Bush, Blair are war criminals, court says …..
http://www.presstv.ir
The five-panel Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal decided that Bush and Blair committed genocide and crimes against humanity by leading the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a Press TV correspondent reported on Tuesday.
In 2003, the US and Britain invaded Iraq in blatant violation of international law and under the pretext of finding weapons of mass destruction allegedly stockpiled by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
The Malaysian tribunal judges ruled that the decision to wage war against Iraq by the two former heads of government was a flagrant abuse of law and an act of aggression that led to large-scale massacres of the Iraqi people.
Bombings and other forms of violence became commonplace in Iraq shortly after the US-led invasion of the country.
In their ruling, the tribunal judges also stated that the US, under the leadership of Bush, fabricated documents to make it appear that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
However, the world later learned that the former Iraqi regime did not possess WMDs and that the US and British leaders knew this all along.
Over one million Iraqis were killed during the invasion, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.
The judges also said the court findings should be provided to signatories to the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court, and added that the names of Bush and Blair should be listed on a war crimes register.
.
NATO’s secret weapon – racism …….
Human Rights Investigations has been repeatedly warning about the Libyan rebels and it has become increasingly clear that racism lies at the very heart of the conflict in Libya. It now clear that the rebel forces are NATO (and Qatar and UAE)’s proxy fighters on the ground. Many of these fighters have been recruited and motivated on the basis of psy-ops about African mercenaries, fired up by viagra, mass-raping women and pillaging their cities - discredited stories which have been spread and amplified by rebel commanders, NATO ministers, the media and ICC prosecutor Moreno Ocampo.
The effects of this pernicious propaganda campaign have been seen in Benghazi, Misrata and Tawergha and across the nation and are now being seen on the streets of Tripoli as rebels round up black-skinned Libyans and African guest workers, putting them into football stadiums.
AP reports:
Virtually all of the detainees say they are innocent migrant workers, and in most cases there is no evidence that they are lying. But that is not stopping the rebels from placing the men in facilities like the Gate of the Sea sports club, where about 200 detainees – all black – clustered on a soccer field this week, bunching against a high wall to avoid the scorching sun.
In the Khallat al-Firjan neighborhood in south Tripoli, Associated Press reporters saw rebel forces punching a dozen black men before determining they were innocent migrant workers and releasing them.
Racism lies at the heart of many of the NATO campaigns, including in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq where innocents are slaughtered in a way that simply would not be accepted if the victims were white.
NATO’s chief weapon in the Libyan conflict has been and continues to be, not Brimstone or Paveway bombs, Tornados, Typhoons or Tomahawk cruise missiles - but racism.
To appreciate the importance of racism in motivating soldiers please listen to Mike Prysner’s speech made at the 2008 Winter Soldier hearings:
Transcript:
“And I tried hard to be proud of my service but all I could feel was shame and racism could no longer mask the occupation. These were people. These were human beings. I’ve since been plagued by guilt anytime I see an elderly man, like the one who couldn’t walk and we rolled onto a stretcher, told the Iraqi police to take him away. I feel guilt anytime I see a mother with her children like the one who cried hysterically and screamed that we were worse than Saddam as we forced her from her home. I feel guilt anytime I see a young girl like the one I grabbed by the arm and dragged into the street.
”We were told we were fighting terrorists, but the real terrorist was me and the real terrorism is this occupation. Racism within the military has long been an important tool to justify the destruction and occupation of another country. It has long been used to justify the killing, subjugation, and torture of another people. Racism is a vital weapon deployed by this government. It is a more important weapon than a rifle, a tank, a bomber or a battleship. It is more destructive than an artillery shell, or a bunker buster, or a tomahawk missile. While all of those weapons are created and owned by this government, they are harmless without people willing to use them.
”Those who send us to war do not have to pull a trigger or lob a mortar round. They do not have to fight the war. They merely have to sell the war. They need a public who is willing to send their soldiers into harm’s way and they need soldiers who are willing to kill or be killed without question. They can spend millions on a single bomb, but that bomb only becomes a weapon when the ranks in the military are willing to follow orders to use it. They can send every last soldier anywhere on earth, but there will only be a war if soldiers are willing to fight, and the ruling class: the billionaires who profit from human suffering care only about expanding their wealth, controlling the world economy, understand that their power lies only in their ability to convince us that war, oppression, and exploitation is in our interests. They understand that their wealth is dependent on their ability to convince the working class to die to control the market of another country. And convincing us to kill and die is based on their ability to make us think that we are somehow superior. Soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, have nothing to gain from this occupation.
”The vast majority of people living in the US have nothing to gain from this occupation. In fact, not only do we have nothing to gain, but we suffer more because of it. We lose limbs, endure trauma, and give our lives. Our families have to watch flag draped coffins lowered into the earth. Millions in this country without healthcare, jobs, or access to education must watch this government squander over $450 million a day on this occupation. Poor and working people in this country are sent to kill poor and working people in another country to make the rich richer, and without racism soldiers would realize that they have more in common with the Iraqi people than they do with the billionaires who send us to war
”I threw families onto the street in Iraq only to come home and find families thrown onto the street in this country in this tragic, tragic and unnecessary foreclosure crisis; only to wake up and realize that our real enemies are not in some distant land. But not people whose names we don’t know, and cultures we don’t understand. The enemy is people we know very well and people we can identify. The enemy is a system that wages war when it’s profitable. The enemy is the CEO who lays us off our jobs when it’s profitable; it’s the insurance companies who deny us health care when it’s profitable; it’s the banks who take away our homes when it’s profitable. Our enemies are not 5000 miles away, they are right here at home. If we organize and fight with our sisters and brothers, we can stop this war, we can stop this government, and we can create a better world.”
.
Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (Full Movie)
The story of what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war.
Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed) takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing in Iraq (Blackwater, Halliburton/KBR, CACI and Titan) and the decision makers who allow them to do so.
Originally released in 2006.
Image of War’s Pain
http://www.uruknet.infoFrom the Rockland Coalition for Peace & Justice
|
:: Article nr. 78140 sent on 28-may-2011 23:12 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=78140
President Obama’s top 5 broken campaign promises
http://www.rawstory.com
President Barack Obama came to office on a tide of voters eager to see a change in more than just the White House’s occupant. Two years into his presidency — and one day after he launched his 2012 reelection campaign — and even some of his most ardent supporters are having trouble coming to terms with the answer to Sarah Palin’s 2010 question: “How’s that hopey, changey stuff working out?”
Polls show that less than half the country believes President Obama deserves reelection, with disaffected liberals now a fast growing demographic.
Even though Obama clearly leads all of the likely Republican front-runners at this point, the deep dissatisfaction brewing within his core constituency could make the president, and his whole party, uniquely vulnerable in next year’s elections.
Below are five of the biggest campaign pledges Obama failed to keep — for which he’ll likely have to answer before election day 2012.
—–
1. Health care for all
If you’re an American making less than $30,000 a year, chances are you still have trouble seeing a doctor, despite the passage of President Obama’s health care reform plan. In 2007, then-Senator Obama said he wanted to make sure no American is without access to vital medical attention and proposed using revenues from the soon-to-expire Bush tax cuts to fund it. When the campaign laid out their specific plans in 2008, they included a “public option” that would be paid for by the public at large and made available to anyone who could not obtain coverage through their employer or other public program.
Ultimately, the debate in Washington became so heated and rife with disinformation that the administration and its allies in Congress agreed to forgo the public option, using it as a bargaining chip to ensure other proposals, like ending the “pre-existing condition” exclusion in private insurance policies, were passed in the final bill. They also gave in to Republican demands and extended the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, promising to take on the issue again in 2012. In spite of the modest legislative victory of actually getting health reform passed, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that even after all the elements take effect in 2014, over 22 million Americans will still lack access to basic health services.
2. Close Guantanamo
As a symbol of everything that liberals thought to be wrong with the Bush-era, closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba should have been an easy target for the new and popular president and his Democratic super-majority in Congress — and, in fact, then-candidate Obama promised to do just that. But as he soon found out, strategic and political calculations have made it almost impossible to shuck.
Today, Obama has turned away from his promise to close the facility and embraced the controversial terror war symbol, ordering the resumption of military tribunals and even moving the accused 9/11 plotters’ trial from a civilian court in New York City to the secret military court at Guantanamo.
3. Defend labor rights
“Understand this,” Obama said during a campaign rally in 2007. “If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I’ll will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America.” (Watch.)
Despite efforts by state-level Republicans in Wisconsin, Tennessee, Michigan, Ohio, Maine, Florida and Indiana to curtail collective bargaining rights, the President has yet to appear at a single protest or picket line.
4. Reform the Patriot Act
Contrary to popular belief, Obama has never actually argued for a repeal of the Bush administration’s sweeping, post-9/11 security initiatives, which were passed with a mandatory “sunset” clause to overrule the concerns of civil libertarians at the time. Instead, Obama has consistently said he favors enhanced judicial oversight and a pullback from some warrantless searches — like the provisions that allow the FBI to access library records without a warrant.
But every time the emergency laws have been due to expire, President Obama has pushed to extend them without any reforms. Most recently, the administration sought an extension of the Patriot Act that was even longer than the one Republicans wanted. They gave it to him and continued the sweeping spy powers through 2013, ensuring that the next extension doesn’t become an election year issue.
5. End the wars
Even as a candidate, Obama maintained that Afghanistan should be “the focus” of Bush’s terror war, and he pledged to make it so. But the president was also swept into power on a wave of anti-war fervor behind his calls to end the occupation of Iraq. Iraq has calmed down quite a bit as U.S. troops steadily stream out of the country, but Afghanistan is more violent than ever amid Obama’s own “surge.”
Even though the president promised his Afghan occupation would conclude in July 2011, military officials have admitted that sometime in 2014 is more likely. Elsewhere, American forces are dropping more bombs on more countries today than at any point during the Bush administration, with continued occupation forces in two massive countries even as they stage aerial bombardments of Pakistan, Libya and Yemen.
.
Kucinich “It A Question Of Priorities…We Will Borrow Over 5 TRILLION Dollars For Current Wars!”
http://dailybail.com
US Embassy in Baghdad to Double Staff
http://www.commondreams.org
The US Embassy in Baghdad, already the largest in the world, is expected to double its staff after American forces pull out of the country later this year.
“We’ll be doubling our size if all of our plans go through and if we receive the money from Congress in 2011 and then again in 2012,” James Jeffrey, the US ambassador in Iraq, said.
“This will be an extraordinarily large embassy with many different functions,” James Jeffrey, the US ambassador in Iraq. He also said a private security force some 5,500 strong will protect the large US diplomatic presence in Iraq. (photo: AFP) He said the staff would increase “from 8,000 plus personnel that we have now to roughly double that by 2012,” adding that US forces would make up only a very small part of that number.
“This will be an extraordinarily large embassy with many different functions. Some we took over from USFI (United States Forces in Iraq) and some of them continuation of the work we are doing now.”
Mr Jeffrey said that US military advisers and trainers would stay or be added to support the Iraqi military with US-made equipment such as M1A1 tanks and other weaponry. He said the added personnel would not include combat troops.
Fewer than 50,000 US troops are currently in Iraq, down from a peak of more than 170,000 and ahead of the planned full withdrawal in late 2011.
Jeffrey and Lieutenant General Lloyd Austin, the commander of US military forces in Iraq, told members of the Armed Services Committee in February that the embassy would be well protected after the withdrawal.
A private security force some 5,500 strong will protect the large US diplomatic presence in Iraq, Jeffrey told the lawmakers.
He and Austin said they were confident that the force was adequate, and that Iraq will remain stable once US troops have departed.
They said that in 2012, the American presence in Iraq will consist of up to 20,000 civilians at sites that include two embassy branches, two consulates, and three police training centres.
The figure includes armed private security personnel, support staff and diplomats.
Currently there are 2,700 armed security contractors in Iraq, Jeffrey told the senators.
9/11 and the Conquest of Iraq
http://dprogram.net
March 1st, 2011
“It’s a system that lies automatically, at every level from bottom to top – from sergeant to commander in chief – to conceal murder.” Daniel Ellsburg, Secrets, (Viking, 2002)
“Beneath all the fakes and lies and all the mental aberrations, however deeply hidden or wildly deformed, the truth still breaks through, still glitters, still breathes.” (Mihail Sebastian, Romanian playwright, as quoted by Nickolson Baker, Human Smoke, Simon & Schuster, 2008)
(FireDogLake) – In the movie, Fair Game, about the travails of Valerie Plame, and her outing as a CIA agent by the Bush administration, Sean Penn, in the character of Joe Wilson, Plame’s husband, exhorts a group of students to “Demand the Truth!” Yet, very few of us have demanded to know the truth about 9/11 and the attacks on the World Trade Center. We have been content with the officially sanctioned explanation. Those who are not so content are ridiculed as “conspiracy theorists.”
It was a conspiracy – 9/11. That is indisputable. There is no “lone gunman” to confuse matters. To say anything meaningful about 9/11, you have to be a conspiracy theorist. It is only a question of whose theory of the conspiracy you are prepared to believe. It is incredible that anyone still believes anything the Bush administration said about that tragic day.
The Center for Public Integrity identified 935 lies, (no doubt, a conservative estimate) Bush/Cheney and their neocon enablers told to justify attacking and occupying Iraq. And, they lied about many other things as well: domestic surveillance, the “war on terror,” torture, the Plame affair, etc. The list is endless. Yet, our minds recoil at the idea that they lied about the events of 9/11. This is because the implications are just too terrible to contemplate. We are left with Osama Bin Laden, because this is the person the Bush administration identified as the master-mind of these events. To have any other theory of 9/11 labels you a crank or a nut case, and if you are a professional person, raising troubling questions about 9/11 events can get you into a heap of trouble as Prof. Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University found out to his dismay.
Even men and women of otherwise critical judgment on most issues shrink from drawing troubling conclusions from the context and results of the 9/11 attacks. Looking over the edge of the precipice makes us squirm; it’s through the looking glass and we really don’t want to go there. That’s why people so often get angry when questions about 9/11 are raised. However dubious the official explanations, they have a patina of authority that is intended to tranquilize and deflect attention. We are invited not to dig deeper, to go about our business, have a nice afternoon at the mall and don’t think too hard about the entire panorama of events that unfolded on September 11th and what they mean.
Naomi Klein in her excellent book, The Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, (Metropolitan Books, 2007) writes that the shock of September 11th, “opened up a period of deep disorientation and regression that the Bush administration expertly exploited.” They capitalized on the fear generated by 9/11, “not only to launch the ‘War on Terror’ but to ensure that it is an almost completely for-profit venture.” It provided them with an opportunity to do something that would have been impossible without 9/11: “wage privatized wars abroad and build a corporate security complex at home.” Yet, we are told there was no pre-planning involved; it was not that, “the administration deviously plotted the crisis,” but, as Ms. Klein says, they prayed for the crisis like “drought-struck farmers pray for rain,” or Christian-Zionists pray for the rapture. This may be a plausible explanation for the 9/11 attacks if you believe in the power of prayer, instead of the ability of determined men to create their own opportunities.
The context for 9/11, and everything that followed from it, has been in front of us from the start. Zbigniew Brzezinski, in his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard, “American Primacy and its Geo-strategic Imperatives,” (Basic Books, 1997) laid out the arguments for US global hegemony, although he later seemed stunned by US actions in the Middle East. He argued that Eurasia, a huge area stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok, is the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played. The United States, a non-Eurasian player, had (prior to its occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq) its power deployed on three peripheries of the Eurasian continent, a dominant position that no state could challenge. Professor Brzezinski argued that America’s chief task is to maintain its “global primacy” over this vast area and, “to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitrating role.”
Professor Brzezinski devoted particular attention to the Eurasian Balkans, which include nine countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and Afghanistan. All of these countries, with the exception of Afghanistan, form part of the Caspian Sea Basin. Why are these countries important? According to Professor Brzezinski, “the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.” He continues, “Access to that resource and sharing in its potential wealth represent objectives that stir national ambitions, motivate corporate interest, rekindle historical claims, revive imperial aspirations and fuel international rivalries.”
But, says Professor Brzezinski, there is a small problem: how to get the American public to sign on to the imperial venture of global dominance. Unfortunately, he says, “The attitude of the American public towards the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.” He notes that polls conducted in 1995 and 1996 highlighted the public’s preference for ‘sharing’ global power with others, “rather than for its monopolistic exercise.” He says that, “America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America’s power, especially its capacity for military intimidation.” Democracy, he laments, is “inimical to imperial mobilization,” except, “in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public’s sense of domestic well-being.”
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was established in the spring of 1997, by a group of now discredited neo-conservatives, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and William Kristol among others. The goal of the group was to “promote American global leadership.” Their statement of principles included the assertion that, “The United States stands as the world’s most preeminent power. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests.”
In 2000, this group published a report titled: “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century.” In short, “the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible.” The document is a “blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.” Unfortunately, this could be a long process, they say, “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”
The idea of US pre-eminence was translated, once George W. Bush took office, into America’s foreign policy doctrine of “pre-emption,” of striking any country before it can become a threat to the global dominance of the United States. The report also provided a justification for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, stating: “The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” No word of weapons of mass destruction, bringing democracy to the Middle East or liberating oppressed Iraqis.
As Chalmers Johnson says (Nemesis, 2007), “It is clear today that the Bush administration intended, upon Saddam Hussein’s certain defeat, to create military bases in Iraq similar to those we built or took over in Germany and Japan after World war II. The covert purpose of our 2003 invasion was empire building – to move the main focus of our military installations in the Middle East from Saudi Arabia to Iraq, gain control over Iraq’s oil resources, and make that country a permanent Pentagon outpost for the control of much of the rest of the ‘arc of instability’.”
The analogy to Pearl Harbor, raised by both Brzezinski and the neocons, may be sheer coincidence or a telling prophecy, but the lessons of Pearl Harbor were etched on their minds. Right wing conspiracy theorists, as part of their on-going assault on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legacy, have for years claimed that FDR and the American Government had prior intelligence about the planned Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. According to this scenario, Roosevelt left Pearl Harbor dangling, undefended, a poisoned pawn, to lure the Japanese to attack as a pretext for getting us into WWII. The fact that none of the American aircraft carriers were in Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack, fuels the speculation. Robert B. Stinnett in his book, Day of Deceit “The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor,” argues that, “America had ample warning of the pending attack. At those same levels, it was understood that the isolationist American public would not support a declaration of war unless we were attacked first. The result was a plan to anger Japan, to keep the loyal officers responsible for Pearl Harbor in the dark, and thus to drag America into the greatest war of her existence.”
Was September 11th 2001, also a “day of deceit?” Or was it, as neocon ideology would have it, “A Noble Lie?”
The events of 9/11 clearly provided a catalytic shock to the public’s sense of domestic well being. The national trauma of September 11, 2001, was the pivotal event, “the new Pearl Harbor”, that precipitated the American public’s support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As Tony Blair admitted, “… to be truthful about it there is no way we would have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on 11 September,” (Commons Select Committee on Liaison, 16 July 2002). And, the “neoconservatives would not have been able to implement their war agenda had it not been for the trauma of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which filled the American people with fear and anger…” Stephen J. Sniegoski, The Transparent Cabal, “The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East and the National Interest of Israel,” Engima Editions, 2008)
Was 9/11, then, an elaborately contrived Reichstag fire, or like Pearl Harbor, a poisoned pawn held out to provide the rationale for a strategic war for oil, global dominance and/or the advancement of American/Israeli interests in the Middle East?
Dare we even think in such terms? Would a government contemplate attacking or allowing its own citizens to be attacked? The military certainly has considered such false-flag operations in the past. We know from James Bamford’s book, Body of Secrets (Anchor Books, April 2002), that, “… the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government. In the name of anticommunism, they proposed launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba.”
While some dismiss the significance of these plans as part of “normal” military contingency planning, Bamford tells us that Operation Northwoods, had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It called for innocent people to be shot on American streets, for boats carrying refuges fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas, for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit, planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus providing an excuse, as well as the public and international backing needed to launch a war against Cuba.
We also now know that the Anthrax attacks contained in letters sent to key Democratic senators such as Tom Daschle, following 9/11, were a false flag operation because the letters themselves were written to appear as if they originated from some foreign Islamic group. The letter to Daschle said: “You cannot stop us. We have this Anthrax. You die now, Are you afraid? Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is Great.” The anthrax originated in a highly secure government lab and only someone within the government with a top-level security clearance could have gained access to this very specific material. It certainly wasn’t accessible to any foreign terrorist groups. But, as the Daily News reported on 2 August 2008, “In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda. “They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East,” a retired senior FBI official told The Daily News.
When the space shuttle Columbia burned up during its return to earth, killing all seven astronauts on board, the first reaction of the government was to establish an independent board of enquiry to determine what went wrong. This is how the government usually responds whenever tragic events overtake our society. People want to know what happened – who’s to blame? Were there technical malfunctions or human errors that caused the tragedy? Contrast this response with the actions of the Bush administration in the wake of September 11, 2001, when more than 3000 of our fellow citizens were murdered at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Rather than immediately set up an independent, expert level investigation, the Bush administration dithered, delayed and stonewalled, asserting that a public enquiry would compromise national security and detract from the war on terrorism. As Vincent Bugliosi says in, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder,” (Vanguard Press, 2008) “George Bush never wanted (and did everything he could to stop) any investigation of how and why the tragedy happened, and what could be done to prevent it from happening again!!”
Although Congress established a joint committee in February 2002, months went by before it held its first hearings on September 18, 2002, a full year after 9/11. Kristen Breitweiser, the wife of one of those killed in the Trade Center, appeared before the committee and pleaded for the creation of an independent blue ribbon panel to investigate. When the joint committee finally submitted its report in December 2002, 28 pages concerning the possible involvement of foreign governments in 9/11were redacted by the Bush Administration. Were these, by any chance, the same list of foreign governments that collaborated with the CIA in its covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan? In this regard, see Charlie Wilson’s War, the book, not the movie, by George Crile.
As former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds subsequently reported, the US maintained ‘intimate relations’ with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, right up to “that day of September 11.” These ‘intimate relations’ included using Bin Laden for ‘operations’ in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China, and involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner “as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict,” that is, fighting ‘enemies’ via proxies.
Moreover, Ms. Edmonds’ three and a half hour testimony to the 9/11 Commission has been entirely suppressed, reduced to a single footnote, which refers readers to her classified testimony. In an interview, she says that the information that was classified in her case specifically identifies that the US was using Bin Laden and the Taliban in Central Asia, including in Xinjiang. Ms. Edmonds says that in suppressing her testimony, the US government claims that it is protecting ” ‘sensitive diplomatic relations,’ protecting Turkey, protecting Israel, protecting Pakistan, protecting Saudi Arabia…”
After a great deal of protest and prodding by 9/11 family members, the Bush administration finally agreed to a Commission, which was not established until November 15, 2002. The sincerity of this gesture was immediately cast in doubt, however, when they tried to appoint Henry Kissinger, as Chairman of the Commission. Kissinger is a figure whose veracity is so tainted that only the most credulous could believe that this was a good faith effort to find the truth, rather than an effort at cover up. Mercifully, Mr. Kissinger resigned from the Commission shortly thereafter, owing to his reluctance to disclose the names of his consulting clients. It was only in mid-December 2002, that Bush named former New Jersey Governor, Thomas Keane, to head the Commission. However, with a budget allocation of only $3 million, compared with the $40 million spent on Monica Lewinsky, the Commission was financially hobbled from the start.
But leaving aside, financial limitations and time constraints, Philip Shenon in his book, The Commission (Hachette Book Group, 2008) documents how tainted the 9/11 Commission and its final report really were, although that is not his conclusion. What is clear is that the Bush administration played the Commission likely a finely tuned instrument, ensuring that no finger would be pointed in its direction. The Commission composed of representatives from the two political parties, rather than experts and specialists, was structurally flawed from the start. It’s every deliberation and finding was held hostage to political considerations, and any inconvenient truths were filtered out before they saw the light of day.
Even if the Commission were not suspect because of its political composition; its Executive Director, Philip Zelikow certainly made it so. Not only was he a close friend of Condoleeza Rice before he was employed by the Commission, he was immediately hired by her as a State Department counselor when the Commission finished its work. More alarmingly, however, he was the guy who codified the neocon pre-emption doctrine as “The National Security Strategy of the United States,” which laid the groundwork for attacking Iraq. He made repeated attempts during the course of the Commission’s work to weave in a link between Iraq and Al-qaeda to bolster the Bush administration’s justification for the invasion. He also maintained regular, secret contacts with Karl Rove while serving as the Executive Director. Yet, we are asked to believe that the Commission report is an entirely credible account of what happened on that fateful day. As Mr. Shenon recounts, in the end, the Report, “was almost all good news for the White House.”
There is no space here to parse the details of what happened on September 11, many people have done that[1], continue to do that, and it’s not much more productive than trying to agree on what happened in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. In these cases, the devil is not in the detail, but in the big picture of what happened after the event itself. Anyone looking at President Kennedy’s murder from outside the country would immediately identify it as a coup d’état that irreversibly changed the leadership of the American government and altered our political history. Of course, we don’t speak in such terms in this country, because political correctness doesn’t allow it; coups don’t happen in America. It is as James Douglass writes, “The Unspeakable.” The “system” has to be protected at all costs, so we maintain our silence and censor our thoughts, lest we lose our jobs, reputations or social standing. Only the “lunatic fringe” has other ideas.
The same is true of 9/11. We have to step back and look at the big picture of what happened after that day. Whose agenda was implemented as a result of 9/11 – the Bush/Cheney neocon agenda or the agenda imputed to Osama Bin Laden? If Bin Laden’s agenda was to mobilize the Islamic world on a grand jihad against the infidels, he failed miserably and brought untold calumny on the heads of Muslims everywhere. It is difficult to identify even one thing that Osama Bin Laden might have achieved by these attacks. In fact, Bush’s invasion of Iraq did more to weaken the United States and to mobilize radical jihadists than anything Bin Laden did, or could have done.
On the other hand, the attacks were apparently very beneficial for Israel, if Benjamin Netanyahu is to be believed. The Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv reported on April 16, 2008 that Netanyahu told an Israeli audience, “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq, … swung American public opinion in our favor.” Justin Raimondo adds that ‘The American invasion and occupation of the Mesopotamian heartland has empowered the Israelis as never before – and now they are on the offensive, carving out a greatly expanded sphere of influence …,’ (as quoted by Stephen J. Sniegoski).
For America, the main outcome of the 9/11 attacks, as we can see now, was the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Iraq is the smoking gun of 9/11. We know that on the very day of 9/11, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were already urging an assault on Iraq without a shred of evidence that Iraq was involved in the attacks. At every stage, leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and right until this day, Bush/Cheney and the neocons have conjured up the ghosts of 9/11 to justify and advance this one agenda – Afghanistan was just a sideshow and remained such, until President Obama made the tragic mistake of escalating the conflict there. Not one element of their agenda could have worked without 9/11. As Vincent Bugliosi says, “if there had been no 9/11 there would have been no war in Iraq, certainly not one the American people would have approved of.” Was it just a matter of sublime coincidence, that Bin Laden provided the neocons with the catalyst they needed as a pretext for unleashing their plans on the world? Was it chance or planning?
There are many who might say, it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie, that nothing can be gained by reopening investigations and discussions about what happened on September 11th. But knowing the truth of what happened, however painful, is essential because so much of what we are doing in the world has been justified on the grounds that this was an attack by foreign terrorists when the truth may be much more sinister. It may be that we can never know the whole truth about 9/11, any more than we can about the Kennedy assassination, but much about 9/11 still remains hidden and unexplored because of the manner in which the 9/11 Commission carried out its work. It might have been hoped that once Bush/Cheney finally left office, it would be possible to have a new enquiry, free from partisan politicians, to pursue many of the issues not adequately explored, or covered up by the Keane/Zelikow Commission. But this now appears to be a vain hope given the Obama administration’s unwillingness to take a hard look at the past. 9/11 remains buried under the officially sanctioned explanations, because, as a people, not only have we failed to demand the truth, it may be that we really don’t want to know the truth.
[1] See especially, Paul Thompson’s, The Terror Timeline, Harper Collins, 2004. Or go to, http://www.historycommons.org/project.jsp?project=911_project
Source: Fire Dog Lake
.
Star Wars In Iraq
Al Ghezali reported that he had seen three passengers in a car all dead with their faces and teeth burnt, the body intact, and no sign of projectiles. There were other inexplicable aspects: the terrain where the battle took place was dug up by the American military and replaced with other fresh earth, the bodies that were not hit by projectiles had shrunk to just slightly more than one meter in height.
As in any war, the war in Iraq left us a dreadful gallery of horror, images of mutilations that not even doctors can explain. The witnesses refer to laser weapons, arms with mysterious effects. We do not know what kind of weapons could produce such terrible effects. We tried to learn more about it by asking for interviews to members of companies manufacturing laser and microwave weapons. Yet, the U.S. Defense Department prevented any information from being released to us, they also did not answer, up to the time to almost edited, the questions we have sent them in order to know whether or not experimental weapons had been tested in Iraq and Afghanistan.
http://freeviewdocumentaries.com
We tracked down the Pentagon press conferences from before the beginning of the second Gulf War to see if they spoke about any new weapons being tested. The words of the Secretary of Defense and General Meyers indicated a willingness to try weapons that had never been used before. And the questions from the press about direct energy and microwave weapons made them visibly uncomfortable.
YEAR: 2006
RUNTIME: 25 min
“Child cancer skyrocketing in Iraqi city”
Baku: The rapidly soaring child cancer rate in the southern Iraqi province of Basra has prompted the officials in the country to open the country’s first specialist cancer hospital for children in the province’s capital, APA reports quoting Press TV.
Since 1993, Basra province has witnessed a sharp rise in the incidence of childhood cancer.
“Leukemia (a type of blood cancer) among children under 15 has increased by about four times,” said Dr. Janan Hasan of the hospital inaugurated on Thursday in the southern port city of Basra.
Hasan went on to say that “Most [of the affected children] are high-risk cases, which means that they do not have a high survival rate.”
“Basra’s childhood leukemia rates compare unfavorably to those of neighboring Kuwait and nearby Oman, as well as the US and the European Union and other countries,” said a study conducted by the University of Washington in Seattle, which documented the increase in the cancer rate in Basra.
A suspected source of the afflictions is the depleted uranium (DU) used by the invading forces.
It is reported that the United States and Britain used up to 2,000 tons of DU during the Iraq war.
“We observed 698 cases of childhood leukemia between 1993 and 2007, ranging between 15 cases in the first year and 56 cases in the final year, reaching a peak of 97 cases in 2006,” the study added.
Amid the need for drastic action for handling the crisis, the medics “still do not have advanced equipment, labs and many medicines. We hope to acquire them over time,” Hasan said.
related :
What are Depleted Uranium Weapons?
.
Obama and Iraq: ‘Through a Glass, Darkly’
Posted on Sep 21, 2010
 |
| AP / Charles Dharapak |
By Scott Ritter
“The time has come to set aside childish things.” With these words, President Barack Obama, in his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2009, pushed aside “the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas” which he claimed “far too long have strangled our politics.” This passing reference to the Scripture (1 Corinthians 13: 11) served as the vehicle with which Obama broke with the policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush. While the differences in policy between Obama and Bush were many, they were particularly stark on the issue of the war in Iraq. On the surface, Obama’s televised address on Sept. 7, 2010, in which he somberly announced “the end of our combat mission in Iraq,” brought closure to a conflict as unnecessary as it was elective, and fulfilled, however superficially, his pledge to do just that. Unfortunately, Obama has come face to face with the biblical line “But now we see through a glass, darkly,” which immediately follows the Scriptural verse he mentioned in his inaugural address. The president and the American people will all too soon come to recognize that the quagmire in Iraq is far from over. In fact, one might say it has only just begun.
In what passed for the “Iraq master plan” as set forth by the Bush administration, Iraq’s oil wealth was to create the foundation of economic viability, which would then pave the way for political stability and improve internal security to the extent that U.S. combat troops could be withdrawn from that war-torn land. In a perfect world, this plan had a certain irrefutable logic, and as such was for the most part endorsed by politicians from both major parties, the mainstream media and the majority of the American people, enamored as they were with the Colin Powell-esque ethic of the “Pottery Barn Rule” that held “if you broke it, you own it.” And there can be no doubt that, regardless of the abuses which had occurred during the rule of deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, America had, through the waging of two wars (1991 and 2003), the implementation of more than two decades of U.N.-backed economic sanctions and a disastrous occupation, “broke” Iraq.
To make amends for these actions, the American people have tolerated more than seven years of redefined missions (which ranged from disarming Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, to imposing democracy, to creating stability, and, finally, to creating the conditions for stability), all the while recoiling from the enormous cost in terms of human lives and treasure (American, allied and Iraqi). Compounding the problems associated with a fluid mission was the fact that the “enemy” in Iraq was similarly ill-defined—the Shiites were our friends, until Moqtada al-Sadr became our enemy; the Sunnis were our enemies, until the “Awakening” movement made them our allies; and “al-Qaida in Iraq” went from being composed almost exclusively of foreigners to being almost exclusively Iraqi, to being whatever the U.S. military chose to define it as. This lack of a discernable foe made any traditional military combat mission designed to close with and destroy the enemy through firepower and maneuver impossible to execute.
While the United States military can claim that it did not lose the war in Iraq, it will have a hard time backing up any claims of victory. America was denied its “Missouri moment” in Iraq—the Baathists of Saddam Hussein’s regime were never compelled to line up, as the Japanese had in Tokyo Bay in August 1945, and sign a surrender document. This lack of closure highlights the ever-present reality that while American forces may have defeated Saddam Hussein’s divisions, and ultimately captured or killed the Iraqi president and the majority of his senior officials, the fighting would last for years and continues today.
History has highlighted, and will continue to highlight, the failures inherent in the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq following the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. As liberation transformed into anarchy and the illusory “flowers and song” greeting turned into rancor and resistance, it became clear that the United States lacked a coherent plan and vision for rebuilding a post-Saddam Iraq. The dream of rapidly reconstituting a viable Iraqi nation was soon shattered by the reality of a land laid to waste by the combined effects of war and economic sanctions. This process was also hampered by an Iraqi people who lacked faith in one another, and were alienated by the ideology, incompetence and corruption of the American occupation of their country. Despite the prewar assurances and guarantees made by senior officials in the Bush administration, Iraq’s “oil miracle” never occurred, and as such any hopes of building a solid economic foundation upon which an indigenous framework of governance could be placed were quashed. With no anchor upon which to steady itself, Iraq’s drive toward democracy was instead cut adrift amid the treacherous currents of internal politics, regional insecurity and international greed.
Advertisement
In many ways, the American experience in Iraq has been defined more by the fantasy dreamed up in Washington, D.C., than by the reality on the ground. That fantasy has included the “purple finger revolution,” which came to symbolize Iraq’s first national election of the post-Saddam era (Iraq still lacks a viable, cohesive government); the much-hyped military “surge” of 2006-2007, which had all the real impact of punching air; and the farcical economic “success” of major oil companies bidding on Iraqi oil exploration rights (orchestrated by an Iraqi Oil Ministry lacking both a governmental structure and legal basis for issuing such bids, given the Iraqi Parliament’s inability to pass an oil law. American politicians, aided and abetted by a fawning mainstream media, have fabricated a fiction aimed at a largely ignorant American public that fails to address the real problems in Iraq. It is in this topsy-turvy world created by political hype and media spin that a president can, with a straight face, announce the withdrawal of American “combat troops” from Iraq, while leaving behind six combat brigades (renamed, but not reorganized) comprising some 50,000 troops to fight and die in “noncombat.”
So You Think Know About the American Empire? — 11 Questions to Test Your Knowledge
Sign up to stay up to date on the latest News & Politics headlines via email.
Yes, it would be funny if it weren’t so grim. After all, when it comes to squandering money and resources in strange and distant places (or even here at home), you can count on the practitioners of American-style war to be wildly over the top.
Oh, those madcap Pentagon bureaucrats and the zany horde of generals and admirals who go with them! Give them credit: no one on Earth knows how to throw a war like they do — and they never go home.
In fact, when it comes to linking “profligate” to “war,” with all the lies, manipulations, and cost overruns that give it that proverbial pizzazz, Americans should stand tall. We are absolutely #1!
Hence, the very first TomDispatch American Way of War Quiz. Admittedly, it covers only the last four weeks of war news you wouldn’t believe if it weren’t in the papers, but we could have done this for any month since October 2001.
Now’s your chance to pit your wits (and your ability to suspend disbelief) against the best the Pentagon has to offer — and we’re talking about all seventeen-and-a-half miles of corridors in that five-sided, five-story edifice that has triple the square footage of the Empire State Building. To weigh your skills on the TomDispatch Scales of War™, take the 11-question pop quiz below, checking your answers against ours (with accompanying explanations), and see if you deserve to be a four-star general, a gun-totin’ mercenary, or a mere private.
1. With President Obama’s Afghan surge of 30,000 U.S. troops complete, an administration review of war policy due in December, and fears rising that new war commander General David Petraeus might then ask for more troops, what did the general do last week?
a. He informed the White House that he now had too many troops for reasonable operations in Afghanistan and proposed that a drawdown begin immediately.
b. He assured the White House that he was satisfied with the massive surge in troops (civilian employees, contractors, and CIA personnel) and would proceed as planned.
c. He asked for more troops now.
Correct answer: c. General Petraeus has already reportedly requested an extra mini-surge of 2,000 more troops from NATO, and probably from U.S. reserves as well, including more trainers for the Afghan military. In interviews as August ended, he was still insisting that he had “the structures, people, concepts, and resources required to carry out a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign.” But that was the summer silly season. This is September, a time for cooler heads and larger demands.
2. With President Obama’s announced July 2011 drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in mind, the Pentagon has already:
a. Begun organizing an orderly early 2011 withdrawal of troops from combat outposts and forward operating bases to larger facilities to facilitate the president’s plan.
b. Launched a new U.S. base-building binge in Afghanistan, including contracts for three $100 million facilities not to be completed, no less completely occupied, until late 2011.
c. Announced plans to shut down Kandahar Air Base’s covered boardwalk, including a TGI Friday’s, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and a Mamma Mia’s Pizzeria, and cancelled the opening of a Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs as part of its preparations for an American drawdown.
Correct answer: b. According to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, construction is slated to begin on at least three $100 million air base projects — “a $100 million area at Shindand Air Base for Special Operations helicopters and unmanned intelligence and surveillance aircraft”; another $100 million to expand the airfield at Camp Dwyer, a Marine base in Helmand Province, also to support Special Operations forces; and a final $100 million for expanded air facilities at Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan. None of these projects are to be completed until well after July 2011. “[R]equests for $1.3 billion in additional fiscal 2011 funds for multiyear construction of military facilities in Afghanistan are pending before Congress.” And fear not, there are no indications that the fast-food joints at Kandahar are going anywhere.
3. The U.S. military has more generals and admirals than:
a. Al-Qaeda members in Yemen.
b. Al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan.
c. Al-Qaeda members in Pakistan.
d. Al-Qaeda members in all three countries.
Correct answer: a, b, c, and d. According to CIA Director Leon Panetta, there are 50 to 100 al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, possibly less. Best estimates suggest that there are perhaps “several hundred” al-Qaeda members in poverty-stricken, desertifying, strife-torn Yemen. There are also an estimated “several hundred” members and leaders of the original al-Qaeda in the Pakistani borderlands. The high-end total for al-Qaeda members in the three countries, then, would be 800, though the actual figure could be significantly smaller. According to Ginger Thompson and Thom Shanker of the New York Times, the U.S. military has 963 generals and admirals, approximately 100 more than on September 11, 2001. (The average salary for a general, by the way, is $180,000, which means that the cost of these “stars,” not including pensions, health-care plans, and perks, is approximately $170 million a year.) The U.S. military has 40 four-star generals and admirals at the moment, which may represent more star-power than there are al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has suggested that, as a belt-tightening measure, he might cut the top-heavy U.S. military by 50 positions — that is, by half the increase since 9/11.
4. With the U.S. military obliged, by agreement with the Iraqi government, to withdraw all U.S. military personnel from Iraq by the end of 2011, the Pentagon has:
a. Decided that, in the interests of Iraqi sovereignty and to save U.S. taxpayers money, all U.S. troops will depart ahead of schedule, leaving Iraq no later than next February.
b. Instituted austerity measures, halted renovations on remaining American bases, and handed over all base construction efforts to the Iraqi government.
c. Continued to sink hundreds of millions of dollars into military base improvements.
Correct answer: c. Jackie Soohen recently toured Balad Air Base in Central Iraq for Democracy Now! That base, described in the past as an American town, has, she points out, “three large gyms, multiple shopping centers, recreation areas, and a movie theater,” not to speak of multiple bus routes and the usual range of fast-food parlors, PXs, and the like. The base, she reports, is still expanding and “on bases like this one…, the military continues to invest hundred of millions in infrastructure improvements, and it is difficult to imagine them fully abandoning everything they are building here.” They are, in fact, not likely to do so anytime soon. There are still more than 5,800 U.S. Air Force personnel in Iraq. Thanks to previous American policies, that country, which once had a large air force, today has only a rudimentary one. The new Iraqi air force is now eager to purchase its first jet fighters, F-16s from Lockheed Martin, but no agreement has been signed or date set for delivery. The Iraqis will still need further years of pilot training to fly those planes when they do arrive in 2013 or later. In the meantime, the U.S. Air Force is almost guaranteed to be the Iraqi Air Force, and U.S. Air Force personnel will undoubtedly remain at Balad Air Base in significant numbers, “withdrawal” or no.
5. What did the Pentagon recently hand over to Iraq?
a. A check for one trillion dollars to reconstruct a country which the U.S. invasion and occupation plunged into a ruinous civil war that cost millions of Iraqis their homes, their jobs, their economic security, their peace of mind, or their lives.
b. An IOU for two trillion dollars to reconstruct a country which the U.S. invasion and occupation plunged into a ruinous civil war that cost millions of Iraqis their homes, their jobs, their economic security, their peace of mind, or their lives.
c. Some hot air.
Correct answer: c. We’ll bet you didn’t know that, in 2003, the U.S. military occupied not only the land of Iraq, but its air, too. Just recently, according to a Pentagon press-release-cum-news-story, “the U.S. Air Force handed over the Kirkuk sector of airspace, 15,000 feet and above, to the ICAA [Iraq Civil Aviation Authority] at Baghdad International Airport.” In November, the U.S. plans to hand over even more hot air, this time in the south of the country — but not all of it. Iraq will not control all of its air until some time in 2011. Of course, once they have their air back, the Iraqi Air Force will only need planes and trained pilots to make use of it. (See question 4.)
6. The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, a “combat-capable brigade-sized unit,” has been deployed three times (according to the U.S. Army) “during Operation Iraqi Freedom — serving successfully in tough areas including Fallujah, Tall Afar, Ramadi, and Baghdad.” Its lead elements were recently sent from Fort Hood, Texas, to where?
a. Afghanistan as the final installment of President Obama’s surge of U.S. troops into that country.
b. Camp Justice, the U.S. military base in Oman, as a warning to insurgents in neighboring Yemen.
c. Camp Darby in Livorno, Italy, because the war there didn’t end all that long ago and, besides, Switzerland sits threateningly to the north.
d. Juarez, Mexico, because Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently declared Mexico’s drug war an “insurgency,” and insurgencies are now an area of U.S. military expertise.
e. Iraq, the country that the “last U.S. combat troops” left less than a month ago.
Correct answer: e. Of course, the “Brave Rifles,” as the unit is known, are not — we repeat not — combat troops. They’re just, says the Army, “combat capable.” Yes, they’re trained for combat. But take our word for it, they’re NOT combat troops. Yes they’re well armed. But NOT for combat. And yes, they’re an “Armored Cavalry” unit. But it’s NOT about combat, OK? They’re in Iraq strictly in an “advise and assist” capacity. Did we mention that they aren’t a combat unit?
7. With the U.S. military occupation of Iraq due to end in 2011, the American mission there is officially being left to the State Department, representing the civilian side of U.S. foreign policy, which is planning to:
a. Spend about $1.5 billion dollars to set up and run two embassy branch offices and two or more “enduring presence posts” (they used to be called “consulates”), including hiring the necessary armed private contractors.
b. Employ 2,400 people in its (“largest in the world”) embassy, the size of the Vatican (but far better defended) in Baghdad’s Green Zone and at its other posts.
c. More than double its force of private civilian contractors to 6,000-7,000, arm them with cast-off Pentagon heavy weaponry and Apache helicopters, and form them into “quick reaction teams.”
d. Spend another $800 million on a program to train the Iraqi police.
e. Take on more than 1,200 specific tasks previously handled by the U.S. military.
Correct answer: a, b, c, d, and e (and even they don’t cover the subject adequately). Michael Gordon of the New York Times supplied most of the numbers above. Who knows what those 1,200 previously military tasks may be, but, reports the Nation’s Jeremy Scahill, those five “enduring presence posts” are to be set up on what are now U.S. military bases, assumedly so that the Pentagon’s costly base-building won’t go completely to waste. It all represents a unique arrangement, since the civilian State Department’s corps of mercenary warriors will then be used to “operate radar to warn of enemy fire, search for roadside bombs, and fly surveillance drones,” among other jobs. Oh, and good news — if you happen to be a private contractor at least — that police-training program will be run by private contractors; and even better, just in case the private contractors don’t act on the up-and-up, there will be people specially assigned to provide oversight and they will be… private contractors, of course. How can the new diplomats from the remodeled five-sided State Department go wrong, advancing as they are encased in the latest mine-resistant vehicles known as MRAPS and ever prepared to give peace a chance?
8. When private military contractor Blackwater (now known as Xe Services) found itself in hot water after some of its guards slaughtered 17 Iraqi civilians in a Baghdad square in 2007, the company responded by:
a. Admitting error, while begging forgiveness from, and rapidly paying generous compensation to, the families of the dead Iraqi civilians.
b. Vowing to avoid all armed work in the future and to transform the company into a community-services and elderly care operation.
c. Setting up at least 31 shell companies and subsidiaries through which it could still be awarded contracts by the State Department, the CIA, and the U.S. Army without embarrassment to anyone.
Correct answer: c. So James Risen and Mark Mazzetti reported earlier this month in the New York Times. The company, which is “facing a string of legal problems, including the indictment in April of five former Blackwater officials on weapons and obstruction charges, and civil suits stemming from the 2007 shootings in Iraq,” hasn’t suffered in pocket-book terms. Just this year, it received contracts for $120 million to provide the State Department with security in Afghanistan, and another $100 million to protect the CIA in Afghanistan and elsewhere. (The Agency has awarded Blackwater and its shell companies $600 million since 2001, according to Risen and Mazzetti.)
9. Recently, Iran unveiled a new armed drone, billed as a long-range unmanned aerial bomber and dubbed the “Ambassador of Death” by the country’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Afterwards, the Pentagon:
a. Cut out drone strikes in Pakistan to send Iran a message that conducting regular attacks on a country with which you are not officially at war is impermissible.
b. Announced plans to rethink the fast-and-loose rules of robotic assassination used in its Terminator wars for the better part of a decade so that Iran could not cite U.S. actions as precedent.
c. Stepped up drone strikes in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, sometimes carrying out more than one a day.
Correct answer: c. In discussing Washington’s desire to export drone technology to allies, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has termed Iranian drones a “concern.” The U.S. has, however, not only continued to pave the way for Iran (and every other nation and non-state actor) to conduct drone attacks with utter impunity, but accelerated the process. For his part, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley recently echoed Gates, calling Iran’s drones a “concern to us and concern to Iran’s neighbors.” Of the new Iranian drone’s hyperbolic unofficial moniker, he said with a laugh, “It’s a curious name for a system.” Perhaps he’s unaware that his own government has dubbed its two marquee armed drones — with a straight face, mind you — Predator and Reaper (as in “Grim…”) and that those aircraft launch “Hellfire” missiles. The official name of the Iranian drone is actually the least inflammatory of the three: “Karrar” or “striker.”
10. Five hundred million dollars is approximately the amount:
a. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged in July to development projects for Pakistan to “build broader support for the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.”
b. Afghanistan’s troubled Kabul Bank had in cash just weeks ago before its panicked depositors bled it dry.
c. The amount of money the U.S. military will spend on its musical bands this year.
Correct answer: a, b, and c. According to the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus, the U.S. military may now spend $500 million or more annually on its musical bands — the U.S. Army alone has more than 100 of them — the same amount used to sway a critically impoverished country of 166 million people in what’s been portrayed as a multigenerational war of paramount importance. At least Kabul Bank now knows where to go for a loan, assuming that Afghans will accept trombones instead of cash.
Blast-from-the-Past Bonus Question
11. Who said, “I think for us to get American military personnel involved in a civil war inside Iraq would literally be a quagmire”?
a. Bob Dylan, mumbled during a live performance in April 2002.
b. Dick Cheney in 1991 when he was George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense.
c. George Steinbrenner in an interview with the New York Daily News after the Yankees won the 1998 World Series.
Correct answer: b. If only Cheney had listened to himself when he became vice president. “Several years after occupied Iraq had become the quagmire he once warned about,” writes historian John Dower in his striking new book Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq, “Cheney was asked how to reconcile what he argued in 1991 and disregarded later. ‘Well, I stand by what I said in ’91,’ he replied. ‘But look what’s happened since then — we had 9/11.’” Sigh.
And believe it or not, folks, that’s it for the wild and wacky world of American war this month. If you answered at least 10 of the American Way of War Quiz questions correctly, consider yourself a four-star general. If you answered 5 to 9 correctly, you qualify as a gun totin’ mercenary (with all the usual Lord of the Flies perks). If you did worse, you’re a buck private in a U.S. Army woodwind ensemble that’s just been dispatched to Camp Dwyer in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books), has just been published. You can catch him discussing war American-style and his book in a Timothy MacBain TomCast audio interview by clicking here or, to download it to your iPod, here.
Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. His latest book, The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books), has just been published. He discusses why withdrawal hasn’t been on the American agenda in Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview, which can be accessed by clicking here or downloaded to your iPod here. Turse is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute. You can follow him on Twitter @NickTurse, on Tumblr, and on Facebook. His website is NickTurse.com.
Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation,and regularly at TomDispatch. His latest book, The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso), which brings together leading analysts from across the political spectrum, will be published later this month. He is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute. You can follow him on Twitter @NickTurse, on at http://nickturse.tumblr.com/Tumblr, and on NickTurse.com.
Tony Blair Fanclub Part 2 : War Criminals Rewarded for their Contribution to World Peace: Only in America Can Tony Blair Go Out in Public
| http://www.globalresearch.ca
by David Swanson
|
|||||
 |
|||||
|
Global Research, September 14, 2010
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
When U.S. media pundits claim that every other nation on earth honestly believed the absurd lies George W. Bush told about Iraqi weapons and ties to terrorism, the grain of truth is that one leader of one foreign nation went along with the lies: British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Bush gave Blair a medal of freedom as a reward. I picture millions of Iraqi refugees without proper food or medicine in Jordan and Syria strong in spirit and grateful for their fate thanks to Blair’s assistance in freeing them from their homes.
On August 31st, President Obama spoke from the Oval Office, assuring us that the War on Iraq had been launched to disarm a nation. Disarming a nation is a criminal basis for a war, a fact that I wish would quit getting lost in the madness of what we actually debate in this country. But Obama’s claim to have opposed this war that he funded as a senator and continued as a president rests on the idea, not just that he was lucky enough not to yet be in the Senate when it started, but that he didn’t at that time yet pretend to believe the lies. Now he finds it important to put up that pretense when nobody else believes it anymore, in order to urge us to “turn the page” on the crime of the century. Obama’s embrace of the Iraq war lies, which included the “surge” lies so valuable now in Afghanistan, coincided with Tony Blair’s book tour. When Blair was performing his poodle tricks in 2002 and 2003 he was questioned and mocked at home and in Parliament, but given endless standing ovations in Congress. Nothing has changed. In Ireland on his book tour — the current equivalent of a triumphal march after a return from foreign slaughter — Blair faced protests and an attempted citizen’s arrest. In London the planned protests were so large that Blair canceled his event, stuck his tail between his legs, and whimpered away. In Philadelphia, on the other hand, Blair has just been presented with a Liberty Medal at the Constitution Center by none other than Bill Clinton, as reward for Blair’s . . . wait for it . . . “steadfast commitment to conflict resolution.” Only in America. I haven’t read Bliar’s book (Bliar is the proper spelling) and I don’t think I could be paid enough to do so. But I want to recommend a different book instead. Someone else who was part of the British government during the lead up to the War on Iraq has also just published a book. It doesn’t have any cute stories in it about sitting in the wrong chair in the Queen’s palace, but it does tell the truth about Blair’s deadly lies, for which he should have been — and nearly was — impeached, and for which he should be prosecuted. The book is “Failing Intelligence: The True Story of How We Were Fooled into Going to War in Iraq,” by Brian Jones, the former head of the UK Defense Intelligence Staff’s nuclear, biological, and chemical section. Jones was in charge of the type of claims that Blair used in his famously sexed up dodgy dossier to sell his nation on war. But Jones and his staff were cut out of the process. They were told that evidence existed that they could not see and would have to take on faith, evidence Jones still hasn’t seen but which was “withdrawn” as inaccurate by the government after the war began. Jones did not accept the mysterious evidence of “weapons of mass destruction” on faith. He formally registered his concerns with his superiors at the time. But he did not resign in protest or go public, either. Jones seems, from his book, to be a very cautious bureaucrat whose view of the world does not differ radically from the worldview of Bush or Blair. But he has come gradually, through a series of inquiries into the war lies, to understand that the lies were intentional and to speak out against them. Jones notes that the discussion at 10 Downing Street on July 23, 2002, recorded in the Downing Street Minutes, did not include any consideration of the security of Britain and seemed based on the premise that continued good relations with the United States was of greater importance than the risk of a terrorist attack. Jones would never have sworn that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. He even finds the question lacking, pointing out how swiftly a nation can create and use biological or chemical weapons whether or not it currently has them, as long as it has the know-how, which Iraq did. But, contrary to what you might hear in the U.S. media, Jones — the man in charge of this area in Britain — did not have any evidence that Iraq did have biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons. In fact, Jones knew Iraq to be far from possessing nuclear weapons. And he said so, albeit privately and through approved professional channels. “Now listen, Brian,” he records his boss lecturing him, “I don’t know what it is but you really seem to have a problem with authority, don’t you? Decisions have been made, a position has been established and it is our responsibility as good civil servants to accept that and support the line as best we can.” Jones refused to go along, and he says that he tried to go public with his concerns following his retirement but before the invasion of Baghdad. Jones retired two months before the war began. “I thought it was important that the public should understand these differences [between various types of weapons conflated through the term "WMD"] and I drafted an article that explained them,” Jones writes. “I was surprised that my request to Whitehall for clearance for me to submit it for publication was promptly approved. Unfortunately, no one wanted to publish it.” A version of that article, dated July 2003, is here: http://warisacrime.org/downloads/jones.pdf You can see why nobody wanted to publish it. It does not blow the whistle on the war liars, explain how the experts were cut out of the process, or denounce the war. It presents itself as academic quibbling over the use of terminology. Jones’ account of his gradual movement in the months and years following the invasion reads, at first, more as a profile in pusillanimity than courage. He literally has a weak heart and is concerned about his health during the stress of testifying to the Hutton, Butler, Chilcot and other inquiries. Asked at the Hutton Inquiry how he would have felt had his staff gone to the press with their concerns, Jones replied: “I would have thought they were acting well beyond the bounds of what they should have been doing. I would have been very disappointed and very annoyed.” Never mind that over a million Iraqis might have been kept very much ALIVE. That concern never enters Jones’ book. And yet, as he methodically recounts, he came to speak out in public inquiries and in the press about the corrupt process through which Bliar dragged Britain into a U.S. war of aggression. Jones lays the blame for his nation’s role solidly on Bliar. Now, it occurs to me that Washington, D.C., is crawling with respectable bureaucrats like Jones, none of whom have published a book like his. And it occurs to me that they are less likely to do so because of the climate in which they live. In Britain, there have been constant investigations since the war was launched. They have been limited and can in most cases accurately be characterized as white washes. They have not involved criminal prosecution. But they have been there. And those who have spoken up a bit have been lauded and encouraged to speak up a little more. This climate, I think, has encouraged the leaking of all the official British documents through which we in the United States have learned about our own government’s war plans. The activism of the Stop the War Coalition has been relentless, but — unlike in the United States — it has penetrated major media outlets. Producers and editors have urged Jones and others to make their information known and to publish books. We haven’t seen a proposal in Washington to investigate the war lies since 2005 when the Democrats were lying about what they’d do if we gave them a majority in Congress. On the contrary, it is now popular in Washington to claim you supported the 2007 “surge” and knew Iraq would turn out to be a “good war” all along. Jones’ prescription for reform at the close of his book is a single intelligence agency with a single head answerable to the Parliament. As his book reveals in detail, just as in the United States, the tangled web of rival agencies in the UK is a liability. I agree with Jones’ proposed reform, although I hardly think spying — even when limited to spying, and excluding assassination and other tricks of the CIA — has earned the moniker ‘intelligence.’ I’d be inclined to go with ‘stupidity’ for a while. “Would you please share that piece of stupidity with the committee?” “Is there a consensus on this point within the stupidity community?” “I have the utmost respect for the views of our stupidity agents.” Et cetera. More substantively, of course, we will only be able to “turn the page” to a page that looks sufficiently different when there are deterrents to the sort of abuses engaged in by Bush and Blair. Blair WAS, in fact, a single head of government answerable to Parliament, and Parliament failed to impeach him. Now, if we could just begin enforcing the law and stop handing out medals. David Swanson is the author of “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union” |
|||||
|
Global Research Articles by David Swanson
. |
|||||
Email this article to a friend
Print this article
Flying the Flag, Faking the News
Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the first world war, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe. In his book, Propaganda, published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the "intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses was an important element in democratic society" and that the manipulators "constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country." Instead of propaganda, he coined the euphemism "public relations."
The American tobacco industry hired Bernays to convince women they should smoke in public. By associating smoking with women’s liberation, he made cigarettes "torches of freedom." In 1954, he conjured a communist menace in Guatemala as an excuse for overthrowing the democratically-elected government, whose social reforms were threatening the United Fruit company’s monopoly of the banana trade. He called it a "liberation."
Bernays was no rabid right-winger. He was an elitist liberal who believed that "engineering public consent" was for the greater good. This was achieved by the creation of "false realities" which then became "news events." Here are examples of how it is done these days:
False reality: The last US combat troops have left Iraq "as promised, on schedule", according to President Barack Obama. TV screens have filled with cinematic images of the "last US soldiers" silhouetted against the dawn light, crossing the border into Kuwait.
Fact: They are still there. At least 50,000 troops will continue to operate from 94 bases. American air assaults are unchanged, as are special forces’ assassinations. The number of "military contractors" is currently 100,000 and rising. Most Iraqi oil is now under direct foreign control.
False reality: BBC presenters and reporters have described the departing US troops as a "sort of victorious army" that has achieved "a remarkable change in [Iraq’s] fortunes.” Their commander, General David Petraeus, is a “celebrity”, “charming”, “savvy” and “remarkable.”
Fact: There is no victory of any sort. There is a catastrophic disaster; and attempts to present it as otherwise are a model of Bernays’ campaign to “re-brand” the slaughter of the first world war as “necessary” and “noble.” In 1980, Ronald Reagan, running for president, re-branded the invasion of Vietnam, in which up to three million people died, as a “noble cause”, a theme taken up enthusiastically by Hollywood. Today’s Iraq war movies have a similar purging theme: the invader as both idealist and victim.
False reality: It is not known how many Iraqis have died. They are “countless” or maybe “in the tens of thousands.”
Fact: As a direct consequence of the Anglo-American led invasion, a million Iraqis have died. This figure from Opinion Research Business is based on peer-reviewed research led by Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC, whose methods were secretly affirmed as “best practice” and “robust” by the Blair government’s chief scientific adviser, as revealed in a Freedom of Information search. This figure is rarely reported or presented to “charming” and “savvy” American generals. Neither is the dispossession of four million Iraqis, the malnourishment of most Iraqi children, the epidemic of mental illness and the poisoning of the environment.
False reality: The British economy has a deficit of billions which must be reduced with cuts in public services and regressive taxation, in a spirit of “we’re all in this together.”
Fact: We are not in this together. What is remarkable about this public relations triumph is that only 18 months ago the diametric opposite filled TV screens and front pages. Then, in a state of shock, truth was unavoidable, if briefly. The Wall Street and City of London financiers’ trough was on full view for the first time, along with the venality of once celebrated snouts. Billions in public money went to inept and crooked organizations known as banks, which were spared debt liability by their Labor government sponsors.
Within a year, record profits and personal bonuses were posted, and state and media propaganda had recovered its equilibrium. Suddenly, the “black hole” was no longer the responsibility of the banks, whose debt is to be paid by those not in any way responsible: the public. The received media wisdom of this “necessity” is now a chorus, from the BBC to the Sun. A masterstroke, Bernays would surely say.
False reality: The former government minister Ed Miliband offers a “genuine alternative” as leader of the British Labor Party.
Fact: Miliband, like his brother David, the former foreign secretary, and almost all those standing for the Labor leadership, is immersed in the effluent of New Labor As a New Labor MP and minister, he did not refuse to serve under Blair or speak out against Labor’s persistent warmongering. He now calls the invasion of Iraq a “profound mistake.” Calling it a mistake insults the memory and the dead. It was a crime, of which the evidence is voluminous. He has nothing new to say about the other colonial wars, none of them mistakes. Neither has he demanded basic social justice: that those who caused the recession clear up the mess and that Britain’s fabulously rich corporate minority be seriously taxed, starting with Rupert Murdoch.
Of course, the good news is that false realities often fail when the public trusts its own critical intelligence, not the media. Two classified documents recently released by Wikileaks express the CIA’s concern that the populations of European countries, which oppose their governments’ war policies, are not succumbing to the usual propaganda spun through the media. For the rulers of the world, this is a conundrum, because their unaccountable power rests on the false reality that no popular resistance works. And it does.
Read more by John Pilger
- Why WikiLeaks Must Be Protected – August 18th, 2010
- Tony Blair Must Be Prosecuted – August 4th, 2010
- The New Warlord of Oz – July 21st, 2010
- The Charge of the Media Brigade – July 6th, 2010
- The Black Art of ‘Master Illusions’ – June 3rd, 2010
No Secrets: Julian Assange’s mission for total transparency
Raffi Khatchadourian
The New Yorker
Mon, 07 Jun 2010 10:07 EDT
The house on Grettisgata Street, in Reykjavik, is a century old, small and white, situated just a few streets from the North Atlantic. The shifting northerly winds can suddenly bring ice and snow to the city, even in springtime, and when they do a certain kind of silence sets in. This was the case on the morning of March 30th, when a tall Australian man named Julian Paul Assange, with gray eyes and a mop of silver-white hair, arrived to rent the place. Assange was dressed in a gray full-body snowsuit, and he had with him a small entourage. “We are journalists,” he told the owner of the house. Eyjafjallajökull had recently begun erupting, and he said, “We’re here to write about the volcano.” After the owner left, Assange quickly closed the drapes, and he made sure that they stayed closed, day and night. The house, as far as he was concerned, would now serve as a war room; people called it the Bunker. Half a dozen computers were set up in a starkly decorated, white-walled living space. Icelandic activists arrived, and they began to work, more or less at Assange’s direction, around the clock. Their focus was Project B – Assange’s code name for a thirty-eight-minute video taken from the cockpit of an Apache military helicopter in Iraq in 2007. The video depicted American soldiers killing at least eighteen people, including two Reuters journalists; it later became the subject of widespread controversy, but at this early stage it was still a closely guarded military secret.
Assange is an international trafficker, of sorts. He and his colleagues collect documents and imagery that governments and other institutions regard as confidential and publish them on a Web site called WikiLeaks.org. Since it went online, three and a half years ago, the site has published an extensive catalogue of secret material, ranging from the Standard Operating Procedures at Camp Delta, in Guantánamo Bay, and the “Climategate” e-mails from the University of East Anglia, in England, to the contents of Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo account. The catalogue is especially remarkable because WikiLeaks is not quite an organization; it is better described as a media insurgency. It has no paid staff, no copiers, no desks, no office. Assange does not even have a home. He travels from country to country, staying with supporters, or friends of friends – as he once put it to me, “I’m living in airports these days.” He is the operation’s prime mover, and it is fair to say that WikiLeaks exists wherever he does. At the same time, hundreds of volunteers from around the world help maintain the Web site’s complicated infrastructure; many participate in small ways, and between three and five people dedicate themselves to it full time. Key members are known only by initials – M, for instance – even deep within WikiLeaks, where communications are conducted by encrypted online chat services. The secretiveness stems from the belief that a populist intelligence operation with virtually no resources, designed to publicize information that powerful institutions do not want public, will have serious adversaries.
Iceland was a natural place to develop Project B. In the past year, Assange has collaborated with politicians and activists there to draft a free-speech law of unprecedented strength, and a number of these same people had agreed to help him work on the video in total secrecy. The video was a striking artifact – an unmediated representation of the ambiguities and cruelties of modern warfare – and he hoped that its release would touch off a worldwide debate about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was planning to unveil the footage before a group of reporters at the National Press Club, in Washington, on April 5th, the morning after Easter, presumably a slow news day. To accomplish this, he and the other members of the WikiLeaks community would have to analyze the raw video and edit it into a short film, build a stand-alone Web site to display it, launch a media campaign, and prepare documentation for the footage – all in less than a week’s time.
Assange also wanted to insure that, once the video was posted online, it would be impossible to remove. He told me that WikiLeaks maintains its content on more than twenty servers around the world and on hundreds of domain names. (Expenses are paid by donations, and a few independent well-wishers also run “mirror sites” in support.) Assange calls the site “an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking and public analysis,” and a government or company that wanted to remove content from WikiLeaks would have to practically dismantle the Internet itself. So far, even though the site has received more than a hundred legal threats, almost no one has filed suit. Lawyers working for the British bank Northern Rock threatened court action after the site published an embarrassing memo, but they were practically reduced to begging. A Kenyan politician also vowed to sue after Assange published a confidential report alleging that President Daniel arap Moi and his allies had siphoned billions of dollars out of the country. The site’s work in Kenya earned it an award from Amnesty International.
Assange typically tells would-be litigants to go to hell. In 2008, WikiLeaks posted secret Scientology manuals, and lawyers representing the church demanded that they be removed. Assange’s response was to publish more of the Scientologists’ internal material, and to announce, “WikiLeaks will not comply with legally abusive requests from Scientology any more than WikiLeaks has complied with similar demands from Swiss banks, Russian offshore stem-cell centers, former African kleptocrats, or the Pentagon.”
In his writing online, especially on Twitter, Assange is quick to lash out at perceived enemies. By contrast, on television, where he has been appearing more frequently, he acts with uncanny sang-froid. Under the studio lights, he can seem – with his spectral white hair, pallid skin, cool eyes, and expansive forehead – like a rail-thin being who has rocketed to Earth to deliver humanity some hidden truth. This impression is magnified by his rigid demeanor and his baritone voice, which he deploys slowly, at low volume.
In private, however, Assange is often bemused and energetic. He can concentrate intensely, in binges, but he is also the kind of person who will forget to reserve a plane ticket, or reserve a plane ticket and forget to pay for it, or pay for the ticket and forget to go to the airport. People around him seem to want to care for him; they make sure that he is where he needs to be, and that he has not left all his clothes in the dryer before moving on. At such times, he can seem innocent of the considerable influence that he has acquired.
Sitting at a small wooden table in the Bunker, Assange looked exhausted. His lanky frame was arched over two computers – one of them online, and the other disconnected from the Internet, because it was full of classified military documents. (In the tradecraft of espionage, this is known as maintaining an “air gap.”) He has a cyber-security analyst’s concern about computer vulnerability, and habitually takes precautions to frustrate eavesdroppers. A low-grade fever of paranoia runs through the WikiLeaks community. Assange says that he has chased away strangers who have tried to take his picture for surveillance purposes. In March, he published a classified military report, created by the Army Counterintelligence Center in 2008, that argued that the site was a potential threat to the Army and briefly speculated on ways to deter government employees from leaking documents to it. Assange regarded the report as a declaration of war, and posted it with the title “U.S. Intelligence Planned to Destroy WikiLeaks.” During a trip to a conference before he came to the Bunker, he thought he was being followed, and his fear began to infect others. “I went to Sweden and stayed with a girl who is a foreign editor of a newspaper there, and she became so paranoid that the C.I.A. was trying to get me she left the house and abandoned me,” he said.
Assange was sitting opposite Rop Gonggrijp, a Dutch activist, hacker, and businessman. Gonggrijp – thin and balding, with a soft voice – has known Assange well for several years. He had noticed Assange’s panicky communiqués about being watched and decided that his help was needed. “Julian can deal with incredibly little sleep, and a hell of a lot of chaos, but even he has his limits, and I could see that he was stretching himself,” Gonggrijp told me. “I decided to come out and make things sane again.” Gonggrijp became the unofficial manager and treasurer of Project B, advancing about ten thousand euros to WikiLeaks to finance it. He kept everyone on schedule, and made sure that the kitchen was stocked with food and that the Bunker was orderly.
At around three in the afternoon, an Icelandic parliamentarian named Birgitta Jonsdottir walked in. Jonsdottir, who is in her forties, with long brown hair and bangs, was wearing a short black skirt and a black T-shirt with skulls printed on it. She took a WikiLeaks T-shirt from her bag and tossed it at Assange.
“That’s for you,” she said. “You need to change.” He put the T-shirt on a chair next to him, and continued working.
Jonsdottir has been in parliament for about a year, but considers herself a poet, artist, writer, and activist. Her political views are mostly anarchist. “I was actually unemployed before I got this job,” she explained. “When we first got to parliament, the staff was so nervous: here are people who were protesting parliament, who were for revolution, and now we are inside. None of us had aspirations to be politicians. We have a checklist, and, once we’re done, we are out.”
As she unpacked her computer, she asked Assange how he was planning to delegate the work on Project B. More Icelandic activists were due to arrive; half a dozen ultimately contributed time to the video, and about as many WikiLeaks volunteers from other countries were participating. Assange suggested that someone make contact with Google to insure that YouTube would host the footage.
“To make sure it is not taken down under pressure?” she asked.
“They have a rule that mentions gratuitous violence,” Assange said. “The violence is not gratuitous in this case, but nonetheless they have taken things down. It is too important to be interfered with.”
“What can we ask M to do?” Jonsdottir asked. Assange, engrossed in what he was doing, didn’t reply.
His concerns about surveillance had not entirely receded. On March 26th, he had written a blast e-mail, titled “Something Is Rotten in the State of Iceland,” in which he described a teen-age Icelandic WikiLeaks volunteer’s story of being detained by local police for more than twenty hours. The volunteer was arrested for trying to break into the factory where his father worked – “the reasons he was trying to get in are not totally justified,” Assange told me – and said that while in custody he was interrogated about Project B. Assange claimed that the volunteer was “shown covert photos of me outside the Reykjavik restaurant Icelandic Fish & Chips,” where a WikiLeaks production meeting had taken place in a private back room.
The police were denying key parts of the volunteer’s story, and Assange was trying to learn more. He received a call, and after a few minutes hung up. “Our young friend talked to one of the cops,” he said. “I was about to get more details, but my battery died.” He smiled and looked suspiciously at his phone.
“We are all paranoid schizophrenics,” Jonsdottir said. She gestured at Assange, who was still wearing his snowsuit. “Just look at how he dresses.”
Gonggrijp got up, walked to the window, and parted the drapes to peer out.
“Someone?” Jonsdottir asked.
“Just the camera van,” he deadpanned. “The brain-manipulation van.”
At around six in the evening, Assange got up from his spot at the table. He was holding a hard drive containing Project B. The video – excerpts of running footage captured by a camera mounted on the Apache – depicts soldiers conducting an operation in eastern Baghdad, not long after the surge began. Using the Freedom of Information Act, Reuters has sought for three years to obtain the video from the Army, without success. Assange would not identify his source, saying only that the person was unhappy about the attack. The video was digitally encrypted, and it took WikiLeaks three months to crack. Assange, a cryptographer of exceptional skill, told me that unlocking the file was “moderately difficult.”
People gathered in front of a computer to watch. In grainy black-and-white, we join the crew of the Apache, from the Eighth Cavalry Regiment, as it hovers above Baghdad with another helicopter. A wide-angle shot frames a mosque’s dome in crosshairs. We see a jumble of buildings and palm trees and abandoned streets. We hear bursts of static, radio blips, and the clipped banter of tactical communication. Two soldiers are in mid-conversation; the first recorded words are “O.K., I got it.” Assange hit the pause button, and said, “In this video, you will see a number of people killed.” The footage, he explained, had three broad phases. “In the first phase, you will see an attack that is based upon a mistake, but certainly a very careless mistake. In the second part, the attack is clearly murder, according to the definition of the average man. And in the third part you will see the killing of innocent civilians in the course of soldiers going after a legitimate target.”
The first phase was chilling, in part because the banter of the soldiers was so far beyond the boundaries of civilian discourse. “Just fuckin’, once you get on ‘em, just open ‘em up,” one of them said. The crew members of the Apache came upon about a dozen men ambling down a street, a block or so from American troops, and reported that five or six of the men were armed with AK-47s; as the Apache maneuvered into position to fire at them, the crew saw one of the Reuters journalists, who were mixed in among the other men, and mistook a long-lensed camera for an RPG. The Apaches fired on the men for twenty-five seconds, killing nearly all of them instantly.
Phase two began shortly afterward. As the helicopter hovered over the carnage, the crew noticed a wounded survivor struggling on the ground. The man appeared to be unarmed. “All you gotta do is pick up a weapon,” a soldier in the Apache said. Suddenly, a van drove into view, and three unarmed men rushed to help the wounded person. “We have individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly, uh, picking up bodies and weapons,” the Apache reported, even though the men were helping a survivor, and were not collecting weapons. The Apache fired, killing the men and the person they were trying to save, and wounding two young children in the van’s front seat.
In phase three, the helicopter crew radioed a commander to say that at least six armed men had entered a partially constructed building in a dense urban area. Some of the armed men may have walked over from a skirmish with American troops; it is unclear. The crew asked for permission to attack the structure, which they said appeared abandoned. “We can put a missile in it,” a soldier in the Apache suggested, and the go-ahead was quickly given. Moments later, two unarmed people entered the building. Though the soldiers acknowledged them, the attack proceeded: three Hellfire missiles destroyed the building. Passersby were engulfed by clouds of debris.
Assange saw these events in sharply delineated moral terms, yet the footage did not offer easy legal judgments. In the month before the video was shot, members of the battalion on the ground, from the Sixteenth Infantry Regiment, had suffered more than a hundred and fifty attacks and roadside bombings, nineteen injuries, and four deaths; early that morning, the unit had been attacked by small-arms fire. The soldiers in the Apache were matter-of-fact about killing and spoke callously about their victims, but the first attack could be judged as a tragic misunderstanding. The attack on the van was questionable – the use of force seemed neither thoughtful nor measured – but soldiers are permitted to shoot combatants, even when they are assisting the wounded, and one could argue that the Apache’s crew, in the heat of the moment, reasonably judged the men in the van to be assisting the enemy. Phase three may have been unlawful, perhaps negligent homicide or worse. Firing missiles into a building, in daytime, to kill six people who do not appear to be of strategic importance is an excessive use of force. This attack was conducted with scant deliberation, and it is unclear why the Army did not investigate it.
Assange had obtained internal Army records of the operation, which stated that everyone killed, except for the Reuters journalists, was an insurgent. And the day after the incident an Army spokesperson said, “There is no question that Coalition Forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force.” Assange was hoping that Project B would undermine the Army’s official narrative. “This video shows what modern warfare has become, and, I think, after seeing it, whenever people hear about a certain number of casualties that resulted during fighting with close air support, they will understand what is going on,” he said in the Bunker. “The video also makes clear that civilians are listed as insurgents automatically, unless they are children, and that bystanders who are killed are not even mentioned.”
WikiLeaks receives about thirty submissions a day, and typically posts the ones it deems credible in their raw, unedited state, with commentary alongside. Assange told me, “I want to set up a new standard: ‘scientific journalism.’ If you publish a paper on DNA, you are required, by all the good biological journals, to submit the data that has informed your research – the idea being that people will replicate it, check it, verify it. So this is something that needs to be done for journalism as well. There is an immediate power imbalance, in that readers are unable to verify what they are being told, and that leads to abuse.” Because Assange publishes his source material, he believes that WikiLeaks is free to offer its analysis, no matter how speculative. In the case of Project B, Assange wanted to edit the raw footage into a short film as a vehicle for commentary. For a while, he thought about calling the film “Permission to Engage,” but ultimately decided on something more forceful: “Collateral Murder.” He told Gonggrijp, “We want to knock out this ‘collateral damage’ euphemism, and so when anyone uses it they will think ‘collateral murder.’ “
The video, in its original form, was a puzzle – a fragment of evidence divorced from context. Assange and the others in the Bunker spent much of their time trying to piece together details: the units involved, their command structure, the rules of engagement, the jargon soldiers used on the radio, and, most important, whether and how the Iraqis on the ground were armed.
“One of them has a weapon,” Assange said, peering at blurry footage of the men walking down the street. “See all those people standing out there.”
“And there is a guy with an RPG over his arm,” Gonggrijp said.
“I’m not sure.” Assange said. “It does look a little bit like an RPG.” He played the footage again. “I’ll tell you what is very strange,” he said. “If it is an RPG, then there is just one RPG. Where are all the other weapons? All those guys. It is pretty weird.”
The forensic work was made more difficult because Assange had declined to discuss the matter with military officials. “I thought it would be more harmful than helpful,” he told me. “I have approached them before, and, as soon as they hear it is WikiLeaks, they are not terribly coöperative.” Assange was running Project B as a surprise attack. He had encouraged a rumor that the video was shot in Afghanistan in 2009, in the hope that the Defense Department would be caught unprepared. Assange does not believe that the military acts in good faith with the media. He said to me, “What right does this institution have to know the story before the public?”
This adversarial mind-set permeated the Bunker. Late one night, an activist asked if Assange might be detained upon his arrival in the United States.
“If there is ever a time it was safe for me to go, it is now,” Assange assured him.
“They say that Gitmo is nice this time of year,” Gonggrijp said.
Assange was the sole decision-maker, and it was possible to leave the house at night and come back after sunrise and see him in the same place, working. (“I spent two months in one room in Paris once without leaving,” he said. “People were handing me food.”) He spoke to the team in shorthand – “I need the conversion stuff,” or “Make sure that credit-card donations are acceptable” – all the while resolving flareups with the overworked volunteers. To keep track of who was doing what, Gonggrijp and another activist maintained a workflow chart with yellow Post-Its on the kitchen cabinets. Elsewhere, people were translating the video’s subtitles into various languages, or making sure that servers wouldn’t crash from the traffic that was expected after the video was posted. Assange wanted the families of the Iraqis who had died in the attack to be contacted, to prepare them for the inevitable media attention, and to gather additional information. In conjunction with Iceland’s national broadcasting service, RUV, he sent two Icelandic journalists to Baghdad to find them.
By the end of the week, a frame-by-frame examination of the footage was nearly complete, revealing minute details – evidence of a body on the ground, for instance – that were not visible by casual viewing. (“I am about twelve thousand frames in,” the activist who reviewed it told me. “It’s been a morbid day, going through these people’s last moments.”) Assange had decided to exclude the Hellfire incident from the film; the attack lacked the obvious human dimension of the others, and he thought that viewers might be overloaded with information.
The edited film, which was eighteen minutes long, began with a quote from George Orwell that Assange and M had selected: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.” It then presented information about the journalists who had been killed, and about the official response to the attack. For the audio of this section, one of the film’s Icelandic editors had layered in fragments of radio banter from the soldiers. As Assange reviewed the cut, an activist named Gudmundur Gudmundsson spoke up to say that the banter allowed viewers to “make an emotional bond” with the soldiers. Assange argued that it was mostly fragmentary and garbled, but Gudmundsson insisted: “It is just used all the time for triggering emotions.”
“At the same time, we are displaying them as monsters,” the editor said.
“But emotions always rule,” Gudmundsson said. “By the way, I worked on the sound recording for a film, ‘Children of Nature,’ that was nominated for an Oscar, so I am speaking from experience.”
“Well, what is your alternative?” Assange asked.
“Basically, bursts of sounds, interrupting the quiet,” he said.
The editor made the change, stripping the voices of the soldiers from the opening, but keeping blips and whirs of radio distortion. Assange gave the edit his final approval.
Late Saturday night, shortly before all the work had to be finished, the journalists who had gone to Baghdad sent Assange an e-mail: they had found the two children in the van. The children had lived a block from the location of the attack, and were being driven to school by their father that morning. “They remember the bombardment, felt great pain, they said, and lost consciousness,” one of the journalists wrote. The journalists also found the owner of the building that had been attacked by the Hellfires, who said that families had been living in the structure, and that seven residents had died. The owner, a retired English teacher, had lost his wife and daughter. An intense discussion arose about what to do with this news: Was it worth using at the National Press Club, or was it a better tactic to hold on to it? If the military justified the Hellfire attacks by claiming that there were no civilian casualties, WikiLeaks could respond by releasing the information, in a kind of ambush. Jonsdottir turned to Gonggrijp, whose eyes had welled up.
“Are you crying?” she asked.
“I am,” he said. “O.K., O.K., it is just the kids. It hurts.” Gonggrijp gathered himself. “Fuck!” he said. Resuming the conversation about ambushing the Army, he said, “Anyway, let them walk into this knife – “
“That is a wonderful thing to do,” one of the activists said.
“Let them walk into this, and they will,” Gonggrijp said. “It is a logical response.”
Jonsdottir was now in tears, too, and wiping her nose.
“Now I want to re-edit the thing,” Assange said. “I want to put in the missile attack. There were three families living in the bottom, so it wasn’t abandoned.” But it was impossible to re-edit the film. The activists were working at capacity, and in several hours it would be Easter.
At half past ten in the morning, Gonggrijp pulled open the drapes, and the Bunker was filled with sunlight. He was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and black pants, freshly washed and ironed, and he was struggling to keep everyone on schedule. Last-minute concerns – among them finding a criminal-defense lawyer in the United States – were being addressed. Assange was at a computer, his posture upright as he steadily typed.
“How are we on time?” he asked no one in particular.
“We have three hours,” Gonggrijp said.
Assange wrinkled his brow and turned his attention back to the screen. He was looking at a copy of classified rules of engagement in Iraq from 2006, one of several secret American military documents that he was planning to post with the video. WikiLeaks scrubs such documents to insure that no digital traces embedded in them can identify their source. Assange was purging these traces as fast as he could.
Reykjavik’s streets were empty, and the bells of a cathedral began to toll. “Remember, remember the fifth of November,” Assange said, repeating a line from the English folk poem celebrating Guy Fawkes. He smiled, as Gonggrijp dismantled the workflow chart, removing Post-Its from the cabinets and flushing them down the toilet. Shortly before noon, there was a desperate push to clear away the remaining vestiges of Project B and to get to the airport. Assange was unpacked and unshaven, and his hair was a mess. He was typing up a press release. Jonsdottir came by to help, and he asked her, “Can’t you cut my hair while I’m doing this?”
“No, I am not going to cut your hair while you are working,” she said.
Jonsdottir walked over to the sink and made tea. Assange kept on typing, and after a few minutes she reluctantly began to trim his hair. At one point, she stopped and asked, “If you get arrested, will you get in touch with me?” Assange nodded. Gonggrijp, meanwhile, shoved some of Assange’s things into a bag. He settled the bill with the owner. Dishes were washed. Furniture was put back in place. People piled into a small car, and in an instant the house was empty and still.
The name Assange is thought to derive from Ah Sang, or Mr. Sang, a Chinese émigré who settled on Thursday Island, off the coast of Australia, in the early eighteen-hundreds, and whose descendants later moved to the continent. Assange’s maternal ancestors came to Australia in the mid-nineteenth century, from Scotland and Ireland, in search of farmland, and Assange suspects, only half in jest, that his proclivity for wandering is genetic. His phone numbers and e-mail address are ever-changing, and he can drive the people around him crazy with his elusiveness and his propensity to mask details about his life.
Assange was born in 1971, in the city of Townsville, on Australia’s northeastern coast, but it is probably more accurate to say that he was born into a blur of domestic locomotion. Shortly after his first birthday, his mother – I will call her Claire – married a theatre director, and the two collaborated on small productions. They moved often, living near Byron Bay, a beachfront community in New South Wales, and on Magnetic Island, a tiny pile of rock that Captain Cook believed had magnetic properties that distorted his compass readings. They were tough-minded nonconformists. (At seventeen, Claire had burned her schoolbooks and left home on a motorcycle.) Their house on Magnetic Island burned to the ground, and rifle cartridges that Claire had kept for shooting snakes exploded like fireworks. “Most of this period of my childhood was pretty Tom Sawyer,” Assange told me. “I had my own horse. I built my own raft. I went fishing. I was going down mine shafts and tunnels.”
Assange’s mother believed that formal education would inculcate an unhealthy respect for authority in her children and dampen their will to learn. “I didn’t want their spirits broken,” she told me. In any event, the family had moved thirty-seven times by the time Assange was fourteen, making consistent education impossible. He was homeschooled, sometimes, and he took correspondence classes and studied informally with university professors. But mostly he read on his own, voraciously. He was drawn to science. “I spent a lot of time in libraries going from one thing to another, looking closely at the books I found in citations, and followed that trail,” he recalled. He absorbed a large vocabulary, but only later did he learn how to pronounce all the words that he learned.
When Assange was eight, Claire left her husband and began seeing a musician, with whom she had another child, a boy. The relationship was tempestuous; the musician became abusive, she says, and they separated. A fight ensued over the custody of Assange’s half brother, and Claire felt threatened, fearing that the musician would take away her son. Assange recalled her saying, “Now we need to disappear,” and he lived on the run with her from the age of eleven to sixteen. When I asked him about the experience, he told me that there was evidence that the man belonged to a powerful cult called the Family – its motto was “Unseen, Unknown, and Unheard.” Some members were doctors who persuaded mothers to give up their newborn children to the cult’s leader, Anne Hamilton-Byrne. The cult had moles in government, Assange suspected, who provided the musician with leads on Claire’s whereabouts. In fact, Claire often told friends where she had gone, or hid in places where she had lived before.
While on the run, Claire rented a house across the street from an electronics shop. Assange would go there to write programs on a Commodore 64, until Claire bought it for him, moving to a cheaper place to raise the money. He was soon able to crack into well-known programs, where he found hidden messages left by their creators. “The austerity of one’s interaction with a computer is something that appealed to me,” he said. “It is like chess – chess is very austere, in that you don’t have many rules, there is no randomness, and the problem is very hard.” Assange embraced life as an outsider. He later wrote of himself and a teen-age friend, “We were bright sensitive kids who didn’t fit into the dominant subculture and fiercely castigated those who did as irredeemable boneheads.”
When Assange turned sixteen, he got a modem, and his computer was transformed into a portal. Web sites did not exist yet – this was 1987 – but computer networks and telecom systems were sufficiently linked to form a hidden electronic landscape that teen-agers with the requisite technical savvy could traverse. Assange called himself Mendax – from Horace’s splendide mendax, or “nobly untruthful” – and he established a reputation as a sophisticated programmer who could break into the most secure networks. He joined with two hackers to form a group that became known as the International Subversives, and they broke into computer systems in Europe and North America, including networks belonging to the U.S. Department of Defense and to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In a book called “Underground,” which he collaborated on with a writer named Suelette Dreyfus, he outlined the hacker subculture’s early Golden Rules: “Don’t damage computer systems you break into (including crashing them); don’t change the information in those systems (except for altering logs to cover your tracks); and share information.”
Around this time, Assange fell in love with a sixteen-year-old girl, and he briefly moved out of his mother’s home to stay with her. “A couple of days later, police turned up, and they carted off all my computer stuff,” he recalled. The raid, he said, was carried out by the state police, and “it involved some dodgy character who was alleging that we had stolen five hundred thousand dollars from Citibank.” Assange wasn’t charged, and his equipment was returned. “At that point, I decided that it might be wise to be a bit more discreet,” he said. Assange and the girl joined a squatters’ union in Melbourne, until they learned she was pregnant, and moved to be near Claire. When Assange was eighteen, the two got married in an unofficial ceremony, and soon afterward they had a son.
Hacking remained a constant in his life, and the thrill of digital exploration was amplified by the growing knowledge, among the International Subversives, that the authorities were interested in their activities. The Australian Federal Police had set up an investigation into the group, called Operation Weather, which the hackers strove to monitor.
In September, 1991, when Assange was twenty, he hacked into the master terminal that Nortel, the Canadian telecom company, maintained in Melbourne, and began to poke around. The International Subversives had been visiting the master terminal frequently. Normally, Assange hacked into computer systems at night, when they were semi-dormant, but this time a Nortel administrator was signed on. Sensing that he might be caught, Assange approached him with humor. “I have taken control,” he wrote, without giving his name. “For years, I have been struggling in this grayness. But now I have finally seen the light.” The administrator did not reply, and Assange sent another message: “It’s been nice playing with your system. We didn’t do any damage and we even improved a few things. Please don’t call the Australian Federal Police.”
The International Subversives’ incursions into Nortel turned out to be a critical development for Operation Weather. Federal investigators tapped phone lines to see which ones the hackers were using. “Julian was the most knowledgeable and the most secretive of the lot,” Ken Day, the lead investigator, told me. “He had some altruistic motive. I think he acted on the belief that everyone should have access to everything.”
“Underground” describes Assange’s growing fear of arrest: “Mendax dreamed of police raids all the time. He dreamed of footsteps crunching on the driveway gravel, of shadows in the pre-dawn darkness, of a gun-toting police squad bursting through his backdoor at 5 am.” Assange could relax only when he hid his disks in an apiary that he kept. By October, he was in a terrible state. His wife had left him, taking with her their infant son. His home was a mess. He barely ate or slept. On the night the police came, the twenty-ninth, he wired his phone through his stereo and listened to the busy signal until eleven-thirty, when Ken Day knocked on his door, and told him, “I think you’ve been expecting me.”
Assange was charged with thirty-one counts of hacking and related crimes. While awaiting trial, he fell into a depression, and briefly checked himself into a hospital. He tried to stay with his mother, but after a few days he took to sleeping in nearby parks. He lived and hiked among dense eucalyptus forests in the Dandenong Ranges National Park, which were thick with mosquitoes whose bites scarred his face. “Your inner voice quiets down,” he told me. “Internal dialogue is stimulated by a preparatory desire to speak, but it is not actually useful if there are no other people around.” He added, “I don’t want to sound too Buddhist. But your vision of yourself disappears.”
It took more than three years for the authorities to bring the case against Assange and the other International Subversives to court. Day told me, “We had just formed the computer-crimes team, and the government said, ‘Your charter is to establish a deterrent.’ Well, to get a deterrent you have to prosecute people, and we achieved that with Julian and his group.” A computer-security team working for Nortel in Canada drafted an incident report alleging that the hacking had caused damage that would cost more than a hundred thousand dollars to repair. The chief prosecutor, describing Assange’s near-limitless access, told the court, “It was God Almighty walking around doing what you like.”
Assange, facing a potential sentence of ten years in prison, found the state’s reaction confounding. He bought Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “The First Circle,” a novel about scientists and technicians forced into the Gulag, and read it three times. (“How close the parallels to my own adventures!” he later wrote.) He was convinced that “look/see” hacking was a victimless crime, and intended to fight the charges. But the other members of the group decided to co-operate. “When a judge says, ‘The prisoner shall now rise,’ and no one else in the room stands – that is a test of character,” he told me. Ultimately, he pleaded guilty to twenty-five charges and six were dropped. But at his final sentencing the judge said, “There is just no evidence that there was anything other than sort of intelligent inquisitiveness and the pleasure of being able to – what’s the expression – surf through these various computers.” Assange’s only penalty was to pay the Australian state a small sum in damages.
As the criminal case was unfolding, Assange and his mother were also waging a campaign to gain full custody of Assange’s son – a legal fight that was, in many ways, far more wrenching than his criminal defense. They were convinced that the boy’s mother and her new boyfriend posed a danger to the child, and they sought to restrict her rights. The state’s child-protection agency, Health and Community Services, disagreed. The specifics of the allegations are unclear; family-court records in Australia are kept anonymous. But in 1995 a parliamentary committee found that the agency maintained an “underlying philosophy of deflecting as many cases away from itself as possible.” When the agency decided that a child was living in a safe household, there was no way to immediately appeal its decision.
The custody battle evolved into a bitter fight with the state. “What we saw was a great bureaucracy that was squashing people,” Claire told me. She and Assange, along with another activist, formed an organization called Parent Inquiry Into Child Protection. “We used full-on activist methods,” Claire recalled. In meetings with Health and Community Services, “we would go in and tape-record them secretly.” The organization used the Australian Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents from Health and Community Services, and they distributed flyers to child-protection workers, encouraging them to come forward with inside information, for a “central databank” that they were creating. “You may remain anonymous if you wish,” one flyer stated. One protection worker leaked to the group an important internal manual. Assange told me, “We had moles who were inside dissidents.”
In 1999, after nearly three dozen legal hearings and appeals, Assange worked out a custody agreement with his wife. Claire told me, “We had experienced very high levels of adrenaline, and I think that after it all finished I ended up with P.T.S.D. It was like coming back from a war. You just can’t interact with normal people to the same degree, and I am sure that Jules has some P.T.S.D. that is untreated.” Not long after the court cases, she said, Assange’s hair, which had been dark brown, became drained of all color.
Assange was burned out. He motorcycled across Vietnam. He held various jobs, and even earned money as a computer-security consultant, supporting his son to the extent that he was able. He studied physics at the University of Melbourne. He thought that trying to decrypt the secret laws governing the universe would provide the intellectual stimulation and rush of hacking. It did not. In 2006, on a blog he had started, he wrote about a conference organized by the Australian Institute of Physics, “with 900 career physicists, the body of which were sniveling fearful conformists of woefully, woefully inferior character.”
He had come to understand the defining human struggle not as left versus right, or faith versus reason, but as individual versus institution. As a student of Kafka, Koestler, and Solzhenitsyn, he believed that truth, creativity, love, and compassion are corrupted by institutional hierarchies, and by “patronage networks” – one of his favorite expressions – that contort the human spirit. He sketched out a manifesto of sorts, titled “Conspiracy as Governance,” which sought to apply graph theory to politics. Assange wrote that illegitimate governance was by definition conspiratorial – the product of functionaries in “collaborative secrecy, working to the detriment of a population.” He argued that, when a regime’s lines of internal communication are disrupted, the information flow among conspirators must dwindle, and that, as the flow approaches zero, the conspiracy dissolves. Leaks were an instrument of information warfare.
These ideas soon evolved into WikiLeaks. In 2006, Assange barricaded himself in a house near the university and began to work. In fits of creativity, he would write out flow diagrams for the system on the walls and doors, so as not to forget them. There was a bed in the kitchen, and he invited backpackers passing through campus to stay with him, in exchange for help building the site. “He wouldn’t sleep at all,” a person who was living in the house told me. “He wouldn’t eat.”
As it now functions, the Web site is primarily hosted on a Swedish Internet service provider called PRQ.se, which was created to withstand both legal pressure and cyber attacks, and which fiercely preserves the anonymity of its clients. Submissions are routed first through PRQ, then to a WikiLeaks server in Belgium, and then on to “another country that has some beneficial laws,” Assange told me, where they are removed at “end-point machines” and stored elsewhere. These machines are maintained by exceptionally secretive engineers, the high priesthood of WikiLeaks. One of them, who would speak only by encrypted chat, told me that Assange and the other public members of WikiLeaks “do not have access to certain parts of the system as a measure to protect them and us.” The entire pipeline, along with the submissions moving through it, is encrypted, and the traffic is kept anonymous by means of a modified version of the Tor network, which sends Internet traffic through “virtual tunnels” that are extremely private. Moreover, at any given time WikiLeaks computers are feeding hundreds of thousands of fake submissions through these tunnels, obscuring the real documents. Assange told me that there are still vulnerabilities, but “this is vastly more secure than any banking network.”
Before launching the site, Assange needed to show potential contributors that it was viable. One of the WikiLeaks activists owned a server that was being used as a node for the Tor network. Millions of secret transmissions passed through it. The activist noticed that hackers from China were using the network to gather foreign governments’ information, and began to record this traffic. Only a small fraction has ever been posted on WikiLeaks, but the initial tranche served as the site’s foundation, and Assange was able to say, “We have received over one million documents from thirteen countries.”
In December, 2006, WikiLeaks posted its first document: a “secret decision,” signed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a Somali rebel leader for the Islamic Courts Union, that had been culled from traffic passing through the Tor network to China. The document called for the execution of government officials by hiring “criminals” as hit men. Assange and the others were uncertain of its authenticity, but they thought that readers, using Wikipedia-like features of the site, would help analyze it. They published the decision with a lengthy commentary, which asked, “Is it a bold manifesto by a flamboyant Islamic militant with links to Bin Laden? Or is it a clever smear by US intelligence, designed to discredit the Union, fracture Somali alliances and manipulate China?”
The document’s authenticity was never determined, and news about WikiLeaks quickly superseded the leak itself. Several weeks later, Assange flew to Kenya for the World Social Forum, an anti-capitalist convention, to make a presentation about the Web site. “He packed in the funniest way I have ever seen,” the person who had been living in the house recalled. “Someone came to pick him up, and he was asked, ‘Where is your luggage?’ And he ran back into the house. He had a sailor’s sack, and he grabbed a whole bunch of stuff and threw it in there, mostly socks.”
Assange ended up staying in Kenya for several months. He would check in with friends by phone and through the Internet from time to time, but was never precise about his movements. One friend told me, “It would always be, ‘Where is Julian?’ It was always difficult to know where he was. It was almost like he was trying to hide.”
It took about an hour on Easter morning to get from the house on Grettisgata Street to Iceland’s international airport, which is situated on a lava field by the sea. Assange, in the terminal, carried a threadbare blue backpack that contained hard drives, phone cards, and multiple cell phones. Gonggrijp had agreed to go to Washington to help with the press conference. He checked in, and the ticketing agent turned to Assange.
“I am sorry,” she said to him. “I cannot find your name.”
“Interesting,” Assange said to Gonggrijp. “Have fun at the press conference.”
“No,” Gonggrijp told the attendant. “We have a booking I.D. number.”
“It’s been confirmed,” Assange insisted.
The attendant looked perplexed. “I know,” she said. “But my booking information has it ‘cancelled.’ “
The two men exchanged a look: was a government agency tampering with their plans? Assange waited anxiously, but it turned out that he had bought the ticket and neglected to confirm the purchase. He quickly bought another ticket, and the two men flew to New York and then rushed to catch the Acela to Washington. It was nearly two in the morning when they arrived. They got into a taxi, and Assange, who didn’t want to reveal the location of his hotel, told the driver to go to a nearby cross street.
“Here we are in the lion’s den,” Gonggrijp said as the taxi raced down Massachusetts Avenue, passing rows of nondescript office buildings. Assange said, “Not looking too lionish.”
A few hours after sunrise, Assange was standing at a lectern inside the National Press Club, ready to present “Collateral Murder” to the forty or so journalists who had come. He was dressed in a brown blazer, a black shirt, and a red tie. He played the film for the audience, pausing it to discuss various details. After the film ended, he ran footage of the Hellfire attack – a woman in the audience gasped as the first missile hit the building – and read from the e-mail sent by the Icelandic journalists who had gone to Iraq. The leak, he told the reporters, “sends a message that some people within the military don’t like what is going on.”
The video, in both raw and edited forms, was released on the site that WikiLeaks had built for it, and also on YouTube and a number of other Web sites. Within minutes after the press conference, Assange was invited to Al Jazeera’s Washington headquarters, where he spent half the day giving interviews, and that evening MSNBC ran a long segment about the footage. The video was covered in the Times, in multiple stories, and in every other major paper. On YouTube alone, more than seven million viewers have watched “Collateral Murder.”
Defense Secretary Robert Gates was asked about the footage, and said, clearly irritated, “These people can put anything out they want and are never held accountable for it.” The video was like looking at war “through a soda straw,” he said. “There is no before and there is no after.” Army spokespeople insisted that there was no violation of the rules of engagement. At first, the media’s response hewed to Assange’s interpretation, but, in the ensuing days, as more commentators weighed in and the military offered its view, Assange grew frustrated. Much of the coverage focused not on the Hellfire attack or the van but on the killing of the journalists and on how a soldier might reasonably mistake a camera for an RPG. On Twitter, Assange accused Gates of being “a liar,” and beseeched members of the media to “stop spinning.”
In some respects, Assange appeared to be most annoyed by the journalistic process itself – “a craven sucking up to official sources to imbue the eventual story with some kind of official basis,” as he once put it. WikiLeaks has long maintained a complicated relationship with conventional journalism. When, in 2008, the site was sued after publishing confidential documents from a Swiss bank, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, and ten other news organizations filed amicus briefs in support. (The bank later withdrew its suit.) But, in the Bunker one evening, Gonggrijp told me, “We are not the press.” He considers WikiLeaks an advocacy group for sources; within the framework of the Web site, he said, “the source is no longer dependent on finding a journalist who may or may not do something good with his document.”
Assange, despite his claims to scientific journalism, emphasized to me that his mission is to expose injustice, not to provide an even-handed record of events. In an invitation to potential collaborators in 2006, he wrote, “Our primary targets are those highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the West who wish to reveal illegal or immoral behavior in their own governments and corporations.” He has argued that a “social movement” to expose secrets could “bring down many administrations that rely on concealing reality – including the US administration.”
Assange does not recognize the limits that traditional publishers do. Recently, he posted military documents that included the Social Security numbers of soldiers, and in the Bunker I asked him if WikiLeaks’ mission would have been compromised if he had redacted these small bits. He said that some leaks risked harming innocent people – “collateral damage, if you will” – but that he could not weigh the importance of every detail in every document. Perhaps the Social Security numbers would one day be important to researchers investigating wrongdoing, he said; by releasing the information he would allow judgment to occur in the open.
A year and a half ago, WikiLeaks published the results of an Army test, conducted in 2004, of electromagnetic devices designed to prevent IEDs from being triggered. The document revealed key aspects of how the devices functioned and also showed that they interfered with communication systems used by soldiers – information that an insurgent could exploit. By the time WikiLeaks published the study, the Army had begun to deploy newer technology, but some soldiers were still using the devices. I asked Assange if he would refrain from releasing information that he knew might get someone killed. He said that he had instituted a “harm-minimization policy,” whereby people named in certain documents were contacted before publication, to warn them, but that there were also instances where the members of WikiLeaks might get “blood on our hands.”
One member told me that Assange’s editorial policy initially made her uncomfortable, but that she has come around to his position, because she believes that no one has been unjustly harmed. Of course, such harm is not always easy to measure. When Assange was looking for board members, he contacted Steven Aftergood, who runs an e-mail newsletter for the Federation of American Scientists, and who publishes sensitive documents. Aftergood declined to participate. “When a technical record is both sensitive and remote from a current subject of controversy, my editorial inclination is to err on the side of caution,” he said. “I miss that kind of questioning on their part.”
At the same time, Aftergood told me, the overclassification of information is a problem of increasing scale – one that harms not only citizens, who should be able to have access to government records, but the system of classification itself. When too many secrets are kept, it becomes difficult to know which ones are important. Had the military released the video from the Apache to Reuters under FOIA, it would probably not have become a film titled “Collateral Murder,” and a public-relations nightmare.
Lieutenant Colonel Lee Packnett, the spokesperson for intelligence matters for the Army, was deeply agitated when I called him. “We’re not going to give validity to WikiLeaks,” he said. “You’re not doing anything for the Army by putting us in a conversation about WikiLeaks. You can talk to someone else. It’s not an Army issue.” As he saw it, once “Collateral Murder” had passed through the news cycle, the broader counter-intelligence problem that WikiLeaks poses to the military had disappeared as well. “It went away,” he said.
With the release of “Collateral Murder,” WikiLeaks received more than two hundred thousand dollars in donations, and on April 7th Assange wrote on Twitter, “New funding model for journalism: try doing it for a change.” Just this winter, he had put the site into a state of semi-dormancy because there was not enough money to run it, and because its technical engineering needed adjusting. Assange has far more material than he can process, and he is seeking specialists who can sift through the chaotic WikiLeaks library and assign documents to volunteers for analysis. The donations meant that WikiLeaks would now be able to pay some volunteers, and in late May its full archive went back online. Still, the site remains a project in early development. Assange has been searching for the right way not only to manage it but also to get readers interested in the more arcane material there.
In 2007, he published thousands of pages of secret military information detailing a vast number of Army procurements in Iraq and Afghanistan. He and a volunteer spent weeks building a searchable database, studying the Army’s purchasing codes, and adding up the cost of the procurements – billions of dollars in all. The database catalogued matériel that every unit had ordered: machine guns, Humvees, cash-counting machines, satellite phones. Assange hoped that journalists would pore through it, but barely any did. “I am so angry,” he said. “This was such a fucking fantastic leak: the Army’s force structure of Afghanistan and Iraq, down to the last chair, and nothing.”
WikiLeaks is a finalist for a Knight Foundation grant of more than half a million dollars. The intended project would set up a way for sources to pass documents to newspaper reporters securely; WikiLeaks would serve as a kind of numbered Swiss bank account, where information could be anonymously exchanged. (The system would allow the source to impose a deadline on the reporter, after which the document would automatically appear on WikiLeaks.) Assange has been experimenting with other ideas, too. On the principle that people won’t regard something as valuable unless they pay for it, he has tried selling documents at auction to news organizations; in 2008, he attempted this with seven thousand internal e-mails from the account of a former speechwriter for Hugo Chávez. The auction failed. He is thinking about setting up a subscription service, where high-paying members would have early access to leaks.
But experimenting with the site’s presentation and its technical operations will not answer a deeper question that WikiLeaks must address: What is it about? The Web site’s strengths – its near-total imperviousness to lawsuits and government harassment – make it an instrument for good in societies where the laws are unjust. But, unlike authoritarian regimes, democratic governments hold secrets largely because citizens agree that they should, in order to protect legitimate policy. In liberal societies, the site’s strengths are its weaknesses. Lawsuits, if they are fair, are a form of deterrence against abuse. Soon enough, Assange must confront the paradox of his creation: the thing that he seems to detest most – power without accountability – is encoded in the site’s DNA, and will only become more pronounced as WikiLeaks evolves into a real institution.
After the press conference in Washington, I met Assange in New York, in Bryant Park. He had brought his luggage with him, because he was moving between the apartments of friends of friends. We sat near the fountain, and drank coffee. That week, Assange was scheduled to fly to Berkeley, and then to Italy, but back in Iceland the volcano was erupting again, and his flight to Europe was likely to change. He looked a bit shell-shocked. “It was surprising to me that we were seen as such an impartial arbiter of the truth, which may speak well to what we have done,” he told me. But he also said, “To be completely impartial is to be an idiot. This would mean that we would have to treat the dust in the street the same as the lives of people who have been killed.”
A number of commentators had wondered whether the video’s title was manipulative. “In hindsight, should we have called it ‘Permission to Engage’ rather than ‘Collateral Murder’?” he said. “I’m still not sure.” He was annoyed by Gates’s comment on the film: “He says, ‘There is no before and no after.’ Well, at least there is now a middle, which is a vast improvement.” Then Assange leaned forward and, in a whisper, began to talk about a leak, code-named Project G, that he is developing in another secret location. He promised that it would be news, and I saw in him the same mixture of seriousness and amusement, devilishness and intensity that he had displayed in the Bunker. “If it feels a little bit like we’re amateurs, it is because we are,” he said. “Everyone is an amateur in this business.” And then, his coffee finished, he made his way out of the park and into Times Square, disappearing among the masses of people moving this way and that.
Pic’n post : Old Palestinian man in front of his house demolished by Israel
music: playing now : Pink Floyd – Meddle [Full Album]
The Hidden Evil (The financial elite’s covert war against the civilian population)
Isn’t she beautiful ?
……………………
The American Dream By The Provocateur Network
don’t forget to
Libya: visit to Sirte what’s left of it!
Foreign Snipers in Syria beaten by an angry mob
Vaccines: ALL are Contaminated – Every Last One of Them
CELAC Historic Birth in Caracas
Battlefield Earth: Resist NWO Tyranny or Die Under It
The New Abu Ghraib – in pictures
Factcheck : The green Book : read and understand this before you jump into conclusions about Gaddhafi being a ruthless dictator
The Most Dangerous Cult in The World!
Can Fiction Become a Reality? The Coup d’état of 2012
LIBYA R.I.P. …… THE ROTHSCHILDS OWN YOU NOW
just a little reminder !
NWO Plans Exposed By Insider In 1969
LIBYA FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF A NON-POLITICAL BUSINESSMAN Part 1
Photo Horrors: 3rd Reich vs Gaza (www.veteranstoday.com)
The Anglo-American Military Axis: West Backs Holy Alliance For Control Of Arab World And Persian Gulf
Depleted Uranium: The Ultimate Dirty Bomb
US : Naming Names: Your Real Government, The Shadow Government
Energy News (enews.com)- *WSJ* Reporter asks: What plans do you have in case Unit 4 pool does come down? — Gov’t official “evaded or wouldn’t answer” May 21, 2012 ENENews
- Gundersen on Plutonium: I believe fragments of nuclear fuel are in the ocean — From explosions at Unit 3 AND Unit 1 (VIDEO) May 21, 2012 ENENews
- Work at Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 “being handled like a construction project and that’s unfortunate to say the least” — “There is no international effort” (VIDEO) May 20, 2012 ENENews
- “Pacific Ocean will continue to be contaminated, kind of for the rest of time” — Containment vessels continuously leaking into sea (VIDEO) May 20, 2012 ENENews
- Trillions of becquerels per day still being emitted from Fukushima Daiichi — Radioactive steam continues (VIDEO) May 20, 2012 ENENews
- Former Senior Reactor Operator: You can get a recriticality in Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 — “Never ending fountain of particulates and gas” (VIDEO) May 20, 2012 ENENews
- M6.2 quake and several above M5.0 hit off Northeast Japan in last day — UPDATED May 20, 2012 ENENews
- Gundersen: Recent hydrogen build up inside Fukushima reactor “worrisome” (VIDEO) May 20, 2012 ENENews
- Reporter at Fukushima Daiichi: Reactors seemed terribly threatened by the slightest movement or upheaval of heaven and of earth May 20, 2012 ENENews
- Again: Three strong quakes in 15 minutes hit near same area as on 3/11 — M5.8, M5.0, M4.8 (MAPS) May 20, 2012 ENENews
- dprogram.net (US)
- Max Igan on Through the Looking Glass – May 20, 2012 May 21, 2012(SurvivingTheMatrix) – Part 1 of 4 Part 2 of 4 Part 3 of 4 Part 4 of 4 Related posts: Max Igan – Radio SkidRow – Jan16th, 2012 Max Igan on Vinny Eastwood Show – April 5th, 2012 Max Igan – Truth Frequency Interview – Jan 14th, 2012 Related posts: Max Igan – Radio SkidRow – Jan16th, 2012 Max Igan on Vinny Eastwoo […]sakerfa
- Legal vs Lawful – Max Igan May 21, 2012(SurvivingTheMatrix) – May, 18th, 2012 Part 1 of 4 Part 2 of 4 Part 3 of 4 Part 4 of 4 Related posts: Systems of Control and Social Subtext – Max Igan The Discarding of Humanity – Max Igan Max Igan Discussing Trance-Formation on Truth Frequency Related posts: Systems of Control and Social Subtext – Max Igan The Discarding of Humanity […]sakerfa
- Whats going on with Ron Paul I’ll tell you – Ryan Dawson May 21, 2012(Rys2Sense) – In light of Jesse Benton sending out an Email saying Paul quit this is the guy saying Paul wanted to move the capital in Israel that Paul wants a deal with Romany bla bla and hes the guy that went on CSPAN to “defend” Ron Paul and did so with the most piss [...] Related posts: Mass media bias Against Paul Again – Ryan Da […]sakerfa
- Alan Watt ‘Cutting Through The Matrix’ – May 18th, 2012 May 21, 2012Damaged Mentality from Manufactured Reality Reality, Reality, Wherefore Art Thou, Reality? All the Experts Running the World, Why is All Calamity? Bogus Facts Mass-Produced Trying to Give Credence, Made by Those Who Benefit, Hence Forced Obedience, Science Prostituted Itself, Sacrificed On the Altar, Ensuring Eco-Grants Come In, Consensus doesn’t Falte […]sakerfa
- The Thom Hartmann Program – May 18th, 2012 May 21, 2012(LiveStream) – Related posts: The Thom Hartmann Program – April 18th, 2012 The Thom Hartmann Program – March 12, 2012 The Thom Hartmann Program – April 3, 2012 Related posts: The Thom Hartmann Program – April 18th, 2012 The Thom Hartmann Program – March 12, 2012 The Thom Hartmann Program – April 3, 2012sakerfa
- Ron Paul Has Not Suspended His Campaign May 21, 2012(SouthernAvenger) – Not pursuing further primary states but still collecting delegates in caucus states is not “dropping out.” Related posts: Ron Paul Wins First Caucus: MSM Changes Rules, Reports Romney Wins Ron Paul Not Suspending Campaign, It is a Media Hoax Paul Campaign Points To Anomalies In Romney Maine “Victory” Related posts: Ron P […]sakerfa
- Michigan authorities force farmers to massacre baby pigs cold blood May 21, 2012(RussiaToday) – The Health Ranger is interviewed on RT America about the Michigan DNR conducted armed raids on Michigan farms, forcing farmers to shoot their own baby pigs in cold blood. v Related posts: Armed Authorities Coerce Farmers To Massacre GMO Free Organic Livestock – Mike Adams Health Ranger on Alex Jones Show, interview with [...] Rela […]sakerfa
- Gerald Celente – Brian Sussman KFSO and Tony Cruise May 21, 2012(CelenteChannel) – Gerald Celente – Brian Sussman KFSO May 15th, 2012 Gerald Celente – Morning news with Tony Cruise May 16, 2012 Related posts: Gerald Celente with Tony Cruise – November 21st, 2011 Gerald Celente – Jeff Rense Radio Gerald Celente – ABC Australia Adelaide Related posts: Gerald Celente with Tony Cruise […]sakerfa
- Operation Midnight Climax: Sex, Drugs and the CIA May 21, 2012(MediaRoots) – The feverish hysteria of the “red scare” during the 1950s and 1960s prompted the Central Intelligence Agency to do some dirty deeds, not the least of which was a pet project called Operation Midnight Climax. The C.I.A. conducted the operation in the hopes of finding a truth serum by dosing civilians with psychotropic [...] Related posts […]sakerfa
- Journalist, Plaintiff Chris Hedges Hails “Monumental” Ruling on NDAA Indefinite Detention May 21, 2012(DemocracyNow) – In a rare move, a federal judge has struck down part of a controversial law signed by President Obama that gave the government the power to indefinitely detain anyone it considers a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world without charge or trial — including U.S. citizens. Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District [...] Rel […]sakerfa
- Max Igan on Through the Looking Glass – May 20, 2012 May 21, 2012
- Voltairenet.org (Int.)
- AFP rewrites the Lockerbie caseAbdel Basset al-Megrahi died on 20 May 2012 of cancer at the age of 60. He was the only person convicted of the bombing of PanAm flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, killing 270 people. Taking advantage of the vacuum left by NATO's annihilation of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Agence France Presse has written: "In 2003, the […]
- Massive anti-NATO protests in ChicagoThousands of people rallied in Chicago against NATO on the opening day of its Summit meeting. The massive anti-NATO demonstrations aim to boycott the event. Thousands of peaceful protesters, including peace activists and war veterans, have marched through the second largest city in the U.S. carrying banners against NATO and demanding the dissolution of the A […]
- Storytelling: NATO rewrites the Syrian conflictYossef Bodansky, the U.S.-Israeli expert who wrote the official history of Al Qaeda, is back. The one who had explained with a straight face that bin Laden was both an Iraqi and Iranian agent, and that Saddam Hussein had financed the attacks of September 11, no longer works for the U.S. Congress and the Defense Department, but for the Institute Strategie für […]
- Israel developing 'spy-butterfly' for indoor surveillanceThe future is here and this is not a butterfly on your wall, as Israeli drones are getting tiny. Their latest project – a butterfly-shaped drone weighing just 20 grams - the smallest in its range so far – can gather intelligence inside buildings. The new miniscule surveillance device can take color pictures and is capable of a vertical take-off and hover fli […]
- The NSA can spy on Google and moreThe National Security Agency is under no obligation to disclose the nature of its relationship with Google, confirmed a Washington D.C. federal appeals court on 11 May 2012. A three-judge panel ruled that in view of NSA's special status, any arrangement with the Internet giant can remain secret. "Any information relating to the relationship between […]
- May 2012-05-18, Syrian Crisis UpdatedCeasefire violations Anti-government activists talk about bombardments by Syrian Arab Army in Al-Sultanieh and Jobar neighborhoods and in Rastan area of Homs Explosions are heard in several neighborhoods of Homs this morning including Rastan area of Homs countryside. News says one shell is fired on the electronic bakery in Rastan area Ahmad Al-Qaai gets kill […]Syrian Center for Documentation
- The Empire Holds Its War Council in ChicagoThe Obama administration imposed the most draconian police state legal structures in U.S. history before summoning the heads of NATO to Chicago. NATO accounts for 70 percent of military spending on the planet – combining the capacities of yesterday's imperialists and the current superpower. According to the Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report, “The […]Glen Ford
- Kelly Thomas, victim of police brutalityOn July 5 last year Kelly Thomas, a 37-year-old schizophrenic homeless man, was so badly beaten and stun-gunned by Fullerton California police officers that he was left unrecognizable. He died 5 days later from blunt force trauma to the head. Up to 5 police officers assault him with batons, tasers and fists. When the unconscious and bloodied body of Thomas w […]
- May 2012-05-17, Syrian Crisis UpdatedCeasefire violations Anti-government activists say that a mortar shell was fired on Douma area which killed 5 members of Al-Shanwani family. Clashes between the Syrian Army and insurgents took place last night in Daraya and continued on this evening; anti-government activists talk about causalities. Gunmen assassinated last night Sergeant Imad Shkaira in Al- […]Syrian Center for Documentation
- Shale gas: Halliburton's weapon of mass devastationAcross the United States the exploitation of gas and oil from shale rocks using Halliburton's hydraulic fracturing technology continues amid rising disasters. Unregulated drilling practices, rendered legal by the "Halliburton Loophole" engineered in 2005 by Vice President Dick Cheney, have had staggering health and environmental effects. Lured […]F. William Engdahl
- AFP rewrites the Lockerbie case
- Signs of the times (www.Sott.net)
- Facebook's Overnight Millionaires Begin Lavish Spending Spree May 21, 2012Facebook's $104 billion initial public offering on Friday transformed thousands of young people into instant millionaires - as well as a few billionaires - and already the booming luxury market in Silicon Valley is experiencing an upswing. Multi-million dollar mansions and $100,000 Porsches are flying off local shelves in the Palo Alto, Santa Clara and […]
- The unholy trinity of industry, government and academics : "just study something industry would fund" May 21, 2012Here's what happens when corporations begin to control education. "When I approached professors to discuss research projects addressing organic agriculture in farmer's markets, the first one told me that 'no one cares about people selling food in parking lots on the other side of the train tracks,'" said a PhD student at a large […]
- Monsanto Funds College Research: Big Ag 101 - Playing at a Campus Near You May 21, 2012When government officials insist on making science-based decisions in food and agricultural policy, what happens when the research is increasingly funded by huge corporations with a vested interest in the results? According to a new report by GAP coalition partner Food & Water Watch, almost 25 percent of agricultural research funding at land-grant univer […]
- M6.2 quake and several above M5.0 hit off Northeast Japan in last day May 21, 2012Earthquake Information Japan Meteorological Agency 17:50 JST 20 May 2012 17:42 JST 20 May 2012 Sanriku Oki M5.1 2 17:27 JST 20 May 2012 17:21 JST 20 May 2012 Sanriku Oki M5.4 2 16:54 JST 20 May 2012 16:49 JST 20 May 2012 Ibaraki-ken Hokubu M3.3 1 16:38 JST 20 May 2012 16:28 JST 20 May 2012 Sanriku Oki M5.7 2 16:32 JST 20 May 2012 16:20 JST 20 May 2012 Sanrik […]
- Marijuana Oil Helps 3-Year-Old Son Beat brain Cancer, Dad Says May 21, 2012What would you do if your 3-year old son was stricken with brain cancer? Most parents wouldn't think twice about bringing their child to a mainstream doctor, only to undergo modern-day cancer 'treatments' such as chemotherapy. This is what one father, Mike Hyde, from Montana did when his 3 year old was diagnosed with brain cancer, but the fath […]
- Terror charges ahead of Chicago NATO summit for beer-making kit May 21, 2012Trio accused of making petrol bombs and plotting attacks, but supporters say suspect materials were beer-making kit. Three protesters arrested in a late-night raid days before the start of this weekend's 60-nation NATO summit in Chicago have been charged with terrorism for possession of explosive devices, police and their attorney have said. The men hav […]
- Great-grandma: Ready to 'lose' my life protesting May 21, 2012Chicago, Illinois -- Nan Wigmore brought her walker and packed her sign, "Grateful Great Grandmas Circle The Wagons, Support Occupy," and rode on a bus for some three days, sleeping in the same clothes, to make it to the NATO protests in Chicago. The 75-year-old from Portland, Ore., says she couldn't imagine being anywhere else despite the dis […]
- Worldwide Protest Movements: Are They Helping or Hurting? May 21, 2012Are the worldwide protests helping or hurting? That is the question. As Alexander Haig once stated "they can protest all they want so long as they pay their taxes". This statement is pretty telling in my opinion. Now accompany that statement with the question, has protesting and hitting the streets really brought any change in policy, banking, wars […]
- The Framework For Suppressing Information: Public Opinion in America's 21st Century Police State May 21, 2012The police state's framework for suppressing information and opinion arguably threatens all forms of independent thought and appears poised to intensify as the "war on terror" continues. As the recent emergence of US plans for indoctrination in reeducation camps reveals, Western governments' actual enemy is the capacity for a people to ex […]
- Occupy Journalists Stopped, Searched, Handcuffed & Interrogated at Gunpoint May 21, 2012Under cover of the night around twelve police cars stopped five journalists when they were heading back to where they are staying in Chicago during the NATO summit. All five have been covering protests against the NATO summit for the past few days. The five journalists included Luke Rudkowksi, who streams as @Lukewearechange, Tim Pool, who streams as @Timcas […]
- Facebook's Overnight Millionaires Begin Lavish Spending Spree May 21, 2012
- Alternet.org (US)
- The Rise of the New Economy Movement May 21, 2012Activists, theorists, organizations and ordinary citizens are rebuilding the American political-economic system from the ground up.Gar Alperovitz, AlterNet
- The Terrifying Ways Google Is Destroying Your Privacy May 21, 2012 David Rosen, AlterNet
- 826 Valencia: Transforming a Community, One Student at a Time May 21, 2012826 has blossomed from a noble experiment into one of the top innovators and influencers in the education field.Theresa Ralston, AlterNet
- The Enviro Disaster You Know Nothing About: The Eco-Devastating Quest for "Frac Sand" in Rural America May 21, 2012Midwestern rural communities are being devastated by energy companies searching for a form of sand to use in their destructive fracking operations elsewhere in rural America.Ellen Cantarow, TomDispatch.com
- Attachment Parenting: More Guilt for Mother May 21, 2012Not only is 'attachment parenting' bad for women; it's not necessarily good for children, either.Katha Pollitt, The Nation
- Oregon Activists Pick Up "Health Care as a Human Right" Campaign for Real Universal Care May 21, 2012 Peter Shapiro, Labor Notes
- Why Mobility In America is in the Dumpster May 21, 2012 Tina Dupuy, TinaDupuy.com
- Why Do Sex Scandals Destroy Democrats But Not Republicans? May 21, 2012Not all politicians are created equal. And not all are treated equally. Therein lies an issue deserving a closer look: whether vulnerable Democrats are targeted for destruction.Russ Baker, WhoWhatWhy.com
- NATO Comes to Chicago, Highlights Violence and Inequality at the Heart of the System May 21, 2012Much like the NATO summit, the system is set up not to spread wealth but to preserve and protect it, not to relieve chaos but to contain and punish it.Gary Younge, Comment Is Free
- Are JPMorgan’s Losses A Canary in a Coal Mine? May 21, 2012Bill Moyers talks to Simon Johnson, once chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and now MIT professor, about the (possible) fall of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan.Bill Moyers, BillMoyers.com
- The Rise of the New Economy Movement May 21, 2012
- Antiwar.com (US)
- Obama or Anarchy? May 21, 2012Rahm Emanuel runs Chicago like he ran the Obama White House: with an iron fist and a foul mouth – and the NATO summit, being held in the Windy City, is the perfect occasion for him to demonstrate just how “tough” he can be. “Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean [...]Justin Raimondo
- Baghdad Judges Refuse To Hear Evidence That Could Clear Iraq VP of Terrorism Charges May 21, 2012A three-judge panel has rejected evidence that could help clear Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi of terrorism charges, causing Hashemi's team of lawyers to quit the case in protest. Meanwhile, at least two Iraqis were killed and eight more were wounded.Margaret Griffis
- Six Killed in Iraq Violence May 20, 2012At least six Iraqis were killed and six more were wounded in light violence.Margaret Griffis
- The Serbian Job May 19, 2012Nebojsa Malic on stealing an electionNebojsa Malic
- Applying the Six-Day War to Iran May 19, 2012Ray McGovern on the mythical Six-Day WarRay McGovern
- Iran Hawks in Congress in Some Disarray May 19, 2012Hopes by Iran hawks here to get the U.S. Congress to wield the threat of a U.S. military attack on the Islamic Republic on the eve of next week’s critical negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program appear to have fallen unexpectedly short. While the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Thursday to reject "any U.S. policy that [...]Jim Lobe
- 15 Killed, 72 Wounded at Baghdad Pet Market, Restaurant and Home May 19, 2012In the capital, multiple attacks harkened back to the height of sectarian tensions. At least 15 Iraqis were killed and 67 more were wounded.Margaret Griffis
- What Does Ron Paul Want? May 18, 2012A movement primed for victory, says Justin RaimondoJustin Raimondo
- Dangerous Legislation May 18, 2012I strongly oppose H Res 568, a resolution "expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the importance of preventing the Government of Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability." Once again we see on the "suspension" calendar, which is customarily reserved for non-controversial legislation, a resolution designed t […]Rep. Ron Paul
- Walk to the NATO Summit: Striding Toward Peace May 18, 2012On what is now the 17th day of our walk from Madison to Chicago, the number 165 does not seem to encapsulate all the progress we have made. We are 17 days and 165 miles away from the day I drove into Madison, where news arrived that Air Force One had descended on pre-dawn Kabul [...]Buddy Bell
- Obama or Anarchy? May 21, 2012
- Human Rights Investigations.org
- The International Commission of Inquiry on Libya March 11, 2012The Report of the The International Commission of Inquiry on Libya has been issued and provides some interesting reading. A few initial comments: Tawerghans – to be ‘wiped off the face of the planet’ The report supports Human Rights Investigation’s position regarding the crimes committed against the Tawerghans. The report confirms our […]HRI Mark
- Responsibility to protect: the liberation of Sirte October 27, 2011According to NATO figures, coalition aircraft delivered 415 key strikes on the town of Sirte between Sunday 28th August and Thursday 20th October. We have compared this to the bombing of Guernica and other comparisons have been made to the widely condemned levelling of Grozny. In addition, the rebels, described in NATO circles as a [...]HRI Mark
- Colonel Gaddafi captured and killed October 20, 2011Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi was reportedly captured and shot dead 20 October. As the evidence below shows the Libyan leader and his son Mutassim were summarily executed by the rebels, sharing the fate of so many Libyans in this conflict. NATO involvement NATO have said that a French jet bombed 2 military vehicles in a convoy leaving the area [...]HRI Mark
- التطهير الُعرقيّ والإبادة الجماعيّة والتورخا October 20, 2011التطهير الُعرقي و الإبادة الجماعيّة و التورخا هيومن رايتس إينفستيخاشيون (HRI) تُتابٍع عن كثب الوضع في منطقة ا”لتورخا”، وهنا نلفتُ معاً المعلومات، ونجِدُ، ، استناداً إلى تقارير الشهود والصحافيين والعاملين في مجال حقوق الإنسان ، بأنّ حالة ا”لتورخا” ليست مُجرد حالة تطهير عُرقي ولكن وفقاً للتعريف القانوني، إِبادة جماعيّة. HRI لديها مخاو […]HRI Mark
- William Hague’s deportation of Malyshevs to torture in Uzbekistan October 20, 2011Below is a repost from Craig Murray’s excellent blog . Craig, has a very clear knowledge of the Karimov regime as he was British Ambassador there from 2002 to 2004. Uzbekistan is a state with widespread torture, kidnapping, murder, rape by the police, financial corruption, religious persecution, censorship, and other human rights abuses. In 2002, accor […]HRI Mark
- Sarkozy, Cameron, Obama, Al-Thani and the suffering of the children of Sirte October 11, 2011The background to the video and image below is the ongoing bombardment of Sirte by NATO aircraft in support of the rebel brigades who are indiscriminately firing tank, mortar and artillery shells into this urban, civilian-populated area. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has refused to comment on why NATO is not fulfilling its UN mandate [...]HRI Mark
- Nobel Peace Prize winners: Tawakul Karman, Leymah Gbowee and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf October 7, 2011The Nobel Peace Prize has long been a nonsense and has been accused of being a kind of tool of Norwegian foreign policy. Who can forget the farcical scenes as Barack Obama was awarded the prize (about which Martin Luther King would have had a few things to say) or that it was once awarded to Henry Kissinger, or that Mahatma [...]HRI Mark
- Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International fan the flames of conflict in Syria October 6, 2011A major thread running through the story of the Libyan conflict has been the information war – propaganda spread by intelligence agencies, military, media and political groups designed to encourage hatred, conflict, war, foreign intervention, death and destruction. One sad aspect of the propaganda war has been the role played by Amnesty International a […]HRI Mark
- NATO ‘protection of civilians’ – propaganda and pretence to escape war crimes trials October 4, 2011As is now well documented, the rebellion in Libya began with violent attacks on police stations, such as this one in Al-Bayda where people locked inside were reportedly burnt to death: An intensive propaganda campaign systematically distorted the facts on the ground, including in particular allegations that the Libyan airforce was bombing peaceful protestors […]HRI Mark
- Ethnic cleansing, genocide and the Tawergha September 26, 2011Human Rights Investigations has been following the situation of the Tawergha closely and here we draw the information together and find, based on the reports of witnesses, journalists and human rights workers, the situation of the Tawergha is not just one of ethnic cleansing but, according to the legal definition, genocide. HRI has grave concerns, not only f […]HRI Mark
- Will Obama veto ‘the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for a state of their own?’ September 24, 2011President Barack Hussein Obama made a speech in Cairo in June 2009, which was widely hailed as marking a new beginning; as the great speech of a true humanitarian and worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. Here are some key passages from that profound, deep and moving speech, which gave hope to the people of [...]HRI Mark
- High treason, barbarity and the importance of the Geneva Conventions in Libya September 22, 2011On Saturday 17th September, as reported by Al Jazeera, Ahmed Bani, the interim government’s military spokesman, said gave army personnel still loyal to Gaddafi a last chance to join the ranks of former rebel fighters: “The soldiers and officers who will not heed this last call will be accused of high treason.” The invocation of [...]HRI Mark
- The International Commission of Inquiry on Libya March 11, 2012
- Uruknet.info (middle east)
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- Mathaba News ( Libya)
- Chicago Under Siege May 21, 2012NATO arrives everywhere violently. Chicago was no exception. During summit activities, city cops are enforcers. They specialize in serving wealth, power, and imperial interests. more...
- Life in Occupied Chicago May 21, 2012Through Monday, downtown residents live in occupied Chicago. Mathaba Analyst Stephen Lendman reports from the city. more...
- Green Charter Movement Activist Contest - Entry 11 May 21, 2012Another entry from USA in The GREEN WALL Activist Contest 2012. Write in a public place WWW.GREENCHARTER.COM and send us photos of evidence showing before and after, and we will publish it here more...
- Chicago Militarized for NATO May 20, 2012more...
- Israeli Police State Crimes May 20, 2012more...
- Chicago Police Crack Down on Public Ahead of NATO Summit May 20, 2012Photo: Police hit and run a man as wide spread police violence against peaceful anti-war protesters takes shape ahead of NATO military summit in Chicago more...
- Former Malaysia PM Dr Mahathir: What a `toothless` tribunal can do May 20, 2012Failure to uphold international laws has allowed nations like the US to get away with crimes against humanity, writes Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia (photo, right, with Mathaba News founder and editor, left) more...
- Homenagem à Identidade Lusa May 20, 2012Rainer Daehnhardt com o elmo de D. Sebastião more...
- Israel`s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Weapons May 20, 2012Israel`s long known open secret is its formidable nuclear arsenal. Less is known about its chemical and biological weapons (CBW) capability. Mathaba Analyst Stephen Lendman takes a look. more...
- Ziyad Yaghi: Guilty of Being Muslim in America May 19, 2012more...
- Chicago Under Siege May 21, 2012
- Syrian Arab News Agency (sana.sy)
- Russia Dedicates Majority of Its Contribution to WFP for SyriaDAMASCUS, (SANA) – Russia, as a creditor of the UN World Food Program, decided to dedicate the majority of its remaining contributions to the Program for sending urgent humanitarian relief to Syria
- Al-Nusra Front Claims Responsibility for Suicide Bombing in Deir Ezzor DUBAI, (SANA)- A militant group called 'al-Nusra Front', which is connected with al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing which targeted the city of Deir Ezzor, eastern Syria, that killed nine people and injured more than 100 others
- Syrian Community in Russia: Terrorist Attacks in Syria will not Defeat Syrian PeopleMOSCOW, (SANA) – The Syrian community in Russia condemned on Sunday the terrorist attacks witnessed in Syria, the latest of which was the terrorist bombing in Deir Ezzor province, stressing that these attacks will not defeat the determination of the Syrian people.
- Ryabkov: Situation in Syria Cannot Be Resolved by Pressuring Its GovernmentMOSCOW, (SANA) – Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that during the G8 Summit in Camp David, Russia adhered to its stance which states that the situation in Syria cannot be resolved through exerting pressure via force or otherwise on the Syria government
- G8 Calls for Halting Violence in Syria, Condemns Latest Terrorist Attacks CAMP DAVID, U.S, (SANA)- The Group of 8 Summit called on all sides in Syria to immediately halt violence and carry out the plan of the UN envoy Kofi Annan
- Health Cooperation between Syria and Iran Discussed TEHRAN, SANA_ Syria and Iran on Saturday reviewed means of strengthening bilateral cooperation in health filed.
- Russia Condemns Targeting the International Observers in Syria and the Opposition's Pursuit for ArmingMOSCOW, (SANA)- Russia on Friday expressed condemnation of the terrorist attempt that targeted the international observers in Syria, saying it was aimed at foiling the plan of the UN envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan
- Gen. Mood: We Are to Find Successful Way for Deployment in Syria Thanks to Syrian Government and UN's CooperationPROVINCES, (SANA)- Head of the UN observer mission to Syria, Gen. Robert Mood, said on Friday the mission is working at finding a successful way to be deployed in Syria thanks to the advanced level of cooperation by the Syrian government, the UN Presidency and the contributor countries
- President of the European Council Stresses Important of Russia's Role in Settling the Crisis in SyriaMOSCOW, (SANA)- President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy stressed the key role Russia is playing to settle the crisis in Syria
- Tunisian Authorities: Tunisian Citizens Within Armed Terrorist groups in SyriaTUNIS, (SANA) – Tunisian authorities on Friday admitted that there are Tunisian citizens who were killed or arrested in Syria, and that they were members of the armed terrorist groups
- Russia Dedicates Majority of Its Contribution to WFP for Syria
- Occupied Palestine
- Settlers, amongst soldiers, fire live ammunition on Palestinians – Videos May 21, 2012Maan News Agency | May 21, 2012 (updated) BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — An Israeli human rights group released footage on Sunday of settlers firing on Nablus-village a day earlier, and called on Israel’s military to investigate the assailants, as well as the army’s role. Settlers entered Asira al-Qibliya on Saturday and threw rocks at propertie […]occupiedpalestine
- PALESTINE NEWS | May 21, 2012 May 21, 2012LIVE BLOG ▶ PALESTINIANS ON HUNGER STRIKE | #PalHunger LIVE BLOG ▶ Commemorating 64 Years of Catastrophe in Palestine | #Nakba64 LIVE BLOG ▶ Israel Attacks Gaza May 17, 2012 & lies about it | #GazaUnderAttack continuous updated آخر الأخبار والتحديثات May 21, 2012 | 23382 Days Since Al-Nakba & Gaza has been under siege [...]occupiedpalestine
- A conference held in Netherlands to mark Nakba anniversary May 21, 2012[ PIC 20/05/2012 - 08:45 PM ] THE HAGUE (PIC)– The Palestinian community in the Netherlands held, on Saturday, a conference to mark the 64th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba in the capital Amsterdam, with the participation of the former PM of Netherlands, Dries van Agt, and with a large presence of the Palestinian community [...]occupiedpalestine
- “We hope 4th generation returns to free country” May 21, 2012Al-Qassam Website | 21-05-2012,08:37 Al Qassam website (PressTV) – Palestinian refugees want their next generation to go back home to a free “Palestinian state” and to build their country themselves, a young Palestinian refugee tells Press TV. The comment comes as Palestinians commemorated the 64th anniversary of Nakba Day on May 15; when over 750,000 […]occupiedpalestine
- Palestinian Seriously Wounded, Kept On The Ground As Soldiers Stepped on His Palms May 21, 2012Monday May 21, 2012 03:31 by Saed Bannoura – IMEMC Palestinian medical sources reported Sunday that a Palestinian youth was injured near the Etzion Israeli settlement, between Bethlehem and Hebron in the occupied West Bank. The soldiers then stepped on his palms to pose for pictures as the resident continued to bleed. Salah Sghayyar – [...]occupiedpalestine
- A researcher: 66% of Jerusalemites threatened with displacement May 20, 2012[ PIC 20/05/2012 - 08:06 PM ] OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (PIC)– A Palestinian researcher revealed that more than two thirds of Jerusalemites owe money to the Israeli occupation’s different organs and departments. The Jerusalemite activist and researcher, Fakhri Abu Diab, said that Israeli official data showed that there are over 43 thousand debt files in […]occupiedpalestine
- PALESTINE NEWS | May 20, 2012 May 20, 2012LIVE BLOG ▶ PALESTINIANS ON HUNGER STRIKE | #PalHunger LIVE BLOG ▶ Commemorating 64 Years of Catastrophe in Palestine | #Nakba64 LIVE BLOG ▶ Israel Attacks Gaza May 17, 2012 & lies about it | #GazaUnderAttack continuous updated آخر الأخبار والتحديثات May 20, 2012 | 23381 Days Since Al-Nakba & Gaza has been under siege [...]occupiedpalestine
- Two youths injured in IOF shooting one seriously May 20, 2012[ PIC 20/05/2012 - 05:44 PM ] AL-KHALIL, (PIC)– A Palestinian teen was seriously injured near Gush Etzion settlement to the north of Al-Khalil after Israeli occupation forces (IOF) fired at him. Medical sources said that the 17-year-old youth Salah Zaghir was seriously wounded in his abdomen after an Israeli soldier fired at him near [...]occupiedpalestine
- Barhoum champions third intifada to protect Aqsa and holy shrines May 20, 2012[ PIC 20/05/2012 - 05:52 PM ] GAZA, (PIC)– Spokesman of Hamas in Gaza Fawzi Barhoum has charged that the Jewish settlers’ storming of the Aqsa mosque on Sunday fell in line with the religious war waged by the Israeli occupation government against the Palestinian people. Barhoum told the PIC that the repeated visits by [...]occupiedpalestine
- Medics: Farmer shot in south Gaza, moderately injured May 20, 2012Maan News Agency | May 20, 2012 GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — A young Palestinian farmer was shot by Israeli soldiers while working on his land in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday, a medical official said. Waheed, 22, is in a moderate condition in Nasser hospital after suffering a bullet wound in the thigh, emergency [...]occupiedpalestine
- Settlers, amongst soldiers, fire live ammunition on Palestinians – Videos May 21, 2012
- IRNA (Iran)
- India-Iran cultural relations “extensive”: Indian Scholar May 21, 2012New Delhi, May 21, IRNA – Terming the cultural relations between India and Iran as “extensive” and “uninterrupted”, an Indian scholar Monday emphasized the need to further strengthen the ties between the two nations.-1391/03/01-16:06
- Visa not required for Bolivians willing to visit Iran for 30 days May 21, 2012Tehran, May 21, IRNA - The Iranian Government has dropped visa requirement for Bolivian nationals willing to visit Iran for 30 days.-1391/03/01-16:00
- Iranian nation capable of reaching scientific peaks, president May 20, 2012Mahshahr, Khuzestan Prov, May 21, IRNA – Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here on Monday that the Iranian nation is well capable of reaching the industrial and scientific peaks in the world.-1391/03/01-13:17
- Turkish economic delegation in Iran May 21, 2012Tehran, May 21, IRNA – A high-ranking Turkish economic delegation arrived in Tehran on Monday.-1391/03/01-11:55
- Iran’s Red Crescent to dispatch humanitarian aid to Syria May 21, 2012Tehran, May 21, IRNA – Head of Iran’s Red Crescent Society Abolhassan Faqih said Iran will shortly send humanitarian aid to Syria.-1391/03/01-11:46
- Ban underlines need to preserve marine biodiversity May 21, 2012Tehran, May 21, IRNA — UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his message on the International Day for Biological Diversity, May 22, 2012, while warning that between 30 and 35 per cent of critical marine environments are estimated to have been destroyed called for national and international actions to preserve marine biodiversity.-1391/03/01-11:24
- Headlines in major Iranian newspapers May 21, 2012Tehran, May 21, IRNA – The following headlines appeared in major Iranian dailies on Monday:-1391/03/01-09:52
- Amano arrives in Tehran May 21, 2012Tehran, May 21, IRNA -- Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano, arrived in Tehran on Monday.-1391/03/01-06:30
- President: No distance between govt., Majlis May 21, 2012Tehran, May 21, IRNA – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says there is no distance between Majlis and government.-1391/03/01-00:47
- Amano positive about Tehran visit May 21, 2012Vienna, May 21, IRNA -- Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano, says he is positive about visiting Iran.-1391/03/01-00:25
- India-Iran cultural relations “extensive”: Indian Scholar May 21, 2012
- Press Tv
- 'Iran's Army to stage drill in Isfahan' May 21, 2012Commander of the Iranian Army’s Ground Forces Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan has announced the army’s plans for a military drill in the central province of Isfahan.
- Olympics made no boon to UK small firms May 21, 2012Small British companies say the government is shutting them out of the Olympics trade boost despite earlier ‘selling’ the games to taxpayers as an economic boon.
- China's oil imports from Iran up 53.2 pct May 21, 2012China's oil imports from Iran have increased by 53.2 percent in April to 388,034 barrels per day (bpd) from 253,302 bpd a month earlier, Chinese customs data shows.
- US military trainers attacked in Yemen May 21, 2012Gunmen have attacked three US Coast Guard trainers in western Yemen, injuring one, Yemeni security officials say.
- China urges trust-building in P5+1 talks May 21, 2012China has urged all parties involved in the upcoming talks between Iran and six major world powers in Baghdad to make efforts to “build up mutual trust.”
- Chemicals risk at UK air base uncovered May 21, 2012Military authorities at Britain’s RAF Kinloss army base in Scotland have kept silent on the risk of chemical weapons contamination at the base, which is shortly to host more than 900 army personnel.
- Iran rally slams KSA-Bahrain merger bid May 21, 2012Hundreds of Iranian university students have staged a rally to protest against a bid for the merger of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Press TV reports.
- Brotherhood candidate tops expat polls May 21, 2012The Muslim Brotherhood's presidential candidate in Egypt, Mohammed Mursi, sweeps the country's expatriates votes, securing 40 percent of the ballot.
- ‘Warmonger’ cries disrupt Blair speech May 21, 2012Protesters have interrupted a commencement speech by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair at Colby College in Maine, the US, where he was advising audience to serve others.
- 96 Yemeni people killed in Sana’a May 21, 2012At least 96 Yemeni people, including soldiers, have been killed in a bomb attack carried out in the capital, Sana’a.
- 'Iran's Army to stage drill in Isfahan' May 21, 2012
- Globalresearch (US)
- The Globalization of War: The "Military Roadmap" to World War III July 14, 2012The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest. The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously.
- Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation May 28, 2012The dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination... Eventually all major regions of the World will be affected.
- SUPERPOWER: Behind the Scenes of America’s National Security Apparatus May 24, 2012For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
- Down but Not Defeated: Why the Truth Must be Told May 23, 2012For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
- Chicago: cops start preemptive arrests on the eve of NATO Summit May 21, 2012For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
- Police violence in Chicago May 21, 2012For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
- Chicago NATO Protests May 21, 2012For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
- NATO. "1984" Revisited. When "War is Peace" May 21, 2012For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
- Social Nightmare Foretold if Greece Heads for Euro Exit May 21, 2012For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
- Islamophobia: Washington’s "New Colonialism" May 21, 2012For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
- The Globalization of War: The "Military Roadmap" to World War III July 14, 2012
- Globalresearch TV
- Appelle à réfléchir à la désobéissance civile contre la Loi matraque May 18, 2012 grtv
- Montréal: Quelle place pour les médias? What is the Role of Media? May 17, 2012 grtv
- Pentagon Talks Peace, Then Arms Syria Rebels Via Gulf Allies May 17, 2012 grtv
- Toronto 9/11 Hearings: Uncovering 10 Years of Deception (Trailer) May 16, 2012 grtv
- Home Not So Sweet: Foreclosure & Debt Push Americans to Extremes May 16, 2012 grtv
- Alex Jones Infowars
- Teacher Yells At Student: Criminal Offense to Criticize Obama May 21, 2012Paul Joseph Watson | Disturbing trend of Obama cult of personality in school system continues.paul
- As The Elite Fences Itself In, Kissinger Announces Order Out Of Chaos May 21, 2012Jurriaan Maessen | Kissinger: social upheaval and mass civil unrest to be used as a means of merging the US into an “international system”.kurtnimmo
- Homeland Security in the Land of the Free May 21, 2012Sartre | Remember Tiananmen Square before yet another Kent State becomes routine.kurtnimmo
- Recovery or Collapse? Bet on Collapse May 21, 2012Paul Craig Roberts | The US financial system and, probably, the financial system of Europe, like the police, no longer serves a useful social purpose.steve_watson
- Jim Cramer Is Predicting Bank Runs In Spain And Italy And Financial Anarchy Throughout Europe May 21, 2012The Economic Collapse | During an appearance on Meet The Press on Sunday, Jim Cramer of CNBC boldly predicted that "financial anarchy" is coming to Europe.steve_watson
- Why Mankind Is Screwed: The People Are Children, And Leaders Are Fathers May 21, 2012Saman Mohammadi | Barack Obama is a Father Figure to his naive, blind, and delusional followers.steve_watson
- The Top 50 Excuses For Not Prepping May 21, 2012The American Dream | With the way that things are heading in this country, it is not surprising that there are approximately 3 million preppers in the United States today.steve_watson
- Obama: The Groomed from Birth Dictator May 21, 2012Infowars.com | Alex talks about the continued and long overdue outing of Kenyan-born Obama the imposter.steve_watson
- Barack Obama: A Foundation Operative! May 21, 2012Infowars.com | Alex covers the global elite on the run as the establishment media is forced to report on the Bilderbergers.steve_watson
- Judge in 9/11 Case at Guantanamo Weighs Splitting up Defendants and Holding Multiple Trials May 21, 2012NY Daily News | Ten years later, still trying to pretend that the government didn't stage the attacks.undergrowth
- Teacher Yells At Student: Criminal Offense to Criticize Obama May 21, 2012
- Veteranstoday.com (US)
- Homeland Security in the Land of the Free May 21, 2012The horror stories about the Transportation Security Administration are indisputable. In the post 911 environment, civil liberties routinely ignored or eliminated, become a mere memory in a country that once prided itself as the beacon of freedom for the entire world. The TSA is part of the Department of Homeland Security. FEMA, the Federal Emergency [...]SARTRE
- Hafez Aladdeen is an Israeli Patriot May 21, 2012When Cohen attempts to bond with his protagonist Dictator Aladeen, he actually speaks in his mother tongue, Hebrew. Cohen speaks Hebrew because Aladeen is not an Arab dictator, he is actually an Israeli patriot like Cohen himself.Gilad Atzmon
- US Declares ‘Total War’ on Islam May 21, 2012By Dr. Ismail Salami In an organized act of brutality, a number of US soldiers went on a house-to-house shooting spree in Zangabad village, Kandahar in March and massacred 16 people including nine children while they were sleeping and all Washington had to say were a few words of condolence and apology nonchalantly strung together [...]Dr. Ismail Salami
- Cross Talk : Farewell Israel? May 21, 2012Is the American-Jewish romance with Israel coming to an end?Veterans Today
- NATO – Rogue Arm Of America’s War Machine Must Be Dismantled May 20, 2012There is much to both question and criticize about NATO but primary is the fact that America has created an international organization that is not answerable to international or constitutional laws and is still mired in a cold war mentality.Allen L Roland
- Life in Occupied Chicago May 20, 2012Secret Service agents, NORTHCOM and National Guard forces, as well as thousands of state and local police seem everywhere.Stephen Lendman
- Screw Religion! Go With God May 20, 2012This is another column exploring the evil sway of scientism, not science, that dominates worldwide behavior.Tom Valentine
- 9/11 and Islamophobia May 20, 2012My Recent Comment on Prof. Richard Falk's Blog Highlighting the Failures of the Mainstream Media to Cover the Hunger Strike Aimed a Calling Attention to Israel's Violations of the Universal Human Rights of Palestinians.Anthony Hall
- NATO Vulture Culture May 20, 2012Russian Aurora has discharged a preemptive salvo against the Atlantic freedom vultures in America, which have camped out at sweet home Chicago. No, it wasn’t another Bolshevik mutiny at the legendary cruiser in St Petersburg; it was an audacious Russian think tank, Institute for Foreign Policy Research & Initiatives, www.invissin.ru that boarded ritzy Ma […]Col. Eugene Khrushchev
- Evil, Madness, and Blind Spots: Two New Books on Psychopathy Leave their Selective Empathy Showing May 20, 2012So let us ask Dr. Baron-Cohen: What part of the Jewish brain is malfunctioning to produce this widespread empathy-deficit disorder?Kevin Barrett
- Homeland Security in the Land of the Free May 21, 2012
- The Daily Bail ( US )
- VIDEO - Clint Eastwood's Chrysler Super Bowl Commercial: "It's Halftime in America" February 7, 2012 DailyBail
- Fed Prez Who Owns Over $1 Million in Gold, Greek Bailout May Have To Be $19.7 Billion Higher, How The Government Manufactures Low Unemployment Numbers (LINKS) February 6, 2012Fed Prez Who Owns Over $1 Million in Gold Greek Bailout May Have to Be $19.7 Billion Higher Greece misses another bailout deadline - Reuters Foreclosure deal deadline arrives, not all states are...DailyBail
- VIDEO - Rand Paul Introduces Amendment To Force Former Elected Officials To Forfeit ALL Benefits If They Become Lobbyists February 4, 2012Video - Sen. Rand Paul on the Senate Floor - Jan. 31, 2012 This law is approximately 40 years overdue, and it took a neophyte Senator to be the first to propose such legislation in the history of...DailyBail
- Nigel Farage: 'For Greece It's Diplomacy At Gunpoint, And Portugal Is Next' February 4, 2012Video - Nigel Farage - Feb. 1, 2012 Transcript "Well, Congratulations everybody. Davud Cameron had you worried for a bit. You thought he was even a eurosceptic. But it's okay, you had a quiet word...DailyBail
- Bailout Battle - The IMF vs. Germany, Banking Giant HSBC Accused Of Laundering Billions, Yale Discovers A Fungus That Eats Plastic (LINKS) February 4, 2012Counterfeit Value Derivatives: Follow the Bouncing Ball Bailout Battle - The IMF vs. Germany Summary of Bernanke's testimony before Congress Bernanke: Deficit reduction must be top priority 47...DailyBail
- Alexander Higgins Blog
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- Asian Times
- Riddle of the Scarborough Shoals May 18, 2012In the matter of the Scarborough Shoal mess, the Philippines started it and the infamous Chinese nine-dash line encompassing almost the entire South China Sea looks like an audacious claim drawn from an appetite for aggression. A closer look reveals that there is some genuine method to Beijing's madness, and a chance that gas and greed, rather than inte […]
- THE ROVING EYE : NATO occupies sweet home Chicago May 18, 2012The North Atlantic Treaty Organization hopes that If you can't beat them in Pashtunistan, you can at least corral them in the home of the blues, with NATO's Chicago summit planned to instill in members the "common values" behind drone warfare and base expansion. As riot police lock down the city, some partners likely fear they've mar […]
- US Iran hawks in some disarray May 18, 2012Hopes by Iran hawks for the United States Congress to provide enough ammunition to threaten Iran with a military strike on the eve of critical talks over Tehran's nuclear program have fallen unexpectedly short. The House has retracted its talons, while over in the Senate a new sanctions bill was blocked by Republicans because it wasn't sufficiently […]
- Tehran: To talk or not to talk May 18, 2012The possibility of direct talks between the United States and Iran emerged in January when new sanctions gave the White House political cover to revert to a policy of engagement. However, Tehran's profound mistrust of American sincerity hampers progress. The only sensible way forward is to let bygones be bygones and work through an intermediary such as […]
- The 'illogic' of China's North Korea policy May 18, 2012China's refusal to use its leverage as North Korea's friend and protector to halt its provocations strengthens the United States alliance system that Beijing considers a tool of encirclement. As Pyongyang blithely continues with missile launches and other acts that undermine China in the international arena, it seems hard to image a policy more dam […]
- BOOK REVIEW : Cherry-picking from China's success May 18, 2012What the US Can Learn from China by Ann Lee This book forces the reader to confront China's growth in the midst of America's decline, drawing attention to the reasons US politics became too self-serving, too short-sighted and too partisan. The author doesn't argue the Chinese approach is flawless, but she does hold up China's single-minde […]
- SPEAKING FREELY : Nepal's constitution: Respect the dissenters May 18, 2012The transition to a new constitution and the rule of law cannot be achieved overnight (South Africa's model constitution was seven years in the making). Yet the rush to get Nepal's new code into shape has been seemly, with the result that it will not have legitimacy, simply because politicians have failed to hear the dissenting voices of the people […]
- China's start-ups hold global potential May 18, 2012Western opinion has largely greeted China's early attempts at innovation with skepticism. Yet companies such as Tsing Capital and Chrysalix Venture Capital are discovering entrepreneurs whose concepts represent a potential next wave of innovative technologies that could impact the world. - Benjamin A Shobert
- US gives green light to investment in Myanmar May 18, 2012The United States is to permit investment by US companies in Myanmar, while a ban will remain on imports from the still largely military-run country. Critics say the move is too early, with armed conflict still raging in the north, and will inevitably benefit human-rights abusers.- Carey L Biron
- IT WORLD : Facebook floats May 18, 2012Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is now officially worth close to US$20 billion after successfully bringing off the initial public offering for his young social network site. Fans keen to grab a piece of the company may have to pay 50% more than the initial price when the shares start trading Friday. Martin J Young surveys the week's developments in com […]
- Riddle of the Scarborough Shoals May 18, 2012
- RT (Russia today)
- Beirut clashes draw Lebanon into Syria conflict May 21, 2012 RT
- Air-France-KLM: Austerity job cuts coming? May 21, 2012 RT
- Assange Episode 6: Ecuador’s fight against its media vultures May 21, 2012 RT
- Princess grieves Russian millionaire toy boy’s death May 21, 2012 RT
- Facebook IPO gains to exceed commodity profits of Russian moguls May 21, 2012 RT
- New ‘network’ party aims to replace United Russia May 21, 2012 RT
- Russian government approved, only quarter of ministers stay May 21, 2012 RT
- Cut oil dependency before too late - former Finance Minister Kudrin May 21, 2012 RT
- Tragedy: Robin Gibb loses cancer battle May 21, 2012 RT
- Transgender beauty drops out of contest still a winner May 21, 2012 RT
- RIA Novosti ( World News Russia )
- Azerbaijan Responds to Iran Eurovision Criticism May 21, 2012
- Turkish Intelligence Foils Kidnapping of Syrian Opposition Army Chief May 21, 2012
- Defects Spotted in Ukrainian Armored Vehicles for Iraq May 21, 2012
- Search for SuperJet Black Box Goes On – UAC May 21, 2012
- Sukhoi Superjet 100 crash in Indonesia May 21, 2012
- Suicide Bomber Kills 96 at Yemen Military Parade May 21, 2012
- G8 Join Efforts to Cut Short-Lived Climate Pollutants May 21, 2012
- G8 Summit at Camp David 2012 May 21, 2012
- Myanmar to Rebuild 'Death Railway' May 21, 2012
- Viktor Bout case May 21, 2012
- American free press.net
- Foreign Wars Could Send Hoards of Third Worlders to our Shores in Coming Decades May 14, 2012News Item...
- Middle Class at a Crossroads May 14, 2012News Item...
- Students Living the American Nightmare May 14, 2012News Item...
- All the Terrorism That’s Fit to Invent May 7, 2012News Item...
- Inside the Murky World of International Arms Smuggling May 7, 2012News Item...
- Foreign Wars Could Send Hoards of Third Worlders to our Shores in Coming Decades May 14, 2012
- Gerald Celente.com(US) financial research
- Gerald Celente – The Gary Null Show – May 18, 2012 May 18, 201218 May 2012admin
- Gerald Celente – Morning news with Tony Cruise – May 16, 2012 May 16, 201216 May 2012admin
- Gerald Celente – Goldseek Radio – May 16, 2012 May 16, 201216 May 2012admin
- Gerald Celente – Brian Sussman KFSO – May 15, 2012 May 15, 201215 May 2012admin
- Gerald Celente — Capital Account — 14 May 2012 May 14, 201214 May 2012admin
- Gerald Celente – The Gary Null Show – May 18, 2012 May 18, 2012
- Middle East Monitor (UK)
- Arab League head visits Sudan to discuss crisis with the South and Darfur developments May 21, 2012The Secretary General of the Arab League, Dr. Nabil Al-Arabi, arrived in Sudan on Sunday for discussions with President Omar Al-Bashir and senior Sudanese officials. The agenda will cover the crisis with South Sudan and the latest political and security developments in Darfur. A press release from the Arab League revealed that Al-Arabi had a meeting on Frida […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Khalid)
- SA university pulls plug on Israeli Embassy May 21, 2012South Africa's University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) has pulled the plug on the Israeli deputy ambassador to South Africa, Yaakov Finkelstein. This is yet another blow to Israel-South Africa relations that have recently become tense. Finkelstein was due to speak at UKZN later on today, Monday (21 May 2012), but yesterday afternoon, UKZN's Deputy Vice […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Khalid)
- Nablus schoolgirls display handicrafts May 19, 2012EXCLUSIVE PICTURES Schoolgirls from the Muhammad Tufaha School in Nablus have held a craft exhibition under the title "Flowers of Spring", which featured their work from across the academic year. The exhibition was supervised by craft instructor Maha Al-Qadomi and was attended by local officials, parents and students. Many of the exhibits underline […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Khalid)
- Egypt's new role in the future of Palestine May 18, 2012Recently, millions of Egyptians crowded round TV sets in Cairo to watch two presidential candidates debate their country's future. For citizens more used to having a political system imposed on them than joining in the discussion, they seem to have adapted quickly. Cheers and applause broke out as the candidates each exploited their opponent's weak […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Amelia Smith)
- Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails: Their legal status and their rights May 18, 2012Introduction The status of prisoners of war is a very complicated issue in international humanitarian law. Many people think - wrongly - that all of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are to be considered as prisoners of war. International humanitarian law, in particular the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 and its protocols, gives a very precise defi […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Dr Abdulrahman Muhammad Ali)
- Why the BBC must change May 18, 2012Love it or hate it, the BBC is perhaps the most powerful media institution in the world. Not even the Murdoch empire in its heyday matched the scale and impact of the BBC's operations. Yet, in the last week, it has suffered two embarrassing setbacks in the aftermath of which its funders, the British public, are entitled to a change of policy. For almost […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Dr. Daud Abdullah)
- Jewish settlers break into Al-Aqsa with government minister and Knesset members May 18, 2012A group of illegal Jewish settlers, accompanied by an Israeli government minister and a number of members of the Knesset (Israeli parliament), broke into the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque on Thursday morning, 17 May, amid a state of alert and while being heavily guarded by Israeli occupation forces. Mahmoud Abu Atta, a spokesman for the Al-Aqsa for Endowment […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Khalid)
- BBC poll ranks Israel third in list of worst countries worldwide May 18, 2012A poll conducted by the BBC World Service has ranked Israel in third place among the worst countries in the world, keeping company with North Korea and only just ahead of Iran and Pakistan. The results of the global poll, organised by the BBC and covering 22 countries, showed that Israel stands among the countries with the most negative influence on the worl […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Khalid)
- Growing racism in Israel May 18, 2012A report on Israel radio has revealed that manifestations of racial discrimination are widespread across Israeli society. The racism is particularly evident between Jews and Arabs, but there is also evidence of racism between Jews themselves and against African refugees who come to work in Israel. The report noted instances of attempted arson attacks on buil […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Khalid)
- Knesset bill will prohibit Nakba Day ceremonies in educational institutions May 17, 2012Hebrew media sources have revealed the extent of support in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, for a law which would ban the commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe) in Israeli universities and educational institutions. Yedioth Ahronoth reported that the Chairman of the Knesset Education Committee, Alex Miller, is behind the introduction of t […]khalid@memonitor.org.uk (Khalid)
- Arab League head visits Sudan to discuss crisis with the South and Darfur developments May 21, 2012
- Commondreams.com (US)
- Nearly 100 Soldiers Dead, 300 Wounded in Yemen Blast May 21, 2012Reports indicate a single suicide bomber who detonated powerful explosives amid a crowd of soldiers rehearsing for an upcoming parade in Yemen's capital city of Sanaa left at least 96 dead and perhaps 300 or more wounded. "We are hearing reports that 96 people were killed and many more injured. There have been requests for blood donations and the d […]jon
- Drones of Its Own: NATO Signs Deal with Northrup Grumman for 'Global Surveillance Capabilities' May 21, 2012 jon
- NAACP Endorses Same-Sex Marriage May 20, 2012The NAACP on Saturday resolved to support same-sex marriage by voting to affirm marriage equality as a civil right. (photo: sushiesque) read moreandrea
- Shut Down the War Marchine!: Thousands in Anti-NATO Rally May 20, 2012 andrea
- At G8 France's Hollande Pushes Against the Austerity Drive May 20, 2012 andrea
- Chicago Police Hold Occupy Activists on State Terrorism Charges With Dubious Evidence May 19, 2012The City of Chicago has filed charges against three Occupy activists, Jared Chase, Brent Beterly, and Brian Jacob Church, including possession of explosives or incendiary devices, material support for terrorism, and conspiracy. Chicago police during anti-NATO protests. (photo: Mikasi) read moreandrea
- 25,000 Rally Against Austerity in Germany May 19, 2012 andrea
- How Twitter Mapped a ‘Covert’ US Drone Operation in Yemen May 19, 2012The local press was quickly at the scene but Twitter broke the story first. Though the hour was late, Yemen’s social media was still very much awake. A US drone’s missiles had just slammed into a convoy of vehicles in a remote part of Yemen, killing three alleged militants. read moreandrea
- 'An Economy for the 99%': People's G8 Demands 'Robin Hood Tax' May 18, 2012See below for livestream and Twitter updates... Thousands of protesters are in Chicago today for a "People's G8" in a call led by National Nurses United (NNU) to demand an economy for the 99% and heal the "financial traumas faced by real people at the hands of Wall Street." read more […]andrea
- The Organic Watergate: Alarming Report Reveals USDA's Cozy Relationship with Corporate Agribusinesses in 'Organics' May 18, 2012Today, the Cornucopia Institute released a report titled The Organic Watergate, revealing widespread corruption in the USDA's organic food monitoring panel -- the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB). read morejacob
- Nearly 100 Soldiers Dead, 300 Wounded in Yemen Blast May 21, 2012
- surgar.net ( Afghanistan)
- Iran finance minister: 'Rest assured' record oil prices over nuclear sanctions May 21, 2012
- Al-Qaeda attack' on Yemen army parade causes carnage May 21, 2012
- Suicide blast 'kills 10' at Afghan checkpoint in Khost May 19, 2012
- SpaceX Dragon ship aborts launch May 19, 2012
- Dubai Customs foils 19 smuggling bids May 16, 2012
- Washington Independent.com
- Navigating anti-abortion online strategy February 7, 2012Updated: 6:15 p.m. EST with a clarified quote*. In the seemingly endless war over abortion rights in America, battles are waged in legislatures, in courts and, most recently, on the Internet. The strategy of using abortion-related keywords to send a woman searching the web for abortion information More...Sofia Resnick
- FCC to modernize low-income broadband Internet access program January 10, 2012On Monday, Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski announced changes that would modernize the agency’s Lifeline program to give greater broadband Internet access to low-income Americans. Lifeline has traditionally provided “discounts on one basic monthly telephone service (wireline or wireless) for qualified subscribers.” While announci […]Marcos Restrepo
- Local Michigan county wants to force meds on HIV criminal suspect January 10, 2012Sangeeta Ghosh, assistant corporate counsel for Kent County, Mich., says should the 51-year-old man charged in two cases of failing to disclose his HIV-positive status to sexual partners make bail, the county is prepared to ask a court to force him to take antiretroviral medications. “The county is More...Todd Heywood
- Michigan Rep. Hoogendyk preparing to challenge Upton in 6th Congressional District? January 10, 2012Former Michigan state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk is likely to announce next week that he will challenge Congressman Fred Upton (R-St. Joseph) in the GOP primary in August. Hoogendyk unsuccessfully challenged Upton for the seat two years ago, when he was able to garner only 43 percent of the vote, More...Todd Heywood
- Right-wing think tank leaks salaries of Florida public employees via new website January 9, 2012The Foundation for Government Accountability debuted a new website Monday — an online database of the salaries of Florida’s public employees: FloridaOpenGov.org. The website is almost a replica of a project by Foundation President Tarren Bragdon at his last place of employment, the Maine Heritage Policy Center. More...Ashley Lopez
- Ski industry exploited ‘lax regulatory environment’ under Bush, says former Forest Service official January 9, 2012Going to court may be “the best way” to resolve a dispute over water rights between the U.S. Forest Service and the National Ski Areas Association, according to a former Forest Service ski area permit coordinator. “Frankly, litigation may be the best way forward on this issue,” Ed Ryerson More...Troy Hooper
- Arkansas AG stops anti-abortion group from introducing ‘personhood’ bill January 9, 2012Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel has blocked the state’s Personhood affiliate from introducing a bill that would define life from the moment of conception, on the grounds that it is “too vague” as written. Though “fetal personhood” measures across the country have been criticized for that very reason, Personhood Arkansas More...Virginia Chamlee
- New Florida bill would outlaw gender- and race-based abortions January 9, 2012With the beginning of session only days away, Florida legislators have been busy filing a slew of anti-abortion bills. Add yet another to the list: a measure outlawing race- and gender-based abortions. The bill was filed by state Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood. House Bill 1327, or the “Susan B. More...Ashley Lopez
- News anchor, anti-abortion activist to be the ‘face’ of Minnesota anti-gay marriage amendment January 9, 2012Kalley King Yanta, a former anchor for a Minneapolis-based television station and an anti-abortion-rights activist, has joined the Minnesota for Marriage group to anchor videos intended to convince Minnesotans to vote for the anti-gay-marriage amendment on the ballot in 2012. The videos — and Yanta — have come under More...Andy Birkey
- Media analysis: Grand Rapids HIV criminal case spurs ‘sensationalist’ reporting January 9, 2012An alleged admission by a 51-year-old Comstock Park, Mich., man that he attempted to infect hundreds of people with HIV through unprotected sexual activity and needle-sharing has sparked a media feeding frenzy, which HIV activists and legal experts have roundly censured as “sensationalist.” In spite of the national condemnation, More...Todd Heywood
- Navigating anti-abortion online strategy February 7, 2012
- AllAfrica news
- Africa: G8 to Poor Countries - It's Not You, It's Me May 21, 2012[Oxfam] As the Camp David G8 Summit winds down, international agency Oxfam criticized G8 leaders for failing to renew measurable funding and policy commitments to help address global food security. Leaders were unwilling to continue current efforts to invest in developing country agriculture, even as they set a new goal of helping 50 million people lift them […]
- Somalia: Multiple Explosions in Mogadishu Kill 8 May 21, 2012[Garowe Online] Mogadishu - Multiple explosions in Mogadishu's busy Bakara market and another blast in east Mogadishu killed 8 and injured more than 15 on Saturday, Radio Garowe reports.
- Tanzania: NGOs Push for More Budget On Maternal Health May 21, 2012[Daily News] SOME 35 NGOs have teamed up to petition the government, urging it to allocate adequate budget for maternal and newborn health during the 2012/2013 financial year.
- Egypt: Pro-Revolution Candidates Fail to Unite May 21, 2012[Aswat Masriya] Cairo - Campaign of presidential candidate Hisham Bastawisi denied reports that he may withdraw for another candidate, insisting on his intention to run the race until the end.
- Somalia: Violent Clashes Erupt in Somaliland May 20, 2012[UN News] The United Nations envoy in Somalia, Augustine P. Mahiga, today expressed concern over recent violent clashes in the northern city of Hargeisa, located in Somaliland, between Somaliland security forces and citizens which allegedly resulted in the deaths on both sides.
- Sudan: Security First, Bashir Tells Mbeki May 20, 2012[Sudan Tribune] Khartoum - The chairman of the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP) saw little change in Khartoum's position regarding the resumption of negotiations with Juba during his talks today with Sudanese president Omer Hassan al-Bashir.
- Ethiopia: How Meles Rules The Country May 21, 2012[African Arguments] Meles Zenawi is the cleverest and most engaging president in Africa - at least when he talks to visiting outsiders. When he speaks to his fellow Ethiopians, he is severe and dogmatic.
- South Sudan: Juba Calls for 'Steep' Sanctions On Sudan Over Abyei May 21, 2012[Sudan Tribune] Juba - South Sudan on Sunday said it is time the international community imposes "steep sanctions" on the government of neighbouring Sudan for its "deliberate" failure to comply with a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution calling for an end to hostilities and the immediate withdrawal of troops from the contested region of […]
- South Africa: Secrecy Bill Amendments On the Cards May 21, 2012[West Cape News] MPs are set to invite the Department of State Security to debate proposed changes made by political parties to the controversial Protection of State Information Bill.
- Libya: Nation Votes for the First Time in Four Decades May 21, 2012[AEP] Libyans are scheduled to go to the polls in June 2012 to elect 200 members of the National Public Conference in the country's first democratic elections since Col. Muammar Gaddafi took the reign of power in 1969.
- Africa: G8 to Poor Countries - It's Not You, It's Me May 21, 2012
- The Jakarta Post.com (Indonesia)
- Vocational school students assemble 2,000 laptops May 21, 2012Vocational school students of SMKN 3 Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara, have managed to assemble 2,000 laptops for fellow students in schools throughout the region since 2009.The students have worked with ...
- Govt prepares report for UNHRC May 21, 2012The government will accurately describe its human rights record in a report to be given to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) later this week, a top Palace official says.“The Office of ...
- Promoter reveals different side of Lady Gaga May 21, 2012Contrary to her controversial and eye-catching image, Lady Gaga is actually very modest, according to a representative from local concert promoter Big Daddy Entertainment.“For instance, she ...
- IM2 eyes SME segment for expansion May 21, 2012Local Internet and multimedia service provider PT Indosat Mega Media (IM2) plans to expand its market into the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) segment for future growth.IM2 president director ...
- Bali officials remain ‘in the air’ over the possibility of hosting Gaga concert May 21, 2012With uncertainty surrounding US singer Lady Gaga’s upcoming concert scheduled in Jakarta, it has been rumored that her promoter has switched the venue to Bali instead. Bali officials, however, ...
- National futsal team to compete in 2012 Asia Cup May 21, 2012The Indonesian national futsal team is ready to compete in the 2012 Asia Cup in Dubai, which will run from May 25 to June 1."We began training in April. Our team is ready to compete and to do their ...
- Tangerang Police arrest two suspects in minimarket robberies May 21, 2012Tangerang regency police (Polresta Tangerang) have arrested two of the seven members of Pitam Kuning, a gang that has allegedly been involved in a number of armed robberies targeting minimarkets ...
- Millions look skyward as eclipse crosses Asia, US May 21, 2012Millions in Asia and the western United States watched as a rare "ring of fire" eclipse crossed their skies.The annular eclipse, in which the moon passes in front of the sun leaving only a golden ...
- Michelle Obama, NATO spouses visit youth center May 21, 2012At the tender age of 11, Cecilia Moseley already appears versed in the virtues of fitness. But she was left star-struck Sunday after first lady Michelle Obama and an audience of global leaders ...
- US prison riot leaves guard dead, 8 hurt May 21, 2012Authorities say a guard was killed and, at one point, hostages were taken during a riot at a Mississippi prison that holds illegal immigrants.The Sunday riot at the privately run prison in southwest ...
- Vocational school students assemble 2,000 laptops May 21, 2012
- todayszaman.com (Turkey)
- Israel denies plans to deploy commandos to Greek Cyprus May 20, 2012A spokesperson from the Israel Foreign Ministry refuted an Anatolia news agency news report which said the Israeli president has requested permission to deploy at least 20,000 soldiers to Greek Cyprus in exchange for building a gas terminal on the island.todayszaman.com
- Suicide bomber kills at least 63 Yemeni soldiers in Sanaa May 20, 2012A suicide bomber killed 63 soldiers at a military parade rehearsal in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Monday, a police source said.AP/REUTERS
- Public bus attacked with Molotov cocktail in İstanbul May 20, 2012A group of masked assailants threw a Molotov cocktail onto a public bus along the Taksim-Osmanbey route when the bus stopped at a red light near the Okmeydanı Şark Kahvesi, setting the bus on fire, in İstanbul's Şişli district on Sunday.Today's Zaman
- Six İskenderun students drown during picnic event May 20, 2012Six teenagers attending a picnic organized by a district Quran course drowned over the weekend in İskenderun, Hatay, when they were swept away by strong currents after going for a swim in the sea.Today's Zaman
- Protesters threaten to attack Turkish firms if Hashemi not handed over May 19, 2012Turkish-Iraqi ties have been further strained after the burning of a Turkish flag during a protest near the Turkish Consulate General in Basra on Saturday and threats by protesters against Turkish firms operating in the city.Today's Zaman
- Clashes in Beirut after army kills anti-Assad group members May 20, 2012Residents of a Beirut suburb fired heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades at each other on Sunday, the latest violence to raise fears that Syria's turmoil was spilling over the border into its neighbour.Reuters
- One officer killed, five wounded in clashes with PKK May 20, 2012A special ops team officer was killed and five other security personnel were wounded in a clash with the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the Kulp district of Diyarbakır province on Monday.todayszaman.com
- Turkish police detain three for plotting to abduct Syrian defector May 20, 2012Turkish police on Monday detained three people, including two Turks, for their suspected involvement in a plot to abduct a defected Syrian colonel who fled to Turkey.todayzaman.com
- Turkish prime minister arrives in Pakistan for talks May 20, 2012Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan arrived in Pakistan's capital city Islamabad late on Sunday as the formal guest of his Pakistani counterpart, Yousuf Raza Gilani.todayszaman.com
- Syria briefly shuts down border gate with Turkey over clashes May 19, 2012Syria briefly closed its Bab al-Hawa border gate with Turkey on Saturday, apparently because of a military operation carried out by Syrian troops against a village near the border.Aydın Albayrak
- Israel denies plans to deploy commandos to Greek Cyprus May 20, 2012
- hurriyetdailynews.com (Turkey)
- May 19 celebrations are better this way May 18, 2012We used to watch the ceremonies on May 19, the Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day with much interest and enjoyment.
- Space camp a favorite among world’s children May 20, 2012One of three space camps in the world, Space Camp Turkey in İzmir is already booked full for this summer...
- Bardo museum reopens in Tunis May 20, 2012The Bardo Museum in Tunisia’s capital, renowned for its exceptional collection of ancient mosaics...
- Di Matteo enjoys his glory night - it might be his last May 20, 2012Caretaker coach Roberto Di Matteo leads Chelsea to the club’s first-ever Champions League title...
- ‘The Dictator’: When racist replaces racy May 21, 2012Once one of the best comedians in the world and a crusader fighting the ignorance ...
- Egypt expats favor mild Islamist May 20, 2012Former member of the Egyptian Brotherhood Abolfotoh leads in the presidential elections held by Egyptian embassies abroad, according to partial results.
- Uludere and politics as a conspiracy May 20, 2012Uludere was a terrible event and has been a controversial issue from the beginning. Now, there is a new controversy concerning U.S. involvement ...
- The wrong guys did something good again! May 20, 2012Saturday was May 19, the 93rd anniversary of the beginning of Turkey’s War of Liberation by the country’s visionary founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
- Inflation risk is not an illusion May 20, 2012Shall the world economy be able to return to reasonable growth rates again without entering a new inflationary era?
- A new political face for Greece? May 20, 2012The results of the Greek general elections of May 6 produced no clear winner and the negotiations among the parties that entered ...
- May 19 celebrations are better this way May 18, 2012
- Buenos Aires Herald
- European shares bounce back from five-month lows May 21, 2012European shares bounced back from five-month lows today as investors bought into some stocks and sectors that had been particularly badly hit in the previous week's sell-off.
- Aftershocks rattle Italy, residents sleep outdoors May 21, 2012Thousands of people in northern Italy slept in tents and cars overnight as more than 100 aftershocks rocked the area hit by a magnitude 6.0 earthquake that killed seven people and inflicted heavy damage to centuries-old cultural sites.
- Strauss-Kahn investigators open group rape inquiry May 21, 2012French prosecutors said today they had opened an inquiry into allegations of group rape by Dominique Strauss-Kahn and three friends, as part of an investigation into his ties to a suspected prostitution ring in the northern city of Lille.
- Euro area bonds to be discussed at informal EU summit May 21, 2012French President Francois Hollande and like-minded euro zone leaders are expected to promote the idea of mutualised European debt at an informal summit in Brussels this week, increasing pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to drop her opposition to the proposal.
- Italy vote to tap austerity anger, gauge political shift May 21, 2012Italy is likely to register a strong protest vote against belt-tightening in local elections that will provide a fresh snapshot of Europe's changing political landscape a year ahead of a national ballot.
- Scioli rejects rumours of 'rifts' with CFK, says he is not campaigning May 20, 2012
- British nuke sub on her way to Malvinas, UK newspaper May 20, 2012British nuke submarine HMS Talent was dispatched last night to the Malvinas Islands with Tomahawk warheads on what could be a warning signal to Argentina, according to UK’s sensationalist tabloid The Sun.
- Spain: Companies 'need to think twice before investing in Argentina' May 20, 2012
- UN seeks Iran nuclear deal before Baghdad talks May 20, 2012The UN nuclear supervisor flies to Tehran looking for a deal to inspect suspected weapons sites - a potential breakthrough that Iran may hope could persuade the West to start lifting sanctions and deflect threats of war.
- Cobos says Mariotto 'is putting limits on Scioli' May 20, 2012Former Vice-President Julio Cobos said he believes Buenos Aires governor Daniel Scioli “is the most presidential candidate in the Justicialist Party,” therefore his deputy governor “tries to put bumps in the road.”
- European shares bounce back from five-month lows May 21, 2012
- Venezuelanalysis.com
- Venezuelan Authorities Regain Control of La Planta Prison after Violence May 19, 2012 tamara
- Venezuelan Economy Growing Ahead of 2012 Expectations May 18, 2012Venezuela's economy grew 5.6% in the first quarter of 2012 confirmed planning and finance minister Jorge Giordani and Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV) president Nelson Merentes on Thursday. read moreewan
- Germany Asks European Union to Step Up Support for Venezuela’s Opposition May 18, 2012A German news website has revealed that the German government has been pushing for Eurozone countries to adopt a more active role in backing the current Venezuelan opposition coalition, the Roundtable of Democratic Unity (MUD), in the run up to this year’s presidential elections. read moreewan
- Tourism to Venezuela Increases by 49.5% in 2012 May 18, 2012A total of 312,725 international tourists have visited Venezuela between January and April 2012, a figure which represents almost a 50% increase compared with the same period last year. read moreewan
- Millions of Venezuelan Workers Now Eligible for Social Security May 17, 2012The government has revealed that there are about 3.7 million independent workers in Venezuela who could potentially benefit from the reforms to the Law on Social Security in Venezuela, enacted on April 21 by President Hugo Chávez. read moreRachael
- Venezuelan Opposition Candidate’s Campaign “Stagnating”, Journalists Attacked May 16, 2012Government representatives and private media have said opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles’ campaign is “stagnating” as he fails to gain support, while journalists also marched yesterday protesting violent attacks committed against them by Capriles’ supporters. read moregreg
- Chávez Returns to Venezuela after “Successful” Treatment, Riding High in Polls May 15, 2012Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez returned to Venezuela on Friday night, announcing a successful conclusion to his radiotherapy treatment in Cuba and his intention to return to the frontline of Venezuelan politics. Meanwhile, polls show him extending his advantage over rival Henrique Capriles Radonski. read more […]greg
- Alternative Venezuelan News Website Aporrea.org at 10 Years May 15, 2012Venezuelan alternative news website Aporrea.org reached its tenth anniversary today, marking a milestone in Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution. read moregreg
- Unasur Nations Reveal Military Spending, Deepen Cooperation May 11, 2012 tamara
- Venezuelan Government and Communities See Urban Agriculture Increasing May 9, 2012 ewan
- Freegaza movement news (Palestine)
- Gaza's Ark: Building Hope May 17, 2012The Canadian Boat to Gaza, in cooperation, with international initiatives in the US, Australia and other countries, is launching a new initiative to challenge the illegal and inhumane Israeli blockade of Gaza, the only Mediterranean port closed to shipping. This new initiative: Gaza’s Ark, will build a boat in Gaza, using existing resources. A crew of intern […]Greta Berlin
- Outing Omer: The Fake Gay “Flotilla Activist” May 4, 2012FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (London, May 4, 2012) Last summer, “Omer” posted a video saying he had been turned down as a passenger on board one of Free Gaza’s boats because he is gay. Within a few days, he was discovered to be a fake, apparently recording his statement coordinated with the Israeli government press office. Yesterday, Jon Ronson from the Guardian, f […]Free Gaza Team
- Gaza “More Dire Than Ever” April 13, 2012April 11, 2012 During the Israeli “Operation Cast Lead” in Dec. 2008 – Jan. 2009, Dr. Gilbert was one of only two outside doctors in Gaza. Last week the International Criminal Court, to the protests of Amnesty International and other groups, stated it would not issue prosecutions for the Israeli Operation. Recently Gilbert, co-author of “Eyes in Gaza,” retur […]Free Gaza Team
- I have returned from Beit Hanoun. A terrible day. March 31, 2012I spent the early afternoon at a demonstration attended by several thousand people. The Hamas authorities refused to allow the people to march to the border, and clashes broke out with the police. .When we finally found a way to get around the Hamas cordon, we found shabob (Kids from roughly the age of 12 to 25) at Erez Crossing. They were throwing stones a […]Free Gaza Movement
- They Will Never Beg March 18, 2012We don't usualy post blogs, but this one from Audacity of Hope passenger, Johnny Barber, is eloquent and timely. He is currently in Gaza as a photojournalist and puts a face and a family to the murdered men, women and children from last week. http://onebrightpearl-jb.blogspot.fr/2012/03/hey-will-never-beg.htmlFree Gaza Team
- Gaza's Ark: Building Hope May 17, 2012
- Mondoweiss (US) Israel-Palestine matters
- South African artists, intellectuals and gov’t ministers take steps to isolate Israel May 20, 2012How long before South Africans are accused of being anti-Semites? South Africa to ban labeling West Bank settlement products as 'made in Israel', Amira Hass Minister of Trade and Industry says South Africa recognizes the State of Israel only within … Continue reading →Today in Palestine
- Aharon Appelfeld’s rage at the German language (and Arendt’s need for it) May 20, 2012It wasn't the German language that went crazy, Hannah Arendt explained. Israeli prize winner calls German a language of murderersEleanor Kilroy
- Feeling the hate in Long Island May 20, 2012Obama's Jewish support has gone from 78% to 62% and rightwing rabbi stirs the pot with video of old Jews hinting Obama is a secret MuslimPhilip Weiss
- The awakening: Missouri paper runs a Jew’s call for equal rights for all May 20, 2012Columbia (MO) Daily Tribune runs article exposing the 'Zionist mythology' that covers up the NakbaPhilip Weiss
- Monumental Dutch exhibit: Zionism built ‘a house, a cage, a UN shelter… a zoo’ May 20, 2012Inspired by the donkeys of the Gaza zoo, Israeli architect Malkit Shoshan exposes the inhumanities of Zionism in a Dutch exhibit that has stirred critics across EuropeAnnie Robbins
- ‘King Bibi’ is ready for his close up, and ‘Time’ is willing to oblige May 20, 2012Time magazine crowns Benjamin Netanyahu in its latest cover article, although he comes across as the leader of a country on the verge of a nervous breakdown.Craig Higgins
- A tale of two festivals May 20, 2012Eleanor Kilroy compares Palfest and the Jerusalem International Writers Festival.Eleanor Kilroy
- Kristol: ‘I don’t see it as a huge problem’ May 19, 2012Jeremy Ben-Ami and Bill Kristol debate at a synagogue in ManhattanAnnie Robbins
- New US demographics make Israel’s demographic fears seem all the more prehistoric May 19, 2012How long will Obama be able to honor Israel's demographic concerns without sounding like a total racist?Philip Weiss
- What forestry teaches us about ethnic cleansing May 19, 2012Our ancestors got away with destroying old growth forests. South Americans today are held to a higher standardPhilip Weiss
- South African artists, intellectuals and gov’t ministers take steps to isolate Israel May 20, 2012
- ynet.co.il (Israel)
- Ex-ambassador who shared intel with Lieberman convicted May 21, 2012Zeev Ben-Aryeh convicted within framework of plea bargain for leaking information to foreign minister regarding criminal investigation against him
- 3rd suspect in Ramat Yishai rape surrenders to police May 21, 2012Suspect linked to rape of two women in north Israel on Sunday surrenders to officers near his home; attorney of man suspected of aiding to alleged rapists says alibi solid
- TA police chief: Migrants committing 'survival crimes' May 21, 2012During Knesset session on wave of violence, Commander Aharon Aksol says employing foreign migrants would curb phenomenon. MK Danon: Solution is simple – deportation
- Chinese execs to study at Tel Aviv University May 21, 2012Executives to take business course as part of cooperation agreement with Nanjing
- Ministers approve ban on biking with headphones May 21, 2012Bill also calls for additional bike lanes, requires cyclists to wear reflective clothing
- Mother recalls West Bank kidnapping attempt May 21, 2012Palestinian cell indicted in attempted kidnapping of Yael Shahak and 8-year-old daughter, now she recalls incident: 'Look in his eyes changed and he became crazed'
- Russian refusenik remembers Jerusalem May 21, 2012Minister Edelstein says Six Day War 'changed the standing of Israel in the eyes of Jews across the world'
- Ex-ambassador who shared intel with Lieberman convicted May 21, 2012
- The Nation (US,New York) subscribers only )
- Can Occupy Fight Back Against the War on Women? May 18, 2012 Sarah Seltzer
- Can Occupy Fight Back Against the War on Women? May 18, 2012 Sarah Seltzer
- Comments of the Week: Standardized Testing, Poverty and Attachment Parenting May 18, 2012Sarah ArnoldSmart comments from our live chat on education reform and testing, along with comments on poverty and attachment parenting.Sarah Arnold
- With Hollande in Power, Can Germany's Social Democrats Force Merkel to Discard Austerity? May 17, 2012Norman BirnbaumThe fate of the EU hangs in the balance.Norman Birnbaum
- Preying on the Poor May 17, 2012Barbara EhrenreichHow government and corporations use the poor as piggy banks.Barbara Ehrenreich
- Obama Can't Knock the Hustle May 17, 2012Robert ScheerEven after it was known that Jamie Dimon’s bank blew more than $2 billion, Barack Obama still had praise for the intellect of his political backer.Robert Scheer
- Obama and the Arc of the Rainbow May 16, 2012The EditorsThe president’s endorsement of same-sex marriage is a testament to the generations of activists who waged a brave and often lonely battle for gay rights.The Editors
- Wisconsin's Recall May 16, 2012John NicholsIn the June 5 recall election to unseat Gov. Scott Walker and his cronies, grassroots activists are fighting millions in corporate cash.John Nichols
- Noted May 16, 2012Ari Berman on Mitt Romney’s bogus job numbers.
- Reality Bites Republicans May 16, 2012Chris MooneyPolitical watchdogs like PolitiFact and the Washington Post's "Fact-Checker" are accused of favoring Democrats—but it is the facts themselves that have a liberal bias.Chris Mooney
- freeviewdocumentaries.com (US)
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- EU Observer.com
- [Ticker] Nato launches European missile shield May 21, 2012Nato has told AFP that a US warship in the Mediterranean armed with interceptor missiles and a radar system in Turkey have come under Nato command out of a base in Rammstein, Germany. The move is phase one of a Europe-based missile shield system to be fully operational by 2018.
- [Opinion] Nato: Do what you do best May 21, 2012Nato should consider opening up its Partnership for Peace scheme to post-Arab-Spring democracies, writes Jos Boonstra.Related StoriesEU takes aim at Israeli settler productsObama presses EU leaders on growth
- [Ticker] Le Pen's parliamentary seat under threat May 21, 2012French far-right leader Marine Le Pen may lose her parliamentary seat to far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon in next month's parliamentary elections. An Ifop-Fiducial poll showed Le Pen would win 34% of first round votes to 29% for Melenchon but would be beaten 55-45% in the 17 June second round.
- Serb nationalist wins elections, pledges EU allegiance May 21, 2012Serb nationalist Tomislav Nikolic has backed Serbia's EU bid after his surpise victory in presidential elections.
- [Ticker] Denmark to label products made in Israeli settlements May 21, 2012Denmark is planning to label products from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, foreign minister Villy Søvndal told Politiken Friday. In a similar move, South Africa's trade ministry Saturday said Israeli products made on Palestinian land must be marked "Made in Occupied Palestinian Territories." Israel described the move as "racist. […]
- [Ticker] Iranian filmmaker awarded EU prize in Cannes May 21, 2012Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi was awarded the European Union's Media Prize at this year’s film festival in Cannes. The 60,000 euro prize is meant to help fund his next film.
- [Ticker] Frankfurt sees thousands protest against austerity May 21, 2012More than 20,000 people demonstrated in Frankfurt on Sunday against austerity measures in Europe and the power of banks. Activists from the ”Occupy Frankfurt” set up tents outside the European Central Bank’s headquarter after police cleared out an earlier encampment at the same place last week.
- Hollande to confront Merkel on eurobonds at EU summit May 21, 2012French leader Hollande has said he will call for joint eurozone debt at Wednesday's EU summit, despite German opposition.Related StoriesGreece struggling to manage asylum seekersEuropean Commission should be EU government, says GermanyObama presses EU leaders on growth
- Obama presses EU leaders on growth May 20, 2012A weekend summit of G8 leaders stressed the need for the eurozone to focus on keeping Greece inside the euro. But plans are reportedly being drafted to deal with its potential exit.Related StoriesEuropean Commission should be EU government, says GermanyHollande to confront Merkel on eurobonds at EU summit[Opinion] Nato: Do what you do best
- [Ticker] Turkey accuses Israel of violating northern Cyprus airspace May 18, 2012Turkey Thursday accused Israeli airplanes of violating the airspace of northern Cyprus - recognised only by Turkey. Ankara said the Israeli plan was driven off by Turkish fighter planes. The incident happened on Monday and comes as Turkey and Israel's relations have soured recently.
- [Ticker] Nato launches European missile shield May 21, 2012
- The European Union Times (UK)
- NASA plans to Land on Asteroid and stay for a Month May 18, 2012The space agency Nasa is training a team of astronauts to land on asteroids after a three million mile journey – dwarfing the mere 239,000 miles travelled to the moon. The mission, planned for the next decade, would land on an asteroid travelling at more than 50,000 miles an hour. The astronauts will drive vehicles [...]The European Union Times
- Moody’s cuts ratings of 16 Spanish banks May 18, 2012The European banking industry has suffered another crushing blow after Moody’s ratings agency downgraded the credit ratings of 16 Spanish banks, citing the weakened government’s ability to support some banks. The agency downgraded the long-term debt and deposit ratings by one to three notches for 16 Spanish banks and Santander UK PLC, a UK-domiciled subsidia […]The European Union Times
- Kepler space telescope records the number of superflares May 17, 2012NASA’s Kepler space telescope has recorded the number of superflares or enormous releases of magnetic energy that can damage a nearby orbiting planet. According to the report published in the journal Nature, superflares are much less frequent on slow-rotating stars like our Sun. The biggest recorded flare on the Sun happened on September 1, 1859 [...]The European Union Times
- Minority report: White births no longer majority in the US May 17, 2012For the first time in US history, racial and ethnic minorities outnumber its white majority – white births make up fewer than half the children born in the country, according to the US Census Bureau. The new 2011 census, which was made public on Thursday, reveals non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6 per cent of all [...]The European Union Times
- Russia warns West against hasty wars and rising regional tension May 17, 2012Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has warned the West against launching ‘hasty wars’, which may increase regional tensions and even trigger a nuclear war. “Sometimes these [military] actions — which undermine state sovereignty — could result in a fully-fledged regional war, and even — although I do not want to scare anyone […]The European Union Times
- NASA plans to Land on Asteroid and stay for a Month May 18, 2012
- reddit.com
- A materials scientist at Michigan Technological University has discovered a chemical reaction that not only eats up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, it also creates something useful. And, by the way, it releases energy. May 21, 2012
- Holy shit! May 21, 2012
- High hopes for the future! May 21, 2012
- Perfect timing. May 21, 2012
- Good Guy Tyler Perry May 21, 2012
- Every rage comic on this subreddit from now until the end of time. May 21, 2012
- TIL that Whoopi Goldberg choose her stage name, not just as a reference to a Whoopee Cushion, but also because her mother thought "Goldberg" was Jewish-sounding enough to make it in Hollywood. May 21, 2012
- Recently discovered a secret about a house I've driven past on my way to work for 3 years. May 21, 2012
- Gordon Ramsay goes undercover, and takes a cooking class. May 21, 2012
- SKYFALL - First Official Teaser Trailer May 21, 2012
- Xinhuanet ( China )
- Poll suggests Gingrich benefits from Cain exit December 6, 2011New poll results released on Monday showed former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich on top of the GOP field and benefiting from the exit of Herman Cain from the presidential campaign.
- Egyptian new PM completes cabinet line-up December 6, 2011Egyptian Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri has completed the line-up of the new cabinet, state TV reported Monday. Ganzouri led the Egyptian gov't under the Mubarak regime from Jan. 1996 to Oct. 1999.
- Senior British official rules out military intervention in Syria December 6, 2011The most senior security policy adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron told a committee of the Houses of Parliament on Monday that it was highly unlikely that there would be any British military intervention in Syria.
- Obama presses Congress to OK payroll tax cut extension December 6, 2011Obama Monday urged Republican lawmakers in Congress to join Democrats and approve the extension of payroll tax cuts next year to revive the U.S. economy.
- Abbas says ready to present Palestinian visions on status issues December 6, 2011Abbas announced Monday that the Palestinians are ready to present their visions concerning all the permanent status issues to end the conflict with Israel.
- Sarkozy, Merkel agree on new EU treaty to stem debt crisis December 6, 2011Europe's powerhouses France and Germany agreed Monday on a series of reforms aimed at changing the European Union (EU) treaty to impose tough control of eurozone budgets.
- Russia's ruling party to win Duma majority: CEC December 5, 2011Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) announced Monday that the ruling United Russia party won 49.54 percent of the votes after 95.71 percent of the ballots were counted.
- Syria responds "positively" to AL protocol, proposes minor amendments December 5, 2011Syria has responded positively to the Arab League (AL) protocol on an observer mission, but proposed "minor amendments" to the plan, a foreign ministry spokesman said Monday.
- Pakistan wants solid outcome of Bonn Conference: FM spokesman December 5, 2011Pakistan said on Monday that it wants solid outcome of Bonn Conference on the future of Afghanistan to promote peace and reconciliation in the war- shattered country.
- Irish PM gets tougher on budget December 5, 2011Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny on Sunday called for tougher measures for next year's budget, reminding the public that the country is running a deficit of 16 billion euros (21.46 billion U.S. dollars).
- Poll suggests Gingrich benefits from Cain exit December 6, 2011
- Wired Magazine
- Laser Levels and Motion Capture Show Everything You Know About Bike Fit Is Wrong May 21, 2012 Chuck Squatriglia
- 7 Social Networking Apps for When Facebook Jumps the Shark May 21, 2012 Christina Bonnington
- Nexus Smartphones: Who Wins, Who Loses if Google Launches Android 5.0 in Multiple Handsets? May 21, 2012 Nathan Olivarez-Giles
- Alt Text: 5 Horrifying Combo Monsters for Syfy Creature Features May 21, 2012 Lore Sj?berg
- May 21, 1927: Lucky Lindy Flies His Way Into the Celebrity Ranks May 21, 2012 Tony Long
- 5 Nuclear Sites That Could Launch War With Iran May 21, 2012 Spencer Ackerman
- How Apple and Microsoft Armed 4,000 Patent Warheads May 21, 2012 Robert McMillan
- Kevin Smith Riffs on Spoilers, His New Show for Movie Geeks May 21, 2012 Angela Watercutter
- A Google-a-Day Puzzle for May 21 May 21, 2012 Ken Denmead
- Watch Live: Annular Solar Eclipse Creates Ring of Fire May 20, 2012 Adam Mann
- cyveillanceblog.com (US)
- Protecting Corporate Assets with ShodanHQ – An Interview with the ShodanHQ Creator April 25, 2012 Cyber Intelligence Division
- APWG’s CeCOS Conference in Prague: Face to Face Collaboration in the Fight Against eCrime April 18, 2012 Cyber Intelligence Division
- Forget Marriott Introducing Ads into Your Hotel Wifi – Whose Network Are Your Employees On Anyway? April 6, 2012 Cyber Intelligence Division
- Defensive Measures of Google+ for Businesses April 3, 2012 Cyber Intelligence Division
- Contacting the Owner of a Website Using WHOIS Information March 7, 2012 Cyber Intelligence Division
- Common Questions About the New gTLDs February 22, 2012 admin
- Monitoring DMCA Safe Harbor Provisions February 9, 2012 admin
- Securing the Internet with DNSSEC February 6, 2012 Cyber Intelligence Division
- Cyber Attacks Abound with the Proliferation of New Technology – No Time for Complacency December 16, 2011 admin
- Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) Explained November 14, 2011 admin
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- telesurtv.net (Venezuela)
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- La Jornada (Mexico)
- Reportan dos muertos en Beirut vinculados a situación en SiriaLos choques se produjeron en la noche luego de la muerte de un dignatario sunita a manos del ejército en el norte del Líbano.AFP
- Reportan dos muertos en Beirut vinculados a situación en Siria
- zonavirus.com (España)
- Variante de spyzbot - z May 22, 2012
- Nueva variante de reveton.a (virus de la policia) May 22, 2012
- Nuevas variantes de fakedoc que afectan a ficheros doc de unidades compartidas May 22, 2012
- Nueva variante de fake av security shield cazada por la heuristica del elistara May 22, 2012
- Los ciberdelitos supusieron 485 millones de dólares en pérdidas en 2011, solo en ee.uu May 21, 2012
- Vulnerabilidades en openoffice y libreoffice May 21, 2012
- Ahora el virus de "la policia" llega aparentando ser multa de la sgae por delitos contra la propiedad intelectual May 20, 2012
- Ficheros .doc convertidos en .scr, en servidores con comparticion de ficheros de dicho tipo (relacionado con fakedoc) May 19, 2012
- The pirate bay y wikileaks se recuperan de ataques de negación de servicio distribuidos... May 19, 2012
- Invitan a delinquir ofreciendo ganancias de 90.000 dólares mensuales... May 19, 2012
- Stampa Libera (Italia)
- Terremoto – Ministro Romani lo dica che è dovuto al Fracking delle trivelle texane autorizzato da Lei May 20, 2012 Lino Bottaro
- Ornella Vanoni – Una ragione di più May 20, 2012 Redazione
- Niente più risarcimenti per le calamità naturali, ci vorrà l’assicurazione May 20, 2012 Domenico Proietti
- Colonizzazione sottile May 20, 2012 Redazione
- L’Iran catturò dei terroristi protetti da Israele alla vigilia dell’incontro diplomatico P5 + 1 May 20, 2012 luca martinelli
- Perche’ la Russia teme un attacco atomico Usa? May 20, 2012 Redazione
- Stelle per uscire dallo stallo May 19, 2012 Roberto Duria
- NON TUTTO VA MALE! …ESEMPI DA SEGUIRE. May 19, 2012 Ascanio Montisci
- COMUNICATO di PAOLA MUSU, l’avvocato che ha denunciato Monti, Napolitano e deputati May 19, 2012 Domenico Proietti
- Schiavi May 18, 2012 Redazione
- theintelligence.de (Deutschland)
- Erste Ergebnisse zur Ägypten-Wahl! May 21, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Kim Kovalsky)
- Ende mit Schrecken: Drachme statt Euro! May 21, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Otmar Pregetter)
- Tagesschau geifert gegen Griechen „Gebaren als linksradikaler Erz-Flegel“ May 20, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Gerd R. Rueger)
- Ein kurzer Blick ins Reagenzglas May 20, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Kolumnistenschwein)
- Die Krise News (72) – Farbenspiele May 19, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (KriSe)
- Erlebnisse in China (2) May 19, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Theophil Sempes)
- Wem dient die EU? May 18, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Christian Brand)
- Die Sache mit der Grundordnung ... May 18, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Peter Reuter)
- Notaufnahme – Der kleine Roman (Teil 1 bis 4) May 17, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Oliver Wellmann)
- Erlebnisse in China (1) May 17, 2012 mrr@theintelligence.de (Theophil Sempes)
- gesundheitlicheaufklaerung.de
- Der Theta-Zustand – Zugriff auf das Unterbewusstsein May 16, 2012 Sandra Weber
- Tote Rinder durch Gen-Mais – Bauer erstattet Strafanzeige gegen Syngenta May 9, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- Gerhard Klügl, Aurachirurge: “Ich bin ein Weltenmensch” (Doku) May 3, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- Die Weltbank und das positive HIV April 20, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- BAYER: 30 Jahre Kritische Aktionäre April 20, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- Der Sonne ist unsere Zeit egal – Sagen Sie NEIN zur Zeitumstellung! April 13, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- Kapitalismuskrankheit Burnout – Ausgebrannt: Wenn nichts mehr geht April 13, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- Diskussion: Die große Verschwendung – Nahrungsmittel im Müll April 12, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- Petition: Landwirtschaftliche Bodennutzung – Ersatz mineralischer Phosphordünger und Klärschlamm durch Humusdüngung April 11, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- Buchtipp: Einfach Ballengang – natürliches Gehen April 10, 2012 Gesundheitsapostel
- info.kopp-verlag.de (Deutschland)
- +++ Verfassungsschutz: Rechnet mit Anschlägen islamistischer Einzeltäter +++ Nach Frankreich-Wahl: Moslemstimmen verändern die politische Landschaft Europas +++ Mordaufruf gegen pro-NRW: Generalbundesanwalt ermittelt gegen Islamisten +++ (Zeitgeschichte) May 21, 2012
- Abstimmung mit dem Möbelwagen: Ärzte kehren Deutschland den Rücken (Enthüllungen) May 21, 2012
- Fliegeneier statt Fischmehl (Enthüllungen) May 21, 2012
- Warten wir ab, für wen es am Ende wirklich bitter wird! (Wirtschaft & Finanzen) May 21, 2012
- Der Honigmann sagt ….
- Russlands neue Regierung steht! May 21, 2012 honigmann
- Nikolai Levashov (Teil 1) – “die Ausbreitung der Emotionellen Pest” May 21, 2012Seit 2007 habe ich gezögert von folgendem zu berichten und meine damalige Einsicht immer wieder verdrängt. Aber irgendwann kommt alles Verdrängte an die Oberfläche. Zunächst einmal wird dem aufmerksamen Leser aufgefallen sein, daß ich in meiner Besprechung des skandalösen Begleitbandes zu OROP Wüste den zweiten Teil des Büchleins, der von Richard Blasband zu […]honigmann
- “Die gesamte abendländische Geschichte ist das Ergebnis eines einzigen Konfliktes: zwischen Juden und Germanen. Es ist ein Kampf ums Dasein” May 21, 2012Einer der brillantesten Wissenschaftler, Rassenkundler und Kenner der jüdischen Geschichte: Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Houston Stewart Chamberlain (* 9. September 1855 in Portsmouth, England; † 9. Januar 1927 in Bayreuth) war ein Schriftsteller, Verfasser zahlreicher populärwissenschaftlicher Werke, unter anderem zu Richard Wagner, Immanuel Kant und Johann […]honigmann
- Pfingstausflug 2012 für alle die nicht zu den Externsteinen kommen können… May 21, 2012Um den Tag der energetischen Wurzel des Neuanfanges mitgestalten zu können, gibt es viele Möglichkeiten… Die Intuition einer lieben Leserin brachte uns auf die Idee, Orte ausfindig zu machen, die Pfingstsonntag um 14:30 Uhr durchaus eine Reise wert sind! Für den Süden Deutschlands sind zwei Orte zu nennen, an denen wir Pfingstsonntag um 14:30 Uhr [...] […]honigmann
- Neun Leichen hingen an einer Brücke – 23 Tote in Mexiko May 20, 2012Grausamer Drogenkrieg in Mexiko: Im Norden des Landes wurden 23 Tote gefunden. Mehrere Leichen hingen von einer Autobahnbrücke, die Köpfe der anderen Opfer lagen vor einem Rathaus. Neue Gewaltexzesse im mexikanischen Drogenkrieg: 23 Tote sind in der Grenzstadt Nuevo Laredo in Nordmexiko entdeckt worden. Neun Menschen hingen am Freitag von einer Autobahnbrück […]honigmann
- Französische Regierung kürzt ihre Gehälter, die deutsche erhöht sie May 20, 2012Der Sozialist Hollande setzt mit der 30prozentigen Kürzung ebenso ein Zeichen wie die konservative Kanzlerin mit der 5,7prozentigen Erhöhung Es ist eine symbolische Geste, wenn der frisch gewählte französische Präsident Hollande sich und seinen Ministern zu Beginn schon einmal eine 30prozentige Gehaltskürzung verordnet. Gleichwohl setzt die neue Regierung da […]honigmann
- “Das war´n Schuß in´n Ofen…” – alles blieb ruhig May 20, 2012Blockupy – Erfolg oder Niederlage? Mehr als 25.000 Menschen sollen heute (gestern) in der Frankfurter Innenstadt nach Veranstalterangaben gegen die Politik der EU-Troika demonstriert haben Das Spektrum der Demonstranten reichte von Gewerkschaften, der Linkspartei, Attac bis den außerparlamentarischen Bündnissen Ums Ganze und der Interventionistischen L […]honigmann
- Röttgen wehrt sich gegen Merkels Demontage May 20, 2012Nach dem kühlen Rausschmiss von Norbert Röttgen durch Kanzlerin Angela Merkel, wehrt sich der Ex-Bundesumweltminister nun: Er möchte sein Amt als Merkels erster Stellvertreter behalten © DAPD Den Rausschmiss will Ex-Bundesumweltminister Röttgen so nicht auf sich sitzen lassen. Er möchte stellvertretender CDU-Vorsitzender bleiben Der am Mittwoch entlassene Bu […]honigmann
- Film am Sonntag – Cagliostro – Teil 1 – Audienz in Versailles May 20, 2012Der Dreiteiler basiert auf dem Roman “Joseph Balsamo” von Alexandre Dumas Abenteurer, Hochstapler, Magier, Goldmacher, Geisterbeschwörer – “Graf” Cagliostro suchte im 18. Jahrhundert fast alle Hauptstädte und Höfe Europas heim. Im Jahre 1791 wurde er von der Inquisition verurteilt und verschwand bis an sein Lebensende hinter Ker […]honigmann
- Sonntagsansichten – Die armen, armen Männer….. May 20, 2012Wir verlangen, dass wir genau wie die Frauen mit einem Tag geehrt werden, da wir ständig Opfer von Missbrauch, Demütigungen, verbalen, physischen und sexuellen Attacken sind. Außerdem muss folgendes beachtet werden: Wer ist der Einzige der sich traut, alles aufzuessen, was ihm vorgesetzt wird, ohne zu mucksen ? Der selbstlose Mann ! Wer hebt die [...]honigmann
- Polskaweb.eu (Poland /German version)
- Schwindler Zuckerberg und die Facebook- Aktie May 20, 2012
- Horror: Wiesenthals "Geist" in Auschwitz unterwegs May 18, 2012
- Volksbetrug: Wolfgang Thierse ist gar kein Ossi ! May 16, 2012
- Schock: Weiterer Bundespräsident als Betrüger entlarvt May 13, 2012
- Rentenreform: Beispiellose Ungerechtigkeit May 12, 2012
- Radio Utopie (D)
- Stromfresser Stuttgart 21 abschalten! May 21, 2012Dokumentation: Die Rede von Parkschützer Matthias von Herrmann auf der heutigen 124. Montagsdemonstration der Stuttgarter Bürgerbewegung für den Kopfbahnhof und gegen das verkehrsindustrielle Umbauprogramm "Stuttgart 21" (S21).Redaktion
- Der G-Null-Gipfel May 20, 2012Ein Resumee des Gipfels der G-8-Regierungen in Camp David. Und ein Ausblick über den Horizont.Daniel Neun
- “World Wide Rebel Song”: Rock statt Rocks in Chicago zum NATO-Gipfel May 20, 2012Rund 500 Demonstranten versammelten sich vor dem Haus des Bürgermeisters von Chicago Rahm Emanuel, um gegen die kürzliche Schliessung der psychiatrischen Kliniken als Teil einer Reihe von Kundgebungen und Märsche zeitgleich mit einem NATO-Gipfel zu protestieren. Die Menschen hatten Transparente mitgebracht mit den Slogans “food not bombs”, “seize the peace” […]petrapez
- SYRIZA-Vorsitzender Tsipras: “Es ist ein Krieg zwischen den Völkern und dem Kapitalismus” May 19, 2012Griechenland: Nachdem vorher der Botschafter der Berliner Republik in Athen, Wolfgang Dold, und der deutsche EU-Parlamentspräsident Martin Schulz (SPD/SPE) bei ihm rausgeschlichen kamen, hat der Vorsitzende der Koalition der Radikalen SYRIZA, Alexis Tsipras, auch dem britischen "Guardian" eine Audienz gegeben. Auszüge des Interviews im Wortlaut: […]Daniel Neun
- Frau Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, streichen Sie bitte Paul Watson von Roter Liste … May 19, 2012Sea Shepherd Conservation Society warnte am 17.Mai davor, dass Paul Watson in Costa Rica nicht sicher ist und um sein Leben fürchten muss. Die taiwanesische Haifang-Mafia hat seit Jahren ein Kopfgeld in Höhe von 20.000 Dollar auf den Captain ausgesetzt. “Wir wissen, dass der Arm der taiwanesischen Fischerei-Mafia nicht nur bis zur illegalen Fischerei in Cost […]petrapez
- Der neue Protest May 18, 2012Sie hat nichts mit dem Ereignis zu tun, das ihm den Namen gab: Die riesige Rallye für Frieden , an deren Ende die Ermordung Yitzhak Rabins war. Diese Rallye war in jeder Hinsicht anders. Es war ein fröhliches Ereignis. Dutzende von NGOs, viele von ihnen klein, einige von ihnen etwas größer, jede mit einer anderen Agenda, kamen zusammen, um den sozialen Prote […]Uri Avnery
- Denn Mutti sagt immer die Wahrheit May 18, 2012Heute hat Angela Mutti Merkel versucht, ihrem griechischen Volk ein Referendum zu geben.. Leider gab es da ein kleines Mißverständnis. Dabei will sie nur ständig das Beste. Und zwar mit Zinsen. Heute hat also Mutti – wer würde ihr schon was antun? Einfach abwählen?! Niemals! Ihr Muttimörder! – dem griechischen Volk ein Referendum über blühende [. […]Daniel Neun
- Blockupy Frankfurt 18.5.2012 May 18, 2012Videos und updates In ganz Frankfurt und Randgebiete ist das Recht auf Bewegungsfreiheit, Meinungsäusserungen und Pressefreiheit ausser Kraft gesetzt, denn die Repressalien der Polizei erstrecken sich auf Kontrollen und Platzverweise für alle Besucher, einschliesslich Touristen und Einwohner. Auch am heutigen Freitag kamen tausende Menschen in die Innenstadt […]petrapez
- Frankfurter Paulskirche: 1000 Demonstranten halten Grundgesetz in die Höhe May 17, 2012Liedermacher Konstantin Wecker auf dem Paulsplatz zu den Blockupy-Protesten: Wecker: “Begräbnis demokratischer Rechte” Livestreams und updates von den “Bloccupy”-Protesten. Ohrfeige nach Karlsruhe aus der Main-Metropole: die Bürger verhalten sich wie Bürger, die zur Verteidigung der Verfassung sowie für das Gemeinwohl der Gesellschaft […]petrapez
- US-Gericht blockiert National Defense Authorization Act! May 17, 2012Mit diesem 565 Seiten umfassenden Gesetz wäre ein Freibrief durch einen kurzen Paragraf in Statut 1021 für das Militär in Kraft getreten, jeden Bürger auf unbestimmte Zeit ohne ein ordentliches Gerichtsverfahren zu inhaftieren, dem vorgeworfen wird, wissentlich oder unwissentlich Unterstützung des Terrorismus zu leisten.petrapez
- Stromfresser Stuttgart 21 abschalten! May 21, 2012
- heise.de (Deutschland)
- Facebook vor dem zweiten Handelstag: Angst vor dem Absturz
- GEMA legt im YouTube-Streit Berufung ein
- Perl 5.16.0: neues Release der Skriptsprache
- EU-Kommission verlangt von Google Zugeständnisse
- Hersteller: Tablets mit Windows 8 nicht konkurrenzfähig
- Bitkom: Rechenzentren wurden effizienter
- Webbrowser: Chrome rückt Internet Explorer auf die Pelle
- Kabel Deutschland übernimmt Tele Columbus
- Chefs von Apple und Samsung suchen Lösung in Patentstreit
- Winken und Schnipsen am PC
- wirtschaftsfacts.de
- Niederlande: Obacht, Steuerzahler – nationale Hypothekenmärkte wackeln May 21, 2012 REd
- Hollande pocht auf Eurobonds – und ist nicht allein… May 21, 2012 REd
- USA: Steuerverweigerer im Ausland – wir kriegen Euch alle… May 20, 2012 REd
- Krugman über Europas Apokalypse; wir sprechen über apokalyptischen Krugman May 20, 2012 REd
- Facebook: Bewertung mit 100-fachem des Gewinns – LoL! Sichere Short-Wette? May 19, 2012 REd
- Facebook: Der erste Handelstag … enttäuschend May 19, 2012 Robert Schroeder
- Riskante Staatsanleihemärkte: Japanischer Pensionsfonds setzt erstmals auf Gold May 18, 2012 REd
- Italien: Neue Industrieaufträge brechen im März regelrecht ein May 18, 2012 REd
- Katzenjammer im globalen Minensektor setzt sich fort May 18, 2012 REd
- Spaniens Polizeikräfte nicht zimperlich im Einsatz gegen Demonstranten May 17, 2012 REd
- NATO website
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- Reuters top news
- Lockerbie bomber Megrahi to be buried in Libya May 21, 2012
- Alibaba buys back 20 percent stake held by Yahoo for $7.1 billion May 21, 2012
- Russia says West still considering military action on Iran May 20, 2012
- Spain to slump further but will hit deficit goal May 21, 2012
- NATO to hand combat role to Afghans as it seeks way out of war May 21, 2012
- Strauss-Kahn investigators open group rape inquiry May 21, 2012
- Zuckerberg's post-IPO wedding is smart legal move May 21, 2012
- Barclays to sell $6.1 billion BlackRock stake May 21, 2012
- Insight: Greece party talks framed by unreality, punctuated by insults May 21, 2012
- Blind Chinese activist Chen rests in NYC May 21, 2012
- Times Magazine ( Top Stories)
- A Year of Recovery in Joplin, Mo.: Photos by Eric Thayer May 21, 2012
- Obama's Afghanistan Problem: Neither Karzai Nor the Taliban Like the 'Reconciliation' Script May 21, 2012
- The Passing of the Lockerbie Bomber: Have More Secrets Died in Libya? May 21, 2012
- Robin Gibb, Bee Gees Singer and Pop Pioneer, Dies at 62 May 21, 2012
- Has Obama 'Gotten It' in Time? May 21, 2012
- Why the Coalition Trying to Recall Scott Walker Is Splintering May 21, 2012
- From China's State Press, a Not-So-Fond Farewell to Activist Chen Guangcheng May 21, 2012
- What You Need to Know About the New Census Numbers on Hispanic Births May 21, 2012
- NATO in Chicago: Geopolitics Meets Reality of a U.S. City May 21, 2012
- A Monstrous Act in Brindisi: Why Was an Italian Girls School Bombed? May 21, 2012
- CNN ( Top Stories)
- Dominique Strauss-Kahn may face gang rape allegations May 21, 2012
- Gibb, 62, dies after cancer battle May 21, 2012
- Violent protests near NATO summit May 21, 2012
- Italy hit by back-to-back quakes May 21, 2012
- China human rights activist now in U.S. May 20, 2012
- Lockerbie bomber dies in Libya May 21, 2012
- Flesh-eating victim breathes on her own May 21, 2012
- Mom with rare bug has 7 surgeries May 21, 2012
- Riot halted at prison where guard died May 21, 2012
- Zuckerberg's latest move -- a wedding May 21, 2012
- CBC (Canada)
- Montreal tuition protesters defy law and clash with police May 21, 2012
- Prince Charles and Camilla arrive in Canada May 20, 2012
- Mount Everest descent claims Canadian woman, 2 others May 21, 2012
- Bee Gees singer Robin Gibb dies May 21, 2012
- 'Ring of fire' eclipse dazzles millions May 21, 2012
- Yemen suicide bombing kills 38 at army parade May 21, 2012
- Afghanistan mission won't be extended, MacKay says May 21, 2012
- Salad recall expanded after Listeria contamination May 21, 2012
- Quake-struck Italians fear return to homes May 21, 2012
- Leukemia fighter keen to meet royals May 20, 2012
- The Guardian – (UK) Global News
- Sana'a suicide bomb attack kills 63 May 21, 2012 Sam Jones, Tom Finn
- Nato summit: US-Pakistan rift widens May 21, 2012 Ewen MacAskill
- Settler filmed firing gun at Palestinians May 21, 2012 Harriet Sherwood
- Eurozone crisis live: EU heading for showdown over growth May 21, 2012 Graeme Wearden
- Afghanistan has poetry in its soul | Reza Mohammadi May 21, 2012 Reza Mohammadi
- Rural education offers Morocco's women promise of a quiet revolution | Santorri Chamley May 21, 2012 Santorri Chamley
- Syria crisis hits Beirut - live updates May 21, 2012 Matthew Weaver
- Bee Gees fans mourn Robin Gibb – video May 21, 2012
- Ryanair faces disruption over Stansted baggage handlers' strike May 21, 2012 Dan Milmo, Gwyn Topham
- The saola 'Asian unicorn' in pictures May 21, 2012
- The Washington Post ( Politics)
- White House visitor logs provide window into lobbying industry May 21, 2012 T.W. Farnam
- Featured Advertiser May 21, 2012
- Cory Booker commits the classic Washington gaffe May 21, 2012 Chris Cillizza, Aaron Blake
- Santorum, Gingrich campaigns owe millions May 21, 2012 T.W. Farnam
- As Obama opens NATO summit in Chicago, focus is on winding down Afghanistan war May 21, 2012 Karen DeYoung, Scott Wilson
- Romney could best Obama in fundraising May 20, 2012 Chris Cillizza
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel endorses Scott Walker May 20, 2012 Rachel Weiner
- Mitch McConnell, John Boehner double down on deficit concerns May 20, 2012 Ed O'Keefe
- Obama’s cash advantage grew in April May 20, 2012 Aaron Blake
- Hakeem Jeffries: Brooklyn’s Barack Obama? May 19, 2012 Rachel Weiner
- New York Times (Global)
- Supply Lines Cast Shadow at NATO Meeting on Afghan War May 21, 2012 By HELENE COOPER and MATTHEW ROSENBERG
- Bo Xilai’s Fall in China Put Allies in Peril May 21, 2012 By EDWARD WONG and JONATHAN ANSFIELD
- Suicide Attack in Yemen May 21, 2012 By ALAN COWELL
- Megrahi’s Death Revives Debate Over Trial and Release May 21, 2012 By JOHN F. BURNS
- Italy Quake Kills 5 and Causes Widespread Damage May 21, 2012 By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
- At the Ethiopian News Agency, Hope for Freer Journalism May 21, 2012 By BENNO MUCHLER
- The New American Job: Increasingly, Men Seek Success in Jobs Dominated by Women May 21, 2012 By SHAILA DEWAN and ROBERT GEBELOFF
- Caballo Blanco’s Last Run: The Micah True Story May 21, 2012 By BARRY BEARAK
- Cairo Journal: In Streets and Online, Campaign Fever in Egypt May 21, 2012 By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and MAYY EL SHEIK
- International Agency Resumes Talks With Iran on Nuclear Program May 21, 2012 By WILLIAM J. BROAD
- Huffingtonpost.com
- Stress Relief: 7 Calming Workouts That Aren't Meditation May 21, 2012 The Huffington Post News Editors
- Sachigusa Yasuda's 'Aerial' Exhibition Mixes Meditation And Thrills (PHOTOS) May 21, 2012 The Huffington Post News Editors
- Weight Loss Success: Jason Barsotti Wanted To Get Healthy For His Daughter And Lost 120 Pounds May 21, 2012 The Huffington Post News Editors
- Too Good To Be True? A History Of Failed Fitness Gadgets May 21, 2012 The Huffington Post News Editors
- Bailout Architects Overly Optimistic About The Program's Success May 21, 2012 The Huffington Post News Editors
- Miley Cyrus Spits Off Hotel Balcony (PHOTO) May 21, 2012 The Huffington Post News Editors
- Stacy Berman: Double-Dipping Workouts May 21, 2012 Stacy Berman
- John Edwards Trial: Jury Resumes Deliberations On Former Presidential Candidate's Fate May 21, 2012 The Huffington Post News Editors
- James Sims: Fighting My Mother's Cancer With Text Messages May 21, 2012 James Sims
- Sarah Klein: Introducing The 30-Day Summer Shape Up Challenge: Sweat Into Summer May 21, 2012 Sarah Klein
- ilmessaggero.it (Italia)
- Terremoto, nuove scosse in Emilia nella notte. Salgono a 4mila gli sfollati, sette le vittime May 21, 2012
- Brindisi, ecco il video del presunto killer: così ha azionato la bomba May 21, 2012
- Melissa, oggi a Brindisi i funerali Riapre la scuola: studentesse in lacrime May 21, 2012
- Terrorismo, il ricordo di D'Antona Napolitano: rinsaldare coesione sociale May 21, 2012
- Ballottaggi, seggi aperti fino alle 15 Affluenza in picchiata May 21, 2012
- Terremoto, leghista su Fb: «Scusate il disagio, la Padania si sta staccando» May 20, 2012
- Crisi, Monti invita anche Rajoy al vertice con Merkel e Hollande May 21, 2012
- Chicago, in migliaia protestano al vertice Nato: almeno 45 arresti May 21, 2012
- Brescia, si getta con i figli dal balcone Tre morti, i bimbi avevano 1 e 4 anni May 21, 2012
- Coppia di Caserta sequestrata e uccisa in Venezuela: giallo a Maracaibo May 20, 2012
- Corriere della sera (Italia)
- Notte di paura, ancora scosse in Emilia Sette morti, 4.500 sfollati Video e foto May 21, 2012
- Terremoto in Emilia, la morte dei turnisti nei capannoni accartocciati May 21, 2012 Andrea Pasqualetto
- Che succede alla Pianura Padana? May 21, 2012 Giovanni Caprara
- Il ministro: «Non escludiamo niente» Ci sono due sospettati Foto May 21, 2012
- Riapre la scuola, studenti in lacrime May 21, 2012 Redazione Online
- Il falso attentatore che ha ingannato Facebook May 20, 2012 Matteo Cruccuilcruccu
- Coppa Italia, fischiato inno di Mameli May 21, 2012 Redazione online
- Uccide i suoi due figli lanciandoli dal sesto piano e poi si suicida May 21, 2012 Redazione Brescia Online
- Ballottaggi, riaperti i seggi fino alle 15 Domenica affluenza in forte calo May 21, 2012 Redazione Online
- Rapallo, bomba carta davanti a seggio May 21, 2012 Redazione Online
- El Pais ( Madrid )
- Roland Berger y Oliver Wyman auditarán a los bancos españoles May 21, 2012 El País
- Oliver Wyman encumbró a un banco irlandés antes de su colapso May 21, 2012 Cristina Galindo
- Guindos cifra en 7.500 millones el saneamiento pendiente de Bankia May 21, 2012 El País
- Rajoy: “Merkel apoya nuestra política” May 20, 2012 Antonio Caño
- Un ataque suicida mata a un centenar de militares en Yemen May 21, 2012 Agencias
- Bruselas exige cambios a Google en “semanas” para evitar la multa May 21, 2012 Claudi Pérez, Agencias
- Monti suma a Rajoy a la ‘cumbre del crecimiento’ con Merkel y Hollande May 21, 2012 El País
- Rubalcaba rechaza el rescate de la UE: “Podemos hacerlo solos” May 21, 2012 El País
- Miles de personas desplazadas por el terremoto en el norte de Italia May 21, 2012 Lucia Magi
- “No vuelvo a mi casa hasta que controlen esa grieta en la pared” May 21, 2012 Lucia Magi
- El Universal ( Mexico )
- Suman siete muertos por sismo en norte de Italia May 21, 2012 Notimex
- Sismo en Italia deja 6 muertos y graves daños a edificios May 21, 2012
- Atrapa narco en Centroamérica a jóvenes desempleados May 21, 2012 José Meléndez Corresponsal
- Atentado suicida deja decena de muertos en Yemen May 21, 2012 Notimex
- En esta crisis, a Europa le ha faltado rapidez May 21, 2012 Danilo Arbilla
- Welt online (D)
- Jemen: Selbstmordattentäter tötet fast 100 Menschen May 21, 2012
- Linksradikaler Grieche: Tsipras will mit Merkel über Sparkurs verhandeln May 21, 2012
- Sozialbetrug: Wie vermögende Türken den deutschen Staat ausnehmen May 21, 2012
- Konfliktforschung: Elf Kriege stehen der Menschheit noch bevor May 21, 2012
- "Hand nicht gesehen": Schweinsteiger entschuldigt sich bei Gauck May 21, 2012
- FC Bayern München: Uli Hoeneß zum vierten Mal Zweiter in dieser Saison May 21, 2012
- Geheime Verführer: In welche Psychofallen wir im Supermarkt tappen May 21, 2012
- Fahrrad-Verkehrsregeln: Handy verboten, Suff erst ab 1,6 Promille strafbar May 21, 2012
- Astronomie: Über Asien und Amerika leuchtet ein Feuerring May 21, 2012
- Bergsteiger-Unglück: Deutscher Arzt stirbt am Mount Everest May 21, 2012
- Der Spiegel (Germany)
- Bayern-Frust: Null Bock auf Niederlande
- Gipfel in Chicago: Nato zittert Afghanistan-Abzug entgegen
- Eurovision Song Contest: Zahlen, bitte!
- Debatte über Währungskrise: Sarrazin entlarvt die Euro-Lüge
- Bestseller-Autorin Patricia Schultz: Fünf Orte, die Sie sehen müssen, bevor Sie sterben
- Verdacht auf Börsenbetrug: Ramsch-Aktie stieg um 1000 Prozent
- Tourismusbranche: Griechenland-Buchungen brechen drastisch ein
- Jemen: Selbstmordattentäter reißt mehr als 60 Menschen in den Tod
- Google-Lunar-X-Prize: Stresstest für All-Amateure
- Zum Tode Robin Gibbs: Der Verkannte
