Yet again. All it takes is reading the New York Times to get pretty damn paranoid these days. From May 16:

Defendant Says Police Informer Pushed Him Into Bomb Plot
A Pakistani immigrant accused of plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station in 2004 took the stand in his own defense yesterday and said he never wanted to carry out an attack until he met a paid police informer who treated him like a younger brother and inflamed his anger against the United States.

A national summit of indigenous and campesino organizations is meeting at the Guambiano indigenous reserve of La Maria Piendamó, along the Pan-American Highway in Cauca, southern Colombia, and has just been attacked by the security forces. At least one death is reported. From the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), via Colombia Indymedia, May 16 (our translation):

Four helicopters have attacked the summit, launching tear gas. One person is dead, more than 50 injured, 36 persons under arrest and more than 10 disappeared following the assualt by the National Army, the [National] Police and the ESMAD [elite riot squad], against the indigenous, campesinos and Afro-descendants in La María Piendamó, vereda [hamlet] El Rosal-Mondomo, in Cauca.

From Ya Libnan, May 15:

Beirut & Damascus — Prominent writer and democracy campaigner Michel Kilo was detained after calling for better relations between Syria and Lebanon.

Its about out way of life, remember? From Newsday, May 15:

Fatal accident leaves grief on Mother's Day

It was a simple Mother's Day gift: Alvin Johnson was going to surprise his girlfriend of 20 years, Emma Liverman, with a homemade cake and a meal fit for such a celebration.

Not knowing his plans, she had picked him up at his Springfield Gardens home Saturday afternoon, and was making a U-turn out of a parking spot on Farmers Boulevard at 132nd Street, police said, when a passenger van carrying eight people collided with Liverman's Toyota Camry.

From BBC, May 16. Maybe this will finally shut up the conspiranoiacs. (Yeah, as if...)

Why Pentagon released 9/11 tape

A non-profit government watchdog has succeeded in getting the US to release videotapes of a plane striking the Pentagon on 11 September 2001.

The conservative group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request in December 2004, which was denied a month later, the group says.

We recently noted an internal shake-up in the Libyan regime that seemed to signal a tilt back to the sidelined hardliners. This seems not to have affected Washington's plans, announced today, to restore diplomatic relations. This may actually reveal something about a strategic shift underway in Washington—away from the hubristic neocons, with their ambitions to remake the world, and back towards pragmatists (typified by the Trilateral Commission) who believe in wooing recalcitrant regimes into the pro-West fold rather than overthrowing them. Note that Washington appears to be racing for Qadaffi's good graces with Hugo Chávez, who would doubtless woo Libya (and its oil) for his Third Worldist agenda...

From AP, May 13:

WASHINGTON - President Bush, trying to build momentum for an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, is considering plans to shore up the Mexican border with National Guard troops paid for by the federal government, the Associated Press reported Friday, citing unnamed administration officials.

Nine bombs exploded across Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa May 12, killing four people and wounding dozens. (AP, May 13) The Oromi separatists deny involvement. But Ethiopia has no shortage of ethnic separatist struggles, as we have noted. And also no shortage of reasons to suspect its own government. From the Sudan Tribune, May 13: