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Robert Scheer: Obama, Congress Owe Snowden Thanks, and a Pardon - Robert Scheer - Truthdig

CIA Consulted with Pakistani Government in Conducting Drone Strikes – Report October 24, 2013 "Information Clearing House - Pakistan’s top officials have not only had knowledge of the US drone program that is now deeply unpopular in the country, but have quietly been authorizing it for years, according to a report based on classified documents and internal Pakistani memos.

Marines ‘Murdered Man Live on Camera’: Court martial sees graphic footage of ‘execution’ of injured Taliban fighter Marines ‘Murdered Man Live on Camera’: Court martial sees graphic footage of ‘execution’ of injured Taliban fighter The victim was left twitching and gasping for breath as the British servicemen, apprehensive that they might have been spotted, pretended to give him first aid By Kim Sengupta October 24, 2013 " Information Clearing House - " The Independent " -  A prisoner was murdered in cold blood in Afghanistan by a Royal Marines patrol after they had found him lying injured and helpless in a field, a court martial has heard. Footage of the alleged “battlefield execution” of the Taliban fighter in Helmand two years ago was recorded by the helmet camera of one of the alleged killers and shown to the proceedings at a military tribunal in Bulford, Wiltshire. Leaning to fire a bu

Palestinian arrested in Chicago because of her community activism, groups say The Department of Homeland Security’s arrest of Palestinian community activist Rasmea Yousef Odeh at her home in the Chicago suburbs on Tuesday was an act of political repression, dozens of groups around the US stated this week.

Can You Guess the 10 Best Countries For Women? Hint: the U.S. Isn't One of Them October 25, 2013 " Information Clearing House  - " AlterNet " -- The World Economic Forum released its annual  Global Gender Gap Report for 2013 measuring gender disparity between men and women around the world…and disappointingly the United States didn’t even make it in the top 20! The report, which ranks 136 countries, determines its findings across four primary areas including economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment and health and survival, ranking the United States 23  rd  on the list for 2013, HuffPost  reported .

Who Killed Michael Hastings? October 25, 2013 " Information Clearing House  -   Early in the morning on June 18, a brand new Mercedes C250 coupe was driving through the Melrose intersection on Highland Avenue in Hollywood when suddenly, out of nowhere, it sped up. According to an eye-witness, the car accelerated rapidly, bounced several times then fishtailed out of control before it slammed into a palm tree and burst into flames,  ejecting its engine  some 200 feet away. A witness, Jose Rubalcalva, whose house stood adjacent to the crash,  told Ana Kasparian  of the The Young Turks news network that no one could approach the burning car because  it kept exploding . In  a simulated full-frontal crash  of a 2013 C250 coupe, the car doesn’t explode on impact nor does it launch its engine 200 feet. In fact, said Nael Issa, a Mercedes Benz dealer in Long Beach, “The car has a crumble zone, so when it crashes it goes in like an accordion. And in some cases the engine drops down, so it

Empire Under Obama: America's "Secret Wars" in Over 100 Countries Around the World October 25, 2013 " Information Clearing House  -  Obama's global terror campaign is not only dependent upon his drone assassination program, but increasingly it has come to rely upon the deployment of Special Operations forces in countries all over the world, reportedly between 70 and 120 countries at any one time. As Obama has sought to draw down the large-scale ground invasions of countries (as Bush pursued in Afghanistan and Iraq), he has escalated the world of 'covert warfare,' largely outside the oversight of Congress and the public. One of the most important agencies in this global "secret war" is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC for short.

What a Surprise: U.S.-Based Iran “Experts” Promoting Israeli Policy October 25, 2013 " Information Clearing House  -  As the new round of nuclear diplomacy between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 unfolds,  an informal coalition of forces is coalescing in the West to oppose any prospective deal in which the United States would “accept” safeguarded uranium enrichment in Iran .  Of course,  Israel and the pro-Israel lobby are at the heart of this coalition .  Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s remarks about the Iran nuclear talks on NBC’s  Meet the Press  this past Sunday, see  here , are emblematic of the “zero enrichment” camp:

30 million people living in slavery worldwide | GulfNews.com There are an estimated 14 million slaves in India and a further 2.1 million in Pakistan. The foundation’s definition of modern slavery includes slavery itself, plus slavery-like practices — such as debt bondage, forced marriage and the sale or exploitation of children — human trafficking and forced labour.

The Lancet: Arafat Poisoned With Polonium 210 The Lancet: Arafat Poisoned With Polonium 210 By China Central Television October 13, 2013 " Information Clearing House  - A report by a respected British medical journal the Lancet, has supported the possibility that late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned with the radioactive element polonium 210. The journal published a peer review of last year’s research by Swiss scientists. It backed their work, which found high levels of the highly radioactive element in blood, urine, and saliva stains on Arafat’s clothes and toothbrush. The Palestinian leader died in 2004 in a French hospital near Paris, after being effectively confined to his West Bank compound for two years. In November 2012, experts from Switzerland, France and Russia exhumed his remains and took samples to examine for possible poisoning. It was prompted by a documentary aired on Al- Jazeera, that claimed there were traces of polonium in Arafat’s personal belong

The Lancet: Arafat Poisoned With Polonium 210 The Lancet: Arafat Poisoned With Polonium 210 By China Central Television October 13, 2013 " Information Clearing House  - A report by a respected British medical journal the Lancet, has supported the possibility that late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned with the radioactive element polonium 210. The journal published a peer review of last year’s research by Swiss scientists. It backed their work, which found high levels of the highly radioactive element in blood, urine, and saliva stains on Arafat’s clothes and toothbrush. The Palestinian leader died in 2004 in a French hospital near Paris, after being effectively confined to his West Bank compound for two years. In November 2012, experts from Switzerland, France and Russia exhumed his remains and took samples to examine for possible poisoning. It was prompted by a documentary aired on Al- Jazeera, that claimed there were traces of polonium in Arafat’s personal belong

2500 Murdered by US Drones in Pakistan, Names of Victims Now Available

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36525.htm Entitled  In the Front Line: A Doctor in War and Peace , Dr Glen’s account includes the fate of the Armenians of Caucasia as the Turks tried to spread their pan-Turkic rule to the east in 1918 – after the original massacre of one-and-a-half million Armenians three years earlier. Marching through north-western Iran towards Baku, Dr Glen writes of how his British-Indian force began to pass several thousand Armenian refugees in a day.

Malala Confronts Obama, Says Drone Strikes Are Fueling Terrorism -- News from Antiwar.com During her Friday meeting with President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize nominee Malala Yousafzai  confronted  the president about ongoing US drone strikes against Pakistan.

Pew survey of U.S. Jews: soaring intermarriage, assimilation rates NEW YORK (JTA) — There are a lot more Jews in America than you may have thought — an estimated 6.8 million, according to a new study. But a  growing proportion of them are unlikely to raise their children Jewish or connect with Jewish institutions. The proportion of Jews who say they have no religion and are Jewish only on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity or culture is growing rapidly, and two-thirds of them are not raising their children Jewish at all. Overall, the intermarriage rate is at 58 percent, up from 43 percent in 1990 and 17 percent in 1970. Among non-Orthodox Jews, the intermarriage rate is 71 percent. Read more: http://www.jta.org/2013/10/01/news-opinion/united-states/pew-survey-u-s-jewish-intermarriage-rate-rises-to-58-percent#ixzz2hdjj6d5E

HRW: Syrian Rebels Killed 190 Civilians in Coordinated Attack

Chemical Weapons Watchdog Wins Nobel Peace Prize

On August 21, the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad was accused of using chemical weapons on its own population, prompting Western countries – led by the United States – to declare their intention to bomb Syria to somehow save it from itself. The reasons for the declared intention of launching air strikes on Syria was to punish the Syrian government, to uphold international law, and to act on the ‘humanitarian’ values which the West presumably holds so dear. George Orwell discussed this in his 1946 essay,  Politics and the English Language , written two years prior to the publication of  1984 . In his essay, Orwell wrote that, “the English language is in a bad way” and that language is ultimately “an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.” The decline of language, noted Orwell, “must ultimately have political and economic causes… It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thou

Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai Says Nato Caused 'Great Suffering' President Hamid Karzai has criticised Nato for failing to bring stability to Afghanistan in over a decade there. By Yalda Hakim  BBC Newsnight October 07, 2013 " Information Clearing House  - " BBC " - "On the security front the entire Nato exercise was one that caused Afghanistan a lot of suffering, a lot of loss of life, and no gains because the country is not secure," he said.

Six-year-old loses eye from bullets Israel promised to phase out Six-year-old Mousab Sarahnin lost an eye after Israeli soldiers fired  rubber-coated steel bullets  just after he stepped off a bus at the Fawwar refugee camp, near the occupied West Bank city of  Hebron , on 27 September. Sitting with his father, Mousab Sarahnin was shot in the eye by an Israeli soldier. (Dylan Collins)

Glenn Greenwald Full Interview on Snowden, NSA, GCHQ and Spying Video BBC Newsnight Posted October 03, 2013 Glenn Greenwald Full Interview on Snowden, NSA, GCHQ and Spying

David Vine: The Italian Job How the Pentagon Is Using Your Tax Dollars to Turn Italy into a Launching Pad for the Wars of Today and Tomorrow By David Vine October 03, 2013 " Information Clearing House - The Pentagon has spent the last two decades plowing hundreds of millions of tax dollars into military bases in Italy, turning the country into an increasingly important center for U.S. military power. Especially since the start of the Global War on Terror in 2001, the military has been shifting its European center of gravity south from Germany, where the overwhelming majority of U.S. forces in the region have been stationed since the end of World War II. In the process, the Pentagon has turned the Italian peninsula into a launching pad for future wars in Africa, the Middle East, and beyond. At bases in Naples, Aviano, Sicily, Pisa, and Vicenza, among others, the military ha

Syria: The Army of Islam; Saudi Arabia’s Greatest Export By Phil Greaves October 04, 2013 " Information Clearing House -  Recent developments regarding “rebel” groups inside Syria have shed further light on the ideologies and political aims of the militants waging war upon the Syrian state. On the 24th September, under the moniker of the “Islamist Alliance”, 11 of the largest and most recognisable rebel brigades – a mix of supposed “moderate Islamists” such as Liwa al-Tawhid, the largest “FSA”-branded brigade in Aleppo, alongside more hardline Salafi/Jihadi brigades such as Ahrar al-Sham, and Al Qaeda ideologues Jahbat al-Nusra - released a joint statement denouncing the western-backed expatriates of the “National Coalition” (NC), along with its equally impotent military arm, the “Supreme Military Council” (SMC). Following this statement of intent, on the 29th of September, up to 50 re