The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) have filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., demanding to know more about an alleged policy of assassinating Americans thought to be involved in terrorist activities. "The United States cannot simply execute people, including its own citizens, anywhere in the world based on its own say-so," Vince Warren, Executive Director of the CCR, said in a media advisory. "The law prohibits the government from killing without trial or conviction other than in the face of an imminent threat that leaves no time for deliberation or due process. That the government adds people to kill lists after a bureaucratic process and leaves them on the lists for months at a time flies in the face of the Constitution and international law." The groups have sued President Obama, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Department of Defense. WaPo: Civil liberties groups challenge constitutionality of secret U.S. program to target terror suspects for killing.

Less than two weeks ago Americans were glued to their TVs for footage of the “last brigade” of US soldiers withdrawing from Iraq. With embedded MSNBC journalists and in-studio officials trumpeting a military victory, an America exultant in having finally “won” the war, it was extremely successful, and that 50,000 US troops are still there and hundreds of Iraqis have died since the announcement was really only a minor hiccup. It was so successful, in fact, that the Obama Administration has decided to do it again, which is one of the advantages fake endings of wars have over actual endings.

Antiwar: Pentagon is desperate to stay (The Dog Ate My Exit Timeline)

We are still under siege, darkness...And hunger...
Do you still remember us?!

To get water we have to walk so far...To fill a bottle or a jar...
Do you still remember us?!

We still have No food...Or medicine to be fed...Our kids...are dying every day...
in their beds...And many have just tears to shed...
Do you still remember us?!

Death! is everywhere...that sometimes we have No place, to make Our prayer...
Do you still remember us?!

We have nothing but pain...illness...And daily sadness...to Share...
Do you really still remember us?! -At least in your prayer?!

***

Gaza children implore you! They are dying due to the blockade!
There is 'growing humanitarian crisis,' happening in Gaza...
There is an EXTREME restricted access, to food, water, and medicine!!

● We, reserve combat officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, who were raised upon the principles of Zionism, sacrifice and giving to the people of Israel and to the State of Israel, who have always served in the front lines, and who were the first to carry out any mission, light or heavy, in order to protect the State of Israel and strengthen it.
● We, combat officers and soldiers who have served the State of Israel for long weeks every year, in spite of the dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty all over the Occupied Territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country, and that had the sole purpose of perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people. We, whose eyes have seen the bloody toll this Occupation exacts from both sides.
● We, who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Territories, destroy all the values we had absorbed while growing up in this country.
● We, who understand now that the price of Occupation is the loss of IDF’s human character and the corruption of the entire Israeli society.
● We, who know that the Territories are not Israel, and that all settlements are bound to be evacuated in the end.
● We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements.
● We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.
● We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel’s defense.
● The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose – and we shall take no part in them.

Lebanese counter-intelligence continues to round up a number of alleged Mossad agents embedded inside the Lebanese political structure and telecommunications sector, according to reports reaching WMR from Beirut. Although Hezbollah provided Daniel Bellmare and his UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) office in Beirut with six DVDs showing Israeli surveillance drone footage of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s locations prior to his remote bombing assassination in February 2005, Bellemare wants Hezbollah to turn over more data on how Hezbollah was able to intercept Israel command and control communications with its drones over Beirut. WMR has learned that Bellemare’s team is riddled with Israeli agents and CIA agents who are also working on behalf of Israeli intelligence. Hezbollah has charged, and WMR has previously reported, that Mossad was behind the assassination of Hariri in order to rid Lebanon of Syrian forces and destabilize the country, thus weakening Hezbollah’s influence. The operation against Hariri, as WMR also previously reported, involved the CIA and operatives for the CIA proprietary firm Blackwater, now known as Xe Security. Israel is obviously concerned that some of its agents in Lebanon, of which there are many, may be double agents passing intelligence to Hezbollah.

Photo: AP/ScanPix

SAN JOSE MINE, Chile—As Chilean government rescuers prepare to start the months long task of digging out 33 miners trapped half a mile below ground, questions are emerging about whether the men will be paid during their ordeal.

The firm that ran the mine, Cia. Minera San Esteban Primera, has said it may have to declare bankruptcy, because of the shutdown of the mine and the flurry of government investigations and civil actions it is facing. The local mining union has asked the government to step in and meet the San José payroll starting in September. But on Monday, government officials said that, while they are keen to assist the miners, the government isn't legally permitted to pay their salaries.

The salary debate unfolded Monday as the government made final preparations to start using a massive 30-ton drill to burrow down to where the miners have been holed up since Aug. 5. The government said it could take three to four months to reach the miners and then hoist them out.

A labor ministry subsecretary, Bruno Baranda, replied that the government "cannot legally, within the regulations, take over labor responsibilities such as paying salary or pension benefits." He and other government officials said the government had planned to offer the miners training and assistance in finding other jobs. That doesn't answer the question of how the workers' families will survive until they are rescued.

Three days before the direct peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are officially launched in Washington on Thursday, a Palestinian official revealed on Monday that Israel began to expand two Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The Palestinian state-run news agency Wafa has quoted Ghassan Daghlas, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) official, who is in charge of the Jewish settlement file in northern West Bank, as saying that the expansion have begun in the settlements of Elon Moreh and Giv'at Gilad north of Nablus.

"We saw the Israeli authorities allowing five caravans into the settlement of Elon Moreh north of the city of Nablus," said Daghlas, adding that similar expansion has taken place into the settlement of Giv'at Gilad on the road between Nablus and Qalqilia.

France's deportation of Roma is nothing short of state-sponsored racism. When will the international community stand up for us? What era are we living in? The sad answer is that we are living – once again, it would seem – at a time when France is harassing and expelling its Romany population in the name of law and order. Last week, the French government began the roundup of more than 700 Romany immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania, and ordered special flights chartered to send them back to their home countries. The deportations will begin on Thursday. Over the past month, the French government began dismantling Romany camps; at present, more than 50 camps all over France have been destroyed by the state. At the same time, France has announced two other policies directed at Roma, Travellers and other immigrants: the criminalisation of entire families rather than just individuals and the stripping of citizenship from immigrants with criminal convictions.

AWIP: Back to Vichy
Saman: The Plight of the Romani People
AWIP: First they came for the Muslims; then they came for the Roma...(VIDEO)
Michaela Stanková: A wall to keep out Roma and The cost of excluding the Roma minority
Pete Brook: The Roma People: Matt Lutton building upon a legacy of wandering photographers

The actual footage of Pastor Steven Anderson getting Tazed and breaten by DHS agents! We also examine interstate check points and watch how the pros from www.CheckpointUSA.org handle it.

As official videographer for the U.S. government, Kurt Sonnenfeld was detailed to Ground Zero on September 11, 2001, where he spent one month filming 29 tapes: "What I saw at certain moments and in certain places ... is very disturbing!" He never handed them over to the authorities and has been persecuted ever since.

AWIP: U.S cameraman has proof 911 was a lie

Gareth Williams was a UK spy "who made regular trips to the US National Security Agency." On 23 August 2010, the police found his body in an MI6 flat near to MI6 HQ in London. According to "a source" Mr Williams’ body was found during a "welfare check" by police following a call from one of his colleagues at GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) in Cheltenham. According to Nicholas Anderson, a Former MI6 agent, "It took nearly two weeks for the FCO (Foreign & Commonwealth Office) employee assistance head to follow up on why he hadn't been at work."