General Wesley Clark reveals the US plan to invade and take over 7 countries, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Lybia, Somalia, Sudan, And Iran, before we even invaded Afghanistan. The first part of the plan was revealed 10 days after 9/11 and was expanded to included the other nations. Clark is quoted as saying the invasion wasn't based on links to Al-Queda or any other intelligence reports but just because the US has an army that is great at taking over other nations. [Full Story]

Authorities say the death toll from the tornado stands at 89 but is likely to go higher. Search-and-rescue and relief crews race against an approaching storm, but their efforts are complicated by downed power lines, fires and transportation problems.

Reporting from Joplin, Mo. and Los Angeles— Search-and-rescue teams on Monday pored through rubble and wreckage, all that was left in many areas of Joplin, where at least 89 people have died, more than 2,000 structures have been ripped apart and whole neighborhoods have been obliterated after a tornado carved a six-mile path through southwestern Missouri. Would-be rescuers conducted door-to-door searches, avoiding downed power lines that had ignited fires fueled by leaking gas. Debris was a constant danger and a barrier to search teams. "We still believe there are people to be saved in the rubble," Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon told reporters, describing the carnage in what is the state's worst tornado disaster. He warned that another storm was on the way, complicating rescue efforts.

CSM: Missouri tornado killed at least 89 according to officials
Chicago Tribune: Pictures: Missouri storm damage

On 6th may, the Syrian army and security forces broke into Marqab village and arrested many men who thought to have participated in protests. The next day, the arrested men's female relatives gathered on the highway between the cities of Baniyas and Latakia to demand the release of the arrested men. Members of the security forces asked them to leave and, when they refused to do so, they opened fire.

Faced with an embarrassing collection of WikiLeaks cables released by Dawn, Pakistan’s military today issued an official denial of the information contained within one of the most damning cables. They insists no US special forces were deployed anywhere in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

Yet diplomatic cables from summer of 2009 clearly contradict this, with former US Ambassador Anne Patterson reporting on the successful embeds to the State Department. As of May 2009, they were not allowed on deployments, but only to help in coordination. But this soon changed, as later cables show that by September, the US was embedding across the Frontier Corps, including at their headquarters, and had also set up operations in Balochistan. Other cables showed US troops providing “assistance” in the Malakand invasion of early 2009, but did not specify how deeply this went.

MIRAMSHAH, Pakistan — Based here in the remote, weathered hills of North Waziristan, is the Haqqani Network, a group of insurgents closely aligned with the Taliban that has long provided a safe haven for "Al Qaeda." [CIA]

The Haqqani Network is believed to be one of the greatest threats to U.S.-led NATO forces operating in neighboring Afghanistan. This is a region ruled by tribal law and allegiances, making it difficult for even a Pakistani from outside to travel freely. It is a Wild West where everyone is watching everyone else, a semi-autonomous region where, according to the country’s constitution, normal judicial and criminal laws don’t apply. There are no police here, no army and no courts. Pashtunwali, a centuries-old tribal code, rules day-to-day life and is the law of land. All disputes are resolved through a Jirga, an assembly of community elders, whose word is final.

PressTV: US drone strike kills 7 people in Pakistan
Yahoo: Pakistan spy chief asks U.S. to end drone strikes

KARACHI: Thousands demonstrated in Karachi on Sunday to demand an immediate end to US missile strikes in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas and urge the blocking of NATO supplies passing through the country.

Activists from the Tehreek-e-Insaf ( Movement for Justice) continued a two-day sit-in outside the city's Arabian Sea port, urging the government to end its cooperation with Washington's "war on terror". "It is not Pakistan's war, this is America's war. This war has killed thousands of innocent Pakistanis, women and children," the group's leader and former cricketer Imran Khan told the gathering of around 7,000 supporters.

Taliban leader Mullah Omar was supposedly killed two days ago in Pakistan according to an unnamed Afghan defense official who provided this information to TOLOnews on Monday. However, another Afghan defense spokesperson, Lutfullah Mashal, refused to divulge any information beyond logistical details related to Omar’s physical relocation. Mashal told TOLOnews:

"We confirm that Gen. Hamid Gul moved him from Quetta to North Waziristan two days ago, but we cannot confirm his death right now," said Mr Mashal.

This would fulfill last week’s prediction by an Afghan security official who mentioned that Pakistan’s spy agency was scheming to move Mullah Omar from Pakistan to Afghanistan, because the Pakistanis wanted him killed on Afghan soil.

Stephen Lendman: Killings, Detentions and Torture in Egypt

US intelligence agents have staked out suspected "terrorists" in Sweden, without the authorisation of the government there, the online edition of a Swedish daily reported Sunday.

Sweden's intelligence service Säpo discovered in 2009 that two Americans were conducting illegal, under-cover investigations in Sweden, the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) daily reported. The two men were discovered when Säpo noticed them tracking people who it was also investigating for suspected ties to terrorist groups, the paper said, quoting several unnamed sources close to Säpo. Washington had not informed Swedish authorities of the agents' activities in the country, and soon after their activities were discovered, the two US citizens left the country, the paper added.

Referring to Washington's failure to inform Pakistan before it tracked and killed Osama bin Laden three weeks ago, Svenska Dagladet insisted "the US has also carried out intelligence against terrorists on Swedish territory. "Sweden has thus become the scene of a foreign power's terror hunt without the knowledge of the Swedish government," it said.

NBC Washington: Arrest of Man In Wheelchair Raises Concerns

The current issue of Toronto Life's cover story is the sad and perverse tale of Byron Sonne, a Toronto security researcher, hackspace stalwart, and anarcho-libertarian who decided to show up the security theatre at play in last year's billion-dollar-plus G20 preparations. Sonne published extensive accounts of the vulnerabilities in the preparations, taunting the police and officials who were putting on a kind of repressive, city-wide puppet show about security, rather than securing much of anything. Sonne was arrested and spent more than just under a year in jail, being held without bail on a variety of charges, almost all of which have been dropped (his bail conditions are nothing short of Kafkaesque). Sonne's actions seem, on their face, to be over-the-top and ill-considered (though we haven't heard his side of things yet), but the Canadian judicial system's response is so insanely paranoid that it makes Sonne look extremely reasonable by comparison.

Sonne's story is the sad tale of a geek who lost everything -- his marriage, his home, his livelihood -- because he couldn't figure out how to contain or express his disgust with the state's increasing encroachment on personal liberty. If the authorities wanted to make an object lesson to scare activists into quietly accepting "security" measures, the response to the Toronto G20 (including the arrest and jailing of Sonne) is absolutely fit for purpose.

Taliban [CIA] claims responsibility for attack on naval facility in Karachi that has left at least 13 dead. Pakistan navy has declared that the operation involving an attack by armed men on a military base in the Pakistani city of Karachi has come to an end, according to Al Jazeera's sources.

According to a navy spokesman, 11 navy officers and two paramilitary ranger have been killed and 14 others injured in the attack that lasted for hours before ending past midday on Monday. At least a dozen men attacked the Mehran base, a key naval aviation facility, late on Sunday. Two maritime patrol aircraft were destroyed and at least nine people were also wounded in the assault.

Thomas Drake worked for the National Security Agency before he was indicted by it. Drake felt that taxpayer money was being misused on unnecessary intelligence, not the information that would lead to the successful capture of terrorists. While the government says he betrayed his country, Drake, facing 35 years in prison if convicted, says he only pointed out government mismanagement. Drake was imprisoned under the Espionage Act of 1917. “The entire national security establishment – it was a failure, a fundamental systemic breakdown,” Drake told “60 Minutes”‘ Scott Pelley in his first televised interview. [Raw Story]

AWIP: Charges Against the N.S.A.’s Thomas Drake

In his address to the influential pro-Israeli lobby in the U.S., AIPAC, President Barack Obama has backtracked from earlier remarks regarding an Israeli-Palestinian agreement based on their pre-1967 borders, suggesting Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu had misrepresented him.

Speaking in Washington to a welcoming crowd of Israel's hard-line supporters, Obama said delays in moving toward a two-state solution would undermine Israel's security. "There was nothing particularly original in my proposal," Obama told an estimated 10,000 delegations to the powerful pro-Israel lobby, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). “This basic framework for negotiations has long been the basis for discussions among the parties, including previous U.S. administrations,” AFP reported on Sunday.

Jason Ditz: Obama’s AIPAC Speech Placates Netanyahu
Jason Ditz: Obama ‘Clarifies’: 1967 Borders Didn’t Really Mean 1967 Borders
James M. Wall: Obama Speech Mired In Zionist Rhetoric
Wall Street Journal: Transcript of Obama’s Remarks to AIPAC
PressTV: Obama: UN vote won't create Palestinian state
Glenn Greenwald: Obama and the Israel Lobby

Ashraf Ezzat: In Obama –Netanyahu Meeting, Who Is Who? - “The old game is over fellows, this is a whole new game now and it is going to be Israel once again, and like it or not, who will set the new rules. And as the United States had annexed Texas back in 1845 Israel simply followed in her footsteps and annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem, big deal.” says Benjamin Netanyahu. “At this point and as the ticking seconds seemed like ages for Obama, it was clear that Mr. Netanyahu was slapping Obama in the face in public and for the whole world to see.”