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.