Families of two detainees who died at Guantanamo Bay in 2006 say the prisoners were tortured to death, challenging Washington's claim that they committed suicide.

Relatives of Saudi national Yasser al-Zahrani and Yemeni Salah al-Salami have demanded a federal appeals court reconsider their cases claiming they have new information backing up their case including direct eyewitness accounts from four US military guards. "They have direct eyewitness accounts of a cover-up of the actual circumstances of the deaths" their attorney, Padriss Kebriaei said, according to AFP. At the time of their death, Al-Zahrani, 21, and Al-Salami, 33, had been held in custody without charge, detained incommunicado for about four years at Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon says the two men, along with another individual that his family has not filed a complaint, committed suicide by hanging themselves in their own cells. However, Joe Hickman, a US soldier that was on guard at the night of their death claims that he had seen the three prisoners being transferred to another facility known as “Camp No."

Scott Horton: The Guantánamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle

American and Afghan officials are locked in increasingly acrimonious secret talks about a long-term security agreement which is likely to see US troops, spies and air power based in the troubled country for decades.

Though not publicised, negotiations have been under way for more than a month to secure a strategic partnership agreement which would include an American presence beyond the end of 2014 – the agreed date for all 130,000 combat troops to leave — despite continuing public debate in Washington and among other members of the 49-nation coalition fighting in Afghanistan about the speed of the withdrawal. [...] A European diplomat in Kabul said: "It is difficult to imagine the Taliban being happy with US bases [in Afghanistan] for the foreseeable future."

A prominent anti-war group has slammed the US-led NATO mission in Libya, saying that the military campaign only aims to plunder the North African state's oil reserves.

Brian Becker of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition wrote on Monday that Libya is today resisting a new colonialism as well as forces loyal to Libya's embattled leader Muammar Gaddafi. These “colonizers,” he said, usually assign noble names such as “protecting civilians” to their military missions both in the Middle East and Africa. And now they are using the corporate-owned media coverage about their “humanitarian motives” to “disguise their crass and cynical plans in Libya and elsewhere,” Becker's statement read.

Stephen Lendman: Obama's Terror War on Libya
Stephen Lendman: Libya's Great Man-Made River
Brian Becker: Why the NATO powers are trying to assassinate Moammar Gaddafi

It is already well-documented that the Obama Administration has been escalating the number of air strikes against targets inside Yemen. While the CIA has played a role in those military strikes, officials say, the agency is now preparing to launch attacks of its own.

The CIA has been responsible for a massive drone campaign against Pakistan’s tribal areas, launching scores of strikes and killing thousands of people over the past several years of escalations. As with the Pakistan attacks, the Yemen strikes will nominally be aimed at “assassination” of al-Qaeda members.

But with the Pakistan program a dreadful failure, killing massive numbers of random people and rarely killing anyone officials have even heard of, the Yemeni program looks to be even more complex, targeting a tribal area that encompasses most of the nation, and which despite recent increases in presence officials have conceded is largely a mystery to intelligence agencies.

The CIA strikes will like center if part on attempts to assassinate US citizen Anwar Awlaki, who officials admitted last year was the first confirmed US citizen to be tapped for assassination by the president. Officials have alleged ties to al-Qaeda, but have mostly complained about Awlaki’s religious sermons being critical of American foreign policy.

Stephen Lendman: Remote Control Killing Like Sport

Speaking today British Naval leader Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope warned that he was uncomfortable continuing Britain’s involvement in the War in Libya for more than another three months, saying that the military simply cannot afford its continuation.

Sir Mark’s comments appear to be aimed at rebuking the British government for major cuts in military spending, focusing on the Harriet Jump Jet and other weapons, which the military scrapped as too expensive, as just one of the weapons that might’ve been used if Britain still had them. Yet the comments may fuel a growing debate in Britain about the nation’s involvement in what was supposed to be a humanitarian no-fly zone and has increasingly become an endless war aimed at regime change. A war with no end in sight and which Britain cannot afford.

Michele Bachmann stepped out of the shadow of Sarah Palin in the Republican presidential contenders debate in New Hampshire, wooing Republican primary voters with a mix of populism and sharp attack.

It was Bachmann's first outing as a candidate, and she dramatically chose her first statement in the debate to announce she had filed official paperwork to run for the presidency. But it was Bachmann's steely assertion of conservative values, including her fostering of 23 children as well as having five of her own, that won her a warm reception. Declaring Barack Obama to be "a one-term president", Bachmann laid out her firm opposition to Obama's healthcare reforms. "You can take it to the bank," she said of her vow to repeal the reforms if elected president. Bachmann remains, however, far less well known to American voters than the frontrunner Mitt Romney, who gave a solid performance, as did all the candidates in a debate format that rarely challenged them.

"We try to ensure that we are not photographed at high resolutions, and most (countries) accommodate us," a senior Israeli defense official said.

A new Turkish satellite has Israelis eyeing the end of a U.S.-backed blackout on high-resolution commercial photography of their turf from space. The GokTurk satellite due in orbit by 2013 will sell images of objects more detailed than 2 metres (6 feet) across -- currently the finest grain available when it comes to pictures of Israel, thanks mainly to U.S. legislation from the 1990s. We try to ensure that we are not photographed at high resolutions. Turkey's leap into the aerospace market treads on Israeli security sensitivities given the former allies' recently strained ties. Unlike with other nations that have fielded commercial satellites, Israel has little leverage over Ankara. "Should we request this of the Turks? We won't ask for it. There is no one to talk to."

Ellsberg calls for immediate termination of court-martial. WASHINGTON. DC— Today the National Archives and the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon Presidential Libraries will at long last release the entirety of the Pentagon Papers, 40 years to the day after the New York Times’ publication of large portions of the top secret documents. Daniel Ellsberg, then an analyst with the RAND Corporation, had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the Times in order to reveal information about the Vietnam War to the American people. The full contents of the Pentagon Papers will also be available online at www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers.

Daniel Ellsberg: Why the Pentagon Papers matter now

The Italians have cast their ballots -- and for the second time in a few weeks, Silvio Berlusconi was left holding the short stick. The country voted against nuclear energy and against the privatization of waterworks. But it has also become clear that the country has tired of its leader.

His star may be falling, but he continues to believe it is shining brighter than ever before. In the process, the 74-year-old Silvio Berlusconi -- Italian prime minister, media tycoon and billionaire -- is becoming increasingly ridiculous. Recently he insisted that other government leaders hold him in "the highest esteem" and that they see him as their "greatest expert." His own people, he said, would "build a monument" to him if they only better understood all that he does. In reality, however, Italians pursue him with catcalls of "bunga bunga" and whistles -- as was the case last Friday as Berlusconi walked through the attractive seaside town of Portofino to his son Piersilvio's villa to attend the birthday of grandson Lorenzo. The message Italian voters sent on Sunday and Monday was just as clear: They no longer seem willing to put up with the bizarre charm of their prime minister.

BDS explained - DID YOU KNOW? updated 12May11 from Sonja Karkar on Vimeo.

This video is created by Australians for Palestine and Women for Palestine as an educational tool to help people gain a better understanding of the clear principles underpinning the Palestinian BDS call and the global Palestinian BDS movement.

Australians For Palestine: ARCHBISHOP TUTU SUPPORTS MARRICKVILLE’S STANCE ON BDS

Gaza's unemployment rate was among the world's highest, at 45.2% in late 2010, the UN has found, as Israel's blockade of the territory enters its fifth year.

Real wages meanwhile fell by more than a third, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said. Its report says that private businesses have been hardest hit by the continuing ban on virtually all exports. UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said of the report in a statement: "These are disturbing trends and the refugees, who make up two-thirds of Gaza's 1.5 million population, were the worst hit." The unemployment figure, for the second half of 2010, was a slight improvement on the 45.7% jobless rate during the same period in 2009.

GREECE IS a borderline failed state. Its society lacks cohesiveness and is deeply divided. Its economy is in shock. If the country’s history is any guide to its future, there is serious trouble ahead.

More than a year ago, when the troika of institutions that now oversees Ireland’s bailout first landed in Athens, there was hope that developed Europe’s most poorly governed country could be put on the right track. A new government was then in place and its most senior figures seemed serious about radical reform. Many Greeks, particularly the young and the educated who recognise how dysfunctional their country is, backed rupture. There was much talk of opportunity in crisis. That talk is no longer to be heard. The crisis now presents nothing but threats and risks.

BBC: S&P makes Greece the least credit-worthy country
Deutsche Welle: Greek economy slapped with sharp credit downgrade
The Guardian: Greece pays a heavy price as eurozone strives to protect its reckless banks

A senior Iranian official has disclosed new plots hatched by certain Western powers to violate non-proliferation regulations and conduct illegal acts pertaining to weapons of mass destruction.

“The British regime is renewing the Trident nuclear system which will last at least for one century,” Deputy Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Baqeri said at the end of second International Conference on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation in the Iranian capital of Tehran on Monday. “In a quite illegal move, the British regime signed a nuclear deal with France to share know-how needed to build and renovate nuclear bombs and to reduce spending to expand their nuclear arsenal,” he added, Fars news agency reported. He further disclosed a reality about domestic situation in the US and stated, “The budget allocated by the US in 2011 for storage and development of nuclear weapons showed more than 50 percent increase in comparison with 2001.” However, according to US statistics, 45,000 Americans die annually due to lack of social welfare insurance, Baqeri noted.

Cartels have taken cruelty up a notch, says one drug trafficker: kidnapping bus passengers for gladiatorlike fights to the death.

The elderly are killed. Young women are raped. And able-bodied men are given hammers, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the death. In one of the most chilling revelations yet about the violence in Mexico, a drug cartel-connected trafficker claims fellow gangsters have kidnapped highway bus passengers and forced them into gladiatorlike fights to groom fresh assassins. In an in-person interview arranged by intermediaries on the condition that neither his name nor the location of his Texas visit be published, the trafficker also admitted to helping push cocaine worth $5 million to $10 million a month into the United States.

Law enforcement sources confirm he is a cartel operative but not a fugitive from pending charges. His words are not those of a federal agent or drawn from a news conference or court papers. Instead, he offers a voice from inside Mexico's mayhem — a mafioso who mingles among crime bosses and foot soldiers in a protracted war between drug cartels as well as against the government. If what he says is true, gangsters who make commonplace beheadings, hangings and quartering bodies have managed an even crueler twist to their barbarity.

Members of the Zetas cartel, he says, have pushed passengers into an ancient Rome-like blood sport with a modern Mexico twist that they call, "Who is going to be the next hit man?" "They cut guys to pieces," he said. The victims are likely among the hundreds of people found in mass graves in recent months, he said.