The Secret Service has too few agents, with too little training, assigned to patrolling a White House fence that needs to be at least 4 to 5 feet taller than it is to keep out intruders, according to a punishing report from an independent panel of experts.

A lot of technology magazines are rather dubious at President Obama's accusations that it was the North Koreans that that it. Wired magazine, which is pretty well known for covering technology, says that it's akin to saying Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction to say the North Koreans had the capability to pull something like this off.

CIA agents “impersonated Senate staffers” while the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was producing its report on the agency’s rendition, detention and interrogation program, according to Huffington Post.

“According to sources familiar with the CIA inspector general report that details the alleged abuses by agency officials,” journalists Ali Watkins and Ryan Grim reported, “CIA agents impersonated Senate staffers in order to gain access to Senate communications and drafts of the Intelligence Committee investigation.”

A source “familiar” with the inspector general report, which remains classified, told Huffington Post, “If people knew the details of what they actually did to hack into the Senate computers to go search for the torture document, jaws would drop. It’s straight out of a movie.”

A New Year’s goal of the federal office responsible for averting employee leaks is to make a career out of catching so-called insider threats.

It is a delicate task to simultaneously guard hard-working federal personnel and expose the bad apples. And it takes different talents than those one would find in a counterintelligence analyst, human resources professional or information security professional. The insider threat discipline melds all those disciplines.

The sudden dramatic collapse in the price of oil appears to be an act of geopolitical warfare against Russia. The result could be trillions of dollars in oil derivative losses; and the FDIC could be liable, following repeal of key portions of the Dodd-Frank Act last weekend.

Targeting conservative and Tea Party nonprofit applicants for harassment during the 2010 and 2012 campaigns was the most obvious, but far from the only illustration of how deeply President Obama politicized the daily operations of the IRS, according to a new report from a congressional oversight panel.

The Central Bank of Russia has said it will provide £343m of support to one of the country's more troubled banks, as analysts warn of a wave of defaults in the sector.

On Friday, the FBI released a statement blaming the North Korean government for the massive cyberattack against Sony last month. President Barack Obama also said over the weekend that he was considering re-adding North Korea to the United States' terrorist watch list.

But North Korea has continued to deny that it's behind the Sony breach, and the group that has claimed responsibility -- the hacking collective Guardians of Peace -- is mocking the FBI online, according to The Daily Beast. Some security researchers, as well as members of the hacktivist group Anonymous, are questioning whether there is enough evidence to blame North Korea at all.

"I have yet to see evidence of North Korea behind this," Kyle Wilhoit, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro, a Japanese security firm, told HuffPost on Monday. Wilhoit argued that just because the FBI sees similarities between the code used in the Sony hack and other North Korean malware doesn't mean it was the same attacker.

In the shadows of the Sony hacking incident and North Korea’s massive Internet outage, the Pentagon has quietly built a multibillion-dollar cyberwarfare capability and trained its commanders to integrate these weapons into their battlefield plans.

U.S. Cyber Command was officially stood up in 2010, based at Fort Meade in the Maryland suburbs of the nation’s capital, consolidating intelligence and cyberwarfare capabilities of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines under one house. Soon, billions of dollars were being invested in the concept that cyberattackers targeting America should be prepared to sustain their own damage.

One IRS employee called a conservative group “icky” while another griped that they would probably “have to” approve a different group’s application for nonprofit status, according to the latest findings Tuesday by the House Oversight Committee.

In a new staff report released by Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who is term-limited as chairman of the committee, investigators also found IRS officials had “repeatedly changed their stories” about what went on and who was responsible for targeting the conservative and tea party groups who applied for nonprofit status.

China said on Monday it opposed all forms of cyberattacks but there was no proof that North Korea was responsible for the hacking of Sony Pictures, as the United States has said.

North Korea has denied it was to blame and has vowed to hit back against any U.S. retaliation, threatening the White House and the Pentagon. The hackers said they were incensed by a Sony comedy about a fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which the studio has pulled.

Key North Korean websites were back online Tuesday after a nearly 10-hour shutdown that followed a U.S. vow to respond to a crippling cyberattack on Sony Pictures that Washington blames on Pyongyang.

It wasn't immediately clear what caused the Internet stoppage in one of the least-wired and poorest countries in the world, but outside experts said it could be anything from a cyberattack to a simple power failure. The White House and the State Department declined to say whether the U.S. government was responsible.

The former girlfriend of the man who ambushed two NYPD officers after shooting her in Baltimore told investigators that he gave no indication that he intended to commit violence against police officers.

My mother, even in middle-class suburban prosperity, couldn’t throw away an eggshell without running her finger round it to get out the last of the white. No butcher dared twice to try to cheat her on the weights.

Haunted all her life by rationing, she would habitually break a chocolate bar into its smallest pieces. She had also been bombed from the air in Liverpool, and had developed a fatalism to cope with the nightly danger of being blown to pieces, shocking to me then and since.

I am now beset by these ingrained memories of shortage and danger because I seem surrounded by people who think that war might be fun. This seems to happen when wartime generations are pushed aside by their children, who need to learn the truth all over again.

China said Tuesday there was no proof that North Korea was behind a cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, signaling its reluctance to side with the United States over the incident, while also rejecting speculation it could have cut off Pyongyang’s Internet access as punishment.

Asked about American requests for help from China to punish North Korea for cyberattacks, Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry, said the United States and North Korea needed to communicate directly.

She said Beijing had not seen proof of who was behind the attack on Sony. “We need sufficient evidence before drawing any conclusion,” she said at a news conference.

Late Friday, a federal judge dismissed a civil claim filed against George W. Bush and other high-ranking officials regarding their conduct in planning and waging the Iraq War, and immunized them from further proceedings.

“This is an early Christmas present to former Bush Administration officials from the federal court,” Inder Comar of Comar Law said. Comar brought the claim on behalf of an Iraqi refugee and single mother, Sundus Shaker Saleh. “This was a serious attempt to hold US leaders accountable under laws set down at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. I am very disappointed at the outcome.”

The St. Louis prosecutor in charge of the Ferguson grand jury today acknowledged that witnesses “absolutely lied under oath” before the panel, but said that none of the perjurers--including the unmasked "Witness 40"--would face criminal charges.

During a KTRS radio interview, Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch said that, “Early on I decided that anyone who claimed to have witnessed anything would be presented to the grand jury,” even if investigators questioned their truthfulness.

McCulloch (seen above left) said that he opted to present “anybody and everybody” to the grand jury, adding that it was the responsibility of panel members to judge the credibility of individual witnesses.

Referring to “Witness 40,” whom TSG identified this week as a 45-year-old St. Louis woman named Sandra McElroy, McCulloch said she “clearly wasn’t present” when Michael Brown was shot to death by Officer Darren Wilson.

A former personal assistant to President Obama accidentally blew the lid off of the Osama bin Laden raid, “Situation Room” photo, with startling new revelations.
Former Presidential aid, Reggie Love, accidentally let the cat out of the bag when he told an AAA, UCLA audience he and Obama played cards all night at the WHite House, while the alleged bin Laden raid was being watched downstairs in the "Situation Room."
Pete Souza / White House

As if there weren’t already enough problems, inconsistencies and improbabilities within the three-plus decade-long saga between Osama bin Laden and the Western establishment and the way the story was narrated by its media, the world has just been afforded one more.

It’s likely everyone remembers the iconic photo of Barack Obama, Biden, Hillary and other members of the President’s national security team allegedly watching “the world’s top terrorist” finally being brought to justice, from the comfort of a conference room at the White House.

North Korea is having major Internet problems, just days after President Barack Obama promised a proportional response to the devastating hacks against Sony.

It’s that time of year again: Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) just released Wastebook 2014, his annual list of the most wasteful government projects during 2014. Coburn’s wastebook list includes a comprehensive analysis of 100 of the most wasteful government projects funded over the last year. The full report, which includes detailed descriptions and investigations of every wasteful project, spans more than 200 pages.

Here are eight of the most egregious and infuriating wasteful projects listed in Coburn’s 2014 Wastebook report, which can be read in full here.

"Mr President," he said in his booming voice, "when I told my Christian friend I was coming to a Channukah party at the White House, he told me, 'I didn't know the President was Jewish!"

The President let out a serious belly laugh. But in all the commotion of people asking other questions and everyone clicking their smart phone cameras, it was easy to lose sight of the president to see if he had anything to say.

I kept my eyes straight on him. It was clear that the "President was Jewish" idea had intrigued him. After about three or four seconds, as he was walking away, and looking at no one in particular, the President just said, "I am, in my soul."

So, there you have it: The leader of the free world says he's Jewish, in his soul.

A new poll indicates a considerable decline in support for Hillary Clinton to run as a candidate in the 2016 presidential race.

But as much as Sony seemed to mishandle its sorry situation in recent days, the severity of the circumstances Sony faced are so extreme that it begs the question of whether anyone could have handled it better. Every step of the way Sony has been faced with no-win situations and just plain bad luck.

Just when things couldn’t have looked any worse for the studio, President Obama turned sharply critical of Sony in a news conference Friday, second-guessing its decision to withdraw “The Interview” from theaters.

The government blames North Korea of the Axis of Evil for the attack on Sony, a claim quite like the bogus claims of the past we so credulously believed. No matter how often they lie to us, Americans believe what the government tells us. They lie, we believe, their lies are exposed — rinse, repeat. It makes us easy to govern, incapable of self-government, and quite different than our skeptical unruly forebearers. We can do better. This is a great day to begin. Read this and decide for yourself. This is the most complete collection of information I’ve found on this story.

This week, Bill speaks with outspoken veteran journalist John R. MacArthur, president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine, about the problems with TPP, which is being negotiated in secret, behind closed doors. MacArthur says that the “free trade” agreement will take jobs away from Americans: “I guarantee you, this is a way to send more jobs [abroad], particularly to Vietnam and Malaysia.”

Obama’s commitment to trade is just another example of his indebtedness to Wall Street for massive campaign contributions. Hillary Clinton, who MacArthur describes as to the right of Americans’ political beliefs, may be scaring off progressives looking to run in 2016 as she is “very much in harmony” with Wall Street.

On Friday, President Obama signed yet another annual defense bill which explicitly forbids closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, leaving a pledge to close the site, made on his first day in office, unresolved.

Despite this, President Obama insisted that he will “do everything I can” to close the site, which apparently did not include not signing anything that bans closing the site.

Obama did accompany the signing with a statement insisting that anything he views as violation of his constitutional powers, which includes the Gitmo provision, would be ignored.

U.S. president Barack Obama said in a TV interview set for broadcast on Sunday that he will do "everything I can" to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after four Afghan detainees held there were sent home.

Obama promised to shut the internationally condemned prison when he took office nearly six years ago, saying it was damaging America's image around the world. But he has been unable to do so, partly because of obstacles posed by the U.S. Congress.

I watched painfully former Vice-President Dick Cheney on NBC television’s “Meet the Press” programme trying to defend and redefine his role in the “authorised” CIA torture. Whenever he was asked about a specific torture case, Cheney always referred back to the “tortured” Americans who lost their lives in 9/11.

President Obama said Sunday he does not consider North Korea’s attack on Sony Pictures to be an “act of war,” instead calling it an example of “cybervandalism” that must be met with a proportional response from the U.S. government.

Guardians of Peace, the hacker group that previously took credit for the Sony cyber attack, mocked the FBI and their investigation that determined North Korea was "centrally involved" in the Sony hack. "The result of investigation by FBI is so excellent that you might have seen what we were doing with your own eye," the Guardians of Peace wrote in a statement posted on the file-sharing site Pastebin (via CNN). "We congratulate you success. FBI is the BEST in the world. You will find the gift for FBI at the following address. Enjoy." The hackers also included a link to a YouTube video titled "you are an idiot!"

US official states that North Korea responsible for hacking of Sony over The Interview film – and that Kim Jong-un's regime may have had Chinese help

Now that U.S. intelligence has blamed North Korea for the Nov. 24 cyber attack on Sony Pictures, there is growing concern that the Hermit Kingdom has the capability of bringing down the vulnerable U.S. national grid system.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/after-sony-hack-is-u-s-grid-next/#uM8SW1GrR...

North Korea said U.S. accusations that it was involved in a cyberattack on Sony Pictures were "groundless slander" and that it was wanted a joint investigation into the incident with the United States.

An unnamed spokesman of the North's foreign ministry said there would be "grave consequences" if Washington refused to agree to the joint probe and continued to accuse Pyongyang, the official KCNA news agency reported on Saturday.

On Friday, President Barack Obama blamed North Korea for the devastating cyberattack, which led to the Hollywood studio cancelling "The Interview", a comedy on the fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

President Obama said Friday that the U.S. will retaliate against North Korea for its cyberattack against Sony Pictures, and he thinks the movie studio “made a mistake” by canceling the release of a movie in response to the hacking.

“They caused a lot of damage, and we will respond,” Mr. Obama said of the North Koreans at a White House news conference. “We will respond in a place and time and manner that we choose.”

The U.S. government has yet to reveal what evidence they have of a “linkage” between North Korea and the Nov. 24 hacking attack on Sony Entertainment but they are considering a “range of options” in response, according to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

The FBI said Friday that North Korea is responsible for the cyberattack on Sony Pictures that led the studio to cancel the release of a movie.

Confirming what government officials were saying privately for days, the FBI announced that is months-long investigation concluded that North Korea was behind the attack, based on technical similarities to previous attacks.

Unlike any hack attributed to North Korea in the past

North Korea has been blamed for a string of hacks in the past, and it’s generally accepted that the country has the capability to hack and attack companies. But no previous attack attributed to North Korea—or any nation-state—has been so public and so noisy. In the past, attacks happened, North Korea was suspected, and then sometimes the country was later blamed. It rarely said anything, except for an initial denial. This time around, the hacker group has posted messages online taunting Sony and telling the FBI they cannot be caught. Early on, they were also interacting with reporters.

Obama admin. mulling “proportional” response

Webmaster's Commentary: 

Gee, I hate being right all the time!

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US President Barack Obama signed an executive order Thursday that sets up the “Task Force on 21st Century Policing” to determine how to strengthen the public’s and local communities trust for law enforcements.

Michelle Obama is once against coming alongside the usurper-in-chief to help stir up more division. And once again, just like her husband, she's lying to do it. What once was used as a story from Mrs. Obama to promote that she had done a good deed has now been changed to claim that she was discriminated against because she's black.

Drone strikes and other targeted counterinsurgency programs aimed at capturing or killing “high-value targets” belonging to militant groups could be effective if coupled with larger strategic goals, the CIA believes, but they could also backfire.

US President Barack Obama has signed a bill that will allow the White House to levy further economic sanctions on Russia over Ukraine, though the Administration has said it has no immediate plans to introduce them.

Obama Knew Drone Strikes Were Counter-Productive, But Did It Anyway

Previously-leaked documents showed that the CIA warned Obama that funding rebels doesn’t work … but Obama decided to fund the Syrian rebels anyway for cynical political gain.

Top CIA officers say that drone strikes increase terrorism (and see this). Indeed, virtually all aspects of the American “war on terror” strategy creates more terrorists and weakens our national security. And see this.

Now, a leaked internal CIA memo shows that the Agency told Obama that drone strikes might be counter-productive.

In recent years, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has come under fire for disallowing scientists working for the Canadian government to speak directly to the press.

An article published in August by The New Republic said “Harper’s antagonism toward climate-change experts in his government may sound familiar to Americans,” pointing to similar deeds done by the George W. Bush Administration. That article also said that “Bush’s replacement,” President Barack Obama, “has reversed course” in this area.

Society for Professional Journalists, the largest trade association for professional journalists in the U.S., disagrees with this conclusion.

After a day of closed-door negotiations among Arab members of the United Nations, Jordan, which represents Arab countries on the Security Council, put the draft resolution "in blue," meaning the text of the draft has been finalized and could be put to a vote 24 hours later.

While the resolution could be put to a vote late Thursday, Riyad Mansour, Palestinian ambassador to the UN, said his country was open to continuing negotiations.

"The draft in blue in not closing the door to the continuation of the negotiation with all of our partners," Mansour said. "We are willing to work with those who want to work with us in the Security Council in a positive and constructive way."

Saudi Arabia, the most influential member of OPEC, and the United States are working together to destroy the Russian economy and destabilize the country.

U.S. economic terrorism (i.e. the One Bank’s economic terrorism) has hit a new extreme this week. This crime syndicate has launched what can be termed nothing less than an all-out effort to destroy the economy of Russia.

Its modus operandi is, once again, currency manipulation. What is the quickest/easiest way to destroy an economy? Drive the value of its currency as close to zero as possible. The effect of such a manipulated “devaluation” is a massive explosion in inflation. And the effect of that is to make all Russians much poorer.

The economic destruction caused by this economic terrorism affects Russians, and the Russian economy on a percentage-for-percentage basis. Each percentage lower that the banksters drive the ruble with their criminal manipulation makes Russians, and the Russian economy 1% poorer.

If there’s one thing we have learned about Barack Obama, it’s that he is a master of deception and absolutely loves to lie to the public. He seems to enjoy conning the plebs to such a degree, I think he actually receives blasts of dopamine every time he does it. The bigger the lie, the better the rush.

The administration warned a federal judge Monday to stay out of the debate over President Obama’s deportation amnesty, saying decisions about whom to deport fall squarely within the executive’s job description, “which this court lacks authority to review.”

A new bill imposing further sanctions on Russia is to be signed by US President Barack Obama by the end of the week, a White House spokesman told a news briefing Tuesday.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that Obama is expected to sign new legislation this week despite preliminary concerns about its content. “I would anticipate that it would get done before the end of the week,” he said.

Administration officials said Tuesday that nearly 2.5 million Americans had selected a plan on the federal Obamacare marketplace through Friday, a tally that did not include an “extremely busy” three days before Monday night’s deadline to get covered for the new year.

Citigroup is the Wall Street mega bank that forced the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999; blew itself up as a result of the repeal in 2008; was propped back up with the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world even though it was insolvent and didn’t qualify for a bailout; has now written its own legislation to de-regulate itself; got the President of the United States to lobby for its passage; and received an up vote from both houses of Congress in less than a week.

Former Florida governor and brother and son of United States presidents, Jeb Bush, announced that he will "actively explore" a possible presidential campaign for 2016.

More than two decades after the Berlin Wall fell, it appears that the United States and Russia are engaging in the same sort of proxy wars that were so common during the Cold War. Everywhere that Western and Russian spheres of influence meet there is the potential for conflict, and the two aging superpowers have shown their willingness fight through their neighbors. However, this game of chess has taken on a whole new dimension that is radically different than what we saw during the Cold War.

Vice President Joe Biden will assist in the lighting this year of the Hanukka menorah on the ellipse in front of the White House.

US has delivered weapons to the terrorist group ISIS (Daesh, in Arabic) in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar, west of the capital of the northwestern province of Nineveh, Mosul, which has become since last June a bastion these takfiri gangs, according to an Iraqi parliamentary.

"Three US aircraft carrying advanced weapons, clothes and food for ISIL, have landed at the airport in Tal Afar," reported Sunday Nahla Al-Hababi, the representative of the Nineveh province in the Iraqi parliament.

Senior Israeli official says U.S. should maintain its policy on unilateral measures, ahead of leaders' Rome meet; Kerry staff nixes scheduled photo op; Palestinians say will submit UN draft resolution this week.

He drinks a bit. That is well-chronicled.

The tabloids have splashed headlines about torrid affairs, including one with a lobbyist.

And, of course, he cries in public.

But is there more to the personal story of House Speaker John Boehner that would explain his funding of Obamacare and the president’s executive action providing amnesty for millions of illegal aliens in his budget accommodation with Democrats?

Enter the ubiquitous Matt Drudge who tweeted Friday: “Obama got EVERYTHING. NSA dirt on Boehner must be incredible. Chicago wins.”

While the Republicans are getting ready to take control of the of the U.S. Senate in just a few weeks, Americans witnessed a preview on Saturday of what can be expected in 2015 from a GOP majority in both houses of the U.S. Congress. When Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, raised a point of order saying that President Barack Obama's immigration reform by fiat is unconstitutional, during the heated debate over the $1.1 trillion spending bill, he only received support from 22 senators.

The vast majority of the U.S. Senate openly disagreed with Sen. Cruz’s attempt to enter opposition to President Obama’s executive order on immigration, on the grounds it is unconstitutional, in the omnibus spending bill for 2015.

Thousands of Germans have staged a protest rally to express their anger at the West’s warmongering policies against Russia over the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

At least 3,500 people took part in the protest, organized by the German Peace Movement, in the capital Berlin on Saturday.

The demonstrators marched to the presidential Bellevue palace to condemn the West’s confrontation with Russia over the conflict in Ukraine.

They expressed concern that the policies adopted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) under the influence of the United States will lead to further escalation of tensions in Europe.

The US Senate has approved a multi-billion-dollar military spending bill that includes $350 million for Israel’s Iron Dome missile system.

The Senate passed the bill on Friday by a 89-11 vote.

The bill was sent to the White House for President Barack Obama's signature.

The 2015 defense authorization bill also authorized $521.3 billion for Defense Department operations, and about $64 billion for overseas military operations.

The House of Representatives last week approved the National Defense Authorization Act by a 300-119 vote.

Five billion dollars are allocated for the fight against the ISIL terrorist group. The money should be spent for the training and arming of the so-called moderate rebels in Syria for two years and for the training and assisting of Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

Earlier this month, US Vice President Joe Biden announced that the Obama administration had provided Israel with more than $17 billion in military aid since 2008.

Never one to hold back when it comes to corrupt big government agencies, former Congressman Ron Paul said Tuesday that the world would be a much better place if the CIA were completely abolished.

Responding in part to the release of the Summary of the forthcoming Senate report on CIA torture, and also to an impending possible government shutdown, Paul stated “my government shutdown would be something to be proud of.”

“Abolish the NSA, the TSA, the CIA and all spying on American citizens.” Paul urged.

President Obama’s approval ratings among Hispanic Americans has leaped double digit numbers since he signed the immigration presidential executive order.

US peace activist Kathy Kelly has been sentenced to 3 months prison for her criticism of the US drone programme in Afghanistan on the 10th December.

Considered to be Human Rights Day, peace activist Kathy Kelly was sentenced on the 10th December to 3 months prison by the US Federal court.

According to the Centre for Global Research the defence said that “The punishment for our attempt to speak on behalf of trapped and desperate people, abroad, will be an opportunity to speak with people trapped by prisons and impoverishment here in the U.S”

The US is poised to impose sanctions on Venezuela over the sometimes-violent suppression of anti-government protests which racked the country earlier this year.

The $1.1 trillion federal spending bill rammed through Congress provides a half-billion dollars to arm and train ISIS-linked Syrian rebels who could potentially launch terrorist attacks against the U.S.

"CIA official says former U.S. President George Bush was fully in formed of the intelligence agency's torture programme and Identified a number of Washington officials who were aware of programme." click here

Have we had enough yet? Are we ready to grab some courage and face the facts?

The information above comes from the British newspaper the Dailymail.co.uk

The Times.co.uk leads with the headline: "Bush knew all about torture, insists CIA" click here

Has any U.S. mainstream paper provided this information?

Russia has slammed the US Senate for ratifying a bill that allows Washington to provide lethal military aid to Ukraine, saying such a move is aimed at destroying cooperation between the two neighbors.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, today plans to introduce into the Congressional Record important new information about how Bush administration officials misled the nation in advance of the Iraq War, and called on CIA Director John Brennan to fully declassify an important 2003 CIA cable.

Levin will introduce a letter he received from CIA Director John Brennan, declassifying for the first time some details of a March 2003 CIA cable warning the Bush administration against references to the allegation that Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, had met before the attacks in Prague, Czech Republic, with an Iraqi intelligence officer. He also introduced a translated excerpt from a book by the former head of Czech counterintelligence, describing U.S. pressure to confirm that the meeting took place. In fact, no such meeting occurred. And he called on Brennan to fully declassify the CIA cable.

US Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann says she told President Barack Obama this week that he must bomb Iran, but the president laughed at her.

A story about the fire at the heart of suffering.
Bringing together dancers, musicians, visual artists and 3d animators, the film takes a critical look at current events. A mysterious figure travels aboard his boat through a dark and desolate landscape in his quest for inner peace.

Hawaii hopes it has an offer Honolulu-born President Barack Obama won't be able to turn down.

It hopes to build him a presidential library on the ocean, with a dramatic view of his hometown's famed Diamond Head volcanic crater. The state's abundant sunshine would generate solar power and support vegetable gardens on site.

A freight train carrying a whole column of American armored vehicles has been caught on camera in Latvia. Dalbe Railway Station, where the train was reportedly spotted several days ago, is less than 300km from the Russian border.

The train was carrying at least 38 vehicles and several semitrailers, including eight Bradley Fighting Vehicles, nine M113 Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs), four petrol tankers, Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks (HEMTTs), High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVs), an M88 Hercules Armory recovery vehicle, a couple of trucks, some tactical engineering and medical vehicles, at least four containers and a pair of railcars with ammunition.

The Pentagon is considering the re-deployment of nuclear cruise missiles in Europe in response to a new Russian cruise missile that the United States has charged violates a 1987 nuclear treaty, a senior Pentagon official told Congress on Wednesday.

For most of the past year, Mitt Romney supporters have publicly said he should consider running again. And for most of the past year, Romney has seemed uninterested.

Until recently.

After listening to CIA director John Brennan’s long-winded attempt at community relations today, only three words come to mind…

Ya vol Commandant!

And then maybe these two words, “Verschärfte Vernehmung”. As it happens, those two German words are straight out of the Gestapo’s own manual on torture. Translated from German to English, it means, ‘enhanced interrogation’ - you get that fancy term we keep hearing about this week, you know, that thing that’s ‘keeping America safe’.

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee released new information on Thursday that he claims is evidence that the Bush administration misled the nation in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

In a speech on the Senate floor, retiring Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., outlined a 2003 CIA cable that warns George W. Bush administration officials against making references to claims that Mohammad Atta - the man who led the 9/11 hijackers - met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech Republic before the Sept. 11, 2011, attacks. Levin claims Bush officials used the unconfirmed meeting to link Iraq to 9/11 to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has released new information claiming the Bush administration misled the American people in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said on Thursday that a 2003 CIA cable warns the administration of former President George W. Bush against making reference to claims that Mohammad Atta – the leader of the 9/11 hijackers – had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech Republic before the attacks.

Levin, who is retiring, maintains that Bush officials used the unconfirmed meeting to link Iraq to 9/11 and Al-Qaeda in order to justify the US invasion in Iraq.

The United States House of Representatives has been in an emergency recess since 2 p.m. as dissent on both sides of the aisle grows for the "CRomnibus" spending bill.

In an extraordinary appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry outlined the Obama administration’s demand for a congressional resolution to authorize military action in Iraq and Syria that would be unlimited in scope, time frame and methods.

Over the past six years, Chicago has become a top potential target for international terrorists, a top security expert said Friday, making the posting of a veiled threat by Islamic radicals on Twitter a higher cause for concern.

Last spring, Palin appeared before an NRA convention crowd and laughed about how liberals supposedly coddle America's mortal adversaries. "Oh, but you can't offend them, can't make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen," said Palin. "Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists," The NRA audience roared with approval, but even some conservative commentators who saw the tape of Palin's wisecrack took offense, upset that she had linked bodily torture with a Christian sacrament. ("It's disgusting.")

Palin, of course, hardly stands alone among conservative media commentators who have spent years not only downplaying the grievous practice of torture adopted by the Bush administration, but who have routinely made light of the cruel tactic previously banned by the United States.

White House spokesperson Josh Earnest announced that US President Barack Obama shares the US Department of Justice decision that no prosecutable crime had been committed by the CIA officers.

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colorado) blasted both the CIA and the White House on Wednesday over what the lawmaker considers to be complicity with regards to propagating long-standing lies about the United States’ use of torture against foreign detainees.

Speaking on the Senate floor merely 24 hours after the chamber’s Intelligence Committee released its long-awaited report on the CIA’s past use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Udall – an adamant critic of the torture program described in detail within this week’s report – called on CIA Director John Brennan to resign from his role, while also urging US President Barack Obama to ensure that the full truth about the agency’s past policies be officially acknowledged.

I have received many emails regarding the various articles I have written about the problems with the current economic system of being forced to borrow all currency at interest from a privately-owned central bank. This is, of course, the very system of banking the United States fought a revolution to be free of, only to be sold back into said banker slavery not just once, but three times by corrupted congresses and corrupted presidents.

I have been asked to collect all those articles into a single page to make it easier for people to send to their friends, and this collection is the result.

With school districts around the nation dropping the federal nutrition program backed by Michelle Obama, despite the fact that doing so means a drastic reduction in funding, it is clear that many affected by its mandates are not on board. Students have staged protests against the insufficient, unappetizing fare being offered in lunchrooms, administrators cite the loss in revenue associated with reduced school lunch participation, and parents lament the dearth of choices being presented.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s extensive use of torture reveals that the agency regularly misled the White House and Congress about the information it had obtained from detainees and used techniques that are far more brutal than it — or former Bush administration officials — had previously acknowledged.

For instance, President George W. Bush insisted that “[t]his government does not torture people” and claimed that the intelligence it produced was instrumental to preventing terrorism on American soil and capturing high-value targets, including Osama bin Laden. But the Committee’s five year investigation — and examination of more than six million CIA documents — reveals all of those assertions to be false.

Congressional leaders were trying to hold the center in the run-up to Thursday’s government shutdown deadline, with Senate Democrats and House Republicans pleading for their troops to back a $1.1 trillion spending bill that had those on both extremes of the ideological spectrum fuming.

House Republican leaders touted dents to the Internal Revenue Service budget and Environmental Protection Agency staffing levels, language that stalls some of President Obama’s plans to battle climate change, and the chance to fight the White House’s deportation amnesty next year as reasons to get behind the massive 1,600-page bill.

Early this year, in Denver (Colorado) ex-Israeli soldier Eran Efrati, explained how Israel Occupation Force (IOF) have militarized foreign law enforcement agencies in countries like the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, Brazil, Turkey, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, Nigeria, India, etc. “Israeli soldiers are intensely trained for a war, whilst their actual military duties are to subdue and control Palestinians,” he said.

Over the last several months, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has been giving speeches, campaigning for candidates, appearing at public forums, and meeting with wealthy donors, which has led many people to believe that he may soon enter the race to become the next Republican presidential nominee. On Dec.?1, Bush told a gathering of business leaders at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington that he would make a decision about his political future “in short order.” But Bush’s recent business ventures reveal that he shares a number of liabilities with the last nominee, Mitt Romney, whose career in private equity proved so politically damaging that it sunk his candidacy.