While US President Barack Obama and the Western media lied in concert to the world regarding America's role in supporting terrorists operating in Syria, it is now revealed that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been shipping weapons to Syria via NATO-member Turkey and Jordan since at least early 2012. The New York Times in their article titled, "Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With C.I.A. Aid," admits that:

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports.

PressTV: US military has plans to bomb and send forces in Syria: Washington Post
Tony Cartalucci: CONFIRMED: US Shipping Weapons to Syria - Al Nusra's "Mystery" Sponsors Revealed

Cyprus and the Troika have agreed to a 20 per cent tax on deposits over 100,000 euros at the Bank of Cyprus and 4 per cent on deposits held at other banks. - A senior Cypriot official told Reuters that a plan to tap nationalized pension funds would not be a part of a plan to raise billions of euros in return for a bailout from the European Union. Cyprus said earlier on Saturday that it was looking at seizing a quarter of the value of big deposits at its largest bank in order to raise such funds. "Unfortunately, the events of recent days have led to a situation where there are no longer any optimal solutions available. Today, there are only hard choices left," European Union Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said in a statement. Cyprus is scrambling to come up with €5.8 billion by Monday, or face being kicked out of the Eurozone. The cash is a prerequisite for a further €10 billion in bailout funds.

The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West - Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Dr. Paul Craig Roberts says there is another financial calamity coming to the U.S. Dr. Roberts says, “It is a crisis they can’t avoid. One way or another it’s going to bite very hard, whether it comes through the dollar or the bonds.” Dr. Roberts says all the ongoing financial problems we face today are a result of little or no regulation. Dr. Roberts makes his case in a book titled “The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West.” Dr. Roberts contends, “What you are looking at is a deregulated financial system, and the result was fraud, crisis and collapse. . . . The end result of financial deregulation is crony capitalism.” Look no further than the continuing bank bailouts with massive money printing and zero percent interest rates as the reason for the coming catastrophe of spiking interest rates. Roberts asks, “How can the dollar be anything but a bubble because the Fed is creating a trillion new dollars every year, but the demand for dollars is not growing by a trillion dollars a year.” Roberts goes on to predict, “Sooner or later, the printing has to affect the dollar’s value. If the dollar drops . . . we have inflation . . . you can’t have inflation and zero percent interest rates.” Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with economist Paul Craig Roberts.

Paul Craig Roberts: Americans’ Economic Prospects And Civil Liberties Have Been Stolen

Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda. - The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda. A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world. Once developed, the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with any number of co-ordinated messages, blogposts, chatroom posts and other interventions.

'Asharq al-Awsat' reports Abbas agrees to forgo legal action against Israel for 2 months; $500 million in US aid released to PA. - US President Barack Obama asked Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during his visit to Israel and the West Bank not to take action against Israel at the International Criminal Court for any reason, including settlement construction, London-based Arab daily Asharq al- Awsat reported on Saturday, citing Palestinian sources. The PA has hinted on numerous occasions since it gained recognition as a non-member observer state at the UN in November that it was considering complaining to the ICC against Israel for approving construction of new housing in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

AWIP: U.S. Unblocks $500 mln "for Palestinians"

Israel will “immediately” respond to Syrian gunfire on the border of Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, stated new Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon. The statement comes after Israel returned fire from over the border, wounding two Syrian soldiers. "Every violation of Israeli sovereignty and shooting from the Syrian side will immediately be answered by silencing the source of fire," AFP quoted him as saying after Israeli troops opened fire towards a Syrian military post. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) fired a Tamuz anti-tank guided missile into Syrian territory after Syrian troops opened fire for the second time in twelve hours, according to YNet News.

Searching for truth in the debris - What follows amounts to Syria’s version of events in the attack near Aleppo on Tuesday in which 26 people died in unexplained circumstances. It comes from three senior medical and military sources in Damascus and in the Aleppo area. All wish to remain anonymous. It is the government version of events but it conforms to the few undisputed facts of the case: the low number of causalities for an alleged chemical attack; the fact that the UN took Syria’s complaint seriously and acted upon it and the fact that Syrian soldiers are among the fatalities. Damascus says it has conducted tests on the Victim’s blood samples and also soil samples and the rocket debris itself. It says the results have already been sent to the UN team investigating. I am told the Syrian officials have also supplied the phone numbers of the doctors who treated the victims to the UN and has vow to co-operate fully with the UN investigation which is now underway. Syria believes the chemical involved was a relatively small amount of chlorine gas, namely CL17 which was dissolved into saline solution in a home-made rocket. Two separate military sources have confirmed to Channel 4 News that it was a rocket and not a shell.

GAINES TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) – A cattle farmer is fighting a Gaines Township zoning ordinance to keep a couple of trailer-sized political signs on his property.

A crowd is expected in 63rd District Court Friday as Vern Verduin takes on Township officials who are trying to force him to remove his signs. The signs, which are visible from M-6, are posted on two semi-truck trailers parked in Verduin’s pasture. One reads "Marxism/Socialism = Poverty & hunger." The other reads "Obama's 'mission accomplished.' 8% unemployment. 16 trillion debt." "I felt that things were going in the wrong direction," he said. He said as a farmer, he's concerned especially about hunger and poverty. But the signs have put him at odds with the leaders of Gaines Township, for whom he has worked as a volunteer firefighter for years. The Township cited him for violating its sign ordinance, which restricts the size of political signs to 20 square feet. But under the ordinance, you can have a bigger sign to sell a product than to sell an idea. "You can have a 32-foot advertising sign. I don't get that," said Verduin. That commercial element is why Verduin's lawyer thinks his client will win in court. The US Constitution, he says, gives political speech more protection than it does commercial speech. "This is clearly a violation of his free speech and free exercise right," said attorney Howard Van Den Heuvel.

There was a lot going on this week, but it’s all being overshadowed by the fascinating geopolitical game over Cyprus. This is a stage on which a country’s pending financial collapse hinges explicitly on its hydrocarbons potential, and whoever turns up with aid will win access to exploration blocks. Yesterday morning, Oilprice.com’s Jen Alic took us through the nuances of this game, noting that Russia could bail out Cyprus in return for a nice chuck of exploration acreage offshore. By the close of the day, that is exactly how things appeared to be unfolding. Later in the day, it began to emerge that Gazprom had reportedly offered Cyprus a bailout deal in return for offshore exploration rights. But by Friday, Russian and Greek Cypriot officials had said no deal had been reached. The deal Cyprus put on the table was the creation of a Cypriot state company with control of gas reserves into which Russian companies could invest, along with a nice stake in Cypriot banks to be rescued by the Russian investment fund. It’s not enough for Moscow, which is holding out for more—and likely to get it if the EU refuses to budge. This all came after the EU tried to get Cyprus to agree to partially fund an EU bailout package by putting a levy on bank deposits and offering account-holders compensation in the form of potential gas futures. This is where the EU was caught playing dirty—and it’s all about Russia. Russian oligarchs use Cyprus for their offshore banking needs, and as such hold a lot of the bigger accounts that would have been targeted under this scheme.

Ten years ago this week, British forces entered Iraq’s second city, Basra, as part of the U.S.-led invasion of the country. No one remembers that decisive event more so than librarian Alia Baqer. Known locally as a cultural hero, Baqer moved to rescue the contents of Basra’s central library before everything was lost. “At the beginning of the war on Iraq, the governor [of Basra] took the library over as a headquarters for himself and his guards, mounting machine guns on top of the building. So, we asked the governor if we could take the important books to our homes, but he rejected the idea. Eventually we took the responsibility ourselves to transfer the books, without the governor’s approval,” she said, looking back ten years. As U.S.-led forces took over the country, security broke down and looting spread. Baqer and her staff moved fast to carry the most precious books to safety, transporting them in curtains to the Hammdan restaurant next door.

Cyprus is only the first victim of a one-size-must-fit-all policy that is made in Berlin. - Then, as now, Cyprus was the toy of foreign powers. Othello was sent there from Venice to repel the Turks, though luckily they all got blown away in a tempest. Since then, Russia, Britain, Greece and, always, Turkey, have taken an interest. Even today, Britain has an important listening post for the Middle East there, 60,000 expatriates, 3,500 troops in our sovereign bases and a continuing role as a guarantor power. Cypriots still drive on the left. Lord Salisbury, who won control of Cyprus for Britain from Turkey in 1878, once sent an envoy there. People complained that the man knew neither Greek nor Turkish. “Good,” said Salisbury, “then he will hear fewer lies.” That is the authentic tone of an imperial power. Today that power is Germany. We have heard enough lies, the Germans are saying haughtily to the Cypriots, now shut up and do what we want. Yesterday, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, ordered that “Cyprus must realise that its business model is dead”.

MoneyNews: Crisis in Cyprus Threatens EU Role and Legitimacy
Stephen Lendman: Grand Theft Cyprus: Part II
Ellen Brown: A Safe and a Shotgun or Publicly-owned Banks? The Battle of Cyprus

China's central bank deputy governor Yi Gang said: “China is prepared. In terms of both monetary policies and other mechanisms, China will take into full account the quantitative easing policies implemented by central banks of foreign countries.” However, Mr Yi said a currency war can be avoided if policymakers follow the consensus reached at the Group of 20 nations meeting in Moscow last month. ■ A currency war occurs when a number of major economies compete against each other to devalue their own currency and lower the exchange rate. This cuts the price of exports from the country and makes imports more expensive – effectively boosting jobs as demand from both domestic and foreign markets increases.

The US Central Intelligence Agency has been feeding information to select rebel fighters in Syria to try to make them more effective against government troops, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. - Citing unnamed current and former US officials, the newspaper said the new CIA effort reflected a change in the administration's approach that aims to strengthen secular rebel fighters. The CIA has sent officers to Turkey to help vet rebels who receive arms shipments from Gulf allies, the report said. But administration officials cited concerns about some weapons going to "Islamists", the paper noted.

Wall Street Journal: CIA Expands Role in Syria Fight

The United States has quietly unblocked almost $500 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority which had been frozen by Congress for months, a top U.S. official said Friday. - The news that the funds had finally been freed up came after U.S. President Barack Obama met top Israeli and Palestinian leaders in a landmark visit to Israel and the West Bank earlier this week. "To date, we have moved $295.7 million in fiscal year 2012 money... and $200 million in fiscal year 2013 assistance," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.

Stephen Lendman: [The money is to prop up a stooge & his illegitimate regime.] - [Obama] said Israelis "have a true partner in president Abbas and prime minister Fayyad." Both serve illegitimately. They're Israeli collaborators. They enforce occupation harshness. They spurn their own people. They do so for benefits derived. Israel rigged Abbas' 2005 election. His term expired in January 2009. Fayyad was appointed, not elected. In 2006 legislative elections, his Third Way party won two of 132 seats. It got 2.4% of Palestinian votes. Fayyad's unwanted for good reason. He's Israel's man in Palestine. He's a former World Bank/IMF official. He supports neoliberal harshness. He enforces militarized occupation.

Stephen Lendman: Salam Fayyad: Israel's Man in Palestine
Stephen Lendman: Abbas and Fayyad: Collaborationist Israeli Allies

Israel has announced a full resumption of diplomatic ties with Turkey after apologizing for the deaths of nine Turkish activists in an Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound international flotilla. - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that he had apologized to Turkey during a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan for a deadly 2010 flotilla attack. He also accepted Ankara's demand for compensation to be paid to the families of the nine activists who were killed.

Al-Manar News: Zionist PM Apologizes, Amends Ties with Turkey
PressTV: Turkey says apology brought Israel to ‘line of international law’

REMEMBERING FURKAN DOGAN ~~ PHOTO ESSAY
US emboldens Israel to kill Americans
This Says It All: Israelis kill American – Joe Biden says: "What's the big deal?"

The hacker that has targeted Hillary Clinton and the Presidents Bush has leaked a new trove of classified emails to RT that discuss in detail the Algerian hostage crisis and the relationship between the United States and Egyptian governments. An elusive hacker using the moniker 'Guccifer' was credited earlier this week with infiltrating the email account of journalist Sidney Blumenthal and uncovering a collection of highly sensitive memos allegedly sent to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Now for the second time in only a week, the person known only by a three-syllable screen name has provided yet another compilation of correspondence that highlights America’s foreign diplomacy in ways that are rarely made public this side of WikiLeaks.

The United States may be finished dropping bombs on Iraq, but Iraqi bodies will be dealing with the consequences for generations to come in the form of birth defects, mysterious illnesses and skyrocketing cancer rates. - Al Jazeera’s Dahr Jamail reports that contamination from U.S. weapons, particularly Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions, has led to an Iraqi health crisis of epic proportions. “[C]hildren being born with two heads, children born with only one eye, multiple tumours, disfiguring facial and body deformities, and complex nervous system problems,” are just some of the congenital birth defects being linked to military-related pollution. In certain Iraqi cities, the health consequences are significantly worse than those seen in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Japan at the end of WWII.

Dispatches: What You Won’t Hear About the #IraqWar from the Establishment

Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian writer who was one of Africa’s most widely read novelists and one of the continent’s towering men of letters, died on Thursday in Boston. He was 82. - His death was announced by Brown University, where he had been on the faculty since 2009. Besides novels, Mr. Achebe’s works included powerful essays and poignant short stories and poems rooted in the countryside and cities of his native Nigeria, before and after independence from British colonial rule. His most memorable fictional characters were buffeted and bewildered by the conflicting pulls of traditional African culture and invasive Western values. For inspiration, Mr. Achebe drew on his own family history as part of the Ibo nation of southeastern Nigeria, a people victimized by the racism of British colonial administrators and then by the brutality of military dictators from other Nigerian ethnic groups. Mr. Achebe burst onto the world literary scene with the publication in 1958 of his first novel, “Things Fall Apart,” which has sold more than 10 million copies and been translated into 45 different languages.

Nigerian Tribune: BREAKING NEWS! Chinua Achebe is dead
NPR Blog: Chinua Achebe, Nigerian Author Of 'Things Fall Apart,' Dies
AllAfrica: Nigeria: Prof Chinua Achebe is Dead

Just days after the CIA inked a $600-million cloud computing contract with Amazon, chief technology officer Gus Hunt admitted that the agency is trying to amass as much data as it can, hold it indefinitely and use it for analysis in the future. - In a Wednesday speech in New York City to an audience of technology experts assembled for GigaOM’s Structure: Data conference, Hunt admitted the intelligence community has long sought a database to store text messages, tweets, Facebook activity, videos and any other information Americans make available - intentionally or otherwise. Hunt said CIA analysts have been at work on new algorithms that will break down vast amounts of information into easily digestible tools that allow them to closely examine trends in the public. The agency will then be able to base its covert strategies off those results.

NBC News: US plan calls for more scanning of private Web traffic, email

So like is New York the new North Korea now or something? Or maybe it’s reverting back to the old days of Nazi Germany. For over a year now, New Yorkers have been offered $500 rewards to snitch on people who own guns. The Andrew Cuomo mafia has done a real job on dumb New Yorkers. Cuomo makes Eliot Spitzer look like a rookie. He even makes his daddy Mario look ethical!

The Cyprus bailout proposal made by the Eurogroup is both economically and politically absurd. But what if the real reason behind the whole Cyprus crisis is the desire to confiscate the country’s gold? - The European Union, the IMF and the ECB are pushing Cyprus into bankruptcy while risking a contagion effect that could lead to the meltdown of the eurozone. European leaders have already bailed out Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy. Why is the Cyprus bailout so special? Why do the European leaders prefer to push the country into bankruptcy and raid the Cypriot bank accounts instead of saving it? Russia 24, the Russian state news channel, reports that under the current plan that is being discussed by the Cypriot parliament, the Central Bank of Cyprus will sell its gold reserves in order to cover a part of the 5.86 billion euros demanded by the Eurogroup. Other sources of financing the country’s “contribution” include such outrageous measures as a special levy on bank accounts and the expropriation of the money held by the Cypriot pension system, so everyone’s attention is diverted from the sale of gold.

Zero Hedge: Furious Merkel: "Cyprus’ Decision To Test Europe Is Unacceptable"
Zero Hedge: Europe, Russia Reject Latest Cyprus Bailout Plan Before It Is Even Voted By Parliament
Russia Today: Protests in Cyprus as government postpones crucial legislation debate - PHOTOS)
Mike Adams: Cyprus bank insolvency crisis quickly escalating; may set off EU bankageddon

Russia Today: ‘Euro is a house of cards waiting to topple’- Nigel Farage - RT: Every bailout comes with strings attached. But can Cyprus afford the price the EU has set? Nigel Farage: What is really happening here is we are having a reconcilable split between the North and the South of Europe. In the North of Europe – Germany, the Netherlands, and Finland – there are very strong political voices saying “We do not want to go on bailing out southern European countries.” And bear in mind that Cyprus is now the fifth country out of 17 that has needed to be bailed out. And that is why the Germans extracted the terms that they did. But I must say that even in my direst predictions in this parliament over the years about the way the EU bosses were behaving, never did I think that they would in a completely unprecedented manner resort to stealing money from people’s bank accounts. RT: But is that because Europe can’t afford Cyprus to fail? NF: Well, It can’t afford Cyprus to fail, it can’t afford Greece, Portugal, Spain or Ireland to fail. They know that once one country goes the whole deck of cards will come tumbling down. And countries like Germany will realize absolutely vast losses – possibly as much as one trillion euro. So, they are prepared now to do literally anything to try to keep the Euro afloat. And that is why they have now resorted to what can only be described as theft.

The war in Iraq is not over, not by a long shot. For decades to come we will have to deal with what the United States and its allies have unleashed. [Video]

It’s anyone’s guess if those responsible for this war of aggression will ever be held accountable for their crimes, what we do know however, is that the decision to invade Iraq has transformed the global political landscape (emphasis added):

“Kofi Annan, declared explicitly… that the US-led war on Iraq was illegal. Mr Annan said that the invasion was not sanctioned by the UN security council or in accordance with the UN’s founding charter. In an interview with the BBC World Service… he was asked outright if the war was illegal. He replied: ‘Yes, if you wish.’ “He then added unequivocally: ‘I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view and from the charter point of view it was illegal.’… “American officials have defended the war as an act of self-defence, allowed under the UN charter, in view of Saddam Hussein’s supposed plans to build weapons of mass destruction… “Mr Annan issued a stern critique of the notion of pre-emptive self-defence, saying it would lead to a breakdown in international order.”

The People's Voice: A reminder, according to the UN charter, the invasion was illegal
AWIP: James Steele: America's mystery man in Iraq

Former Guantanamo prison official Ret. Col. Morris Davis has discussed with RT how the once 'temporary' facility has become a money pit as repair costs and yearly maintenance bills begin to pile up. - As prison officials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, struggle to explain an inmate hunger strike a new report has revealed that the United States Southern Command has requested funding for construction of a new building, as well as for maintenance on the existing facility. Media outlets have speculated that the new project could cost American taxpayers a sum approaching $200 million, a sum that had some scratching their heads after Southern Command General John F. Kelly testified before Congress Wednesday that the improvements would cost between $150 and $170 million.

Jason Ditz: Instead of Closing, Gitmo to Receive Major Upgrades - Pentagon officials say that a plan being pushed would spend $150 million upgrading the facility, creating a new hospital which is going to be helpful, since so many of the detainees are already in failing health and are seemingly going to stay there until they die of old age.

A suicide bomber has attacked the Iman Mosque in the Syrian capital city of Damascus today, killing 42 people, including senior pro-government Sunni cleric Mohammad al-Buti, the Imam of the Ummayyad Mosque, one of the most significant mosques in all of Islam. 84 other people were also reported wounded. Imam Buti was an outspoken supporter of the Assad government, referring to the rebels as “scum” during weekly television sermons and urging Syrians to join the military to fight them off. So far no group has claimed credit for the attack and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) explicitly disavowed it, saying that their group does not conduct suicide bombings against mosques.

Franklin Lamb: Mr. Hitto solves a few immediate Syria problems for the White House. Or so they are hoping. At minimum Hitto will be an American ‘potted plant’ who can be recognized and around whom NATO can corral an implant some of the desperate factions. He appears willing to take orders and is now involved in as crash-course to learn what he needs to know about Syria and the unfolding game plan. One congressional aide who helped vet Mr. Hitto claims he has “spunk and can be tough. And we think he will play ball.”