Netanyahu tells European foreign ministers that if the Russian defense missile systems get into Syria, Israel's 'entire airspace will become a no-fly zone' and therefore it 'cannot stand idly by.' [non sequitur] - Israel's National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror sketched out what Jerusalem's "red line" is vis-à-vis the S-300 missile systems Russia intends to send to Syria before the 27 European Union ambassadors in Israel. Two diplomats who were in the room during the briefing last Thursday, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was a closed event, said that Amidror stressed Israel will act "to prevent the S-300 missiles from becoming operational" on Syrian soil. This message was also conveyed by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon when he said on Tuesday that if the missiles reach Syria "Israel will know what to do."

UPI: Syria: Obama mulls no-fly zone, Russia sends missiles
PressTV: Iran will not allow overthrow of Syria government: Iran deputy FM
PressTV: Syrian Army kills US woman fighting alongside militants
PressTV: Turkey seizes sarin in homes of anti-Syria militants, reports say
Stephen Lendman: Israel Threatens Syria

If you think it’s tough sorting truth from industry propaganda and lies, get ready for even tougher times ahead. More than 50 front groups, working on behalf of food and biotechnology trade groups¯Monsanto being the most prominent¯have formed a new coalition called Alliance to Feed the Future. The alliance, which is being coordinated by the International Food Information Council (IFIC), was created to "balance the public dialogue” on modern agriculture and large-scale food production and technology, i.e. this group will aim to become the go-to source for “real” information about the junk being sold as “food.” The groups comprising this new alliance represent multi-national food companies, biotech industry, and chemical companies that generate hundreds of billions of dollars worth of revenue from food related sales every year.

Photos shown by the father of Ibragim Todashev, a young man who was killed by FBI agents during investigations into the Boston Marathon bombings, reveal he sustained six gunshot wounds, one in the crown of his head. - 27-year-old Todashev was killed by the FBI while he was being questioned about his relationship with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston bombing suspects who was killed by police on April 19. Law enforcement sources initially said Todashev was armed with a knife and that he “went crazy” brandishing the knife and stabbing an FBI agent. However, unidentified sources said Thursday that Todashev was not armed when the FBI shot him dead. At a press conference on Thursday in Moscow, Ibragim’s father showed photos of his son’s body which were taken by Ibragim’s friends after the FBI handed the body to them.

Bill Van Auken: The FBI murder of Ibragim Todashev—the man who knew too much?

US Attorney General Eric Holder personally approved the Obama administration’s secret effort to seize email records of Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2010. The Justice Department was forced to admit this fact following an NBC News report documenting Holder’s role. In an official statement issued last Friday, the Justice Department hypocritically claimed it “takes seriously the First Amendment right to freedom of the press. In recognition of this, the Department took great care in deciding that a search warrant was necessary in [this] matter, vetting the decision at the highest levels of the Department, including discussions with the Attorney General.” The announcement amounts to an admission that Holder lied when he testified before Congress on May 15 regarding the administration’s crackdown on information disclosures made by government officials to journalists.

The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, (DSM-5) is coming under scrutiny. - Thomas Insel, The director of the US National Institute of Mental Health, is questioning the manual's validity, pressing scholars and scientists to shift away from the manual's current philosophy. Much of the DSM's current validity is based on nothing more than disease categorization, listing mental health disorders such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia based on symptoms alone. Insel wants to take a more objective approach forward, using cognitive testing, brain scans, and genetic studies to diagnose mental health conditions. Insel's approach will abandon the current DSM philosophy that has been published by the American Psychiatric Association for the past 60 years.

Ecuador's foreign minister on Tuesday accused the British government of trampling on the human rights of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by refusing to allow him to travel to Ecuador, which granted him political asylum almost a year ago. Assange, 41, took refuge in Ecuador's tiny embassy in London last June to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over sex assault and rape allegations. He denies the allegations. Ecuador's socialist president, Rafael Correa, angered the UK by granting Assange asylum in August on concerns that the former computer hacker might be further extradited from Sweden to the United States. Ecuador's government late last year said the Australian citizen was suffering from lung problems.

Ken O'keefe speaks nothing but the facts, some zionists hecklers can't handle it

The worldwide March Against Monsanto this past Saturday was no mere political demonstration. Rather, it was a worldwide mobilization against corporate greed, the assault on our health and environment, and the oppression of small farmers. - As the diverse crowd gathered in New York City’s Union Square on an unseasonably cold and rainy Memorial Day weekend – just as they did in hundreds of cities around the world – it was clear that Monsanto and the issue of health and food sovereignty transcends political ideology. People from all walks of life joined together to reject Monsanto and its pesticides, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), and socially and environmentally destructive business practices.

Though the US dollar continues to reign as the foreign reserve currency of choice, a new International Monetary Fund analysis shows that the currency has slumped to a 15-year low, heightening concerns that it may lose that status. - While the dollar currently constitutes 62 per cent of the $6 trillion in foreign holdings by the world’s central banks, when a historical view is taken into account, Dick Bove, vice president of equity research at Rafferty Capital Markets says the dollar’s actual percentage of total money supply worldwide has gone from 90 per cent in 1952 to about 15 per cent today. Bove, like many other analysts, believes that the rise of the Chinese currency, the yuan, is at the expense of the US dollar’s dominance as a safe haven.

The Daily Star (Lebanon): Qatar may drop dollar peg in future: central bank chief

The man shot and killed by an FBI agent during interrogations connected with the Boston Marathon bombings was unarmed, an unnamed FBI source has said. - Ibragim Todashev, 27, was interrogated by an FBI agent for hours on May 22 at a condominium in Orlando, Florida, regarding his connection with Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The FBI said Todashev was killed after he turned violent and brandished a knife and stabbed the FBI agent. The unnamed source contradicted that account, however, telling the Washington Post on Wednesday that Todashev had neither a gun nor a knife.

Russia Today: Friend of Boston bombing suspect unarmed when killed by FBI
PressTV: FBI agent killed unarmed Todashev: Report
AWIP: Witness tied to Boston bombing suspect killed by FBI

A grandfather checking on his neighbor is shot and killed by Fort Worth police. The shots rang out early Tuesday morning near Woodhaven Country Club, in east Fort Worth.

Those close to the family say the victim lived nearby and heard his neighbor’s burglar alarm. Neighbor Jerry Wayne Waller then apparently went outside to see what was going on. The 72-year-old man didn’t even make it to the house across the street before he was shot. He died on his own property. The neighbors in the Woodhaven Country Club area and generally know each other pretty well. Becky Haskin, a former Fort Worth City Councilmember, lives in the area and said she believes Waller, “…was doing what neighbors do probably checking on the neighbor that the alarm went off.” The elderly man, who was armed at the time, was shot and killed in his own driveway by police responding to a burglary call. “We heard five shots,” Haskin recalled. They were just rapid fire one after the other.” For the normally quiet and quant neighborhood, Waller’s death is devastating. Neighbors say he and his family have always been very involved in the community. “They are just a nice retired couple, that loved working in their yard, having family over, and grandkids,” Haskin said. CBS 11 News has been trying to get more answers from Fort Worth police. The official response has primarily been that the shooting is “an ongoing investigation.”

James Hall: The data mining technology that is integral to the Google AdWords experience is a power tool in creating an individual profile for anyone who surfs the web. The amazing capacity to target specific ads to personal search topics, geographic locations and web history is the harbinger of a total recall on your personality. If the benefits of getting relevant advertisement that maximize sales opportunities were the only purpose of the process, the relatively benign intrusion of a materialistic message might be tolerable to most internet users. However, the bull in the china shop is not merely in the business of making a commercial profit. Google is a wonder creation of the calculate surveillance society.

Syria has received the first shipment of an air defence system from Russia, President Bashar al-Assad was quoted as saying, sending a signal of military strength days before an EU arms embargo on the war-torn country lapses. - "Syria has received the first shipment of Russian anti-aircraft S-300 rockets," Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar newspaper quoted Assad as saying in an interview due to be broadcast later on Thursday. More of the missiles would arrive soon, he was quoted as saying. Russia has said it would deliver the missile system to the Syrian government over Western objections, saying the move would help stabilize the regional balance. A staunch ally of the Assad government, Moscow has appeared to grow more defiant since the European Union let its arms embargo on Syria expire, opening up the possibility of the West arming the rebels battling to topple the president. The embargo lapses on June 1.

Reuters: Assad says Syria received Russian missile shipment: Lebanese media
PressTV: Syria already in possession of Russia's S-300 system: President Assad
Reuters: Syrian army seizes strategic air base near Qusair

About 60,000 veterans remain homeless in the United States, says Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan calling the statistic a “national disgrace.” - “Having close to 60,000 homeless veterans, as we currently do, is a national disgrace,” Donovan said at the annual National Coalition for Homeless Veterans conference Wednesday. “We can’t let these forgotten heroes slip through the cracks.” Donovan said the staggering figure serves as a sobering reminder of the challenge to find housing for America’s homeless veterans. U.S. officials will have to provide housing for about 60 homeless veterans a day if they are to meet a self-imposed deadline to eliminate homelessness among former soldiers, according to Stars and Stripes.

Profits for the US banking industry rose in the first quarter of 2013 to a record $40.3 billion, according to a report released by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on Wednesday. Profits surged by 15.8 percent compared to the same quarter last year. The quarterly profits top the previous record set more than six years ago, prior to the financial meltdown of 2008. It was the 14th straight quarter of banking sector profits. The record bank profits, along with a soaring stock market, is a direct product of the policies of the Obama administration. Trillions have been handed out to the banks and financial institutions, including $85 billion every month from the Federal Reserve. Not a single bank or bank CEO has been held criminally responsible for the financial catastrophe, which they have utilized to increase their stranglehold over the economic and political system.

Laurent Guyénot: "The neoconservative movement, which is generally perceived as a radical (rather than “conservative”) Republican right, is, in reality, an intellectual movement born in the late 1960s in the pages of the monthly magazine Commentary, a media arm of the American Jewish Committee, which had replaced the Contemporary Jewish Record in 1945. The Forward, the oldest American Jewish weekly, wrote in a January 6th, 2006 article signed Gal Beckerman: “If there is an intellectual movement in America to whose invention Jews can lay sole claim, neoconservatism is it. It’s a thought one imagines most American Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, will find horrifying. And yet it is a fact that as a political philosophy, neoconservatism was born among the children of Jewish immigrants and is now largely the intellectual domain of those immigrants’ grandchildren”. The neoconservative apologist Murray Friedman explains that Jewish dominance within his movement by the inherent benevolence of Judaism, “the idea that Jews have been put on earth to make it a better, perhaps even a holy, place” (The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy, 2006)." "Neoconservatism is essentially a modern Jewish version of Machiavelli’s political strategy. What characterizes the neoconservative movement is therefore not as much Judaism as a religious tradition, but rather Judaism as a political project, i.e. Zionism, by Machiavellian means."

Gilad Atzmon: Take It From the Rabbi’s Mouth - Every so often we come across a secular Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist’ who argues that Zionism is not Judaism and vice versa. Interestingly enough, I have just come across an invaluable text that illuminates this question from a rabbinical perspective. Apparently back in 1942, 757 American Rabbis added their names to a public pronouncement titled ‘Zionism an Affirmation of Judaism’. This Rabbinical rally for Zionism was declared at the time “the largest public pronouncement in all Jewish history.”

Ethiopia has diverted the Nile River as it continues with the construction of a new $4.7 billion hydroelectric dam. - In its quest to become Africa’s largest power exporter Ethiopia has set out plans to invest more than $12 billion in various projects designed to harness the natural power of the various rivers running through the country’s rugged highlands. The flagship of the plan is the Grand Renaissance Dam being built in the Benishangul-Gumuz region near to Sudan; currently 21% complete, it will have a 6GW capacity once finished. The Chief Executive Officer of the state-run Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation, Mihret Debebe, said that “the dam is being built in the middle of the river so you can't carry out construction work while the river flowed.” The diversion of the Nile around the site “now enables us to carry out civil engineering work without difficulties. The aim is to divert the river by a few meters and then allow it to flow on its natural course.”

Shamus Cooke: It’s now clear that Obama’s foreign policy in Syria is actively encouraging terrorism. - For a president that is executing Bush’s “war on terror” against Al-Qaeda and “its affiliates,” it seems odd that President Obama has targeted the secular Syrian government for “regime change.” Equally odd is that Obama’s strongest military ally on the ground in Syria- the best equipped and effective fighting force against the Syrian Government — is Jabhat al-Nusra, a group that has affiliated itself with al-Qaeda, and aims to turn Syria into an extremist Islamic state that enforces a fundamentalist version of Sharia law.

Justin Raimondo: Why John McCain Wants to Aid Syrian Terrorists - His trip to Syria in support of lung-eating savages - When John McCain slipped into Syria the other day to meet with Islamist rebels, Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted “best wishes” to his fellow warmonger and claimed “dibs on his office if he doesn’t come back.” Leave it to Sen. Graham, who has been agitating along with McCain for the US to send weapons to the rebels, to joke about the untrustworthiness of the very people he wants to arm. But the rebels’ savagery is no joke: we are, after all, talking about people who eat the lungs of their enemies.

At least seven people have been killed in an attack by a US assassination drone in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region, local officials say. - The incident took place early Wednesday after the US drone fired two missiles at a house in Chashma village near Miranshah, a town in the North Waziristan district. The strike was the first such move since Pakistan’s recent general elections won by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League. Sharif, who is expected to take office for a third term in the first week of June, has described US drone strikes as a “challenge” to the sovereignty of Pakistan.

PressTV: Islamabad condemns recent US assassination drone strike

A senior Israeli defense official warned on Tuesday that Russia’s plan to send sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons systems to Syria’s President Bashar Assad was a “threat” and signaled Israel could take some form of unspecified action in response. - Israel has launched airstrikes inside Syria that it says were designed to stop weapons shipments getting to the Assad-allied Hezbollah movement in Lebanon. Russia on Tuesday reiterated its intention to go ahead with the arms deal. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said it would “restrain some hotheads from escalating the conflict to the international scale,” according to Russia Today. His comments came after the European Union agreed to lift an arms embargo that prevented weapons from being sent to the rebels fighting Assad’s forces.

Jason Ditz: Israeli DM Threatens to Attack Russian Ships

The top 1 per cent has seen its real income rise by more than 60 per cent over those two decades. - The lead research economist at the World Bank, Branko Milanovic, will be reporting soon, in the journal Global Policy, the first calculation of global income-inequality, and he has found that the top 8% of global earners are drawing 50% of all of this planet's income. He notes: "Global inequality is much greater than inequality within any individual country," because the stark inequality between countries adds to the inequality within any one of them, and because most people live in extremely poor countries, largely the nations within three thousand miles of the Equator, where it's already too hot, even without the global warming that scientists say will heat the world much more from now on.

AWIP: Wealth Inequality in America - Must See Video

Karen Hudes, left, a 20-year veteran at the World Bank confirms the central banking families own and control the world. She also confirms the bankers are prepared to use martial law to defend their fraudulent monopoly on credit. (The war on terror is of course a pretext.) ■ A former insider at the World Bank, ex-Senior Counsel Karen Hudes, says the global financial system is dominated by a small group of corrupt, power-hungry figures centered around the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve. The network has seized control of the media to cover up its crimes, too, she explained. In an interview with The New American, Hudes said that when she tried to blow the whistle on multiple problems at the World Bank, she was fired for her efforts. Now, along with a network of fellow whistleblowers, Hudes is determined to expose and end the corruption. And she is confident of success. ■ Citing an explosive 2011 Swiss study published in the PLOS ONE journal on the “network of global corporate control,” Hudes pointed out that a small group of entities — mostly financial institutions and especially central banks — exert a massive amount of influence over the international economy from behind the scenes. “What is really going on is that the world’s resources are being dominated by this group,” she explained, adding that the “corrupt power grabbers” have managed to dominate the media as well. “They’re being allowed to do it.”