Check out what Mitt's mom says at the 0:50 mark. (Wikipedia on George W. Romney)

Syrian security forces have killed up to 100 Afghan insurgents in the northwestern city of Aleppo over the past two days, Press TV reports. On Thursday, the Syrian forces also arrested about 100 armed men near the capital, Damascus. Many insurgents were killed during clashes with the Syrian troops in Aleppo’s Maysaloon district on Wednesday. The Syrian army also seized large amounts of weapons and ammunition, including Israel-made bombs.

At least 54 people were killed and dozens wounded "when an air strike hit a fuel station" in Syria's northern province of al-Raqqa on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The British-based group, which has a network of activists across Syria, cited an activist in the region saying that more than 110 people were among the dead and wounded.

Affected & insincere: Rahm Emanuel pretends to be
what he is not. Casting a shadow over children's lives,
this evil poseur pops up at a temporary day care dur-
ing the Chicago teachers strike, September 10, 2012.

Chicago teachers returned to work on Wednesday, one day after the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) succeeded in passing a motion to end the strike at a House of Delegates meeting. The political and media establishment is wasting no time in seizing the initiative and pressing forward in the attack on teachers and public education. The full contract has not been released and language is still being worked out.

No teachers have yet seen the entire tentative agreement, which they will be able to vote on only in three to four weeks. Many questions still remain, but it is clear that the agreement concedes to the school board all the essential demands of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. In addition to school privatization, the city is planning a wholesale attack on teacher pensions, on the grounds that the pension system is under-funded for years. Emanuel will proceed now with plans to cut benefits for teachers, while other city and state workers face the same demands.

Diane Ravitch: Two Visions for Chicago’s Schools

Stephen Lendman: Unconditional Surrender in Chicago - September 18, 2012 will be remembered in Chicago as a day of infamy. Corrupt city officials and union bosses won. Teachers, parents, and kids lost. On September 10, teachers walked out. Core issues were at stake. Most important is saving public education. An American tradition is disappearing. It's being commodified. Corporate predators are gaining control. Contract terms agreed on do nothing to stop them.

Last week the mainstream media hailed QE3 as the "quick fix" that the U.S. economy desperately needs, but the truth is that the policies that the Federal Reserve is pursuing are going to be absolutely devastating for our senior citizens. By keeping interest rates at exceptionally low levels, the Federal Reserve is absolutely crushing savers and is systematically destroying Social Security. Meanwhile, the inflation that QE3 will cause is going to be absolutely crippling for the millions upon millions of retired Americans that are on a fixed income. Sadly, most elderly Americans have no idea what the Federal Reserve is doing to their financial futures. Most Americans that are approaching retirement age have not adequately saved for retirement, and the Social Security system that they are depending on is going to completely and totally collapse in the coming years.

Italy's Highest Court Upholds The Convictions of 23 CIA Agents for Kidnapping a Terror Suspect in Milan.

Italy's highest criminal court on Wednesday upheld the convictions of 23 Americans in the abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, paving the way to possible extradition requests by Italian authorities. The ruling by the Court of Cassation marks the final appeal in the first trial anywhere in the world involving the CIA's practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture is permitted. The Americans were convicted in absentia following a three-and-a-half-year trial, and have never been in Italian custody. They risk arrest if they travel to Europe and one of their court-appointed lawyers suggested that the final verdict would open the way for the Italian government to seek their extradition. "It went badly. It went very badly," lawyer Alessia Sorgato said after the court announced its decision after a day of deliberations. "Now they will ask for extradition." Milan Prosecutor Armando Spataro, one of Italy's top anti-terrorism magistrates who shaped the prosecution, hailed the top court's decision, saying it was tantamount to a finding that extraordinary rendition "is incompatible with democracy." The CIA declined to comment.

John Goetz & Matthias Gebauer: CIA Rendition Case: US Pressured Italy to Influence Judiciary
David Walsh: Secret cables reveal Washington intervened in Italy to defend CIA kidnappers
AWIP: Italian court "postpones" ruling in CIA rendition case
AWIP: Italian judge convicts 23 in CIA kidnap case

The American Civil Liberties Union is taking the CIA to court for the agency’s refusal to comply with a FOIA request to hand over documents about the Obama administration’s “targeted killing” drone program. - The CIA claims its drone program is “secret,” even though President Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and senior government officials have publicly spoken about the program. In May, the New York Times found that President Obama personally oversees a drone “kill list,” using the weapon to target and kill terrorists abroad and often cause fatalities to bystanders near the target. But the CIA considers all military-age males killed in a strike zone to be “combatants,” the Times found. The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in January 2010 asking the government to disclose “its use of predator drones to conduct ‘targeted killings’ overseas,” but the CIA refused to confirm or deny any information regarding the drones.

“The CIA cannot deny the existence of the government’s targeted killing program and refuse to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests about the program while officials continue to make public statements about it,” the ACLU wrote in a press release.

Abby interviews former CIA Officer Ray McGovern about CIA intelligence failures leading up to 9/11, the presidential daily briefings, and the PNAC neocon strategy for war.

This week sees the 30th anniversary of the single-worst atrocity during the more than six decades of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Sabra and Shatila were populated by destitute families of Palestinians that had fled from the pogroms in 1948 carried out by Israel’s Haganah death squads. The refugee numbers also burgeoned with Lebanese Shia displaced from the civil war in their country that erupted in 1975. - For three days, between 15 and 18 September, up to 3,500 men, women and children were butchered in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps of West Beirut. Their mutilated, mangled bodies bulldozed into mass graves. For three days, Lebanese Christian Phalangists under the command of intelligence chief Elie Hobeika returned over and over again to go on an orgy of systematic slaughter in the camps. The massacre would not have been possible only for the collaboration of Israel’s Defence Forces, which had months earlier invaded Lebanon and taken control of the camps. The United Nations’ General Assembly later condemned what happened at Sabra and Shatila as “an act of genocide”.

New York Times: Sabra and Shatila: A Preventable Massacre

(from the fighting-for-the-right-to-not-be-offended? dept) Just in case anyone needed another reminder that Britain's "Free Speech" laws are more about what's not included than what is, a UK citizen has just been found guilty of "sending a grossly offensive communication," a crime under the Malicious Communications Act of 1988. Azher Ahmed posted a message on his Facebook page in response to the news that six British soldiers had died in an Afghanistan IED attack. His message was as follows:

People gassin about the deaths of Soldiers! What about the innocent familys who have been brutally killed. The women who have been raped. The children who have been sliced up! Your enemy's were the Taliban not innocent harmful familys.

All soldiers should DIE & go to HELL! THE LOWLIFE F****N SCUM! Gotta problem. Go cry at your soldiers grave and wish him hell because that's where he is going.
Recognizing the fact that the UK does not have the same sort of free speech protection that the US does, it's still somewhat troubling that a Facebook post of this nature is considered a criminal act.

Facebook has an ugly little secret, a number disclosed nowhere in its voluminous filings to become a public company and now only vaguely addressed by corporate officials. An estimated 5.6 million Facebook clients - about 3.5 percent of its U.S. users - are children who the company says are banned from the site. - Facebook and many other web sites bar people under age 13 because the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requires web sites to give special treatment to children 12 or younger. The law aims to stop marketers prying personal information from children or using their data to advertise to them. Sites must get parental permission before allowing children to enter, and must take steps to protect privacy. Facebook declines to acknowledge that many of its efforts to block children are not working.