This video brings together Reverend Edward Pinkney, Dr. Randy Short and Dr. Webster Tarpley to discuss the current situation with the NAACP, Detroit's Emergency Manager Laws, the bankruptcy of America and the solutions to change it.

Joseph Kishore: A financial dictator for Detroit

In a recent Christian Science Monitor article dealing with "teenagers, terrorism and social media" (focusing on the recent Cameron D'Ambrosio arrest for making "terrorist threats" via some improvised rap lyrics posted to Facebook), Sgt. Ed Mullins of the NYPD shows up to make some very disturbing statements about your rights and responsibilities as a (mere) citizen. It starts with the worst kind of "policy" and goes downhill fast.

Using a zero tolerance approach to track domestic terrorists online is the only reasonable way to analyze online threats these days, especially after the Boston Marathon bombing and news that the suspects had subsequently planned to target Times Square in Manhattan, Mullins says. The way law enforcement agencies approach online activity that appears sinister is this: “If you’re not a terrorist, if you’re not a threat, prove it,” he says.

Mullins goes even further than this, though, asserting that the burden of proof lies with the person charged, not the person bringing the charges. This flips our judicial system on its head.

The government of Pakistan ordered the New York Times' bureau chief in Islamabad to leave the country on the eve of national elections, the newspaper said on Friday. - A two-sentence letter was delivered by police officers to the home of the bureau chief, Declan Walsh, at 12:30 a.m. local time on Thursday, it said. "It is informed that your visa is hereby canceled in view of your undesirable activities," the Times quoted the letter as saying. "You are therefore advised to leave the country within 72 hours." The newspaper protested the action and urged the government to reconsider, said Danielle Rhoades Ha, a company spokeswoman.

German prosecutors said on Friday they had arrested two Dutch citizens suspected of taking part in a $45 million global cyber heist unveiled the previous day by U.S. authorities. - A 35-year-old man and a 56-year-old woman were caught on February 19 withdrawing 170,000 euros ($220,500) in Düsseldorf using Bank of Muscat credit cards. In total, $2.4 million dollars was withdrawn in seven German cities, the prosecutors said. On Thursday, U.S. prosecutors said an international criminal gang had stolen $45 million from two Middle Eastern banks by hacking into credit card processing firms and withdrawing money from cash machines in 27 countries. The ringleaders of the global operation were believed to be outside the United States but U.S. prosecutors have declined to give details, citing the continuing investigation. Germany is the only other country so far to announce arrests.

Motherboard: Cybercriminals Stole $45 Million from ATMs in a Matter of Hours

[PDF] Abstract: The search for ever deeper relationships among the World’s languages is bedeviled by the fact that most words evolve too rapidly to preserve evidence of their ancestry beyond 5,000 to 9,000 y. On the other hand, quantitative modeling indicates that some “ultraconserved” words exist that might be used to find evidence for deep linguistic relationships beyond that time barrier. Here we use a statistical model, which takes into account the frequency with which words are used in common everyday speech, to predict the existence of a set of such highly conserved words among seven language families of Eurasia postulated to form a linguistic superfamily that evolved from a common ancestor around 15,000 y ago. We derive a dated phylogenetic tree of this proposed superfamily with a time-depth of ∼14,450 y, implying that some frequently used words have been retained in related forms since the end of the last ice age. Words used more than once per 1,000 in everyday speech were 7- to 10-times more likely to show deep ancestry on this tree. Our results suggest a remarkable fidelity in the transmission of some words and give theoretical justification to the search for features of language that might be preserved across wide spans of time and geography.

Washington Post: Linguists identify 15,000-year-old ‘ultraconserved words’

Washington Post: Words that last [Interactive/Multilingual] - A research team led by Mark Pagel at the University of Reading in England has identified 23 “ultraconserved words” that have remained largely unchanged for 15,000 years. Words that sound and mean the same thing in different languages are called “cognates”. These are five words that have cognates in at least four of the seven Eurasiatic language families. Those languages, about 700 in all, are spoken in an area extending from the British Isles to western China and from the Arctic to southern India. Only one word, “thou” (the singular form of “you”), has a cognate in all seven families.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai vowed Thursday to wring concessions out of the United States in negotiations for a security pact for the country, as Washington wants to maintain nine military bases in Afghanistan after ISAF troops withdraw in 2014. - As US and other NATO troops begin to withdraw from the country by 2014, Washington is in talks with Karzai’s government to allow the US Military to retain a residual presence. The size of the force has not yet been determined, but could number between 2,500 and 12,000, according to US officials. The stated aim of the plan is that soldiers would continue to train the Afghan army and police, and carry out attacks on Al-Qaeda militants.

Philip Giraldi: CIA Pays the Potentate
Russia Today: Afghan marathon: US troops passing the baton to mercenaries ahead of 2014 withdrawal

There is no innocent explanation for a decision by the FBI, the CIA and the Homeland Security Department to conceal from the state and local police, in advance of a major public event, the presence of area residents widely suspected of having terrorist connections. - The Boston police commissioner and a top Massachusetts Homeland Security official told Congress Thursday that the local and state police were never informed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Department of Homeland Security of multiple warnings about Tamerlan Tsarnaev prior to the April 15 bombings at the Boston Marathon. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar are the only suspects to date in the twin bombings at the downtown Boston finish line of the race, which killed three people and wounded more than 160 others. Tamerlan was killed in a shootout with police on April 19. Dzhokhar is under arrest at a prison medical facility outside of Boston.

William Blum: Boston Marathon, this thing called terrorism, and the United States

Huge numbers of people on Earth are keen to leave the planet forever and seek a new life homesteading on Mars. - About 78,000 people have applied to become Red Planet colonists with the nonprofit organization Mars One since its application process opened on April 22, officials announced Tuesday. Mars One aims to land four people on the Red Planet in 2023 as the vanguard of a permanent colony, with more astronauts arriving every two years thereafter. "With 78,000 applications in two weeks, this is turning out to be the most desired job in history," Mars One Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Bas Lansdorp said in a statement. "These numbers put us right on track for our goal of half a million applicants." Mars One estimates that landing four settlers on Mars in 2023 will cost about $6 billion. The Netherlands-based organization plans to pay most of the bills by staging a global reality-TV event, with cameras documenting all phases of the mission from astronaut selection to the colonists' first years on the Red Planet.