BEIJING - China's ruling Communist Party opened a congress Thursday to usher in a new group of younger leaders faced with the challenging tasks of righting a flagging economy and meeting public calls for better government. - The weeklong congress starts a carefully choreographed but still fraught power transfer in which President Hu Jintao and most of the senior leadership will begin to relinquish office to a new slate of leaders for the coming decade headed by the appointed heir, Vice President Xi Jinping. Delegates filed into Beijing's Great Hall of the People, bedecked with red banners, and the congress was declared open after the national anthem played. The 2,268 delegates are drawn from the 82 million-member party where the real deal-making is done by a few dozen power-brokers behind the scenes, even as China is ever more connected to the world through trade and the Internet.

‘My enemy is terrorism and instability in Syria’

In an exclusive interview with RT, President Bashar Assad said that the conflict in Syria is not a civil war, but proxy terrorism by Syrians and foreign fighters. He also accused the Turkish president of eyeing Syria with imperial ambitions. Assad told RT that the West creates scapegoats as enemies – from communism, to Islam, to Saddam Hussein. He accused Western countries of aiming to turn him into their next enemy. While Western media outlets report that the crisis is solely between Assad and Syrian opposition groups, the president claims that his country has been infiltrated by terrorist proxy groups. He also criticized Turkish PM Reccip Tayyip Erdogan of wanting to exploit the Syrian conflict to imperial ends. In the event of a foreign invasion of Syria, Assad warned, the fallout would be too dire for the world to bear.

Recently-released video footage has shown insurgent execution of another captured Syrian, raising further concern about insurgent brutality in the violence-stricken Arab state. The shocking footage shows a captured Syrian man pleading for his life as insurgent gunfire is heard blasting for some seconds. The man then falls on the ground before an insurgent shoots another bullet at him. In recent weeks, many videos have emerged of insurgents killing unarmed Syrians. Despite widespread international condemnation, the [CIA's] so-called Free Syrian Army continues to kill captives and kidnap civilians.

Stephen Lendman: Caught in the Act - Video
PressTV: CIA's Insurgents kill 30 Syrian civilians in Idlib

Photo: 1947 U.S. Army seizing World War II
Germany gold bullion reserves

Bernie Madoff, you were a piker and chump change swindler, strictly pony league. We found this site quite fascinating although very complicated to chronologically navigate. The videos are interesting in themselves! The blogger has devoted a great deal of diligent research on its content. Good place to spend your afternoon carousing. Will it some day be reported how the banking cartel funded US presidents' wars on the world?

An excellent commission of experts from a wide cross-section of archives and acedemia on the subject of World War II gold bullion transactions involving subject areas, not limited to, the Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold ( TGC ), World War II gold trade, transactions, and distribution routings throughout Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Argentina, Turkey, United States, United Kingdom, Russia, and elsewhere with an in-dept look at a large variety of international and commercial banks, the bank and international gold bank clearinghouse BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS ( Basel, Switzerland ), Third Reich SS, spies, decisionmakers, and more that provides plenty of details and references for in-depth research reading. In 1939, Czechoslovakia had an accumulated 6,000,000 million pounds of gold deposited in the Central Bank of England that had its account in the Bank for International Settlements ( BIS ) transfer $6,000,000 million pounds of gold into the Reichsbank of Germany. [Part 1] + [Part 2] + [Part 3] + [Part 4] + [Part 5]

Wikipedia: Bank for International Settlements
Der Spiegel: German Politicians Demand to See Gold in US Federal Reserve...

The United States has yet to charge WikiLeaks or its founder Julian Assange with any crimes, but a judge this week admitted that a 2-year-old investigation is nonetheless still being pursued by federal prosecutors. - US District Judge Liam O’Grady denied a plea on Wednesday to unseal court documents pertaining to an elusive grand jury investigation targeting WikiLeaks started in 2010. Rejecting a request to make certain materials available outside of the closed-door inquisition, the judge acknowledged that publishing those files would put in jeopardy the country’s still pending and highly-secretive probe into the whistleblower site. The judge’s response this week is in regards to the latest request to release materials believed to discuss persons loosely affiliated with WikiLeaks, a website shunned by the Obama administration and largely expected to be indicted sooner or later for publishing hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables and other sensitive files online.

The Statelessness Refugees International organization has called on the international community to make a collective effort to end the suffering of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, Press TV reports. - Sarnata Reynolds, the program manager of the rights organization, told Press TV in an interview on Friday that the responsibility of supporting the Muslim minority in Myanmar has to be shared by the international community. “People are fleeing prosecution and they are fleeing hunger and violence, and they are fleeing the fact that they have zero human rights that no one would protect them. So when they take boat voyages or flee away, they need to be accepted. They need to be provided with refuge,” Reynolds stated.

BBC: Displaced and divided in Burma's Rakhine

Iran snub - Ms Gillard is co-chair of the forum with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and their South Korean counterpart Lee Myung Bak. Among the leaders at the conference are the presidents of Afghanistan and Iran, Hamid Karzai and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the prime minister of Thailand, Yingluck Shinawatra. The conference only runs for two days, and Ms Gillard's main role was co-hosting today's events. Ms Gillard has ruled out meeting Mr Ahmadinejad "for all the obvious reasons", citing Iran's nuclear program and opposition to Israel. She says Iranian President Muhmoud Ahmadinejad does not appear to be listening to the world's nuclear concerns. Ms Gillard will leave Bali for Australia later on Friday.

Irom Sharmila has been demanding the repeal of a law that
allows troops to act with impunity.

She is held in "judicial custody" and force-fed every day through a tube in her nose to keep her alive. Frail and suffering after being on fast for more than 12 years, Irom Sharmila proclaims she will die on hunger strike unless India repeals the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA).

The AFSPA gives security forces sweeping powers, including the power to shoot people dead on mere suspicion. - On November 2, 2000, troops of India's elite counter-insurgency force Assam Rifles opened indiscriminate fire on a market at Malom near Manipur's state capital Imphal. Ten civilians were killed on the spot - among them a 60-year-old woman and three teenage boys, one of whom had won the Prime Minister's Award for Bravery. The Assam Rifles forces were upset after one of Manipur's more than a dozen rebel groups attacked one of their patrols - but the people they killed in retaliation were innocent civilians who had no involvement in the attack.

"That was a Thursday, the day I used to fast every week. I was so shocked by the massacre at Malom that I just decided to continue my fast unless the draconian law was repealed," Sharmila said. "This is a symbolic fight for the people of Manipur who have suffered so much at the hands of the security forces. Hundreds of our boys and girls have been killed on mere suspicion of being rebels. This is possible because the AFSPA gives so much power to the security forces. This Act must go," she said.

Brother Irom Singhajit Singh recalls that his sister had one last supper with pastries and sweets, then touched her mother's feet to seek her blessings to begin the epic fast.

A 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck off the Pacific coast of Guatemala on Wednesday, killing at least 48 people as it ravaged a small state near the Mexican border, the country's president said. - The mountain village of San Marcos, 80 miles from the epicenter, suffered much of the damage with about 30 homes collapsing. Hundreds of frightened villagers were on the streets, one of which was cracked open by the temblor, the strongest to hit Guatemala since a deadly 1976 quake that killed 23,000. More than 300 people, including firefighters, policemen and villagers, worked at a sand extraction site to rescue seven people reported buried alive, including a 6-year-old boy that had accompanied his grandfather to work.