Thirty people protesting against unmanned aerial drones outside Hancock Field Air Force National Guard Base have been arrested.

The Post-Standard reports that the arrests Sunday came after a series of rallies and workshops held in Syracuse over the weekend by the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars. A group of people lying on the base’s driveway were arrested. Charges include disorderly conduct, obstructing governmental administration and loitering. About 250 people had marched to the gates, some pounding drums and chanting. The base is home to the 174th Attack Wing of the New York Air National Guard, which operates unmanned, armed drones. They are used for intelligence gathering and bombing ground targets.

Ernst Wolff: The terror of US drone warfare
Stephen Lendman: Drones: Instruments of State Terror
Chris Floyd: Pay in Blood: The Bipartisan Terror Machine Stripped Bare
The Post-Standard: Anti-Drone Protests at the NY Air National Guard Base at Hancock Field

A US government task force is drafting FBI-backed legislation that would penalize companies like Google and Facebook for refusing to comply with wiretap orders, media report. - In the new legislation being drafted by US law enforcement officials, refusal to cooperate with the FBI could cost a tech company tens of thousands of dollars in fines, the Washington Post quoted anonymous sources as saying. The fined company would be given 90 days to comply with wiretap orders. If the organization is unable or unwilling to turn over the communications requested by the wiretap, the penalty sum would double every day.

Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner: How Americans became exposed to biohazards in the greatest uncontrolled experiment ever launched - A hidden epidemic is poisoning America. The toxins are in the air we breathe and the water we drink, in the walls of our homes and the furniture within them. We can’t escape it in our cars. It’s in cities and suburbs. It afflicts rich and poor, young and old. And there’s a reason why you’ve never read about it in the newspaper or seen a report on the nightly news: it has no name — and no antidote. The culprit behind this silent killer is lead. And vinyl. And formaldehyde. And asbestos. And Bisphenol A. And polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). And thousands more innovations brought to us by the industries that once promised “better living through chemistry,” but instead produced a toxic stew that has made every American a guinea pig and has turned the United States into one grand unnatural experiment. Today, we are all unwitting subjects in the largest set of drug trials ever.

A [force-]“feeding chair” at US Guantánamo military prison’s
psychiatric ward, called the "Behavioral Medical Unit" (taken
from a military handout video dated April 10, 2013).

The US has dispatched additional military ‘medical forces’ to its Guantánamo detention and torture camp in Cuba to help with growing force-feeding measures as the hunger strike by captives continues to spread to protest the indefinite detention without charge or trial.

Nearly 40 more “US Navy medical forces” have arrived at the notorious military prison camps in efforts to deal with the spreading hunger strike by what the prison authorities report as 100 detainees, over one-fifth of whom are being force-fed to keep them alive, US-based daily The Miami Herald reported Monday, citing the prison’s spokesman. The "corpsmen, nurses, and other specialists" arrived at the naval base over the weekend "as part of a contingency during the ongoing hunger strike," the report added, citing a statement by the spokesman, Army Lt. Col. Samuel House. The figure offered by prison authorities, however, has been contested by a number of attorneys for the inmates who have put the number of Guantánamo hunger strikers at between 130 and all the 166 remaining detainees.

Top Afghan officials have been on the CIA’s payroll for over a decade, receiving tens of millions of US dollars in cash. Afghan President Hamid Karzai admitted to receiving the clandestine financial support, but dismissed the sum as a “small amount.” - A New York Times report has revealed that unparalleled corruption in the Afghan government has been encouraged by the US Central Intelligence Agency. Since the start of the decade-long war, CIA agents have delivered cash to Afghan officials in “suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags.” “We called it ‘ghost money,’” said Khalil Roman, President Hamid Karzai’s former chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, adding that it “came in secret, and it left in secret.” There is no evidence that President Karzai was a recipient of any of the money, as Afghan officials claim the cash was distributed by president’s National Security Council, the report said.

New York Times: C.I.A. delivers 'tens of millions of dollars' to Afghan druglords, Taliban

Women’s rights are increasingly heralded as a useful propaganda device to further imperial designs. - Western heads of state, UN officials and military spokespersons will invariably praise the humanitarian dimension of the October 2001 US-NATO led invasion of Afghanistan, which allegedly was to fight religious fundamentalists, help little girls go to school, liberate women subjected to the yoke of the Taliban. The logic of such a humanitarian dimension of the Afghan war is questionable. Lest we forget, Al Qaeda and the Taliban were supported from the very outset of the Soviet-Afghan war by the US, as part of a CIA led covert operation. It was the US which installed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 1996, a foreign policy strategy which resulted in the demise of Afghan women’s rights. Religious schools were generously funded by the United States of America.

A civilian [?] cargo plane crashed at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan on Monday afternoon, according to a spokesman for the "International Security Assistance Force". There was no immediate word on casualties or the cause of the crash. Zamaray Khan, the local district police chief, said only that the plane crashed on takeoff on an airport runway. Bagram is about an hour's drive north of the capital, Kabul, and is one of the two largest air bases serving coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Coalition forces rely heavily on contracted aircraft to haul troops and supplies in a nation where roadside bombs and insurgent attacks make traveling by road dangerous. The name of the plane's contracting company was not immediately available. It was the second crash in three days involving coalition aircraft in Afghanistan. On Saturday, four U.S. airmen were killed when a military turboprop plane crashed in southern Afghanistan.

The Defense Department identified the four service members as Capt. Reid K. Nishizuka, 30, of Kailua, Hawaii; Staff Sgt. Richard A. Dickson, 24, of Rancho Cordova, Calif., Capt. Brandon L. Cyr, 28, of Woodbridge, Va.; and Staff Sgt. Daniel N. Fannin, 30 of Morehead, Ky.

A powerful bomb rocked central Damascus on Tuesday, killing 13 people according to Syrian TV, and sowing fear and chaos in a busy commercial district of the capital for the second consecutive day. - The Syrian prime minister narrowly escaped an assassination attempt Monday after a car bomb struck near his convoy, a few kilometers (miles) away from Tuesday's blast. The bombings appear to be part of an accelerated campaign by opposition forces seeking to topple President Bashar Assad to strike at his heavily protected seat of power. Syrian TV said Tuesday's explosion was caused by a "terrorist bombing" in the district of Marjeh, a commercial area in central Damascus. Assad's regime [correctly] refers to opposition fighters as "terrorists."

Activists said Tuesday that at least 15 opposition fighters have been killed in a battle with Syrian government troops for a military helicopter base in the country's north. - The Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights said fighting between rebels and President Bashar Assad's troops is raging around the Mannagh base in the northern province of Aleppo. The activist group said the government deployed fighter jets to the area late on Monday, pounding rebel positions around the helicopter base, which is located near Syria's border with Turkey. The Observatory said that at least 15 rebels have been killed in the fighting. Rebels have repeatedly targeted Assad's air bases around the country in their 2-year-old campaign to topple his regime. More than 70,000 people have been killed since the conflict started in March 2011.

Syrian Radio & TV: Armed Forces Continue Operations against Terrorists in Several Provinces

The Israeli regime has joined forces with the United States, Britain, and al-Qaeda terrorists in the plot to depose Syrian President Basher al-Assad. - Speaking at a conference in New York on Sunday, former Mossad director Meir Dagan said Tel Aviv must “do whatever it can to make sure that Syrian President Basher al-Assad is removed from power.” Dagan added that the ouster of Assad would be hugely beneficial for Israel from a strategic point of view and asserted that it would weaken Iran and the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah. And Tel Aviv should not be too worried about the possibility of hostile forces taking power in Syria, since Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states will make every effort to install a “moderate” regime in Damascus, the former Israeli spy chief said.

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich: What Israel is really after in Syria
Russia Today: Netanyahu orders Israeli ministers to ‘remain silent’ on Syria
PressTV: Russia warns against attempts to topple Syrian government
Al-Manar News: 13 Killed, Dozens Wounded in Damascus Terrorist Explosion

A landowner trying to sell a portion of the Wounded Knee National Historic landmark in South Dakota said Monday he has three offers from West Coast-based investment groups for the land that sits adjacent to where about 150 of the 300 Lakota men, women and children killed by the 7th Cavalry in 1890 are buried. - But James Czywczynski told The Associated Press that he is giving the Oglala Sioux Tribe until May 1 to make an offer on the40-acre parcel before he opens it up to outside buyers. Czywczynski would not give details on the groups, nor what they intend to do with the land, but said they are willing to pay the full $3.9 million asking price. The Wounded Knee National Historic landmark comprises 870 acres. Along with its proximity to the burial grounds, the land includes the site of a former trading post burned down during the 1973 Wounded Knee uprising, in which hundreds of American Indian Movement protesters occupied the town built at the site of the 1890 massacre. The 71-day standoff that left two tribal members dead and a federal agent seriously wounded is credited with raising awareness about Native American struggles and giving rise to a wider protest movement that lasted the rest of the decade.

Andre Damon: A US government task force is seeking to force companies such as Google, Dropbox and Facebook to create backdoors for wiretapping user communications, according to a report published Wednesday in the Washington Post. According to the Post, the efforts are being driven by the FBI, part of the Obama administration’s Justice Department, though the White House has not formally announced a position. However, the panel is preparing legislation that would vastly expand police spying powers. [...] While enacted under the framework of the “war on terror,” the basic target of these actions is the American people and domestic opposition to the policies of the ruling class. It is part of a systematic dismantling of democratic principles, with the government asserting the right to imprison and even assassinate US citizens without due process.

Max Ajl: Perhaps no war in recent memory has so thoroughly flummoxed the Euro-Atlantic left as the recent NATO war on Libya. Presaging what would occur as U.S. proxies carried out an assault on Syria, both a pro-war left and an anti-anti-war left started filling up socialist e-zines and broadsheets with endless explanations and tortuous justifications for why a small invasion, perhaps just a “no-fly-zone,” would be okay—so long as it didn’t grow into a larger intervention. They cracked open the door to imperialism, with the understanding that it would be watched very carefully so as to make sure that no more of it would be allowed in than was necessary to carry out its mission. The absurdity of this posture became clear when NATO immediately expanded its mandate and bombed much of Libya to smithereens, with the help of on-the-ground militia, embraced as revolutionaries by those who should have known better—and according to Maximilian Forte, could have known better, had they only looked.

Activist Mark Dice is at it again, this time asking citizens on the street of California to sign a petition mandating maximum mercury injections for children along with door-to-door gun confiscations using police and military forces. Astonishingly, person after person gladly signs the petition!

This is even as Mark Dice is describing how it will work: "We're going to model it after the police state in Russia and Germany," he says. "We need a 1984-style Orwellian police state to keep us safe."

A steady stream of people gladly signs the petition with their name, signature and zip code.

Even Mark Dice can't believe people are signing a petition that openly calls for a Nazi-style police state takeover of America.

FTMDaily.com: Obama Supporters Sign Petition to Repeal 6th and 7th Amendments

For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency. All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader. “We called it ‘ghost money,’ ” said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. “It came in secret, and it left in secret.” The C.I.A., which declined to comment for this article, has long been known to support some relatives and close aides of Mr. Karzai. But the new accounts of off-the-books cash delivered directly to his office show payments on a vaster scale, and with a far greater impact on everyday governing.

Jason Ditz: CIA’s ‘Bags of Cash’ Fueled Afghan Corruption

The list of possible co-conspirators in the Boston bombing keeps growing as investigators examine Tsarnaev family connections both in the US and abroad. US legislators are not convinced such an attack could have been carried out without special training. - On Sunday, US lawmakers indicated that they were pursuing “persons of interest” in the April 15 blasts at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and wounded more than 260. After reviewing the phone records of the suspects Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev, Chief of the House Homeland Security Committee, Michael McCaul said he believed that the accused could not have carried out the crime alone and that the brothers had special training, considering the “level of sophistication” of a pressure-cooker bomb used in Boston attack.

Andrea Peters: New questions on Boston bombing suspects’ ties to US intelligence

In an astounding admission, the New York Times confirms that the so-called "Syrian opposition" is entirely run by Al Qaeda and literally states: Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of. From the beginning, it was clear to geopolitical analysts that the conflict in Syria was not "pro-democracy" protesters rising up, but rather the fruition of a well-documented conspiracy between the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia to arm and direct sectarian extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda against the Syrian government. This was documented as early as 2007 - a full 4 years before the 2011 "Arab Spring" would begin - by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his New Yorker article titled, "The Redirection" - Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?" which stated specifically:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Tony Cartalucci: NYT: "Nowhere in Rebel-Controlled Syria is There a Secular Fighting Force to Speak Of"

Delegates at an international peace conference in Turkey have blamed the United States and some of its allies in the Middle East for creating the crisis in Syria, Press TV reports. - The participants from twenty-three different nationalities at the conference in Istanbul said on Sunday that the imperialistic designs of the US, certain Western states, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are to blame for the crisis, Press TV's Istanbul correspondent Serena Shim reported. Cathy Goodman came all the way from the United States to show her discontent in what she calls her country is doing in the region, especially in the Syrian conflict. Cathy told Press TV that the United States, with the help of its regional allies, was invading and destroying certain countries in the region because it wants to establish its hegemony over the oil rich Middle East. "All of the American imperialist adventures have to be funded by American tax dollars... it comes directly out of our paychecks. Unfortunately, under [US President Barack] Obama we had the largest military budget in our history. We are trying to stop imperialist aggression -- in all of its different manifestations." The representative of the US peace council said ordinary Americans don't know what's going on in the Middle East because of what she called a sanitized biased media propaganda campaign.

Anhar Kocheneva is a Ukrainian journalist, who was captured and held captive by the foreign-backed militates in Syria for 25 days. "I was not scared, and I am still not scared. They are terrorists. And I had to tell the story. They claim they are Islamists, but they are not Islamists. They say it is a revolution, but it is not. It is terrorism," Kocheneva said.

Syrian Prime Minister Wael Halqi survived an attempted bombing assassination in central Damascus on Monday. - The explosion struck near a school in a southwestern district of Damascus, and at least ten were killed in the attack. The attack was reported by Syrian state television. "The terrorist explosion in al-Mezze was an attempt to target the convoy of the prime minister. Doctor Wael al-Halqi is well and not hurt at all," the report said. At least 19 people, including one of Halqi’s bodyguards, were killed and 25 others were wounded in the attack, a local journalist, who requested anonymity, told RT. Syrian media reported that up to 10 people may have been killed in the explosion. Halqi's driver and a second bodyguard were seriously wounded in the explosion, AFP said, quoting the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. An explosive device was placed under a black BMW vehicle that was parked along the route of Halqi’s convoy. The explosion took place near a kindergarten and a school. No children were killed in the attack, but two were injured, the journalist said.

Al-Manar News: Syrian PM Survives Assasination Attempt, Bodyguard Killed

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered his ministers to cease making public comments on the civil conflict in Syria, especially reports regarding the alleged use of chemical weapons by Syrian government forces, Israeli media said. - Netanyahu’s instruction follows comments made by deputy foreign minister Ze’ev Elkin on Army radio Friday, in which the official appeared to call on the international community to intervene in Syria in order to contain and neutralize the country’s chemical weapons stockpiles. “It is clear that if the United States wants to and the international community wants to, they could act militarily, among other things, to take control of the chemical weapons, and then all the fears … will not be relevant,” The Times of Israel cites Elkin as saying.

Israel risks a loss of credibility over both its "red line" for Iran's nuclear program and its threat of military action, and its room for unilateral maneuver is shrinking. - After years of veiled warnings that Israel might strike the Islamic Republic, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out an ultimatum at the United Nations last September. Iran, he said, must not amass enough uranium at 20 percent fissile purity to fuel one bomb if enriched further. To ram the point home, he drew a red line across a cartoon bomb, guaranteeing him front page headlines around the world. However, a respected Israeli ex-spymaster says Iran has skillfully circumvented the challenge. Other influential voices say the time has passed when Israel can hit out at Iran alone, leaving it dependent on U.S. decision-makers. "If there was a good window of opportunity to attack, it was six months ago - not necessarily today," said Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser. Pressure from Washington, he said, had forced Israel to drop its strike plan. Amos Yadlin, a former military intelligence chief who runs a Tel Aviv think-tank, suggested last week that Israel had also got itself into a tangle, saying Iran had expanded its nuclear capacity beyond the Israeli limit, without triggering alarms.

Jason Ditz: Defying Netanyahu: Former Mossad Chief Defends Effort to Block Iran War

An influential group of cancer experts has warned that the high prices charged by pharmaceutical companies for cancer drugs are effectively condemning patients to death. - The group of more than 100 leading cancer physicians from around the world, including nine from the UK, accuse the drug industry of “profiteering” – making a profit by unethical methods such as by raising the cost of grain after a natural disaster. Of the 12 drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the US in 2012, 11 were priced above $100,000 (£65,000) per patient per year. In addition the price of existing drugs of proven effectiveness has been increased by up to threefold. The specialists say: “What determines a morally justifiable ‘just price’ for a cancer drug? A reasonable drug price should maintain healthy pharmaceutical industry profits without being viewed as ‘profiteering’. This term [profiteering] may apply to the trend of high drug prices where a life threatening medical condition is the disaster.”

Voters in Iceland have inflicted a massive defeat on the Social Democrat-Left Green coalition that has ruled the country for the past four years. The two parties lost more than half of their support, as their combined total votes barely surpassed 20 percent. - The Social Democrats, who received 29 percent of the vote in 2009, saw their support fall to just 13 percent. The Left Greens, who obtained 21 percent of the vote in the last election, crashed to 10 percent. After being elected as a supposed alternative to the Progressive and Independence parties, the Social Democrats and Left Greens have handed power back to the former by continuing the same right-wing policies. The Social Democrat and Left Green government sought to place the full burden of the economic crisis of 2008 on the backs of ordinary Icelanders, while recapitalising the discredited financial institutions. Glittnir, Kaupthing and Landsbanki, the banks that collapsed the economy in 2008, have been rebranded and are back to business as usual, an achievement the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last year described as “impressive.” [...] One Icelander who spoke to the British Independent expressed the anger of many at the government, commenting dryly, “Okay, so there’s been a car crash. But then the government has come along and shot dead the survivors.”

The Independent: Iceland re-elects centre-right political parties blamed for financial meltdown

Declassified UK reports document build-up of conflict, Jewish public's endorsement of their leaders' pro-terrorist stance and declare armies of Arab states were Palestinians' 'only hope'. - The British government knew from the moment it planned to withdraw its forces from Palestine more than 60 years ago that partition of the territory and the founding of the state of Israel would lead to war and defeat for the Arabs, secret documents released make clear. The documents, which have a remarkable contemporary resonance, reveal how British officials looked on as Jewish settlers took over more and more Arab land. In the weeks leading up to the partition of Palestine in 1948, when Britain gave up its UN mandate, Jewish terrorist groups were mounting increasing attacks on UK forces and Arab fighters, the Colonial Office papers show. [...] The papers, released at the National Archives, show how in regular intelligence reports to London, British officials in Jerusalem described a steady build-up of tension as Britain, the US, the United Nations and Zionists moved towards the partition of Palestine. As early as October 1946, two years before partition, UK officials warned London that Jewish opinion would oppose partition "unless the Jewish share were so enlarged as to make the scheme wholly unacceptable to Arabs". British officials warned the colonial secretary, George Hall: "The Jewish public … endorsed the attitude of its leaders that terrorism is a natural consequence of the general policy of His Majesty's Government", including turning away ships carrying "illegal" Jewish immigrants.

The City of Lincoln in the north of England. Scenic. Suburban. And suddenly a hub for Britain's war on terror. This week the government announced that it's now conducting drone attacks on Afghanistan from the base behind me - RAF Waddington - where 100 personnel are manning the hi-tech reaper drones carrying 500lb bombs and hellfire missiles.

In response to the move, hundreds of anti-war demonstrators have marched through the city to the army site. Drone Expert Chris Coles agrees - that Britain is expanding its drone project - with the help of its friends. The government defends drones. It says they save lives. It will only admit to one civilian killing. But reality on the ground speaks differently. UK insists its operations are only in Afghanistan - where British drones have flown about 45,000 hours and fired about 350 times.