The General Assembly today endorsed the report of the United Nations investigation which found that both Israeli forces and Palestinian militants were guilty of serious human rights violations during the conflict in the Gaza Strip at the start of the year. After two days of debate in the Assembly, at UN Headquarters in New York, 114 Member States voted in favour of a resolution endorsing the report’s findings and its recommendations for further action. Eighteen States voted against the resolution and another 44 countries abstained.

The US House of Representatives has condemned the UN Goldstone report, which accused Israel of committing war crimes in its 22-day war against the Palestinians in Gaza. By a vote of 344 to 36, the members of the lower house of Congress approved a non-binding resolution that calls the report “irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy.” The harshly worded resolution calls on President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration" of the critical report. South African judge Richard Goldstone recently challenged the United States to justify its objections over his report about the December 27-January 18 Israeli war on the Gaza Strip that killed over 1,400 Palestinians, with many of the victims women and children. Goldstone recommended that the conclusions of the report be forwarded to the Hague-based International Criminal Court if the sides involved in the Gaza war failed to conduct credible investigations within six months.

The latest Haaretz column by the outstanding and courageous Israeli columnist, Gideon Levy, is entitled "America, Stop Sucking Up to Israel," and it highlights one of the most bizarre political facts: criticism of Israeli actions is far more tolerated and permitted in Israeli political discourse than it is in America's.

Last Friday, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen introduced H.Res.867, calling on the Obama Administration to "oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration" of the Report of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, known as the Goldstone Report. Currently, 114 Representatives already have signed on to the resolution as co-sponsors. To see if your Representative has co-sponsored the resolution, please click here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:HE00867:@@@P

"The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on Tuesday on a resolution calling on President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ in multilateral fora.”" Plus a link to a petition to sign in support of the Goldstone report.

Russia and China have voted in favor of the endorsement of the Goldstone report by the UN. The UK and France “did not take part in the vote”, but demanded that Israel conduct a real investigation. We have quarreled with Turkey, until now an important military ally. We have altercations with Sweden, Norway and a number of other friendly countries. The French Foreign Minister has been prevented from crossing into the Gaza Strip and is furious. The already cold peace with Egypt and Jordan has become several degrees colder. Israel is boycotted in many forums. Senior army officers are afraid to travel abroad for fear of arrest.

The US Congress is a considering a bipartisan resolution which would officially reject the findings of Judge Goldstone’s report on the Gaza war and call on President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton to use the US veto to prevent a vote on the report in the United Nations Security Council. A vote on the bill, House Resolution 867, is expected by this coming weekend. It is urgent that you call both your Senators and your Congressperson today and tell them to vote against this outrageous bill. You can read the bill here: http://gazaviews.blogspot.com/2009/10/yet-another-outrageous-congressional.html. It ignores the conclusions of the Goldstone Report and simply parrots Israeli government denial. Judge Goldstone has challenged the US to substantiate its claim that his report is “flawed.” President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have made no response. The carefully researched and documented report deserves a response, not a veto. The people of Gaza, who were brutally attacked, deserve a hearing.

The New York Times is covering the Goldstone Report. Where is it covering it? Well: the furor over the report among Palestinians. We’re pretty sure this is a good story. Neil MacFarquhar is on it. But it’s really not The Story, it’s just an angle of a hugely-important international story, and the only angle the Times is covering. Here’s what the Times refuses to cover: –the furor over the Goldstone report on the part of the Israel lobby in the U.S., and the pressure it’s put on the Obama administration, number one. Even J Street has been quiet about the Goldstone report, while it puts out a statement applauding an Israeli Nobelist. –and what about the political jockeying over the report, the decision by the Obama administration to bury it and make the Palestinian Authority do the dirty work? Important story. Nothing. Mike Hanna of the Century Foundation said two weeks ago that the report’s troubling findings were going to be very "tricky" diplomatically for the Obama administration. He was right. He knows what’s gone down. Why isn’t the Times calling him for comment?

It was not only shocking, but incomprehensible. Mahmoud Abbas, the de-facto leader of the Palestinian people, backing the opposition to postpone the UN vote on the findings of Richard Goldstone's report on Israel's war on Gaza. Various media outlets reported that the action was the result of 'intense US pressure', however, unnamed sources have another version of the events.It would appear that at the time of the Israeli offensive on Gaza which began last December and lasted nearly a month, when the world began to call for a cease fire, Israel may have been taking its cues from Mahmoud Abbas. Let us recall that the Palestinian leader has been seen as a weak figure, unable to gain the support of his own people, and the loser of the democratically held elections which gave Hamas victory over Fatah. Naturally, since the vote did not please Israel nor its Western allies, that particular election result was not welcome.

It was a telling coincidence that two reports were issued on the very same day. The Geneva Initiative, a group of Israeli and Palestinian diplomats and technical experts, released its updated 400-page plan, spelling out the practical details of a reasonable two-state settlement. But Israeli newspapers barely noticed. They were too busy headlining the other report: a UN fact-finding mission's 575 pages of detail on war crimes committed by both Israeli and Palestinian forces during last winter's war in Gaza. The UN report's lead author, Richard Goldstone, says he's a Zionist and "loves Israel." The Israeli authors of the Geneva Initiative are Zionists who love Israel, too. So are the Israeli government leaders who ignored the new Geneva document while they lashed out at Goldstone and the whole UN fact-finding operation. So, the coincidence of both documents appearing on the same day cast a bright spotlight on the contest between two different styles of Zionism, a contest that may soon come down to the wire. And the outcome will matter to all of us. So, it's worth paying attention.

"Technology, the competition, and the times have passed him"

It appears no one is more pissed off than Leon Panetta. The CIA director has reportedly threatened to resign and launched a profanity-laced tirade in response to the public release of the CIA inspector general's report. I'm assuming he was also reacting to the appointment of a special prosecutor to be announced later that day. But who can blame the guy? Think of things from his perspective: As an outsider, he's had to win over CIA operatives in these past few months with a consistently protective stance. Now, not only is Holder coming after his guys, but he also is not going after the people who asked his guys step over the line.

The simmering controversy over the Bush administration's interrogations of terrorism suspects is about to boil over again with two major developments today. First, the CIA released a once-secret report that sounds like plot points from "24." The report, written in 2004 and declassified in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, says interrogators threatened Sept. 11 mastermind that if any more attacks happened, "We're going to kill your children." Another interrogator allegedly tried to convince another detainee that his mother would be sexually assaulted in front of him, according to the Associated Press account of the report. The White House confirmed earlier today that a new specialized unit, housed at FBI headquarters, will oversee future interrogations of "high value" terror suspects. The second related development: Attorney General Eric Holder is appointing a special prosecutor to look into alleged CIA mistreatment of the terror suspects.

The Geneva Conventions of 1949, which will be 60 years old later this week, consist of four treaties and three additional protocols that govern the humanitarian treatment of PoWs and civilians during military conflicts. Still, countries such as the U.S., Britain and Israel have tried to bypass the Geneva Conventions on the grounds that they do not apply to "terror suspects" or "terrorists." "The argument that Geneva Conventions should not apply to terror suspects is an argument I never expected to hear in any country that claims to be a democracy under the rule of law," Michael Ratner, president of the New York- based Centre for Constitutional Rights, told IPS. The minimum humane treatment provisions of Common Article 3 apply to everyone in all times and places. "The U.S. and other countries' efforts to get out from under their humane legal obligations is and was obscene," said Ratner, who also teaches international human rights law at the Columbia University Law School.

The Department of Justice was supposed to release a 2004 report from the CIA's Inspector General's Office Wednesday. The highly-anticipated document was rumored to contain scathing criticism of the Bush Administration's torture policy. So far there's been no news from the Justice Department, but apparently White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs addressed the issue at today's briefing. I guess we're supposed to get a look at it tomorrow, or in three days or some other time in the future, maybe.

Climate change has already caused "visible impacts" in the United States and poses particular risks to the U.S. agriculture and energy industries, a new government report said on Tuesday. The report, which lays out the effects of global warming on specific U.S. regions and sectors, calls for quick policy action as the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to vote soon on a bill to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. "It's not too late to act," said Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, while releasing the report. "Human induced climate change is a reality, not only in remote polar regions (and) in small tropical islands, but every place around the country -- in our own backyards."

Walking in to the hall on the first day of the America's Future Now conference my first response was "Ooops! Wrong room." Flashing by on two screens, placed on either side of the speaker's podium, were clips of President Bush. But no. That was just a warm up. Soon Pres. Obama was on screen giving a rousing speech to the crowd at an earlier Conference sponsored by Campaign for America's Future (Then called Take Back America Now). He attended both their 2007 and 2008 conferences.Here he was with his signature call to arms: Change comes from the bottom up not the top down. The most important event of Day one of this year's three-day conference was the announcement of a massive coalition to fight for health-care reform with a more than $82 million kitty and a broad-based group of 1030 local and national groups committed to the fight for universal health care.

What we fail to acknowledge is that the system itself is totalitarian. This means that it is designed to exert total control over the lives of individuals. We are accustomed to use this label when thinking of anachronisms of history like communism or fascism. We do not understand that globalist finance capitalism and the government which protects, enables, or even regulates it are also totalitarian. What has happened in the last year as the financial system has seemingly gone belly-up, and is coming back only through massive government bailouts, is part of a pattern that has been around for decades if not centuries. How the controllers work was laid out in 1967 when Dial Press published a leaked copy of The Report from Iron Mountain. This was a study put together by a team of academics and analysts who met at the underground facility in New York that was home to the Hudson Institute. The report began by identifying war as the central organizing principle of society. It stated, “War itself is the basic social system, within which other secondary modes of social organization conflict or conspire. It is the system which has governed most human societies of record, as it is today.”

Former Bush administration officials are launching a behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign to urge Justice Department leaders to soften an ethics report criticizing lawyers who blessed harsh detainee interrogation tactics, according to two sources familiar with the efforts. In recent days, attorneys for the subjects of the ethics probe have encouraged senior Bush administration appointees to write and phone Justice Department officials, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process is not complete.

Why is the Army sending sick troops back into combat? You won't learn the answer from a new internal report.