WikiLeaks has released the first 200 of a cache of 5m emails obtained from the servers of Stratfor, a US-based intelligence firm. The emails originated not from a whistleblower, but instead from a series of hacking attacks against Stratfor in December 2011, carried out by the online activist collective Anonymous. Anonymous apparently passed the emails to WikiLeaks in the weeks following the attack. The whistleblowing website then recruited, according to its statement, 25 media partners to work on the document cache.

AWIP: WikiLeaks begins disclosing intelligence firm's e-mails

Israel, Kurdish fighters destroyed Iran nuclear facility, email released by WikiLeaks claims. In exchange released by website, worker at Stratfor intelligence firm doubts validity of a source claiming an Israeli ground force had already wiped out Iran's nuclear infrastructure. - The mega-leaks website, WikiLeaks, has partnered with the hackers cooperative Anonymous, to publish internal emails of the American strategic intelligence company Stratfor. In one of the hacked emails, Stratfor officials discuss information obtained from one of their sources who reports that Israeli commandos, in cooperation with Kurdish fighters, have destroyed Iranian nuclear installations. WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, will hold a press conference today in London where he plans to reveal new details from the Stratfor emails, including details on the company's dealings with the American government and major corporations, and its network of paid sources.

It was a kindergarten class piece of art that Jessie Sansone probably won’t want to hang on the refrigerator anytime soon. - After Jesse Sansone’s 4-year-old daughter drew a picture of a gun, cops handcuffed the clueless father and dragged him off to jail. It was there that the dad was stripped of his clothes and searched by the authorities. Sansone was never charged with a crime. Sansone wasn’t expecting to be greeted by police when he went to pick up his three children from school last week. Faculty there had become concerned, however, after the man’s 4-year-old daughter drew an image last Wednesday that they thought warranted investigation. It was a picture of a man holding a gun, and when teachers asked the girl to explain it, she said it was a depiction of her father. “He uses it to shoot bad guys and monsters,” teachers say the girl explained. The father says he doesn’t own a gun. Nor does he kill monsters.

“I’m picking up my kids and then, next thing you know, I’m locked up,” Sansone, 26, tells The Record out of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. “I was in shock. This is completely insane. My daughter drew a gun on a piece of paper at school,” he says.

After seeing the image in question, the school’s staff became shocked as well. So much so, in fact, that they rang up child welfare officials and local law enforcement and arranged for them to meet the girl’s father at the end of the school day. By that evening, Sansone had been handcuffed, whisked away to jail and forced to remove his clothes so he could be subjected to a strip search. Authorities took all three of Sansone’s children and dragged them to Family and Children’s Services to be interviewed. His wife, Stephanie Squires, tells The Record that authorities never explained themselves.

Israel is reportedly fuming over what it describes as the United States’ soft stance on Iran’s nuclear energy program, pushing the White House to adopt a more hawkish position against Tehran. - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials have reportedly put the US President Barack Obama administration under pressure due to their rage over the “deliberate attempts” by the White House to undermine the effectiveness of Israel’s war threats against Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. According to the report, the Israeli premier has told US officials that he wants Obama to outline specifically what Washington considers as the "red lines" that Iran cannot cross. “Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials also are pressing for Obama to publicly clarify his insistence that ‘all options are on the table,’” regarding Iran, the report said.

Bill Van Auken: US, Britain gear up for war on Iran

AIPAC’s Washington policy conference next month is drawing intense scrutiny and unprecedented resistance. AIPAC has worked quietly for years to tripwire the United States into war with Iran. Soon it will “ask” Congress and the president to define “nuclear weapons capability” as the threshold for war, essentially demanding an immediate attack. Because Iran presents no military threat to the United States, many Americans wonder exactly where such costly and potentially disastrous policies are formulated. Recently declassified FBI files reveal how Israeli government officials first orchestrated public relations and policies through the U.S. lobby. Counter-espionage investigations of proto-AIPAC’s first coordinating meetings with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the head of Mossad provide a timely and useful framework for understanding how AIPAC continues to localize and market Israeli government policies in America.

The Obama administration, which promised during its transition to power that it would enhance "whistle-blower laws to protect federal workers," has been more prone than any administration in history in trying to silence and prosecute federal workers. The Espionage Act, enacted in 1917 to punish those who gave aid to US enemies, has been used six times since the current president took office. In the most recent case, John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who became a Democratic staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was charged under the Espionage Act with leaking information to journalists about other C.I.A. officers, some of whom were involved in the agency's interrogation program, which included waterboarding.

Vaccination rights attorney Patricia Finn threatened with criminal charges; New York State demands she surrender names of all clients. - Vaccine rights attorney Patricia Finn is being targeted by the Ninth Judicial District of New York State, which has threatened to strip her of her license to practice law and even file criminal charges against her. Finn is one of several "vaccine rights" attorneys across America who helps parents assert their rights to protect their children from potentially deadly vaccines. She's considered a hero by many, but a villain by the status quo for daring to stand up against the vaccine-pimping medical police state that exists in America today.

The upper class has a higher propensity for unethical behavior, being more likely to believe – as did Gordon Gekko in the movie “Wall Street” – that “greed is good,” according to a new study from the University of California, Berkeley.

In seven separate studies conducted on the UC Berkeley campus, in the San Francisco Bay Area and nationwide, UC Berkeley researchers consistently found that upper-class participants were more likely to lie and cheat when gambling or negotiating; cut people off when driving, and endorse unethical behavior in the workplace.

“The increased unethical tendencies of upper-class individuals are driven, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed,” said Paul Piff, a doctoral student in psychology at UC Berkeley and lead author of the paper published today (Monday, Feb. 27) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Piff’s study is the latest in a series of UC Berkeley scholarly investigations into the relationship between socio-economic class and prosocial and antisocial emotions and behaviors, revealing new information about class differences during a time of rising economic tension.

Raw Story: Upper class people more likely to cheat: study
AWIP: The rich are different — and not in a good way, studies suggest

Even as the transvaginal ultrasound bill in Virginia was causing national outrage, Pennsylvania conservatives were quietly pushing a even more restrictive abortion bill. The legislation is designed with so many difficult and differing restrictions that long-time abortion policy analyst Elizabeth Nash at the Guttmacher Institute told Raw Story, “I’ve never seen anything like it.” In addition to mandating the much-maligned transvaginal ultrasound requirements since rejected by the state of Virginia, Pennsylvania legislators proposed strongly encouraging women to view and listen to the ultrasounds, forcing technicians to give the women personalized copies of the results and mandating how long before any abortion the ultrasound much be preformed — and that’s just for starters.

Raw Story: Brownback: ‘Go work somewhere else’ if you want contraception

Amid reports of fresh atrocities in the besieged city of Homs, the Syrian government said Monday that an overwhelming majority of voters - 89 percent - had approved a new constitution that is billed as President Bashar Assad's most serious concession yet in the nearly year-old uprising against his rule. - Opposition activists, backed by the Free Syrian Army guerrilla movement, rejected the results and vowed to continue their fight to end the Assad dynasty's four-decade hold on the country. They renewed their calls for foreign assistance such as weapons and "safe zones" along the borders, saying that the bloodshed of the past year renders moot any more regime promises of reform. The results, however, bolstered Assad's support from China and Russia, the two nations that had vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution earlier this month that called for new sanctions on Assad.

Stephen Lendman: Syrians Overwhelmingly Approve New Constitution

At dawn last Wednesday, February 22nd, between 250 and 300 Israeli soldiers came through the occupied Palestinian village, Al Aqaba, as part of their training. They were going on little to no sleep, so they took the opportunity to sleep in their jeeps, on the street, and between village houses. After they awoke, they proceeded eastward towards the valley.

The contention that they are "accidents" is balderdash, this is U.S. military doctrine taught from the top down. - The US claim that they were unaware of the sacredness and importance of the Qur’an defies logic as Americans have repeatedly desecrated Islam’s holy book, a political analyst tells Press TV. The comment comes as the US has asked the Afghan government to protect the foreign troops in the war-ravaged country from public outrage over the recent desecration of the Holy Qur'an by US-led forces.

Within hours of Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s defeat of Kevin Rudd in yesterday’s Labor Party leadership ballot, Labor Senator Mark Arbib announced that he was quitting politics. A career apparatchik within the powerful New South Wales Right faction, Arbib played the key role in removing Rudd and installing Gillard as prime minister in the June 2010 coup. In this, he worked closely with Washington, having been a secret “protected source” for the US embassy in Canberra from early on in his political career. Arbib indicated that his decision to resign was centrally bound up with the coup. While insisting that he “stands by the decision” to axe Rudd, the senator declared that “we need to close the door on that period and we need to start afresh.” He continued: “I want to be able to mend some of the conflict that has happened in the past... What I’m trying to do is try to ensure that the party gets over the past week, the past period, it’s a gesture of goodwill to the party.”

AWIP/WSWS: Australia’s political coup leaders and their big business connections
Mike Head: Australian media organisations, Labor MPs attack persecution of Julian Assange
Patrick O’Connor: WikiLeaks cables reveal secret ties between Rudd coup plotters and US embassy

Police and bailiffs have evicted anti-capitalist protesters and removed tents from the Occupy London camp at St Paul's Cathedral. - The operation, which began just after midnight, was mostly peaceful but there were 20 arrests. A St Paul's spokesman said: "We regret the camp had to be removed by bailiffs." The City of London Corporation said it "regretted" that it had become necessary to evict the protesters. Occupy London, which campaigns against corporate greed, set up the camp on 15 October. The campaigners were refused permission to appeal against a High Court decision to allow their eviction to proceed.

Russia Today: Occupy London camp destroyed by police in riot gear PHOTOS, VIDEO