The pending indictments in the Plame affair are providing interesting fodder for those intent on analyzing internal splits within the ruling elites. OK, all you domestic Kremlinologists out there—who is really runnning the show at the White House? Has Dubya fallen out with Poppy, as this interview with longtime Poppy buddy Brent Scowcroft might indicate? Has Dick really betrayed Poppy's crowd of old-fashioned multilateralists and sold out to the brave new neocons? Sound off...

Yeah, it makes us feel dirty, but we really didn't have any choice. WW4 Report is now carrying Google Ads. We had a hard time imagining what kinds of ads would be directed to our site by Google's mysterious algorithm—"Meet Chechen Singles"? "Learn Uzbek as a Second Language"? "Vacation Packages in Chiapas"? Instead the first ones that popped up had titles like "Stressed? Find Relief in Minutes", "How to Manage Your Stress" and "Stop Panic Attacks Before They Begin!"—which made us wonder if the algorithm didn't have psychic abilities and was somehow scanning the brainwaves of our chief blogger. Then we got a wave of do-gooder peacenik stuff—ads for peace-sign car magnets and the like—which was a little touchy-feely, but we figured we could live with. Then came a wave of policy-wonk type stuff—including an ad for Foreign Affairs, publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, notorious pillar of the permanent shadow government. Uh-oh. Then it got worse. Some outfit selling pro-war paraphernalia—yellow-ribbon car magnets and the like! "Find Your Career in Homeland Security"! A recuriting ad for Army Special Forces!

While the idiot left is busy blaming the Jews, the people who really run the planet are laughing all the way to the bank.

Big oil rakes in historic profits
While drivers have been paying up at the pump, profit has been gushing in to oil companies.

Thursday, ExxonMobil became the starkest example yet of how much big oil companies benefited from the huge run-up in oil prices in the third quarter even as two hurricanes ripped through the industry's Gulf Coast infrastructure. Exxon reported:

On Oct. 26, John D. Negroponte, the first director of national intelligence, released a detailed National Intelligence Strategy for coordinating the nation's 15 spy agencies. It calls for building up the ranks of intelligence operatives and analysts and delineates new global missions. One of the top three key missions cited is to "bolster the growth of democracy and sustain democratic states." Reads the 20-page document: "We have learned to our peril that the lack of freedom in one state endangers the peace and freedom of others and that failed states are a refuge and breeding ground of extremism. Self-sustaining democratic states are essential to world peace and development." The other missions outlined in the document are "defeating terrorists at home and abroad" and "preventing and countering the spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction."

The BBC is suspending its operations in Uzbekistan due to security concerns. All local staff are being withdrawn and the office in the capital Tashkent will close for at least six months pending a decision on its future. Regional BBC head Behrouz Afagh said the staff had been harassed and intimidated in recent months. "Over the past four months since the unrest in Andijan, BBC staff in Uzbekistan have been subjected to a campaign of harassment and intimidation which has made it very difficult for them to report on events in the country."

The Lebanese army has besieged military positions run by the People's Front for Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), including a network of tunnels dug in the mountains in Sultan Yaqoub (Jacob) area in the eastern Bekaa Valley. Lebanese authorities are demanding the PFLP-GC hand over persons who allegedly opened fire on a government survey team in the valley Oct. 25, killing one. The PFLP-GC denies involvement. (Arabic News, Oct. 27) There are also reports that the Bekaa compound of the group Palestinian Fatah-Intifada has also been surrounded. (Arab Monitor, Oct. 26)

North Korea, Eritrea and Turkmenistan are named as the three countries in the world where there is virtually no freedom of expression in a newly-released annual study. They occupy the bottom three places on the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index (which dubs the trio "black holes" for news, where independent media does not exist).

Other countries near the bottom of the list of 167 include China, Iran, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia. "Liberated" Iraq is ranked 157, with RWB noting that 72 reporters and media workers have been killed there since the war started.

The number of US service members killed in Iraq reached 2,000 Oct. 25, making headlines around the world (e.g. CBS News). More than 90% of this death toll occurred after President Bush declared the end of "major combat operations" in May 2003. But the figure actually masks a far more grim reality. Not included are the deaths of contract personnel who play an ever-larger role in the war. US media also made little mention of the number of US troops wounded—which is upwards of 15,000, with generally more serious wounds than in previous recent conflicts. For instance, limbs are being amputated at twice the rate of other modern military engagements. These salient facts were noted in an Oct. 26 report by the ABC—not the American Broadcasting Co., but the Australian Broadcasting Co. WW4 REPORT also noted earlier this year that the media habit of counting only US military dead, rather than the total number of coalition forces dead, is a dangerous obfuscation: