It was the video that put WikiLeaks on the map: “Collateral Murder” turned the tide of war in Iraq and landed Private first class Bradley Manning in military detention. But for Army veteran Ethan McCord, it was just another day on duty. - “The helicopters were approximately a mile and a half away and they were zooming in on these guys,” McCord recalls to RT’s Meghan Lopez. “And looking at it now you obviously can’t see anything.” The whistleblower website released the video on April 5, 2010, and instantly made international headlines by exposing what the War in Iraq really meant to some. The clip in question, taken from camera affixed to an Apache helicopter flown by US troops, showed Americans opening fire on civilians and journalists. Ethan McCord’s story is tragic, but he is not alone. Thousands of veterans suffer from the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). For those who can’t handle the stress, many have taken their own lives. They were fathers and brothers, soldiers and sons, and now they are just another casualty in American wars abroad. In the past two years alone, McCord has lost eight of his veteran brothers to suicide — and his own outlook on life hasn’t exactly improved either.

"According to a report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service late last year, “U.S. income distribution appears to be among the most unequal of all major industrialized countries and the United States appears to be among the nations experiencing the greatest increases in measures of income.”

AWIP: Wealth Inequality in America - MUST See Video

Italy’s President Giorgio Napolitano has pardoned, without presenting a justifiable reason, a US Air Force colonel, who has been convicted in absentia of the abduction and illegal imprisonment of an Egyptian Muslim cleric.

Napolitano's office said in a statement on Friday that the president had granted the pardon "in hopes of giving a solution to a situation to an affair considered by the United States to be without precedent because of the aspect of convicting a US military officer of Nato for deeds committed on Italian soil." Napolitano said he had pardoned Romano because the US and Italy are close allies and share the ‘common goal of promoting democracy.’ This is while the move to pardon the US convict is believed to be unjustifiable in concrete terms. Romano was one of the 23 Americans tried and sentenced by Italian courts over the operation to kidnap Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, in 2003.

John Goetz & Matthias Gebauer: CIA Rendition Case: US Pressured Italy to Influence Judiciary [12/17/10 ]

Researchers have discovered that the Fukushima nuclear disaster has had far-reaching health effects more drastic than previously thought: young children born on the US West Coast are 28 percent more likely to develop congenital hyperthyroidism. In examining post-Fukushima conditions along the West Coast, researchers found American-born children to be developing similar conditions that some Europeans acquired after the 1986 meltdown of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. “Fukushima fallout appeared to affect all areas of the US, and was especially large in some, mostly in the western part of the nation,” researchers from the New York-based Radiation and Health Project wrote in a study published by the Open Journal of Pediatrics.

A Navy Veteran who was honorably discharged from the military has had his 2nd Amendment rights suspended and his guns confiscated after a forced psychological evaluation and subsequent wellness check that lead police to illegally search his house and conduct an interrogation. The problems started for David A. Schmecker after he requested a follow-up pain management appointment and was informed that he needed to have a psychological evaluation beforehand. Not having any past history of arrests or mental illness, Schmecker politely refused the evaluation, which was the beginning of what would end up being an illegal seizure of a patriotic veteran's guns during a search that was conducted without a warrant and without any regard for the law.

Whistleblowing group WikiLeaks unveiled plans on Saturday to field candidates in at least three states in Australia's elections and said it would be “embarrassing” if Julian Assange won but couldn't take his seat. - Assange, Australian-born founder of the controversial WikiLeaks site, announced that he would run for the Senate last year and is pushing ahead with the plan despite being holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June. Greg Barns, a lawyer who is Assange's newly-appointed campaign director, said the WikiLeaks Party had secured candidates to run in at least three states when Australia goes to the polls on September 14.

Sydney Morning Herald: WikiLeaks bid for Senate - VIDEO

Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvii and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev have been named as owners of companies registered in the offshore tax haven of the British Virgin Islands, according to a 15-month investigation by the Washington, DC-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. - The list of such owners, published in an April 3 report called "Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze," names Ivanishvili as the director of the Bosherton Overseas Corporation, registered in the British Virgin Islands in 2006 and "still in existence," according to the report. Aliyev and his wife, Mehriban, were listed as directors of Rosamund International as of 2003, the year Aliyev first came to power.

AWIP: Anonymous hidden wealth revealed after data leak

The Egyptian ministry of foreign affairs warned that the truce between the Palestinians in Gaza and the Israelis would collapse if the latter persisted in violating it. - In a press statement on Wednesday, Egyptian foreign minister Mohamed Amr condemned Israel’s air raids on Tuesday night on Gaza. Amr said that Israel’s policies would adversely affect Egypt’s ongoing efforts to maintain calm in the Gaza Strip. The minister also slammed Israel’s practices against the Palestinian prisoners, which led to the death of a prisoner a few days ago. He stressed the need for finding international mechanisms ending Israel’s systematic violations against the Palestinian prisoners.

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon: Once again Zionist join forces with their ideological twins, the Anti Zionist Zionists (AZZ). I have learned today that due to pressure, Deir Yassin Remembered's (DYR) commemoration in Glasgow was cancelled. In spite of the difficulties Mr Abdallah Eid, a survivor of the Deir Yassin, will still commemorate Deir Yassin as planned and I urge you to join him at the event.

The murder of over 100 Palestinians by the Urgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and Stern gangs with the assistance of an elite unit from the Haganah, led to the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, an event known as al-Nakba, "the Catastrophe". The aim of the "Deir Yassin Remembered" campaign is to erect a memorial on the site of the massacre and at the same time raise the plight of the Palestinian people. For more information about the campaign visit Memorial to Deir Yassin and Deir Yassin Remembered

Deir Yassin Blog: Deir Yassin Day 2013
Gilad Atzmon: Remember Deir Yassin [04/26/12] + Being in Time [09/14/11]

The families of some 20 Utøya massacre victims are planning to take court action against either the state or the police. - The goal of the action is to establish responsibility for the inadequate police response to the events of July 22, 2011, when Anders Brevik killed 69 people on the island of Utøya where the Norwegian Labour Party had organised a youth camp. Most of the families are relatives of people who were shot during the last 21 minutes of the massacre, at a time when, they allege, security forces should have already intervened.

The U.N. human rights chief called on the United States on Friday to close down the Guantanamo prison camp, saying the indefinite imprisonment of many detainees without charge or trial violated international law. Navi Pillay said the hunger strike being staged by some inmates at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in southeastern Cuba was a "desperate act" but it was "scarcely surprising".