Although many people expected a change in foreign and military policy when Barack Obama took over for George W. Bush, Brian Becker of the ANSWER coalition says that this expectation proved false because the military-industrial complex is in bed with the banks.

The Turkish navy will significantly strengthen its presence in the eastern Mediterranean Sea as one of the steps the Turkish government has decided to take following the release of the UN Palmer report on the 2010 Gaza flotilla, Turkish officials told the Hurriyet Daily News. "The eastern Mediterranean will no longer be a place where Israeli naval forces can freely exercise their bullying practices against civilian vessels," a Turkish official was quoted as saying. As part of the plan, the Turkish navy will increase its patrols in the eastern Mediterranean and pursue "a more aggressive strategy". According to the report, Turkish naval vessels will accompany civilian ships carrying aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Wikileaks began on Sunday November 28th 2010 publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into US Government foreign activities. - The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February 2010, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret. The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next year. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice. The cables show the extent of US spying on its allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in "client states"; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for US corporations; and the measures US diplomats take to advance those who have access to them. This document release reveals the contradictions between the US’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors – and shows that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what’s going on behind the scenes. Every American schoolchild is taught that George Washington – the country’s first President – could not tell a lie. If the administrations of his successors lived up to the same principle, today’s document flood would be a mere embarrassment. Instead, the US Government has been warning governments -- even the most corrupt -- around the world about the coming leaks and is bracing itself for the exposures.

The United Nations has called the ongoing drought and famine in Somalia the "worst humanitarian disaster" in the world. It's going to get worse in the coming months.

Yet a new Pew Research Center study released on Thursday shows that news outlets have barely noticed: "In July and August the food crisis has accounted for just 0.7 percent of the newshole. Year-to-date the crisis registers at just 0.2 percent."

Aid workers say the current famine, which has affected Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti, "is worse" than the one that hit Somalia in 1992—making it perhaps the most serious food crisis since the famine that devastated Ethiopia in 1985.

The statistics are shocking: In Somalia, at least 29,000 children died of starvation in 90 days. Some 2 million children are malnourished, and another 500,000 children are at great risk of starving to death. Some 12 million people in the region need emergency assistance. The crisis has been exacerbated by the al-Shabaab Islamist insurgent group, which has played a hand in causing the famine by forcing out aid groups and preventing starving Somalis from fleeing the country.

As you read this, you might be thinking, "Huh? There's a famine in Somalia right now?" If you haven't heard about the crisis before, it's because US news coverage has been focusing on other topics—a tabloid scandal, Congress' budget deficit battle, the economy, Middle East revolutions, and, most recently, Hurricane Irene. Some of these are important, attention-worthy stories, but they've drowned out almost any coverage of the famine. That matters: Relief organizations say their fundraising efforts have stalled because the media isn't talking about the famine. The United Nations recently announced that it needs $1.1 billion to adequately respond to the crisis.

The CIA worked closely with Muammar Gaddafi's intelligence services in the rendition of terrorist suspects including Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, the rebel commander in Tripoli, according to documents found in Tripoli. - The documents, found in the offices of the former head of Libyan intelligence Musa Kusa, also show that MI6 gave Gaddafi's regime information on Libyan dissidents living in the UK. The files, uncovered by Human Rights Watch, provide details of the close relationship between western intelligence services, including MI6 and the CIA, and the ousted dictator's regime.

Al Jazeera Blogs: Torture: Cooperation between the CIA and Muammar Gaddafi's intelligence agencies

Hackers claim to have accessed the email accounts of more than two dozen law enforcement agencies in Texas and dumped the contents online. Anonymous, the loose-knit international hacking collective, said the data it posted came from the work and personal emails of officers, including department chiefs. The group said the information posted online included classified police documents as well as lewd and racist jokes. In one email to a senior Texas police official accessed by MailOnline, it was written: 'That stupid b**** who started that stolen car chase at Yale and 610 got what she deserved (I'll bet she was fat and black too). 'Same with that pervert that got shot by the county. F*** that guy, see ya. That all sounds like good police work to me.

Former US President George W. Bush used the September 11, 2011 attacks on the United States to mislead the American public opinion and justify the war on Afghanistan, a political analyst told Press TV. - "Bush wanted to go to war. This (9/11) was an incident that actually happened and that provided the pretext for the US government to mobilize the sentiments of the people of the United States, to mislead them into justifying a war," Richard Becker from ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition.

"First, against Afghanistan; then the following summer, attempting to construe what happened on 9/11 as being somehow the responsibility of Iraq, making knowingly false claims about weapons of mass destructions, attempting to scare the people in the United States into supporting this war which has turned into an absolute disaster for the people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and for the people in the United States," he added.

The analyst also called on the US government to investigate the incident after one decade. "We don't accept the US government's explanation of what happened on 9/11. We think there should really be a truly independent investigation because it would be interesting to know, for instance, if [former US Vice President Dick] Cheney and [former Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld and the others knew that there was something coming and didn't do anything to prevent it because they wanted that pretext," Becker noted.