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.