The curriculum in Afghan schools intentionally excludes four decades of war in an effort to "bring people together".

“There is no mention of the Soviet war, the mujaheddin, the Taliban or the U.S. military presence,” reports the Washington Post. “In their efforts to promote a single national identity, Afghan leaders have deemed their own history too controversial.”

When state-funded indoctrination books whitewash entire swathes of relevant history, societal problems don’t simply go away. They’re compounded. Afghans are suffering on a daily basis from war and yet the U.S. and their Afghan “education” wardens appear to have decided to keep children ignorant of the causes of their country’s troubles.

Attempting to erase four decades of history is something extremely beneficial for [the U.S.] the criminals, thugs, and extremists that have terrorized the country in that time.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange interviewed in London by Malou Von Sivers from Swedish channel TV4. (Introduction in Swedish). Part 2/2. Justice for Assange (website)

Following Twitter’s decision last month to begin censoring the messages of users based on restrictions of their respective countries, Google has followed suit and announced that it will begin a similar practice with its own blogging service. - Blogger, the web-log service run by Internet giant Google, will begin censoring the personal posts of its users in order to comply with local laws rather than encouraging an internationally open Internet. While the company has previously allowed users of the World Wide Web to post wide-open opinions on its Blogger site, it will now allow individual jurisdictions to govern what can and can’t be posted on the Web. Under Google’s new policies, personal pages hosted on Blogger will be redirected to country-specific URLs, such as “.in” for India and “.au” for Australia. The company writes that “Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law.” By implementing this, adds Google, “content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers." Specifically, they acknowledge that "Content [will be] removed due to a specific country's law.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appeared before the UK Supreme Court Wednesday for the start of a two-day hearing to challenge his extradition to Sweden on trumped-up sexual assault charges.

The appeal to Britain’s highest court is the last legal avenue open to Assange in the UK to prevent his removal, after he was arrested under a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) issued by Sweden on December 7, 2010. He has been held under house arrest ever since. However, the two-day hearing is restricted to the technical matter as to whether the fact that the EAW was issued by a prosecutor rather than a judge, or in Sweden’s case the National Police Board, makes the extradition request invalid. Any examination of the dirty tricks operation mounted against Assange, with the aim of silencing him and WikiLeaks, is out of bounds. Assange has never been charged with any offence, yet his name was released to the press as a potential rapist by Ny, triggering a campaign of vilification against him. Extradition to Sweden is widely considered to be only a prelude to Assange’s extradition onto the US, with whom Sweden has a “temporary surrender” agreement in place.

Justice for Assange - Website
WL Central: The Assange Extradition Hearing: Day 1
John Pilger: The Assange case means we are all suspects now
The Guardian: Julian Assange extradition appeal at supreme court - day two live blog

There was a moment in a report from Tunisia by the BBC’s Wyre Davies when I could not stop myself laughing. I was listening to it on the Corporation’s generally excellent World Service radio. (In my view this particular BBC service is generally excellent because unlike all other BBC news and current affairs outlets, radio and tv, it often reflects some of the truth about what is happening in and over Palestine that became Israel)....

UK, London: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange attends a debate on the subject of whistle-blowing with prominent public figures on secrecy and transparency issues at Kensington Town hall in central London on April 9, 2011.

Russia Today: Sweden unbiased? Assange appeals extradition [01 February, 2012]

The ACLU [has] set up a special page allowing people to compare multiple versions of documents with just a simple mouseover. This came out a few months ago, but I didn't get a chance to write it up until now. It's pretty enlightening to see just what makes the censor's cut, and (not surprisingly) raises significant questions about the government's temptation to simply excise stuff they don't like, rather than information that there are valid reasons to keep hidden.

A prominent British journalist says the West is selling the possibility of confrontation with Iran by exaggerating the threat of Tehran's nuclear program through media manipulation. - “Manipulation of the media and public opinion through systematic threat exaggeration through which the growing confrontation with Iran is being sold by the US, Israel and West European leaders is deeply dishonest,” wrote Patrick Cockburn in an article published in The Independent on Sunday. Cockburn added that “the supposed aim of imposing sanctions on Iran's oil exports and central bank is to force Iran to abandon its nuclear program before it reaches the point where it could theoretically build a nuclear bomb.” The United States and the European Union have recently slapped unilateral sanctions against Iran's oil and banking sectors based on the allegation that Tehran's nuclear program may consist of a covert military aspect. Iran has repeatedly refuted the allegations, arguing that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Tehran has a right to use nuclear technology for peaceful use.

Patrick Cockburn: Sanctions can only deepen the Iran crisis
Stephen Lendman: Selling War

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking for a better way to spy on Facebook and Twitter users. The Bureau is asking companies to build software that can effectively scan social media online for significant words, phrases and behavior so that agents can respond.A paper posted on the FBI website asks for companies to build programs that will map sentiment and wrongdoing. [...] Although the police, including in Britain, already use Facebook routinely to ascertain the whereabouts of criminals, automatically filtering out irrelevant information remains challenging. The new FBI application will be able to automatically highlight the most relevant information. The FBI is seeking responses by 10 February.

Twitter has announced it will begin restricting tweets in certain countries, marking a policy shift for the social media platform that helped propel the popular uprisings recently sweeping across the Middle East. - "As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression," Twitter wrote in a blog post. It said even with the possibility of such restrictions, Twitter would not be able to coexist with some countries. "Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there," it said. Twitter gave as examples of restrictions it might cooperate with "certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content". A Twitter spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the blog.

BBC: FBI plans social network map alert mash-up application

In a move that has triggered outrage, Google has announced plans to bring all data collected from users’ separate accounts on its sites into a combined profile. Besides raising dubious questions about privacy, this offer is one you… cannot refuse. - The changes will take effect on March 1. Before that date, Google will notify its hundreds of millions of users about the new rules of the game. In preparation, the company is boosting its privacy policy and terms of service. Users will have to decide whether to agree with the new terms – or lose access to some of their favorite sites. There is no way of opting out of the changes. Some say Google’s privacy announcement is frustrating and a little frightening."Even if the company believes that tracking users across all platforms improves their services, consumers should still have the option to opt out,” said Common Sense Media chief executive James Steyer, as cited by the Washington Post.

After days of protests and hacker attacks, Poland has signed the controversial ACTA copyright protection treaty. Opponents call it an assault on online freedom, since it demands that internet service providers police user activity.

Warsaw’s Ambasador to Tokyo Jadwiga Rodowicz-Czechowska signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in Japan on Tuesday. The treaty aims to harmonize international copyright protection standards in a number of industries from pharmaceutics to fashion. The agreement now has to be ratified by the parliament, which is unlikely to oppose it, reports RT’s Aleksey Yaroshevsky. The news came amid mass protests in Poland, where tens of thousands of people took to the streets, while many more joined online action against ACTA. Some 15,000 activists marched in Krakow, 5,000 in Wroclaw, and several thousand in other Polish cities. A number of websites, including that of Prime Minister Donald Tusk were attacked by hackers demanding that the country boycott the treaty. This however didn’t stop the authorities from proceeding with their plan. The agreement, which has already been signed by the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea, has been criticized by human rights groups for the secrecy, in which it has been developed, and the potential for abuse it poses. The deal has been compared to the SOPA/PIPA bills, which drew worldwide opposition and an internet strike, once the danger the posed became widely publicized. It the case of ACTA, the public remained mostly unaware of its nature, before the hacktivist group Anonymous spread the message.

Photographers who compose a picture in a similar way to an existing image risk copyright infringement, lawyers have warned following the first court ruling of its kind. - UK souvenir maker Temple Island Collection Ltd has won a ruling against New English Teas which it had accused of breaching copyright by using a photo of a London bus on its packaging. Welcoming the news, Temple Island Collection's managing director Justin Fielder – who shot the image in August 2005 and then manipulated it using Photoshop – said: 'As creator of the Red Bus image, and originators of the product concept, we gave New England Teas the opportunity to license with us and work collaboratively, but this was declined.' The case, heard at the Patents County Court in London on 12 January, could have serious implications for photographers, according to photographic copyright expert Charles Swan, a lawyer at Swan Turton, who said: 'His honour Judge Birss QC decided that a photograph of a red London bus against a black and white background of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, with a blank sky, was similar enough to another photograph of the same subject matter to infringe copyright.'

Film Accuses All Muslims of Plotting to Overthrow US. - Last year, the New York Police Dept. was caught in an ugly scandal when the Village Voice reported it showed a 72-minute film titled The Third Jihad to police as a “terrorist training” video. Officials at the time downplayed the number of officers who saw it, and claimed it was quickly pulled when it was deemed “inappropriate.” The video condemns Muslims in general and moderate American Muslims in particular, claiming that all non-violent Muslims are part of a secret conspiracy to overthrow the US government and impose Sharia law in its place.

AWIP: In Police Training, a Dark Film on U.S. Muslims

Europe is considering a sweeping new law that would force Internet companies like Amazon.com and Facebook to obtain explicit consent from consumers about the use of their personal data, delete that data forever at the consumer’s request and face fines for failing to comply. - The proposed data protection regulation from the European Commission, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, could have significant consequences for all Internet companies that trade in personal data, whether it is pictures that people post on social networks or what they buy on retail sites or look for on a search engine. The regulation would compel Web sites to tell consumers why their data is being collected and retain it for only as long as necessary. If data is stolen, sites would have to notify regulators within 24 hours. It also offers consumers the right to transport their data from one service to another — to deactivate a Facebook account, for example, and take one’s trove of pictures and posts and contacts to Google Plus. The proposed law strikes at the heart of some of the knottiest questions governing digital life and commerce: who owns personal data, what happens to it once it is posted online, and what the proper balance is between guarding privacy and leveraging that data to aim commercial or political advertising at ordinary people.

AWIP: EU proposes 'right to be forgotten' by internet firms

A new law promising internet users the "right to be forgotten" will be proposed by the European Commission on Wednesday. - It says people will be able to ask for data about them to be deleted and firms will have to comply unless there are "legitimate" grounds to retain it. The move is part of a wide-ranging overhaul of the commission's 1995 Data Protection Directive. Some tech firms have expressed concern about the reach of the new bill. Details of the revised law were unveiled by the Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, at the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference in Munich. A spokesman for the commissioner clarified that the action was designed to help teenagers and young adults manage their online reputations. "These rules are particularly aimed at young people as they are not always as aware as they could be about the consequence of putting photos and other information on social network websites, or about the various privacy settings available," said Matthew Newman.

Surrey Police faces "serious questions" about whether it ignored evidence of phone hacking after it emerged that a News of the World reporter played officers a recording of Milly Dowler's voicemails within a month of her disappearance. - Instead of pressing charges against the newspaper for illegally accessing the schoolgirl's messages, a senior officer from Surrey Police invited two of the tabloid's staff to a private meeting to discuss the case. An internal investigation by the Surrey force An internal investigation by the Surrey force found that a reporter told police that the newspaper had obtained Milly's mobile number and voicemail PIN from her schoolfriends. In fact, the tabloid had paid the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire to do so. The newly released report also suggested that a News of the World investigator posed as Milly's mother, Sally, in an attempt to gain information about her. Milly was abducted on her way home from school in Walton–on–Thames, Surrey, on March 21, 2002. Her body was found six months later.

Assad's popularity, Arab League observers, US military involvement: all distorted in the west's propaganda war. - When coverage of an unfolding drama ceases to be fair and turns into a propaganda weapon, inconvenient facts get suppressed. So it is with the results of a recent YouGov Siraj poll on Syria commissioned by The Doha Debates, funded by the Qatar Foundation. Qatar's royal family has taken one of the most hawkish lines against Assad – the emir has just called for Arab troops to intervene – so it was good that The Doha Debates published the poll on its website. The pity is that it was ignored by almost all media outlets in every western country whose government has called for Assad to go. The key finding was that while most Arabs outside Syria feel the president should resign, attitudes in the country are different. Some 55% of Syrians want Assad to stay, motivated by fear of civil war – a spectre that is not theoretical as it is for those who live outside Syria's borders. What is less good news for the Assad regime is that the poll also found that half the Syrians who accept him staying in power believe he must usher in free elections in the near future. Assad claims he is about to do that, a point he has repeated in his latest speeches. But it is vital that he publishes the election law as soon as possible, permits political parties and makes a commitment to allow independent monitors to watch the poll.

A controversial American anti-piracy act was recalled on Friday, which came as no small victory for hacktivists who launched history's largest attack on several websites – including that of FBI – in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act. - Those opposing the controversial law have grown jubilant, with many seeing Friday's news as real victory in a sort of war for online freedom. The vote on the anti-piracy legislation, which was due on January, 24, has been postponed. The words of House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith – who was the chief sponsor of SOPA – came as a bombshell: he stated that American legislators would delay action on similar proposals until the matter is more widely agreed upon.

“I have heard from the critics, and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy,” Smith said. “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.” “The Committee will continue work with copyright owners, Internet companies, and financial institutions to develop proposals that combat online piracy and protect America’s intellectual property.”

He said in a statement that the Judiciary Committee welcomes input “from all organizations and individuals who have an honest difference of opinion about how best to address this widespread problem.”

Russia Today: PIPA postponed indefinitely

Hacktivists with the collective Anonymous are waging an attack on the website for the White House after successfully breaking the sites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America. In response to today’s federal raid on the file sharing service Megaupload, hackers with the online collective Anonymous have broken the websites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA, Motion Picture Association of America and Warner Music Group. “It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.org,” Anonymous operative Barrett Brown tells RT on Thursday afternoon.

One day after thousands of websites temporarily shut-down to highligt the dangers of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), federal prosecutors have pulled the plug on Megaupload.com, a website that was at one time among the top 20 most popular sites in the world. American authorities helped issue arrests on Thursday for four people in New Zealand that they say are responsible for the website. According to the official indictment, unsealed the same day, Megaupload is being accused of costing copyright holders upwards of $500 million in lost revenues because of content illegally uploaded to its servers.

TorrentFreak: MegaUpload: What Made It a Rogue Site Worthy of Destruction?

The vote on the Protect Intellectual Property Act has been postponed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. - Pressure from protests and blackouts held by internet giants such as Wikipedia may have influenced Reid's decision, reported Politico. Reid said, "In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday's vote on the PROTECT IP Act." In his statement, printed by The Washington Post, he added, "There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved. Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs. We must take action to stop these illegal practices."

Andre Damon: SOPA, PIPA and the freedom of the Internet

Under house arrest in England, the WikiLeaks founder opens up about his battle with the 'Times,' his stint in solitary and the future of journalism.

It's a few days before Christmas, and Julian Assange has just finished moving to a new hide-out deep in the English countryside. The two-bedroom house, on loan from a WikiLeaks supporter, is comfortable enough, with a big stone fireplace and a porch out back, but it's not as grand as the country estate where he spent the past 363 days under house arrest, waiting for a British court to decide whether he will be extradited to Sweden to face allegations that he sexually molested two women he was briefly involved with in August 2010.

Assange sits on a tattered couch, wearing a wool sweater, dark pants and an electronic manacle around his right ankle, visible only when he crosses his legs. At 40, the WikiLeaks founder comes across more like an embattled rebel commander than a hacker or journalist. He's become better at handling the media – more willing to answer questions than he used to be, less likely to storm off during interviews – but the protracted legal battle has left him isolated, broke and vulnerable. Assange recently spoke to someone he calls a Western "intelligence source," and he asked the official about his fate. Will he ever be a free man again, allowed to return to his native Australia, to come and go as he pleases? "He told me I was fucked," Assange says. "Are you fucked?" I ask. Assange pauses and looks out the window.

The tale of the DC Five – the five Beltway bloggers at two prominent Democratic Washington thinktanks who have been smacked down (and one fired) for being insufficiently pro-Israel – is hardly a shock to those who know their history. But before we get into that, a few details on what is only the latest chapter in the story of how the War Party operates in this country. [...] The Isra-bots will “argue” that since Iran represents an “existential threat” to Israel’s very existence, anyone who opposes a war with Tehran is calling for a replay of the Holocaust. If you’re for peace, and see no vital US interest in going to war with Iran, well then you’re a “Holocaust-denier.” [...] The case of the DC Five is meant to sow fear among the policy analysts and thinktankers who inhabit the Washington Beltway: “do not cross the line,” they are telling them – and the closer we get to war with Iran, the faster the boundaries of the impermissible are growing. There is a method to this madness: it is a preemptive strike aimed at opponents of US intervention, and on the left as well as the right it is turning out to be quite effective.

One of the most conservative Republican Congressman in the current House of Representatives – Steve Scalise from Louisiana’sHouse District 1 – is a co-sponsor of a bill that some say would allow the federal government to censor the internet. - The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) would among other things give “Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice broad new powers to police the Internet,” according to California Congressman Darrel Issa. The issue has become a hot-button subject in the last few days, with internet giant Wikipedia going dark for 24 hours, and many other websites asking users to contact their senators and congressmen.

Russia Today: Web blackout ends: SOPA bleeding, but not dead
Jason Ditz: SOPA Co-Sponsors Abandon Bill Amid Massive Protests
BBC: Support wanes in US Congress for anti-piracy bill
Raw Story: Lawmakers turn against anti-piracy bills amid huge Internet blackout
Glenn Greenwald: Chris Dodd’s paid SOPA crusading
Stephen Lendman: Protesting Internet Censorship
Andre Damon: Wikipedia shuts down to protest censorship bills
AWIP: Stop American Censorship - PETITION

On Wednesday Jan. 18th thousands of sites will go dark to protest SOPA & PIPA, two US bills racing through Congress that threaten prosperity, online security, and freedom of expression.

I am writing to you as a voter in your district. I urge you to vote "no" on cloture for S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act, on Jan. 24th. The PROTECT IP Act is dangerous, ineffective, and short-sighted. It does not deserve floor consideration. I urge my representative to vote "no" on SOPA, the corresponding House bill. Over coming days you'll be hearing from the many businesses, advocacy organizations, and ordinary Americans who oppose this legislation because of the myriad ways in which it will stifle free speech and innovation. We hope you'll take our concerns to heart and oppose this legislation by voting "no" on cloture. More HERE

Andre Damon: Wikipedia shuts down to protest censorship bills
PressTV: Wikipedia joins protest against US bills
Russia Today: Wikipedia blackout: 24-hour strike against SOPA, PIPA is on

Just when you think you've heard it all, it gets worse. I turned on the radio late last night to hear a little soothing music but ... oops wrong station. This creepy little non-human by the name of Bill Cunningham was taking hate speech to a whole new level. He almost makes Savage and Limbaugh look like choirboys. In a quick summary here's what he was saying: "Dresden was good. Hiroshima was double good. If you're going to fight a war, kill the civilians, burn 'em, they deserve it." Expanding to Iran he says: "I'd warn the Iranians a few days in advance to get the heck out of Dodge. I would obliterate [a favorite word used at least a dozen times] the 20 largest cities. Women, children, they all need to die. 20 million killed would be a good start. Then we would go in and take all of their resources and bring them back to the US."

Barely a week after presidential candidate Mitt Romney's role as former head of the private equity firm Bain Capital erupted as an issue in the Republican primary campaign, there is a concerted effort by the media to bring an end to the discussion. The Republican front-runner made an estimated $250 million during his years as the head of Bain from 1984 to 1999. - Romney's rivals, Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and Texas Governor Rick Perry appear to have pulled back from denouncing Romney as a “vulture capitalist,” and testimonials defending both Romney and the leveraged buyout industry have proliferated. The major financial interests do not want a broader debate over charges, leveled by Gingrich and Perry in an attempt to revive their campaigns, that investment firms such as Bain make money by destroying jobs and robbing workers of their wages, pensions and health benefits. Wall Street rightly fears that such a discussion will only deepen the growing popular hostility toward the capitalist system itself.

AWIP: Devastating anti-Romney film surfaces - VIDEO

A group of computer hackers known as ‘Nightmare’ managed to shut down the websites of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, as well as the Israeli government’s airline El Al on Sunday night. - According to a spokesperson for the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, trading was not affected by the hacker attack that shut down the website that provides information about regarding Stock Exchange. The anonymous hacker group sent an email to the Israeli news website Yedioth Ahranoth, from the same email address that claimed credit for releasing thousands of Israeli credit card numbers. The news agency identified the sender as a Saudi Arabian hacker, but were unable to identify other than the country of origin. The hack comes one day after representatives of the Hamas party in Gaza issued a statement calling for an increase in cyber-attacks on Israeli targets.

Gilad Atzmon: Israel is under Cyber Attack
PressTV: Cyberwar on Israel, new resistance

A lawyer for an intelligence analyst charged with leaking classified information to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks wants to question Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before his client is tried. - David Coombs, a lawyer for Pfc. Bradley Manning, included a request to question Clinton as part of a redacted document posted Monday on his website and also sent to Army officials. Clinton's name is obscured in the document, but it is clear from context that she is the person he wants to question. Coombs failed in his attempt to call Clinton as a witness at Manning's preliminary hearing last month. The Army is still deciding whether the 24-year-old Manning, who is accused of causing the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history, should stand trial.

UK Owner of TVShack, a linking only website, is to be extradited to the US and faces up to 10 years in prison for supposed copyright infringement. - The website did not itself host unlawful downloads or video streams, but acted as a directory of links to others that did, Westminster Magistrates' Court heard. American authorities allege that Mr O’Dwyer made more than $230,000 by selling advertising on TVShack in three years until December 2010. District Judge Quentin Purdy rejected all three of the defence’s arguments against extradition, including claims Mr O’Dwyer would not get a fair trial in the United States and that if a crime was committed he should be prosecuted in Britain. O'Dwyer's mother Julia said she was: "Very disappointed, in fact disgusted," with the verdict. She also expressed disappointment towards the government: "for signing us up to this treaty which has opened the flood gates to America to come and seize British citizens without even having set foot outside of this country."

A British student faces up to a decade in a U.S. prison for actions which are not even a crime in the UK. - Campaigners say Richard O’Dwyer, 23, is being abandoned by his country in the same way as computer hacker Gary McKinnon. Mr O’Dwyer is accused of listing places where films and TV programmes could be illegally downloaded, on a website he ran from his university bedroom in Sheffield. Legal experts say this is not an offence under British law, and he did not download any of the entertainment himself. Yet the ‘quiet and vulnerable’ son of a GP could spend ten years in a high-security American jail after he lost his fight against extradition yesterday. The case has chilling similarities with the attempt by the U.S. to extradite Asperger’s sufferer Mr McKinnon, who hacked into Pentagon computers from his north London bedroom. Instead of putting the men on trial in the country where their alleged offences took place, the British legal system is permitting them to be bundled on a plane to America.

The Guardian: TVShack's student founder can be extradited to US, court rules

At least two of four US Marines shown in a video appearing to urinate on Taliban corpses have been identified, a Marine Corps official has told the BBC. - The video, which was posted online, purports to show the Marines standing over the bodies of several Taliban fighters, at least one of whom is covered in blood. The Marines have begun a criminal investigation and an internal inquiry. US officials and Afghan officials have condemned the video. The Taliban condemned the video, but said it would not affect the political process. The origin of the video is not known, but it was originally posted to YouTube. It has not been verified but correspondents say all indications are that it is authentic.

David Swanson/Russia Today: Marine video exposes systemic abuse by US troops - Video Interview

Arthur Silber: The Varieties of Pissing - The rulers of the United States piss on you, and on every other human being on Earth not favored by privilege and power.
James Cogan: US marines desecrate Afghan dead - As in previous cases of military abuse, it seems the media will publicly vilify the rank-and-file troops involved in the desecration, but abstain from any commentary—let alone criticism—of the political and military establishment that created the debased climate in which this abuse took place.

January 11 was the tenth anniversary of amerika’s Guantanamo torture prison. National Public Radio commemorated the anniversary by airing critics and defenders of Washington’s violation of US statutory law, the Geneva Conventions, and the US Constitution. Listening to the former government officials justify their crimes, I realized that I was listening to those who had set the table and served the agenda that transformed the US into a criminal police state. Here was confirmation of Professor Dennis Loo’s theory of democracy in which an elite decides the agenda and the subservient media prepares the electorate’s receptivity. In his new book, Globalization and the Demolition of Society (2011) Professor Loo suggests that democracy without an independent and aggressive media becomes a disguised form of dictatorship. People think that by voting they are determining outcomes when in fact they are merely legitimizing agendas decided by the elite.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's command center routinely monitors dozens of popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, WikiLeaks and news and gossip sites including the Huffington Post and Drudge Report, according to a government document. - A "privacy compliance review" issued by DHS last November says that since at least June 2010, its national operations center has been operating a "Social Networking/Media Capability" which involves regular monitoring of "publicly available online forums, blogs, public websites and message boards." The purpose of the monitoring, says the government document, is to "collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture."

Russia Today: Homeland Security monitoring journalists, bloggers, forum posters, and social networks

According to sources in Iran, a nuclear scientist was killed in Tehran today by a bomb placed on his car by a motorcyclist. It is very clear to most of us who stands behind these continuous attacks on Iran’s scientists and military personnel. However, the discrepancy between Hebrew and English press reporting on the incident is pretty staggering and demands some deliberation.

While the Israeli English outlet Ynet reports on the incident in a pretty cold manner, it goes as far as reporting on “mysterious explosion in Iranian capital”, the Hebrew Ynet is happy to suggest that Israel is probably behind all those ‘mysterious attacks’.

The Hebrew publication ends its coverage of the story stating that yesterday Chief of Staff - Major General Benny Gantz, said that 2012 would be a “critical year for Iran”. he refered specifically to “continued pressure (on Iran) from the international community and the things that happen to them unnaturally". It doesn’t take a genius to gather that if General Ganz speaks about future “unnatural” events, he must be closely familiar with the details of such events!!!

While the English Ynet, operates as a Hasbara outlet, spreading Israeli propaganda for the Goyim and English speaking Jews, the Hebrew version, is there to boost the Israeli morale. And as it happens, Israeli love to see their ‘enemies’ being, terrorised, slaughtered and murdered.

The true ‘mysterious’ nature of the Jewish state and its relation with the world is indeed a disturbing one and a reason for serious concern.

PressTV: Santorum: Death of Iran experts wonderful
Frank Gardner/BBC: Iran and the undeclared campaign
Alex Lantier: Iranian nuclear scientist assassinated in Tehran
AWIP: Another nuclear scientist killed in Iran; Israel accused

A proposed bill would make it a crime in Israel to criticize people by comparing them to Nazis. - The draft legislation would impose penalties of up to six months in jail and a $25,000 fine for using the word "Nazi" or Holocaust symbols for purposes other than teaching, documentation or research. The draft legislation passed its first hurdle Monday when Cabinet ministers approved it. It now goes to the full parliament for a vote. The bill was proposed after ultra-Orthodox demonstrators set off a furor by dressing young boys as Nazi concentration camp inmates during a protest against what they said was incitement against their community. Protesters have also called police "Nazis."

Jason Ditz: Israeli Cabinet Pushes Bill to Ban Using ‘Nazi’ and ‘Similar-Sounding Words’ in Protests

During Pfc. Bradley Manning's legal hearing last month, many observers thought the proceedings seemed scripted. It turns out that, at least in part, they were. - POLITICO has obtained the script, which extends to 18 pages, including various addenda dealing with the handling of classified information. The script lays out statements for the Investigating Officer Lt. Col Paul Almanza and for the prosecutors, while places for comments by defense counsel were generally left blank. The script was generally adhered to but not entirely. For example, when Almanza closed the hearing to hear classified evidence he said representatives of "relevant government agencies" would be allowed to stay in the courtroom. The script says "relevant victim agencies." The script, submitted as part of a public court filing, is posted here.

"In a tweet early this morning, cybersecurity researcher Christopher Soghoian pointed to an internal memo of India's Military Intelligence that has been liberated by hackers and posted on the Net. The memo suggests that, "in exchange for the Indian market presence" mobile device manufacturers, including RIM, Nokia, and Apple (collectively defined in the document as "RINOA") have agreed to provide backdoor access on their devices. The Indian government then "utilized backdoors provided by RINOA" to intercept internal emails of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a U.S. government body with a mandate to monitor, investigate and report to Congress on 'the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship' between the U.S. and China. Manan Kakkar, an Indian blogger for ZDNet, has also picked up the story and writes that it may be the fruits of an earlier hack of Symantec. If Apple is providing governments with a backdoor to iOS, can we assume that they have also done so with Mac OS X?"

The six corporations that collectively control U.S. media today are Time Warner, Walt Disney, Viacom, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., CBS Corporation and NBC Universal. - Back in 1983, approximately 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the United States. Today, ownership of the news media has been concentrated in the hands of just six incredibly powerful media corporations. These corporate behemoths control most of what we watch, hear and read every single day. They own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite websites. Sadly, most Americans don't even stop to think about who is feeding them the endless hours of news and entertainment that they constantly ingest. Most Americans don't really seem to care about who owns the media. But they should. The truth is that each of us is deeply influenced by the messages that are constantly being pounded into our heads by the mainstream media. The average American watches 153 hoursof television a month. In fact, most Americans begin to feel physically uncomfortable if they go too long without watching or listening to something. Sadly, most Americans have become absolutely addicted to news and entertainment and the ownership of all that news and entertainment that we crave is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands each year.

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council is investigating after a Quebec mayor called Israel an apartheid regime and a country that doesn’t deserve to exist on his French-language talk show. - Stéphane Gendron, host of Face à Face on V Television Network and mayor of Huntingdon, a small town 75 kilometres southwest of Montreal, made the comments on his show last month. He also said he supports a boycott of a store in Montreal that sells Israeli-made shoes. A Network spokeswoman Diane Patenaude said the point of Gendron's show is to provide strong opinions: "This program is neither a news telecast or a news magazine and its hosts are not journalists." The network will meet with Gendron and the show in the next few days to discuss the situation, she said.

It is not known that one of America's most successful technology companies was complicit in helping Nazi leader Adolph Hitler build a more efficient killing machine before and during World War II, one author charges.

Edwin Black, who's groundbreaking work, "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation" (Crown Books, 2001, and Three Rivers Press, 2002), has just re-released this powerful book of a decade ago in paperback. In the original version, Black says Hitler's Nazi regime developed an "alliance" with IBM that helped the 20th century's most notorious dictator "to accelerate and in many ways automate key aspects of his persecution of Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others the Nazis considered enemies."

Black says, based on his research, the alliance, which he says was engineered by IBM's president, Thomas J. Watson saw the transfer of technology that enabled Hitler to create the world's most sophisticated killing apparatus. It involved the use of special IBM punch cards which were developed and utilized by the Nazi regime to help "organize and manage the initial identification and social expulsion of Jews and others, the confiscation of their property, their ghettoization, their deportation, and, ultimately, even their extermination."

He went onto say the technology was provided through a special wartime Polish subsidiary that reported to IBM New York, "mainly to its headquarters at 590 Madison Avenue." During the war years, and even after reports surfaced that Hitler's Nazi Germany was engaged in mass extermination of Jews and other undesirables, "not a single sentence written by IBM personnel has been discovered in any of the documents questioning the morality of automating the Third Reich," Black wrote.

The Israeli government has launched a program to pay students to promote the Israeli agenda on Facebook and internet chatrooms. - Students participating in the program will receive a two thousand dollar stipend from the Jewish Agency, part of the Israeli government, to spend five hours a week online promoting talking points provided by the Israeli government. According to the National Union of Israeli Students, which is a partner in the program, it is aimed at quote “deepening and expanding hasbara activities of students”. Hasbara is the Hebrew word for propaganda. Critics say that the information provided to student participants in the program does not make any distinction between anti-Jewish statements and legitimate criticism of the Israeli government’s policies. Instead, program organizers say that all criticism of Israel constitutes ‘anti-Semitism’ and should be combated using cyber-warfare and propaganda. To that end, they will be sending hundreds of self-proclaimed ‘student missionaries’ to colleges around the world to promote the online propaganda program and to encourage students to support the Israeli government’s agenda. To be eligible for the program, students must have lived in Israel for three years and consider themselves active Zionists, as well as having served in the Israeli military.

Since 2010 a group of self-confessed pirates have tried to get their beliefs recognized as an official religion in Sweden. After their request was denied several times, the Church of Kopimism – which holds CTRL+C and CTRL+V as sacred symbols – is now approved by the authorities as an official religion. The Church hopes that its official status will remove the legal stigma that surrounds file-sharing.

[Hacking group] Anonymous has issued a message calling President Barack Obama and co-authors of National Defence Authorization Act (NDAA) "terrorists" and demanding that the president resign because he has no right or authority to implement a bill that contradicts the Constitution of the American people. Anonymous vows to remove the corrupt leaders from government and says, "We The People! Veto" the president's NDAA decision. "We The People! Veto your decision to implement the National Defense Authorization Act," states Anonymous in a Jan. 3 written and recorded statement via a YouTube video to perpetrators who voted for the NDAA.

“I’m really excited about a lot of his ideas,” Cpl. Thorsen told CNN pundit Dana Bash from Paul headquarters in Ankeny, Iowa Wednesday night. “Especially when it comes to bringing the soldiers home,” added Thorsen. “I’ve been serving for ten years now and all ten of those have been during wartime. I’d like to see a little peacetime army and I think he has the right idea.”

Almost immediately, CNN’s Bash began berating the veteran and questioning him over his support for a candidate that would want to largely discontinue America’s foreign military presence. Bash pointed the camera towards a large tattoo on the solder’s neck that recognizes the September 11 terrorist attack and asks Thorsen how he could consider a candidate like Paul while other Republicans write him off as a security threat.

“Some Republicans out there have been saying that Ron Paul would be very dangerous for this country because he wants to bring troops like you back from your post from all over the world,” said Bash. “I think it would be even more dangerous to start nitpicking wars with more countries,” responded the vet.

At that point, CNN’s broadcast became scrambled, but Thorsen managed to begin, “Someone like Iran.” The soldier managed to squeeze off the word “Israel” before the broadcast ceased and the network returned to Blitzer live from in-studio.

CNN’s latest attempt at censoring Rep. Ron Paul’s message from the masses comes days after the network broadcast an edited interview of the candidate in which he is portrayed as agitated and irritated by a CNN host grilling him over controversial newsletters penned under the congressman’s name from the 1990s. After the broadcast, an unedited version of the interview circulated to the Web and showed that the station had largely doctored the original piece.

Google is getting into some hot water after some stealthy bloggers caught the search engine giants breaking their own rules. - An online ad campaigned launched by Google to promote its own products, specifically the Chrome web browser, has been revealed to using shortcuts to skip rules that the company itself put in place in order to keep search engines fair in returning their results. According to Google’s own rules on paid links, “Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the Web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results.” In order to keep the Web operating justly then, Google proposes coding to be added to websites that keep paid links from landing within the regulations set forth in their guidelines. Google, however, is dismissing those guidelines themselves.

Spain’s new government has wasted no time in approving tough new legislation to combat unauthorized file-sharing. After less than two weeks in power, the Partido Popular government has fully implemented the so-called Sinde Law. Spaniards can look forward to previously legal sites being blocked by ISPs or shut down completely, all within 10 days of a rightsholder complaint. - In the last decade Spain has truly emerged as one of file-sharing’s safe-havens. Countless court decisions have affirmed that P2P indexing sites operate legally, with most cases against site operators going in favor of the defendants. This state of affairs led to huge pressure on Spain from the United States, and behind closed doors the two countries drafted new laws in preparation for a time when Spain was ready to clamp down on file-sharing. That time has come. After taking power in mid-December, Spain’s incoming Partido Popular (People’s Party) government has now fully approved their pending Sustainable Economy Law (LES), legislation designed to stop Spanish Internet users from accessing file-sharing sites. Deputy Prime Minister Maria Soraya Saenz de Santamaria announced at a press conference that the so-called Sinde Law, named after outgoing Minister of Culture Ángeles González-Sinde, will now be fully implemented. The legislation, which will give the authorities the power to swiftly close file-sharing sites or have them blocked at the ISP level, was actually passed by the Spanish Parliament in February 2011, but the former government failed to enact a supporting regulatory framework and it has laid dormant since.

The U.S. Library of Congress reports that Belarus, a former Soviet Republic, has now essentially outlawed its citizens from browsing foreign websites. The law, which goes into effect on January 6th, puts severe restrictions on visiting or using foreign websites, the violation of which will be a misdemeanor. - Moreover, the law also requires that all businesses in Belarus conduct their transactions using “providing online services, conducting sales, or exchanging email messages.” The owners of internet cafes and other such sites are liable for the internet use of their customers – even to the point of being shut down if they don’t report violations. Moreover, even the individual owners of a computer are liable if they allow someone else to use their computer, and that person accesses an illegal website.

Peter Phillips of Project Censored speaks at the Grand Lake Theater for the 9/11 anniversary film festival on September 8, 2011.