Amnesty International has obtained video footage that points to a ”shoot to kill” policy being used by the Syrian security forces to quell reform protests.

The footage, smuggled out of Syria by contacts of Amnesty International, shows protesters shot and beaten by security forces, soldiers conducting a night raid on the ‘Omari mosque in Dera’a and a mass funeral in Izraa. “These extraordinary images were taken by Syrians who have risked their lives to document the callous attempts of the authorities to terrorize the pro-reform movement from going out onto the streets,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa. “Faced with this and other compelling evidence of rampant abuses, President Bashar al-Assad must stop the Syrian security forces shooting unarmed protesters and ensure that perpetrators are held to account for their treatment of fellow Syrians.” The video includes scenes of:

• The military raiding the ‘Omari mosque, which was being used as a field hospital.
• Soldiers armed men in plain clothes inside the mosque after their operation, filming bodies on the floor, celebrating and shouting “Take pictures, we killed them, they are traitors”.
• Badly injured, possibly dead, individuals being carried hurriedly away.
• People who appear to have sustained severe head injuries and in some cases to have died as a result.
• Two scenes of uniformed members of the security forces bludgeoning injured men lying on the road.
• Testimony from an ambulance worker who tells of how the army would not let anyone tend to the wounded.

Gulf News: Syria video shows 'shoot to kill' policy: Amnesty
Facebook/PressTour: Syria video points to shoot to kill policy - VIDEO

War-crimes suspect Ratko Mladic looks hollow-cheeked and shrunken after a decade and a half on the run, nothing like the beefy commander accused of personally orchestrating some of the worst horrors of the Balkan wars.

A police photo of Mladic moments after his arrest in a tiny northern Serbian village shows a clean-shaven Mladic with thinning hair wearing a navy blue baseball hat and looking up with wide eyes, as if in surprise. After spending a night in jail, Mladic was due back in a Belgrade court on Friday for a hearing on his extradition to a U.N. war crimes tribunal. The Bosnian Serb wartime army commander is facing international war crimes charges, including the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. A Thursday extradition hearing was adjourned due to what Mladic's lawyer claimed was his poor health. Serbian war crimes prosecutors say the health issue appears to be a tactic to delay his extradition to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.

LA Times: Mladic can be extradited, judge rules
B92.net: Obstacle removed, new to be invented
Google/AP: UN war crimes tribunal confident it can deal with Ratko Mladic health issues
The Dispatch: Serbia Says Jailed Mladic Will Face War Crimes Trial
Yahoo: Witness: An evening with Ratko Mladic
NYT: In a Serbian Village, Disbelief and Bitterness Over Arrest

WASHINGTON -- Congress on Thursday passed a four-year extension of post-Sept. 11 powers to search records and conduct roving wiretaps in pursuit of terrorists. Votes taken in rapid succession in the Senate and House came after lawmakers rejected attempts to temper the law enforcement powers to ensure that individual liberties are not abused.

Following the 250-153 evening vote in the House, the legislation to renew three terrorism-fighting authorities headed for the president's signature with only hours to go before the provisions expire at midnight. With Obama currently in France, the White House said the president would use an autopen machine that holds a pen and signs his actual signature. It is only used with proper authorization of the president. Minutes before the midnight deadline, the White House said Obama had signed the bill.

PressTV: US Senate OKs Patriot Act extension
AWIP: There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says
Stephen Lendman: Extending Key Patriot Act Provisions

[Source] KABUL, Afghanistan — Nine NATO service members were killed Thursday in Afghanistan, including seven U.S. troops among eight who died when a powerful bomb exploded in a field where they were patrolling on foot, officials said.

Two Afghan policemen also died and two others were wounded in the explosion in the mountainous Shorabak district of Kandahar province, 12 miles (19 kilometers) from the Pakistan border, said Gen. Abdul Raziq, chief of the Afghan border police in the province. "Two months ago, we cleared this area of terrorists, but still they are active there," Raziq said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast. "A bomb was planted for them in a field," Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told The Associated Press in a telephone call.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information, confirmed that seven American service members died in the bombing. The international military coalition reported that one additional NATO service member was killed Thursday when a helicopter crashed in the east. U.S. officials said seven American soldiers were killed in the bombing. NATO said an eighth soldier was also killed, but his nationality was not immediately released. It was the deadliest day for coalition forces in Afghanistan since April 27, when a veteran Afghan military pilot opened fire at Kabul airport and killed eight U.S. troops and an American civilian contractor.

Jason Ditz: Eight US Troops Killed in Kandahar Blast
PressTV: US chopper shot down in Afghanistan

Congress has reliably defeated efforts to end the Afghan War on the back of strong support from a number of Representatives who have never seen a war they didn’t like. Today’s highly anticipated vote was assumed to be a defeat before it began, but turned out extremely close.

Indeed, though the amendment was defeated, it lost only 204-215, and carried more than 90% of the sitting Democratic representatives. With the bipartisan bill also carrying a number of freshmen Republicans’ support, a couple of shifts here or there could have actually swung the vote the other way, and left President Obama’s ambition to keep the war going beyond 2014 in an awful mess.

Jim Lobe: House Votes Suggest Growing War Weariness
Yahoo: US lawmakers pass $690 billion Pentagon bill

Pakistan also tells the U.S. to cut back its troops in the country, in a move amid deepening mistrust after the U.S. raid to kill Osama bin Laden and a CIA contractor's shooting of two Pakistani men. Joints Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen heads to Pakistan for talks.

Reporting from Washington— In a clear sign of Pakistan's deepening mistrust of the United States, Islamabad has told the Obama administration to reduce the number of U.S. troops in the country and has moved to close three military intelligence liaison centers, setting back American efforts to eliminate insurgent sanctuaries in largely lawless areas bordering Afghanistan, U.S. officials said. The liaison centers, also known as intelligence fusion cells, in Quetta and Peshawar are the main conduits for the United States to share satellite imagery, target data and other intelligence with Pakistani ground forces conducting operations against militants, including Taliban fighters who slip into Afghanistan to attack U.S. and allied forces. U.S. special operations units have relied on the three facilities, two in Peshawar and one in Quetta, to help coordinate operations on both sides of the border, senior U.S. officials said. The U.S. units are now being withdrawn from all three sites, the officials said, and the centers are being shut down. It wasn't immediately clear whether the steps are permanent.

[Video] MADISON, Wisconsin (Reuters) - A Wisconsin judge on Thursday voided a controversial Republican-backed law restricting the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions.

Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi said Republican lawmakers violated the state's open meetings law in rushing the legislation through during massive protests at the state Capitol earlier this year. Sumi ruled the evidence was "clear and convincing" that Republicans failed to comply with the law in a hastily called meeting in March to push through legislation containing the collective bargaining changes. The Wisconsin proposal championed by Republican Governor Scott Walker would eliminate most collective bargaining rights for public sector unions and require them to pay more for pensions and health coverage. The law has been on hold pending the legal decision.

Stephen Lendman: Union Busting in America
Stephen Lendman: Reactionary Extremism in Wisconsin and Ohio
Stephen Lendman: Battleground Wisconsin: Corporate Power v. Worker Rights
Stephen Lendman: Spreading Activism for Change
AWIP: Wisconsin democratic state congressman rips the hell out of Republicans on the floor of Congress

US President Barack Obama has come under fire for violating the 1973 War Powers Act by continuing military operations in Libya without Congressional approval.

The Act authorizes the US president to commence military operations without consulting with US Congress. However, within 48 hours Obama must confer with Congress that will afterward have an additional 60-day period to vote on whether military operations are to continue. Sixty days have now passed and Congress has not approved the military operation, making the Libya war illegal, a Press TV correspondent reported on Friday. Dan Burton, the Indiana representative, says Obama “has received no authorization whatsoever from the Congress of the United States. And it is in violation of the War Powers Act.” “The president is not a king, and he shouldn't act like a king,” Burton added.

Israeli army spokesperson Brigadier General Ruth Yaron testified this week in what was expected to be the final hearing of the Rachel Corrie trial, now in its fifteenth month of oral testimonies. But once again, the conclusion of the oral testimonies has been pushed back and the Corrie family continues to wait for a final decision. Colonel Pinhas (Pinky) Zuaretz, the commanding officer of the Gaza Division’s Southern Brigade at the time of Rachel’s death, was expected to testify in court but could not appear. The lawsuit, filed in 2005 by the Corrie family, charges the Israeli government and the Ministry of Defense with criminal negligence, causing the death of 23-year-old American peace activist Rachel Corrie.

Rachel was crushed to death by a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer on 16 March 2003 while attempting to shield the demolition of a home near the Rafah crossing in the occupied Gaza Strip. The case seeks one dollar in damages from the Israeli military. The highly symbolic reparation demand illustrates that the more meaningful redress for the Corries will be holding the Israeli army and government accountable for their criminal negligence and guilt in the killing of their daughter.

Reuters journalist Suleiman al-Khalidi, a Jordanian citizen, was arrested by Syrian security police when covering the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In the following story, he recounts his treatment at the hands of the Syrian intelligence services and the scenes of torture he witnessed around him during four days of confinement. Like other foreign correspondents, he was subsequently expelled from Syria. He now reports on the continuing unrest from Amman. The item is accompanied by an account by correspondent Yara Bayoumy of others' experiences of abuse in Syrian prisons.

U.S. space shuttle Endeavour blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, kicking off its 25th and final mission. The event was important to the eyes of media and scientists in China because the shuttle carries the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS) particle detector, mankind's most ambitious effort to date to explore the universe' origin with Nobel laureate physicist Samuel Ting as the program's principal scientist. The 7,000-kg AMS worth 2 billion U.S. dollars will be placed in the International Space Station (ISS) and an international team of more than 600 scientists, including many from China's mainland and Taiwan, have joined Ting's exhausting but respectable AMS program.

China's scientists have played a crucial role in designing and manufacturing some core parts of the device. However, Chinese journalists who hoped to cover the launching of Endeavour were simply denied entry to the site by a ban initiated by Frank Wolf, chairman of the Committee of Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies in the House of Representatives.

BELGRADE -- Serbian President Boris Tadić confirmed during a news conference in Belgrade today that a man suspected to be Hague fugitive Ratko Mladić had been arrested.

According to reports earlier in the day, the Serbian police arrested on Thursday a man going by the name of Milorad Komadić, who was suspected to be former VRS General Ratko Mladić. B92 previously received confirmation that a man suspected to be Mladić was in custody. The secret operation came after a tip-off that Komadić "possessed some identification documents of Ratko Mladić and was physically very similar to him", the Zagreb-based Jutarnji List reported earlier today. The report did not mention the location where the arrest took place. B92 has unofficially learned that the operation took place in the village of Lazarevo, near the town of Zrenjanin in northern Serbia. B92 contacted the police, but was told only that an indentity check and a DNA analysis were "ongoing", and that a complete DNA analysis would take three days to complete. The former military leader of Serbs in Bosnia is wanted by the Hague Tribunal on genocide and war crimes charges.

BBC: Ratko Mladic arrested: Bosnia war crimes suspect held
NYT: Top Serbian War Crimes Suspect Caught
Al Jazeera: Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic arrested - Video
Der Spiegel: A Portrait of Ratko Mladic
Wikipedia: Ratko Mladić

By next month, every driver in the U.S. will be required to have a black box in their vehicle.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will declare that all automobiles are required to contain the event data recorder - similar to those found in aircraft - in order to monitor driving habits and provide a snapshot of the final moment of impact if the car crashes. The snapshot will be able to be viewed by law enforcement, insurance companies and automakers and the owner of the vehicle will not be able to turn it on or off. Critics of the mandate see it as another Big Brother-style invasion of privacy by the government while others believe it is a way to keep tabs on drivers. It will also make it easier for insurance companies to settle claims and have access to circumstances surrounding car crashes.

Skype appears to have suffered a significant and bizarre crash, with users worldwide reporting problems on Twitter.

Not long after the company has announced a major deal with Microsoft it has become victim to unspecified problems, with some reports of the programme shutting down with a Windows error message. Twitter is now seeing floods of angry messages by users who have been booted of the system and are now unable to login or even start up the Skype programme itself. An error message appears on Skype and users are not able to even get to the next log-in screen. Much of the vitriol is aimed at Microsoft, with one user tweeting: “Major worldwide Skype crash, thanks Microsoft!”.

Update: Skype's servers are screwed. There is a notice online which says: "Hi, our server has taken a short break. "Looks like our server is down. This usually means that we're doing maintenance work or there are too many visitors at skype.com and we cannot cope with the popularity. In any case — we're already fixing it and everything should be back to normal in a few minutes." What's happened here then? Not much or has Skype been hit badly? Somewhere in Redmond, someone is sweating...

Update 2: Thanks to commenter Rael, who mentions Skype's quick-fix post at heartbeat.skype.com.

It was not as if there was a chance of peace for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to squander in Washington. No peace process worth talking about exists to be revived. But he had a choice of making matters worse or better, and he chose to make them worse.

Not that you would have known that if your only contact with the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis was watching Mr Netanyahu's speech to a joint session of the US Congress. Congressional lawmakers are not just pro-Israeli, like most Americans. They support Mr Netanyahu's specific vision of Israel, judging by their response to his speech. His speech to Congressional lawmakers was punctuated by around 30 standing ovations.

Philip Giraldi: The Book of Netanyahu
Uri Avnery: Bibi and the Yo-Yos
Stephen Lendman: Netanyahu Spurns Peace

[PressTV Video] Former US lawmaker Cynthia McKinney says every candidate for Congress has to sign a pledge to vote for supporting the military superiority of Israel. "Every candidate for Congress at that time had a pledge. They were given a pledge to sign ... that had Jerusalem as the capital city," McKinney said in an interview with Press TV on Sunday. "You make a commitment that you would vote to support the military superiority of Israel that the economic assistant that Israel wants that you would vote to provide that," she added. McKinney said that if a candidate does not sign the pledge or perform accordingly, "then you do not get money to run your campaign." The former Congresswoman said that after she made the pledge issue public "the tactic changed." "But this is what is done for 535 members of the United States Congress, 100 senators and 435 members of the House of Representatives have to now write a paragraph which basically says the same thing."

The LIBRARY of CONGRESS THOMAS
How Congress Works - Gus Savage: Laying out the Facts - Congressional Record - 101st Congress (1989-1990)

Iraqi demonstrators have gathered in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad to protest against the US attempts to prolong its military presence in the Middle Eastern country beyond the 2011 deadline.

More than 20,000 people assembled in Sadr City, a suburb of the Iraqi capital, to send a warning message to the US government that Washington is likely to suffer the consequences of extending its presence in their war-torn country, a Press TV correspondent reported early Thursday. The leader of Iraq's Sadr Movement, Muqtada al-Sadr, was among the officials who attended the demonstration to show unity with the people of Iraq. In April, al-Sadr warned of an “escalation of military resistance” in Iraq if the US forces do not leave by the appointed deadline.

AWIP: Gates: Keep Troops in Iraq to Bother Iran
Bill Van Auken: US Defense Secretary Gates urges post-2011 occupation of Iraq

The former Egyptian intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, who faces numerous lawsuits in the North African country, has gone missing following the ouster of ex-President Hosni Mubarak.

More than three months after the ouster of Mubarak in the February revolution, Suleiman has not appeared in public as many reports have been filed against the former spy chief over the killing of protesters, the abuse of power and the wasting of public money. During the Egyptian revolution, Suleiman had made several televised speeches to calm protesters on behalf of Mubarak to save the regime. Since the downfall of the former president, many former officials have come under investigation and some were tried and convicted of corruption charges, while Suleiman has so far managed to avoid a day in court.

[Watch video, courtesy of Wikileaks] In a behind the scenes interview tape between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and PBS Frontline’s Martin Smith, Assange claims that WikiLeaks’ mission is not to destroy the U.S. government, but to expose government cover-ups.

“What we mean about conspiracy is simply people getting together in private to make plans to do something that the public would be outraged against,” Assange said. “They keep it in private because the public would oppose it. And if the public finds out about it and opposes it before it’s implemented, then chances are it won’t be implemented.” “Institutions derive their legitimate authority from an informed public that chooses to grant them authority,” Assange said.

“If the public is not informed, then any authority that chooses to grant an organization in itself is not informed, and therefore is not legitimate.”

He added that WikiLeaks was not interested in annihilating the government of the United States or any other government, and denied the organization he founded had a partisan political agenda.

US Vice President Joseph Biden said Tuesday night that bipartisan talks between the Obama administration and congressional leaders had identified more than $1 trillion in possible spending cuts, about half the total demanded by Republicans as the price of a vote to raise the federal debt ceiling.

“Our Republican friends and the Democrats think we’re making progress. We’re confident if we keep on this pace we can get to a relatively large number,” Biden said after a 2½-hour meeting with the top Republican negotiators, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. “I think we’re in a position where we’ll be able to get to well above a trillion dollars pretty quick, what would be a down payment on the process,” Biden said. “We’re going to be discussing trigger mechanisms,” he added, which could include either budget cuts or tax increases to be applied automatically if deficit-reduction targets are not met.

Biden refused to discuss any of the details of the proposed cuts, and there were conflicting reports about whether the major entitlement programs had yet been addressed, including Medicare and Medicaid.

A bill that would criminalize TSA agents who conduct airport patdown searches was scuttled last night after the federal government threatened to ground all flights out of Texas.

The proposed law would have levied misdemeanor charges against security agents who "intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly [touch] the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of the other person, including touching through clothing, or touching the other person in a manner that would be offensive to a reasonable person." An earlier version of House Bill 1937 would have made such action a felony.

"If [the legislation] passes, the federal government would likely seek an emergency stay of the statute," a letter from the Department of Justice explained (PDF). "Unless or until a such a stay were granted, TSA would likely be required to cancel any flight or series of flights for which it could not ensure the safety of passengers and crew."

As a result, the bill's co-sponsor in the Texas Senate withdrew the legislation. It had cleared the Texas House by unanimous vote.

NSA, Cyber Command have 'unparalleled expertise'.

The US military will play a leading role in defending homeland America from cyber attacks, and this will include providing cybersecurity to key infrastructure on US soil. Robert J Butler, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, briefed senators in Washington on the plans yesterday. Butler stated that the Defense department would of course safeguard its own .mil domain, but would also closely collaborate with the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice to guard and patrol the rest of America's cyber territory [= the entire world...].

Meeting today in London, President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron once again insisted that the NATO war in Libya will continue until Moammar Gadhafi is ousted from office. They also added that the strikes against Libya will be escalated. Reports from residents in Tripoli suggest that the strikes have already been escalated considerably. President Obama has vowed that NATO will never let up on the strikes until Gadhafi agrees to step down.

The US warns Gadafi: the attacks will increase: ter·ror·ism  [ter-uh-riz-uhm] –noun 1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes. [Dictionary.com]

AWIP: 19 killed in NATO attacks
PressTV: 4 blasts shake Tripoli after NATO sorties
HRI: The cluster bombing of Misrata: The case against the USA
NYT: In House, Libya Effort Is Called Violation of War Powers Act
Bill Van Auken: NATO bombing of Tripoli kills 19 civilians, wounds 150
Media Lens: If At First You Don't Succeed - Four Decades Of US-UK Attempts To Topple Gadafi

You may think you understand how the Patriot Act allows the government to spy on its citizens. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) says it’s worse than you’ve heard.

Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. But Wyden says that what Congress will renew is a mere fig leaf for a far broader legal interpretation of the Patriot Act that the government keeps to itself — entirely in secret. Worse, there are hints that the government uses this secret interpretation to gather what one Patriot-watcher calls a “dragnet” for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently. “We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” Wyden tells Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. “When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands.”

Most of the attention this week has been at the AIPAC conference, but speaking today at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Secretary of Defense Robert Gates struggled to lay out the reason(s) to keep troops in Iraq. Gates described it as “my last major policy speech.”

And among his flimsiest, as Gates’ entire argument for keeping the troops in Iraq was because it would make Iran uncomfortable. The comments came in the wake of an AEI “report” earlier in the day claiming Iran is a “serious threat” to Iran’s security. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has recently left the door open for keeping troops, but only if a “consensus” is reached on the matter. This would be impossible, however, because top Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose bloc controls the Iraqi National Alliance, has repeatedly condemned the notion, demanding an end to the US occupation. Gates shrugged off Sadr’s opposition, however, and insisted within the speech that he wasn’t sure how much opposition Sadr actually had and how much his comments stemmed from “Iranian backers.”