By controlling the means of food production, transportation and distribution, the CA will ensure the standards set forth by the UN are the basis for all national legislation. - Obama signed Executive Order (EO), Establishing the National Prevention, Health Promotion and Public Health Council in 2010. Through this EO, Obama empowered the CA to enact the UN’s plan for worldwide food standards. The National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council was created to assist Obama in destroying the alternative health industry. Congress fought the use of CA policy as the foundation for an attempt by the federal government to remove the American public’s ability to purchase vitamin supplements by deeming those remedies as “unscientific”. Since the FDA have consistently claimed that these alternatives have no medicinal value and decried their daily use a danger to a healthy lifestyle, social stigmas have served to aid Obama in declaring them useless. Obama suggests that their potency be changed to ultra-low levels in compound mixtures.

Eric Blair: Endgame Legislation: Lame Duck Session Ushers in Tyranny
AWIP: Food safety bill invokes Codex harmonization and grants FDA authority to police food safety of foreign nations

Russia says powerful foreign military and financial backing is emboldening the Syrian opposition to continue terrorist activities. - Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov accused terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, of being behind the deadly wave of bombings in Syria, Reuters reported. Terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, are behind the recent terror strikes in Syria… There is completely proved evidence that armed groups [in Syria] include mercenaries from Libya and other Arab countries,” he said. Gatilov painted a bleak picture of Syria's future, saying, “This gives little hope for an early start of talks,” adding that the standoff will be hard to break unless Western and Arab nations take a harder line with opposition groups. He went on to say that the continued foreign assistance to Syrian armed groups compels Moscow to stand by its traditional ally in its time of trouble. Earlier in the day, Russia's UN ambassador warned Kosovo against allowing Syrian militants to be trained on its territory. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin censured Kosovo over what he called the “disturbing information” that Kosovo has been “establishing contacts with the Syrian opposition to train insurgents.”

The latest episode of The World Tomorrow takes us to the very heart of America’s War on Terror: Guantanamo Bay. Julian Assange sat down with a former Gitmo prisoner and a rights campaigner fighting for those still trapped behind the wire.

Ten years ago the war on terror prompted the opening of the facility. Now, more than three years after President Obama ordered its closure, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, like the war in Afghanistan, remains with us. Over a year ago, Wikileaks blew the lid on Gitmo by releasing a cache of files that exposed the inner workings of the infamous prison where 169 remain without hope of trial or release. Moazzam Begg, born and raised in the UK, was imprisoned for years in Guantanamo as an Al Qaeda suspect. He amazingly managed to secure his release in 2005 after lobbying his government. Asim Qureshi is a former corporate lawyer, whose human rights organization Cageprisoners Ltd exists solely to raise awareness of the plight of prisoners who remain in Guantanamo Bay. Begg signed a confession admitting he “was armed and prepared to fight alongside the Taliban and Al Qaeda against the US,” but only after being hog-tied and beaten as he listened “to the sound of a woman screaming next door I'm told or am led to believe is my wife.” Together, both men discuss the plight of Muslims in the post 9/11 world, the thin line between terror and self-defense, and how Begg believes Obama has ushered in an era where “extra-judicial killing” has replaced “extra-judicial detention.”

China, Mexico and other countries far less affluent are working to provide medical insurance for all citizens. It's viewed as an economic investment. - Even as Americans debate whether to scrap President Obama's healthcare law and its promise of guaranteed health coverage, many far less affluent nations are moving in the opposite direction — to provide medical insurance to all citizens. China, after years of underfunding healthcare, is on track to complete a three-year, $124-billion initiative projected to cover more than 90% of the nation's residents.

■ Francois Hollande has been sworn in as France's next president.
■ The new leader says he will fight for unity and reconciliation.
■ Mr Hollande says he is fully aware of the challenges facing France, including the debt deficit and high unemployment.
■ After a day of ceremonies, the new president flies to Berlin to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Le Parisien: EN DIRECT : François Hollande, septième président de la Ve République
L'Express: François Hollande: "Je ne déciderai pas de tout pour tout et partout"

Evening Standard: Socialist Hollande owns three homes on the Riviera - France's new Socialist president owns three holiday homes in the Riviera resort of Cannes, it emerged today. François Hollande, 57, who “dislikes the rich” and wants to revolutionise his country with high taxes and an onslaught against bankers, is in fact hugely wealthy himself. His assets were published today in the Official Journal, the gazette which contains verified information about France’s government. To the undoubted embarrassment of the most Left-wing leader in Europe, and a man who styles himself as “Mr Normal”, they are valued at almost £1 million.

MONTEREY, Tenn. -- "If somebody told me this happened to them, I absolutely would not believe this could happen in America."

That was the reaction of a New Jersey man who found out just how risky it can be to carry cash through Tennessee. For more than a year, NewsChannel 5 Investigates has been shining a light on a practice that some call "policing for profit." In this latest case, a Monterey police officer took $22,000 off the driver -- even though he had committed no crime. "You live in the United States, you think you have rights -- and apparently you don't," said George Reby. As a professional insurance adjuster, Reby spends a lot of time traveling from state to state. But it was on a trip to a conference in Nashville last January that he got a real education in Tennessee justice. "I never had any clue that they thought they could take my money legally," Reby added. "I didn't do anything wrong."

Reby was driving down Interstate 40, heading west through Putnam County, when he was stopped for speeding. A Monterey police officer wanted to know if he was carrying any large amounts of cash. "I said, 'Around $20,000,'" he recalled. "Then, at the point, he said, 'Do you mind if I search your vehicle?' I said, 'No, I don't mind.' I certainly didn't feel I was doing anything wrong. It was my money." That's when Officer Larry Bates confiscated the cash based on his suspicion that it was drug money. "Why didn't you arrest him?" we asked Bates. "Because he hadn't committed a criminal law," the officer answered.

The top-secret US National Security Agency is not required to reveal any deal it may have with Google to help protect against cyber attacks, an appeals court ruled Friday. - The US Court of Appeals in Washington upheld a lower court decision that said the NSA need not confirm or deny any relationship with Google, because its governing statutes allow it keep such information secret. The ruling came in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from a public interest group, which said the public has a right to know about any spying on citizens. The appeals court agreed that the NSA can reject the request, and does not even have to confirm whether it has any arrangement with the Internet giant.

Under the gaze of American instructors, gangly Ugandan recruits are taught to carry rifles, dodge roadside bombs and avoid shooting one another by accident. In one obstacle course dubbed “Little Mogadishu,” the Ugandans learn the basics of urban warfare as they patrol a mock city block of tumble-down buildings and rusty shipping containers designed to resemble the battered and dangerous Somali capital.

GAZA, (PIC)-- Palestinian prisoners have finally won their battle of empty stomachs against the Israeli suppressive jailors and won back normal rights of prisoners after 28 days of hunger strike.

Political bureau member of Hamas Saleh Al-Aruri has said that the higher committee of the hunger strike had signed an agreement with the Israeli prison service (IPS) by which the hunger strikers would end their strike in return for meeting all their demands. He told the PIC on Monday that the IPS would end the solitary confinement of Palestinian prisoners within 72 hours. Aruri added that the agreement, reached with Egyptian mediation, also stipulates releasing all administrative detainees by end of their administrative custody or indicting them. The agreement also stipulated allowing relatives of Gaza prisoners to visit them and ending the so-called Shalit law and improving incarceration conditions, the Hamas leader said.

IMEMC: Israel Agrees to Most of Hunger-Striking Detainees’ Demands
Linah Alsaafin: Empty Stomach Warriors: Thaer Halahleh - All in The Name

Israel closes Palestinian school to make way for West Bank training zone for the IDF even though Palestinians residents have no access to any other school. - A Palestinian elementary school was shut down last week after Israel's Civil Administration confiscated the vehicle used to transport teachers to it. Teachers initially tried coming to the school, located in the Jinba cave village in the southern Hebron hills, by donkey, but this proved disruptive since they were often late. On Sunday, the administration also confiscated the car of a veterinarian employed by the Palestinian Authority when he came to the village to vaccinate sheep. The vehicles were seized as part of a stepped-up enforcement campaign in Area C, the part of the West Bank under full Israeli control. The Civil Administration also issued a demolition order against the school, though residents have no access to any other school: The nearest is in Yatta, 20 kilometers away. In addition, it ordered an access road, tents, mud huts, sheepfolds and solar energy facilities razed, reinstating demolition orders frozen by agreement with the state prosecution in 2007.

Up to 8,000 companies doing business with the Pentagon may be qualified to join a newly expanded U.S. effort to guard sensitive information on private networks, a senior Defense Department official said Monday. - The Pentagon on Friday invited all of its eligible contractors to join the voluntary pact aimed at fighting what U.S. officials have described as growing cyber threats that allegedly originate, above all, in Russia and China. The Defense Department will provide intelligence-derived information on malicious Internet traffic to the companies; the firms are to share information on any cyber penetrations of their networks with the government.

The United States is considering the removal of the anti-Iranian Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) from its terrorism watch list. - Senior US officials say Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will make her final decision on the matter two months after the terrorist group leaves Camp New Iraq, formerly known as Camp Ashraf, some 120 kilometers (74 miles) west of the border with Iran. MKO members are currently being relocated to Camp Liberty near the Baghdad International Airport under an agreement reached between the United Nations and Iraq last December. The MKO is designated as a terrorist organization under US law, and has been described by State Department officials as a ‘repressive cult.’ MKO has carried out numerous acts of violence against Iranian civilians and government officials.

The man convicted of espionage for the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, and assassinating a top Iranian nuclear physicist has been executed in Tehran's Evin Prison. - Majid Jamali Fashi, who assassinated Massoud Ali-Mohammadi in January 2011, was brought to justice under the Iranian judicial system on Tuesday. Jamali Fashi was also found guilty of receiving training from Mossad inside Israel as well as $120,000 to assassinate the Iranian scientist. The Mossad assassin had also confessed to having received forged documents in Azerbaijan’s Heydar Aliyev Airport to travel to Tel Aviv. He also pleaded guilty to charges of damaging residential structures in Iran following the terrorist act as well as keeping drugs at home. He was sentenced to death after being convicted in a trial last August.

Bomb blast kills Iranian professor
N-scientists hitmen trained by Mossad
Israel agent details Iran assassination
Mossad's killer of Iran N-scientist tried - Video
Stephen Lendman: Waging Covert War on Iran

The date is December 3, 1972, and it’s right there in a headline of the Tri-City Herald, the newspaper that serves Pasco-Kennewick-Richland in the state of Washington: “Jews sent President Truman letter bombs, book tells.” The newspaper picked up the article, we see, from the Associated Press (AP). - Not only does the article carry the authority of the AP, but the book in question bears the authority of none other than President Harry Truman’s own daughter, Margaret. It is her biography of her father, entitled simply Harry S. Truman, and at the time the article was written, the book had just been published. The passage in question—a long paragraph that begins on page 489 and ends on page 490 (pp. 533-534 of the paperback edition)—is in a section on threats and attempts on President Truman’s life.

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon: According to Norman Finkelstein, American Jews fall out of love with Israel? In this BBC Hardtalk exchange he argues that they are now so unhappy with what Israel is doing that they want to distance them from the country. But is Finkelstein telling the truth here? I think that he is dead wrong! Diaspora Jews are actually more attached to their tribal identity than ever. For the time being, Israel is the one and only Jewish secular symbolic identifier (culturally, spiritually and nationally). Even the so-called Jewish ‘anti’ Zionists identify collectively with Israel by the means of negation. Israel is at the heart of the Jewish collective universe. Most Jews feel strong affinity towards the 'Jewish State' and just a very few claim to oppose it. I would argue that for Jews to move away from Israel or Zionism a new Jerusalem is needed, I don’t see it happening voluntarily.

Moody's Investors Service downgraded the debt ratings of 26 Italian banks Monday as they struggled with the effect of the weak economy and government austerity measures. - The move means Moody's now ranks Italy's banks lower than most of their Western European peers. The ratings agency said the banks are suffering because Italy is back in recession and government measures are cutting demand for loans. Banks are facing more loan losses, limited access to funding and weaker profits. Moody's noted, however, that support from the European Central Bank lowered the default risk of many of the banks. The firm lowered its long-term debt and deposit ratings by one notch each for 10 banks, by two notches for eight banks, by three notches for six banks and by four notches for two banks. It also downgraded the short-term rating on 21 banks by one or two notches, which triggered long-term rating downgrades. The firm's outlook for all 26 banks is negative. Moody's said Italy relapsed into recession in early 2012 and there are no clear signs of recovery.

New elections appear increasingly likely in Greece. The conservative New Democracy (ND) and the Democratic Left (DIMAR) demanded participation of the Coalition of Radical Left (SYRIZA) as a necessary condition for them to form a coalition with the social-democratic PASOK party. SYRIZA turned down the demand and made clear it was unwilling for now to enter into such an alliance. SYRIZA has already signaled its willingness to participate in a government that implements EU diktats. [...] The primary objective of a coalition including SYRIZA would be the preservation of the EU, the euro currency and European capitalism. It would negotiate with the EU to achieve at best a few minor changes and then—camouflaged with leftist rhetoric and using its connections with the trade unions—enforce new cuts against the resistance of the workers.