US Secretary of State, John Kerry, acknowledged on Wednesday that there “a lot of countries” which are training Syria militants. "It's one part of it. But other nations are doing other things. There are a lot of nations working at this. And so I think President Assad needs to read the tea leaves correctly," Kerry told Fox News during a visit to Qatar. Earlier, media reported that instructors from US Special Forces are training armed opposition groups that are fighting against the government of President Assad. French and British newspapers, Le Figaro and The Sunday Times, reported US commandos have been training the so-called “Free Syrian Army” in camps located in Jordan.

Chris Marsden: Kerry steps up US war threats against Syria, Iran
SANA: US Adopts Two Contradicted Stances in Handling Crisis in Syria

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel met with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday at the Pentagon to reassure him that the diplomatic window on Iran is closing and that, despite tough fiscal times in Washington, exorbitant amounts of aid to Israel would not be affected. - According to the Pentagon, “Secretary Hagel expressed his strong commitment to Israel’s security, including maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge and continued US support for missile and rocket defense systems in spite of fiscal constraints.” Many observers who expected Hagel, who had a reputation for issuing harsh criticisms of Israel, to differentiate the US relationship with Israel at least slightly, have thus far been disappointed by his close adherence to the Obama administration’s approach over the last four years.

John Glaser: AIPAC Lobbyists to Congress: Despite Sequester, Don’t Touch Israel Aid

Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro has announced the expulsion of two US embassy officials for allegedly spying on the country’s military, accusing Washington of having infected late President Hugo Chavez with the cancer virus. - Maduro charged the US administration in a televised speech on Tuesday, after holding an emergency meeting with high military command and civilian leaders and hours before the announcement of President Chavez’s death. Caracas accused the US embassy’s Air Force attache, Colonel David Delmonaco, and assistant air attache, Major Devlin Kostal, of trying to stir up a military plot against the Venezuelan government. Washington confirmed that the two officials were employed at the embassy, saying Delmonaco was en route back to the US, and Kostal was in America at the time. Maduro also said that, “We have no doubt” that the President’s cancer, first diagnosed in 2011, was induced by “the historical enemies of our homeland,” a thinly-veiled reference to the US. He compared the situation to the death of the late leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, who Maduro claimed was “inoculated with an illness.”

El País: Luto en los países bolivarianos por la muerte del “querido amigo”
El País: Maduro asume el poder mientras comienza el duelo por Chávez
Al-Manar News: Venezuela Bids Farewell to Cháves, Pledges to Continue on His Path
BBC: Iconic Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez dies
SANA: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez passed away
Russia Today: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez dies - Video
Russia Today: President, TV star, thorn in US side
Tony Cartalucci: US Plots Conquest of Venezuela in Wake of Chavez' Death
Kevin Barrett: Chavez: Another CIA assassination victim
Stephen Lendman: Chavismo Lives!
Bill Van Auken: Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez dead
Russia Today: Venezuelans mourn Hugo Chavez - Photos
New York Times: Chávez Dies, Leaving Sharp Divisions in Venezuela

The US attorney general has refused to rule out the possibility that drone strikes may be used inside the United States to kill an American citizen. - Eric Holder said a drone strike within the borders of the US and against an American citizen may be carried out in what he called an extraordinary circumstance. He made the remarks in a statement in a response to an inquiry by Republican Senator Rand Paul, who had questioned the Justice Department on Tuesday if it believed that President Barack Obama had the legal authority to order an assassination drone strike on an American while present on US soil. Paul said the administration’s "refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening -- it is an affront the Constitutional due process rights of all Americans."

Global Post: Obama admin refuses to rule out drone strikes on US soil - American forces could launch a deadly drone strike against a target on US soil if there was an "extraordinary circumstance," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter seen Tuesday. The nation's top Justice Department official, in a letter to Republican Senator Rand Paul, who released it, stressed that US military and intelligence agencies "currently" have no intention of carrying out such an attack.

Washington's Blog: Holder: Prez Can Assassinate Americans On U.S. Soil - Specifically, Holder did not say “we are legally constrained by the Constitution from depriving people of life, liberty or property without due process of law, and from using military force on U.S. soil”. Instead, he said that the Obama administration was so far abstaining from using a power it already has as a current “policy” decision.

FromTheTrenches: The Use of Drones to Kill US Citizens on American Soil Should Surprise No One - The very fact of employing drones domestically in the first place, would come with the desire to assassinate those suspected of crimes against the government, "terrorist acts", and a wide variety of circumstances seen by the government as threats, including but not limited to those who speak out against the government that have the potential of causing descent among the people. Those who question the Constitutionality of using drones for domestic assassinations should have realized a long time ago, when the idea of using drones on American soil was first discussed that using drones against US citizens in any way, shape, or form, is unconstitutional in itself.

John Glaser: AG Holder: We Can Kill Americans on US Soil - The controversy, arising out of the drone war, that President Obama has the authority to assassinate US citizens abroad in non-war zones just got even more disgraceful. The Obama administration’s Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter in response to persistent inquiries from Senator Rand Paul, who vowed to block the confirmation of John Brennan to CIA chief if the White House didn’t respond. In the letter, Holder maintains that the President does have the authority to kill US citizens on US soil without any due process.

Kade Crockford: Drones are coming home to skies near you: feel safer? - American democracy urgently needs laws to protect our privacy from the national security state's new surveillance technologies. - Academic and writer Michelle Alexander has said, of the prison-industrial complex and mass incarceration, that we need a mass movement to repeal the New Jim Crow. She warns that the scattershot strategy of advocating to close some prisons here and reform sentencing there won't cut it. The same is true with respect to the ongoing war on our privacy amidst rapidly developing technologies, and state power post 9/11 more broadly. We need comprehensive privacy law reform for the 21st century; in order to get there, we need a new mindset.