U.S. CIA operatives have been training Syrian rebels since at least last year, long before U.S. President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. would be sending guns to the Free Syrian Army, the Los Angeles Times revealed on Friday. The U.S. set up covert training bases in Jordan and Turkey to train fighters from the Free Syrian Army and a “loose confederation of rebel groups.” The LA Times reports that in Jordan U.S. operatives are training Syrians in groups of 20 to 45 at a time. The “course” takes two weeks and includes training with Russian anti-tank rifles and missiles as well as anti-aircraft weapons. So far about 100 rebels have been training at a base in Dara, in southwest Jordan, which opened in November 2012, the LA Times said.

UN experts say they do not confirm the claims by the United States, France and Britain that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the militants. - "We are not able to say who has used chemical agents or chemical weapons,” said Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the United Nations human rights investigation committee on Syria, on Friday. Speaking to reporters after an informal meeting with UN Security Council ambassadors, Pinheiro said he would not comment on evidence, including multiple blood, tissue and soil samples, that the US, Britain and France have sent to the UN about the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria. The technical data presented by the three countries is of limited value to the UN which, according to its rules, can pass a final judgment on the situation only after its own inspectors personally collect evidence.

On Friday evening, the Obama administration announced that it had filed three charges under seal on June 14 in US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. The charges are stealing government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified information. These charges carry, in aggregate, a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. In the course of any indictment, however, additional charges can be added. Prominent Democrats and Republicans have denounced Snowden for “treason,” an offense that carries a potential death sentence.

There is not a shred of legitimacy in the charges against Snowden. He is not a criminal. He is an individual who, at immense personal risk, has sought to reveal to the population of the United States and the world a state conspiracy against the democratic rights of the people.

Russia Today: Obama administration charges NSA whistleblower Snowden with espionage
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The British spy agency GCHQ has access to the global network of communications, storing calls, Facebook posts and internet histories – and shares this data with the NSA, Edward Snowden has revealed to the Guardian in a new leak. GCHQ’s network of cables is able to process massive quantities of information from both specific targets and completely innocent people, including recording phone calls and reading email messages, it was revealed on Friday. "It's not just a US problem. The UK has a huge dog in this fight," Snowden told the Guardian. "They [GCHQ] are worse than the US."

Brandon Turbeville: There is one more underlying reason for Western military intervention in Syria that is rarely discussed publicly, even among many alternative media outlets - the goal of total domination by the private central banking system. ■ Existing as one of the last nations on the face of the earth that has not allowed itself to become subservient to a privately-owned central bank, Syria now finds that national financial independence does not come without the price of presenting oneself as a preferred target for the banking cartels and the nations they control. ■ While one may be tempted to ignore the presence of government-owned central banks as a contributing factor toward the decision to destabilize and/or invade sovereign nations, it is interesting to note that Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Sudan have all fallen victim to NATO-backed invasions, and/or destabilization campaigns ever since the push for the New American Century took off in 2001. “Coincidentally,” these nations all held government-owned central banks prior to the intervention. After the conflict had ended, or at least subsided, all of these nations were presented with a new banking system which was privately owned; another “strange coincidence” for those unwilling to acknowledge the existence of a pattern. ■ Thus it now appears that “Democracy” and “private central banking” stand as the only thing the West is capable of exporting.

Putin reiterated that weapon supplies to the Syrian rebels violate international law, and threaten to further destabilize the war-torn state. "Why supply weapons to militant forces in Syria when we are not sure of the composition of these groups?” he said, adding that it remains unclear where these arms will end up. "If the United States ... recognizes one of the key Syrian opposition organizations, al-Nusra, as terrorist ... how can one deliver arms to those opposition members?" Putin said. "Where will (those weapons) end up? What role will they play?" Russia’s Foreign Ministry has also criticized the supply of arms to the rebels in separate remarks to AP and Bloomberg: “The problem is that the weapons are coming to the region anyway,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. “And if you take, you know, stock of what is being used by the opposition you would find a lot of arms shipped by the West, including the US, to the Gulf countries and to other countries in the region,” he said. “So, this smuggling continues and this is very dangerous. Because the leading opposition force on the ground is very extremist.”

The United Nations Committee on the Right of the Child has issued a report today faulting the Israeli military for its “systematic” abuse of Palestinian children, noting that it not only routinely denies Palestinians basic rights, but also regularly tortures them during detention. - Palestinian children who get detained are interrogated in Hebrew, a language virtually none of them speak, and if they are ever to be released they are forced to sign a “confession” to whatever crimes the Israeli military pleases. Again, the confession is in Hebrew, so they have no clue what they’re confessing to. Physical and verbal abuse are the orders of the day in Israeli military custody, as are arbitrary detentions and confessions extracted by threats of rape or execution, either of themselves or their families. Incredibly, the Israeli Foreign Ministry didn’t appear to question the contents of the report, but only faulted the committee on the grounds that UNICEF had pointed out the exact same thing several months ago, and they felt it was “redundant” to keep pointing it out.

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A scandal has erupted at one of Costa Rica's largest state-run medical centers, Calderon Guardia Hospital. The head of Nephrology, Francisco Mora Palma, has been arrested for playing a key role in a suspected international organ trafficking ring set up to supply patients in Israel. - This arrest highlights the wider problem of organized human organ trafficking, as well as Israel's role as the centerpiece for this disgusting practice. It is something that Israel as been accused of many times before. The Costa Rica scandal hints at something broader than what has been uncovered with the arrest of Dr. Francisco Mora Palma. Also taken into custody was a police officer who apparently was connected to the doctor as a scout to look for potential donors. Several other private facilities were raided as well. Israel's newspaper, Haaretz, offers some background: In recent years Costa Rica has served as a destination for Israeli patients needing kidney transplants. The price for a kidney transplant on the black market is estimated at some NIS 700,000 per kidney.

Gilad Atzmon: Organ Trafficking AGAIN!!!

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