During upcoming visit, president will convey message that window for American military operation opens in June, TV report says. - When he visits Israel next month, US President Barack Obama will tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that a "window of opportunity" for a military strike on Iran will open in June, according to an Israeli TV report Monday evening. Obama will come bearing the message that if diplomatic efforts and sanctions don't bear fruit, Israel should "sit tight" and let Washington take the stage, even if that means remaining on the sidelines during a US military operation, Channel 10 reported. Netanyahu will be asked to refrain from any military action and keep a low profile, avoiding even the mention of a strike, the report said, citing unnamed officials.

Jason Ditz: Obama To Tell Israelis of Plans for Iran War
Jonathan Cook: Obama’s Israel Trip: Four More Years of Settlement Growth

With her new weapons ban bill looming. It's time to know the real story. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) really wants to take your Constitutional right away. Making you defenseless.

■ Blackwater mercenaries are currently overseeing the police in Greece as rumours of a coup abound. We understand the situation is extremely tense and that the mercenaries [allegedly] are there mainly to protect the Government and parliament should trouble break out either in the form of a revolution or counter-revolution. Already, a destabilisation plot involving the far-right and police has been uncovered. ■ As we have said, there is a revolution taking place – a messy revolution . And it’s going to get messier, for the situation in Greece has now entered a critical phase. ■ Strategy of tension: A few days ago we reported on a plot by the police in collusion with the far-right to instigate a massacre of police, which would then be blamed on anarchists – presumably this would then be used as an excuse to introduce martial law or a state of emergency. The plot may have been foiled (23 persons were arrested) by Blackwater working in conjunction with police officers who are loyal to the Government. Blackwater are expected to continue monitoring police operations generally, to identify those officers who may be involved in other, similar plots.

Silvio Berlusconi has unnerved investors with his
strong polling. (Photo: AFP)

■The result of the Italian parliamentary elections on Sunday and Monday was still unclear on Monday evening, even though the polls closed at 3:00 p.m. All indications were that the electorate had inflicted a resounding defeat on incumbent Prime Minister Mario Monti and repudiated his agenda of austerity measures demanded by the European Union (EU). ■According to Italian electoral law, the party with the biggest share of the vote automatically receives 55 percent of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house. This evidently leaves the 61-year Bersani with a secure parliamentary majority. ■When exit polls predicted a victory for Bersani at 3:00 p.m., the Milan stock index rose by 3 percent and the German DAX was up 2.3 percent. The euro rose against the dollar and the interest rate on Italian bonds dropped significantly. But when news emerged of a possible Berlusconi victory in the Senate, indexes turned negative.

Wall Street Journal: Berlusconi Shocks Italy With Another Political Comeback
New York Times: Split Vote in Italy Brings Political Deadlock
Russsia Today: Italy in political deadlock as vote brings no clear leader
Le Monde: Les incertitudes de l'élection italienne secouent les marchés

China took over management on Monday of Pakistan's Gwadar port, en route to key Hormuz Straits oil shipping lanes, in a move which has prompted nerves in India about its fellow Asian giant's growing strategic clout. - China financed more than 80 percent of the $248 million development cost of the port on the Arabian Sea, as part of a plan to open up an energy and trade corridor from the Gulf, across Pakistan to western China. When complete, the port could be used by the Chinese Navy, analysts say, and Indian Defence Minister A.K. Antony told reporters on February 6 that Chinese control of the port was "a matter of concern." Indian policy-makers are wary of a string of strategically located ports being built by Chinese companies in its neighborhood, as India beefs up its military clout to compete. China has also funded ports in Hambantota, Sri Lanka, and Chittagong in Bangladesh, both India's neighbors.

Sampath Perera: Pakistan transfers strategic Gwadar port to China
The Nation/AWIP: Take note CIA: Gwadar Port control transferred to China!

A new report has revealed that Saudi Arabia has supplied foreign-backed militants in Syria with large cargos of infantry and heavy weapons through Jordan. - Citing anonymous American and Western officials, The New York Times newspaper reported on Monday that "the weapons began reaching rebels in December via shipments shuttled through Jordan." One Western official said "thousands of rifles and hundreds of machine guns" and an unknown quantity of ammunitions were among the weapons shipped to Syria. The daily quoted one senior American official as describing the shipments as "a maturing of the opposition's logistical pipeline." Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said that the recent Saudi purchase of heavy weapons from Croatia was "not in and of itself a tipping point." "I remain convinced we are not near that tipping point," the official added. The report confirmed that Persian Gulf Arab nations have been sending military equipment and other assistance to the militants fighting government forces in Syria "for more than a year," but the scale of the recent shipments is not comparable with the previous weapons supplies.

NaharNet: 'Extremists' in Syria Opposition Blocking Dialogue, Says Lavrov

The granting of the Best Picture Oscar to the Iranophobic movie "Argo" has long been foreseeable as the Machiavellian maneuvering of Hollywood propaganda harbors a much more elaborate imperialistic scheme, political analysts say. - “I put my money on this film to win the Best Picture Oscar (even though there is nothing remotely “best” about it) especially if Obama can pull off winning the Presidential election,” wrote cultural critic Kim Nicolini in an article published in October 2012. “Argo, above all else, is a piece of conservative liberal propaganda created by Hollywood to support the Obama administration’s conservative liberal politics as we move toward the Presidential election,” she said before Obama was re-elected for the second term. “It also primes the war wheels for an American-supported Israeli attack on Iran, so that Leftists can feel okay about the war when they cast their vote for Obama in November (2012),” the critic pointed out.

Global Post: Iran calls Oscar for 'Argo,' awarded by Michelle Obama, an ad for CIA
Fars News Agency: Critic: Argo Produced to Overshadow US Failure in 1979 Embassy Takeover
Fars News Agency: Former Canadian Ambassador to Tehran: Argo Full of Fabricated Scenes

■ Do you have a right to know where that steak on your plate came from? Should it be legal to photograph chicken farms and dairy cows? Big Agriculture says you don’t and it shouldn’t. Armies of Big Ag lobbyists are pushing for new state-level laws across the country to keep us all in the dark. Less restrictive versions have been law in some states since the 1980s, but the meat industry has ratcheted up a radical new campaign. ■ This wave of “ag-gag” bills would criminalize whistleblowers, investigators, and journalists who expose animal welfare abuses at factory farms and slaughterhouses. Ten states considered “ag-gag” bills last year, and Iowa, Missouri, and Utah approved them. Even more are soon to follow. Had these laws been in force, the Humane Society might have been prosecuted for documenting repeated animal welfare and food safety violations at Hallmark/Westland, formerly the second-largest supplier of beef to the National School Lunch Program. Cows too sick to walk were being slaughtered and that meat was shipped to our schools, endangering our kids. The investigation led to the largest meat recall in U.S. history. ■ More recently in Wyoming, video footage showed workers at a Tyson supplier kicking live piglets and pummeling mother pigs. The film led to criminal charges against nine employees, including two managers. In Pennsylvania, an investigation of a major regional egg supplier, Kreider Farms, showed decomposing birds packed into cages among the living. Other hens had their heads stuck in cage wire and were left to die. [Via: BLN]

The UN Middle East peace envoy has called for an "independent and transparent" probe into the death of a Palestinian man in an Israeli jail as anger mounts in Palestinian territories. - "The United Nations expects the autopsy to be followed by an independent and transparent investigation into the circumstances of Mr Jaradat's death, the results of which should be made public as soon as possible," Robert Serry said on Monday. Arafat Jaradat, who was arrested on February 18 on suspicion he was involved in hurling stones at Israeli troopers, died on Saturday in Magiddo prison. Israel claims that Jaradat had died of cardiac arrest, a claim Palestinians deny.

UFree: Mass Hunger Strike in Israeli Jails - Captive Movement continued its mass hunger strike for the second day in a row in the Israeli prisons protesting the murder of the prisoner Arafat Jaradat from the city of al-Khalil in the southern West Bank territories on Saturday. The prisoners decided to step up their daily protests in protest against the Israeli repressive policy and the ongoing IPS aggressions against the prisoners, through refusing meals, impeding the daily count, and delaying the return to prison. The Captive movement stressed the prisoners' determination to go on a hunger strike on April 14 to mark the Palestinian Prisoners' Day, and the first anniversary of the Dignity battle.

PIC: Jaradat's martyrdom raises alarm bells
Occupied Palestine|فلسطين: UFree demands an international investigation into the death of captive Jaradat
Charlotte Silver: How Israel legitimises torturing Palestinians to death
Fars News Agency: UN Calls for Inquiry into Palestinian Death
Fars News Agency: Iran Strongly Condemns Death of Palestinian Prisoner in Israeli Jail
AWIP: ‘Palestinian detainee tortured before death’

One misconception about the use of torture in Myanmar is that it has been a form of human rights abuse most commonly associated with the cases of political prisoners, and therefore in the current period we should expect the incidence of torture to diminish as political conditions change. ■ However, the Asian Legal Resource Centre has long brought to the attention of the Human Rights Council and its predecessor that torture in Myanmar is not confined to any particular type of case but rather is systemic and ongoing. ■ The practice of extremely brutal forms of torture is systemic. Officials at all different levels of the police hierarchy, courts, administration and hospitals are aware of its occurrence, are involved actively or are complicit and condone it. Superiors do not prohibit the use of torture by subordinate officers but delimit it by warnings not that it is illegal or a violation of human rights but that if the torturers go too far and the victim dies then the police officers will, despite their pretenses to the contrary, have trouble.

Asian Human Rights Commission (website)

On Bastøy prison island in Norway, the prisoners, some of whom are murderers and rapists, live in conditions that critics brand 'cushy' and 'luxurious'. Yet it has by far the lowest reoffending rate in Europe. - The first clue that things are done very differently on Bastøy prison island, which lies a couple of miles off the coast in the Oslo fjord, 46 miles south-east of Norway's capital, comes shortly after I board the prison ferry. I'm taken aback slightly when the ferry operative who welcomed me aboard just minutes earlier, and with whom I'm exchanging small talk about the weather, suddenly reveals he is a serving prisoner – doing 14 years for drug smuggling. He notes my surprise, smiles, and takes off a thick glove before offering me his hand. "I'm Petter," he says. Before he transferred to Bastøy, Petter was in a high-security prison for nearly eight years. "Here, they give us trust and responsibility," he says. "They treat us like grownups." I haven't come here particularly to draw comparisons, but it's impossible not to consider how politicians and the popular media would react to a similar scenario in Britain.

WikiLeaks has published over 40,000 secret documents regarding Venezuela, which show the clear hand of US imperialism in efforts to topple popular and democratically elected leader Hugo Chavez. - The documents, which date from July 2004 to December 2011 and which were published through WikiLeaks twitter account @wikileaks and which are now available on WikilLeaks Global Intelligence Files online, are based on emails taken from the private US-based intelligence company, Stratfor. This company claims to provide analysis for multinational corporations looking to invest in Venezuela, and uses a number of local sources to develop their reports. However, their emails prove that their motives and objectives are far from independent, and they are working as an intelligence and strategy agency for those looking to develop suitable political conditions for economic imperialism, exploitation, and intervention in the country. WikiLeaks describes Stratfor as “a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency”. “The emails”, WikiLeaks goes on to explain, “show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods”.