A civil lawsuit filed Wednesday in Delaware charges that toxic levels of waste dumped at the Arroyo Barril port has made people nearby sick. After years of repeated miscarriages, women whose blood levels show abnormal levels of arsenic are giving birth to babies with cranial deformities, with organs outside their bodies or missing limbs.

An anti-gun group is using the shooting rampage Thursday at Fort Hood as an example in its campaign against pending gun rights legislation, drawing accusations of exploitation from a Republican senator.

Imprisoned American citizen and Michigan resident Ahlam Mohsen to be deported to the US after being arrested in a Palestinian home taken over by Israeli settlers in Occupied East Jerusalem.

America is bankrupt, and it’s growing worse by the day. The U.S. government was technically dissolved by the “Emergency Banking Act” of March 9, 1933. THAT’S A FACT.

If you have any doubt, just look around. Foreclosures and unemployment run rampant. The dollar is dropping so low it could fit under a closed door with a top hat on, yet every day the mainstream media is trying to convince us that the recession is over. Who’s kidding whom? If you take Social Security and Medicare out of our economy, it’s a full-blown depression—a total belly-up depression.

For the past 23 years, Afghanistan has served as a proxy military playing field for different countries, including the former Soviet Union, the United States and Pakistan. Now, after a year of the US-led war on terrorism, a new proxy war has begun in Afghanistan, this time aimed at Pakistan and involving the intelligence networks of India and Israel.

It has been learned from highly placed intelligence sources that India's Reasearch and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Israel's Mossad are collaborating to train several hundred militants to be used in an attempt to destabilize the administration of President General Pervez Musharraf.

The section begins with the observation: "The terrorists came not, as later in the twentieth century, from Palestinian or Islamist groups but from the Zionist extremists of the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang..."

Andrew adds: "In March 1946, B3a [of MI5] received information from a 'reliable' source in Palestine, in 'direct contact' with the Stern Gang', that 'terrorists are now training their members for the purpose of proceeding to England to assasinate members of His Majesty's Government'.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton faced sharp rebukes from Pakistani audiences Friday, including one woman who accused the U.S. of conducting "executions without trial" in aerial drone strikes. Slapping back, Clinton questioned Pakistan's commitment to fighting terrorists.

"Somebody, somewhere in Pakistan must know where these people are," Clinton said in an exchange almost as blunt as her exasperated comments a day earlier that Pakistani officials lacked the will to target al-Qaida.

Israeli tanks have shelled a house in the east of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, leaving at least two people wounded.

Israel dismally fails the requirements of a tolerant pluralistic society, according to a new report from the U.S. State Department.

Despite boasting religious freedom and protection of all holy sites, Israel falls short in tolerance toward minorities, equal treatment of ethnic groups, openness toward various streams within society, and respect for holy and other sites.

"Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell
you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information." --
US official quoted in Carl Cameron's Fox News report on the Israeli spy ring and its connections to 9-11.

The weekly demonstrations against the West Bank separation barrier in the towns of Bil'in and Na'alin, which take place every Friday, reached new heights this week when activists, seeking to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall, knocked a part of the barrier over.

Orlando Police Sgt. Barbara Jones says the gunman is 40-year-old Jason Rodriguez, a man they believe is a former employee of the business at 1000 Legion Place in Orlando.

Investigators say Rodriguez is using silver 2002 Nissan SUV with a Florida tag of D119UX.

It is clear that interest bearing debt to a bank as money is a vicious hoax, but strangely enough, few have been developing a viable alternative.

In response to an "epidemic" amount of mortgage fraud in Florida, federal agents and prosecutors have spent the last nine months building cases against Realtors, brokers and other industry professionals.

The results of their intense efforts were announced by the U.S. Attorney's Office on Wednesday: So far, more than 100 people face charges in the 18-county federal district that includes Orlando.

I'd just like to share the good news that in spite of all the stories that are coming out about the very questionable safety of the swine flu vaccine, that's no longer a cause for concern. Now that the media have told us that there is a shortage, the only important question is "How can I get my hands on it?" And now that the media have admitted that the evil banks have already reserved vaccine for their employees, the next most important question is "How come those nasty banks get priority over me?" We have to thank the media for making it so clear that safety is no longer an issue.

Bailed out insurance giant AIG on Friday announced a profit of 455 million dollars in the third quarter, a massive turnaround from a 24.4 billion dollar loss in the same period last year.

The plague or virus in the Ukraine has 10 times the mortality rate than the normal swine flu.

In the wake of a shooting rampage at Fort Hood by a military psychiatrist of Middle Eastern lineage, the hosts at Fox News have begun suggesting that all Muslims in the military should be treated as potential threats.

What is good for Israel isn't always good for the US. Active duty military who try to make their own foreign policy are not just total morons but are in violation of a number of laws. They are technically at war with the United States of America. If it is necessary for veterans to take up weapons to fight against members of our military who are part of an insurrection run by a foreign power, tell me where to sign up.

Cone acknowledged that it was "counterintuitive" that a single shooter could hit so many people, but he said the massacre occurred in "close quarters.

"With ricochet fire, he was able to injure that number of people," Cone said.

Not that we can believe the reported number of jobs created, but let's assume for the sake of argument that the figures provided by the administration are correct.

The newspaper, citing what it describes as "previously unpublished documentation" from an International Atomic Energy Agency compiled dossier, said Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of a "two-point implosion" device.

Back in May, an Army Sgt. stationed in Iraq and suffering from PTSD shot and killed five of his fellow soldiers. That man's name - John Russell - was Anglo Saxon. Nobody speculated on the role of his religion in the killing. In this instance, as an article in the New York Times makes clear, Hasan, who joined the military out of patriotism, faced harassment for being Muslim and wanted out, even pursuing a failed legal route to early discharge.

Gold futures barreled to a new record high above $1,100 an ounce on Friday, as news that the U.S. unemployment rate topped 10.2% in October boosted expectations the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates near zero well into next year, pressuring the dollar.

A second military official said Hasan's family has Palestinian roots.

Last week I was disinvited from my second Jewish conference in two months for poems I’d written in solidarity with Palestinians, poems that make an unapologetic call for justice. Subsequently, I and the poet I was to read with at the J Street conference, wrote a response to being censored. People from all over the country wrote to us supporting free speech, supporting art as a tool for change, supporting real talk about the degradation of Palestinians, and people wrote to let us know they disagreed. Some more thoughtfully than others.

The spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Banks, says two shooters were apparently involved. There is no word yet on who they were, nor on identities of the dead.

Banks says the second incident took place at a theater on the sprawling base.

The public is rapidly losing confidence that the war in Afghanistan can be won, after the killing of five soldiers by a rogue Afghan policeman, a new poll showed Thursday.

So consider the hypocrisy. On October 27, Rep. Connie Mack (Rep. FL) introduced HR 872: Calling for the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to be designated a state sponsor of terrorism for its support of Iran, Hezbollah, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP). Its sole co-sponsor was Rep. Ron Klein (Dem. FL).

Question: How many countries do you have to be at war with to be disqualified from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?

Answer: Five. Barack Obama has waged war against only Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. He's holding off on Iran until he actually gets the prize.

Shortly before the massacre, Hasan was caught on camera shopping at the convenience store located on the army base – laughing and joking. Is this the behavior of a man psychologically readying himself for the high-intensity horror of gunning down dozens of his colleagues, or someone unaware of what was to follow?

We learn that Hasan “Showed no signs of worry or stress when he stopped at 7-Eleven for his daily breakfast of hash browns, said Jeannie Strickland, the store’s manager.” ” He came in (Thursday) morning just like normal,” she said, “nothing weird, nothing out of the ordinary.”

A 575-page blistering report by Justice Richard Goldstone detailing war crimes in Gaza last December is refusing to die despite an aggressive Israeli smear campaign to kill it.

The report, which was favorably voted by the 47-member Human Rights Council in Geneva last month, received overwhelming support Thursday in the 192-member General Assembly.

The US government is now so totally under the thumbs of organized interest groups that “our” government can no longer respond to the concerns of the American people who elect the president and the members of the House and Senate.

Voters will vent their frustrations over their impotence on the president, which implies a future of one-term presidents. Soon our presidents will be as ineffective as Roman emperors in the final days of that empire.

Colorado State University conducted tests with carnations and other flowers in controlled CO2 atmospheres ranging from 200 to 550 ppm. The higher CO2 concentrations significantly increased the rate of formation of dry plant matter, total flower yield and market value.

Incredibly, it appears that Maj. Malik Nidal Hasan, the alleged shooter in the massacre that resulted in at least 12 dead and 31 wounded at Fort Hood today, served on the Homeland Security Policy Institute’s presidential transition task force between April 2008 and January 2009 when Barack Obama was inaugurated as the nation’s 44th president.

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon has said that Israel is not bluffing in its threats to take military action against Iran's contentious nuclear program, in remarks broadcast Friday on Sky News.

"The one who's bluffing is Iran, which is trying to play with cards they don't have," Ayalon told the British station. "All the bravado that we see and the testing and the very dangerous and harsh rhetoric is hiding a lot of weaknesses."

While some mainstream media outlets still refuse to consider the possibility that the outbreak in Ukraine is anything other than the H1N1 strain that is found in other areas of the world, the reality is that the hemorrhagic nature of the respiratory disease in Ukraine has many health experts speculating either that the H1N1 swine flu virus has mutated in that region or that what is happening in Ukraine is an outbreak of pneumonic plague.'

In his landmark speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, on June 4, President Obama vowed to adopt a fair approach toward the Arab-Israel conflict. He criticized the Israeli policy of settlement expansion and repression against Palestinians, and promised to get Israel to freeze all settlement activities in the West Bank and Al-Quds (East Jerusalem) in order to facilitate the resumption of a more genuine peace process.

However, six months later, the Obama Administration’s approach toward the enduring Palestinian crisis seems more or less a mere re-cloning of George Bush’s policies.

Israel’s national paranoia that the international community is bent on holding Israel to a higher standard than the rest of the world has provided an environment where Israel acts with impunity in full view of the entire global community.

The state-controlled Fannie Mae reported a net loss of $US18.9 billion ($A20.74 billion) in the third quarter on Thursday, 35 per cent smaller than a year ago but sharply higher than its $US14.8 billion ($A16.24 billion) loss in the second quarter.

The “public option” in the president's health care bill is like the “clean” in clean coal. One harnesses the awesome power of the word clean and attaches it to coal, which is anything but. Likewise Democrats deploy the rhetorical power of the words “public” as in “everybody in, nobody out” and “option” as in choice to describe an arrangement will be neither public or for most, an available option.

This reflexive attitude that Israel can do no wrong is morally bankrupt and exceedingly unhelpful in resolving, in a just manner, the conflict between Israel and Palestinians.

Dennis Kucinich had it right when he denounced the House majority for going along with this. His statement is so powerful that I’m excerpting it at length here.

“Today we journey from Operation Cast Lead to Operation Cast Doubt,” he said on the House floor on Tuesday. “Almost as serious as committing war crimes is covering up war crimes, pretending that war crimes were never committed and did not exist.

Pakistan has lost control of rogue military and intelligence officers, who are now aiding the militants, and it might be too late to sanitize the Army, a former French judge has said in his new book.

"The situation in Pakistan is among the most worrisome...the central government has lost control of certain elements of the Army and the ISI," Jean-Louis Bruguiere, an investigative French Magistrate, said.

President Hugo Chavez's government is sending 15,000 soldiers to the border with Colombia, saying the military buildup is needed to increase security, combat drug trafficking and root out paramilitary groups.

U.N. inspectors found "nothing to be worried about" in a first look at a previously secret uranium enrichment site in Iran last month, the International Atomic Energy chief said in remarks published Thursday.

At a Sep. 25 briefing on the site, senior administration officials refused to provide any specific information to back up the claim that construction had begun before the March 2007 Iranian withdrawal from an agreement requiring that it inform the IAEA immediately of any decision to build a nuclear facility.

Meanwhile, a new photo analysis by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) of the Qom site in 2004 and 2005 suggests it was not dedicated to building a uranium enrichment facility at that time.

"I think it's very clear if we succeed on that, it would open the way, finally, to a new era, when Iran and the US... can work together," ElBaradei said at the Council on Foreign Relations, listing Iraq and Afghanistan as two areas where Iran could play a hugely constructive role.

However, ElBaradei warned this optimistic scenario depended on Iran signing up to the proposed deal and on Western powers sticking to diplomatic dialogue.

If Israel were to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities that would "turn the Middle East into a ball of fire," he cautioned.

The only change the Fed did signal? That it’ll buy up to $175 billion in so-called “agency” debt, slightly below its previous target of $200 billion. But it’s still going to buy $1.25 trillion in mortgage-backed securities.

And it’s not buying fewer bonds issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because it suddenly realized the folly of “monetizing” U.S. debt obligations …

… it’s because of the “limited availability of agency debt” to buy. In other words, the Fed is afraid it’s cornering and distorting the market … which it is!

A global treaty to fight climate change will be postponed by at least six months and possibly a year or more, senior negotiators and politicians conceded today.

In a day of gloomy statements, the world's key industrialised nations said they had abandoned hope of a legally binding treaty at the Copenhagen summit next month and had begun to plan only for a meeting of world leaders.

The stark statements follow weeks of pessimism and represent a significant downgrading of the summit's goal.

Russia may decide to use military forces abroad only in exceptional circumstances to protect its citizens, said President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday.

Russia's State Duma, the lower house, in late October voted unanimously to pass a bill which the Kremlin said would lay the legal foundation for using troops abroad to prevent aggression by other states and to protect Russian citizens on foreign soil.

I'll take considerable heat for my opinion on this, since the IRS encourages electronic filing, as do many accountants. In fact, the IRS boasts that two out of three 2008 returns were filed electronically. Clearly, electronic filing is the thing of the future and will be required for every return someday soon.

Until then, I suggest filing the old fashioned way, particularly if you're worried about an audit. Why? Paper filing means it's more work for the IRS to access all the information in your return. Your duty as a taxpayer is to be truthful and accurate, but you don't have to make it easy for the IRS.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using “open source intelligence” – information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

Imam Faizul Khan says he knew Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan for more than 10 years. They first met at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring.

Kahn says Hasan was quiet and reserved. They mostly discussed religious matters, but Khan says Hasan never seemed controversial. They rarely discussed politics.

Among the "more sinister aspects" that Pheneger suggested were that Hasan is a "lone wolf" who has sympathy for Islamic militancy and "decided to go act on his own to do some damage" or that he could have "consciously been placed as a plant in the U.S. Army."

All of those twentysomethings who voted for Barack Obama last year are about to experience the change they haven't been waiting for: the return of income tax bracket creep. Buried in Nancy Pelosi's health-care bill is a provision that will partially repeal tax indexing for inflation, meaning that as their earnings rise over a lifetime these youngsters can look forward to paying higher rates even if their income gains aren't real.

Twenty-five top recipients of government bailout funds spent more than $71 million on lobbying in the year since they were rescued, an extensive review of federal lobbying records by the Huffington Post reveals.

A year after taxpayers forked over $700 billion to help rescue the biggest names in banking, insurance and the automotive industry, those same institutions are using portions of the cash to influence legislation with a direct impact on taxpayers.

We no longer worry about World War III. Our future nuclear exchanges will be skirmishes, yes, but the Internet is far more dangerous than anyone ever realized. It becomes something that eats the world defensively.

It’s kind of amazing that with all the uproar over the Galleon business, nobody is making much hay over the recent revelations about the AIG bailouts, which make former Goldman chief and former New York Fed chairman Stephen Friedman look every bit as guilty of insider machinations as Raj Rajaratnam of the Galleon fund.

Lawyers are paid to keep secrets. But like anyone else, the more valuable the information they're sitting on, the more likely they are to welsh on their promise of confidentiality and sell privileged information to the highest bidder.

As a case in point, two of the 14 defendants arrested in the government's latest Galleon Group-related insider trading bust are New York lawyers who allegedly accepted cash to funnel information on three 2007 corporate acquisitions to a one-time employee of the hedge fund.

The environmental charity said not only does the current system of trading permits fail to tackle climate change, it is also financially dangerous. Currently only Europe has an emissions trading scheme, where companies can buy and sell permits giving them the right to pollute the atmosphere with carbon dioxide.

Sarah-Jane Clifton, author of the report, said the growth of a secondary market in carbon trading involving “financial speculators and complex financial products, carries a risk that carbon trading will develop into a speculative commodity bubble”.

Shouting "Kill the bill" and "You're fired!" thousands of sign-waving demonstrators thronged the grounds of the US Capitol Thursday to oppose landmark health care legislation put forward by Democrats.

Under banners deriding "Obamacare" as a step towards socialist medicine and proclaiming "Give me liberty, not debt," protesters loudly cheered leading Republican legislators who stood on the Capitol steps.

The Republicans vowed to try and shoot down the bill aimed at providing care to millions of uninsured but slammed by conservatives as fiscal recklessness.

According to the U.S. Capitol Police, officers arrested nine protesters in Sen. Joe Lieberman’s office just after 10 a.m. today inside the Hart Senate Office Building.

“The demonstrators insisted on disrupting office operations after they rejected repeated offers for meetings with both the senator’s chief of staff and legislative director to discuss their concerns,” Marshall Wittmann, a Lieberman spokesman, said in a statement. “After rejecting these meeting offers, refusing to heed warnings from the Capitol Hill police and continuing the disruption, some of the demonstrators were removed by the police.”

In a statement, Capitol Police said the nine were arrested without incident and there have been no other arrests today.

In the video below Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) is asked to start the rally by providing an introduction and reciting the pledge. Rep. Akin stated that it is altogether fitting and proper to say the pledge and that it would infuriate liberals as well. Liberals seem not to mind that the pledge was recited but Think Progress has made an issue out of the fact that "indivisible" was taken out of the pledge by Rep. Akin. The removal of "indivisible" is especially concerning for some since some conservatives have actually advocated secession as the Obama agenda gets passed.

Like a horror movie monster, the former vice-president keeps coming back to sink his teeth into Obama's foreign policy