● Listing the greatest obstacles to peace, he said "unlimited" funds available to Jewish organizations and AIPAC in the US are used to control and divert American policy in the region,” former Member of Knesset Einat Wilf reported on her Facebook page. Straw also blamed “Germany's ‘obsession’ with defending Israel,” she said, adding, “I guess he neglected to mention Jewish control of the media...”
● Straw has a history of offending Israeli leaders with his remarks on the Israeli-Arab conflict. In 2003, he angered the Foreign Ministry by comparing Israel to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In 2006, he said the world should be as concerned with disabling Israel’s nuclear capabilities, as it is with Iran’s nuclear program. Under Straw, Britain’s foreign ministry considered maintaining diplomatic ties with members of Hamas, a terrorist group which openly states that its goal is Israel’s destruction.

The Times of Israel: Ex-UK FM: ‘Unlimited’ Jewish funds control US policy, block Mideast peace

Michael Scheuer calls congress on their "BULLSH*T!"

Former head of the CIA bin Laden unit, Michael Scheuer, testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee on October 9, 2013.

1. U.S. support for tyranny in the Muslim world
2. U.S. presence in the Arabian peninsula
3. U.S. support for Israel
4. U.S. ability to get oil below the market level
5. U.S. military presence in other countries in the Muslim world
6. U.S. willingness to identify as terrorists any Muslim population that one of our allies dislikes

Israel and not America was behind the hacking of millions of French phones, it was claimed today. ● In the latest extraordinary twist in the global eavesdropping scandal, Israeli agents are said to have intercepted more than 70 million calls and text messages a month. Up until now the French have been blaming the U.S., even summoning the country’s Paris ambassador to provide an explanation. But today’s Le Monde newspaper provides evidence that it was in fact Israeli agents who were listening in. France first suspected the U.S. of hacking into former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s communications network when he was unsuccessfully trying for re-election in 2012. Intelligence officials Bernard Barbier and Patrick Pailloux travelled from Paris to Washington to demand an explanation, but the Americans hinted that the Israelis were to blame.

Le Monde: The NSA's intern inquiry about the Elysée hacking revealed
(Le Monde: Comment Paris a soupçonné la NSA d'avoir piraté l'Elysée)
PressTV: ‘Israel intercepted millions of French calls’

Die NSA späht das Handy von Angela Merkel offenbar bereits seit mehr als zehn Jahren aus. Das geht aus einer geheimen Datei des US-Geheimdienstes hervor, die dem SPIEGEL vorliegt. Von ihrer Berliner Botschaft spionieren die USA anscheinend das gesamte Regierungsviertel aus. ● Das Handy von Angela Merkel steht anscheinend seit 2002 auf einer Liste mit Aufklärungszielen des amerikanischen Geheimdienstes NSA. Das ergibt sich aus einem Auszug, der offenbar aus einer geheimen NSA-Datei stammt. Aus dem Dateiauszug geht außerdem hervor, dass dieser Ausspähauftrag offenbar auch wenige Wochen vor Präsident Obamas Berlin-Besuch im Juni 2013 gültig war. In dem Auszug, der dem SPIEGEL vorliegt, ist die Nummer unter "GE Chancellor Merkel" eingetragen. Demnach hat das für Europa zuständige Referat S2C32 "European States Branch" Merkel als Ziel benannt. Für die Umsetzung ist in der Datei eine Einheit mit dem Namen Special Collection Services (SCS) eingetragen. Aus dem Eintrag geht nicht hervor, welche Art von Daten überwacht wurden, ob etwa alle Gespräche mitgeschnitten oder nur Verbindungsdaten ausgewertet wurden.

GCHQ fears a legal challenge under the Human Rights
Act if evidence of its surveillance methods becomes ad-
missible in court. (Photo: © Unknown )

The UK intelligence agency GCHQ has repeatedly warned it fears a "damaging public debate" on the scale of its activities because it could lead to legal challenges against its mass-surveillance programmes, classified internal documents reveal. ● Memos contained in the cache disclosed by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden detail the agency's long fight against making intercept evidence admissible as evidence in criminal trials – a policy supported by all three major political parties, but ultimately defeated by the UK's intelligence community. Foremost among the reasons was a desire to minimise the potential for challenges against the agency's large-scale interception programmes, rather than any intrinsic threat to security, the documents show.

Christoph Dreier: NSA wiretapping scandal dominates European Union summit ■ At the summit, all 28 EU leaders agreed that Merkel and Hollande should clarify the issues with US President Barack Obama and prepare a report for the next EU summit in December. A delegation of high-ranking government and intelligence officials will travel to Washington next week. The purpose of such a delegation is not to expose the criminal activities of US intelligence agencies, but to assist in a cover-up. For months, all EU leaders have worked to suppress the revelations by Edward Snowden of the systematic monitoring of the entire world population. The British, German and French intelligence work closely with US intelligence in their own surveillance activities.

Russia Today: Germany, Brazil enlist 19 more countries for anti-NSA UN resolution
PressTV: German spooks heading to Washington
PressTV: Snowden files reveal enormous GCHQ efforts to escape legal challenge

UN Urges More Transparency in Killings ● The UN conference on drone strikes opened today in New York with calls from UN experts to see more transparency around the use of drones for extraterritorial executions by nations, and condemnations by several nations of the unlawful use of the attacks en masse by the United States. The Obama Administration was quick to dismiss any complaints, insisting the killings of several thousand people worldwide without any legal oversight by CIA drones was “legal and just.”

■ In January of 2011, we were told that "spontaneous," "indigenous" uprising had begun sweeping North Africa and the Middle East in what was hailed as the "Arab Spring." It would be almost four months before the corporate-media would admit that the US had been behind the uprisings and that they were anything but "spontaneous," or "indigenous." As we will see, preparations for the "Arab Spring" and the global campaign that is now encroaching on both Russia and China, as predicted in February 2011's "The Middle East & then the World," began not as unrest had already begun, but years before the first "fist" was raised, and within seminar rooms in D.C. and New York, US-funded training facilities in Serbia, and camps held in neighboring countries, not within the Arab World itself.

■ The year 2011 was surely the year of the dupe. Youth enamored with lofty, naive notions of "freedom" sold to them by corporate-fascist funded NGOs were brought into the streets to create chaos and division which was then capitalized on by covert political and even military maneuvering by the West and its proxy forces. In Egypt the nation is teetering on the edge of being fully integrated into the Wall Street/London international order, while a big-oil representative is enjoying his new position as prime minister of Libya. In Tunisia a life-long stooge of Western machinations is now president, and an alarming campaign of NATO-backed violence and terrorism is gripping Syria.

■ With the encirclement of Russia and China, these dupes have witlessly brought the world to the edge of World War III, and clearly done nothing at all to improve their own state of being. As their nations fall under the control of increasing Western influence, the resources once used to placate them and defend their nationalism will now be diverted into the bottomless maw of the parasitic banking combines that are currently destroying both North America and Europe. (Also see: "The Middle East & then the World")

It is widely reported and accepted that there has been no increase in average global temperatures for at least 16 years. Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly), the delegates in attendance at the UN's Bonn Climate Change Conference (June 3-14, 2013) were either completely unaware of the global warming standstill or didn't think it mattered.

Daily Mail: Global warming stopped 16 years ago, Met Office report reveals
Steve Goreham: Why the climate models of global warming are wrong

Larry Klayman, who runs the nonprofit watchdog group Freedom Watch, has filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the Pentagon, as well as the Air Force, Army and Navy. He wants a judge to order the military to turn over an array of documents under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. He said the Defense Department stonewalled his written requests, so Freedom Watch went to court last month and succeeded in forcing the government to turn over records.

The UK government is mulling over changing the course on whether it should win parliament’s consent before engaging in acts of war, media reports said. ● A convention was created as per former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s decision in 2003 to seek MPs’ approval before joining the US-led invasion of Iraq in March that year, according to which the parliament was given the right to vote over the use of force. Now, the government is indicating that it will renege on its pledge to do the same as far as the parliament’s consent and the convention are concerned, British media reported. Although the prime minister of Britain enjoys the power to engage in wars and he or she is not legally-bound to have the parliament’s consent, Prime Minister David Cameron was dealt a serious blow earlier this year, when as per the convention he was forced to have MPs’ endorsement in his desperate attempt to invade Syria militarily, but he failed to win the endorsement.

The NSA is spying on everyone's personal communications. It’s operating without any meaningful oversight. On October 26th, the 12th anniversary of the signing of the USA Patriot Act, we're holding the largest rally yet against NSA surveillance. We’ll be handing more than a half-million petitions to Congress to remind them that they work for us — and we won’t tolerate mass surveillance any longer. A stellar group of whistleblowers, activists, researchers and others from both sides of the political spectrum will be speaking at this historic event.

U.S. officials are alerting some foreign intelligence services that documents detailing their secret cooperation with the United States have been obtained by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, according to government officials. ● Snowden, U.S. officials said, took tens of thousands of documents, some of which contain sensitive material about collection programs against adversaries such as Iran, Russia and China. Some refer to operations that in some cases involve countries not publicly allied with the United States. The process of informing officials in capital after capital about the risk of disclosure is delicate. In some cases, one part of the cooperating government may know about the collaboration while others — such as the foreign ministry — may not, the officials said. The documents, if disclosed, could compromise operations, officials said. The notifications come as the Obama administration is scrambling to placate allies after allegations that the NSA has spied on foreign leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

NYmag.com: U.S. Warns Foreign Officials That Snowden Knows About Their Secret Alliances
TIME/Swampland: Snowden May Reveal Countries That Cooperated With the U.S. on Secret Ops
Jason Ditz: US Warns NSA Collaborators: Snowden Docs Would Out You Too

• Agency given more than 200 numbers by government official
• NSA encourages departments to share their 'Rolodexes'
• Surveillance produced 'little intelligence', memo acknowledges

● The National Security Agency monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders after being given the numbers by an official in another US government department, according to a classified document provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The confidential memo reveals that the NSA encourages senior officials in its "customer" departments, such the White House, State and the Pentagon, to share their "Rolodexes" so the agency can add the phone numbers of leading foreign politicians to their surveillance systems. The document notes that one unnamed US official handed over 200 numbers, including those of the 35 world leaders, none of whom is named. These were immediately "tasked" for monitoring by the NSA. The revelation is set to add to mounting diplomatic tensions between the US and its allies, after the German chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday accused the US of tapping her mobile phone.

Paul Laubacher: Mossad, NSA...Qui a vraiment hacké l'Elysée?
Al-Ahram Online: France feared US hacked president, was Israel involved?
The Guardian: Obama left increasingly isolated as anger builds among key US allies
The Guardian: Angela Merkel bugging claims met with Schadenfreude in Germany
Peter Schwarz: Germany charges US with tapping Chancellor Merkel’s cell phone
PressTV: Spain to summon US ambassador over spying reports
PressTV: Ex-CIA agent: US spied on UNSC members before 9/11 - Video

Les Visible: Most of Europe and- let's face it- most of the world is seriously pissed at serial voyeur, Howdy Doody Obama and his Zio-NAZI handlers. This qualifies as the most epic embarrassment in a century. This damage cannot be undone and the way this impacts on all previous alliances from economic to mutual defense is catastrophic in the long run AND... the heads of all of these countries KNOW who is controlling the US Govt and they also know WHO did 9/11.Since Obama don't know nuthin about nuthin, it stands to reason he wouldn't know anything about 9/11, right? Wrong! He knows. He works for the people who did it.

[Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth - PDF] - Global Warming revisited is a new video series from the Galileo Movement that reviews the current state of the Global Warming (Climate Change) Debate. In this second video we put Al Gore and his movie, An Inconvenient Truth under the spotlight and make some startling findings. For more information please visit Galileo Movement and Conscious. For Malcolm Roberts' short report on CSIRO and detailed appendices on many topics uncovered in the report. The Galileo Movement seeks to foster open and free discussion of major scientific issues, notably the current debate regarding global warming, or as it is now known, climate change.

New film puts Al Gore’s ‘climate reality’ nonsense about climate and carbon tax into perspective

October 22, 2013: Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore’s 24 Hours of Reality: The Cost of Carbon runs from 2 pm EDT, Tuesday October 22, 2013 to 2 pm EDT, Wednesday, October 23, 2013.Mr. Gore bases his activism on several key points, all of which are either wrong or unknown. The red text in the boxes below summarizes positions taken by Mr. Gore. The corrections of ICSC scientists follow each box.

Can one dead man implicate another in a crime? Apparently so, because that is what US investigators in the case of Tamerlan Tsarnayev are now trying to make us believe. Media have recently reported that alleged Boston bomber Tsarnaev, who was shot dead in police pursuit, has been named by prosecutors as participant in a 2011 triple murder. The evidence of that? The alleged confessions made by another Chechen man, whom FBI agents handily gunned down in his Orlando home during a Boston-linked investigation.

Germany sees credible evidence of US monitoring of chancellor as NSA surveillance row intensifies. ● The furore over the scale of American mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden shifted to an incendiary new level on Wednesday evening when Angela Merkel of Germany called Barack Obama to demand explanations over reports that the US National Security Agency was monitoring her mobile phone. Merkel was said by informed sources in Germany to be "livid" over the reports and convinced, on the basis of a German intelligence investigation, that the reports were utterly substantiated. The German news weekly, Der Spiegel, reported an investigation by German intelligence, prompted by research from the magazine, that produced plausible information that Merkel's mobile was targeted by the US eavesdropping agency. The German chancellor found the evidence substantial enough to call the White House and demand clarification. ● The outrage in Berlin came days after President François Hollande of France also called the White House to confront Obama with reports that the NSA was targeting the private phone calls and text messages of millions of French people.

VIDEO: Angela Merkel Calls Obama To Demand NSA Stop Spying On Her Personal Cell Phone
BBC: US ambassador summoned in mobile row
Der Spiegel: Westerwelle bestellt US-Botschafter ein
Der Spiegel: Merkel beschwert sich bei Obama
Deutsche Welle: Press Review: Outrage over NSA eavesdropping
Julian Borger: Merkel: with allies like these, who needs enemies?
LA Times: Germany summons U.S. ambassador over spying reports
New York Times: Anger Growing Among Allies on U.S. Spying
Washington Post: Obama’s phone call with Angela Merkel sounds like it was horribly awkward

Members of the European Parliament (EP) have voted to suspend a security agreement with the United States, amid growing concerns over US spying activities against Europe. ● “The EU should suspend its Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) agreement with the US in response to the US National Security Agency’s alleged tapping of EU citizens’ bank data held by the Belgian company SWIFT,” read a resolution passed by the EP on Wednesday by 280 votes to 254 and 30 abstentions. While the resolution is non-binding, the EP stressed that it “will take account of the European Commission’s response to this demand when considering whether to give its consent to future international agreements.” In 2010, the European Union and the United States agreed on the TFTP, which allowed the US limited access to the global financial database SWIFT as part of an anti-terrorism campaign. The Wednesday vote came, however, after revelations by former American intelligence contractor Edward Snowden that the United States was using the access to spy on Europe instead of using it for counterterrorism purposes.

Russia Today: EU parliament votes to suspend US from financial databank to avoid spying

The National Security Agency monitored nearly 125 billion phone calls in just one month, according to a number of new reports. ● And while the majority of calls reportedly originated in the Middle East, an estimated 3 billion of the calls originated in the U.S. According to a collection of the reports and leaked classified government files, the monitored calls took place throughout the month of January 2013 and tallied to 124.8 billion. Cryptome, a site that posts government and corporate documents, combined the various documents and says the largest share of calls originated in Afghanistan (21.98 billion) and Pakistan (12.76 billion). Elsewhere in the Middle East, billions of calls were monitored in Iraq (7.8 billion), Saudi Arabia (7.8 billion), Egypt (1.9 billion), Iran (1.73 billion) and Jordan (1.6 billion).

Pay gaps within companies widen as top two earners, led by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, earn billion-dollar paychecks. ● Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's co-founder, was America's highest-paid boss in 2012, according to GMI Ratings annual poll of executive compensation, released on Tuesday. Zuckerberg's total compensation topped $2.27bn – more than $6m a day. His base salary was $503,205 but the vast majority of his enormous pay package came from exercising 60m Facebook share options when the company went public last year. ● Richard Kinder, the CEO and chairman of energy firm Kinder Morgan, had a base salary of just $1 in 2012 and received no other bonuses. But he made $1.1bn selling restricted stock. The payout follows a nearly $60m profit from stock in 2011. ● Half of the top 10 are company founders. The rest are appointed executives. The no 3 slot really belongs to Gregory Maffei, who appears twice in the list as CEO of Liberty Media and Liberty Interactive. He reaped a combined $391m from the two posts.

Andre Damon: Top ten American CEOs take home over $100 million each ■ Even as the wages of working people sink, the incomes of the super-rich continue to soar, buttressed by a surging stock market driven by massive cash infusions from the Federal Reserve. ● The widening chasm separating the rich and the super-rich from everyone else is bound up with the decay of the productive infrastructure of American capitalism and the growing role of financial speculation. A recent study published in the American Economic Review found that between 1982 and 2011, the portion of the Forbes 400 who received their wealth from finance rose dramatically—from 4.4 percent to 20 percent. The income of a typical household in the United States has fallen to the lowest level since 1989, while poverty is at the highest level in decades, according to a report issued by the US Census Bureau last month. Since 1999, the median household income has fallen by nearly ten percent, adjusted for inflation. Poverty and social misery are reaching epidemic levels.

Two sheriff’s deputies shot and killed a 13-year-old boy carrying a replica assault rifle -- who they say wouldn’t drop it -- prompting outrage and grief in the typically quiet Northern California city of Santa Rosa.
● The Sonoma County deputies on patrol saw the boy, identified as Andy Lopez, walking in a blue hoodie with what appeared to be a rifle at 3:14 p.m. Tuesday, Sheriff's Lt. Dennis O'Leary said in a statement. The replica gun resembled an AK-47 with a black magazine cartridge and brown butt, according to a photograph the sheriff released. It did not have the traditionally orange tip of a replica firearm. There is a photo of the fake gun and a real AK47 posted below.
● Andy, an eighth-grade student who played trumpet in his school band, was described as a bright and popular student, liked by many in his community, including Lawrence Cook Middle School assistant principal Linsey Gannon. "Andy was a very loved student, a very popular, very handsome young man, very smart and capable," Gannon said Wednesday. "Our community has been rocked by his loss." The boy's mother said she thinks the people who killed her son should be locked up in jail.

ContraCostaTimes: Deputies fatally shoot 13-year-old carrying replica gun

"MJ Rosenberg owes Ali Abunimah an apology for false accusations of anti-Semitism". When you consider that:

● all gentiles are Jew-haters for some magical reason that cannot be explained; and
● anybody who fails to accept with gratitude the entire Zionist plan for a Jewish empire extending from the Nile to the Euphrates is, by definition, an anti-Semite,

you can immediately see that an apology would be ridiculous. The fault lies entirely with those appeasers who bend themselves into pretzel shapes in a a vain attempt to be 'respectable gentiles' worthy of being invited to nice lunches and conferences with the Jews to agree to the Jewish plans. Once you accept the Jewish world-view by bending your language in a way you hope will please your Jewish masters, an impossible task - all the while fooling yourself by claiming that your fine distinctions between 'anti-Semitic' speech and kosher speech are an attempt to avoid bigotry when they are really just your method of expressing fealty to the powerful - it is impossible to stand on your own two feet long enough to be able to put up any resistance to the Jewish plans. It is no wonder the Jews have been so successful in building their empire when all their supposed opponents have accepted their Zionist view of the world. The only apology owing is from Ali Abunimah and his ilk to Gilad Atzmon.

Gilad Atzmon: Here's a critical section from the BDS website (Freedom, justice, equality) as it used to be:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall; [Check it here]

And here's the same critical section from the BDS website (Freedom, justice, equality) as it is now:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967 and dismantling the Wall; [Check it here]

Can you spot the difference? If you'd like to discuss any of this with BDS you can contact them here.

Barry Grey: Reports document US slaughter of civilians in drone strikes ■ A series of reports released over the past several days document the killing of thousands of people, including hundreds of non-combatant civilians, in US drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and other countries. The reports, issued by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on Tuesday and the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions last Friday, expose as lies the claims of President Obama and administration officials that the drone strikes are “surgical” attacks that kill few civilians. ● All three reports suggest that the United States is concealing the extent of the carnage caused by its program of extrajudicial executions and is in violation of international humanitarian law. The reports were timed to coincide with a United Nations General Assembly debate on drone attacks to take place this Friday. ● Amnesty International devoted its report, “Will I be Next?” US Drone Strikes in Pakistan, to the results of an on-the-spot investigation into nine of the 45 reported strikes that occurred in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal agency, which borders Afghanistan, between January 2012 and August 2013.

Reuters: U.S. drone strikes killed Pakistani grandmother, laborers: Amnesty
Drone Victims Recount Horror of Follow-Up Strikes Launched Against People Rescuing Wounded
CNN: In Swat Valley, U.S. drone strikes radicalizing a new generation
Jason Ditz: White House Defends Drone Strikes
David Swanson: A New Kind of War Is Being Legalized

Angela Merkel called Barack Obama today to complain against NSA attempts to eavesdrop on her personal phone. Internal investigations done by german intelligence agencies clearly hinted at US attempts to break into her phone. [Source in German]

GigaOm: U.S. may have bugged German chancellor’s mobile phone

Russia Today: ‘Unacceptable’: Merkel calls Obama over suspicion US monitored her cell phone ● German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called President Obama over the German government's suspicions the US could have tapped her mobile phone. Barack Obama assured Merkel that his country is not monitoring her communications. Earlier, the German government spokesman said that Berlin had information the US National Security Agency (NSA) could have been spying on Merkel. “We swiftly sent a request to our American partners asking for an immediate and comprehensive clarification,” Steffen Seibert said in a statement, Reuters cites.