In the last few days the UN have paved the way for a no-fly zone in Libya. David Cameron and Barack Obama have also agreed to draw up "the full spectrum" of military responses to the crisis in Libya. British PM David Cameron outlined his conversation with Obama, saying "We have got to prepare for what we might have to do if he [Gaddafi] goes on brutalising his own people…”

I find myself overwhelmed by Cameron's humanist stand -- it seems he really cares about the Libyan people. And yet, I am left puzzled, for I have never observed Cameron, Obama or the UN being so touched in the same manner by the death of Palestinian civilians, who are also butchered on a daily basis by Israeli air raids. As it seems, in the quote above, Muammar Gaddafi performs far more integrity than Cameron, Obama and the UN. Gaddafi clearly manages to question the Western moralist agenda. If the UN is so enthusiastic to bomb Libya, shouldn’t it really start with Israel?

If America and Britain are, indeed, ‘morally driven’ why do they fail to protect the people of Palestine? Why do they allow Israeli airplanes decorated with Jewish symbols to drop bombs in Gaza? Is it because Israeli bombs are kosher somehow?

As Obama's crime of the destruction of Bradley Manning continues to unfold before our very eyes, Manning friend David House now tells us that over 8 months in isolation with movement and sleep restrictions placed on him have been having their intended effect. House has told MSNBC that by the end of January Manning appeared "catatonic" and that he had "severe problems communicating," with it having taken House nearly 45 minutes on a recent visit to engage in any meaningful way (video below.) House said Manning's demeanor was as "if he had just woken up and didn't know what was going on around him." Manning was "utterly exhausted physically and mentally...it was difficult to have any kind of social engagement." Also, a full month after Congressman Dennis Kucinich formally requested a visit, the Army has stalled on the request. All for the crime of [allegedly] reporting war crimes and criminal behavior even among the highest-ranking military officials in Iraq. In 2005, General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said [RE: Abu Ghraib]: “It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member [in Iraq], if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to try to stop it.”

Toyotabedzrock Posterous: 10 Things You Can Do To Help Bradley Manning
WikiLeaks: IRAQ: Collateral Murder - VIDEO (This is the video he is accused of leaking)
John Pilger: How The So-Called Guardians Of Free Speech Are Silencing The Messenger
Ray McGovern: Army’s Mafia Abuse of Pvt. Bradley Manning
Margaret Kimberley: Peace Prize Torture
Empty Wheel: Playing God with Bradley Manning

FIGHT BACK: Internet user arrested for linking to other websites. Brian McCarthy ran a website, channelsurfing.net, that linked to various sites where you could watch online streams of TV shows and sports networks. A couple months ago, the government seized his domain name and on Friday they arrested him and charged him with criminal copyright infringement -- punishable by five years in prison.

We just obtained a copy of the complaint (below) that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made against him -- and they don't even allege that he made a copy of anything! Just that he ran what they call a "linking website" which linked to various sites with copyrighted material. Under that sort of thinking, everyone who's sent around a link to a copyrighted YouTube video is a criminal.

Four Things You Need to Know About Rep. Peter King’s Anti-Muslim Witch Hunt

1) The Threat of Homegrown Islamic Terrorism Has Been Greatly Exaggerated. According to the FBI, Muslim-Americans were responsible for just 6% of all domestic terrorist attacks from 1980 to 2005. Latinos were responsible for 42% of terrorist attacks, left-wing extremists for 24%, and Jewish extremists for 7%. Yes, that’s right, Latinos and Jews have committed more domestic terrorist attacks since 1980 than Muslims (LoonWatch).

Since 9/11, America has drastically increased its terrorism against Muslims living overseas, thus fueling an increase in anti-American Islamic terrorism. Despite this, the number of terrorist attacks committed by Muslim-Americans is still relatively low. Last year, for instance, 10 Muslim-Americans were suspected of planning domestic terrorist attacks; of them, just one, Faisal Shahzad (aka the Times Square Bomber) actually carried out his plot, which, we all know, failed. Let me repeat that: last year, one Muslim-American attempted an act of terrorism on US soil. One. One attempt, zero deaths (Duke).

By contrast, 20 non-Muslim-Americans were suspected of planning domestic terrorist attacks last year, including right-wing suicide terrorist Joseph Stack, who flew a small plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and an innocent bystander, a father and grandfather named Vernon Hunter. Richard Cohen points out that, “when measured against ordinary violent crime,” the threat of Muslim-American terrorism “is slight” and that “the threat from non-Muslims is much greater” (Washington Post). [Source]

France is the first country to formally recognise the legitimacy of Libya's rebel National Transitional Council and will open an embassy in Benghazi, the government announced after meeting with NTC representatives in Paris Thursday. Libya’s opposition battled for military and diplomatic advantage against Moammar Gadhafi’s embattled regime on Thursday, winning official recognition from France and hitting government forces with heavy weapons on the road to the capital. France became the first country to formally recognize the rebels’ newly created Interim Governing Council, saying it planned to exchange ambassadors after President Nicolas Sarkozy met with two representatives of the group based in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. The international Red Cross said dozens of civilians have been wounded or killed in recent days in grueling battles between Gadhafi’s army and the opposition movement trying to oust him.

Libyan forces captured, detained and brutally beat a BBC news team while they were trying to reach the western city of Zawiya, the BBC states. The three-member team say Libya's army and secret police beat them with fists, knees and rifles and then performed mock executions. "We were lined up against the wall. I was the last in line - facing the wall," Chris Cobb-Smith told the BBC. "I looked and I saw a plain-clothes guy with a small sub-machine gun. He put it to everyone's neck. I saw him and he screamed at me. Then he walked up to me, put the gun to my neck and pulled the trigger twice. The bullets whisked past my ear. The soldiers just laughed." The news team said they witnessed other detainees who were hooded, handcuffed and often screaming in agony. The team, which was detained Monday and then held for 21 hours, has since flown out of the country. The attack on the journalists, which included being held in a cage while others were beaten around them, represents the most serious case yet involving the targeting of international media, the Guardian reports.

The Guardian: Guardian Correspondent Ghaith Abdul-Ahad Missing in Libya...

A furious row between Nato-led forces and the Afghan president over the killing of civilians looks set to turn into a full-blown crisis after an elderly cousin of Hamid Karzai was killed during a botched Nato operation. Officials in the southern province of Kandahar confirmed that Haji Yar Mohammad Karzai, a second cousin of the president, was accidentally shot during an overnight operation in the family village of Karz. Senior tribal leaders, including Karzai's powerful brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, had gathered for the funeral in keeping with the Islamic tradition of burying the dead within 24 hours. Athough details are scarce, it appears that a major intelligence failure could have been responsible for the deaths after Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) issued a statement correcting an earlier press release that had claimed a man killed in operations in the area was the father of a Taliban leader.

The US government has used Britain's nuclear secrets as a bargaining chip in its talks with Russia on the controversial 'New STARY' treaty, it has been disclosed. The US secretly agreed to give the Russians sensitive information about every Trident missile it supplies to Britain to appease them into signing the new arms control treaty, the Daily Telegraph reported. New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) is a bilateral nuclear arms reduction treaty signed between the United States and the Russian Federation. The treaty was first signed on April 8, 2010, in Prague by Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, the presidents of the two countries.

AWIP: WikiLeaks cables: US agrees to tell Russia Britain's nuclear secrets

The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and his lawyers have repeatedly criticized the Swedish legal system and argued that his chances of a fair trial has been destroyed.

[translate.google.com] Police interrogators in Assangeutredningen is friends with one of the two women who reported Wikileaks-founder of sexual abuse, showing Expressen review. Greetings on the web reveals that the hearing officer and the woman who reported Julian Assange had contact already in April 2009 - 16 months before Julian Assange police were notified of including rape. On his own facebook page praised police interrogators two weeks ago and described the women's lawyer Julian Assange that the "overly hyped bursting bubble".

Expressen: Polisen vän med kvinna som anmälde Assange
The Guardian: Julian Assange police investigator a friend of sex assault accuser
Israel Shamir: PoliceLeaks: How the Swedes Set Up Julian Assange

Military personnel opened fire on Tuesday night and used what was originally assumed to be tear gas to disperse a group of demonstrators who were trying to bring additional tents into the protest area outside Sanaa University. According to witnesses, the soldiers fired warning shots into the air before shooting gas - and in some cases live bullets - into the crowd, killing one and injuring at least 50. Earlier reports indicated that the gas used was tear gas, but doctors who have been treating the wounded refuted that claim today. "The material in this gas makes people convulse for hours. It paralyses them. They couldn't move at all. We tried to give them oxygen but it didn't work," said Amaar Nujaim, a field doctor who works for Islamic Relief. "We are seeing symptoms in the patient's nerves, not in their respiratory systems. I'm 90 per cent sure its nerve gas and not tear gas that was used," said Sami Zaid, a doctor at the Science and Technology Hospital in Sanaa.

The Dalai Lama has announced he is stepping down as political leader of the Tibetan government in exile. He says the time has come for his replacement by a "freely elected" leader. The Dalai Lama, whose more significant role is as the movement's spiritual leader, said he would seek an amendment allowing him to resign his political office when the exiled Tibetan parliament meets next week. "My desire to devolve authority has nothing to do with a wish to shirk responsibility," he said in an address in Dharamshala, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile in northern India. "It is to benefit Tibetans in the long run. It is not because I feel disheartened." The Dalai Lama was 15 when he was appointed head of state in 1950 after Chinese troops moved into Tibet. He fled his homeland in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

Britain's Serious Fraud Office said seven men aged between 42 and 54 were held in raids on two businesses and eight homes in London. The properties were being searched and the suspects questioned at police stations in the city. Two men, aged 42 and 43, were arrested in the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik. Entrepreneurs Robert and Vincent Tchenguiz confirmed they were among those arrested in London and said they were "cooperating fully" with authorities. A police van was parked outside the office of the brothers' investment firm, Rotch Property, in the upmarket Mayfair area. The Tchenguiz brothers amassed a large property portfolio and had investments in some of Britain's best-known retail brands, including grocer J. Sainsbury PLC and pub chain Mitchells & Butlers. But the business borrowed more than 1 billion pounds ($1.62 billion) from Kaupthing, and was plunged into crisis when the bank collapsed.

The Guardian: Tchenguiz brothers arrested in Kaupthing investigation

You don’t have to look far for instances of people lying to themselves. Whether it’s a drug-addled actor or an almost-toppled dictator, some people seem to have an endless capacity for rationalising what they did, no matter how questionable. We might imagine that these people really know that they’re deceiving themselves, and that their words are mere bravado. But Zoe Chance from Harvard Business School thinks otherwise.

Using experiments where people could cheat on a test, Chance has found that cheaters not only deceive themselves, but are largely oblivious to their own lies. Their ruse is so potent that they’ll continue to overestimate their abilities in the future, even if they suffer for it. Cheaters continue to prosper in their own heads, even if they fail in reality.

This 25th year of tracking global wealth was one to remember. The 2011 Billionaires List breaks two records: total number of listees (1,210) and combined wealth ($4.5 trillion). This horde surpasses the gross domestic product of Germany, one of only six nations to have fewer billionaires this year. BRICs led the way: Brazil, Russia, India and China produced 108 of the 214 new names. These four nations are home to one in four members, up from one in ten five years ago. Before this year only the U.S. had ever produced more than 100 billionaires. China now has 115 and Russia 101.

Atop the heap is Mexico's Carlos Slim Helu, who added $20.5 billion to his fortune, more than any other billionaire. The telecom mogul, who gets 62% of his fortune from America Movil ( AMX - news - people ), is now worth $74 billion and has pulled far ahead of his two closest rivals. Bill Gates, No. 2, and Warren Buffett, No. 3, both added a more modest $3 billion to their piles and are now worth $56 billion and $50 billion, respectively. Gates, who now gets 70% of his fortune from investments outside of Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ), has actually been investing in the Mexican stock market and has holdings in Mexican Coke bottler Femsa and Grupo Televisa.

Raw Story: Facebook puts six on Forbes billionaire list