Late last week, according to the BBC Arabic news website, a report was submitted to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon about the scale of destruction Israel inflicted on UN installations in Gaza. This was also mentioned on a BBC news bulletin on 1 May, but I could find little trace of this story anywhere else.

United States interrogators killed nearly four dozen detainees during or after their interrogations, according a report published by a human rights researcher based on a Human Rights First report and follow-up investigations.

Apropos the lying Holbrooke's comment about how "they" (Al Qaeda) attacked us, here is the text from the "rap sheet" of the Usama Bin Laden poster from the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.

"USAMA BIN LADEN IS WANTED IN CONNECTION WITH THE AUGUST 7, 1998, BOMBINGS OF THE UNITED STATES EMBASSIES IN DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA, AND NAIROBI, KENYA. THESE ATTACKS KILLED OVER 200 PEOPLE. IN ADDITION, BIN LADEN IS A SUSPECT IN OTHER TERRORIST ATTACKS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD."

Notice any particular event missing from the above?

The worldly French and British who are taught history and read books are looking with wry amusement and some pity on the Americans who are now gripped by a renewed bout of Taliban terror.

About ten days ago, a bunch of lightly-armed Pashtun tribesmen rode down from the Malakand region on motorbikes and pickup trucks and briefly swaggered around Buner, only 100 km from Pakistan's capitol, Islamabad.

Hysteria erupted in Washington. "The Taliban are coming. The Taliban are coming!"

Shell chairman Russell Caplan says businesses need political consensus over the scheme so they can make decisions to invest with certainty.

"We're taking into consideration what's been disclosed to us about the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in the investment proposals that we're considering, but I must say that the sooner we get to a position of certainty, the better we'll like it," he said.

"I think that the delay ought to help to get some of the details that need fixing better discussed and ought to contribute to a better outcome."

from Richard Neville .....

The revelations of a once secret 2006 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross on the use of torture and "cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment" on prisoners at Guantánamo and secret CIA jails came as a shock to many.

This is odd, because anyone with a keyboard, modem and half a brain, quickly discovered that in the panicky aftermath of 9/11, the West had forged a pact with the Devil. It was not only Dick Cheney who felt the call of the dark side - it was virtually the entire governing class of America, Britain and Australia.

The Australian government says it will push back a planned carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) by a year.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the delay was necessary because of the poor economic climate.

But he also suggested that Australia could pursue tougher emissions reductions targets if an international deal was reached.

Switzerland's largest bank, UBS, has asked a US court not to go ahead with a tax case involving more than 50,000 US customers with Swiss accounts.

UBS told a federal court in Florida it would violate Swiss laws on banking secrecy if it provided the information on its clients.

The US suspects 52,000 Americans of using UBS accounts to hide almost $15bn of assets and unpaid taxes.