'US helped Pol Pot's rise to power'

The Khmer Rouge's most notorious prison chief told a Cambodia war crimes court today US policies in the 1970s contributed to the rise of Pol Pot's genocidal regime.

Kaing Guek Eav, or 'Duch,' the brutal director of the infamous torture centre S-21 said he believed the Khmer Rouge regime would have died out had the US not supported the right wing military government that removed Prince Norodom Sihanouk from power in a 1970 coup.

Duch, who is on trial charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes, made the claims as part of a detailed testimony of his own journey from maths teacher to fanatical communist revolutionary.

Earlier, he told the UN backed tribunal that he had 'sacrified everything' to the revolution, but had realised early on that it would end in 'disaster'.

During the four years the Khmer rouge were in power from 1975 - 1979, over 1.7 million Cambodians - nearly a quarter of the population - died from starvation, disease and execution. Between 1977 and 1979 Duch himself presided over the deaths of up to 17000 victims who were brought to S-21 to be interrogated and murdered.

Last week, he took the stand to express his remorse at the atrocities committed under his command. As his trial entered its second week he took the stand again, this time to desribe his part in the rise of the Khmer Rouge. More

The Cambodia Controversy

Pol Pot's activities in exile had been secretly financed by the United States since January 1980. The extent of this aid 85 million dollars between 1980 and 1986 was shown by a letter to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations..." (John Pilger)

CBS Covers Torture in Iran Exactly As If Reporting from a Nation Outraged By the Very Idea

Watch CBS Videos Online

New Report: Generals Knew About Guantanamo Torture, Lied to Congress

Yet more information is trickling out on the BushCo torture regime. Via Jeralyn, the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research (the watchdogs on the bogus released-prisoners-turned-terrorist numbers) have issued a new report [pdf] on the FBI and DoD role in torture at Guantanamo.

From the press release:

Are Republicans Blackmailing Obama?
If the president releases the Bush torture memos, Republicans are promising to “go nuclear” and filibuster his legal appointments. Scott Horton reports on a serious threat to Obama’s transparency. More

Famed Gitmo Lawyer Facing Six Months in Prison For Writing Letter to Obama Detailing Torture of Client

Clive Stafford Smith is accused of 'unprofessional conduct' by Pentagon officials who monitor communication between Gitmo prisoners and their lawyers.

Lawyers for Binyam Mohamed face the incredible prospect of a six-month jail sentence in America after writing a letter to President Obama detailing their client's allegations of torture by U.S. agents.

The privilege review team -- officials from the U.S. Department of Defense who monitor and censor communication between Guantnamo prisoners and their lawyers -- have previously been accused of using their powers to suppress evidence of the abuse and mistreatment of detainees.

Clive Stafford Smith, director of legal charity Reprieve, and his colleague Ahmed Ghappour have been summoned to appear before a Washington court on May 11 after a complaint was made by the privilege review team.

Stafford Smith had written to the president after judges in the UK ruled against the release of U.S. evidence detailing Mohamed's alleged torture at Guantnamo. The letter asked the president to reconsider the U.S. position and urged him to release the evidence into the public domain. He attached a memo summarizing the case because his US security clearance gives him access to the classified material. In order to comply with classification guidelines, the memo did not identify individual officers by name or specify locations of the abuse. More

War Criminal to be crowned first 'President of EU'

Mass Murderer Tony Bliar has emerged as the leading candidate to become the first permanent president of the European Union after Gordon Brown gave his grudging blessing to the plan.

The former prime minister has stepped up his campaign for the job, which he wants to use to build a bridge between Europe and the new Obama administration.

His return to the global stage would be a shock to his critics over the Iraq war and dismay many in Europe.

But The Independent on Sunday has learnt that Mr Brown has accepted that his old rival should be in pole position for the appointment, on the basis that Britain needs to have a key figure in the architecture of the "new world order".

A senior British official said: "He [Brown] will have to swallow hard to sit down in meetings once again with Blair. But he accepts that there needs to be someone from the UK in the new global architecture. There is no opposition to the plan. Things have moved on, people have moved on." More

Meme Supreme: Predictive Programming In Action

Is the new world order real? You can bet your bottom dollar it is! We are literally just a few short years away from the completion of the plan to centralize global power to control the affairs of the whole planet, all from under one roof that is filled with unelected, totalitarian bureaucrats. What is wrong with that, you may rightfully ask? Well, on the face of it, a global government sounds like a reasonable idea. But it can ONLY work in the favor of the people of this planet if...and ONLY if... the people who control the new world order are nothing less than angels not mass murderers

Dubai asks Rothschild for $10bn

Dubai on Thursday said it had appointed Rothschild to advise the government on the creation of a financial support fund for state-linked entities worth at least $10bn.

Dubai Pyramid

The government has borrowed $10bn from the United Arab Emirates central bank as part of a broader $20bn bond programme and plans to use the cash to help companies owned or linked to the government refinance debts and settle bills.

The fund will provide financial support to these companies while "facilitating reforms ... to protect the long-term viability of these entities," the government's department of finance said in a statement.

"The establishment of the fund will be an important step towards bringing greater stability and confidence to the revised business plans of our state-affiliated entities, especially in the real estate sector," said Nasser al-Shaikh, director-general of the department of finance.

State-linked entities are due to refinance billions of dollars of loans this year, while many are also facing problems in paying contractors as the economy is affected by a real estate crash and lower global demand owing to the worldwide downturn.

Mr Shaikh said the investment bank would help the government put in place a qualification and oversight process for the fund. More

Dubai police make first arrests over warlord murder

G20: A citizen’s guide

What was decided about the International Monetary Fund (IMF)?

The IMF is to receive an extra £500bn in funding, up from its current £250bn budget. This is to be lent to poor countries that are among the worst hit by the financial meltdown. G20 leaders also agreed to a $250bn Special Drawing Rights package, which is essentially cash that can be pumped into the world's economy. There was also a broad agreement to reform the IMF as well as the World Bank, though this was light on specifics.

Will the action on the IMF work?

Central and Eastern European nations will certainly hope so. Ukraine, Hungary and Latvia have already gone begging to the IMF for financial aid. Poorer countries should feel reassured by the scale of the funds now available to the IMF. However, some of the promises had actually been made before, such as the commitments from the European Union and Japan to put $100bn each into the IMF, making the huge figures somewhat deceptive. More

DPRK says successfully launches satellite

Pyongyang has successfully launched a rocket carrying a communications satellite Sunday, official media reported.

Seoul Says Launch 'Fails'

China Calls For Restraint

Full Text of KCNA Report

Japan Protests

US: Launch Is 'Provocative'

Rocket Passes Over Japan

US terror attack kills 13 in Pakistan

A pilotless US drone aircraft fired a missile in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing 13 people including some foreign militants, security officials and residents said.

Barack Obama goes ahead with missile defence shield despite disarmament BS

Obama talks peace and plans for wars. The USSA would continue to develop a missile defence shield until Iran abandoned its nuclear ambitions, President Barack Obama said in the Czech Republic.

"As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defence system that is cost-effective and proven," he told a crowd of about 20,000 gathered in Hradcany Square, next to Prague Castle.

"Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran's neighbours and our allies."

He hailed the "courageous" Czech Republic and Poland for "agreeing to host a defence against these missiles". Russia is strongly opposed to radar stations for a missile defence shield being established in countries that it still regarded as within its sphere of influence.

But Mr Obama also spoke of the potential for a rapprochement with Iran that would remove the need for such a system. More

America 'to slash military spending'?

Wall Street's ownership of USSA government

White House officials yesterday released their personal financial disclosure forms, and included in the millions of dollars which top Obama economics adviser Larry Summers made from Wall Street in 2008 is this detail:

Lawrence H. Summers, one of President Obama's top economic advisers, collected roughly $5.2 million in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw over the past year and was paid more than $2.7 million in speaking fees by several troubled Wall Street firms and other organizations. . . .

Financial institutions including JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch paid Summers for speaking appearances in 2008. Fees ranged from $45,000 for a Nov. 12 Merrill Lynch appearance to $135,000 for an April 16 visit to Goldman Sachs, according to his disclosure form.

That's $135,000 paid by Goldman Sachs to Summers -- for a one-day visit. And the payment was made at a time -- in April, 2008 -- when everyone assumed that the next President would either be Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton and that Larry Summers would therefore become exactly what he now is: the most influential financial official in the U.S. Government (and the $45,000 Merrill Lynch payment came 8 days after Obama's election). More

OBAMA ENDORSES SOROS PLAN TO LOOT AMERICA

At the G 20 summit in London, President Barack Obama won rave reviews from reporters, many of whom clamored like school kids for the chance to ask him a question at his news conference, but the official conference document proves that plans are being made for what can only be described as the further looting of American taxpayers in order to feed unaccountable and corrupt global entities.

This is not “global cooperation,” as so many in the media described it, but a massive new expansion of the power and authority of international agencies and institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

By embracing the “global plan for recovery and reform,” which is how it was officially described, Obama explicitly endorsed International Monetary Fund (IMF) surveillance of the U.S. economy, creation of a global “Financial Stability Board,” the expanded use of a new global currency called Special Drawing Rights, a new global warming treaty, and costly fulfillment of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This is in addition to the explicit and reported commitment of over $1 trillion in additional taxpayer money to the IMF and the World Bank.

The Special Drawing Rights proposal, which is a vehicle for further U.S. foreign aid to the rest of the world, was the brainchild of billionaire George Soros, who told CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo that the G 20 conference was a “success.” More

The global crisis and a new world order

The G20 meeting is unlikely to produce a ‘grand bargain' to rescue the world economy, but will begin to reshape global politics.

For Europe, the present order is fading fast and the old road is rapidly ageing. Time, as Bob Dylan put it, to get out of the way of those building the new road, “for the times they are a-changing”.

The collapse of communism in 1989 signalled the emergence of a new order in the balance of international power also dominated by Washington. Only 20 years later, the first truly global economic crisis in history is re-shaping that post-communist order, too. Today's (2 April) meeting in London of the leaders of the G20 most influential advanced and emerging market economies begins to lay the foundations for the new governance structures that this brave new world will need.

Despite earlier pre-summit hype, there will, however, be no ‘grand bargains' on how to rescue the global economy from an even deeper recession than the one that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is already predicting. There will be no ‘new Bretton Woods', the misguided slogan dreamed up by a hubristic Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, and echoed by Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, which raised unreal expectations about the London summit that are now being doused under the ice-cold waters of political necessity.

The scrupulously prepared 1944 Bretton Woods conference was utterly dominated by the victors of the Second World War, the UK and the US. It did indeed rewrite the rules of global monetary governance, but on the victors' terms. Only a nanosecond's intelligent thought is required to see that what is happening in London this week is totally different. More

Media Ignores Peaceful Protests at G-20

Time for a Grand Inquest on the Financial Crisis

Global Zero leaders call Obama and Medvedev joint statement an historic commitment to eliminating all nuclear weapons worldwide

Warheads no longer keep us safe. Six security experts urge America and Russia to act today

When presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev meet today for the first time, they will have an historic opportunity to confront the most urgent security threat to our world: the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the risk of nuclear terrorism. The two leaders can move beyond traditional arms control and, in a bold move, set the world on a course towards the total elimination of all nuclear weapons - global zero.

In London, they should agree that the US and the Russian Federation will begin work immediately to achieve an accord for deep reductions in their arsenals and then lead a longer-term effort with other nuclear powers to eliminate all nuclear weapons worldwide through phased and verified reductions.

Today nine countries have more than 23,000 nuclear weapons, many of which are programmed to launch in minutes. A nuclear conflict - or accident - could cause millions to die in a flash and create an environmental catastrophe that would last for generations.

Terrorist groups have been trying to buy, build or steal nuclear weapons, and in the last two decades there have been at least 25 instances of nuclear explosive materials being lost or stolen. If terrorists were to get their hands on a bomb and explode it in a big city, hundreds of thousands of people would die instantly. More

Glenn Beck: I was wrong. We’re not marching to socialism, we’re marching toward fascism.

For almost a year, Glenn Beck has been warning with increasing panic that America is headed toward socialism. Tonight, he issued a correction: “They” are not marching the United States toward socialism, Beck explained, but actually fascism:

It all adds up to me, having to admit that I was wrong. Our government is not marching down the road towards communism or socialism. … But now I have to tell you that they’re not marching us that direction. They’re marching us to a non-violent fascism. Or to put it another way, they’re marching us to 1984. Big Brother. … Like it or not, fascism is on the rise.

Though Beck claimed he didn’t mean “Adolf Hitler kind of fascism” and that he was talking about “fascism with a happy face,” he illustrated his point with more than a minute’s worth of Nazi footage, played dramatically on the full screen behind him. Watch it:

N.Korea threatens to down US spy planes

North Korea threatened on Wednesday to shoot down any US spy planes violating its airspace to monitor an imminent rocket launch, as a think-tank cautioned that any international over-reaction to the event could spark a war.

The North's warning on state radio followed its accusations Tuesday that US planes had stepped up flights over the northeast where the Musudan-ri missile site is located.

The North has announced it will launch a communications satellite some time between April 4-8.

The United States, South Korea and Japan call this a pretext for a "provocative" test of a long-range ballistic missile in violation of UN resolutions. They say they will report the launch to the Security Council.

On Wednesday the North's Korean Central Broadcasting Station denounced US spy planes for monitoring preparations.

"Should the US imperialist racketeers dare to intrude espionage planes into our territorial sky, interfering with our preparations for a satellite launch for peaceful purposes, our revolutionary forces will shoot them down unsparingly," it said. More

G20 Protesters Storm Bank And Clash With Cops

Riot police had to be sent in after G20 demonstrators attacked a uniformed officer and stormed a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland in central London.

Protesters smashed windows at the RBS building and clambered inside.

Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt said he had seen police CCTV pictures of the demonstrators removing equipment and starting a small fire.

Police on foot backed up by a line of mounted officers lined up outside the branch as smoke bombs were thrown by a baying crowd.

Earlier, a protester hit an officer with a large pole during large-scale protests ahead of the G20 summit of world leaders.

Anger at bankers' role in the global economic downturn and frustration at slow progress in tackling climate change prompted thousands to take to the streets in the capital.

Four protest marches converged on the Bank of England after setting off along separate routes as helicopters circled overhead.

City workers leaned out of windows and waved £10 notes at demonstrators on the streets below, who responded with jeers and shouts. More

G20 rioters 'will be tracked down'

Rupert Murdoch Fox fascist O'Reilly compares G20 protesters to child molesters.

Trillions for Wall St., poverty for workers

There is nothing like the smell of a trillion-dollar bonanza to send the stock market through the roof. Wall Street has struck it rich with the Obama administration’s blatantly pro-banker, pro-investor program to revive the capitalist economy.

The so-called Public-Private Investment Plan, crafted and presented by Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, intends to make a trillion dollars available to the biggest banks, hedge funds, private equity funds and other investors, supposedly to get the banks to lend money to businesses and consumers again.

The essence of the plan has two sides to it. First, bribe hedge funds, private equity funds and others in the shadow banking system who have been sitting on the sidelines with trillions of dollars—by offering them government money and loan guarantees to purchase bad bank assets. Second, bribe the banks to sell investors these bad loans by offering to pay far more than they are worth.

So the rich get a deal from the Treasury both ways.

The banks are holding onto $2 trillion in bad loans resulting from their speculation on the great housing and real estate bubble. They don’t want to sell these bad loans at anywhere near their vastly reduced worth because they would have to declare them as big losses. Up to now they have been refusing to sell and have been holding out for more.

Earth population 'exceeds limits'

There are already too many people living on Planet Earth, according to one of most influential science advisors in the US government.

Nina Fedoroff told the BBC One Planet programme that humans had exceeded the Earth's "limits of sustainability".

Dr Fedoroff has been the science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007, initially working with Condoleezza Rice.

Under the new Obama administration, she now advises Hillary Clinton.

"We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can't support many more people," Dr Fedoroff said, stressing the need for humans to become much better at managing "wild lands", and in particular water supplies.

Pressed on whether she thought the world population was simply too high, Dr Fedoroff replied: "There are probably already too many people on the planet."More

The planet will be better off without people like 'Dr' Fedoroff

Overpopulation Lie: