Two New York City Police officers will not face charges after the Manhattan District Attorney decided that widely circulated videos of them punching and pepper-spraying protesters amounted to "insufficient evidence" that they had done so.

Anthony Bologna, the now-infamous NYPD inspector, was filmed in September 2011 spraying a group of female Occupy Wall Street protestors who had already been isolated and immobilized by a screen held by other officers. The video, which received well over a million views online and was skewered on late night television, became emblematic of the brutality endured by OWS demonstrators who found themselves on the receiving end of aggressive police tactics.

In the same statement, quietly issued on the Friday that came at the end of the heavy news week that included the Boston Marathon bombings, the District Attorney’s Office announced no charges would be filed against Deputy Inspector Johnny Cardonna. Cardonna was filmed in October 2011 punching protestor Felix Rivera-Pitra seemingly without provocation.

Russia Today: Thug (Cop) found not guilty of assault despite video proof - Video [02/28/13 - Philadelphia]

The Guantánamo hunger strike is, in the end, a protest against George Orwell’s Big Lie. I have not been able to read much during the 11 years I have been held here, and right now I am so dizzy from lack of food that I can barely focus. But when I have had the opportunity, I have read and re-read Orwell’s 1984. It is very instructive: “The key-word here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings … it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts.” The Big Lie here in Guantánamo is the idea that holding 166 prisoners in Cuba somehow makes America safe from extremism. Ultimately, any Big Lie falls apart, but only if people care to look closely at it.

The Japanese government says it has detected eight Chinese government ships in the waters near a disputed East China Sea island chain, claimed both by Tokyo and Beijing. - Japan's coastguard said that the vessels entered the waters off the islands, which the Chinese call the Diaoyu and the Japanese call the Senkaku, around 8:00 a.m. local time on Tuesday. The move prompted Japan's Foreign Ministry to summon the Chinese ambassador to Tokyo in protest.

PressTV: ‘Japan may use force on disputed islands’

Muslims want a safe Canada, too. That's what Muhammad Robert Heft, a Muslim community leader in Scarborough, wants his fellow Torontonians to know as the RCMP arrested a Muslim man in the GTA for allegedly plotting a rail attack that would have taken innocent lives. Not only do Muslims in the city condemn the attack, they turned over information in a bid to help foil it. "There is going to be backlash," he said, alluding to those who will blame the Muslim community. "But I want to reiterate. Who was the one who tipped the RCMP off? It was our community."

PressTV: Iran rejects Canada’s claim about terror suspects's links
Two men due in court after Canada thwarts al-Qa'ida-linked plot to blow up US-Canada rail line
National Post: Arrests made in alleged Canadian terror plot

Boston Marathon eyewitness confirms bomb drill was under way when explosions went off - Video

Craig Murray: ‘Official Tsarnaev Story Makes No Sense’ - In early 2011 the FBI interview Tsarnaev and trawl his papers and computers but apparently – remarkably for somebody allegedly radicalised by internet – the habitually paranoid FBI find nothing of concern. So far, so weird. But now this gets utterly incredible. In 2012 Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who is of such concern to Russian security, is able to fly to Russia and pass through the airport security checks of the world’s most thoroughly and brutally efficient security services without being picked up. He is then able to proceed to Dagestan – right at the heart of the world’s heaviest military occupation and the world’s most far reaching secret police surveillance – again without being intercepted, and he is able there to go through some form of terror training or further Islamist indoctrination. He then flies out again without any intervention by the Russian security services. That is the official story and I have no doubt it did not happen.

John Spritzler: Anomalies in the FBI's Account of the Boston Marathon Bombings - [The] fact that terrorist events make the public more obedient to the rulers (as indicated by the understandable willingness of everybody in Boston and surrounding towns to remain indoors when instructed to do so by the authorities, in the name of public safety) constitutes a cui bono (to whose benefit?) reason for at least being skeptical of the FBI's account of things. [...] In other words there is no evidence that these suspects placed their backpacks on the ground and then walked away. For all one can tell from these images, the two suspects merely were at the location of the bombing wearing backpacks, much the same as many other people. We are given no reason for singling out these two particular individuals from the others in the area wearing black backpacks. Why not? It is not as if no other people in the area were wearing black backpacks. What about THIS GUY shown in this video?

Bill Van Auken: Unanswered questions in Boston bombings - However, it is the government that has released very little information about what it knows. Moreover, the Obama administration has decreed that Dzhokhar will be denied his Miranda rights, allowing CIA, FBI and military interrogators to question him without the presence of an attorney, thereby further limiting any information surfacing outside of what is vetted by the government and its intelligence agencies. [...] While much remains murky about these and other issues, one thing is clear: the Boston bombing, like virtually every other major terrorist incident, real or invented, since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington, was carried out by someone who was known to and under surveillance by US intelligence agencies.

Russia Today: Tsarnaev brothers: Where the dots won't connect - It would be indeed strange to suggest somebody so closely watched by the FBI could have plotted terrorist acts without setting off alarm bells. The FBI, however, has in the past been accused of enticing socially-aloof Muslims into plotting a terror act and then 'disclosing' and jailing them, claiming they just saved the world from another villain (watch Fox News report). Could it be another such case that went incredibly wrong? So far the investigation has failed to spot and track any 'real people' who could be helping the brothers in their plot. Now, however hard the FBI is trying to connect the dots, they still hardly can. Two young successful friendly men, the joy and pride of their family, with no history of radicalism, all of a sudden choose to commit a terror attack. No 'Allah Akbar' calls, no radical organization affiliation, not a hint of hatred noticed by those close to them. Tamerlan leaving a family behind, Dzhohar just a regular teenager with seemingly common teenage interests. "Their actions" have not brought around any evident benefit to either of them.

I almost choked on my coffee listening to neoconservative Rudy Giuliani pompously claim on national TV that he was surprised about any Chechens being responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings because he’s never seen any indication that Chechen extremists harbored animosity toward the U.S.; Guiliani thought they were only focused on Russia. Giuliani knows full well how the Chechen “terrorists” proved useful to the U.S. in keeping pressure on the Russians, much as the Afghan mujahedeen were used in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan from 1980 to 1989. In fact, many neocons signed up as Chechnya’s “friends,” including former CIA Director James Woolsey. For instance, see this 2004 article in the UK Guardian, entitled, “The Chechens’ American friends: The Washington neocons’ commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own.” Author John Laughland wrote: “the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled ‘distinguished Americans’ who are its members is a roll call of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusiastically support the ‘war on terror.’