South Korea accused North Korea on Thursday of firing a torpedo that sank a naval warship in March, killing 46 sailors in the country's worst military disaster since the Korean War. President Lee Myung-bak vowed "stern action" for the provocation following the release of long-awaited results from a multinational investigation into the incident. North Korea, reacting swiftly, called the results a fabrication and warned that any retaliation would trigger war. The White House called the sinking an unacceptable "act of aggression" that violates international law and the truce signed in 1953. [Pot calling the kettle black...] TimesOnline: ‘All out war’ threatened over North Korea attack on warship.

New UK government promises to scrap children's databases and DNA data held on innocent people, scrap mandatory ID cards and remove restrictions on peaceful protests. [Promises, promises...] The Independent: Clegg makes his bid for a place in history.

Mother of all gushers could kill Earth's oceans: The latest glimpse of video footage of the oil spill deep under the Gulf of Mexico indicates that around 95,000 barrels, or 4 million gallons, a day of crude oil may be spewing from the leaking wellhead, 19 times the previous estimate, an engineering professor told Congress on Wednesday. The figure of 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, a day that BP and the federal government have been using for weeks is based on observations of the surface slick made by satellites and aircraft. Even NASA's satellite-based instruments, however, can't see deep into the waters of the gulf, where much of the oil from the gusher seems to be floating. The well is 5,000 feet below the surface. Reuters: Heavy oil hits Louisiana shore, enters sea current. Chron.com: Florida State scientist: NOAA ignores spill findings. Washington's Blog: Professor of Mechanical Engineering Estimates that 4 Million Gallons of Oil are Leaking Every Day. AWIP/Mike Adams: Massive underwater oil cloud may destroy life in Gulf of Mexico. McClatchy: BP withholds oil spill facts — and government lets it -VIDEO. NYT: Scientists Fault Response of Government to Oil Spill in Gulf. Energy Boom Policy: BP and Coast Guard Blocking Media from Public Beaches [-By what right ?!?! ]

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has warned the UN Security Council against imposing new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. Lula urged the Security Council to show willingness to negotiate with Tehran in response to the nuclear declaration that was signed in the Iranian capital on Monday. "It depends on the UN Security Council to sit down with a willingness to negotiate, because if it feels it does not want to negotiate, everything will be put back," he told a business conference in Madrid on Wednesday. Lula was commenting on a draft UN resolution introduced by the United States on Tuesday that would slap tough new sanctions on Iran.

PressTV: No chance for new Iran sanctions: Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki says Tehran's recent nuclear declaration has left no chance for new sanctions to be imposed on Iran. "We don't take the developments in New York seriously because countries that support the resolution are in a minority," Mottaki stated, referring to a draft UN Security Council resolution that was introduced by the United States on Tuesday with the aim of putting more pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program.

["La Femme à l'évantail," d'Amedio Modigliani] A lone masked intruder stole five priceless paintings, including a Matisse and a Picasso, from the Paris Museum of Modern Art last night. Guards discovered the theft as they made their rounds at dawn and police have described the raid as one of the most daring thefts for many years. Security cameras at the museum showed a hooded man cutting open a window, breaking locks and climbing inside, police said. He apparently cut the art works from their frames, leaving them empty on the wall. It was not clear whether the man could have been working alone or had accomplices inside the museum. The stolen Picasso is a 1912 oil painting, Le pigeon aux petits pois (Dove with Green Peas). Also taken were Henri Matisse’s La Pastorale (Pastoral, 1906), Georges Braque’s L’Olivier près de l’Estaque (Olive tree near Estaque, 1906), Amédéo Modigliani’s La femme a l’éventail (Lady with Fan), and Fernand Léger’s Nature Morte au Chandelier (Still Life with Chandelier, 1922). The prosecutor’s office initially estimated the five paintings’ total worth at as much as €500 million. Christophe Girard, deputy culture secretary at Paris City Hall, later said the total value was “just under €100 million”. As stolen goods with well-known histories, however, they might be worth more for possible ransom, police speculated. Le Monde: Cinq tableaux volés à Paris pour une valeur de 500 millions d'euros.

Like a modern-day Ministry of Truth, the American Psychological Association (APA) has scrubbed the webpage describing "deception scenarios" workshops that were part of a conference it conducted with the CIA and Rand Corporation on July 17-18, 2003. In addition, the APA erased the link to the page, and even all mention of its existence, from another story at its July 2003 Science Policy Insider News website that briefly described the conference.

Californians likely to vote in November are evenly split over whether to legalize marijuana, with only a small percentage of the electorate still undecided about the controversial issue, according to a poll conducted last week by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. The poll, which surveyed 1,168 likely voters, found that 49% think marijuana use should be made legal, 48% do not and 3% do not know, suggesting that the proponents of the legalization measure will have to wage an expensive and persuasive campaign. Mark Baldassare, the institute's president and pollster, said the results show the legalization campaign faces serious challenges: "It's always hard to start out when you're not even at 50%."

Candidates with roots in the tea party movement - including congressional candidate Gloria Carlineo - were on the losing end of battles over sample voter ballots. A rift between the GOP establishment and newly energized conservative Republicans in Bucks County split wide open Tuesday when endorsed candidates for the Republican State Committee obtained a court order to bar distribution of fliers urging voters to elect tea party candidates. AWIP/Bob Altemeyer: Comment on the Tea Party Movement

TREASON DEFINED: (PIC)– An informed source reported Tuesday that the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah asked a number of Arab and regional countries to prevent the arrival of the Freedom Flotilla humanitarian convoy to the besieged Gaza Strip, slated to get there later this month. The source told the Palestinian information center (PIC) that the PA sent several letters to countries in the region including Turkey demanding it not to allow the ships of this convoy to sail for Gaza.

(Haaretz) No one knows fascism better than Israelis. They are schooled, drilled in the history, the mechanics, the horrendous potential of fascist regimes. Israelis know fascism when they see it. In others. In fact, it has taken the most dysfunctional, the most rudderless government Israel has ever known, to make moderates uncomfortably aware of the countless but largely cosmetized ways in which the right in Israel and its supporters abroad have come to plant and nurture the seeds of fascism.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, Zionist settler Yitzhak Hircovich assaulted 90-year-old Palestinian woman Sheeha Ali in the tent she has pitched after he took her house in Beit Safafa village south of occupied Jerusalem in mid April. Sheeha said that the settler insulted her then kicked and beat her then threw her to the ground, along with her four-year-old grandson. She said that her grandson was injured in the head while she was bruised all over her body. Sheeha noted that the settlers have been harassing her for the past 18 years ever since she took her case to court against those who were trying to take over her home.

A campaign has been started in the occupied West Bank to boycott goods produced on Israel's illegal settlements. More than 3000 Palestinian volunteers across the occupied territory are going from house to house urging Palestinians to take part. "Every volunteer will give each family a pack which includes a directory of more than 500 products made in the settlements," said the Minister of National Economy, Mr. Hassan Abu Libdah. The pack also contains written instructions, details of the legal situation and a free telephone number to report settlement goods which are on the shelves in Palestinian shops.

Trilateral Commission co-founder says infighting amongst elite, combined with awakening of humanity worldwide, is hampering move towards one world government. At a recent Council on Foreign Relations speech in Montreal, co-founder with David Rockefeller of the Trilateral Commission and regular Bilderberg attendee Zbigniew Brzezinski warned that a “global political awakening,” in combination with infighting amongst the elite, was threatening to derail the move towards a one world government.

Brzezinski explained that global political leadership had become “much more diversified unlike what it was until relatively recently,” noting the rise of China as a geopolitical power, and that global leadership in the context of the G20 was “lacking internal unity with many of its members in bilateral antagonisms.” In other words, the global elite is infighting amongst itself and this is hampering efforts to rescue the agenda for global government, which seems to be failing on almost every front. Brzezinski then explained another significant factor in that, “For the first time in all of human history mankind is politically awakened – that’s a total new reality – it has not been so for most of human history.”

● Airport scanners may increase risk of cancer
● Radiation "dangerously underestimated"
● Skin around face, neck most at risk

US scientists are warning that radiation from controversial full-body airport scanners has been dangerously underestimated and could lead to an increased risk of skin cancer - particularly in children.

University of California biochemist David Agard said that unlike other scanners, the radiation from these devices is delivered at low energy beam levels, with most of the dose concentrated in the skin and underlying tissue.

“While the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high,” Dr Agard said.

"Ionizing radiation such as the X-rays used in these scanners have the potential to induce chromosome damage, and that can lead to cancer."

Newt Gingrich recently spoke up for the vampire elite by claiming that Obama’s feeble efforts to thwart growing concentration of wealth and the shift of power from the people to corporations is more dangerous than the Nazis or Stalin! It’s a neat trick to ensnare people to defend Corporate power against their own interests.

But articles about Gingrich’s comments are just as flawed. One comment in particular doesn’t sit well with me:

“Since America is still a country in which free speech is protected and in which state terrorism is prohibited, serious talk of totalitarianism in the context of American politics is the province of fools.”

What a blithe and naïve comment about the biggest purveyor of state terrorism in the world! Don’t worry, be happy….while the military build-up and endless war go on and on, our rights fade away under a siege of surveillance and eavesdropping, and Banksters concentrate wealth by cannibalizing the rest of us.