The Department of Justice rejected a request from psychologists Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell to give the CIA the power to pretend to bury terror suspects during interrogations in the years after the 9/11 attacks. A report (PDF, 289 pages) from the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, released last Friday, documents ten interrogation techniques approved by Bush administration lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo. The psychologists had requested twelve techniques. One of those two techniques has already been revealed to be prolonged diapering.

The March 7 election may be a critical event in the contest to decide Iraq’s future, but for some of the nation’s poor, the right to vote does not mean having a say in who leads the country; it means having something to sell to make desperately needed cash. With intensive campaigning now under way in what is shaping up to be a highly competitive ballot, votes have become a precious commodity, a fact not lost on many ordinary people who care little for politics but who struggle to make ends meet. "Elections are a beautiful opportunity to get some money," Ahmad Salam said. "There are lots of people willing to sell their votes, and lots of people who want to buy them." AWIP/Dahr Jamail: US Using Iraqi Political Discord to Justify Continuance of Occupation.

Anthony Lawson is a retired, international-prize-winning TV commercials director, cameraman and editor, and a professional voiceover artist living in Thailand. His entire catalog of YouTube videos can be viewed online. Palestinian Center for Human Rights: Weekly Report on Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Moshe Dayan's widow: Zionism's role is over ... We don't know how to make peace. We go from war to war and this will never end.

[Editor's Comment:] But even at this late stage, she can't help herself from lying: "We didn't expel. During my childhood, we didn't expel. We bought those tracts of land. Since then, however, many things have happened and today Israel is not the same. It's cliche to talk about how we're in a state of occupation and we're trying to occupy more and more. I'm at that age where I don't even talk about peace anymore. We don't know how to make peace. We go from war to war and this will never end." Oh, yes, they did "expel", and thousands too. About 7-800.000 of "them" in fact. More HERE, HERE, HERE and here: New Israeli Law Forbids Palestinians From Mourning Or “Showing Signs Of Sadness”.

And what exactly was Zionism's "role"? -Jewish fascism ("Zionism") set out to steal all of historical Palestine. They now have come very close to their goal. (Check these maps.) Translating Ruth Dayan's statement, we get closer to the truth: We don't know how to be happy with the land we've already stolen. We go from war to war to steal ever more and this will never end.

Israeli settlers in Hebron intend to rally Saturday, commemorating the 1994 massacre that saw a Jewish-American open fire on praying Palestinians, killing 29, the Israeli news site Yedioth Ahronoth reported. AWIP: US: Israel's national heritage plan 'provocative'.

Israel is urging instructing the United States to freeze its decision to send a new envoy to Syria, in the wake of this week's tripartite meeting between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, according to a report Saturday in London-based Arabic daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat.

“I strongly support the dedicated public servants of our intelligence community. Their work to ensure our national security is to be commended. However, I must oppose the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2010. “This legislation contains provisions that implement vital measures of accountability, such as a provision to prohibit the use of funds for payment to any contractor to conduct interrogations of detainees currently in custody. I also support the provision in this legislation to establish an independent Intelligence Community-wide Inspector General. These provisions are an important step to ensure that mechanisms of accountability and oversight are in place. However, I remain concerned that some of the methods being employed by our intelligence community may amount to serious violations of international law and our Constitution." AWIP/Jayne Lyn Stahl: A Refuge for Cowards: Senate Extends Patriot Act. AntiWar: Obama signs one-year extension of Patriot Act.

They will interview six British-Israeli nationals whose identities were stolen by the suspected killers. The officers said the men were being treated as potential witnesses to a crime and not as suspects. It is widely believed Israel's secret service, Mossad, killed Mahmoud al-Mabouh in a Dubai hotel last month. Israel has declined to confirm or deny that it was responsible. AWIP: 'Netanyahu authorized Dubai assassination'.

A massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck Chile this morning crumbling buildings, destroying bridges and causing an unknown number of deaths. The temblor struck near where the largest earthquake on history was recorded in 1960 and ties as the fifth largest since 1900.

The quake has caused tsunami warnings to be issued for most of the nations along the Pacific including Australia, Japan, Russia, Indonesia and the Philippines. In Hawaii, the tsunami arrived in recent hours and it appears the state will escape relatively unscathed.

In the aftermath, buildings in Chile’s capital of Santiago caught fire sending smoke into the sky. The temblor that shook the ground for nearly a full minute also sent a cloud of dust into the air. Click here for a slideshow of some of the first images after the quake. NASA’s Terra satellite flew over the stricken area today and the agency released ‘before and after’ photos that clearly show the smoke and dust. Al Jazeera: Chile quake leaves hundreds dead -Video. PressTV: Chile's killer quake toll passes 300. Boston.com: Disaster pictures from Chile [The Big Picture set]

Google Person Finder: Chile Earthquake

The head of Russia's federal drug control agency has lambasted the US-led forces for failing to stamp out drug production in Afghanistan. Victor Ivanov blamed US President Barack Obama's administration for not doing enough to destroy opium poppy crops and curb the production of heroin in Afghanistan, the BBC reported on Saturday. At least 30,000 people die in Russia every year due to heroin, 90% of which comes from Afghanistan, Ivanov added. PressTV: 40-fold drug surge in Afghanistan: report. Afghanistan Conflict Monitor: Afghan Opium Production Up 34 Percent in 2007; New Record Set. Uruknet: Afghan drug trafficking brings US $50 billion a year.

[Background info:] Interview with Alfred McCoy. + The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade [Interview]. + Afghanistan: Drug Addiction Lucrative for Neolib Banksters, CIA. + Washington's Hidden Agenda: Restore the Drug Trade. + Halliburton Corporation's Brown and Root is one of the major components of THE BUSH-CHENEY DRUG EMPIRE.

Afghan collaborators will begin to take charge of the prison facility at Bagram, currently run by the US military, from next week. Addressing a news conference at the jail near the capital Kabul on Saturday, US and Afghan officials collaborators said the handover of the prison would be gradual over the coming year as Afghan officers traitors still require torture training.

Libyan leader dictator Muammar Gaddafi has called for a jihad, or holy war, against Switzerland, as an ongoing diplomatic row between the two nations heats up. He criticised a recent Swiss vote against the building of minarets and said Muslims must boycott the country. A Swiss foreign ministry spokesman declined to comment on the jihad call.

Tens of thousands of Italians have taken to the streets of Rome to protest a court decision to adjourn Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's trial for a month. Tens of thousands of Italians congregated on Saturday in Piazza del Popolo in central Rome to protest against Berlusconi under a banner reading "Enough. The law is the same for everyone." BBC: Tens of thousands of Italians have demonstrated in Rome against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

A massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake has struck central Chile, shaking the capital for a minute-and-a-half and setting off a tsunami, which triggered international alerts. Buildings collapsed and phone lines and electricity were down, making the extent of the damage difficult to determine. At least 16 people were killed when the earthquake struck, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet announced. "We have had a huge earthquake," Bachelet said, speaking from an emergency response centre in an appeal for Chileans to remain calm. ABC News: Massive earthquake hits Chile: President Michelle Bachelet said 47 people were killed and that more deaths were possible, as the US government reported aftershocks in Chile measuring 6.2, 5.6 and 6.9. "With the quake of this magnitude, we cannot rule out other casualties," she said. USGS: Magnitude 8.8 - OFFSHORE MAULE, CHILE. [Internet Not Working in Chile - all sites with .cl are dead at the moment.] Al Jazeera: Scores killed in Chile earthquake -Video. The AtlanticWire: The Chile Quake: How Bad Will the Damage Be?

Russia's foreign minister says Moscow will not agree to harsh sanctions against Iran, reasoning that there is nothing to prove Tehran is working on nuclear weapons. "There is no evidence that Iran has made a decision to produce nuclear weapons," Sergei Lavrov said in a recent interview with RIA Novosti. Lavrov went on to add hat he did not believe that sanctions were an effective course to take. "If we go with the sanctions, we'll not go beyond the goal of our purpose of defending the nonproliferation regime. "We don't want the nonproliferation regime to be used for ... strangling Iran, or taking some steps to deteriorate the situation [and] the living standards of people in Iran," he said clarifing that Moscow did not plan to agree to embargoes that could seriously damage Iran's economy. AntiWar: Israeli DM: No Need to Coordinate With US on Attacking Iran. WRH: Barak: 'Iran challenges world's stability'.

"I didn't like it when a certain former president -- and it wasn't 41 or 42 -- made my life miserable," he said in a reference to Jimmy Carter, who infuriated the Bush White House in 2007 when he accused the administration of allowing the use of torture on terror suspects.

Dubai police say they have recovered the DNA of assassins, who killed a senior Hamas commander in January. "We have DNA evidence ... from the crime scene. The DNA of the criminals is there," police chief Dhahi Khalfan said on Friday on the Arab satellite television Al-Arabiya. On January 20, the lifeless body of Mahmud al-Mabhouh was found in his hotel with Israel's intelligence service, Mossad, being widely deemed to be behind the hit, given the agency's record of overseas assassinations. The case dipped into soaring controversy when the 11 people, initially identified by the Dubai police as suspected murderers of Mabhouh, were found to have been traveling on fake European passports. AWIP: 'Netanyahu authorized Dubai assassination'.

"Would you be prepared to cross-dress? And kill a guest in an adjacent hotel room? If the answer to these questions is a resounding “yes”, and you can also act, enjoy luxury international travel with a twist and can carry off a convincing Irish or Australian accent, then the job could be yours." The Israeli spy agency Mossad may be the target of international reproach since it allegedly killed the Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel this month, but at home emerging details of the operation have generated Mossad mania. It has never been more popular in Israel, with stores selling out of Mossad memorabilia and its official website reporting a soaring number of visitors interested in applying to become agents. AWIP: 'Netanyahu authorized Dubai assassination'.

In southern Afghanistan's Helmand Province, thousands of American, Afghan Quisling and British troops entered Marja in the biggest offensive of the war, with the goal of destroying the Taliban's Afghans' largest haven main positions and restoring the Quisling government's presence in southern Afghanistan. Resistance was sporadic and fierce as troops seized positions around the area. Allegedly stricter combat rules and a concerted effort by the Afghan Quisling government and NATO forces were aimed at not only protecting the civilian population improving the US' image problem, but planning for the aftermath a permant occupation, building infrastructure, support and trust compliance & submission in an area long dominated by the Taliban Afghans. Collected here are images of the country and conflict over the past month, part of an ongoing monthly series on illegally occupied Afghanistan. (43 photos total)

[Editor's Comment:] Sorry for the annoying number of corrections. They seem to be necessary in order to flush out the true story, or to at least to get past the government fairy-tale and closer to the truth. -That's the MSM for you; chock full of lies & distortions, so please don't blame us. :-) Thank you.

“The Washington Post reports that nearly one billion dollars per year in cash, suspected to include U.S. aid, opium receipts or both, is moving from Afghanistan to Dubai, where friends and family of Afghanistan’s President Karzai have multimillion dollar villas. “Dubai real estate deals and a number of crooked enterprises connected to the Karzai family have created crony capitalism in a country awash with U.S. cash and U.S. blood."

BANGALORE: Criticising Genetically Modified (GM) products could land you in jail — if the draconian draft Biotechnology Regulatory Authority Bill (BRAB) of 2009, which will be tabled in the current session of the parliament by the UPA government, is passed. In an unprecedented muzzle on the right to freedom of speech of the citizen, Chapter 13 section 63 of the draft bill says, “Whoever, without any evidence or scientific record misleads the public about the safety of the organisms and products…shall be punished with imprisonment for a term that shall not be less than six months but which may extend to one year and with fine which may extend to two lakh rupees or with both.” The BRAI Bill drafted by the department of bio-technology under the Ministry of Science and Technology comes on the heels of a moratorium on Bt Brinjal announced by the Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. “What they are doing is much worse than what Hitler or Mussolini did. Through this bill, they want to take absolute authority. They are behaving like a vendor instead of a regulator,” Pushpa M Bhargava, a member of the Supreme Court appointed Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) said.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, suggested Friday the organization might one day be called on to provide countries with a global reserve currency that would serve as an alternative to the U.S. dollar. "That day has not yet come, but I think it is intellectually healthy to explore these kinds of ideas now," he said in a speech on the future mandate of the 186-nation Washington-based lending organization. Strauss-Kahn said such an asset could be similar to but distinctly different from the IMF's special drawing rights, or SDRs, the accounting unit that countries use to hold funds within the IMF. It is based on a basket of major currencies. Truth Serum: BILDERBERG IMF CHIEF STRAUSS-KHAN PROPOSES CONVERGENCE OF BANKING LEGISLATION. [More about the Bilderbergers here.]

Canada and U.S. authorities are talking about extending cross-border security measures that were implemented for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and were to end with the closing of the Winter Games. The RCMP and the U.S. Coast Guard have jointly patrolled the waters off Vancouver since the beginning of the month, boarding nearly 200 vessels and interviewing about 500 people in their efforts to maintain security, RCMP Sergeant Duncan Pound of the border integrity program said in an interview. The Atlantic: Is America Really Ahead in the Olympic Medal Count?

Tens of thousands of striking Greek workers took to the streets today, some throwing stones at police, in a defiant show of protest against austerity measures aimed at averting the debt-plagued country's economic collapse. Riot police responded with teargas when, in sporadic bursts, masked youths charged them in Athens city centre. The violence coincided with a general strike that shut down public services and closed off Greece to the outside world. For trade unions the mass show of force was a warning shot to a government struggling to satisfy its eurozone partners with policies deemed vital for the nation's fiscal health while appeasing angry workers at home. AWIP: Greece not on the brink of bankruptcy, actually attacked by Goldman Sachs.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s major sources of instability. Americans are directly connected to this conflict, and increasingly imperiled by its devastation. It is the goal of If Americans Knew to provide full and accurate information on this critical issue, and on our power – and duty – to bring a resolution.

Here are the simple facts of the great betrayal. Wilson and House knew that they were doing something momentous. One cannot fathom men’s motives and this pair probably believed in what they were up to. What they did not believe in was representative government. They believed in government by an uncontrolled oligarchy whose acts would only become apparent after an interval so long that the electorate would be forever incapable of doing anything efficient to remedy depredations.

Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree. The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans. According to CNN poll numbers released Sunday, Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken - though the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what's broken can be fixed. (The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted February 12-15, with 1,023 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall survey.)

Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak has urged the US administration to impose crippling sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. "At this stage it's important to impose serious and crippling sanctions in order to prevent it from achieving nuclear ability," Barak said referring to Iran during a meeting with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates in Washington on Thursday.

The captured ringleader of the Jundallah terrorist group, Abdolmalek Rigi, has confessed that the US administration had assured him of unlimited military aid and funding for waging an insurgency against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The following is the detailed transcript of Rigi's confession, stated in Farsi, as broadcasted on Press TV. AWIP: Iran to reveal evidence of Jundallah ties with US.

Call them what you will: bottom feeders, corporate con-men, flim-flam artists, peddlers of crisis, you name it. You can't help but marvel how enterprising security firms have the uncanny ability to sniff-out new opportunities wherever they can find, or manufacture, them. After all, nothing sells like fear and in "new normal" America fear is an industry with a limitless growth potential.

Scientists have discovered an area of the North Atlantic Ocean where plastic debris accumulates. The region is said to compare with the well-documented "great Pacific garbage patch". Kara Lavender Law of the Sea Education Association told the BBC that the issue of plastics had been "largely ignored" in the Atlantic. She announced the findings of a two-decade-long study at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland, US.

A commercial ­dispute breaks out in the South Atlantic. ­Argentina asserts a hoary claim to the Falklands and takes it to the UN. Britain says push off, you must be joking. Nobody takes it ­seriously as war is inconceivable. ­Downing Street is more concerned with domestic unpopularity. That was in March 1982. It was also last week. Then the tabloids greeted Argentina's claim with Stick It Up Your Junta. Now they are equally nuanced, calling the Argentine president, Cristina Kirchner, Queen Argie Bargy and Old Plastic Face. Then it took nine weeks of counter-invasion, with 1,000 deaths and £3bn spent, for Britain to restore the status quo ante. The Falklands war was a catastrophic failure of diplomacy and deterrence. Now, at least, war is unlikely. AWIP: Escalating Falklands oil dispute goes to UN.

A British court on Friday made public a ruling criticizing domestic intelligence agency MI5's handling of alleged victim of torture overseas, rejecting a government attempt to keep it secret. A three-judge panel at Britain's Court of Appeal published a paragraph of a judge's draft ruling that was previously withheld after government lawyer Jonathan Sumption complained it contained unsubstantiated criticism. That ruling published details of the mistreatment of ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed, who alleges he was tortured in Pakistan in 2002.

The European Court of Justice has ruled that Israeli goods made in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank cannot be considered Israeli. This means goods made by Israelis or Jews in the West Bank cannot benefit from a trade deal giving Israel preferential access to EU markets. EU import duties on Israeli goods from the settlements may now be imposed, making them less competitive.

The Islamic bloc at the UN calls for international action against Israel's decision to designate two shrines in the occupied West Bank as "national heritage sites." Speaking on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) UN ambassadors, Syria's United Nations Ambassador Bashar Jaafari condemned the "illegality and illegitimacy" of the Israeli decision which they view as "null and void." They called on all relevant UN bodies to take urgent, required measures to force Israel to rescind this decision and urged the Security Council, the General Assembly and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to shoulder their responsibility. AWIP/Khalid Amayreh: Fabricating history.

The rumors of a possible partnership by John Paulson and Goldman Sachs in the speculative attacks on Greece, which I first reported on last week, are now heating up in Europe to the point where one French journalist has multiple sources corroborating them. No one can point to hard evidence, just yet, because these are opaque, unregulated markets. But the news is quickly rising above the status of rumor. NYT: In Greece’s Crisis, Fed Studies Wall St.’s Activities. + Banks Helped Create Greece's Financial Crisis -- Now They're Betting It Will Get Worse.

MEP and UKIP leader Nigel Farage on Wednesday delivered another major tirade brilliant verbal attack on EU President Herman van Rompuy and, along the way, severely insulted Belgium and Greece during a plenary debate.

[Editor's Comment:] Strong words alright, but then democracy in Europe may soon be history. The situation is very, very serious. Mr. Farage obviously understands what is at stake and has what it takes, and more. (The Mexicans would refer to it as "cojones". In case you're still in doubt, think of an American politician -but just the opposite of such a spineless creature. -See?)

Ban Ki-moon urges environment ministers to reject attempts by sceptics to undermine negotiations by "exaggerating" shortcomings in Himalayan glaciers report. The UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, today urged environment ministers to reject attempts by sceptics to undermine efforts to forge a climate change deal, stressing that global warming poses "a clear and present danger."

[Editor's Comment:] Geez, where does this guy Ban Ki-moon get his ideas from? "A clear and present danger" is an American political phrase used to justify the unjustifiable. -Ever since a Hollywood production named A clear and Present Danger (1994) (actually since even before 1994) where CIA Analyst Jack Ryan is drawn into an illegal war fought by the US government against a Colombian drug cartel, through the US government's scare tactics like "Bioterrorism: a clear and present danger" and "Cyber terrorism: a clear and present danger, the sum of all fears, breaking point or patriot games?" to the American think tanks' warmongering & lies, their "Two-War Construct" to justify the illegal & unwarranted attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan, it is now universally recognized that only American war hawks talk like that. -And now apparently this US/NWO stooge from the US client state of Korea does so too...Well, the science is not "settled" and never will be, and the so-called "errors" & "inaccuracies" in the IPCC's reports are nothing of the sort. -We're talking about consciously manipulated data here and they did it for a purpose! This is the science scam of our generation, involving a clear and present conspiracy to deceive, exploit and enslave us all. -This is what the movers & shakers want: a global government and the end of national sovereignty. Or, in the words of Ban Ki-moon himself: “We will establish a global governance structure to monitor and manage the implementation of this.”

AWIP: Global Warming Emerging Science and Understanding Part 6 + UN Chief: We Will Impose Global Governance. + Obama urges action at Copenhagen. + Draft text 'threatens' UN climate deal. Daily Telegraph: Climategate: the official cover-up continues: If there’s one thing that stinks even more than Climategate, it’s the attempts we’re seeing everywhere from the IPCC and Penn State University to the BBC to pretend that nothing seriously bad has happened, that “the science” is still “settled”, and that it’s perfectly OK for the authorities go on throwing loads more of our money at a problem that doesn’t exist. Examiner: U.N. announces independent review of IPCC climate agency as skepticism grows.

Colonel Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, has called for a jihad or armed struggle against Switzerland branding it an "infidel state". Libya's relations with Switzerland broke down in 2008 when one of Colonel Gaddafi's sons, Hannibal, was arrested in a Geneva hotel and charged with assaulting a member of his staff. He was detained for two days before being released, but in protest Libya cut oil supplies to Switzerland, withdrew billions of dollars from Swiss bank accounts and arrested two Swiss businessmen working in the North African country.

American troops will remain in Haiti for the foreseeable future to help the quake-ravaged country get back on its feet, the US ambassador to the Caribbean nation told AFP Thursday. "There are about 6,500 soldiers in Haiti at the moment. There were some 20,000 for the emergency effort launched in the wake of January 12," ambassador Kenneth Merten said. AWIP/Stephen Lendman: Focus on Haiti: Washington's Militarized Takeover. AWIP/Michel Chossudovsky: The Militarization of Emergency Aid to Haiti: Is it a Humanitarian Operation or an Invasion? AWIP/Marguerite Laurent: Oil in Haiti – Economic Reasons for the UN/US Occupation. AWIP/William Bowles: Disasters are Big Business.

An 18-year-old Tampa man was jailed Tuesday afternoon, charged with wearing a clown mask on a public road. Deputies say Matthew David Lopez, of 7003 Ponderosa Drive, was seen with two other people walking south on N 58th Street, just north of E Fowler Avenue. What caught a deputy's attention was Lopez's masked face with a bright red-and-orange wig, according to an arrest affidavit.

US drones fired at least three missiles against a home near Miramshah, North Waziristan today, killing at least nine people described by the Pakistani government as “suspected militants.” The target’s affiliation remains unclear, as do the identities of the people inside, but the death toll has risen throughout the day and may rise further going forward. Originally, Pakistani officials identified the house as a “compound” used by the Haqqani family. They later revised this, saying the house belonged to the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Now some officials say a group calling itself the “Punjabi Taliban” used the house, while some others are saying it was al-Qaeda’s.

A night-time raid in eastern Afghanistan in which eight schoolboys from one family were killed was carried out on the basis of faulty intelligence and should never have been authorised, a Times investigation has found. Ten children and teenagers died when troops stormed a remote mountain compound near the border with Pakistan in December. At the time, US/Nato claimed lied, saying that the assault force was targeting a “known insurgent group responsible for a series of violent attacks”.

When the record 2009 civilian death toll began to emerge, NATO was quick to brag that they had actually killed fewer civilians than the Taliban. This appears to be the case still, though UN reports suggested the difference wasn’t nearly as dramatic as NATO initially claimed. There is one thing the Taliban can’t compete with NATO on, however, and that’s the killing of children. AWIP: Many Thousand Gone.

Human Rights Watch has blasted US President Barack Obama's change in "rhetoric" rather than "policies" as US transfers more Guantanamo Bay prisoners to Europe. Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, says that vows of change in the US administration have been limited to presidential rhetoric, US media said Wednesday. When it came to promoting human rights, there has undoubtedly been a marked improvement in presidential rhetoric, Roth said. However, he added, the translation of those words into deeds remains incomplete.

Key US lawmakers passed legislation Thursday extending three key provisions of the PATRIOT Act, the sweeping intelligence bill enacted after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Backing a White House request, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the measure 11 votes to 8 to extend until 2013 three clauses that would have expired by 31 December. The bill now heads to the full Senate for a vote. The provisions include the "roving wiretap" clause, used to monitor mobile communications of individuals using multiple telephone lines, and the "lone-wolf" provision, which enables spying on individuals suspected of terrorist activity but with no obvious connection to extremist groups.

CIA officials briefed at least 68 U.S. lawmakers between 2001 and 2007 on enhanced interrogation methods like simulated drowning that were being considered or used against captured al Qaeda members, according to declassified documents released on Tuesday. The once-secret CIA papers, obtained in a lawsuit by the conservative legal foundation Judicial Watch, shed new light on which lawmakers knew the details of the controversial interrogation program and when. Human rights groups have argued the harsh interrogation methods torture were forms of torture and violated U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions on treatment of war prisoners. President Barack Obama banned the techniques shortly after taking office in January 2009.

Reality television often ends in humiliation and ridicule for those taking part. But who would be prepared to take part in a game show which featured torture and even death? The answer is most of us, judging by the results of a French experiment which involved asking people to inflict electric shocks on a fellow contestant in what they thought was a new reality TV concept. Eighty per cent of the participants ignored pleas to stop and shrieks of pain as they continued increasing the voltage in response to wrong answers on Zone Xtreme. ''Is he dead?'' asked one contestant when the voltage reached 400 and the victim fell silent.

We, the undersigned, object to the dismissal of Baroness Jenny Tonge from her post as health spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats simply because she suggested that Israel investigate charges made against it. AWIP: British politician Jenny Tonge sacrificed (again) to appease Zionists.

The US has bashed Israel for jeopardizing the Middle East peace process by designating two shrines in the occupied West Bank as Israeli "national heritage sites." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday that Tel Aviv was planning to include Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem and the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron Al-Khalil in a "national heritage plan." US State Department spokesman Mark Toner on Wednesday said Washington viewed the move as provocative and unhelpful to the goal of getting the two sides back to the negotiation table. Toner said Washington had conveyed its displeasure with the move to senior Israeli officials. AWIP/Irish4Palestine: Israeli "Heritage Sights": Hamas lawmaker Samira Al-Halaiqa warned Sunday that Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to annex the Ibrahimi Mosque in Al-Khalil and Bilal Bin Rabah Mosque in Bethlehem to the list of Jewish religious sites is a declaration of war on Muslims. + One Friday Morning in Occupied Palestine – The Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre 25.02.1994.

In Hurricane Katrina's chaotic aftermath, police shot six people – killing two – as they crossed a bridge in search of food. For years the case was a shocking symbol of the confusion and violence that swept through the flooded city. On Wednesday it became a mark of shame for the police department. As victims' relatives watched from the courtroom gallery, a retired lieutenant who supervised the department's probe of the shootings pleaded guilty to orchestrating a cover-up to conceal that police gunned down unarmed civilians.

Blackwater personnel appear to have gone to exceptional lengths to obtain weapons from U.S. military weapons storehouses intended for use by the Afghan police. According to the committee, at the behest of the company's Afghanistan country manager, Ricky Chambers, Blackwater on at least two occasions acquired hundreds of rifles and pistols from a U.S. military facility near Kabul called 22 Bunkers by the military and Pol-e Charki by the Afghans. Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of all U.S. military forces in the Middle East and South Asia, wrote to the committee to explain that "there is no current or past written policy, order, directive, or instruction that allows U.S. Military contractors or subcontractors in Afghanistan to use weapons stored at 22 Bunkers." TimesOnline: Blackwater guards stole weapons in Kabul and went on deadly rampage.

Straight from the loony bin: A prominent Saudi cleric has issued an edict calling for opponents of the kingdom's strict segregation of men and women to be put to death if they refuse to abandon their ideas. Shaikh Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak said in a fatwa the mixing of genders at the workplace or in education "as advocated by modernisers" is prohibited because it allows "sight of what is forbidden, and forbidden talk between men and women."

Australia has warned Israel it is "gravely concerned" about the use of Australian passports in an alleged assassination in Dubai and demanded full co-operation into an investigation into the incident. The Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, today said that preliminary analysis by Australian officials indicated the passports had been duplicated or altered. The passports were issued in 2003, before enhancements were made to Australian documents. Daily Telegraph: Six more Britons had identities stolen by Mossad assassins. Haaretz: Australia warns Israel: Forging passports isn't an 'act of a friend'. The Drum: They've used biologically-infected chocolate, silencer-fitted pistols and bombs concealed in mobile telephones. Who would have thought the latest weapon of choice of Israel's assassins would be the humble hotel pillow? ABC News: Fourteen of the suspects purportedly used American credit cards from META Bank, a regional bank, to pay for hotel rooms and travel arrangements.

Brzezinski: According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention. AWIP/Washington's Blog: Governments ADMIT That They Carry Out False Flag Terror.

Gordon Brown repeatedly shouted at Tony Blair "you ruined my life" in the final confrontation that forced Blair to agree to announce a date by which he would stand down as prime minister, according to Andrew Rawnsley's new book. The revelations in the Observer journalist's book, The End of the Party, raised fresh questions this week about the Brown's character and prompted him to deny at prime minister's questions today he had ever sanctioned briefings against his chancellor, Alistair Darling.

Maariv reported on February 23 that the Tel Aviv municipality launched a “counselling program” to “help” Jewish girls who date and/or marry Arab boys. Grassroots and governmental campaigning against interfaith mingling is nothing new in Israel. RT: Racist birth control? Claims Israel culling Ethiopian Jews -Video.

It was a Friday in the month of Ramadan, so hundreds of Palestinians had gone to the Ibrahimi mosque for the dawn prayer. At around 5 am, and as the worshippers were kneeling in prayer, Zionist colonist Baruch Goldstein, a leader of the fanatic terror movement Kach, who was hiding behind one of the pillar, started shooting randomly at the worshippers. He was also armoured with a number of hand grenades which he threw amongst the dying and the wounded. The shooting lasted 10 minutes during which 29 worshippers were massacred, including many children, and over 300 were wounded, leaving some handicapped for life. Goldstein would have gone on with his butchering were it not for a group of young men who were finally able to subdue him. During this time, and despite the sounds of shooting coming from the mosque, the IOF soldiers stationed outside did not intervene to stop the massacre, instead they locked up the doors of the mosque and prevented worshippers from escaping. Juan Cole: Harvard Professor's Modest Proposal: Starve the Gazans into Having Fewer Babies.

It seems that Paul may have been onto something...or at the very least raised legitimate questions that deserve investigation. A few minutes on google news produced this 1982 story from the Milwaukee Sentinel by Richard Bradee of the paper's Washington Bureau: "Police who searched the room the Watergate burglars used found $4,200 in $100 dollar bills, all numbered in sequence. Proxmire asked the Federal Reserve Board where the money came from. As he explained in a letter to the late Rep. Wright Patman (D-Tex.), chairman of the House Banking Committee: "I got the biggest run-around in years. They ducked, misled, lied, and gave me the idiot treatment." Economic Policy Journal: Fed Chairman Bernanke Should Apologize to Ron Paul. Washington's Blog: Economist With Financial Services Committee For Eleven Years, Assisting With Oversight of the Fed, Lends Support to Ron Paul's Questions.

The strike takes place within the context of growing working class resistance across Europe to austerity measures now being imposed by governments across the continent—irrespective of whether they are nominally social democratic or conservative. WSWS: The social situation in Greece.

The senior Justice Department legal adviser to President Bush who made the legal case for the Bush Administration's use of torture tactics on terror suspects defended comments that the president could unilaterally "massacre" civilians in wartime in a newly released interview. "You did argue that the president can legally order a village of civilians massacred," a KQED radio host asked John Yoo, now a professor at Berkeley. "Do you stand by that?" "If, I thought it was militarily necessary," Yoo replied. "All you have to do is look at American history.... Look at the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Not backing down, Yoo championed the use of nuclear weapons in World War II.

Russia went public with the plan to deploy the Iskander missiles at its western frontier – in the Kaliningrad region or on the territories of neighboring countries, but the process of probing into Washington's reaction is clearly taking too long. In politics, failure to appreciate the importance of acting quickly invariably creates problems, the above situation being a vivid example. The Iskanders are a remarkably potent weapon but it appears that Moscow risks playing the card as a minor element in the diplomatic game. One gets an impression that the threat to deploy the missiles in the Kaliningrad region has been aired too long for NATO on the whole or even Poland and the Czech Republic to take it seriously. If this is the case and the powerful weapon is depreciated due to the evident lack of determination to use it, the adversary has reasons to conclude that the threat is nonexistent. In other words, NATO feels free to go on expanding east in line with its strategy and to disregard Russia's objections as verbiage.

In late 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and then uploaded a video to Google Video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate. The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police. We also worked with the local police to help identify the person responsible for uploading it and she was subsequently sentenced to 10 months community service by a court in Turin, as were several other classmates who were also involved. In these rare but unpleasant cases, that's where our involvement would normally end.

But in this instance, a public prosecutor in Milan decided to indict four Google employees —David Drummond, Arvind Desikan, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes (who left the company in 2008). The charges brought against them were criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. To be clear, none of the four Googlers charged had anything to do with this video. They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it. None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video's existence until after it was removed. La Repubblica: Google executives sentenced.

Latin America and Caribbean leaders united Tuesday to create a regional bloc excluding Canada and the United States, but its birth was undermined by a spat in which the Colombian president told Venezuela's Hugo Chavez to "be a man." Many of the 32 Latin American and Caribbean countries participating in the summit have long called for a new organization that will not be dominated by the interests of their two wealthy northern neighbors. The Washington-based Organization of American States, the largest diplomatic bloc in the Western Hemisphere, has been heavily influenced by the United States. Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who hosted the summit in a Caribbean resort, said the bloc "will consolidate and globally project a Latin American and Caribbean identity."

Latest from the Ministry of Peace: "WAR IS PEACE": Speaking today at the National Defense University, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates condemned European nations in general for their refusal to contribute larger portions of their population to NATO. Gates warned that Europe’s aversion to war was doing serious harm to assorted US military operations with NATO backing, and was therefore “an impediment” to the lasting peace he envisions those wars eventually creating. Gates’ comments appeared to be directed in part at the Netherlands, who saw its government collapse this weekend after NATO pressure to continue its commitment to the Afghan War led antiwar members of the government to withdraw. The Independent: Military chiefs say more troops needed for conflict. [Empire & Plunder]

Despite calls for restraint in multi-million dollar pay packages, Wall Street bonuses jumped by 17% to $20.3bn (£13bn) for 2009 as America's financial services industry rebounded swiftly from the credit crunch to healthy profitability, according to New York's tax department. New York state's comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, said the average taxable bonus on Wall Street was $123,850, a figure he described as a "bitter pill" for many people still struggling with record unemployment and ongoing economic weakness on the high street. Rolling Stone: Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle. Bloomberg: Secret AIG Document Shows Goldman Sachs Minted Most Toxic CDOs.

When it comes to the trust Americans put in government, a new national poll indicates it's a matter of location, location, location. According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday, only 26 percent of the public trusts the federal government most of the time or always. A third of the people questioned in the poll say they trust their state government most or all of the time. But that number surges to 52 percent for those who say they trust local government most or all of the time.

In the latest Israeli strategy to seize more control, power and land illegally, a Holy War has been invoked. Its is not with innocent intent that the Netanyahu regime has embarked on this current "Mission From God." In reality, where most of us actually dwell, religion is being used as just one more alibi for outright theft, more human rights violations, more false facts on the ground and has already instigated a backlash of "clashes" from Palestinians.

"This is a very obvious fraud, on the public and on the colleague in question. One has to categorically reject such a thing and we must now try, should such things really have happened, to make sure they don't happen again next time." Politico: Bernie Sanders compares climate skeptics to Nazi deniers. The Guardian: Sharp decline in public's belief in climate threat, British poll reveals.

Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe has called for a full investigation into the climategate affair, calling the actions of the scientists involved “criminal” and part of “the greatest scientific scandal of our generation”. Inhofe has asked the Department of Justice to determine if climatologists, including Dr. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University and Dr. James Hansen of Columbia University and NASA, engaged in illegal activity to deliberately falsify data and mislead the public on the facts of global warming. The Republican Senator also called for former Vice President Al Gore to be called back before the Senate to testify on the matter. WUWT: Climategate Minority Report.

MI5 and MI6 will not be investigated over allegations they were complicit in the torture of terror suspects abroad, the Attorney General has decided. The Attorney General also rejected calls for a judicial inquiry because such issues were being addressed in civil litigation going through the courts.

The diplomatic row over the Falkland Islands deepened dramatically after Argentina announced that it would take its protests over British oil exploration to the United Nations today. Argentina’s Foreign Minister is to meet the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon. A resolution is also set to be tabled in the UN General Assembly condemning Britain for allowing Ocean Guardian to begin drilling 60 miles north of the islands after Argentina annouced new shipping controls. Desire Petroleum, which is operating the rig, has said that the drilling will take about a month. Further exploration is likely by other companies. People's Daily: Argentines rally against Britain over disputed islands.

A fifth heart attack, such as the one suffered this week by former Vice President Dick Cheney, is not rare because of advances in modern medicine, cardiologists say. "It's something we see often enough that we're not surprised about it," said Dr. Cam Patterson, chief of cardiology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, who is not involved in Cheney's care. "But it's also an indication that somebody has some luck on their side." CBS News: How Cheney Survived 5 Heart Attacks. Kenny's Sideshow/Daily Paul: Our Sentiments Exactly: There was a man who, everyday, would buy a newspaper on the way to work, glance at the headline, and hand it back to the newsboy. Day after day the man would go through this routine. Finally the newsboy could not stand it and he asked the man,

This graph explains a lot...

Europe is outraged over the targeted killing of Hamas functionary Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. On Monday, members of the European Parliament threatened Israel with the discontinuation of partnership talks. European foreign ministers likewise demanded Israel's full cooperation. AWIP: 'Netanyahu authorized Dubai assassination'. Al Jazeera: By not challenging Israel's FM, Europe failed to lead him where he really wanted to go.

The supposed international electoral watchdog has been credited by the UN and Western governments with helping to expose a massive fraud in last year's presidential poll, forcing Karzai into a second round of voting that was eventually cancelled due to his rival's withdrawal. The move gives President Karzai the power to appoint all five members of Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC).

The International Monetary Fund operates primarily as a banker bailout machine. They cajole and tempt and confuse and threaten the leaders of governments worldwide to pay off the failed bets of the big bankers using the taxpayer funds of their countries. This has been going on a long time, at least since the early 1980s.

Iran says it has irrefutable evidence confirming that terrorist ringleader Abdolmalek Rigi had been aided and abetted by the US government before his arrest. The leader of the Jundallah terrorist group was on a flight from the United Arab Emirates to Kyrgyzstan when he was tracked down by Iranian security forces on Tuesday. An informed source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Press TV that Rigi and one of his deputies were captured after Iranian security forces forced their plane to land at an airport in the Persian Gulf city of Bandar Abbas. Iranian security forces said he was at a US base in Afghanistan 24 hours before his capture and had a forged Afghan passport issued by the US in his possession when he was detained. PressTV: 'Rigi case will go to court soon'. AWIP: Iran arrests Jundallah ringleader, Rigi. Daily Telegraph: Iran arrests most wanted man after police board civilian flight.

[Click on image to enlarge] The core column shown above the firefighter was discovered after the collapse. The angled cut occurs in exactly the manner that shaped charges slice through steel beams to control the way they fall. Notice the hardened once liquid metal. Was thermite used with the shaped charge?

"State Delegate Bob Marshall of Manassas says disabled children are God’s punishment to women who have aborted their first pregnancy. He made that statement Thursday at a press conference to oppose state funding for Planned Parenthood."

"Exasperated House Democratic leaders have compiled a list showing that they have passed 290 bills that have stalled in the Senate. The list is the latest sign that Democrats in the lower chamber are frustrated with their Senate counterparts. ... The list of stalled bills includes both major and minor legislation: healthcare reform; climate change; food safety; financial aid for the U.S. Postal Service; a job security act for wounded veterans; a Civil War battlefield preservation act; vision care for children; the naming of a federal courthouse in Iowa after former Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa); a National Historic Park named for President Jimmy Carter; a bill to improve absentee ballot voting; a bill to improve cybersecurity; and the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act."

Plagiarism, "unethical research" and unreliable findings from "fabricated data" are grounds for retraction of medical journal articles says the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). But one look at the US National Library of Medicine database shows the bogus, ghostwritten papers Wyeth (now Pfizer) planted in medical journals in a ghostwriting scandal that reached Congress last year, still stand unretracted.

Press TV's journalist Amina Taylor, searches for the truth behind the headlines of the most important stories in the UK. This time it is the Jewish Lobby. [Thanks to Gilad Atzmon.]

NATO Secretary General expressed condolences to Afghan people today after Afghanistan's government condemned a NATO air strike on a convoy of vehicles in the south of the country, which killed at least 27 civilians. NATO in a statement earlier said it had hit a suspected insurgent convoy, but troops then found "a number of individuals killed and wounded", including women and children in Uruzgan province. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he spoke to Afghan President Hamid Karzai “to express, through him, my deep condolences to the Afghan people for the tragic loss of innocent Afghan lives in recent military operations.”?? AWIP: US [Nato] raid kills 27 Afghan civilians. The Independent: Karzai warns Operation Moshtarak is killing "too many" civilians.

[Editor's Comment:] NATO's Secretary General has offered his "condolences" and Gen. McChrystal is "deeply saddened". That's a lot of tears & grief, even for crocodiles like these. Then we take it 27 dead civilians are not "too many", after all, Mr. Karzai?

Abdolmalek Rigi, ringleader of the Pakistan-based terrorist group of Jundallah, was captured in an operation on Tuesday. Reports say Rigi was captured on a flight from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan. Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar told reporters that Rigi was arrested outside the country as he was preparing for a new act of sabotage. The minister added that he was consequently transferred to Iran. APA: Iran arrest Jundollah rebel leader Abdul Malik Rigi. PressTV: Iran expounds on Rigi's links with CIA, Mossad. + Rigi's brother exposes US ties with Jundullah.

The Torture Memos will forever be known as the work of John Yoo, the former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer who took the lead in preparing them. But the internal Justice Department report on the memos, released Friday, reveals that a less experienced OLC attorney, working under Yoo, played a key role in the process -- in some cases writing initial drafts of the opinions before getting feedback from Yoo and others. The name of that lawyer is redacted throughout the report. But in what appears to be an oversight in the redaction process, a footnote identifies her as Jennifer Koester. Political Friendster: Jennifer Koester Hardy's Friends. Slate: Jennifer Koester Hardy helped John Yoo write the torture memos. Harper's: Scott Horton: Unredacting the OPR Report. [You can find the Office of Professional Responsibility Report HERE.]

THE .50 CALIBER Bushmaster bolt action rifle is a serious weapon. The model that Pvt. 1st Class Lee Pray is saving up for has a 2,500-yard range and comes with a Mark IV scope and an easy-load magazine. When the 25-year-old drove me to a mall in Watertown, New York, near the Fort Drum Army base, he brought me to see it in its glass case—he visits it periodically, like a kid coveting something at the toy store. It'll take plenty of military paychecks to cover the $5,600 price tag, but he considers the Bushmaster essential in his preparations to take on the US government when it declares martial law.

A YouTube comedy classic here, as random Americans on the street are stopped by a fake news reporter who is in fact part of an Australian TV program geared towards making fun of the United States. Yes, these morons may have been cherry-picked and anyone who gave an intelligent answer to the questions asked were probably left on the cutting room floor – but its still both funny and revealing to watch such epic levels of ignorance. As a side note, it also shows how a guy like George W was re-elected for a second term as well as the future base for Tea Baggers.

The incomes of the very rich in the US grew phenomenally between 1992 and 2007, while their tax rates plummeted, according to recently uncovered IRS statistics. The figures were published on the IRS web site in December of 2009, but received little notice because they were not announced. The report only became widely known when Tax Analysts, a news outlet for tax information, discovered the document and wrote about it on its web site, tax.com, on Thursday.

With CO2 driven global warming becoming more discredited by new scientific evidence every day, the world's meddling climate regulators are casting about for a new gas to demonize. Last year the US Environmental Protection Agency was reportedly thinking of even classifying water vapor as a pollutant, due to its central role in global warming. Because water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, accounting for the majority of the Earth's natural greenhouse effect, water vapor emissions during human activities—such as the processing and burning of fossil fuels—are again coming under increasing scrutiny by government regulators.

Bill Nye the Science Guy was totally clobbered in a debate against meteorologist Joe Bastardi from AccuWeather over global warming on the O'Reilly Factor last night. The utterly mortifying results of this debate are what occur when an actual scientist with a degree in meteorology, Joe Bastardi, debates a pro-global warming, self-professed "scientist" in Bill Nye whose biggest claim to fame, ridiculously, was hosting a pre-teen kids show on PBS during the 90s. Bill Nye, of course, shocked his one or two, remaining fans (who can even remember him) from his 90s TV show when he went on Rachel Maddow's program on MSNBC on February 10 and assaulted Americans who disbelieve in global warming as somehow being unpatriotic. WUWT: Bill O’Reilly hosts Bill Nye The Science Guy and AccuWeather’s Joe Bastardi in Fox News Debate. Watch the segment HERE.

Cheney has had four heart attacks, starting when he was 37. He has had quadruple bypass surgery and two artery-clearing angioplasties.

This a damning chart. It implicates a lot of people, including some of the same Democrats who are now joining Republicans in assailing the president for budgeted deficits, but who voted for the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Feb 16th, 2010: The Salvation Army has launched “The Truth isn’t Sexy” campaign to raise public awareness about human trafficking in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. As Trisha Baptie, a former sex-trade worker said, “It’s human slavery. There are women in brothels in Vancouver right now, and more will come before the Games.”

The Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, will neither deny nor accept responsibility for the murder of Hamas weapons dealer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. But one of the alleged Dubai assassins, a man working under the alias Michael Bodenheimer, left traces in Cologne, Germany and Herzliya, Israel.

Israeli soldiers have clashed with protesters in the West Bank town of Hebron after two disputed shrines were listed as Israeli heritage sites. Palestinian protesters threw bottles and stones at soldiers who responded with tear gas and stun grenades. The protesters say the move to list the shrines as heritage sites would restrict Muslims access to them, but this has been denied. AWIP: Israel does not only steal lands, Israel steals also History and Heritage with no shame!

A fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Martin Kramer, has called for “the West” to take measures to curb the births of Palestinians, a proposal that appears to meet the international legal definition of a call for genocide. Kramer rejects common views that Islamist “radicalization” is caused by US policies such as support for Israel, or propping up despotic dictatorships, and stated that it was inherent in the demography of Muslim societies such as Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip. Too many children, he argued, leads to too many “superfluous young men” who then become violent radicals. Kramer proposes that the number of Palestinian children born in the Gaza Strip should be deliberately curbed, and alleged that this would “happen faster if the West stops providing pro-natal subsidies to Palestinians with refugee status.”

Since Israel occupied the East side of the city of Jerusalem in 1967, it continued to construct Israeli settlements in and around the city; an act that is illegal under international law.

[Dying breed: One of the emaciated tigers in a cage at the Xiongshen Tiger and Bear Mountain Village in Guilin, China] Behind rusted bars, a skeletal male tiger lies panting on the filthy concrete floor of his cage, covered in sores and untreated wounds. His once-fearsome body is so emaciated it is little more than a pitiful pile of fur and bones.

Death is surely a matter of days away and can only come as a welcome release. Wardens at the wildlife park in southwest China say, indifferently, that they do not expect him to see the start of the Year of the Tiger which began last Sunday.

'What can we do?' a female park official asks a small huddle of visitors with a sigh and a casual shrug. 'He's dying, of course, but we have to keep feeding him until he does. It's against the law to kill tigers.'

At the highest levels of the US military, a quiet discussion is going on about putting in place a legal framework that would permit the US government to strip American citizenship from terrorists. The case of Las Cruces, New Mexico born al Qaeda commander Anwar al-Aulaqi, who has been a key organizer and recruiter for the terrorist organization in Yemen is the primary driver of this exploration of possibly modifying US law to allow "de-citizening."