English-speaking jihadis seen in Mali, as a Canadian is reported to have co-ordinated Algeria attack.

Canada is investigating an allegation by the Algerian Prime Minister that one of its citizens co-ordinated the terror raid at the Saharan gas plant in which dozens of hostages were killed.

Westerners, including a man with blond hair and blue eyes, are believed to have been among the Islamist militants who launched last week's attack on the Tigantourine complex near Algeria's border with Libya.

A French jihadist, previously unknown to authorities, and two Canadians are suspected to have been involved in the hostage-taking, and reports also claim that a man with a Western accent was among the extremists who lured terrified gas workers from their rooms during the hostage crisis.

Abby Martin takes a look at America's history of government infiltration in news media, from the CIA's 1950s secret cold-war program, dubbed 'Operation Mockingbird', through to paid Pentagon online trolls today.

We are outraged not by the massacre of the innocents, but because the hostages killed were largely white, blue-eyed chaps rather than darker, brown-eyed chaps

Odd, isn't it, how our "collateral damage" is different from their "collateral damage". Speaking yesterday to an old Algerian friend in the aviation business, I asked him what he thought of his country's raid on the In Amenas gas plant."Brilliant operation, Robert," he shouted down the phone. "We destroyed the terrorists!" But the innocent hostages? What about their deaths, I asked? "Poor guys," he replied. "We had thousands of women and children killed in our war [in the 1990s] - terrible tragedy - but we are fighting terrorism."

And there you have it. Our dead men didn't matter in the slightest to him. And he had a point, didn't he? For we are outraged today, not by the massacre of the innocents, but because the hostages killed by the Algerian army - along with some of their captors - were largely white, blue-eyed chaps rather than darker, brown-eyed chaps. Had all the "Western" hostages - I am including the Japanese in this ridiculous, all-purpose definition - been rescued and had the innocent dead all been Algerian, there would have been no talk yesterday of a "botched raid".

In pre-dawn darkness, a ­Toyota Land Cruiser skidded off a bridge in North Africa in the spring, plunging into the Niger River. When rescuers arrived, they found the bodies of three U.S. Army commandos - alongside three dead women.

What the men were doing in the impoverished country of Mali, and why they were still there a month after the United States suspended military relations with its government, is at the crux of a mystery that officials have not fully explained even 10 weeks later.

At the very least, the April 20 accident exposed a team of Special Operations forces that had been working for months in Mali, a Saharan country racked by civil war and a rising Islamist insurgency. More broadly, the crash has provided a rare glimpse of elite U.S. commando units in North Africa, where they have been secretly engaged in counterterrorism actions against al-Qaeda affiliates.

The Obama administration has not publicly acknowledged the existence of the missions, although it has spoken in general about plans to rely on Special Operations forces as a cornerstone of its global counterterrorism strategy. In recent years, the Pentagon has swelled the ranks and resources of the Special Operations Command, which includes such units as the Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force, even as the overall number of U.S. troops is shrinking.

History Repeats ...

In the classic history of Nazi Germany, They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer writes:

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

Similarly, America has - little by little - gone from a nation of laws to a nation of powerful men making laws in secret. Indeed, even Congress doesn't know half of what others are doing.

The following documentary provides compelling evidence of deep and disturbing connections between intelligence agencies, abusive cults, and the failure of government anti-cult organizations like MIVILUDES to investigate the widespread reports of ritual child abuse around the world.

Just as the 'war on terrorism' - conducted by the biggest perpetrators of terrorism - has been used to justify the removal of our civil liberties, governments around the world are clamping down on alternative lifestyle choices - irrespective of whether or not they are actually beneficial choices - under the guise of protecting people from 'cultic deviances'. Meanwhile they have consistently covered up, whether at local or national levels, the most horrific sex crimes, including what can only be described as satanic ritual abuse and truly cultic deviance, committed against children as young as new-born infants by what are clearly organised, powerful and ruthless individuals.

NOTE: This video contains information that many viewers will find extremely disturbing, involving the ritual abuse of children.

Aaron Swartz, the computer programmer and internet freedom activist, committed suicide on Friday in New York at the age of 26. As the incredibly moving remembrances from his friends such as Cory Doctorow and Larry Lessig attest, he was unquestionably brilliant but also - like most everyone - a complex human being plagued by demons and flaws. For many reasons, I don't believe in whitewashing someone's life or beatifying them upon death. But, to me, much of Swartz's tragically short life was filled with acts that are genuinely and, in the most literal and noble sense, heroic. I think that's really worth thinking about today.

At the age of 14, Swartz played a key role in developing the RSS software that is still widely used to enable people to manage what they read on the internet. As a teenager, he also played a vital role in the creation of Reddit, the wildly popular social networking news site. When Conde Nast purchased Reddit, Swartz received a substantial sum of money at a very young age. He became something of a legend in the internet and programming world before he was 18. His path to internet mogul status and the great riches it entails was clear, easy and virtually guaranteed: a path which so many other young internet entrepreneurs have found irresistible, monomaniacally devoting themselves to making more and more money long after they have more than they could ever hope to spend.

But rather obviously, Swartz had little interest in devoting his life to his own material enrichment, despite how easy it would have been for him. As Lessig wrote: "Aaron had literally done nothing in his life 'to make money' . . . Aaron was always and only working for (at least his conception of) the public good."

In 2010 our friend was raped/sexually assaulted by a U.S. Marine she was dating and had just come back from deployment to Camp Pendleton. She didn't go to the police immediately because this Marine used a tactic he was taught by the Marines to premeditate and get out of being reported. And this was by their own admission.

We knew something was wrong when she came back from the trip because she wasn't acting like herself and was having trouble being out with friends immediately. She also told us the sex was scary. We didn't know about the rape/sexual assault until she knew she had to contact the base after continued threats and erratic and unstable behavior, she told us she was going to have to tell them what he did to her. It took months for us to learn the details, and lots of crying and alcohol. We knew she had been concerned about his mental health during deployment from things she had started to witness before he deployed. He had started to use drugs again, his behavior was slightly erratic and she wasn't sure if it was fear or his mental health. He was saying how they would tell them women would cheat and break up with them during deployment all the time, and things like his facebook page saying his political view was "killing bodies." (Click here)

But before we go into the story know that this Marine had a criminal record for drugs before he enlisted. (Click here) He told our friend this month's after they started dating and had said he was clean. However this Marine continued to do them along with several other Marines while they served our country under the guise of heroes.

Ry Dawson dissects AJ's latest insane rant during his appearance on CNN's Piers Morgan TV show, an appearance that was clearly intended to discredit all alternative political views as the delusions of crazed conspiracy theorists .

It seems that empathic leadership is increasingly being devalued in organizations. While the great minds of leadership extol the virtues of engaged, supportive "show me that you care" approaches, it appears that many organizations want to embrace a much different set of values.

Psychopathic leadership seems to be the new shiny thing that is taking some public and private sector organizations by storm. In tough economic times, it would appear that the answer lies with having leaders that exude a bullying narcissism instead of empathy and trust.

The question is why?

It's been shown for decades that truly great organizations are led by individuals who care deeply about the people working for them as well as the bottom line. CEO Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines is often held up as an example of this approach to empathic leadership. Stephen Covey, in his seminal 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, taught that great leaders are those who have integrity, character, empathy and lead by principles such as honesty and transparency.

I am perplexed how the psychopaths even get a job interview, let alone the job.

Part of the answer is surely the increasing push to short-termism. The need for an immediate financial or productivity turnaround to satisfy shareholders or government overseers often leads organizations to find someone with a clear, "take charge" personality.