Lebanon’s security officials say a suspicious cargo containing huge amounts of US dollars, guns, special passports and credit cards have been seized upon arrival in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, from the US and Brazil. - The items, packed in a number of chests and delivered via airmail, were discovered at Beirut’s airport, the Lebanese security officials said. The chests also contained a list of both well-known and ordinary Lebanese citizens including a figure related to Salafi extremist groups. The security officials have summoned a number of the individuals, whose names were on the list, arresting some of them. Beirut has redoubled security surveillance across the country following remarks by some Lebanese factions as well as widespread rumors about the presence of al-Qaeda in Lebanon.

John Glaser: Push for US Intervention in Syria Grows
Stephen Lendman: Heading for War on Syria
Alex Lantier: US shuts Syrian embassy, threatens war
Washington's Blog: Independent Report Contradicts Western Portrait of Syria

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told President al-Assad of Syria he had to do what it takes to ensure peace in the country, during talks in Damascus on Tuesday. - “Every leader in every country should understand their responsibility. You understand yours,” Lavrov told Assad, adding "it's in our interests that the Arab peoples live in peace and harmony." Lavrov’s visit comes three days after Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning the violent crackdown in Syria. He arrived along with his Foreign Intelligence Service chief Mikhail Fradkov. Lavrov had not revealed the purpose of his mission, telling a news conference in Moscow on Monday it would be “unveiled only to the addressee.”

On December 30 of last year, ABC News reported on a 16-year-old Pakistani boy, Tariq Khan, who was killed with his 12-year-old cousin when a car in which he was riding was hit with a missile fired by a U.S. drone.

As I noted at the time, the report contained this extraordinary passage buried in the middle:

Asked for documentation of Tariq and Waheed’s deaths, Akbar did not provide pictures of the missile strike scene. Virtually none exist, since drones often target people who show up at the scene of an attack.

What made that sentence so amazing was that it basically amounts to a report that the U.S. first kills people with drones, then fires on the rescuers and others who arrive at the scene where the new corpses and injured victims lie. In a just-released, richly documented report, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, on behalf of the Sunday Times, documents that this is exactly what the U.S. is doing — and worse:

The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals, an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed. The findings are published just days after President Obama claimed that the drone campaign in Pakistan was a “targeted, focused effort” that “has not caused a huge number of civilian casualties”.

Patrick Martin: CIA drones target rescue workers, mourners - The atrocities being committed in the drone missile strikes are not an aberration, but rather demonstrate the essence of the US intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan, now in its eleventh year. - A report by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) has found that the US Central Intelligence Agency deliberately attacked rescue workers and funeral processions in follow-up strikes after drone missile attacks on insurgents in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The findings were made public on the group’s web site and published by the Sunday Times of London. According to the organization, which includes British and Pakistani journalists, at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes while they were attempting to help victims of an initial CIA drone attack. Dozens more were killed by missile strikes against the funerals of victims of drone attacks. Overall, the group found that “since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed, including more than 60 children.” Pakistani officials and humanitarian aid workers have reported much higher figures for the death toll in Pakistan’s tribal areas, as many as several thousand.

Leading neuroscientists believe that the UK Government may be about to sanction the development of nerve agents for British police that would be banned in warfare under an international treaty on chemical weapons. - A high-level group of experts has asked the Government to clarify its position on whether it intends to develop "incapacitating chemical agents" for a range of domestic uses that go beyond the limited use of chemical irritants such as CS gas for riot control. The experts were commissioned by the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of sciences, to investigate new developments in neuroscience that could be of use to the military. They concluded that the Government may be preparing to exploit a loophole in the Chemical Weapons Convention allowing the use of incapacitating chemical agents for domestic law enforcement.

The curriculum in Afghan schools intentionally excludes four decades of war in an effort to "bring people together".

“There is no mention of the Soviet war, the mujaheddin, the Taliban or the U.S. military presence,” reports the Washington Post. “In their efforts to promote a single national identity, Afghan leaders have deemed their own history too controversial.”

When state-funded indoctrination books whitewash entire swathes of relevant history, societal problems don’t simply go away. They’re compounded. Afghans are suffering on a daily basis from war and yet the U.S. and their Afghan “education” wardens appear to have decided to keep children ignorant of the causes of their country’s troubles.

Attempting to erase four decades of history is something extremely beneficial for [the U.S.] the criminals, thugs, and extremists that have terrorized the country in that time.

After Israel informed them of its intentions to demolish their homes, members of the Hardan family, in Al Fredees village, at the Mount Carmel north of the 1948 territories, started demolishing their own homes, east of the village, in order to avoid the unreasonable and excessive penalties and fines that would be imposed on them. - The so-called Construction and Planning Committee claimed that the buildings were erected without construction permits, and that the constructions will be demolished, and the family will be forced to pay up to NIS 500.000 should family members refrain from demolishing their own homes at their own expense.

Britain was forced to plead with the US to take part in the flotilla challenging Iranian power in the Gulf after American commanders decided the Royal Navy had nothing to contribute to the mission. - Defence sources have revealed that the Americans only relented and allowed a Royal Navy frigate to join the mission following an intervention from Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president. The revelation that US defence chiefs saw little military value in UK participation will raise new questions about Britain’s international clout after Coalition defence cuts. Amid rising tensions in the region, the Royal Navy last month deployed HMS Argyll, a Type 23 frigate, to the Gulf.

'Israeli attack will prompt Pakistani response' - European diplomat based in Islamabad says Israeli strike would force Pakistan to support Iranian retaliation, while EU official says 'political and economic consequences of attack would be catastrophic for Europe'. After US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta estimated that Israel would attack Iran by June, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned government officials against "Iran chatter," A European diplomat based in Pakistan said that if Israel attacks, Islamabad will have no choice but to support any Iranian retaliation.

Kurt Nimmo: Diplomat Says Pakistan Will Retaliate if Israel Attacks Iran

Iran's nuclear program is dangerous. So are those of Pakistan and North Korea, with which the world has learned to live. An Israeli strike on Iran could turn out to be even more dangerous. Everything has already been said about its effects, which at best will only delay Tehran's nuclear weapons development and could actually accelerate it. Everything has already been said about the shot in the arm it will give the Iranian regime, about the implications for Israeli relations with the United States and the danger of thousands of missiles hitting Israel. Israel must do all it can to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons - everything except launching another war of choice.

Arthur Silber: The First Ad: Who Are the Nazis Now?

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange interviewed in London by Malou Von Sivers from Swedish channel TV4. (Introduction in Swedish). Part 2/2. Justice for Assange (website)

For anyone paying attention, there is no shortage of issues that fundamentally challenge the underpinning moral infrastructure of American society and the values it claims to uphold. Under the conceptual illusion of liberty, few things are more sobering than the amount of Americans who will spend the rest of their lives in an isolated correctional facility – ostensibly, being corrected. The United States of America has long held the highest incarceration rate in the world, far surpassing any other nation. For every 100,000 Americans, 743 citizens sit behind bars. Presently, the prison population in America consists of more than six million people, a number exceeding the amount of prisoners held in the gulags of the former Soviet Union at any point in its history.

Ignoring a U.S. threat to cut off aid, Egypt on Sunday referred 19 Americans and 24 other employees of nonprofit groups to trial before a criminal court on accusations they illegally used foreign funds to foment unrest in the country. - Egypt's military rulers had already deeply strained ties with Washington with their crackdown on U.S.-funded groups promoting democracy and human rights and accused of stirring up violence in the aftermath of the uprising a year ago that ousted President Hosni Mubarak. The decision to send 43 workers from the various groups to trials marks a sharp escalation in the dispute. Egypt and the United States have been close allies for more than three decades, but the campaign against the organizations has angered Washington, and jeopardized the $1.5 billion in aid Egypt is set to receive from the U.S. this year. On Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Egypt that failure to resolve the dispute may lead to the loss of American aid. The Egyptian minister, Mohammed Amr, responded Sunday by saying the government cannot interfere in the work of the judiciary.

After 30 years spent drilling through a four-kilometer-thick ice crust, researchers have finally broken through to a unique subglacial lake. Scientists are set to reveal its 20-million-year-old secrets, and imitate a quest to discover ET life.

The Vostok project breathes an air of mystery and operates at the frontiers of human knowledge. The lake is one of the major discoveries in modern geography; drilling operations at such depths are unprecedented; never before has a geological project required such subtle technologies.

The main inspiration for the project – the Russian scientist who posited the lake’s existence – died just six months before the moment of contact with the lake’s surface. Now, the whole world is looking to Lake Vostok for crucial data which might help to predict climate change.

“Yesterday [on Sunday] our scientists at the Vostok polar station in the Antarctic completed drilling at depths of 3,768 meters and reached the surface of the subglacial lake,” RIA Novosti reported, quoting an unnamed Russian scientist. Meanwhile, Itar-Tass news agency says the scientists still have a few meters to go.

Lake Vostok is a unique closed ecosystem hidden under some four kilometers of ice. Its water has been isolated from the atmosphere – and therefore from any contact with the outside world – since before man existed. The key question for scientists is, could the lake harbour life?

The Romanian government resigned on Monday, in the wake of mass protests against its austerity measures over the past three weeks. - Prime Minister Emil Boc explained his resignation in a televised cabinet meeting by saying he wanted to diffuse social tensions without compromising his unpopular austerity measures. “I took this decision to release the tension in the country's political and social situation, but also in order not to lose what Romanians have won.” [...] The IMF is confident that Boc’s austerity program will be continued after his resignation. The IMF representative in Bucharest, Jeffrey Franks, told Reuters that he did not expect that the IMF agreement would be affected by the change in government. Crucial to Frank’s conviction is the fact that all of the country’s opposition parties and trade unions support in principle the deals struck with the IMF. This is also the reason why popular outrage over the harsh austerity measures found no outlet for a long time. The unions have betrayed every labour dispute in recent years, organising sporadic toothless protests aimed at letting off steam.