A terrorism threat has prompted the United States to close dozens of American diplomatic missions in the Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere through the weekend, American officials said Thursday. Officials gave few details about what prompted the move to close an unusually large number of American missions, but said there was "credible" information that an Al Qaeda [al-CIAduh] regional affiliate might be plotting an attack sometime in the coming days. "It's not often that we close a bunch of embassies at once," said one official, adding that the threat was being taken particularly seriously by American intelligence agencies. [Heads up! A big, fat false flag is surely on the way, so USociopaths can get the sheeple to support illegal NSA surveillance, and provide a reason to continue to fork over billion$ to private contractors--violating our privacy at our expense. --LRP]

Russia Today: UK, Germany and France close embassies in Yemen over possible terror threat

Insists US Committed to Stay Beyond 2014. - Secretary of State John Kerry was the latest in the Obama Administration to undercut claims that a “zero option” was being seriously considered, insisting today that the US was absolutely not going to leave by the end of 2014. “We have been very clear about that. We are not withdrawing,” Kerry insisted. He didn’t provide any specifics on how long the US intends to remain in Afghanistan, but President Obama has signed a deal to potentially stay through 2024. Kerry’s comments echoed similar statements from the Pentagon, which insisted that they didn’t even consider leaving a real option. This is in contrast to official claims from the White House that the “zero option” is real.

Опубликовано первое фото Сноудена после
выхода из Шереметьева (vesti.ru)

● “Over the past eight weeks we have seen the Obama administration show no respect for international or domestic law, but in the end, the law is winning,” Snowden said as he received the certificate granting asylum.
● The asylum grant has, predictably, provoked denunciations and threats of reprisal from US officials. Snowden has become an international symbol of resistance to the all-pervasive surveillance state that has been established by the United States and other capitalist governments. As such, he is a source of enormous frustration and hatred within the US military-intelligence complex, the corporate-financial oligarchy, and their political front men in the government.
● The latest information on spying operations to emerge from the Snowden affair has been exceptionally significant and damning. The day before news of the asylum broke, the Guardian published another Snowden-leaked report detailing the NSA’s “widest-reaching” internet spying operation, known as XKeyscore, which involves dragnet internet surveillance and the reading of the contents of individual emails, among other functions.
● According to CNN.com, XKeyscore “makes available everything you’ve ever done on the Internet—browsing history, searches, content of your emails, online chats, even your metadata—all at the tap of the keyboard…The program gives analysts the ability to search through the entire database of your information without any prior authorization—no warrant, no court clearance, no signature on a dotted line. An analyst must simply complete a simple onscreen form, and seconds later, your online history is no longer private.”

Stephen Lendman: Russia Grants Snowden One-Year Asylum ● Snowden's currently in seclusion. Eventually he'll talk to the press. He needs quiet time to decompress, settle in, and decide what's next. He need permanent quarters, work, and a new life. He needs to learn a new language and customs. He needs trusted associates. He needs protection. America's long arm won't rest. As long as he's free, he's a wanted man. He understands. He took the risk. He acted responsibly. Doing the right thing is its own reward. Millions thank him for it.

Jason Ditz: US Officials Furious at Russia's Snowden Asylum ● In practice the US is looking to “retaliate” but their options are limited. Officials are once again suggesting they may not attend a planned summit in Russia to spite Putin, but even a move like this is likely to come off as petty to the international community, many of whom aren’t too keen with the NSA surveillance that Snowden unveiled nor the US reaction to it.

Russia Today: ‘Battle won, war continues’: Snowden asylum victory is just the beginning – WikiLeaks
Russia Today: ‘No plans to leave Russia’: Snowden has job offer, awaits reunion with family, girlfriend
Wired: Declassified Memos Confirm Dragnet Phone Surveillance Program Was No Secret From Congress

Paul Craig Roberts ● Bradley Manning’s conviction is more conclusive evidence that the US government is illegitimate. Manning’s “trial” was equivalent to Joseph Stalin’s “trial” of Nikolai Bukharin. It did not take place in a real court with a real jury. The military officer who served as a “judge” was not impartial. Manning was convicted for obeying the US Military Code and doing his sworn duty to report war crimes. There is no difference between Manning’s “conviction” and the “conviction” of Bukharin as a capitalist spy. Both trials were political trials. ● The absurdity and injustice of these two convictions tells you all you need to know about the governments behind the convictions. The governments are tyrannical. Imagine the US government accusing Manning of aiding the enemy when the US government itself is supporting al Qaeda’s attempt to overthrow the Syrian government! And Bloomberg reports that al Qaeda backers in Afghanistan are receiving US military contracts! ● Americans are a gullible people. They do not understand that the “justice system” is corrupted. Prosecutors and judges have no interest in innocence or guilt. For them conviction alone is the mark of career success. The more people a prosecutor can put in prison, the more successful his career. The more judges bend justice to serve the success of the government’s case, the greater the probability of promotion to higher judicial office. American “justice” has degenerated. Willingness to corrupt the law has become the highest qualification for appointment to a judgeship or as a US Attorney. ● If Manning had been permitted a real trial, possibly jurors might have weighed the evidence. Did Manning obey the Military Code or disobey it? Did Manning serve the public interest or harm it? But, of course, nothing relevant was part of the trial. In American courts today, exculpatory evidence is not allowed into the courtroom. ● If a poor person steals a loaf of bread, the government can turn the case into an act of terrorist sabotage. That’s more or less what the government did to Bradley Manning.

Matthew MacEgan: Bradley Manning prosecution pushes for maximum 136-year sentence

One of Silicon Valley’s most respected technology experts, Steve Blank, says he would be “surprised” if the US National Security Agency was not embedding “back doors” inside chips produced by Intel and AMD, two of the world’s largest semiconductor firms, giving them the possibility to access and control machines. - The claims come after The ­Australian Financial Review revealed that computers made by Chinese firm Lenovo are banned from the “secret” and “top secret” ­networks of the intelligence and defence services of Australia, the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand because of concerns they are vulnerable to being hacked. Internationally renowned security research engineer Jonathan Brossard, who unveiled what Forbes described as an “undetectable and incurable” permanent back door at last year’s prestigious Black Hat conference, told the Financial Review that he had independently concluded that CPU back doors are “attractive attack vectors”. If correct, the allegations would raise the stakes in a growing cyber cold war, and fuel claims that US snooping leaves the Chinese in the shade.

The CIA unmanned aircraft deliberately targeted rescuers attempting to help victims of previous drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found. ■ A field investigation by the Bureau focuses on drone strikes in a single village in North Waziristan last year when the CIA was after Yahya al-Libi, an alleged senior al-Qeada member who was finally killed in one of the aerial attacks on June 4, 2012. The CIA had at the time shown a video to Congressional aides in which only Libi is killed in a drone strike. It was first in February 2012 that an investigation by the Bureau found that the CIA had conducted 11 drone attacks on rescuers of previous strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas between 2009 and 2011. The tactic, called “double-tap” strikes, apparently stopped in July 2011 but new reports show that the CIA had resumed the strikes a year later. Five double-tap strikes took place in mid-2012, killing 53 people and injuring 57 others. One of the attacks targeted a mosque, a report by Pakistani journalist Mushtaq Yusufzai, commissioned by the Bureau, found.

A political expert says the recent massacre in the Syrian town of Khan al-Assal was a Western-backed measure to cover up the militants’ use of chemical weapons there back in March, Press TV reports. ● In an article published on Press TV’s website on Thursday, Finian Cunningham said the evidence on the ground in Khan al-Assal had to be erased to prevent “grave criminal implications for Western governments and their covert involvement in Syria’s 30-month-old conflict.” Cunningham cited reports revealing that the Western-backed al-Qaeda-linked militants had been found in possession of the nerve agent sarin on Turkish soil. He also quoted a June Washington Post report on a US military program in Jordan aimed at training the Jordanian military in the handling of chemical weapons.

Finian Cunningham: West's war crimes in Syria exposed
Sarah Lazare: Classified: Senators Hide Their Votes on Arming Syrian Fighters from Public

Al Arabiya: Aleppo rebel religious committee forbids ‘colonial’ croissants - A sharia committee in a CIA/Mossad's rebel cannibal-held area of Aleppo issued a fatwa deeming croissants ‘haram’ (forbidden in Islamic law) because of their “colonial” significance, pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat reported on Tuesday.

Croissants’ crescent shape celebrates European victory over Muslims, according to the fatwa (religious ruling). Rebel-controlled areas of the Syrian city have experienced several strict fatwas recently from Islamic sharia committees. [But hearts and lungs are kosher...]

Attempts made by the American Civil Liberties Union to obtain an independent probe into the killing of Ibragim Todashev have been rebuffed by representatives of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). Todashev, the 27-year-old Chechen and associate of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents during an interrogation on May 22.

Sharmine Narwani ● At the heart of all politics lies cold, hard opportunism. New circumstances, changed alliances and unexpected events will always conspire to alter one’s calculations to benefit a core agenda. ● In the Middle East today, those calculations are being adjusted with a frequency unseen for decades. In Egypt and Syria, for instance, popular sentiment is genuinely divided on where alliances and interests lie. Half of Egyptians seem convinced that deposed President Mohammed Mursi is the resident US-Israeli stooge, while the other half believe it is Egypt's military that is carrying out those foreign agendas. In Syria the same can be said for Syrians conflicted on whether President Bashar al-Assad or the external-based Syrian National Council (SNC) most benefits Israeli and American hegemonic interests in the region. But Egyptians and Syrians, who point alternating fingers at Islamists or the state as being tools of imperialism, have this wrong: Empire is opportunistic. It has ways to benefit from both. ● There is another vastly more destructive scenario being missed while Arabs busy themselves with conspiracies and speculative minutiae: A third option far more damaging to all. Balkanization of Key Mideast States