The Pentagon is sending about 200 troops to Jordan to help deliver aid to refugees and to plan for possible military action, including a rapid buildup of forces. - The Pentagon is sending about 200 troops to Jordan, the vanguard of a potential U.S. military force of 20,000 or more that could be deployed if the Obama administration decides to intervene in Syria to secure chemical weapons arsenals or to prevent the 2-year-old civil war from spilling into neighboring nations. Troops from the 1st Armored Division will establish a small headquarters near Jordan's border with Syria to help deliver humanitarian supplies for a growing flood of refugees and to plan for possible military operations, including a rapid buildup of American forces if the White House decides intervention is necessary, senior U.S. officials said.

Tony Cartalucci: Surreal: US Troops Stage in Jordan to Defend Al Qaeda in Syria - CNN reports that some 200 US troops are staging along Syria's border, this as reports reveal huge amounts of US-provided flour smuggled into Syria have formed the foundation of Al Qaeda's public relations strategy. Together with huge amounts of US-provided weapons, the aid is fueling Al Qaeda's continued operations and atrocities inside Syria. The addition of US troops along Syria's border appears to be a response to recent and significant gains made by the Syrian government in stamping out terrorist operations nationwide. Syria's "Rebels" are Same Terrorists US Fought for Last 10 Years. As reported in October 2012, the networks used to flood Iraq with weapons and Al Qaeda militants during the US occupation, had been positively identified by the extensive academic efforts of the US Army's own West Point Combating Terrorism Center (CTC). Two reports were published between 2007 and 2008 revealing a global network of Al Qaeda affiliated terror organizations, and how they mobilized to send a large influx of foreign fighters into Iraq.

Police in Waco have said that the number of people killed in an explosion at a fertiliser plant in West in Texas is likely to rise.

In a hastily-convened press conference in a barn just after 2.15am local time (8.15am GMT), Waco PD spokesperson William Swanton said there had been fatalities but said the exact number cannot be confirmed. Swanton said authorities do not want to guess at a figure when victims are still being pulled out of buildings at the scene of the explosion. “There have been fatalities… I think we will see those fatalities increase over the morning,” he said. He confirmed that a number of firefighters who responded to the initial fire are unaccounted for and said that a police officer may also be missing.

The Independent: Scores feared dead and hundreds injured in Texas fertiliser plant blast - Video

President Obama’s ambitious effort to overhaul the nation’s gun laws in response to December’s school massacre in Connecticut suffered a resounding defeat Wednesday, when every major proposal he championed fell apart on the Senate floor. - One by one, the Senate blocked or defeated proposals that would ban certain military-style assault rifles and limit the size of ammunition magazines. But the biggest setback for the White House was the defeat of a measure to expand background checks to most gun sales. The Senate defied polls showing that nine in 10 Americans support the idea, which was designed to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.It was a stunning collapse for gun-control advocates just four months after the deaths of 20 children and six adults in Newtown led the president and many others to believe that the political climate on guns had been altered in their favor.

Washington Times: A good day for the Second Amendment
CSM: Four reasons the Senate gun control bill may be kaput
Tyler Durden/Zero Hedge: Gun Control In Tatters: Obama To Make Statement

Under President Obama, the number of civilian deaths due to drone strikes has increased since the Bush Administration. To murder several runners using bombs at a sporting event is terrorism. To murder 175 children using military drones is U.S. policy. We should accept neither. We should fight against both.

Chris Floyd: Echoes in the Aftermath: Remembering the Victims of Violence

Barry Grey: On Wednesday, two days after two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and wounding 178, the media coverage of the tragedy reached new heights of sensationalism and outright hysteria. The cable news networks, led by CNN, churned out one rumor after another, most of which quickly proved to be false. They set the tone for the rest of the corporate media, which at one point reported that a suspect had been taken into custody, only to have the report denied by Boston police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Despite repeated media claims that a suspect had been identified in video recordings of the bomb scene and promises of a joint press conference of federal, state and local officials to announce a major breakthrough in the case, the day ended as it began, with no suspects identified, no one having claimed responsibility, and no public information as to who planted the bombs or why. The press conference, which was supposed to include Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and FBI investigators, never materialized.

Norman Solomon: The Orwellian Warfare State of Carnage and Doublethink - After the bombings that killed and maimed so horribly at the Boston Marathon, our country’s politics and mass media are awash in heartfelt compassion — and reflexive "doublethink," which George Orwell described as willingness "to forget any fact that has become inconvenient." In sync with media outlets across the country, the New York Times put a chilling headline on Wednesday’s front page: "Boston Bombs Were Loaded to Maim, Officials Say." The story reported that nails and ball bearings were stuffed into pressure cookers, "rigged to shoot sharp bits of shrapnel into anyone within reach of their blast." Much less crude and weighing in at 1,000 pounds, CBU-87/B warheads were in the category of "combined effects munitions" when put to use 14 years ago by a bomber named Uncle Sam. The U.S. media coverage was brief and fleeting. One Friday, at noontime, U.S.-led NATO forces dropped cluster bombs on the city of Nis, in the vicinity of a vegetable market. "The bombs struck next to the hospital complex and near the market, bringing death and destruction, peppering the streets of Serbia’s third-largest city with shrapnel," a dispatch in the San Francisco Chronicle reported on May 8, 1999.

Key words..."I expect the Americans to demand that the government gets on the Israeli page."

Why would the United States of America need filthy apartheid israelis to help them solve the Boston bombing? Why?

Homeland security encompasses a broad range of stakeholders from the public and private sector and is an area of enormous collaboration between the United States and Israel. To further this cooperation, the United States Congress has recently passed the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012. Who is sending the alleged Ricin through the mail? Your choice...Israel, CIA, FBI, Homeland Security. It was so nice of them not to send anthrax this time. There are so many suspicious packages and things being found all over the country with the resulting building evacuations, bomb squads, hazardous device units and SWAT teams converging on them that it seems a street thug or 'intelligence' operative could have a field day with the diversions just by chaining a suitcase of clothes to a pole downtown.

Slowly, every police department in the United States, at the behest of the Department of Homeland Security, is being trained by Israeli groups. As part of this training, there is an increased move to use of military uniforms, armored vehicles, heavy weapons, illegal surveillance, lying to the people, press and courts. They are becoming “Israeli.” We are becoming Palestinian.

A bill introduced by the California Democrat would uniquely exempt Israel from long-standing requirements imposed on all other nations. - In order for the US to permit citizens of a foreign country to enter the US without a visa, that country must agree to certain conditions. Chief among them is reciprocity: that country must allow Americans to enter without a visa as well. There are 37 countries which have been permitted entrance into America's "visa wavier" program, and all of them - all 37 - reciprocate by allowing American citizens to enter their country without a visa. The American-Israeli Political Action Committee (Aipac) is now pushing legislation that would allow Israel to enter this program, so that Israelis can enter the US without a visa. But as JTA's Ron Kampeas reports, there is one serious impediment: Israel has a practice of routinely refusing to allow Americans of Arab ethnicity or Muslim backgrounds to enter their country or the occupied territories it controls; it also bars those who are critical of Israeli actions or supportive of Palestinian rights. Israel refuses to relinquish this discriminatory practice of exclusion toward Americans, even as it seeks to enter the US's visa-free program for the benefit of Israeli citizens.

The Telegraph: Black workers 'banned from Gare du Nord during Israeli president visit'

Iran's army "alone" is able to destroy Israel, army commander General Ataollah Salehi said on Thursday, responding to boasts by the Jewish state that its military that could attack its archfoe on its own. - "Our message to this illegitimate regime (Israel) is the same, we do not need to utilize all of Iran's military forces," Salehi said on the sidelines of the Islamic republic's annual Army Day. "The army ... alone is able to destroy Israel." His comments come after Israeli chief of staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz on Tuesday said the Jewish state's military was capable of attacking Iran on its own without foreign support.

On November 18, during the eight-day deadly confrontation between Israel and Hamas militants, an Israeli warplane bombed the home of the al-Dalou family in Al-Nasser neighborhood, central Gaza City. The attack turned the three-storey home into rubble, killing ten members of the household, including five women and four children. Two more civilians from the family living next door were also killed in the attack.

The Israeli Military’s legal arm has decided not to open a criminal probe into the deaths of 10 members of the Palestinian al-Dalou family killed in the IDF’s air-strike on their home during the Gaza war last year. The airstrike on the al-Dalou home “does not raise suspicion of the commission of a criminal offense and that the unfortunate result occurred despite the efforts made to minimize the collateral damage to uninvolved civilians,” the IDF Military Advocate General's (MAG) Corps stated, after examining the claims of alleged violations by the Israeli military during the November offensive on Gaza.

AWIP: IDF wipes out Palestinian family

The former military ruler of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, fled a courtroom in the capital on Thursday, making a dramatic escape after a judge revoked his bail over a case dating to his nine years in power. - Television footage showed Mr. Musharraf being jostled as his security detail pushed through the court precinct following the hearing, then quickly driving away in a convoy of SUVs as angry lawyers chased behind. The escape was the latest twist in Mr. Musharraf’s quixotic bid to return to Pakistani politics. It was the first time in Pakistan’s history that a former army chief faced potential imprisonment, which analysts said could open a new rift between the courts and the military. After fleeing Thursday, Mr. Musharraf drove to his luxury farmhouse on the outskirts of the capital, where he has been living since returning from exile last month, and which is protected by retired commandos and soldiers still in the armed forces. At the hearing, the court refused to extend Mr. Musharraf’s bail in relation to his controversial decision to sack and imprison the country’s top judges when he imposed emergency rule in November 2007.

Venezuela's Supreme Court has ruled out a recount of the country's disputed presidential vote, saying there is no legal basis for the opposition's push for a vote-by-vote recount. - The head of the country's Supreme Court, Chief Justice Luisa Morales, said on Wednesday that manual vote counting was not possible, citing the country's 1999 constitution that "eliminated the manual electoral process." "In Venezuela the electoral system is completely automated. Therefore, a manual count does not exist. Anyone who thought that could really happen has been deceived," she said. "The majority of those who are asking for a manual count know it and are clear about it. Elections are not audited ballot by ballot but through the system," she added.

Stephen Lendman: Destabilizing Venezuela - On April 14, Venezuelans elected Nicolas Maduro president. He won fair and square. It's official. A nationally televised Monday ceremony announced it. Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles cried foul. He called Maduro "illegitimate." He refuses to recognize election results. He demands a recount. He wants "every vote" counted. National Electoral Council (CNE) president Tibisay Lucena responded. A manual recount of all votes isn't needed to confirm accuracy, she said. Proper auditing checks were implemented. It's routine. They're done before, during and post-elections. Over half the Sunday vote total was checked. She called doing so "a statistical proportion that in any part of the world (would be) considered excessive." Fourteen audits were conducted. They assure a free, open and fair process.

28 migrant workers working at a strawberry farm in Manolada, Greece have been shot because they demanded to get paid, after six months of unpaid work. - New Manolada is in Peloponnese and according to Greek daily Kathimerini the farm owners have a history in abusing migrants. The incident occurred when approximately 200 workers demanded six months’ worth of unpaid wages from their employer. According to ilialive.gr the representatives of the farm owner informed the migrant workers that they are not going to get paid and they demanded from them to get back to work. Then the strawberry pickers became involved in an argument with three Greek supervisors. According to the police, one of the supervisors opened fire and injured 28 migrant workers. The farm owner was arrested but the three supervisors were being sought.