Iran "not close" to nuclear weapons: Gates

Truthy. - Ed.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran is not close to having a nuclear weapon, which gives the United States and others time to try to persuade Tehran to abandon its suspected atomic arms program, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday.

"They're not close to a stockpile, they're not close to a weapon at this point, and so there is some time," Gates said on NBC television's "Meet The Press."

Read more @ Reuters

Russian president to face questions over US letter

Russia's president has his first chance to comment on reports he received a secret letter from President Barack Obama seeking help to disarm Iran at a news conference Tuesday wrapping up a two-day visit to Spain.

Read more @ International Herald Tribune

British PM in US for talks with Obama

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown meets at the White House Tuesday with U.S. President Barack Obama for talks on fighting the world economic crisis.

Mr. Brown has said he hopes to gain new momentum for what he calls the "special relationship" between Britain and the United States.

Read more @ VOA News

Clinton voices support for Israel

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has said that Washington is committed to Israel's security and demanded an end to Palestinian rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

Read more @ Al Jazeera

Israel to present Clinton with 'red lines' on talks with Iran

American blogger to present Israel with 'fuck off' lines for everything they do. - Ed.

Israel plans to present U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with a series of "red lines" it wants Washington to incorporate into its planned dialogue with Tehran about Iran's nuclear program.

Clinton arrived in Israel Monday night and will meet with various Israeli officials Tuesday.

Read more @ Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1068177.html

The Obama Admin Double Deals on Israel

Opinion: Anne Bayefsky

Barack Obama just added double-dealing to his foreign policy repertoire. On Friday, administration officials led many Jewish leaders to believe that the president had decided to boycott the United Nation's "anti-racism" conference known as Durban II. At the same time, however, human rights organizations were being led to believe that the administration was not pulling out and was looking for a way to "re-engage."

Read more @ Forbes

Focus on Fusion Centers

The Department of Homeland Security has produced a new “Concept of Operations” (pdf) to define how the Department will support and oversee the network of dozens of “fusion centers” that have been established around the country. The fusion centers are intended to promote a collaborative approach among federal, state and local authorities to combating terrorism and criminal activity.

Read more @ Secrecy News

Wikileaks cracks NATO's master narrative for Afghanistan

Wikileaks has cracked the encryption to a key document relating to the war in Afghanistan. The document, titled "NATO in Afghanistan: Master Narrative", details the "story" NATO representatives are to give to, and to avoid giving to, journalists.

Read more @ SOS

Reminder: 1 year ago: Cellular carrier giving FBI unfettered access

A security analyst has revealed that a major mobile telecommunications carrier has a secret backdoor which provides an undisclosed third party with unfettered access to the network, including the content of calls. Evidence suggests that the recipient of that data is the FBI.

Read more @ arstechnica

Trigger Fingers

MI5 Alert on Bank Riots

TOP secret contingency plans have been drawn up to counter the threat posed by a “summer of discontent” in Britain.

The “double-whammy” of the worst economic crisis in living memory and a motley crew of political extremists determined to stir up civil disorder has led to the ­extraordinary step of the Army being put on ­standby.

Read more @ Daily Express

Experts fight H5N1 bird flu using smallpox vaccine

money quote:

While H5N1 rarely infects people, experts fear [or perhaps hope????] it could mutate into a form that people could easily pass to one another, sparking a pandemic that could kill tens of millions and topple the global economy.

Read more @ Reuters

US outreach to Iran could aid IAEA probe

By Mark Heinrich and Sylvia Westall

VIENNA (Reuters) - A new U.S. readiness to engage Iran could help resolve suspicions about its nuclear work but Tehran must do more to "unblock this stalemated situation," the U.N. nuclear watchdog chief said on Monday. Mohamed ElBaradei made the remarks in an address kicking off a week-long meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board of governors in Vienna, the first since U.S. President Barack Obama took office on January 20.

Read more @ Reuters

Sen Whitehouse prepares the nation for torture horrors

Senator Whitehouse is on both the Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee. Thus he perhaps more than anyone else has access to ALL of the available information on the Bush Torture Network. Including the remaining pictures and videotapes from Abu Ghraib that were concealed from the public view. Pictures and videotapes that even Rumsfeld was shocked by, even though, as has become apparent since, he authorized them….or at least the programs that led to them.. Before he was implicated he had this to say…

Read more @ There Are No Sunglasses

The Zionist Nexus linking 9/11 and the Financial Crisis

by Christopher Bollyn

The current financial crisis, like 9-11, did not just fall out of the sky. Rather, both 9-11 and the financial melt-down are the results of decades of planning and preparation. President Clinton's denial of responsibility for the current economic crisis notwithstanding, it was his administration, indeed, his special adviser, the Israeli son-of-a-terrorist Rahm Emanuel, who took credit for single-handedly pushing the economically treasonous NAFTA bill through Congress. That a president from the pro-labor Democrat party would support a bill designed to destroy the jobs of millions of working Americans as it devastated the U.S. manufacturing sector is something that the mainstream media has never addressed.

Read more @ Kenny's Sideshow

Interpol issues arrest warrants for 15 top Israeli officials

Interpol begins studying Iran's request for the arrest of 15 senior Israeli officials over war crimes committed during the Gaza offensive.

At a news briefing on Sunday, Tehran's Public Prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, said that Iran had referred the case to the International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO or Interpol), drawing on the organization's charter and Israel's violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Read more @ Press TV

Hamas demands role in Gaza reconstruction

GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas said Monday the West's boycott of the Islamist group would undercut international reconstruction efforts in the Gaza Strip, a cautionary message coinciding with an international donors' conference in Egypt.

Western powers say they will not deal with Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union, unless the group renounced violence and recognized Israel.

Read more @ Reuters

US govt gives more of our money to big fat corrupt loser AIG

"Meaningful progress?" I'll show you meaningful progress. Write the value of your betting slips to zero, close your doors and go to jail. That would be meaningful progress. - Ed.

American International Group Inc. (AIG) reached a new deal with the U.S. government for continued support for its restructuring as the insurance giant's posted a record quarterly loss on $64.1 billion in write-downs and charges.

AIG's shares were recently up 7.6% at 45 cents in premarket trading. The stock is off 73% so far this year.

Chief Executive Edward M. Liddy said Monday that the company has made " meaningful progress" in addressing its liquidity issues, but it's taking more steps to preserve the value of its business amid the economic and capital-market turmoil.

Read more @ CNNMoney

As the crisis bites, splits open up in Europe

Good. Rats in a sack. Hopefully they bite each other to death. - Ed.

Meeting in Brussels for a long Sunday lunch, European Union leaders were supposed to clear the air after weeks of jibes, sneers and slurs over who is to blame for the economic crisis. But after a three-hour meal of goat cheese, beef stew and apple crumble, they emerged as ratty as ever, barely concealing their long-standing gripes and graphically revealing how far the E.U. is from any coordinated response to the downturn.

Read more @ TIME (of all places)

The Secret Government

>A small number of extremely wealthy people, descendants of wealthy families in Europe and the U.S, own a major part of the material wealth of the world. This power is concentrated in London which is the centre of the world banking system. The control they exercise is kept within the original families and passed down from generation to generation. They are highly organised, operating in secret through a web of 'private' organisations.

This group is known as the Global Elite.

Their wealth is accumulating on a compound basis. They determine the course of history, through virtual control of the world economy.

Read more @ Hidden Mysteries

Kill the Messenger: Sibel Edmunds

Most Americans have never heard of Sibel Edmonds, and if the U.S. government has its way, they never will. The former FBI translator turned whistleblower tells a chilling story of corruption at Washington’s highest levels—sale of nuclear secrets, shielding of terrorist suspects, illegal arms transfers, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, espionage….

Read more @ Information Clearinghouse

Bloggers are not journalists, according to Senate bill

But...but...journalists are not journalists either? - Ed.

The question of what makes a journalist is due for yet another round of debate, now that Congress is weighing two competing versions of a federal shield law for reporters.

Last Friday, the Senate introduced its own version of the Free Flow of Information Act, a follow-up to the House’s action two days before. Both versions would provide new — if limited — protection against subpoenas for journalists, and both version contain a range of exceptions. Both bills were introduced in 2007 as well, with the House version passing overwhelmingly despite a veto threat. The Senate bill was passed easily out of committee only to die without a vote of the full chamber as the session ran out of time. (For details on the previous bills, see previous CMLP posts here, here, here, and here.)

Read more @ Infowars