Less than a month after he threatened to veto terrifying legislation that would cease constitutional rights as we know it, Obama has revoked his warning and plans to authorize a bill allowing indefinite detention and torture of Americans. - After passing in the House of Representatives earlier this year, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 went before the US Senate last week, where it was met with overwhelming approval. In the days before, the Obama administration issued a policy statement on November 17 saying explicitly that the president would veto the bill. Opposition from the White House seemed all but rampant until RT revealed earlier this week that Senator Carl Levin told lawmakers that the legislation was altered because “the administration asked us to remove the language which says that US citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section.”

Stephen Lendman: Fascism in America
Stephen Lendman: Legislating Tyranny in America
Brandon Smith: The Essential Rules Of Tyranny
Paul Craig Roberts: The Obama Regime Has No Constitutional Scruples
Bill Van Auken: US Senate backs military detention of American citizens

PressTV: US House OKs indefinite lockup bill
CBS News: WH OKs military detention of "terrorism suspects"

Russia Today: Indefinite detention: 'Architecture of fascist state' - VIDEO “The White House explained it would veto the bill because these provisions, mandating military custody amount to a restriction of president’s authority,” explains John Glaser, assistant editor at Antiwar.com. “But in truth it’s reasonable to assume that a veto threat was a mere political theater, because Senator Carl Levin one of the provision’s primary authors revealed during senate debate that it was the Obama administration itself who requested the inclusion of language mandating military detentions, including US citizens. So you could say the administration never changed their minds, it was just a sort of doing it for public consumption,” he told RT.

Anonymous: The US Government has commited treason against you, the american citizens. You have 24 hours to stop it - VIDEO

The US police have arrested over 5,000 people attending anti-corporatism protests across the country over the past three months, a report says. - There have been 5,425 arrests during Occupy protests in 94 cities across the United States up to December 12, according to St. Pete for Peace, an Occupy-affiliated group from St. Petersburg, Florida. The group says it only tracks 'confirmed arrests.' It says its list represents “a running total of the number of Occupy protesters arrested around the US since the Occupy Wall Street movement began [in September].” The highest number of arrests belonged to Los Angeles, New York City, Tucson, and Chicago, the American news website The Daily Caller reported on Tuesday. The occupy movements owe their inspiration to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS), which began, when a group of demonstrators gathered in New York's financial district on September 17. The protesters rallied, among other things, against the excessive influence of big corporations on the US policies as well as high-level corruption and unjust distribution of wealth in the country. Over the past few weeks, the police broke up Occupy encampments in cities and towns across the US, harshly attacking and arresting dozens of protesters. Despite the police crackdown and the mass arrests, the Occupy movement has now spread to many major US cities.

BAGHDAD — The United States military officially declared an end to its mission in Iraq on Thursday even as violence continues to plague the country and the Muslim world remains distrustful of American power. In a fortified concrete courtyard at the airport in Baghdad, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta thanked the more than one million American service members who have served in Iraq for “the remarkable progress” made over the past nine years but acknowledged the severe challenges that face the struggling democracy. [PUKE READ:] “Let me be clear: Iraq will be tested in the days ahead — by terrorism, and by those who would seek to divide, by economic and social issues, by the demands of democracy itself,” Mr. Panetta said. “Challenges remain, but the U.S. will be there to stand by the Iraqi people as they navigate those challenges to build a stronger and more prosperous nation.” As of last Friday, the war in Iraq had claimed 4,487 American lives, with another 32,226 Americans wounded in action, according to Pentagon statistics.

The WE!: Alive or dead? [Photos + text]
The WE!: WELCOME TO WAR [Photos + text]
The WE!: U.S. Debt Iraq Afghanistan Wars 2006 - 2007

Bill Van Auken: Obama at Fort Bragg: A hypocritical embrace of a criminal war - President Barack Obama used his speech to US troops at Fort Bragg, North Carolina Wednesday to embrace the nine-year war in Iraq that he had ostensibly opposed and to declare the destruction of the country a “success.” The speech appeared to have been written by someone who threw out Abraham Lincoln’s famous adage and adopted the view that you can “fool all of the people all of the time.”

[This] censored video is an embarrassment to the State of Israel’s image of a Democracy. It shows their true colours, a racist society based on the hatred of all that are not of the ‘chosen people’. It is presented here followed by a report from The Electronic Intifada. [Video]

The Brooklyn-based Hebron Fund supports groups attacking Palestinians. - On the June 18, 2007, a nonprofit organization called the Hebron Fund held a fundraiser on a cruise ship in the Hudson River to support Israel settlers’ occupation of a Palestinian house in the West Bank city of Hebron. Some 250 people paid a minimum of $65 each for the “Cruise ‘n’ Schmooze.” The proceeds went to support the settler who had taken the property from the Rajabi family, who denied the settlers’ claims that they had legally purchased the home. A year and half later, Israeli police using stun grenades carried out a government order to evacuate a group of some 100 settlers hunkered down in the four-story hilltop. The house had become the center of a crisis when the Israeli government ruled that the building had been illegally seized from the Rajabi family, and ordered the settlers out. Once evicted, the settlers commenced a rampage that lasted several hours, setting fire to Palestinian houses, olive trees and cars. Twenty-five people were wounded, including a man in critical condition after a settler shot him at close range. A Palestinian Red Crescent official told U.S. Consulate officials that during the riots, settlers stopped an ambulance and defaced the ambulance, painting “let the Arabs die” and covering the red crescent symbol with the Star of David.

Around 2,000 Samburu families have stayed squatting on edge of disputed territory, says NGO Survival International. - Members of the Samburu people in Kenya have been abused, beaten and raped by police after the land they lived on for two decades was sold to two US-based wildlife charities, a rights group and community leader have alleged. The dispute centres on Eland Downs in Laikipia, a lush area near Mount Kenya. At least three people are said to have died during the row, including a child who was eaten by a lion after the Samburu were violently evicted in November last year. The London-based NGO Survival International said the Samburu were evicted following the purchase of the land by two American-based charities, the Nature Conservancy and the African Wildlife Foundation.

Survival International: Violence engulfs Kenyan tribe just miles from royal hideaway

The first blogger to break the Climategate2 story has had a visit from the police and has had his computers seized. Tallbloke’s Talkshop first reported on CG2 due to the timing of the release being overnight in the USA. Today he was raided by six UK police (Norfolk Constabulary and Metropolitan police) and several of his computers were seized as evidence. UPDATE: I’ve been in contact with Roger (Tallbloke) and he tells me that he is not a suspect, and that they’ll clone his hard drives and return the computers to him.

Tallbloke's Talkshop: Tallbloke towers raided: many computers taken

British justice system is turning broadcasters into its spying arms, in clear breach of journalistic principles of objectivity and independence from the state, by ordering TV news networks to hand over un-broadcast footage of an unrest incident in Derry to the police. - The British Crown Court has ordered the BBC, UTV and ITN to hand over all video records of the apprentice Boys parade in Derry in August so that judges can identify those involved. This comes as there is adequate evidence that broadcasters are already acting as the government's media apparatus to twist the news the way politicians favor. In Derry, trouble flared after up to 15,000 people marched as part of the annual apprentice Boys parade using petrol and pipe bombs to counter the heavy-handed riot policing. Judge Piers Grant who issued the order said they want to identify those involved in the Bogside disturbances by reviewing TV footage recorded by journalists, insisting they must keep a balance between the public interest and tracking of offenders and that balance now rules that un-broadcast material are handed over. The National Union of Journalists has slammed the ruling saying it is a violation of the freedom of the press.

The blame game continues in Europe over who is responsible for the high-level split over a new EU fiscal agreement. UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage believes it is time for the British to decide whether they want to stay in the EU.

The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, who slapped a firm "no" on the deal, said it lacked sufficient financial safeguards for the UK. However European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, called the decision “unfortunate” and said Britain itself had made compromise impossible by making demands that threatened the entire single market. “The United Kingdom in exchange for giving its agreement asked for a specific protocol on financial services which as presented were a risk to the integrity of the internal market. This made compromise impossible,” he told European lawmakers in Strasbourg on Tuesday. He also remarked that most countries tried hard to reach an accord of all 27 EU states.

Stephen Lendman: Europe in Disarray

A French court found former president Jacques Chirac guilty in a historic verdict Thursday of embezzling public funds to illegally finance the conservative party he long led, and handed him a suspended prison sentence. - Mr. Chirac, a savvy world diplomat and icon of France’s political establishment for decades, is the first former French head of state to face prosecution since the Second World War era. But the 79-year-old former leader did not take part in the trial, after doctors determined that he suffers severe memory lapses. The court said Thursday it had found Mr. Chirac guilty in two related cases involving fake jobs created at the RPR party, which he led during his 1977-1995 tenure as Paris mayor. He was convicted of embezzling public funds, abuse of trust, and illegal conflict of interest. Mr. Chirac repeatedly denied wrongdoing.