Elizabeth Warren is the person Obama could not get confirmed to the consumer advocate position. She dropped out of contention and ran for the Senate and won. This shows the great gulf between Washington and the American people. Essentially, Washington is a foreign power colonizing the American people. In this video of a Banking Committee hearing of the US Senate, Senator Warren makes the point that not a single financial regulatory agency has prosecuted a single financial crook. How can they? The regulators are owned by the crooks. Watch the video and become accustomed to Amerikan reality.

US War Criminal Obama awarded the "Presidential Medal of Freedom" to Jewish War Criminal Peres last June. Now Obama will receive a medal of "presidential honor" on his upcoming visit to the Zionist entity. Peres received his medal for Cast Lead and Pillar of Cloud and Obama will receive his for helping Peres murder people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. - Very honorable indeed!

Barack Obama will become the first serving U.S. president to receive Israel's presidential medal, from his Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres on a visit to the Jewish state next month, Peres's office said on Monday.

"President Obama has made a unique and meaningful contribution to strengthening the state of Israel and the security of its people," it said in a statement. "Barack Obama is a true friend of the state of Israel and has been since the beginning of his public life. As president of the United States he has stood beside Israel in times of crisis," it added. Israel's presidential medal of distinction is awarded to individuals or organizations who have contributed to "Israeli society" and "Israel's image" in the world. The White House has not announced specific dates for the Obama visit, his first to Zionist entity Occupying Palestine, as president. [Zionist] media reports and a Palestinian official have said that it will run from March 20-22 and take in talks with both [Zionist] and Palestinian leaders [stooges] in Jerusalem and Ramallah. The White House has kept expectations deliberately low, saying Obama has no plans to use the trip to push new proposals to break the more than two-year deadlock in [the so-called] peace talks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that his talks with Obama would focus on Iran's nuclear program [not on Israel's], the conflict in [war on] Syria and long-stalled "peace talks" with the Palestinians.

Israeli police raided overnight the east Jerusalem home of a Palestinian prisoner who has been on long-term hunger strike, arresting his brother, family members and a police spokeswoman said on Monday. - The raid took place in Issawiya on the northern outskirts of annexed east Jerusalem at the family home of Samer Issawi, a 33-year-old prisoner being held by Israel who has been refusing food since August.

"At 2:30am (0030 GMT), Israeli forces barged into our house without any warrant or order and locked us all in one room while five men attacked Shadi and took him away," his sister Shireen told Agence France Presse. "Lawyers were not allowed access to him and he had a secret hearing without a lawyer which handed him a four-day detention," she said.

Occupied Palestine | فلسطين A Letter from Samer Issawi

An American Senator says the United States is likely to play a more active military role in Mali, where a French-led war is raging, after the West African country holds elections. - The four-member delegation from the US Senate and House of Representatives met with French and African military officials as well as Mali's interim President Dioncounda Traore in the capital, Bamako. The US has been providing intelligence, transport and mid-air refueling to France since it started its military campaign in Mali last month. The US law prohibited direct assistance to Mali's armed forces because of last year's military coup, led by a US-trained Malian army captain, who toppled the country’s elected government. Earlier on Monday, the European Union formally approved a military training mission to aid the French-led war in Mali.

Wall Street Journal: U.S. to Expand Role in Africa
PressTV: EU approves 500-strong military mission in Mali
The Guardian: UK troops to be sent to Mali
Christof Lehmann: EU "Stability Fund" releases 20 Million to Mali for Joint European-African Economic Suicide

Tom McCarthy: Would Brennan keep the CIA as a spy organization, or make it into a shadow military force? Critics say the agency should stick to its traditional role of gathering and analyzing intelligence and stay out of the drone assassination game (the CIA currently carries out drone strikes where the Defense Department cannot, for reasons of secrecy or international law). The Washington Post has reported that Brennan wants to move the drones program wholly over to the Pentagon. Others doubt that he would voluntarily surrender the power and suspect he would in fact complete the transformation of the CIA into a paramilitary organization.

Tom Carter & Barry Grey: Brennan refuses to rule out drone assassinations within the US - In written responses to questions submitted by the Senate Intelligence Committee, John Brennan, the Obama administration’s nominee for director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), refused to rule out drone assassinations of American citizens on US soil. The committee on Friday released a declassified version of Brennan’s responses. Brennan, currently President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, is the architect and director of the program of drone missile assassinations that is run out of the White House with the personal participation of Obama. Asked squarely, “Could the Administration carry out drone strikes inside the United States?” Brennan replied, “This Administration has not carried out drone strikes inside the United States and has no intention of doing so.”

PressTV: US drone surveillance program violates citizens' civil liberties - Video
John Glaser: Can the Government Use Armed Drones in US Airspace?
Wall Street Journal: Nominee's Drones Answer Unnerves Rights Groups
Dawn: Brennan hints at making civilian deaths from drone strikes public
Pulse: Obama kills over 700 Pakistanis in 44 drone strikes in 2009
AWIP: US Drones Killed 894 in Tiny Pakistan Agency

Israel today is not the Soviet Union of the '30s. But that attitude of turning a blind eye to obvious injustices is all too familiar from the history of Stalinism, writes Jeff Sparrow. - In 2010, the Israeli news site Ynet reported that an anonymous prisoner was being kept in solitary confinement, in conditions of secrecy so great that even his guards didn't know his name. That report was taken offline within hours, after pressure from the Israeli government. Last week, ABC television identified Prisoner X as the Australian-Israeli man Ben Zygier - and Israel once more sought to gag the media. Nonetheless, we now know that Zygier was detained in early 2010 and then died later that year, supposedly by hanging - despite 24 hour surveillance in a 'suicide proof' cell. Even from this sketchy information, an obvious question arises: why has there been such little public outrage about Zygier's treatment?

Antony Loewenstein: Israel’s image takes another hit with the ‘Prisoner X’ scandal - But what makes this international intrigue all the more fascinating is not what most of the commentary is obsessing over — the details of Zygier’s life and how he ended up in a high security prison — but the ways in which young Jews are groomed by an Israeli intelligence service to commit acts of terrorism and subterfuge across the world under the guise of protecting national security. It is done with the consent of Western governments and intelligence services, including Australia’s.

The UK government’s decision to rename a hall at the Sandhurst military academy after the brutal king of Bahrain has sparked outrage among the British public, according to media reports. - The Ministry of Defense (MoD) is renaming the hall, called Mons, commemorating troops killed in a major World War One battle after king Hamad al-Khalifa of Bahrain following the cruel ruler’s donation of £3 million to refurbish the hall. This comes as the country will soon be marking the 100th anniversary of the battle, Mons, which took place in Belgium and left 1,600 UK troops dead.

Bahrain Center for Human Rights (Website)

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange believes winning a seat in the Australian Senate would force the US and others pursuing him to back down, securing his safe passage out of the UK following his 8-month confinement at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London. - The September 14 elections in Australia could provide a platform for a man once described by Vice President Joe Biden as a “high-tech terrorist,” by raising the political stakes for those seeking his extradition, Assange explained in a recent interview with Australian website the Conversation. By winning a seat in Australia’s upper house, “the US Department of Justice won’t want to spark an international diplomatic row,” Assange was quoted as saying.

“It will drop its grand jury espionage investigation. The Cameron government will follow suit,” he continued, adding that “the political costs of the current standoff will be higher still” if UK authorities insist on blocking his safe passage out of the country.

In January, Assange submitted his application to the Australian Electoral Commission, paving the way for his 2013 senatorial bid in the state of Victoria. Senate nominations are likely to close on August 22, and the six-year term of office would commence on July 1, 2014. Australians living abroad can enroll to vote and run for Senate if they have left Australia within the past three years, and intend to return within six years of their date of departure. Assange said the last time he visited Australia was in June 2010.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez returned to Venezuela in the early hours of this morning after over two months in Cuba recovering from cancer surgery. - “We’ve arrived once again to the Venezuelan Homeland. Thank you God! Thank you beloved people! We’ll continue treatment here,” announced Chavez on Twitter when he arrived in Caracas airport at 2.30am this Monday morning. The Venezuelan head of state had been in Cuba recovering from an operation in the pelvic region undergone on 11 December, in what was his fourth cancer surgery in 18 months. In another tweet Chavez also thanked the Castro brothers, Cuban president Raul and former president Fidel for their support, as well as his medical team, declaring, “We will live and we will overcome!”

Stephen Lendman: Chavez Returns - He still requires special treatment. He got world class care at Havana's Medical Surgical Research Center (CIMEQ). He'll continue it at Venezuela's Carlos Arvelo Military Hospital. His January 10 inauguration was postponed. He was scheduled to take his oath of office before Venezuela's National Assembly. He'll do it later before the Supreme Tribunal of Justice. It unanimously approved his doing so. Constitutional law was observed. At issue now is returning to full health. Venezuelan pray he'll do so soon. They reelected him overwhelmingly last October. They won't tolerate dark forces returning.

RIA Novosti: Chavez Returns to Venezuela From Cuba