implement promised austerity measures in the face of determined domestic opposition, raising the danger of the sovereign debt crisis spreading to the world’s major economies. “The biggest risk now is that the market speculates against every single indebted peripheral country, and that could lead to a sovereign debt crisis,” Axel Botte, a fixed- income strategist at AXA Investment Managers in Paris, told Bloomberg. “The contagion risk is real.” TimesOnline: German tabloids campaign for Greece to leave the euro. IJSR: Greece: Driven into crisis. Al Jazeera: Greek downgrade sparks stocks slide. WaPo: As stocks slump, European, IMF officials push Germany on Greece.

The British leader said he was unaware that a television microphone was still live. Asked by an aide about his conversation, Brown said "she was just a bigoted woman." He suggested Duffy had questioned the number of eastern European migrants in Britain. Duffy then asked for an apology from Brown and said she would no longer vote for his Labour Party in Britain's May 6 election. Brown later apologized "profusely." Daily Mail: Brown caught describing disgruntled life-long Labour voter as a 'bigoted woman'.

When Dina Khiry is feeling a bit down, she reaches for chocolate. "I like Reese's peanut butter cups, Hershey's bars, and chocolate cake batter," says the 24-year-old public relations associate. "I feel better in the moment -- and then worse later on, when I realize that I just consumed thousands of calories." Khiry's emotional relationship with chocolate isn't uncommon, new research suggests. According to a study published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine, people who feel depressed eat about 55 percent more chocolate than their non-depressed peers. And the more depressed they feel, the more chocolate they tend to eat. AIM: Chocolate and Depressive Symptoms in a Cross-sectional Analysis [Please scroll down...].

Downtown Toronto will essentially be on lockdown with rights and liberties severely restricted. The G20 summit will be held on June 26-27 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre preceded by the G8 summit which will take place in Huntsville, Ontario. The secretive meetings will be attended by world leaders, finance ministers, central bank governors, along with thousands of other delegates. It will be the largest security event in Canadian history exceeding the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Downtown Toronto will be turned into a security fortress with fences, barricades, checkpoints and street closures thus greatly affecting local residents. While the G8/G20 summits will attract their share of peaceful protesters, other more radical and fringe elements may try to capitalize on the event. Agent provocateurs might also be used whose actions could then justify a police crackdown and as a means to demonize all demonstrators. The G20 summit will deepen police state measures, as well as further integrate local, provincial, federal law enforcement agencies and the military.

"All the countries of the world are equally entitled to conduct research programs in nuclear energy fields but their moves should not trespass the framework of peaceful uses," Nazarbayev said, addressing the inauguration ceremony of the Eurasian Media Forum (EAMF). He further said that around 20 world countries are seeking to access nuclear weapons, and called for the establishment of nuclear free zones across the globe, including the Near East. "It is important that the nuclear armed states provide the countries of this region with security guarantees and that these countries are given some privileges to use nuclear energy (for peaceful purposes)," Nazarbayev added.

Mexico warned its citizens living in or traveling to Arizona that they could be "harassed" there after the state passed one of the toughest immigration laws in the United States last week. Arizona's Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill into law last week that makes it a crime to be in the state illegally and requires police to check the status of people they reasonably suspect to be illegal immigrants. The law, decried by critics as discriminatory, will force immigrants to carry their alien registration documents at all times once it takes effect 90 days after Arizona's current legislative session ends. Mexico's foreign ministry issued a statement saying that Mexicans in Arizona should be aware of the new law and contact their consular representatives if they are unlawfully detained.

For details go HERE.

This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that “bravely” trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force. Happily, today’s would-be totalitarians are probably too marginal to take full advantage. This isn’t Weimar Germany, and Islam’s radical fringe is still a fringe, rather than an existential enemy. For that, we should be grateful. Because if a violent fringe is capable of inspiring so much cowardice and self-censorship, it suggests that there’s enough rot in our institutions that a stronger foe might be able to bring them crashing down.

KATHMANDU - A South Korean climber has become the first woman to scale 14 of the world's highest mountains. Seoul broadcaster KBS television showed live coverage last night of Oh Eun Sun, 44, reaching the summit of Annapurna in Nepal and affixing a South Korean flag to the peak. It was the final hurdle of a fiercely contested race against a Spanish rival to conquer all 14 Himalayan peaks more than 8000m above sea level.

So today is the big day. Lloyd “God’s Work” Blankfein and Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre are going to be dragged before the Senate and formally introduced to America via the medium of a hearing of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It’s hard to get a read on just exactly what this is all about. The Guardian: Will Goldman Sachs prove greed is God? -The Lunatics Who Made a Religion Out of Greed and Wrecked the Economy. AWIP/Ellen Brown: Computerized Front Running: Another Goldman-dominated Fraud.

[Farmers team up to rescue cattle from exposure to the toxic volcanic ash at a farm in Nupur, Iceland, as the volcano in southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier sends ash into the air Saturday, April 17, 2010. (AP Photo/Brynjar Gauti)] As ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano continued to keep European airspace shut down over the weekend, affecting millions of travelers around the world, some government agencies and airlines clashed over the flight bans. Some restricted airspace is now beginning to open up and some limited flights are being allowed now as airlines are pushing for the ability to judge safety conditions for themselves. The volcano continues to rumble and hurl ash skyward, if at a slightly diminished rate now, as the dispersing ash plume has dropped closer to the ground, and the World Health Organization has issued a health warning to Europeans with respiratory conditions. Collected here are some images from Iceland over the past few days. (35 photos total)

Both progressives and conservatives have sharply criticized Arizona’s new strict immigration law that requires local police to attempt to determine the immigration status of anyone they encounter as part of a “lawful contact” and allows them to arrest undocumented immigrants. The ACLU warns that the law will “exacerbate racial profiling,” and former Republican Arkansas governor has similarly said that “Hispanic Americans have the right to be unhappy about the fact that they might be pulled over.” Even far-right former Colorado Republican congressman Tom Tancredo, who said he supports the Arizona law, has stated, “I do not want people here, there in Arizona, pulled over because you look like [you] should be pulled over.” In the U.S. House and Senate, however, Republicans have been far quieter. AWIP: AZ Truck driver forced to show birth certificate claims racial-profiling -Video.

The low flying U.S Apache helicopter got shot down by Taliban while hovering over the Safid Khak district of Farah province in the late morning hours of the Sunday. The report adds the helicopter caught fire and fell on the desert of Nal in this district, killing at least 13 U.S. soldiers. It is worth saying that one of the U.S. helicopter was shot down near the airfield of Farah province about two months ago which was declared a helicopter crash as a result of a quick landing.

Afghan protesters torched NATO supply vehicles in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, hours after allegations emerged that U.S. and Afghan troops had killed three civilians, including two brothers, in their home. The demonstration occurred in Logar province after a nighttime joint patrol of U.S. Special Operations forces and Afghan soldiers fatally shot three people and arrested two others. NATO officials said falsely claimed the men were insurgents who had displayed "hostile intent." One of those captured was a low-level Taliban commander who planned suicide bombings, they said. But after daybreak, more than 100 people gathered on a main road in Logar to protest the killings and the death in a separate incident of an Islamic scholar, according to Afghan officials. AWIP: Afghanistan: Angry protesters torch 30 logistical vehicles of invaders in Logar.

KANDAHAR, Apr. 27 - A landmine mine planted by Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate during an attack on a U.S military base in Kandahar's Arghandab district, tore through a group of American cowardly soldiers killing 3 Americans besides wounding 5 who, minutes after the attack, approached the site to chase those who had attacked their base, yesterday night (April 26), Mujahideen officials said. According to locals, the blast was so powerful that it threw the mutilated parts of the bodies of the soldiers across the area.

Nigel Inkster, the former assistant head of the British spy service MI6, slammed the United States' handling of its fight on terror, including what he called the "frenzied, alarmist response" to the recently foiled Christmas Day bomber. Writing in an article published in the International Institute for Strategic Studies journal Survival, Inkster and coauthor Alexander Nicoll hammered what they believe is an out of proportion response to attempted terror attacks. They also attacked the United States' policy of imprisoning detainees without trial -- a practice that has continued under President Barack Obama.

The most influential Israeli lobby group in the US has held a fundraising event in an Oregon city as nearby protesters held a mockery-ridden condemnation of the Israeli occupation. The annual meeting, which rallies the contributors to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), was held in Portland on Sunday, the International Middle East Media Center reported. Protesters gathered near the venue, putting up maquettes of the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, a checkpoint, and the apartheid wall.

The leaders of Russia and Norway said Tuesday they had agreed on a compromise Arctic border in the resource-rich Barents Sea, bringing an end to a 40-year dispute. "This solution is about more than a border line under the ocean. It is about developing good neighbour relations," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told a joint press conference in Oslo with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. "It will unite much more than divide, and it will become a bridge to cooperation," he added. Since 1970 Norway has been in dispute with first the Soviet Union then Russia over a 176,000-square-kilometre (67,950-square-mile) maritime area straddling their economic zones in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean. The surprise compromise reached during Medvedev's state visit plans for the contested zone to be divided almost equally between the two countries.