Abby Martin takes a look at the history of Valentine’s Day, commenting on its sadistic origins and the corporate takeover of the holiday, which pushes the idea that consumerism equals love.
Scholar Hamid Dabashi explains why even though a diverse set of forces overthrew the brutal, CIA-backed Shah of Persia, in the end theocracy dominated, leaving Iran in the hands of plutocrats.
Policemen and residents stand near while demolition work is carried out on the building where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces in Abbottabad.(Reuters / Sultan Dogar)
Eleven days after the 2011 US elite forces raid that resulted in the killing of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, the head of US special operations ordered the destruction of all photos of the corpse or for them to be given to the CIA, new evidence shows.
The disclosure was revealed Monday in an email obtained and released by non-profit legal group Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The heavily-redacted email was sent by Admiral William McRaven, head of US Special Operations Command, to subordinate officers on May 13, 2011, instructing them that any remaining photos of Bin Laden’s body must be destroyed or handed over to the CIA. Bin Laden was killed on May 2, 2011 at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by the special operations team commonly known as Seal Team Six during Operation Neptune Spear.
In the email, addressed to “Gentlemen,” McRaven wrote, “One particular item that I want to emphasize is photos; particularly UBLs [Usama Bin Laden, as US military referred to him] remains. At this point – all photos should have been turned over to the CIA; if you still have them destroy them immediately or get them to the [redacted].”
The order to purge the photos came 11 days after the conservative government transparency organization Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request with the Defense Department seeking “all photographs and/or video recordings of Usama Bin Laden taken during and/or after the U.S. military operation in Pakistan on or about May 1, 2011.”
Judicial Watch finally accessed the McRaven email as a result of a June 7, 2013 FOIA request and a subsequent lawsuit against the Defense Department that sought the materials.
Source: RT USA
The Israeli army is both respected and feared as a fighting force. But now the country’s military is facing a backlash at home and abroad for its treatment of children in the West Bank, occupied territory.
Coming up, a joint investigation by Four Corners and The Australian newspaper reveals evidence that shows the army is targeting Palestinian boys for arrest and detention. Reporter John Lyons travels to the West Bank to hear the story of children who claim they have been taken into custody, ruthlessly questioned and then allegedly forced to sign confessions before being taken to court for sentencing.
He meets Australian lawyer Gerard Horton, who’s trying to help the boys who are arrested, and talks to senior Israeli officials to examine what’s driving the army’s strategy.
The program focuses on the stories of three boys. In two cases the army came for the children in the middle of the night, before taking them to unknown locations where they are questioned. A mother of one of the boys described the scene.
Source: Four Corners
Related: Israeli Abuse of Palestinian Children in Prison ‘Systematic,’ Says UN Report
The Russian authorities need to address a deteriorating situation of widespread and concerted abuse against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and activists. The authorities’ failure to act and some officials’ homophobic comments expose LGBT people to further harassment and violence and embolden the attackers, Human Rights Watch research found.
As the host to the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, which begin on February 7, 2014, in Sochi, Russia should act in accordance with the principle of nondiscrimination, a core provision of the Olympic Charter. As a member of the Council of Europe, and party to multiple human rights treaties, it should meet its obligations to provide equal respect and protection for LGBT people.
“The Russian authorities have the power to protect the rights of LGBT people, but instead they are ignoring their responsibility to do so,” said Tanya Cooper, Russia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “By turning a blind eye to hateful homophobic rhetoric and violence, Russian authorities are sending a dangerous message as the world is about to arrive on its doorstep for the Olympics that there is nothing wrong with attacks on gay people.”
Full story at Human Rights Watch
We check the main predictions of the climate models against the best and latest data. Fortunately the climate models got all their major predictions wrong. Why? Every serious skeptical scientist has been consistently saying essentially the same thing for over 20 years, yet most people have never heard the message. Here it is, put simply enough for any lay reader willing to pay attention.
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
Source: Watts Up With That?
Photo: Reuters / Leonhard Foeger
Bees exposed to “field-realistic” doses of insecticides gather less than a half the pollen that they normally do, dooming their young to starvation, UK researches have said. While some scientists hailed the findings, pesticide makers remained unimpressed
In a spin-off of their earlier study, a team of British scientists have revealed how the neurotoxic chemicals contained in agricultural neonicotinoids affect the very basic function of the honeybees – the gathering of pollen, or flower nectar.
“Pollen is the only source of protein that bees have, and it is vital for rearing their young. Collecting it is fiddly, slow work for the bees and intoxicated bees become much worse at it. Without much pollen, nests will inevitably struggle,” explained University of Sussex professor Dave Goulson, who has led the study. His comments were made in a statement released alongside the research.
Goulson’s latest paper called “Field realistic doses of pesticide imidacloprid reduce bumblebee pollen foraging efficiency” was published at the end of January in peer-reviewed journal Ecotoxicology.
The scientists exposed some of the studied bees to low doses of imidacloprid and tracked their movement with the help of electronic tags. Unexposed bees were also tracked, and each insect flying out and returning to a hive was weighed to find out the amount of pollen it gathered.
It turned out that bees exposed to the neonicotinoid brought back pollen from only 40 percent of their trips asopposed to 63 percent of useful trips which their “healthy” counterparts undertook. Intoxicated bees cut the amount of pollen gathered by nearly a third – overall, the comparative study showed that the hives exposed to the pesticide received 57 percent less pollen.
Source: RT News
On 7th February 2013 The Oxford Union held the debate “This House Would Not Fight for Queen and Country”. it was the 80th anniversary of the original debate in 1933 in which The Oxford Union voted in favor of the motion.
Speaking for the motion were Ben Sullivan (Christ Church College), Ben Griffin (former SAS soldier) and Gareth Porter (US Historian).
Speaking against were Rory Stewart (Conservative MP), Nikolai Tolstoy (International Monarchist League) and Malcolm Rifkind (former Foreign Secretary).
The Union is the world’s most prestigious debating society, with an unparalleled reputation for bringing international guests and speakers to Oxford. It has been established for 189 years, aiming to promote debate and discussion not just in Oxford University, but across the globe.
On the night the motion was defeated as it has been on every occasion that it has been held since 1937.
Read a transcript of the speech given by Ben Griffin at Veterans for Peace
Deceptions is a six-part film that traces a string of deceptions from 9/11, through the Bush and now the Obama years, oil and banking power and fraud, media collusion and the existence of a controlling elite.
It ends with a plea for the people of America to become citizen journalists – to report what they see and to encourage full discovery, disclosure and debate on myriad of issues that intentionally remain hidden from public view.
“Lest We Forget” is an indictment of our Leaders, our Media, our Actions and ultimately of ourselves for remaining intentionally blind to an American-made Holocaust.
Bouthaina Shaaban, advisor to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, speaks to the media after a meeting at the Geneva Conference on Syria at the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva, Jan. 30, 2014.
The Geneva II “peace” conference has all the indicia of a sham. Those opposed to war in Syria better get ready to prevent war again.
The Geneva II conference, which claims to be seeking to end the war in Syria, seems designed to fail and instead to provide an excuse for military intervention by the United States and its allies. Human rights activist Ajamu Baraka describes the negotiations as an “Orwellian subterfuge” designed to provide justification for war and a lot of facts support his view.
The negotiations are destined to fail because of the way they have been set up and the preconditions the United States and its allies in the Syrian opposition have made – demanding that President Bashar al-Assad agree to leave government before negotiations go forward.
The set-up for failure begins with the limited participation. The rigged nature of the negotiations was demonstrated when, at the demand of the United States and the Syrian opposition, the UN had to rescind an invitation to Iran to participate. Iran is a close ally of Syria, and keeping Iran out of the negotiations is an effort to weaken and isolate Syria. It is an indication of a desire by the United States for a preordained conclusion rather than a fair negotiation between the parties.
The exclusion of Syrian civil society from these negotiations, beyond the militant fighters, is especially egregious. Many of these groups were working for transformation of Syria before the terrorism and war began. One example is the exclusion of women, although women from across Syria have been meeting and put together a Syrian Women’s Charter for Peace, their request to be included in the talks has been denied. Women and children make up the majority of the millions who have been internally displaced or forced to flee the country. And they have suffered in horrible ways.
Only one opposition group is included, the Syrian National Coalition, one favored by the United States but rejected by 13 key rebel groups in Syria. There are scores of others involved in the bloodshed in Syria, but these on-the-ground fighters are not included. How can peace, even a partial peace like a cease-fire, be negotiated if those involved in the fighting are not participating?
In fact, an agreement by the participants to stop fighting would entrap Assad. Groups not included in the negotiations will continue to fight, and Assad will respond. When Assad responds to attacks, he will be accused of violating the peace agreement. This will provide an excuse for outside military intervention. The United States and its allies will claim: “Assad is violating the peace agreement; there is no other choice than to enforce the agreement with military force.”
The second and most important problem with the negotiations is the precondition of the United States and the Syrian National Coalition that Assad must agree to step down before negotiations can begin. The United States and its allies falsely claim that the removal of Assad already has been agreed to the “Geneva communiqué” signed by Syria’s ally, Russia. As Shamus Cooke points out, the communiqué does indeed call for a negotiated political transition, but nowhere does it state that such a transition must exclude Assad.
Secretary of State John Kerry kicked off the conference by demanding the removal of Assad from power. And this has become the central issue in the discussions so far, leading to a stalemate. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem accused the United States and its Middle East allies, particularly Turkey and Saudi Arabia, of supporting terrorist groups seeking to destabilize Syria and working to put forward their own plans for a new government. The Syrians put forward their own plan that would begin with ridding the nation of foreign terrorists. They argue it is up to the Syrian people to decide who their leaders are and what type of government they want.
The kickoff of the conference coincided with a propaganda campaign. A report funded by Qatar claimed the Assad government had tortured and killed 11,000 prisoners. There has been a history of torture in Syria; in fact, the United States sent people to be tortured in Syria as part of its rendition program, so on its face the claim does not seem far-fetched. But did they prove the case?
Reporter Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor points out some of the problems with the report. He writes it is “a single source report, from an unidentified man, who is related by marriage to a similarly unidentified member of the ‘Syrian National Movement.’ ” The Syrian National Movement is an opposition group funded by Qatar that has been trying to remove Assad since 2011. Further, the report was rushed to publication; the source was “interviewed on Jan. 12, 13 and 18 of this year. The report was provided to reporters yesterday, Jan. 20.” This resulted in no thorough examination of the photographs. Further, Murphy reports the document actually indicates 835 individual cases were examined, not all of the purported victims were shown to have been killed or tortured, and the 11,000 figure that made headlines was an extrapolation.
Yet, this has been trumpeted in the media as fact. A Washington Post editorial published January 22, 2014, treated the 11,000 killed and tortured by Assad without any doubt. It quotes Kerry saying the report shows Syria conducting “systematic torture and execution of thousands of prisoners.” The editorial revealed how the peace process could lead to war: “Mr. Obama probably could force the measures Mr. Brahimi is seeking [i.e. Assad resigning] by presenting Mr. Assad with the choice of accepting them or enduring U.S. airstrikes.” It is notable that The Post is putting military strikes on the agenda now – even before the negotiations fail or a peace agreement is violated.
The US media had been pushing for war with Syria during the last run-up to war, when Obama decided to send the decision to Congress. Thanks to opposition across the political spectrum in Congress and among the American people, the war was prevented. Russia’s intervention, which put forward a compromise that rid the Syrian government of chemical weapons, provided a face-saving escape for the Obama administration.
Since then, doubt about the claims that Sarin gas was used by the Syrian government from Syrian-held territory has intensified. The New York Times, Human Rights Watch and others who favored a US attack had claimed the rockets came from Syrian territory, based on a vector analysis of the angle of the rockets. But this fell apart when experts concluded the rockets did not have the range to reach the targets. The Times was forced to quietly distance itself from a front-page story making these claims.
We already are seeing a media drum beat for war. The media is consistent in repeating several lies about the Syrian negotiations and constantly blaming Assad for refusing to abide by nonexistent requirements of the Geneva communiqué. We can expect the hawkish US media to escalate the drumbeat and put forward war propaganda as the failure of the peace negotiations continues.
And Reuters reports that weapons aid to Syrian “rebels” has been “secretly” approved by Congress. Weapons approved include anti-tank weapons and small arms. Reuters writes “The weapons deliveries have been funded by the U.S. Congress, in votes behind closed doors, through the end of government fiscal year 2014, which ends on September 30. … ” How does Congress have secret votes to approve war-making actions? According to Reuters, “Congress approved funding for weapons deliveries to the Syrian rebels in classified sections of defense appropriations legislation, two sources familiar with the matter said.”
So, on one hand the United States claims to be seeking peace, and with the other it is fueling war with weapons. In public, the Congress opposed war with Syria. But in secret votes, it provides funding for weapons for the Syrian war.
Americans who oppose war better get prepared now. There has been a long-term agenda to remove the Assad family from power in Syria and the US foreign policy establishment has not given up on that goal, nor have US allies Israel and Saudi Arabia. This seems to be one more time when peace negotiations are a likely prelude to war unless the people of the United States see through these actions and prevent it.
Source: Truthout
Related: US Congress secretly approves sending small arms to ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels | Five Reasons the Latest Report on Syria War Crimes Might Not be True
Against the Grain 