Americans’ Sense of Freedom Plummets By 12% … Our Belief in “Widespread Corruption” In the U.S. Jumps 20%, and Our Trust in All 3 Branches of Government Hits Historic Lows. These Problems Are All Related.

Daily Mail: Obama rated WORST president since WW2 in embarrassing poll

Official statistics from the Ministry of Information in Ramallah have revealed that 1,518 Palestinian children were killed by Israel’s occupation forces from the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000 up to April 2013. That’s the equivalent of one Palestinian child killed by Israel every 3 days for almost 13 years. The ministry added that the number of children injured by the Israelis since the start of the Second Intifada against Israel’s occupation has now reached 6,000.

Lawrence Davidson ■ Selective Sympathy in Israel/Palestine

In recent weeks, Israel has kidnapped over 570 Palestinians and carried out a number of extrajudicial executions of Palestinians, including children. - Aangirfan

The State Department has told lawmakers informally that the Obama administration wants to sell Iraq more than 4,000 additional Hellfire missiles for the government's fight against Islamic insurgents, according to people familiar with the plan. Sale of the laser-guided missiles made by Lockheed Martin Corp. would be in addition to 500 previously purchased, of which about 400 have been delivered.

AFP/Yahoo: U.S. troops in Baghdad to fly Apache helicopters, drones

Forty years after the US-backed military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile, the truth about the sordid abuses and crimes that took place during his dictatorship are still emerging. ● The mountains of Patagonia in southern Chile witnessed a particularly bizarre chapter of the Pinochet era; one that is still claiming victims today. In 1961, a former Nazi corporal called Paul Schaefer fled Germany, along with hundreds of others, to found a sect in southern Chile. In an idyllic rural enclave framed by the Andes Mountains he created a virtual state within a state - one where horrifying events unfolded. Initially with the ignorance of the government, and then with the complicity of the Pinochet regime, children were separated from their parents at birth and raised in a Kinder House. Men and women were kept apart and often drugged, while Schaefer systematically sexually abused boys and, occasionally, girls. But it was not only the residents of Colonia Dignidad, or the Dignity Colony, that endured such brutalities. The secluded Colony, set on a huge estate featuring forests, mountains and rivers and enclosed by electrified barbed wire fences and look-out posts manned by armed guards, was the perfect place for the interrogation, torture and disposal of anyone Pinochet considered to be an enemy. It also served as a haven for Nazi fugitives - such as Walter Rauff, the inventor of the portable gas chamber, and Joseph Mengele, the so-called 'Angel of Death' - who were permitted to hide out there in exchange for overseeing sophisticated forms of torture. All of this took place with the full knowledge of the Pinochet regime, whose notorious intelligence chief, General Manuel Contreras, would often visit the site.

The five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), appointed by President Obama, released a report this week upholding core components of the US government's surveillance apparatus. Specifically, the panel affirmed the constitutionality of operations conducted under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act of 2008, which authorizes PRISM and other bulk electronic data collection operations run by the National Security Agency (NSA). The report gives a bogus stamp of legitimacy to some of the most aggressive and criminal surveillance operations carried out by the US government. The surveillance operations covered by the report are responsible for mass spying on an astonishing scale.

Peter Van Buren ■ Shredding the Fourth Amendment in Post-Constitutional America || The Bill of Rights was designed to protect the people from their government. If the First Amendment’s right to speak out publicly was the people’s wall of security, then the Fourth Amendment’s right to privacy was its buttress. It was once thought that the government should neither be able to stop citizens from speaking nor peer into their lives. Think of that as the essence of the Constitutional era that ended when those towers came down on September 11, 2001. Consider how privacy worked before 9/11 and how it works now in Post-Constitutional America.