Brandon J. Raub has been ordered to stay in a mental health institution for a month without charge – and contrary to the American constitution, his defense says. His supporters are concerned any American could end up in Raub’s shoes.

­US police detained Raub, 26, a Marine Corps veteran, on Thursday, without presenting any charges and even without reading to Raub his Miranda rights, and took him to John Randolph Medical Center, where he is currently being held involuntarily, his defense said in a press-release.

A video of his detention emerged online, triggering outrage online, including among American citizens and human rights activists.

"For government officials to not only arrest Brandon Raub for doing nothing more than exercising his First Amendment rights [to freedom of speech], but to actually force him to undergo psychological evaluations and detain him against his will goes against every constitutional principle this country was founded upon," said John Whitehead, executive director of the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties group that has come to the Raub’s defense.

AWIP: Marine nabbed over "Facebook Terrorism"

It was a fight involving two men and a parking space in Highlands Ranch, and now there are claims the CIA wants to end the case before it gets to the courtroom. - Raymond Davis is scheduled to go on trial on assault charges in Douglas County next month. He is the CIA contractor who was held in a Pakistan jail for nearly two months last year. He killed two Pakistani men in what he said was self defense. The attorney for the victim in the case involving the parking space claims the CIA is now getting involved. The district attorney’s office adamantly denies it, but the lawyer based in Los Angeles for the alleged victim in the case, Jeff Maes, says the district attorney wants to downgrade the charges against Davis, or perhaps reach a plea deal and believes it’s at the request of the CIA. After nearly two months in a jail in Pakistan, Davis was freed when some $2 million in so called blood money to the victim’s families was paid for his release. Davis was then acquitted of the murder charges. “They want to keep out of the public realm exactly who Raymond Davis is,” Maes’ attorney Larry Klayman said.

CIA agent Davis linked to Taliban
Raymond Davis 'was acting head of CIA in Pakistan'

Says WikiLeaks Founder Should Seek Promise From US.

Swedish officials, who have in the past termed Julian Assange “public enemy number one” even though he isn’t actually charged with a single crime, have condemned Ecuador for granting him asylum, saying Sweden is a nation of “rule of law” and that it was an insult to keep him from being extradited there. At the same time, Swedish officials made it clear exactly why the asylum happened in the first place, declining to give any guarantee that it wouldn’t simply ship him to the United States after he was acquired and saying Assange should try to get guarantees from the US if he’s worried about it. Assange’s lawyers say he has no problem being sent to Sweden for questioning, but didn’t want it to be used as an excuse to capture him and turn him over to the US, where officials have called him a “terrorist” and members of Congress have called for his summary execution.

Seumas Milne: Why the US is out to get Julian Assange - Can anyone seriously believe the dispute would have gone global, or that the British government would have made its asinine threat to suspend the Ecuadorean embassy's diplomatic status and enter it by force, or that scores of police would have surrounded the building, swarming up and down the fire escape and guarding every window, if it was all about one man wanted for questioning over sex crime allegations in Stockholm? - To get a grip on what is actually going on, rewind to WikiLeaks' explosive release of secret US military reports and hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables two years ago. They disgorged devastating evidence of US war crimes and collusion with death squads in Iraq on an industrial scale, the machinations and lies of America's wars and allies, its illegal US spying on UN officials – as well as a compendium of official corruption and deceit across the world.

TV reporter adds: 'I doubt Obama could say anything that would convince PM to delay a possible attack' - Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "is determined to attack Iran before the US elections," Israel's Channel 10 News claimed on Monday night, and Israel is now "closer than ever" to a strike designed to thwart Iran’s [alleged] nuclear drive. The TV station's military reporter Alon Ben-David, who earlier this year was given extensive access to the Israel Air Force as it trained for a possible attack, reported that, since upgraded sanctions against Iran have failed to force a suspension of the Iranian nuclear program in the past two months, "from the prime minister's point of view, the time for action is getting ever closer."

'There is a new trend in barbarity and lunacy for the police who murder people because of their ethnic origin' - An autopsy report released Monday backed up claims made by Arkansas police officers that an African-American man in custody shot himself in the head despite being handcuffed, according to the Associated Press. Dr. Randy Short is a member of Dignity, Human Rights and Peace. In a phone interview with Press TV's U.S. Desk on Tuesday, he commented about such incidents.

"There have been at least a 130 extrajudicial slayings of mostly black men by the police this year. There was one just a few days ago in Baltimore where a black veteran was executed by the police in Baltimore. Since December of last year, January of this year, there've been about as many as eight cases where blacks are alleged to have either killed themselves while handcuffed and in one instance, a young woman allegedly strangled herself to death with handcuffs."

Ecuador has granted asylum to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange two months after he took refuge in its London embassy while fighting extradition from the UK. - It said his human rights might be violated if he is sent to Sweden to be questioned over sex assault claims, which he denies. The UK denied there had been any threat to storm the Ecuadorian embassy, but said it will not allow Mr Assange safe passage out of the country. Julian Assange's mother, Christine, said the UK had been ''exposed as nothing but a puppet state of the US'' by the latest developments.

When the George Orwell Memorial Trust proposed a statue of the writer for outside the BBC’s new headquarters it expected an enthusiastic response.

According to Baroness Bakewell, who is backing the campaign, Mark Thompson, the Corporation’s outgoing director general, said the statue could not be erected on BBC premises because Orwell was “too Left-wing”. Orwell worked as a BBC journalist, producing radio programmes at Broadcasting House during the Second World War before leaving to publish Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Mr Thompson’s remark will surprise critics of the BBC, who have long accused the corporation of liberal bias. Lady Bakewell said the exchange took place earlier this year. “I met Mark Thompson at a BBC reception and mentioned the project. He said, 'Oh no, Joan, we can’t possibly. It’s far too Left-wing an idea’,” she said. Writing in today's Daily Telegraph, Lady Bakewell said the BBC should “honour the greatest British journalist of his day” with a statue in the piazza outside the new Broadcasting House in Oxford Circus, central London. A number of serving BBC journalists, including Andrew Marr and James Naughtie, have helped to raise more than £60,000 for it to be made. Mark Thompson is currently on leave and could not be reached for comment.

Obama warns Syria against using chemical or biological weapons:Obama says, 'That's a red line for us ... there would be enormous consequences' if Bashar Assad appeared to be preparing to use poison gas or biological weapons.' - Conceding that a peaceful resolution in Syria now appears remote, President Obama warned Monday for the first time that use or movement of chemical or biological weapons by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad would constitute a "red line" for U.S. military intervention. Obama acknowledged his frustration that diplomacy has done little to protect civilians or stem the growing bloodshed in the 17-month conflict. International efforts to persuade Assad to step down, to negotiate an effective cease-fire or to facilitate a political transition have been unsuccessful. "At this point, the likelihood of a soft landing seems pretty distant," Obama said in a brief, unscheduled news conference at the White House.

Johannes Stern: Obama threatens to invade Syria