As international forces prepare for withdrawal from Afghanistan, Western countries are already in talks with Afghanistan's Central Asian neighbors to bring their troops and military equipment back home. - The Pakistani route and the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) running through Central Asian countries are the two viable routes for international forces to withdraw from Afghanistan. The United States and Afghanistan are in the process of negotiating an accord for a long-term US presence in Afghanistan after 2014, when most foreign combat forces are due to withdraw. The US wants some advisers and special forces to stay on. There are also "emergency scenario options" in the event either or both of the Pakistani route or/and the NDN are closed. This would require airlifting military equipment to Ulyanovsk airport in Russia or even to a suitable military airport in India, and from there transporting it to the nearest port city.

Wayne Madsen: Chicago cop to arrested NBC 4 and WGN journalists: "Your First Amendment rights can be terminated if you're creating a scene or whatever." Note to mentally deficient Chicago cops: That's what photo and video journalists do, you morons, they create scenes for their viewers to better understand news events.

Chicago police took two members of the media into custody Saturday, including an NBC Chicago photographer. Photographer Donte Williams and WGN Reporter Dan Ponce were detained as they attempted to cover the story of a 6-year-old girl who was shot and killed. Crews were standing on a sidewalk outside Mt. Sinai Hospital, where the girl had been taken. The hospital apparently called police, complaining of trespassers. The news crews, at the request of police officers, said they had already moved from a public sidewalk directly in front of the hospital, to a median halfway across the street. But police disputed that, saying hospital security guards told them news crews had tried to get past them into a secure area of the hospital. Reporters say they did not go into the hospital.

Japan deploying missiles to Okinawa, says will shoot down any North Korean missiles that threaten it. - Three weeks ago, Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba cautiously welcomed the “Leap Day” agreement between the U.S. and North Korea in which Pyongyang agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment activities and implement a moratorium on its long range missile and nuclear tests in exchange for 240,000 tons of nutritional aid from Washington. But the tone in Tokyo has changed considerably since then, as the North has returned to its predictable cycle of negotiation followed by provocation. Japan has reportedly ordered missile defense systems to be prepared and deployed near its southernmost island of Okinawa. The news follows the North Korean announcement this month that it intends to launch a satellite to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of North Korean founder Kim Il-Sung. The move is provocative and may very well suffocate efforts such as the Leap Day deal to restart the moribund Six-Party talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.

Details emerging about Mohamed Merah, the alleged gunman in a series of murders in the Toulouse area from March 11 to March 19, raise serious questions about the conduct of French intelligence and police agencies. - Merah allegedly killed one paratrooper in Toulouse on March 11, two paratroopers in nearby Montauban on March 15, and a father and several children at a Jewish school in Toulouse on March 19. He was killed in an armed standoff with police at his Toulouse apartment Thursday, shot in the head by a sniper as he fell from his balcony. Officials are scrambling to explain how Merah—though known to both French intelligence (DCRI, Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence) and to police—operated undetected for over a week, and why he was killed in the operation.

This is the original video by Chris Bryan. Click on 'Settings' and change to 720p. Enjoy! - This day at Teahupoo- Aug 27th 2011 during the Billabong Pro waiting period is what many are calling the biggest and gnarliest Teahupoo ever ridden. Chris Bryan was fortunate enough to be there working for Billabong on a day that will go down in the history of big wave surfing. The French Navy labeled this day a double code red prohibiting and threatening to arrest anyone that entered the water. Kelly Slater described the day by saying "witnessing this was a draining feeling being terrified for other people's lives all day long, it's life or death. Letting go of that rope one time can change your life and not many people will ever experience that in their life." All images where shot by Chris Bryan using the Phantom HD Gold camera. To see more of Chris' work check out his website. www.CHRISBRYANFILMS.COM

On Wednesday Marine Sgt. Gary Stein was notified by the Marine Corps that he was in violation of the Pentagon’s policy for blatantly condemning President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. - Stein’s actions could now lead to his dismissal and a possible downgrade in ranking. The Marine who is based in Camp Pendleton, California, created a Facebook page called “Armed Forces Tea Party,” which currently has approximately 19,000 likes and has photos showcasing slogans such as “NObama” and “One Nation, under Obama, with poverty and unemployment for all,” has been under the microscope since 2010. Stein was first warned by his superiors two years ago after he launched the social media page on Facebook critiquing Obama care. Stein offered to remove the page while he revised the rules at the bidding of his superiors. According to Stein, after the revision of the rules he determined he was not in violation.

Earlier this month the Marine Corps released a statement alleging Stein's commanding officer ordered a preliminary inquiry of the social media page after hearing allegations that Stein posted controversial political statements about the Commander in Chief on Facebook. The remarks made by the sergeant were in reference to an online debate regarding NATO permitting US troops to be put on trial for burning copies of the Quran in Afghanistan. The statement that got the Marine into this predicament was he claimed he would not follow orders from the president if the orders meant he had to detain US citizens, disarming them or doing anything that would violate their constitutional rights.

The Obama administration is moving to relax restrictions on how counterterrorism analysts may retrieve, store and search information about Americans gathered by government agencies for purposes other than national security threats. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Thursday signed new guidelines for the National Counterterrorism Center, which was created in 2004 to foster intelligence sharing and serve as a terrorism threat clearinghouse. The guidelines will lengthen to five years - from 180 days - the amount of time the center can retain private information about Americans when there is no suspicion that they are tied to terrorism, intelligence officials said. The guidelines are also expected to result in the center making more copies of entire databases and "data mining them" using complex algorithms to search for patterns that could indicate a threat.

John Glaser: Government Now Allowed to Store Info on Innocent Americans
Michael Gould-Wartofsky: Big Brother on campus
Russia Today: Pentagon creating new-generation cyberweapon
Russia Today: File extension: US to keep innocent civilians' data 10 times longer
Russia Today: Did Obama sign a martial law executive order?

This video was taken in in the spring of 2010 at either O'Hare or Midway Airport. A toddler in a wheelchair is stopped by the TSA at the Airport in Chicago and forced to into a sequestered area. On his way to a family vacation in Disney, this 3 year old boy is in a body cast for a broken leg. Despite assurances from his father that "everything is ok", he is physically trembling with fear while he watches his two siblings, mother, father, grandfather and grandmother pass through along with everyone else...only to be singled out. He simply does not understand what is happening and why.

With a growing number of ‘smart gadgets,’ spying on homes may start to become much easier. In fact, CIA Chief David Petraeus admitted that Americans were effectively bugging themselves and making it easy for spy agencies to peek in on their lives. Speaking at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm, Petraeus noted that new devices that link ‘dumb’ home appliances such as refrigerators, ovens and lighting systems to the Internet could “change our notion of secrecy.”

The Pentagon now has to deal with accusations by Afghans that it was not an accidental shooting committed by a possibly mentally-unstable soldier, but rather a planned revenge by US troops. - Residents from the villages where the rampage took place claim soon after a roadside bomb accident that happened on March 7 or 8, some US soldiers came and threatened that the habitants would be punished for what they called “supporting anti-US forces”. "The soldiers called all the people to come out of their houses and from the mosque," Ghulam Rasool, a tribal elder from Panjwai district said. According to Rasool, the soldiers told the villagers: “A bomb exploded on our vehicle. We will get revenge for this incident by killing at least 20 of your people.” Resident of Mokhoyan village Naek Mohammad also described how the soldiers assembled the villagers. A US soldier, speaking through a translator, told the Afghans: "I know you are all involved and you support the insurgents. So now you will pay for it – you and your children will pay for this," Mohammad told journalists.

Justin Raimondo: Robert Bales – Lone Nut or Scapegoat? - A few days before Bales went postal, there was a bomb attack on a US convoy in which a friend of Bales’s lost a leg: Bales’s lawyer has been detailing his client’s anger at this incident, implying it precipitated the murder spree. There are indications, however, that this is not the whole story. One local resident relates how the Americans paid a visit to the village where the killings took place and threatened residents with retaliation.

Fury over the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin is spreading. - Marchers took to the streets in New York City and Miami Wednesday, demanding the arrest of the shooter, neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. And he's not the only one under fire. In Manhattan, hundreds demonstrated, seeking justice, they said, for Martin. The "Million Hoodie March" got its name because Martin was wearing a hoodie on Feb. 28, the night Zimmerman shot him. Martin's parents were at the New York protest, surrounded by supporters. "Our son was not committing any crime," said Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton. "Our son is your son. I want you guys to stand up for justice and stand up for what's right." That got a loud "yeah" from the crowd.

A Chinese health official has vowed executed inmates will no longer be the main source of organs for transplants in three to five years, as the country sets up a donation system, state media said. - China has long vowed to reduce its reliance on death-row inmates for organs, but high demand and a chronic shortage of donations mean they have remained a key source -- a situation that has generated heated controversy. But Huang Jiefu, vice health minister, said the government wanted to abolish this practice altogether and was in the process of setting up a nationwide organ donation system, the official Xinhua news agency reported. "China... promises that within three to five years, it will completely change the abnormal method of relying mainly on death row inmates to obtain transplant organs," Huang was quoted as saying in the report late Thursday.

Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law in the OPT continued during the reporting period (15 – 21 March 2012)

Shooting: During the reporting period, IOF wounded 3 Palestinian civilians, including a child, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. During the reporting period, IOF used excessive force to disperse peaceful demonstrations organized in protest to Israeli settlement activities and the construction of the annexation wall in the West Bank. As a result, two Palestinian civilian were wounded, and dozens of Palestinian civilians and international human rights defenders suffered from tear gas inhalation. IOF also arrested two Palestinian civilians. News agencies published a photo that showed a dog belonging to IOF violently attack a Palestinian civilian before IOF arrested him. Additionally, Israeli soldiers attacked a journalist and destroyed his camera. In the Gaza Strip, a 6-year-old Palestinian child was wounded by a bullet to the right thigh when he was at home as IOF positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel to the east of Rafah opened fire at Palestinian communities.

Incursions: During the reporting period, IOF conducted at least 56 military incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, during which they arrested 8 Palestinian civilians, including 3 children and a woman. In the Gaza Strip, IOF conducted one limited incursion into the northern Gaza Strip, during which they leveled areas of Palestinian land which they had already razed.

IMEMC: PCHR Weekly: “Army Conducts 56 Invasions Into W. Bank, 1 In Gaza”

Israel announced that it refuses to cooperate with an independent international fact-finding mission which is due to “investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people.” - Israeli sources quoted an Israeli official as saying: “Israel will not cooperate with the fact finding mission,” describing the performance of the UN Human Rights Council as "preposterous". The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the move and described the Council as hypocritical, “This is a hypocritical council with an automatic majority against Israel,” he said. The UN Human Rights Council on Thursday adopted a resolution to set up an independent probe into the effects of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem on the Palestinians. The resolution was passed by 36 votes for, US against and ten abstentions.

PressTV: UN draws Israeli ire with HR probe bid

"Al Qaeda fanatic is DEAD: Serial killer jumps out flat window with all guns blazing in dramatic end to 32-hour siege" - comment by 'The Questioner, Earth' at 22/3/2012 16:18:

"Do you really believe he "escaped" from an Afghan prison? Do you really believe his mother had weapons in her car? Who was watching him on the train "hours before the shooting"? Convenient isn't' it? What happened to the mystery woman? Interesting timing on that, no? Why were his mother and brother arrested but the mystery woman disappeared? Wouldn't one of the last people to speak to him be a priority? Do you think killing him before he stands trial is a good way to shut him up? Do you think arresting his family is a good way to shut them up? isn't letting the mystery woman get away a good way to protect your own operative? Isn't it possible that he did not escape an Afghan jail but was released in exchange for working with "counter-terrorism" units, who duped this useful idiot into "running an exercise" that turned real world? Isn't it possible that he may have told his mother and brother what he was involved in? Is it possible that the woman on the train was his handler?"

The exercise was to assist in Sarko's reelection. Sarko is running a campaign based on xenophobia, and these incidents fit right into the plan.

Gilad Atzmon: Is it an Israeli False Flag Again?

Gilad Atzmon: The ‘Pressure Cooker’ tactics – A Glimpse Into Israeli Psychosis - The Israeli Ynet (Hebrew edition) published a few hours ago an interview with retired Israeli police commissioner, Major General Assaf Hefetz. Hefez is highly critical of the French police’s recent operation in Toulouse. According to the Israeli Major General, the French waited for too long (32 hours). He contends that the French police should have been more assertive and far more aggressive. I hope that you have a hard stomach to read how Israel would handle a similar situation. They should have implemented the ‘pressure cooker tactics’ says Hefetz- “massive fire at the walls of the house, throwing grenades around the building followed by bulldozer erasure of the building walls till the suspect turns himself.” Frightening isn’t it? Welcome to occupied Palestine. It seems as if Major General Hefetz came short of suggesting to evacuate the city and to nuke the neighborhood.

Alex Lantier: Political issues in the Toulouse shootings - The attack is a political event requiring a political explanation, particularly as it comes in the context of the French presidential elections. The response of France’s leading political parties is deeply cynical, aiming to exploit the tragedy to shift politics further to the right. This event is a godsend for incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is trying to burnish his right-wing, law-and-order credentials and win the election despite his deep unpopularity. The shootings have also boosted Marine Le Pen of the neo-fascist National Front (FN).

Richard O’Dwyer, the UK-based ex-administrator of the video linking website TVShack will be extradited to the US to face copyright infringement charges. Despite public outrage Home Secretary Theresa May approved the extradition order today. The 23-year-old student has never visited United States, but now faces several years in a US prison. - Last year Richard O’Dwyer was arrested by police for operating TVShack, a website that carried links to copyrighted TV-shows. Following his detention in the UK’s largest prison, the site owner fought a looming extradition to the US, but without success. After a UK judge gave the green light to extradite the student two months ago, Home Secretary Theresa May officially approved the request from US authorities today. Julia O’Dwyer, Richard’s mother, is severely disappointed with the decision and says that her son has been “sold” to the US. The extradition may disrupt his life for years. “Today, yet another British citizen is betrayed by the British Government,” she said.

Wales Online: Fury as student extradition cleared

Rep. Dennis Kucinich joins Cenk to talk about the Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama’s challenges in getting millions back to work and his loss in the Ohio primary to Rep. Marcy Kaptur after redistricting left the state with two fewer seats. “I’ve lost before,” Kucinich says. “I probably have more defeats registered than most members of Congress… My problems are minimal compared to the fact that you’ve 10 million Americans out of work… I’m going to continue in every way that I can not just to be a voice but to be someone who proposes ways that we can move this country ahead.” Cenk asks whether Democrats should now support Kaptur in November’s general election. “I’m not going to talk about that campaign at all,” Kucinich says. “There are some things that need to be resolved.”

The US State Department has revealed the list of 12 countries which may be subjected to American financial sanctions for failing to cut oil imports from Iran. - The number of countries was mentioned earlier on Tuesday, as Washington announced a penalty waiver for Japan and 10 EU counties which complied with American demands and reduced their purchases. However, the names of the countries were not given. Four of the countries on America’s anger list are among top 100 buyers of Iranian crude. They are China, India, South Korea and South Africa, with the first two being the two largest buyers. Also targeted by possible financial sanctions are Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Turkey. US President Barack Obama may order banks based in those countries and involved in oil trade with Iran to be cut off America’s financial system. On the other hand, he may exempt some of them from sanctions, if US national security demands it. So America’s allies like South Korea or Pakistan may dodge repercussions.

Russia and China today joined the rest of the United Nations Security Council in endorsing former UN chief Kofi Annan’s plan for a negotiated settlement in Syria. The statement was agreed upon after Russia managed to get a number of ultimatums from the initial French proposal removed. - Since he became the special UN envoy to Syria, Annan has managed to put considerable momentum behind negotiation, a major shift from a number of Western nations who were demanding military intervention. So far, however, the Assad regime has offered only tepid support for the deal and several rebel factions have rejected the notion of negotiation on general principle. In a sign that’s probably not going to change, a number of Islamist factions are seen to have gained considerable influence within the Free Syrian Army (FSA), with an eye toward turning it from a straight-forward rebel army for a civil war into an open-ended insurgency.

Chris Marsden: Syrian opposition accused of human rights abuses

NYT writer Rick Gladstone commits serious journalistic malpractice in his piece about the UNSC Presidential Statement on Syria. He writes as if the statement was a climbdown of Russia from its position and as if the statement is what the U.S. tried to achieve for month. The opposite is the case. The U.S. was forced to change its position while the Russians won on each of their points.

Some of the mourners after seven people, including
three children, were gunned down at a Jewish school
in Toulouse, France.

French police fired shots and set off explosives roughly every hour outside an apartment block in southern France on Thursday to try to force out a 24-year-old gunman suspected of killing seven people in the name of al Qaeda [CIA]. Some 27 hours after 300 police first surrounded the five-storey building in a suburb of the prosperous industrial city of Toulouse, Mohamed Merah, a French citizen of Algerian origin, was refusing to give himself up. Instead Merah boasted to police negotiators that he had brought France to its knees and said his only regret was not having been able to carry out plans for more killings. [...] He has told negotiators that he killed the seven to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children and because of French army involvement in Afghanistan. He filmed the shootings of the children and the rabbi on Monday using a camera strapped to him.

New York Times: French Slaying Suspect Dead After Police Raid Hideout
USA Today: Official: Suspect in French killing spree is dead
Russia Today: Toulouse gunman dead, jumps to his death in hail of bullets - VIDEO, PHOTOS
Le Monde: La situation à Toulouse
20Minutes.fr: TOULOUSE: le tueur présumé ne donne plus signe de vie, la police s'interroge
Washington Post: Mohammed Merah, shooting suspect, ‘wants to die’ fighting
MSNBC: No sign of life for 10 hours from Jewish school shooting suspect's home
Wall Street Journal: French Interior Minister: Toulouse Suspect May Be Dead
Alex Lantier: French police in armed standoff with alleged Toulouse gunman
AWIP: French 'arrest Toulouse suspect'

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Israeli occupation forces (IOF) stormed a school in Ras Al-Amud suburb in occupied Jerusalem on Wednesday morning and arrested an 11-year-old child. - Hebrew newspaper Ha’aretz said on its website that the IOF unit took the child from his classroom along with the school’s secretary after the child confessed after beating that the secretary hid him inside the school after throwing stones at an IOF patrol. The paper pointed out that the incident was the fifth of its kind in 2012, recalling that the IOF soldiers detained another child in the same suburb ten days ago. The headmaster said that he tried to convince the soldiers not to storm the school and detain the child in front of all other children but they refused. The paper said that it recorded many similar incidents in which IOF harassment of Palestinian schoolchildren was registered in occupied Jerusalem.

IMEMC: Soldiers Kidnap 11 year old Child From His Classroom

Ambassador Hisham Badr, Egypt's permanent representative to the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, has confirmed Cairo's full support for the establishment of an international fact-finding committee to investigate the impact of Israeli settlements on Palestinian human rights. A proposal for the committee was submitted by the two Arabic and Islamic groups on the UN Human Rights Council. Badr's announcement came in a speech to the latest session of the Council to discuss the developments of the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian and Arab territories. The Egyptian representative said that any talk about the latest developments in the Middle East should not ignore the increasing suffering of the Palestinian people and the population in the occupied Arab territories due to the ongoing Israeli occupation.

The Kandahar, Afghanistan and Sanford, Florida killers are anything but freaks. Both acted on racist impulses shared by huge numbers of their fellow citizens, and encouraged by the policies of national and local governments. U.S. policy conveys immunity from other nations' laws on U.S. soldiers, while state laws are rewritten to do the same for murderous-minded whites. “Evocation of white fear now provides the same justification for summary murder as claims of rape of white women did for mob lynchings, back in the day.”

Mutinying soldiers in Mali took over the state television and announced that they had seized control of the government, saying the action was necessary because of the mishandling of an insurgency in the north. - The spokesman for the soldiers, Lt. Amadou Konare, said in a communique that they had taken the country's security in their own hands "due to the inability of the government to give the armed forces the necessary means to defend the integrity of our national territory." A soldier at the presidential palace who asked not to be named because he feared reprisal said that the presidential guard had failed to defend the palace against the renegade soldiers. They have seized control of the seat of government, but could not find democratically elected leader President Amadou Toumani Toure, who is in hiding.

Jason Ditz: Mali Soldiers Seize State Media, Attack Palace in Coup Bid
Global Research News: JOSEPH KONY, AMERICA'S PRETEXT TO INVADE AFRICA: US Marines Dispatched to Five African Countries