A New York City Police Department sergeant has been caught on video threatening several Brooklyn men with his gun and with sexual assault. - Cell phone video obtained by the New York Post shows Sgt. Lesly Charles launching into a profane tirade while talking to several men who are suspected of criminal behavior. “I have a long dick, you don’t,” Charles says. “Listen to me. When you see me, you look the other way. Tell your boys, I don’t fuck around. I’ll take my gun and put it up your ass and then I’ll call your mother afterwards. OK? And I’ll put your own shit in your mouth. Alright?” (Raw Story)

Why isn't the U.S. economy in a depression right now? The number one reason is because the federal government has stolen more than five trillion dollars from future generations since Barack Obama was elected and has used that money to pump up our grossly inflated standard of living. Whether the federal government spends money wisely or foolishly, the truth is that the vast majority of it still ends up in the pockets of the American people who then use it to buy the things they need for their daily lives. If the U.S. government had not borrowed and spent an extra five trillion dollars that we did not have over the past several years, we would be in the middle of a rip-roaring economic depression right now. So any talk that Barack Obama is "improving the economy" is a total farce. It is a five trillion dollar lie. The reality is that Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress have been stealing trillions of dollars from future generations in order to make things tolerable in the present. If the federal government adopted a balanced budget next year, the debt-fueled prosperity that we are currently enjoying would start disappearing very rapidly and all hell would break loose in America.

Obama's Yemenite model...

“President Barack Obama told G8 leaders meeting at Camp David that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must leave power, and pointed to Yemen as a model of how political transition could work there,” Reuters reported on Saturday.

Just to remind people, after about a year of mass protests urging the U.S.-supported dictator of Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh to resign, Yemenis voted in February in a referendum on a U.S.-backed transition deal to formally depose Saleh and elect his deputy Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, who was the only name on the ballot. The deal granted Saleh total immunity for the crimes he committed while on Washington’s dole and despite the sham, single-candidate “election,” the U.S. praised it as democracy. The Obama administration then dutifully restarted military and economic aid to the Yemeni regime, dramatically escalated the drone war in Yemen, which has bombs dropped in the country virtually every day, and sent in Special Ops to fight militants without even acknowledging that this was any of Congress’s or the American people’s business. The Yemeni people see clearly how their popular revolution was hijacked in the name of “American interests,” and are now being systematically marginalized as Hadi maintains a terrible dictatorship and U.S. bombs continue to breed al-Qaeda loyalists. To boot, Obama signed an executive order last week which threatened sanctions or worse against anybody who challenged the Hadi government, even if you’re an American citizen. What a model of success!

A genetically modified strain of maize created by the notorious American company Monsanto has been temporarily banned in France “to protect the environment.” This comes at a time of protests against the biotech giant in its homeland. - France’s Agricultural Minister Bruno Le Maire Friday imposed the temporary ban on maize strain MON 810, in what his ministry is calling “a precautionary measure.” However, Monsanto itself said in January that it would not sell genetically modified maize in France, as it considered the market “not ready.” MON 810 is known by its trade name, YieldGuard. It was modified genetically in order to insert a bacteria into its DNA structure, allowing YieldGuard to be promoted as resistant to insect pests that damage harvests. However, according to some experts, it can be dangerous for plants and animals. In February, France’s Ecology Ministry announced its request to the European Commission to suspend authorization for the use of MON 810 crops due to potential risks to the environment. The ministry referred to a European Food Safety Authority study saying that threats linked to another form of genetically modified crop – BT11 – might also be associated with MON 810.

CIA secret interrogation methods - including detention and harsh questioning torture of suspected terrorists - remain off limits to public release, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. - The agency was sued eight years ago to provide details of certain communications describing the use of waterboarding and other direct intelligence-gathering methods of foreign terror suspects. A three-judge panel from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled "intelligence methods" are not subject to a Freedom of Information Act request from the lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. The CIA has admitted as part of the lawsuit it destroyed videotaped interrogations of "high-value" terror suspects Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

Amnesty International Advertisement
for the NATO summit in Chicago

So called human rights organizations are increasingly used as propaganda tools against the enemy du jour of western imperialism.

When Georgia attacked Russia peacekeepers in South-Ossetia resulting in a short and lost war Human Rights Watch misidentified cluster ammunition used during that war as Russian when it was, according to its own mine identification charts, indeed Georgian ammunition which had been purchased from Israel. Human Rights Watch continued to push the false claim even weeks after it had been proven wrong. When the French wanted to attack Libya Amnesty International's French director falsly claimed that Gaddhafi was using black mercenaries. Such claims later resulted in violent atrocities by the Libyan rebels against all black people. Human Rights Watch lamented about Syria putting mines on its borders against weapon smuggling. It claimed that such mines are internationally banned which they are not. But it did not say a word when Israel mined its border with Syria to prevent Syrian refugees from coming in. The partisanship of these organizations has now reached a new level with Amnesty International openly calling for NATO to prolong the war on Afghanistan. Amnesty's new slogan: "NATO: Keep the progress going!" - What progress? Amnesty International is cheerleading the war ostensibly for "Human Rights for Women and Girls in Afghanistan". In that it is joining Laura Bush on the neo-conned Washington Post opinion pages.

But as Sonali Kolhatkar, founder of the Afghan Women's Mission (AWM) and Mariam Rawi of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) wrote a while ago on AlterNet:

Under the Taliban, women were confined to their homes. They were not allowed to work or attend school. They were poor and without rights. They had no access to clean water or medical care, and they were forced into marriages, often as children. Today, women in the vast majority of Afghanistan live in precisely the same conditions, with one notable difference: they are surrounded by war. The conflict outside their doorsteps endangers their lives and those of their families. It does not bring them rights in the household or in public, and it confines them even further to the prison of their own homes. Military escalation is just going to bring more tragedy to the women of Afghanistan. [...] Waging war does not lead to the liberation of women anywhere. Women always disproportionately suffer the effects of war, and to think that women's rights can be won with bullets and bloodshed is a position dangerous in its naïveté.

John Vincent: Amnesty International, George Clooney and the Bidding of Empire

The US senate has endorsed a new package of oil and economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear energy program ahead of talks between Tehran and the six major world powers (P5+1) in Baghdad. - The measure, passed unanimously on Monday, would target foreign banks doing transactions with Iran's national oil and tanker companies. It also includes measures to close potential loopholes in existing sanctions that could allow Iran to continue selling its crude oil. The House of Representatives passed its version of the bill in December and now the senate and House must reconcile their differences in the legislation. The powerful pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC strongly supports the proposed sanctions.

Stephen Lendman: Pushing for War on Iran

Obama administration lawyers appealed to the highest US court on behalf of James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence. - The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a US government challenge to a lawsuit against its electronic surveillance program, which allows authorities to eavesdrop on Americans' overseas phone calls and emails. The court agreed to hear the case Clapper vs. Amnesty International, the Barack Obama administration's petition to the US top court in which it seeks to throw out a suit challenging US government monitoring of Americans' international communications.

Turkish news agency reports of Israel's plan to deploy commandos to safeguard Israelis, natural gas plant on Greek island; Agency estimates number of Israeli citizens in area to rise to 30,000. - The high number of Israelis in Greek Cyprus would present a security issue, which Netanyahu suggested be solved by sending as many as 20,000 Israeli commandos to safeguard both the Israelis and the natural gas plant, the agency said. According to the report, Israel offered to place the personnel and commandos in Limassol in Greek Cyprus."The Israelis who come, settle here for good," the news agency's source in Greek Cyprus said.

The European Commission is set to launch a substantial review of rules governing personal documents with the aim of making electronic identities take off across the EU. But the proposal faces likely opposition from civil rights groups and member states where identity cards do not exist. - Neelie Kroes, the EU's Digital Agenda Commissioner, will present by the beginning of June a new legislative proposal which aims “to facilitate cross-border electronic transactions” through the adoption of harmonised e-signatures, e-identities and electronic authentication services (eIAS) across EU member states, according to an internal document seen by EurActiv.

Scientists have identified thousands of sites in the Arctic where methane that has been stored for many millennia is bubbling into the atmosphere.

The methane has been trapped by ice, but is able to escape as the ice melts. Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this ancient gas could have a significant impact on climate change. Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas after CO2 and levels are rising after a few years of stability. There are many sources of the gas around the world, some natural and some man-made, such as landfill waste disposal sites and farm animals. Tracking methane to these various sources is not easy. But the researchers on the new Arctic project, led by Katey Walter Anthony from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks (UAF), were able to identify long-stored gas by the ratio of different isotopes of carbon in the methane molecules. Using aerial and ground-based surveys, the team identified about 150,000 methane seeps in Alaska and Greenland in lakes along the margins of ice cover. Local sampling showed that some of these are releasing the ancient methane, perhaps from natural gas or coal deposits underneath the lakes, whereas others are emitting much younger gas, presumably formed through decay of plant material in the lakes. The region stores vast quantities of the gas in different places - in and under permafrost on land, on and under the sea bed, and - as evidenced by the latest research - in geological reservoirs. How serious and how immediate a threat this feedback mechanism presents is a controversial area, with some scientists believing that the impacts will not be seen for many decades, and others pointing out the possibility of a rapid release that could swiftly accelerate global warming.

Austrian Defense Minister Norbert Darabos says the presence of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in the Israeli cabinet is “unbearable.” - In an interview with the Austrian daily Die Presse, Darabos severely criticized Israel's policies, with a special emphasis on the continued settlement activities and the nuclear allegations against Iran. An attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would spark an uncontrollable fire in the region and will create solidarity and empathy for Iran in the Arab world members who are normally among Iran critics and the world at large, Darabos said. The Austrian minister criticized Israel for "pointing a finger at its foreign enemies like Iran and the Palestinians in order to avoid dealing with internal social issues." Despite his senior position in the cabinet, Lieberman is consciously left out of the talks involving Tel Aviv by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is rarely dispatched for negotiations with Arab leaders. US President Barack Obama has also refused to meet Lieberman in the past three years. Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic, a prominent pro-Israeli publication, has described Lieberman as "neo-fascist ... a certified gangster ... the Israeli equivalent of Jorg Haider." During the 2009 campaign, Meretz, the left wing Zionist party in Israel, released an internal memo comparing Lieberman to "Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, Haider in Austria, and Zhirinovsky in Russia"

Words that Tony Blair spoke over the phone to George Bush on the eve of the Iraq war are to be made public, a tribunal has ordered. - The Foreign Office has been ordered to release parts of the note detailing the conversation on 12 March 2003, a week before the invasion of Iraq began. A panel chaired by tribunal judge Professor John Angel overruled objections from the Foreign Office that publishing any part of the conversation could do “serious damage” to relations with the USA. They said in their ruling: “The circumstances surrounding a decision by a UK government to go to war with another country is always likely to be of very significant public interest, even more so with the consequences of this war.”

Serbia's populist presidential challenger Tomislav Nikolic won an upset election victory over the Balkan nation's veteran pro-Western leader on Sunday, as voters opted for change in the face of high unemployment, stagnating economic growth and allegations of corruption. - The triumph of Mr. Nikolic, who once opposed European Union membership but in recent years has said he favors closer ties with both Brussels and Moscow, could mean a less-ardent embrace of the West and less willingness to make the compromises needed to join the EU, analysts said. "This is a turning point for Serbia," said Mr. Nikolic, the 60-year-old chief of the Serbian Progressive Party, in a victory speech at his Belgrade headquarters late Sunday. Mr. Nikolic pledged to keep the country, once ostracized for its role in the interethnic warfare that engulfed Yugoslavia as it disintegrated in the 1990s, on the path to EU membership. But he said, "Serbia must look for friends everywhere in the world" as it seeks to revive its economy and fight poverty and crime. His opponent, Boris Tadic—the head of the Democratic Party, who resigned as president last month to force early elections—congratulated Mr. Nikolic on "a fair and well-earned victory." He urged his rival not to change course on EU integration, saying, "It would be a tragic mistake if we go back" to the tensions and turmoil of the past. A preliminary count showed that Mr. Nikolic won 49.7% of the vote, compared with 47% for Mr. Tadic, according to the Center for Free Elections and Democracy, a nongovernmental election-monitoring group.

Historically, young people have been less likely to vote; however, record numbers showed up to the polls in 2008. How are young people expected to vote this year? [Courtesy of Best Colleges Online]