Iraq and China have agreed the terms of a $3 billion oil service contract, Iraq's oil minister says, announcing the first major oil contract with a foreign firm since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

China and Iraq have signed a $3 billion deal revising an earlier agreement for China's biggest oil company to help develop the Ahdab oil field, an official at the Iraq's Oil Ministry said Thursday.

RUSSIA today won support from China and Central Asian states in its standoff with the West over the Georgia conflict as the European Union said it was weighing sanctions against Moscow.

Two security researchers have demonstrated a new technique to stealthily intercept internet traffic on a scale previously presumed to be unavailable to anyone outside of intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency.

The conflict in Georgia has awoken fears of a new Cold War between Russia and its allies and the West, nearly 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But will the animosity come back to haunt Western imaginations as it once did?

Alongside falling prices, rising mortgage rates, stricter credit conditions and general malaise, the structure that supports American home ownership is being condemned by market valuation. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have nose dived and been downgraded toward a smaller future - and these are more important names for your future than Joe, Sam, Kathy, Mitt, Meg

If there's one thing scientists have a knack for (other than avoiding sexual contact with other human beings), it's turning seemingly innocent things into horrifying specters of terror. Atoms were just innocent old building blocks of matter up until they were used to level two Japanese cities. Apparently bored with the military weapons as an outlet for their evil, scientists are upping their pant-soiling quotient by genetically engineering monsters out of our livestock and pets.

So there you have it. The Kennedy family absconds with the brain. It is either entrusted within their estate, or destroyed, or buried with John Kennedy’s body when it was reentered. We’ll never know for sure.

Let me see now, how can I say this without violating any of the talking about the Jews rules. Isn't it funny how careful we must be about offending the worlds most successful, politically powerful and affluent ethnic group. That's right those other white people.

The UN Convention against Torture defines the practice as:

Earth- Mass panic ensued among Christians last Sunday when God issued a formal statement from Heaven saying that His pure and sublime love, on which millions of people depend, will no longer be provided unconditionally.

"If you want my love you're going to have to earn it," said God, backed by a chorus of Seraphim who continuously sang His praise. "This generally involves being a good person, and making at least one genuine attempt to benefit humanity over the course of your painfully short lives."

An old dictionary definition of hobo is "one who wanders from place to place without a permanent home or a means of livelihood." Historically, the lifestyle of hobos required that they do basic, unskilled manual labor. In today's world that doesn't always have to be the case. Any skill that is in wide demand and does not require an extended time commitment can "work" for the "new hobo." As long as you can advertise your services and earn people's trust (ideally through references) and take their money, you can do anything.

All three belong to Aryan Nations, according to Victor Ross, the police chief in Glendale, a suburb of Denver where one of the suspects was arrested. The other two were held in Aurora, another suburb.

...

In the back of the vehicle, officers found two high-powered rifles, one with telescopic sights, a spotting scope, a flak jacket, camouflage clothing, a bulletproof vest, boxes of ammunition, three fake identity cards, two wigs, two walkie-talkies and a quantity of the drug methamphetamine, a form of speed known as crystal meth.

Well, well, well, Georgia and their Zionist West backers are still provoking the Russian Bear. A *really* stupid idea. I think I will vacation West of where I am rather than East. I was thinking about checking out Sochi where the 2014 Olympic games are to be held but will pass on that for now. I do not want to be anywhere around the kill zone when the Bear decides he has had enough of the Zionist West bullshit in Georgia.

In an interview with the Russian newspaper Vremya Novostei, Dmitry Rogozin, warned that any NATO attack on the Moscow-backed regions would "mean a declaration of war on Russia."

Bankruptcy filings surged 29% in the 12 months that ended June 30, according to government figures released today.

Total filings rose to 967,831 from 751,056 a year earlier.

A day after the largest single-workplace immigration raid in U.S. history, Elizabeth Alegria was too scared to send her son to school and worried about when she'd see her husband again.

An ABC News producer was arrested Wednesday outside the Brown Palace Hotel as he attempted to chronicle attendees at a private breakfast held by a Democratic Party campaign committee.

ABC said in a statement that Asa Eslocker and a camera crew were "attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting."

"We're getting under their skin, I think," said Brian Ross, ABC News correspondent whose "Money Trail" reports are running every night this week and next from both nominating conventions.

When police arrived, they determined there was no illegal activity from the inital report, "but they found some items that might be used as weapons," McDonald said.

Excellent interview on Russian TV with Alex Jones as he declares the USA and UK have been hijacked by the Military-industrial complex

Now you will discover the definitive truth about 9/11 and learn why even the most popular movies on the subject have failed to address the evidence exhaustively presented in this video. The facts will make it abundantly clear that the so-called 9/11 “Truth” movement has been infiltrated and is ultimately controlled by the same criminals group who masterminded the attacks.

U.S. oil and natural gas producers are beginning evacuations in the Gulf of Mexico as Tropical Storm Gustav, which may become the costliest hurricane since Katrina and Rita in 2005, heads toward the region.

Local music blogger, Kevin Cogill, 27, at Antiquiet streamed nine unreleased Guns N' Roses songs from the album Chinese Democracy back in June. It was a pretty big deal: fans have been waiting for this album for about 14 years now. That excitement led to so much traffic, his site crashed.

Then the FBI got involved (and many media outlets), who he has been in touch with since the whole thing started. But this morning he was arrested and is expected in court later today.

DON'T CRY FOR ME ARGENTINA SAVE YOUR TEARS FOR YOURSELF - While bankers do control the issuance of credit, they cannot control themselves. Bankers are the fatal flaw in their deviously opaque system that has substituted credit for money and debt for savings. The bankers have spread their credit-based system across the world by catering to basic human needs and ambition and greed; and while human needs can be satisfied, ambition and greed cannot—and the bankers' least of all.

At a time when scores of companies are freezing pensions for their workers, some are quietly converting their pension plans into resources to finance their executives' retirement benefits and pay.

In recent years, companies from Intel Corp. to CenturyTel Inc. collectively have moved hundreds of millions of dollars of obligations for executive benefits into rank-and-file pension plans. This lets companies capture tax breaks intended for pensions of regular workers and use them to pay for executives' supplemental benefits and compensation.

Less than an hour before the Democratic convention calls the roll of the states, Hillary Rodham Clinton began an emotional gathering with her delegates Wednesday by telling them she was releasing them as delegates to vote for Barack Obama. Many in the crowded ballroom yelled back "No!"
ADVERTISEMENT

Clinton told her delegates she's not telling them what to do, adding: "You've come here from so many different places, having made this journey and feeling in your heart what is right for you to do."

14,000 are wearing terrible suits.

7,500 aren’t doing much at all. This isn’t surprising. Only a small number of reporters actually have a reason to be here. The rest are conventioneering—seeing old friends, eating Democratic-themed menu items (“Barack Obama’s Turkey Chili”) in pandering local restaurants, brandishing their press passes at all comers, looking for free things, and spending about 14 percent of their time trying to rustle up enough stories to justify their presence to their editors.

Russia is ready to back moves in the United Nations to send more international monitors to the buffer zones around Georgia's rebel regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Russian foreign minister said on Wednesday.

Scores of Chinese air passengers smashed computers and desks and clashed with police Tuesday after a night stranded at an airport without accommodation, state media said.

The recording is titled, “The WTC-10-5-the-message-about-the-remote-controlled-plane.” In the mélange of scratchy voices bumping each other off and on, around minute three, the words “remote controlled-plane” bump through clearly, are interrupted, and finally assert quite clearly again that “there’s a big truck on King Street with the mural of an airplane painted on it diving into New York City and exploding.” It was later noted “King Street between 6th and 7th Avenues,” about a mile north of WTC, which was in direct line of sight from King St. and 6th Avenue.

One of Michelle Malkin’s stooges is caught on tape lying to police in an attempt to frame Alex Jones, claiming that Alex punched her bodyguard and shouted death threats, when in reality Malkin’s bodyguard assaulted Alex and his crew, and the death threats were made by provocateurs completely unaffiliated with Alex Jones.

It was a shock to Misha Defonseca's readers this year when she admitted that the best-selling story of her tortured childhood during the Holocaust was false, but her U.S. publisher saw it as an opportunity to undo a stinging, 7-year-old court judgment.

Jane Daniel says she never would have been ordered to pay Defonseca and her ghost writer $32.4 million over her handling of profits from "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years" had the jury known the book was filled with lies.

The World Bank said on Tuesday more people are living in extreme poverty in developing countries than previously thought as it adjusted the recognized yardstick for measuring global poverty to $1.25 a day from $1.

The FBI is investigating more than $12,000 in calls to the Middle East and Asia that were made when a hacker broke into the Federal Emergency Management Agency's phone system 10 days ago.

Sensitive legal documents relating to a major drugs prosecution in Liverpool have been found on a tip in Lancashire.

The files, which were meant to be destroyed, relate to Operation Montrose, which saw 59 men jailed over drug dealing in 2005.

They include more than 100 "restricted" statements from officers and forensic experts and the personal details of witnesses and suspects.

Nasa has confirmed that laptops carried to the ISS in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG.

The worm was first detected on Earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games.

New research strongly suggests that a mix of preventative agents, such as those found in concentrated black raspberries, may more effectively inhibit cancer development than single agents aimed at shutting down a particular gene.

“We have clearly shown that berries, which contain a variety of anticancer compounds, have a genome-wide effect on the expression of genes involved in cancer development,” says principal investigator Gary D. Stoner, a professor of pathology, human nutrition and medicine who studies dietary agents for the prevention of esophageal cancer.

The supervisor told her she had the choice of submitting to a pat-down in a private room or not flying. Kates offered a third alternative, to take off her bra and try again, which the TSA accepted.

"They tried to humiliate me and I was not going to be humiliated over this," Kates said. "If I was carrying nail clippers and forgot about them, I wouldn't have gotten so upset. But here I was just wearing my underwear."

The Air Force is about to suspend its controversial effort to reorganize its forces to "dominate" cyberspace. The provisional, 8,000-man Cyber Command has been ordered to stop all activities, just weeks before it was supposed to be declared operational.

At a press conference with Israeli Foreign Minister, and future candidate for the premiership, Tzipi Livni, Secretary Rice said "I think it's no secret, and I have said it to my Israeli counterparts, that I don't think that settlement activity is helpful. In fact, what we need now are steps that enhance confidence between the parties and anything that undermines confidence between the parties ought to be avoided".

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) might have to borrow money from the Treasury Department to see it through an expected wave of bank failures, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The borrowing could be needed to cover short-term cash-flow pressures caused by reimbursing depositors immediately after the failure of a bank, the paper said.

In March or April 2007, three noncommissioned United States Army officers, including a first sergeant, a platoon sergeant and a senior medic, killed four Iraqi prisoners with pistol shots to the head as the men stood handcuffed and blindfolded beside a Baghdad canal, two of the soldiers said in sworn statements.

A Russian naval official reported an increase in NATO warships near the Georgian coast on Wednesday.

“According to our information, NATO ships are in the Black Sea and their numbers are increasing,” said Vice Adm. Sergei Menyailo, commander of the Novorossiisk naval base.

Russia is concerned that NATO is continuing to build up its forces in the Black Sea. The military alliance announced its decision to deliver humanitarian aid to Georgia after the conclusion of hostilities between Tbilisi and Moscow over breakaway South Ossetia on August 12.

'It is just too big to think about', so said David Lynch as he
questions the official story surrounding 9-11 and responds to
clips from Loose Change.

Police on Tuesday arrested an Israeli peace activist who had sailed to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip to challenge Israel's blockade of the coastal enclave.

They accused Jeff Halper, who also has U.S. citizenship, of violating a ban on Israelis entering Gaza.

Halper was among 44 "Free Gaza" activists from 17 countries who sailed in two boats from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip on Saturday in defiance of the blockade.

The expected wave of bank failures may force the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to borrow money from the Treasury Department, FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said yesterday.

After all, this is just the way the Pentagon operates, whatever changes or budget cuts come down the pike. Four years later, plenty of people have written about various DARPA projects, but most still fail to ask the most salient question: Why does the U.S. government foster unfettered, blue-skies creativity only in the context of lethal technologies (or those that, indirectly, enhance lethality by aiding the functioning of the armed forces)? Some things never change.

The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller as an off-shoot of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR). David Rockefeller was chairman of the CFR in 1970 and subsequently became the founding chairman of the Trilateral Commission. Soon the membership of the Commission had grown to 300 members, including prominent political figures like Zbigniew Brzezinski. Most members of the Trilateral Commission are bankers, media moguls, or corporate CEOs, primarily from North America, Europe and Japan, while all members of the CFR are U.S. Citizens.

The complaint is part of efforts by groups on both sides of the Atlantic to determine how much Bayer CropScience knows about the part that clothianidin may have played in the death of millions of honeybees.

An 11-year-old boy detained with a Pakistani woman accused of trying to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan is believed to be her son, U.S. prosecutors said in a court letter obtained on Tuesday.

U.S.-trained neuroscientist and al Qaeda suspect Aafia Siddiqui, 36, was arrested in Afghanistan in mid-July and flown to New York earlier this month to be charged with attempting to kill and assault U.S. soldiers.

Don't worry - Portland is not under attack. Low flying military helicopters buzzing downtown Portland looked like a scene out of a movie. Monday night’s drama was all part of a military exercise. Newschannel Eight has learned, the Army and Navy are conducting Urban Military Training in Portland and Salem from August 17-30.

A man suspected of being one of Israel's most powerful crime bosses is charged with using a Los Angeles gang to distribute a million Ecstasy pills and paying one of the gang's members to kill a man for stealing a large drug shipment.

Itzhak Abergil, who prosecutors believe is one of the largest importers of narcotics into the United States, is among seven men listed in a 32-count federal indictment that alleges murder and international drug trafficking.

Will it matter if Obama or McCain are elected in November? Hardly.

Both are rigidly backed by important members of the Trilateral Commission who hijacked the Executive Branch of the U.S. government starting in 1976 with the election of Jimmy Carter.

Austin Swarner left high school to care for his mother while she fought a losing battle with cancer. Tony Brown wanted to begin supporting himself and left two classes shy of a diploma. Haelee Holden got tired of trying to make it through school while flipping burgers until 1 a.m.

But the U.S. Army, eager to fill its ranks amid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, doesn't see them as dropouts. They are recruits who only need a GED before they're ready to begin basic training.

And so, the Army formally opens its first prep school Wednesday.

Bar said that despite a tremendous gap between his campaign’s fund-raising and those of the Democratic and Republican parties’ presumed presidential nominees, the Libertarians were doing well.

“Our message is resonating with the mainstream,” he said.

First, the most obvious and glaring reality of US politics is that only the very, very rich participate. This single fact really should give one pause, should give everyone who actually works for a living pause. As one old Wobbly put it, there are two kinds of people in the world, those who work and those who don’t.

In the middle of the video these guys wrap their arms around Alex Jones, they were loud and claimed to be "big fans", they were not. At one point they scream, "kill Michelle Malkin" over and over. A message of hate and threats, just the type of tactics Alex warned that they would use in the days prior to the DNC on his radio show. It sounds less like a message from a truther, and more like a message from a provocateur, similar to the guys caught at the SPP meeting in Canada last year, they turned out to be cops dressed up like anarchists armed with rocks ready to incite a riot.

The United States has canceled plans to try to dock a military ship carrying humanitarian aid in the Georgian port of Poti, where Russian forces are posted on the outskirts, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said Wednesday.

If you think the media or our government has given us the answers, think again. If you think this can’t happen again, think again. Seven years later most Americans haven’t even heard of Tower 7. Seven years later, most Americans don’t know thousands more of those rescue workers are sick, and many are dying from their exposures at Ground Zero. Seven years later, the FBI still hasn’t listed Osama Bin Laden as “wanted” for the 9/11 attacks. This is incredible–they are the lead investigators, and they don’t have enough evidence to put him on the “most wanted” list for those attacks?

In the Queen's speech this autumn Gordon Brown's government will announce a scheme to institute a database of every telephone call, email, and act of online usage by every resident of the UK. It will propose that this information will be gathered, stored, and "made accessible" to the security and law enforcement agencies, local councils, and "other public bodies".

By freely traveling to Gaza, on Saturday, August 23rd, in two, small, wooden boats, the Free Gaza Movement forced the Israeli government to issue a fundamental policy change regarding their military and economic blockade of Gaza. Until now, Israel has wanted absolute control of Gaza with no responsibility. Israel has managed to maintain this situation, in spite of international law, because its policies have never been challenged.

Dave Weigel at Reason doesn’t think that a key piece of information discovered by a pro-Clinton documentarian will kill the cottage industry of Barack Obama birth certificate truthers, but it will convince everyone else that this rumor has wasted far too much time already. Lori Starfelt, a member of the PUMA movement in the Democratic Party opposed to Obama’s nomination, nevertheless found a birth announcement in an August 1961 edition of the Honolulu Advertiser — and guess who the paper congratulates for their new addition?

Hillary has just finished her speech and the media are falling all over themselves applauding her speech.

And it was a great speech, well written and well delivered.

But while Hillary made the necessary referrals to Barack Obama, the speech was mostly about Hillary and what Hillary has done over her career, what Hillary stands for, what Hilary will do, what Hillary thinks, and what Hillary feels.

Yes, Hillary mentioned Obama. and yes, Hillary took a few moments to bash McCain.

The last of four people charged in the prostitution scandal that destroyed former Gov. Eliot Spitzer's political career pleaded guilty yesterday to a federal conspiracy charge and faces up to a year in prison.

Media reports attempt to link individuals who screamed “Kill Michelle Malkin” to talk show host Alex Jones

Economists say a real-estate recovery is at least months away, but that isn't stopping bargain hunters from snapping up properties in some of the nation's most distressed markets.

In one of the worst atrocities of the US-led occupation of Afghanistan, as many as 90 civilians were massacred by an American air strike last Friday in the western province of Herat. At least 60 of those killed were children under the age of 15, according to Afghan government and military sources.

Police said they were forced to use pepper spray when members of the crowd, some carrying rocks, rushed a police safety line. But one protester said officers charged the protesters