What is Israel's Role in the Destabilization of Pakistan? UmbertoEco, Ramzi Bartoud, Dmitri Medvedev

What is Israel's Role in the Destabilization of Pakistan? When waging war “by way of deception,” the motto of the Israeli Mossad, well-timed crises play a critical agenda-setting role by displacing facts with what a target population can be deceived to believe. Thus the force-multiplier effect when staged crises are reinforced with pre-staged intelligence. In combination, the two often prove persuasive. That duplicity was on display when U.S. lawmakers were induced to invade Iraq in response to the mass murder of 9-11. That crisis alone, however, was insufficient. Military mobilization required a “consensus” belief in Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, Iraqi mobile biological weapons, Iraqi meetings in Prague, and so forth. Though all were false, those “facts” proved sufficient to induce an invasion of Iraq.

SPIEGEL Interview with Umberto Eco: 'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die' Italian novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco, who is curating a new exhibition at the Louvre in Paris, talks to SPIEGEL about the place lists hold in the history of culture, the ways we try to avoid thinking about death and why Google is dangerous for young people.

How Israel Won the Settlement Battle, Again By Ramzy Baroud - When British Foreign Secretary David Miliband uttered a few words regarding the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, many wanted to believe that London was taking a sharp stance against Israel’s continued violations of international law. Alas, they were wrong.

SPIEGEL Interview with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev: 'Oil and Gas Is Our Drug'
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev talks to SPIEGEL about how the fall of the Berlin Wall affected Russia, his controversial relationship to Vladmir Putin and possible sanctions against Iran.