In his first speech as Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel told an audience of US troops and defense officials at the Pentagon that the US should engage with the world instead of try to dictate to it. - “We can’t dictate to the world, but we must engage with the world,” he said. “That engagement in the world should be done wisely. And the resources that we employ on behalf of our country and our allies should always be applied wisely.” Hagel was confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday in a 58-41 vote, which according to The Washington Post was “the narrowest approval ever for a defense secretary nominee.”

LaPresse.ca: Les É.-U. ne peuvent «imposer leurs vues» au monde, selon Chuck Hagel

Washington's approach to the world is: "don't bother us with facts." Israel, for example, possesses some 200 nuclear weapons, which Washington ignores as it ignored India and Pakistan as they made nukes. Iran's problem is its disobedience; it does not do what Washington dictates and therefore the word goes out to the media that it is a danger to US security. Instead of asking: "What did Iran do to us?" Or have they ever tried to overthrow a US government as the US did to Iran in 1953, the media acts as White House stenographers. Another problem Iran faces in Washington is the Israeli lobby, more aggressive than the National Rifle Association and arguably more powerful.

The US is planning a major expansion of its support for terrorist gangs in Syria engaged in a foreign-backed armed insurgency aimed at toppling the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The Obama administration, according to US media reports, is considering a “major policy shift” on Syria that may at least lead to supplying the anti-Damascus militants with apparatus such as armored vehicles, body armor, night-vision goggles and even military training.

SANA: Al-Maliki: Iraq Rejects Foreign Intervention in Syria
PressTV: Car bomb attack jolts Syria’s Deir al-Zour

Imperialism is alive & well. Nothing has changed since 1855 as far as imperialist "wish-lists" go. Today we see what seems to be the "accidental" consequences of military interventions leading to vicious, protracted fighting and in some cases civil wars. These are not accidental but intentional. Divide and conquer is a classic military stratagem that has not escaped the interests and attention of Wall Street & London.

If people can study history and see today's events are simply the relabeled repeating of what empire has been doing for centuries, the public as a whole will be less likely to go along with what is in reality an exploitative, murderous crime spree of global proportions - merely sold to us as justified intervention. One need only look at how Iraq has been despoiled and the profits that have been garnered by Fortune 500 corporations, while soldiers and Iraqis alike pay the price with their minds, bodies, blood, futile destinies, and lives.

"They need us, we don’t need them. That’s the big secret. We get our freedom back as soon as we take back our responsibilities for food, water, security, the monetary system, power, and manufacturing; that is independence. We’ll never be free as long as we depend on the Fortune 500 for our survival. Fixing these problems unfolding overseas starts with fixing the problems in our own backyards. Boycott the globalists, cut off their support, undermine their system, and they lose their ability to commit these atrocities. That will be a real revolution and it can start today."

The perpetrators were reportedly Taliban infiltrators, retaliating for atrocities and crimes by Afghan police. - Several members of the Afghan Local Police, trained and armed by the United States, drugged 17 of their fellow police officers before executing all of them, according to Afghan officials. “The attackers poisoned the dinner food of the other officers, shot them at close range to ensure they were dead, stole their weapons and fled after setting a police vehicle on fire,” reports The New York Times.

New York Times: 20 Afghan Police Officers Killed in 2 Attacks, Including a Mass Poisoning

Internet security firm finds early 'Stuxnet O.5' version revealing espionage and sabotage virus released under George W.Bush - Researchers at the security company Symantec have discovered an early version of the "Stuxnet" computer virus that was used to attack nuclear reprocessing plants in Iran, in what they say is a "missing link" dating back to 2005. The discovery means that the US and Israel...were working on the virus scheme long before it came to public notice -- and that development of Stuxnet, and its forerunner, began under the presidency of George W Bush, rather than being a scheme hatched during Barack Obama's first term. The older version of the virus, dubbed "Stuxnet 0.5" -- to distinguish it from the "1.0" version -- also targeted control systems in Iran's Natanz enrichment facility, the researchers said.

Russia Today: MiniDuke: New cyber-attack 'hacks governments' for political secrets

Municipal Judge Patrick Dugan ruled on Tuesday that Jonathan Josey, an ex-cop let go from the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania police department last year, is not guilty of assault.

Judge Dugan says he was “troubled” by the footage, but refused to let the clip be introduced into the court as evidence because it failed to accurately depict a chaotic and volatile scene. “This is not a social-media contest; this is not a trial by video,” he said in the courtroom, according to The Philadelphia Daily News. “This was a violent, fast-paced, real-life situation.” In the video clip, Josey is seen approaching 39-year-old Aida Guzman during Philly’s annual Puerto Rican Day parade and slugging her with a right hook to the face. Josey said he did not intentionally strike the woman, who was left bloodied in the incident, and was simply trying to knock a beer bottle from her hand. The video, said Judge Dugan, “didn’t tell the whole story.”

LaPresse.ca: Canada: Police assaulting a cameraman during a protest against the summit on higher education in Montreal (French video)

Pentagon retracts 'Taliban attacks down 7 percent' false claim - The American-led military coalition in Afghanistan backed off Tuesday from its claim that Taliban attacks dropped off in 2012, tacitly acknowledging a hole in its widely repeated argument that violence is easing and that the insurgency is in steep decline. In response to Associated Press inquiries about its latest series of statistics on security in Afghanistan, the coalition command in Kabul said it had erred lied in reporting a 7 percent decline in attacks. In fact there was no decline at all, officials said.

Israel has deported at least 1,000 Sudanese on ‘voluntary leave,’ Haaretz reported. The UN Refugee agency said it was not informed of the move, and that the deportees were forced to return to Sudan where visiting or living in Israel is a crime. - The repatriation was reportedly carried out secretly over the last few months through a third country. The UN high commissioner for refugees claimed he had no knowledge of the deportations, and that the repatriation was likely not voluntary because there is no “free will from inside a prison,” the newspaper reported. On Wednesday, the same UN high commissioner for refugees demanded that Israel gives an explanation for the secret deportations. No response was immediately given by either Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, or Interior Minister, Eli Yishai.

The Israeli regime’s last military attaché in Tehran says the Oscar-winning Argo, which depicts the 1979 takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran, is not a realistic movie. The thriller directed by the US filmmaker and actor, Ben Affleck, is loosely based on an allegedly historical account by the former CIA agent, Tony Mendez, about the rescue of six American diplomats after the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran following the 1979 victory of the Islamic Revolution. Political analysts say Argo unmasks the elaborate US scheme to employ every medium in its propaganda apparatus to incite Iranophobia across the globe. Observers have further lashed out at the director of Argo for portraying a stereotyped and caricatured view of the Iranian society, noting that Affleck has consciously sought to ridicule the very customs and traditions of Iran.

Stephen Lendman: Hollywood-Style History

The European satellite provider Eutelsat has forced another satellite provider to pull the plug on Iran’s Arabic-language al-Alam news network as part of its war on the freedom of speech. - Eutelsat has ordered satellite provider, BHS, to take Iran’s Arabic channel off the air from platform AB7 on Wednesday at 20:00 GMT. The BHS satellite provider has said it is against the decision, but has no way of opposing it. In recent months, Eutelsat’s Israeli-French CEO Michel De Rosen has stepped up his restrictive campaign by appealing to major satellite providers in Europe and Asia to silence Iranian media. The campaign has revealed the true face of the West, which preaches respect for human rights and free speech but practices the opposite.

PressTV: Eutelsat Israeli chief behind attack on Iran channels

“I hope we are not going to follow the temptation to give in to populism because of the results in one specific member state,” said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. He feared that anti-austerity passion would spread from Italy to other countries. - So all they document with their own words just how fragile the Eurozone has become. Every little thing can break it apart. Democracy itself, instead of being a fundamental strength, is seen as a threat: if the “wrong” party or an anti-establishment populist or an anti-austerity billionaire gains the most votes in one country, the entire 17-nation construct might break apart.

West feigns indignation as China allegedly shuts down US State Dept-funded BBC propaganda. - Headlines across the Western corporate-media read, "BBC says 'extensive, coordinated efforts' to jam world service frequencies in China" (Fox News), "BBC blocked in China just days after reporting on Chinese hackers" (Washington Post), and "BBC "strongly condemns" China's attempts to jam World Service broadcasts" (Radio Times), before weaving a lofty narrative of a "repressive regime" trying to gag freedom of the press. In reality, BBC's World Service is directly funded by the US State Department and is insidious propaganda admittedly designed to politically subvert not only China, but Iran, Russia, and many other nations perceived by Wall Street and London as intolerable competition.

It is the king of sushi, one of the most expensive fish in the world — and dwindling so rapidly that some fear it could vanish from restaurant menus within a generation. - Yet there is little alarm in Japan, the country that consumes about 80 percent of the world's bluefin tuna. Japanese fisheries experts blame cozy ties between regulators and fishermen and a complacent media for failing to raise public awareness. Catching bluefin tuna, called "hon-maguro" here, is a lucrative business. A single full-grown specimen can sell for 2 million yen, or $22,000, at Tokyo's sprawling Tsukiji fish market. Japanese fishermen are vying with Korean, Taiwanese and Mexican counterparts for a piece of a $900 million a year wholesale market.

The Atlantic: 59% of the 'Tuna' Americans Eat Is Not Tuna - If you've ever wondered why the sushi in the display case is so affordable, given the dire state of the world's tuna supply, well, now you know.

Stocks have completely erased their early gains. - Currently, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is testifying before the Senate banking committee. According to his prepared remarks, is looks like he’s maintaining his dovish slant. But during the Q& A, Fed-watchers will be looking for any clues on how the Fed plans to unwind easy monetary policy and allow interest rates to rise again.

Daily Bell: IMF: ‘World Economy Could End as We Know It …’

One of the most controversial anti-terrorism laws passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks may be beyond normal judicial review, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. In a 5-4 decision, the court's conservative justices ruled that lawyers, journalists, human rights activists and others lacked standing to challenge a law passed in 2008 that increases the government's ability to intercept international communications. The plaintiffs had contended that even the potential of government snooping -- which, they said, would violate the Fourth Amendment -- was forcing them to change the way they communicate with clients and sources. The question before the high court wasn't whether the law itself, passed near the end of the Bush administration, was constitutional. It was whether those challenging it even had the ability to find out.

Italian voters have unambiguously rejected the politics of the Monti government and the European Union. This has triggered panic and outrage in Europe's capitals and unleashed ferocious tremors on the international finance markets. Some 55 percent of the electorate voted for parties that spoke out against the EU in their campaigns. The slate headed by outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti, which was supported by Brussels, Berlin, the Catholic Church and numerous Italian businessmen, only received 10 percent of the vote.

Documentary about the media war and foreign terrorist war that is being waged against Syria and the government of Syria. Broadcast on June 26, 2012

In a news conference today in London, Secretary of State John Kerry slammed the Syrian government for offering peace talks to the rebels, insisting that he didn’t believe they should be taken seriously and promising to step up US involvement in the ongoing civil war. Kerry said the days of the rebels “wondering where there support is or if it’s coming” are over, and that the Obama Administration is determined to “hasten” the regime change that it has been pressing for in recent months.

Tony Cartalucci: US State Department's "Syriasly" Campaign Reaches New Level of Absurdity - While the West and its Arab partners, the brutally autocratic regimes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are now admittedly funneling heavy weapons to Al Qaeda's stronghold in Daraa, southern Syria, the US State Department and its extensive network of faux NGO's funded by the same corporate-financier interests that write its policy, have rolled-out a front organization they call "Syriasly."

Le Monde: Les Occidentaux débattent de l'opportunité d'armer la rébellion syrienne

The claim that Taliban attacks are dropping in Afghanistan, the single piece of data backing up NATO claims of “progress” in the protracted occupation and indeed the centerpiece of President Obama’s re-election campaign speeches related to foreign policy, has turned out to be completely false, Pentagon officials admitted today. The data, which seems to have formed the basis for much of NATO’s occupation strategy, was [allegedly] the ultimate result of a “clerical error” that officials attributed to the Afghan military turning in certain forms late. Officials [now claim] that the revised data shows attacks approximately flat, but they have simply removed all the old reports based on the false data and haven’t replaced them with anything since then.

Israeli officials have rejected international calls, including those from the Palestinian Authority, to allow an international probe into the killing of detainee Arafat Jaradat, who was detained by Israeli forces and died shortly after signing a “confession,” with his body showing multiple signs of torture. - The officials said that the call for an international probe was “predictable” and part of a Palestinian strategy designed at escalating the situation, noting that Palestinian officials were already reporting the torture within hours of the autopsy. The UN is calling on Israel to conduct an “independent and transparent investigation” of Jaradat’s death. Israel insists they always do so when they end up killing a detainee, but reiterated that Jaradat’s death was from a “heart attack” and not from the many broken bones, bruises and cuts on his corpse.

AWIP: UN official calls for Jaradat death probe

The first day of the Kazakhstan conference between the P5+1 and Iran has come and gone, with no signs of a deal being close and many saying it is unlikely that Iran will accept the various Western demands for what appears to amount to a very trivial easing of sanctions. Israeli officials see no need to wait for the talks to officially fail, however, and is out in front of them, condemning the talks from the start, insisting that they are an “Iranian ploy” aimed at keeping their civilian program running while diplomacy continues to stall.

Allen Ruff and I have written extensively about Kazakhstan and about the typical hypocrisy at-play in the kleptocratic country. We published an article in the aftermath of the Zhanaozen Massacre about the U.S. imperial Great Game being played in Kazakhstan and Central Asia at-large, then followed that up with an article about the nuclear double-standards, juxtaposing how the U.S. treats Iran vs. how it treats Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan, as we pointed out, provides 30-percent+ of the world’s supply of uranium fuel stock. Next came our three-part series on the World Bank’s “knowledge bank” agenda in Kazakhstan, bringing Nazarbayev University, named after its “President-for-Life,” to Astana.

Today, Allen was on The Real News Network to chat about the nuclear summit dog-and-pony show and why it’s being hosted in Kazakhstan. Check it out.

Judge Alex Kozinski said the group's "aggressive and high-profile attacks" on Japan's whaling fleet endangered lives, ordering them to stop. US-based Sea Shepherd has for many years chased the Japanese whalers, attempting to disrupt the annual hunt. The two sides have frequently clashed at sea, blaming each other for collisions and damage. Sea Shepherd has also accused the whalers of using water cannon and stun grenades against them, and says Japan has deployed a military icebreaker, the Shirase, to intimidate them - something Japan rejects.

The Star: Who owns Diaoyu Islands?
John V. Walsh: U.S. Goading Japan into Confrontation with China

[Editor:] So, in return for doing Washington's bidding in East Asia, Japan apparently has asked that Obama order the United States Department of Justice (sic) to go after the Sea Shepherd and her valiant crew of warriors. Japan could at least have demanded that their Lord & Master punish the soldiers who rape Japanese women all the time...But even this would have been a very small thing to ask in return for the belligerence vis-à vis China that the US now demands of its pathetic client state. War with China is a very dangerous proposition. There may be worse ahead for Japan than insignificant clashes at sea. There's no way for Japan to benefit from this.

ABC News: We'll never stop eating whales, declares Japanese minister