An American soldier says he released the photos to the Los Angeles Times to draw attention to the safety risk of a breakdown in leadership and discipline. The Army has started a criminal investigation. - The paratroopers had their assignment: Check out reports that Afghan police had recovered the mangled remains of an insurgent suicide bomber. Try to get iris scans and fingerprints for identification. The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan's Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held — and others squatted beside — the corpse's severed legs. A few months later, the same platoon was dispatched to investigate the remains of three insurgents who Afghan police said had accidentally blown themselves up. After obtaining a few fingerprints, they posed next to the remains, again grinning and mugging for photographs. Two soldiers posed holding a dead man's hand with the middle finger raised. A soldier leaned over the bearded corpse while clutching the man's hand. Someone placed an unofficial platoon patch reading "Zombie Hunter" next to other remains and took a picture. The Army launched a criminal investigation after the Los Angeles Times showed officials copies of the photos, which recently were given to the paper by a soldier from the division.

Stephen Lendman: America's Lost War
Carne Ross: Afghanistan: an illusion exposed

A senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps said that all vessels, including the US warships, enter the Persian Gulf waters through the Strait of Hormuz only after they are checked by the IRGC naval forces. -

"The alien vessels which enter the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz always provide the needed answers and information to the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) units," Lieutenant Commander of the IRGC Naval Force Alireza Tangsiri said on Wednesday. He further noted the deployment of a US aircraft carrier in the region, and said, "This vessel, similar to the other warships, answered all the questions asked by the IRGC Navy without any problem or making any particular move and then continued the path to its specified destination."

In relevant remarks today, Commander of the Iranian Army Major General Ataollah Salehi downplayed deployment of two aircraft carriers by the US in waters near the Persian Gulf, and warned the US naval forces not to approach the red zones announced by the Iranian armed forces. The remarks by the Iranian army commander came as the US announced the deployment of the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise along with the Abraham Lincoln carrier in waters near the Persian Gulf. The US [lied][and said] that the deployment is "routine" and the two carriers will support the American military operations in Afghanistan and anti-piracy efforts off Somalia's coast and in the Gulf of Aden.

The Democrats, the Republicans and especially Barack Obama promised that something would be done about the too big to fail banks so that they would never again be a threat to destroy our financial system. Well, those promises have not been kept and the too big to fail banks are now much bigger and much more powerful than ever. The assets of the five biggest U.S. banks were equivalent to about 43 percent of U.S. GDP before the financial crisis. Today, the assets of the five biggest U.S. banks are equivalent to about 56 percent of U.S. GDP. So if those banks were "too big to fail" before, then what are they now? They continue to gobble up smaller banks at a brisk pace, and they continue to pile up debt and risky investments as if a day of reckoning will never come. But of course a day of reckoning is coming, and when it arrives they will be expecting more bailouts just like they got the last time. The size of these monolithic financial institutions is truly difficult to comprehend. They completely dominate our financial system and everywhere you look they are constantly absorbing more wealth and more power.

Bloomberg: Banks Seen Dangerous Defying Obama’s Too-Big-to-Fail Move
NewScientist: Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

CPJ’s 2012 Impunity Index spotlights countries where journalists are slain and killers go free. - Deadly, unpunished violence against the press rose sharply in Pakistan and Mexico, continuing a dark, years-long trend in both nations, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found in its newly updated Impunity Index. The global index, which calculates unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country's population, shows that Pakistani authorities routinely fail to bring prosecutions in journalist murders, including several with suspected government links, while Mexican officials are yet to effectively combat the murderous crime groups targeting news media in vast parts of the nation.

A fighter who calls himself Mohammed holds his rifle in his right hand and uses a kerchief as a sling for his left arm, coated in fresh pink scars. He defected from the army four months ago and has come to fight near his family and his fiancée, who are still in his village just on the other side of the mountain. Like most rebels, he is afraid of contacting them, fearing they could be arrested or killed. [...] Inside the camp, young boys wage their own daily battle with Turkish security to pry openings in the fences around the camp for smuggling the rebels and their supplies in and out. At his border post just miles away, the rebel Mohammed says he is not frustrated yet. He only hopes his fiancée, close yet far away, will wait for him. "I hope she isn't mad, I think she understands," he laughs, rolling the silver engagement ring on his finger. "By God's will, we'll marry as soon as the regime falls."

These rebels are the locals' open secret. Turkish border patrols on the hilltops and farmers ploughing nearby fields somehow just seem to miss seeing scrawny, bedraggled young men like Said sneaking along mountain passes with large packs. Rebels asked that the location of their base not be disclosed, for their safety and that of the locals who help them. Nearby Syrian villagers play ignorant when their sons disappear. Some fighters, like Ayman, an army defector, have faked their deaths and are now hiding just a few kilometres away, carving out rebel posts all along the border. He secretly joined a group of rebels on the border several months ago. Their sagging tents of blue plastic tarp are stuffed with tattered mattresses and dirty pots and pans. Buckets are scattered to collect rainwater to drink. "My parents know I'm alive, that's it. Our neighbours think the rebels killed me," says Ayman, a brawny 28-year old with a short trimmed beard. The border is an ever-shifting belt of rebel control, says one of their commanders, Khaled Hammoud, a defected lieutenant-colonel.

PressTV: Terrorist groups kill six Syrian policemen despite ceasefire

The number of earthquakes in the central United States rose "spectacularly" near where oil and gas drillers disposed of wastewater underground, a process that may have caused geologic faults to slip, U.S. government geologists report. - The average number of earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater in the U.S. midcontinent - an area that includes Arkansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas - increased to six times the 20th century average last year, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey said in an abstract of their research. The abstract does not explicitly link rising earthquake activity to fracking - known formally as hydraulic fracturing - that involves pumping water and chemicals into underground rock formations to extract natural gas and oil. But the wastewater generated by fracking and other extraction processes may play a role in causing geologic faults to slip, causing earthquakes, the report suggests.

New revisions to a proposed federal cybersecurity law still would permit Internet companies to hand over confidential customer records and communications to the National Security Agency. A recent torrent of criticism prompted the politicians behind the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act to circulate a revised version of CISPA this evening before an expected floor vote next week. But the authors made only relatively minor tweaks. The legislation remains so broad that the NSA could vacuum up "all sorts of sensitive information like Internet use information and the contents of e-mails," ACLU legislative counsel Michelle Richardson told CNET.

Jason Ditz: House Intel Chair: Google Secretly Backs CISPA

By Nathan Freed Wessler, Fellow, ACLU, and Pardiss Kebriaei, Attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights

Today the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking information about a horrific U.S. missile strike that killed dozens of civilians in Yemen.

This was the Obama administration's first known missile strike in Yemen, carried out with one or more cruise missiles launched from an American warship or submarine on December 17, 2009. The U.S. military reportedly used cluster bombs, killing at least 41 people in the remote mountain village of al-Majalah in Yemen's Abyan province. The government was purportedly targeting "militants," but those killed include at least 21 children and 14 women. Entire families were wiped out. It is the worst reported loss of civilian life from a U.S. targeted killing strike in Yemen to date.

Although Yemen initially claimed responsibility for the attack, the press soon quoted unnamed American government officials acknowledging that in fact the U.S. had launched the strike. Those reports were confirmed when WikiLeaks released a secret diplomatic cable from January 2010 describing a meeting between then head of the U.S. Central Command General David Petraeus and then Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The cable describes General Petraeus and President Saleh discussing an apparent agreement that Yemen would help conceal U.S. involvement in the al-Majalah and other missile strikes in Yemen by publicly taking responsibility for those attacks. Even now, the U.S. government refuses to publicly discuss its role in the strike.

Briefing regarding the continuous Israeli violations and violence against Palestinian and international solidarity activists through discussing the incident of the recent assault on peace activists in the Jordan Valley.

Speakers:
D. Mustafa Barghouti: Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative
Andreas Ias: Danish solidarity activist attacked by IOF during cyclist event
Jamal Juma – Coordinator of Stop the Wall campaign
Location: Watan TV- in PARC Building
Time: 10 am
For more information please contact 0599940073

Prisoners’ Day is commemorated every year on April 17th. Today 1,600 Palestinian prisoners began an open-ended hunger strike that calls for better conditions in prison, including the right to family visits. Currently, there are over 4,500 prisoners behind Israeli bars, 203 of them being children and 6 women. Newly graduated student Ola Haniyeh is one of them.

In the early morning hours of Monday March 26th, a large force of Israeli soldiers surrounded the Haniyeh house in Al-Bireh, located in the heart of the West Bank’s capital city of Ramallah. After setting up a perimeter around the house, 12 well-armed soldiers kicked down the Haniyeh’s door and entered the home. “They broke the door. They didn’t knock. They didn’t ring. They broke the door and we found them in the middle of our bedroom,” says 26 year-old Dima Haniyeh. After confining Dima’s parents to their bedroom, the soldiers proceeded on to the next bedroom shared by Dima and her 22 year-old sister, Ola. Right of the bat, Dima recalls, it was clear the soldiers had an apparent interest in her young sister. “They wanted to search us both and they wanted Ola’s mobile phone and laptop.” A female soldier was brought in to search them both.