Stephen Lendman

On February 3, a Department of Justice press release headlined "Aafia Siddiqui Found Guilty in Manhattan Federal Court of Attempting to Murder US Nationals in Afghanistan and Six Additional Charges."

At her scheduled May 6 sentencing, she "faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on each of the attempted murder and armed assault charges; life in prison on the firearms charge; and eight years in prison on each of the remaining assault charges. SIDDIQUI faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years in prison on the firearms charge."

On February 3, New York Times writer CJ Hughes headlined: "Pakistani Scientist Found Guilty of Shootings," convicting her on all seven counts, including attempted murder - "capping a trial that drew notice for its terrorist implications as well as its theatrics," but omitting convincing evidence of Siddiqui's innocence. Instead, Hughes said she was arrested with "instructions (in her purse) on making explosives and a list of New York landmarks, including the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building." Her defense team acknowledged their existence, but Siddiqui denied packing them or knowing of their origin. She later suggested she copied them from a magazine, planned no terrorist acts, nor did her indictment claim them.

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Margaret Wente

In 2007, the most comprehensive report to date on global warming, issued by the respected United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made a shocking claim: The Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035.

These glaciers provide the headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers and lifelines for the more than one billion people who live downstream. Melting ice and snow would create mass flooding, followed by mass drought. The glacier story was reported around the world. Last December, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group, warned, “The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty.” To dramatize their country's plight, Nepal's top politicians strapped on oxygen tanks and held a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest. But the claim was rubbish, and the world's top glaciologists knew it.

It was based not on rigorously peer-reviewed science but on an anecdotal report by the WWF itself. When its background came to light on the eve of Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, shrugged it off. But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.

“The global warming movement as we have known it is dead,” the brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead says in his blog on The American Interest. It was done in by a combination of bad science and bad politics.

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Sheila Samples

I know you need your sleep now,
I know your life's been hard.
But many men are falling,
where you promised to stand guard.
~~Leonard Cohen

My friend Bernie says he's suffering from Afghanistan information exhaustion. "During all those months that Obama was dragging his feet about escalating the war in Afghanistan, did you ever get the impression," he asked, "that foxes were in the hen house, chickens were squawking and running around crazily, wolves were tearing the foxes to pieces, and farmers were shooting wildly into the coop with no regard for the innocent?"

I stared at him, mouth agape, my mind trying to shore up all that activity. "Well ... I --"

"And that's just the generals -- David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal -- and their boss, or cohort, defense secretary Robert Gates. They were everywhere -- everywhere!" Bernie said, rolling his eyes. "And still are. Turn on the TV, pick up a newspaper, open a magazine, check out Congress, look under a rock -- peek behind a tree -- and there they are. They're a three-man brigade -- "we're going in, we're coming out -- we're winning, we're losing. Or maybe not. We won't know for 15 years...20 years...or until it's over --"

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Marco Villa

While the U.S. media, for the most part, does not notice most of the international community does. Now a documentary has been produced on the people of Bil’in, who remain steadfast like all Palestinians. The docu is titled Bil’in Habibti {Bil’in My love).

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Ellen Brown

Rumor has it that Timothy Geithner is on his way out as Treasury Secretary, due to his involvement in the AIG scandal that is now unraveling in hearings before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Bob Chapman writes in The International Forecaster:

Each day brings more revelations of efforts of the NY Fed and Goldman Sachs to hide the details of the criminal conspiracy of the AIG bailout. . . . This is a real crisis on the scale of Watergate. Corruption at its finest.

But unlike the perpetrators of the Watergate scandal, who wound up looking at jail time, Geithner evidently has a golden parachute waiting at Goldman Sachs, not coincidentally the largest recipient of the AIG bailout. At least that is the rumor sparked by an article by Caroline Baum on Bloomberg News, titled “Goldman Parachute Awaits Geithner to Ease Fall.” Hank Paulson, Geithner’s predecessor, was CEO of Goldman Sachs before coming to the Treasury. Geithner, who has come up through the ranks of government, could be walking through the revolving door in the other direction.

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Khephra Maley

Many Americans were shocked by Obama’s meteoric rise to power. Although plenty of other ‘relative unknowns’ have made the jump from Congress or a governorship to the Oval Office, none of them were visible minorities or able to galvanize public sentiment nearly as well as Obama. Following 8 years of despotic rule by George Bush & Co., huge segments of the American public embraced Obama’s candidacy with wanton enthusiasm. His campaign rallies took on an imperialistic tenor, and for many confused Americans he was psychologically conflated as a political messiah – ready, willing and able to act as civilization’s great panacea. Unfortunately, much of the public was simply projecting dreams for a better future onto Obama. They saw in him a clear improvement over Bush and more integrity than Hillary Clinton, and this branding helped him handily mop the floor with John McCain. Nevertheless, branding aside, with a little critical attention Obama’s rise to power begins to seem less accidental, and takes on all the hues of a prolonged, successful grooming process. Barack Obama did not become a global sensation by accident. He had help getting where he is. That help obviously included corporate and financial interests, but it may also have included the involvement of covert intelligence agencies – perhaps most especially the CIA.

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Julie Chao

Black Carbon a Significant Factor in Melting of Himalayan Glaciers

From Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, and announcement that comes at a very inconvenient time for IPCC and Pachauri while their “Glaciergate” issue rages. Aerosols and black carbon are tagged as the major drivers. And no mention of disappearance by 2035.

The fact that glaciers in the Himalayan mountains are thinning is not disputed. However, few researchers have attempted to rigorously examine and quantify the causes. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist Surabi Menon set out to isolate the impacts of the most commonly blamed culprit—greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide—from other particles in the air that may be causing the melting. Menon and her collaborators found that airborne black carbon aerosols, or soot, from India is a major contributor to the decline in snow and ice cover on the glaciers.

“Our simulations showed greenhouse gases alone are not nearly enough to be responsible for the snow melt,” says Menon, a physicist and staff scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division. “Most of the change in snow and ice cover—about 90 percent—is from aerosols. Black carbon alone contributes at least 30 percent of this sum.”

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Report, The Electronic Intifada

Mona al-Samouni shows a photo of her parents who she wit-
nessed being killed in Israel's assault on Gaza in January 2009.

OCCUPIED GAZA STRIP (IRIN) - Mona al-Samouni, 12, is depressed and has nightmares about the day -- just more than a year ago -- when she witnessed her parents and a number of relatives being shot by Israeli soldiers in their home in Zeitoun, southeast of Gaza City.

Like a number of other children who witnessed horrific events during last year's 23-day Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, Mona has become increasingly withdrawn and silent -- common ways of coping with tragedies, doctors say.

Statistics about Palestinians who lost their life during the military operation vary, but nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) place the overall number of persons killed between 1,387 and 1,417. The Gaza authorities report 1,444 fatal casualties, while Israel provides a figure of 1,166, according to the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, also known as the Goldstone report.

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Chris Floyd

Here's the way the game works. First you get the outright lie, then later, in dribs and drabs, you get a few, grudging crumbs of the truth.

For example, first you get: "No, there are no Blackwater operatives in Pakistan. None. That's just a conspiracy theory, terrorist propaganda. These kinds of lies just make it harder for us to do good in the region." Then later: "Well, yes, we do have Blackwater operatives in Pakistan. But, uh, we don't actually cut their checks directly in the Pentagon."

Or what about this more recent example? First: "The United States has no troops in Pakistan. None. We are not going to send troops to Pakistan. That's just wild talk, a conspiracy theory. And it makes it harder for us to do good in the region."

Then later: "Well, yes, we do have a few troops in Pakistan. All right, a couple hundred. But that's it. We promise. And they're just training their counterparts in Pakistan's military. Oh yeah, and also working alongside paramilitary militias in the frontier regions. And maybe, you know, following up on some of our drone strikes. That is, our alleged drone strikes, because we are not, as you know, officially admitting that we are carrying out an ever-accelerating campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan, although if we were, these strikes would be very surgical, and the hundreds of people who might have been killed in just the past few months by these strikes, if they happened, would have all been vicious savage murdering 9/11! 9/11! 9/11! terrorists. But other than these 200 troops we have in Pakistan now, we have no troops in Pakistan. Never have. Except, of course, for the 12 American troops who have been killed in, well, battle, in, er, Pakistan since 2001. But that's it. Look me in the eye; would I lie to you?"

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Kingsley Kobo

If you have ever been to any international airport in Africa, you might have observed two kinds of African travellers: one holding his country's passport, and the other a foreign passport - an American, British or European Union.Both are Africans by origin, but do not possess the same power and status.

The first is African because he was born in Africa, of African parents and has been rooted in Africa. The second was probably born abroad or shares a parent who owns a foreign nationality, or acquired a foreign nationality by his long stay abroad.

The first needs to book an appointment at the embassy; needs to answer a lot of questions from the consul; and needs to furnish tons of documents before hoping to obtain a visa. The second only calls up a travel agency, books his flight for Milan, Paris, London or New York and buys just a one-way ticket – because he’s heading for his second home!

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