US president Barack Obama has issued an executive order, enabling the government to take over all private communications in the country under the pretext of ensuring national security. - Released on Friday, the controversial executive order entitled “Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions” allows federal agencies to take control of wired and wireless communications during situations they consider critical in order to reach anyone in the country. He reasoned that by controlling private communications the executive branch would be able to “ensure national security, effectively manage emergencies and improve national resilience.”

Daily Caller: Obama grants DHS power to takeover commercial, private communications "in emergency"

When police state thug border patrol agents ask Pastor Steven Anderson to show his papers and follow their orders, you know what he tells them? NO! This same man was viciously beaten and tazed by border patrol thugs a few years ago, yet he's still giving them hell! Steven reports these so-called "Border Patrol" checkpoints are in Southern California "on east-west highways that never even intersect with the border." "Eventually they'll be used for other more nefarious purposes. At this point they are there to get people acclimated to them while the police state is being built."

The US Ambassador in Pakistan Cameron Munter on Tuesday revealed that PTI chief Imran Khan and PML-N president Nawaz Sharif both assured him of a pro-US government after next elections, DawnNews reported. - The US ambassador, during an interview with BBC Urdu, said that talks did not end at Nato supply restoration, adding that there was still a lot to do for economic development and to eliminate terrorism. He said that he has held meetings with chiefs of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf, adding both the leaders had assured him that they completely support the US. Commenting on situation in Afghanistan, Munter said that Pakistan has to become part of solution and not problem. The US envoy said that both countries will have to "work together" to eliminate insurgents’ hideouts inside Pakistan so as to ensure assistance in Afghan war.

The US is clinging to a controversial policy of training local Afghan militias to carry on the task of keeping order beyond the 2014 date for withdrawal of foreign troops. But the armed gangs are not winning hearts and minds and US support may be laying the groundwork for civil war in Afghanistan. - The strategy is the brain-child of David Petraeus, who employed a similar approach in Iraq with the so-called Sunni Awakening which mobilized local militias against al-Qaeda. The Afghan Local Police (ALP) was created in July 2010, and the aim is to reach about 30,000 fighters before withdrawal.In March 2011, Petraeus told the Senate that the ALP is “arguably the most critical element in our effort to help Afghanistan develop the capacity to secure itself.” But the ALP have been using U.S. support to assert their authority and commit severe crimes against Afghan civilians. A Human Rights Watch report from last September “documents serious abuses, such as killings, rape, arbitrary detention, abductions, forcible land grabs, and illegal raids by irregular armed groups in northern Kunduz province and the Afghan Local Police (ALP).”

The LIBOR scandal is being called the "Wall Street scandal of all scandals" and the "rotten heart of finance," but the massive fraud can be hard to fathom for anyone who doesn't follow the markets. The London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) is a benchmark interest rate used broadly all over the world and affects trillions of dollars of loans – mortgage loans, small-business loans, personal loans – worldwide. This nifty infographic from AccountingDegree.net gives non-finance folk an idea of the scope of the scandal.

New York Times: Behind the Libor Scandal (InfoGraphic)
The American Dream: 19 Warnings About A Coming Global Financial Catastrophe

Russia has reportedly sent a naval flotilla led by destroyer-class warship Smetlivy to Syrian Mediterranean port of Tartous on a training mission. - According to Russian military sources, the flotilla, including two destroyers and three amphibious landing vessels, started their mission from the Russia’s Arctic port of Severomorsk to Tartus. Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted a military source as saying that the ships' mission had nothing to do with the ongoing unrest in the Middle Eastern country. - Untrue. Tartous is Russia’s sole naval base outside the former Soviet Union and Moscow dispatches its warships there regularly. The reports say the Russian vessels were scheduled to reach the Turkish straits on Wednesday morning to continue their mission to waters off Syria. The destroyer Smetlivy patrolled the waters off the coast of Syria in April and May. White House: US unconcerned by Russia's deployment of naval flotilla to Syria - Untrue.

On 22 June, more than 500 Palestinian, Israeli and international activists came together in the Palestinian herding community of Susya, in the West Bank’s South Hebron Hills, to protest a recent Israeli high court ruling for the demolition of the village and the ongoing Israeli attacks on Palestinian land rights in the West Bank. - The activists, arriving by organized buses from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and independently from all over the region, met with the residents of Susya and attempted to march towards the location of the original Susya, which was demolished in 1986 and is now an archaeological park. They were confronted by Israeli soldiers, who fired stun grenades into and around the crowds of people, while several rounds of tear gas were simultaneously released. On 6 June, Israel’s high court issued a decision that prohibits Susya residents from building any new structures near the surrounding Israeli settlements. Six days later, Israeli officials — accompanied by soldiers — handed out demolition orders to the entire West Bank village. These orders referred to demolition decisions stretching back to 1995.

Wayne Madsen: Remember the name of Susya. Israel destroys an entire West Bank village. Susya joins infamous list of other villages razed by Nazis: Lidice, Oradour-sur-Glane, Telavåg, Kortelisy, and Krasowo-Częstki.

(snowshoefilms series #1) Epidemiologist Rosalie Bertell (PhD, biometrics)explains the effects of the weaponized DU on the people of Iraq and the planet. In subsequent parts of this series, Dr. Bertell offers readily-accessible ways to detox some heavy metals and poisons from the body.

A Massachusetts man charged with plotting to "attack the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol" with large, remote-controlled model airplanes packed with explosives has agreed to plead guilty, authorities said on Tuesday. - Prosecutors and defense attorneys have agreed to request a 17-year sentence for Rezwan Ferdaus on charges that he attempted to damage and destroy a federal building, and attempted to provide material support to terrorists. Ferdaus, 26, of Ashland, Massachusetts, earlier pleaded not guilty to a total of six charges after his arrest in September 2011 after an undercover FBI investigation. In exchange for the guilty plea, the government will dismiss the remaining charges.

A witness confirmed there was a plot to assassinate high-profile ex-senator Piedad Cordoba and the Bogota mayor Gustavo Petro earlier in 2012, reported Colombian newspaper La Opinion Sunday. - The two officials were the targets of an assassination plot in May, the unidentified source told the newspaper from his refuge in Venezuela, where he is in hiding for security purposes. According to the source, the attack was scheduled to take place in the city center of Nieva, located in the heart of the southwestern province of Huila. The plan involved two men and a women, including the witness. One of the assailants was supposed to throw a grenade to create a diversion. The witness identified a retired army sargent, Hernando Medina Comacho, who reportedly approached the trio with an offer of more than $500,000 to carry out the hit.

The country's biggest banks are happy to make their money from the same governments about which they love to whine. - Bankers love to rail against government interference in the “free market.” Jamie Dimon, grilled this week in front of Congress over JP Morgan Chase's massive recent losses, famously complained last year that some regulations are “anti-American.” And Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, warned ominously that increased regulations might make the bank seek out another location to do its business: “Operations can be moved globally and capital can be accessed globally,” he said. Even while some of them occasionally have the grace to admit that they wouldn't still be around without the massive taxpayer bailouts of 2008 (and continued access to ultra-cheap loans from the Federal Reserve), they still like to claim that they're free-market entities, subject to the whims of the invisible hand, and that the government's meddling can only be destructive.