The European Commission has the power to improve how the Roma are treated. Why is it not using that power? “It's about Europe. It's about you,” runs the official slogan marking 2013 as the European Year of Citizens. But if you happen to be one the European Union's six million Roma people, you might well be forgiven for not feeling included in such rhetoric. ■ As we mark International Roma Day on 8 April, one of Europe's largest ethnic minorities faces widespread discrimination, racial violence, forced evictions and segregation. More than a decade after EU anti-discrimination laws were adopted, EU member states are failing to effectively enforce these laws to combat this discrimination. ■ The EU's race-equality directive, adopted in 2000, clearly prohibits discrimination on grounds of race and ethnicity in areas including access to goods and services, housing, employment and education. But as Amnesty International's new briefing, “Human rights here, Roma rights now”, points out, EU countries continue with discriminatory policies and practices in these areas, without effective challenge from the European Commission. ■ On housing, we and others have documented forced evictions of Roma communities in several EU countries, including Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy, Romania and Slovenia. Forcibly evicted Roma people are frequently moved to segregated housing, sometimes beside polluted sites or in clearly sub-standard houses.

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Amnesty: The rhetoric and reality of Roma rights - “It’s about Europe. It’s about you.” So goes the official slogan marking 2013 as the European Year of Citizens. But, if you happen to be one of the European Union’s six million Roma, you might well be forgiven for doubting the inclusiveness of such rhetoric. As we celebrate International Roma Day on 8 April, one of Europe’s largest ethnic minorities faces increasingly widespread discrimination, racially motivated violence, forced evictions and segregation. More than a decade after EU anti-discrimination laws were adopted, EU member states are failing to enforce these laws to combat this discrimination.

At least 12 people have been killed and dozens injured after a car bomb explosion in central Damascus, followed by intense gunfire in the Syrian capital. - "Terrorists detonated a car bomb between Sabaa Bahrat square and Shahbander Street," Syrian state television, Al-Ikhbariya reported on Monday. Heavy gunfire was heard shortly after the blast and a column of smoke began to rise in the area. Children are believed to be among the dead and wounded as the explosion took place near a school, the report added. The explosion occurred near AFP's Damascus office, blowing out the windows. No AFP employee was reported to be injured. On Saturday, four people, including a woman, were killed after foreign-backed militants fired several mortar shells at residential areas in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

SANA: Terrorist Bombing Rocks Crowded Area in Damascus Leaving Over 14 Dead, 146 Injured
Tony Cartalucci: World Must Unite Against US-Saudi-Israeli Proxy War in Syria

Steinitz: Iran Must Halt Entire Program or Face Attack - The latest round of talks between the P5+1 and Iran came screeching to a halt this weekend when Iran offered a proposal to settle the issue once and for all, a proposal which appears to have made Western nations, which were hoping to milk these do-nothing summits for many more years, exceedingly uncomfortable. Not that this is over with, however, it’s business as usual, and for Israel that means insisting that the latest round of talks proves the need for a war. Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz is demanding that the US and other Western nations immediately issue an ultimatum to Iran to submit entirely or face invasion.

PressTV: Israel isolated against Tehran as the West will not attack Iran over a non-existent bomb

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov says the final solution to the Western dispute over Iran’s nuclear energy program is the recognition of Tehran’s rights under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). - “Russia says clearly the recognition of all rights of Iran under [the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,] including the right to enrichment in exchange for the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) control over Iran's nuclear program, is the final model. This can be spread out to any depth,” Itar-Tass news agency quoted Ryabkov as saying on Saturday. Ryabkov added that if such a deal is reached, all sanctions against Iran should be lifted.

WikiLeaks has published the ‘Kissinger Cables’: its largest public release of documents in nearly a year, totaling some 1.7 million classified files, including information on the US’s secret diplomatic history.

A variety of files have been collected and collated, including from congressional correspondence, intelligence reports, and cables. Julian Assange, who heads the organization, told the Press Association that the documents were illustrative of the “vast range and scope” of global US influence. He is to present and mark the release of the documents on Monday in a mass-press conference. Assange is currently residing at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, under the threat of arrest if he leaves.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is quoted as saying, “Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, ‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer’,”[*] during a 1975 conversation which included a Turkish and Cypriot official.

[*] Taken from "Crazy He Calls Me" (Billie Holiday): The difficult I'll do right now/ The impossible will take a little while. - Kissinger's satanic character is apparent in his corruption of these beautiful lines, which are about love, not criminal activities. Kissinger wouldn't know the difference. - Ed.

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Russia Today: WikiLeaks announces mysterious ‘Project K’ [04/01/13]

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa says Britain is not in a position to preach about its decision to offer asylum to Julian Assange when it failed to extradite former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet. Correa has infuriated British officials by offering protection at the Ecuador embassy in London to the Wikileaks founder who is wanted for sex assault and rape allegations in Sweden. 'Pinochet was not extradited for humanitarian reasons, when there were dozens of Europeans and thousands of Latin Americans who were murdered, and tens of thousands of people were tortured during the Pinochet dictatorship,' he told reporters in the country's capital Quito. Pinochet was arrested by British police at a hospital in London in 1998 after Spain demanded his extradition for alleged torture and murder, including of Spanish citizens, during his 1973-1990 rule. The British government decided in 2000 that the frail Pinochet was unfit to stand trial and free to fly home. He died six years later in Santiago, Chile, aged 91.

Israeli websites have come under massive cyber attacks in solidarity with Palestinians following a warning by the hacker group Anonymous that threatened to ‘erase’ Israel from the internet. - Websites including the sites owned by the Bank of Israel, Tax Authority, and the Central Bureau of Statistics came under cyber attacks on Saturday night. Anonymous has vowed to “erase” Israel from the internet by disabling Israeli websites during an operation called ‘Op-Israel.’

“You have NOT stopped your endless human right violations. You have NOT stopped illegal settlements. You have NOT respected the ceasefire. You have shown that you do NOT respect international law,” Anonymous said in a statement referring to the Israeli regime.

“This is why on April 7, elite cyber-squadrons from around the world have decided to unite in solidarity with the Palestinian people against Israel as one entity to disrupt and erase Israel from cyberspace,” the Anonymous statement added, listing 1,300 Israeli websites as targets.

Russia Today: Hacktivists to Israel: 'Be ready for new larger surprises’
PressTV: Israeli ministry, Mossad websites hit by pro-Palestinian hackers
Occupied Palestine | فلسطين: Hacker group ‘#Anonymous’ takes down hundreds of Israeli websites
Anonymous Iberoamérica: #Anonymous LIVE COVERAGE"
The People's Voice: Anonymous launches cyber attack on Israel; major government websites down

Margaret Thatcher with mass murderer Augusto Pinochet

Margaret Thatcher, a towering, divisive and yet revered figure who left an enduring impact on British politics, died on Monday of a stroke, her family said.

“It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning,” a statement from her spokesman, Lord Tim Bell, said. Lady Thatcher had been in poor health for months. She served as prime minister for 11 years, beginning in 1979. She was known variously as the ‘Iron Lady,’ a stern Conservative who transformed Britain’s way of thinking about its economic and political life, broke union power and opened the way to far greater private ownership. She was leader of Britain through its 1982 war in the Falklands and stamped her skepticism about European integration onto her country’s political landscape for decades.

Financial Times: Thatcher: ‘Iron lady’ who changed Britain
CNN: Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first female PM, dead at 87
Irish Independent: Margaret Thatcher death a 'great day' for coal miners
BBC: In quotes: Margaret Thatcher
The Independent: Life in pictures: Margaret Thatcher
Raw Story: Conservatives outraged over CNN photo of Thatcher with ‘pedophile’ Jimmy Savile - Video
LaRepublica.pe: Cuando Margaret Thatcher se consideró aliada de Augusto Pinochet
LaTercera.com: La relación entre Augusto Pinochet y Margaret Thatcher

Afghan officials say at least 11 children have been killed in an air strike carried out by the US-led forces in the country’s eastern province of Kunar, Press TV reports.

Kunar provincial officials said on Sunday that at least two Afghan women were also killed in the air raid which took place in the town of Shigal in the Kunar Province where American forces are stationed. Local officials say a U-S military advisor has also been killed in a joint ground military operation by Afghan and foreign soldiers. US-led forces claimed that the attack had been carried out "to target a local Taliban commander".

RAWA: NATO airstrike kills 18, including 10 children in Afghanistan - Afghan officials said strikes happened overnight in Kunar province, during a joint operation between Afghan and NATO troops against Taliban fighters. There were conflicting figures of the death toll with other news agencies. Wasifullah Wasifi, the spokesman for the Kunar governor, confirmed the attack to Al Jazeera but gave a different death toll. "We confirm a raid done by Afghanistan's intelligence service in the district of Shigal. In this raid, the security forces killed 20 Taliban in which 10 of them are very senior Taliban members," he told Al Jazeera. He told AFP news agency said at least 10 children were killed in the strike in Shigal while euters news agency reported six Taliban fighters as being among those killed in the air strikes.

Thomas Gaist: NATO strike kills 10 Afghan children after week of bloody fighting
BBC: Afghan children 'killed by Nato air strike in Shigal'
Associated Press: Afghan villagers flee their homes, blame US drones
PhotoBlog: Afghan villagers flee their homes, blame US drones
Living Under Drones (Website)

Millions of Americans are embarrassingly ill-informed and they do not care that they are. - Just how stupid are we? Pretty stupid, it would seem. What happened in 1066? Just 10% know it is the date of the Norman Conquest. Who said the "world must be made safe for democracy"? Just 14% know it was Woodrow Wilson. Which country dropped the nuclear bomb? Only 49% know it was their own country. Who was America's greatest president? According to a Gallup poll in 2005, a majority answer that it was a president from the last half century: 20% said Reagan, 15% Bill Clinton, 12% John Kennedy, 5% George W. Bush. Only 14% picked Lincoln and only 5%, Washington.

Lawrence Davidson: Critical Thinking Gone Missing
The Washington Post: Teacher’s resignation letter: ‘My profession … no longer exists’

James Holmes text messaged and emailed threats to his psychologist and kept a Batman mask and dozens bottles of beer and liquor at his apartment, a new cache of documents released today reveals. - On June 12, University of Colorado - Denver psychologist Lynne Felton called campus police and reported that Holmes, who had been her patient but stopped seeing her, had been harassing her and that she believed he was having homicidal thoughts. Officers responded by deactivating Holmes' student ID card, which blocked his access to building at the Anschutz Medical Campus, where he had been a student.

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Long before WW2, the myth of 'six million' was already being used to garner sympathy and political support for Jewish interests.