Staff Sergeant Faces Pay Cut Over Butchering of Civilians. - In the mother of all plea bargains, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, who was charged with leading the US Marines’ massacre of 24 civilians in the Iraqi city of Haditha, plead guilty to a single count of “dereliction of duty.” His “sentence,” such as it is, will amount to a demotion to the rank of private and a pay cut related to his loss of rank. He will serve no jail time. The announcement has angered a number of Iraqis, particularly the relatives of the slain, who say the verdict is an insult. Khalid Salman, a lawyer for the relatives of the victims, and a cousin of one of the slain, condemned the decision. “This is not a traffic felony,” he said. Even skeptical Iraqis weren’t prepared for this total dismissal. Saleem al-Jubouri, the head of the Iraqi parliament’s human rights committee, had already issued a condemnation on the assumption that Wuterich would face a three-month jail sentence, the maximum for the soldier’s plea bargain.

AWIP: Marine gets three months in jail for massacring two dozen civilians

The Republican presidential candidate collected as much in a single day as the average American family makes in a full year. - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released his tax returns Tuesday morning, revealing that he collected income of $21.7 million in 2010 and $20.9 million in 2011, nearly $42.6 million over the two-year period. Not a penny of this income was from salary or wages reported on a W-2. Nearly all of it was investment income, including capital gains, dividends and interest.

Justin Raimondo: Adelson, Gingrich, and the Selling of America - If you want to know what’s wrong with our campaign finance laws – and our political system in a more general sense – look at the way Sheldon Adelson is buying the Republican nomination for his sock puppet, Newt Gingrich. So what is Adelson’s agenda? He and his allies have been campaigning for war with Iran for years, not only here but in the Middle East. Adelson is a major financial backer of Israel’s ultra-nationalist Likud party, which calls in its platform for a “Greater Israel,” and he has backed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the hilt.

PressTV: Obama renews anti-Iran war rhetoric

AIPAC: The Voice of America — Part 1: The Orange and the Pea
AIPAC: The Voice of America — Part 2 The Treasonous Dollar Drain

[PUKE READ:] Following is the transcript of President Obama’s State of the Union address on Jan. 24, 2012, as released by the White House: THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans: Last month, I went to Andrews Air Force Base and welcomed home some of our last troops to serve in Iraq. Together, we offered a final, proud salute to the colors under which more than a million of our fellow citizens fought — and several thousand gave their lives. We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world. (Applause.) For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq. (Applause.) For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country. (Applause.) Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated. The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home. These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces. At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together.

PressTV: Obama renews anti-Iran war rhetoric
Russia Today: Obama’s new fairytale: Peace and prosperity for war-bent US
Patrick Martin: Obama’s State of the Union address: War and wage-cutting

Film Accuses All Muslims of Plotting to Overthrow US. - Last year, the New York Police Dept. was caught in an ugly scandal when the Village Voice reported it showed a 72-minute film titled The Third Jihad to police as a “terrorist training” video. Officials at the time downplayed the number of officers who saw it, and claimed it was quickly pulled when it was deemed “inappropriate.” The video condemns Muslims in general and moderate American Muslims in particular, claiming that all non-violent Muslims are part of a secret conspiracy to overthrow the US government and impose Sharia law in its place.

AWIP: In Police Training, a Dark Film on U.S. Muslims

Aziz Dweik's six-month imprisonment is an attempt by Israel to thwart reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, says his office. - An Israeli military court has ordered the speaker of the Palestinian legislative body to be jailed for six months without trial after he was arrested at a checkpoint last week. Aziz Dweik, a member of Hamas and a senior elected politician, was imprisoned "without charge or legal justification", a statement from his office said. It claimed Israel was attempting to thwart moves towards reconciliation between the rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas. Dweik was arrested at a checkpoint near Ramallah last Thursday. According to reports, he was handcuffed and blindfolded by Israeli soldiers, who said he was being detained for "involvement in terrorist activities". Dweik has been the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council since elections six years ago. However the PLC has not sat since the summer of 2007, when Hamas – which had won elections the previous year – took control of Gaza in a bloody battle with Fatah.

PIC: Israel imprisons Dweik for six months without trial
PIC: Hamas condemns Israel's systematic detention of lawmakers
Khalid Amayreh: Dweik's abduction is state terror, pure and simple

">

The Lebanese Cabinet has a meeting scheduled regarding the contentious issue of Beirut’s energy policies in relation to the country’s offshore energy assets.

At stake are massive offshore Mediterranean sub-sea natural gas reserves but the issue involves competing seabed claims with Israel, Cyprus and Turkey. Offshore maritime assets fall under the general delineation terms of the 1982 U.N. Law of the Sea Convention. That provides each country with a 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone for unilateral development of offshore assets. But the issue becomes complicated in congested waters with overlapping claims, as in the eastern Mediterranean. Massive natural gas reserves have been discovered in the region and the fields cross international boundaries. Sources familiar with the governmental discussions said that the 2007 rejection by the Turkish government of the proposed demarcation maritime border between Lebanon and the Republic of Cyprus resulted in the failure of the governments to ratify a proposed bilateral agreement. Issues between Turkey and the Republic of Cyprus, a member of the European Union, remain complex and delicate. According to UNCLOS terms, countries with shared maritime borders must reach bilateral agreements for the demarcation of the borders. Accordingly, Lebanon, Israel and Cyprus are obliged to complete a tripartite agreement on the demarcation of the maritime area they share. Last week Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour said Lebanon is studying the maritime issues related to Mediterranean energy assets and intends to take the dispute to the United Nations.

The top United Nations human rights official criticized Iraq on Tuesday for carrying out a large number of executions, including 34 on a single day last week, and voiced concern about due process and the fairness of trials. - "Even if the most scrupulous fair trial standards were observed, this would be a terrifying number of executions to take place in a single day," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said, in a statement referring to executions carried out on January 19. "Given the lack of transparency in court proceedings, major concerns about due process and fairness of trials, and the very wide range of offences for which the death penalty can be imposed in Iraq, it is a truly shocking figure," she added. At least 63 people are believed to have been executed since mid-November in Iraq, where the death penalty can be imposed for some 48 crimes including a number related to non-fatal crimes such as damage to public property, Pillay said. "Most disturbingly, we do not have a single report of anyone on death row being pardoned, despite the fact there are well documented cases of confessions being extracted under duress," she said.

AWIP: US rights group says Iraq becoming 'police state'

William Hague claims blockading Iran is aimed at avoiding conflict, instead of stoking it. Columbia University Professor Gary Sick, who has a special expertise on Iran, viewed the EU oil embargo much differently. He called the efforts “the equivalent of a blockade. It’s an act of war.” - The European Union embargo on Iranian oil imports that was pushed for aggressively by the U.S. is aimed at reducing the risk of conflict and stressing the need for peace talks, according to British Foreign Secretary William Hague. “This is not a set of actions designed to lead to any conflict but to lead us away from any conflict by increasing the pressure for peaceful settlement of these disputes,” he said on Tuesday. Despite years of evidence to the contrary, Hague’s comments passed without an outburst of laughter on the world stage. Washington, and most of the EU, has approached Iran in largely the same way since the Iranian revolution in 1979. That is, with threats, sanctions, and isolation. Instead of bringing diplomacy, it has brought only more bitterness and mistrust.

PressTV: 'EU in for severe crisis due to Iran ban'
PressTV: Norway's Statoil says Iran can still repay its debt to the company despite the EU ban on the country
Peter Symonds: European Union imposes oil embargo on Iran
Chris Floyd: Pups on Parade: EU Obediently Pushes Toward War with Iran

Little known fact about Sweden, that supposed bastion of liberal idealism: If a Swedish transgendered person wants to legally update their gender on official ID papers, a 1972 law requires them to get both divorced and sterilized first. - Sweden is considered extremely gay-friendly, with one of the highest rates of popular support for same-sex marriage, and more than half the population supports gay adoption. Arguing that the current law is both unpopular and abusive, the country's moderate and liberal parties want to see it repealed. In response, the small but powerful Christian Democrat party formed a coalition with other right-of-center parties to join in upholding the requirement for sterilization. End result: a proposal for new legislation that allows trans—a preferred term for many people who undergo gender reassignment—to be married, but continues to force them to be sterilized.

Europe is considering a sweeping new law that would force Internet companies like Amazon.com and Facebook to obtain explicit consent from consumers about the use of their personal data, delete that data forever at the consumer’s request and face fines for failing to comply. - The proposed data protection regulation from the European Commission, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, could have significant consequences for all Internet companies that trade in personal data, whether it is pictures that people post on social networks or what they buy on retail sites or look for on a search engine. The regulation would compel Web sites to tell consumers why their data is being collected and retain it for only as long as necessary. If data is stolen, sites would have to notify regulators within 24 hours. It also offers consumers the right to transport their data from one service to another — to deactivate a Facebook account, for example, and take one’s trove of pictures and posts and contacts to Google Plus. The proposed law strikes at the heart of some of the knottiest questions governing digital life and commerce: who owns personal data, what happens to it once it is posted online, and what the proper balance is between guarding privacy and leveraging that data to aim commercial or political advertising at ordinary people.

AWIP: EU proposes 'right to be forgotten' by internet firms

The assumption that the US has the technological know-how to cripple a competing nation has always been just that: as assumption. In a recent sit-down interview, however, a former spy chief confirmed that America has already waged cyber attacks. - Mike McConnell, the former director of national intelligence at the National Security Agency under George W Bush, tells Reuters this week that cyber war is more than a distant possibility. According to the current vice chairman at Booz Allen Hamilton, the US has already launched attacks on the computer networks of other nations. McConnell did not add any input as to what countries have been hit with American cyber warfare in the past, but he did confirm that the US has already used the ability. When asked by Reuters if the United States had the capability to destroy the computer system of an adversary, McConnell responded “Yes.” When asked if it worked, he confirmed “yes” as well. "Do we have the ability to attack, degrade or destroy? Sure. If you do that, what are the consequences? That is the question,” added McConnell.

Russia Today: An ACTA of war: Secret censor tool to shake up world wide web