US citizens' privacy will be protected even as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) prepares additional efforts to counter the "new phase" in the threat of global terrorism, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson told Sputnik on Friday.

"The thing that is the greatest strength in our country is...our values in our privacy, our freedom to associate," Johnson told Sputnik when asked about the agency's planned response to the renewed global terror threat. "Those [values] we have to preserve."

Asked whether the next phase in US counter-terrorism and intelligence efforts would bring increased infringements on US citizens' privacy, Johnson explained that homeland security is a balance between ensuring civil liberties and basic security. "It's striking a balance," he added.

Days after China and Japan took a step closer to setting up a consultative mechanism to govern contacts in the East China Sea, Beijing on Thursday criticised Japan's "denials" of its wartime atrocities.

"It is irrefutable that the Nanjing Massacre was a cruel crime that the Japanese militarists committed during Japan's war on China. Any attempts to overturn its past aggression only erode Japan's international credit," China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a daily press briefing on Thursday in Beijing.

Hong's comments came one day after the Kyodo news agency quoted Japanese government sources as saying Japan told China in late December that it was "not appropriate for Chinese President Xi Jinping to state that the number of victims of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre totaled 300,000″.

With a year-and-a-half to go until Rio de Janeiro hosts the next Olympic Games, Brazilian counter terrorism officials say they are prepared for a "lone wolf " attack during the Games, but they think it is unlikely to happen.

Brazil has raised the terrorist threat level for the Summer Olympic Games it will host in 2016 following the recent terror attacks in Paris, said Luiz Alberto Sallaberry, the director of the counter-terrorism department at the Brazilian Intelligence Agency.

"We have no terrorist cells, but there are certain people who can lend assistance to such groups or aid logistically," he said in an interview with Brazilian news site G1 on Thursday.

On 12 January, the French Parliament approved - with near-unanimity; there was just one abstention - the budget for France's continued and enlarged involvement in the 'New War on Iraq' (what number are we on now, Iraq War IV?), a new war engagement led by Washington and supported by its most obedient vassals: the UK, Canada, Australia and France. Aircraft carriers and troops were immediately mobilized, not even losing a day. Doesn't that conspicuously smell of an earlier preparation, just waiting for that crucial and appropriate event, prompting parliamentary approval?

At the same time French lawmakers agreed to display 10,000 troops throughout the country to protect 'vulnerable places'; spying on citizens, for their protection takes on new forms and formats. Was this a direct reaction to the attack on Charlie Hebdo on January 7, and the assault on a kosher supermarket on January 9? Killing 17 people in all? Is that it?

French Ministers of the Interior and of Defense have advanced their respective wishes for substantially increased military and defense budgets when the 2016-2017 allocations are discussed later this year. No doubt they will get their way.

No doubt, this is the Shock Doctrine at its best. People are in shock and awe following the assault on the satirical and Moslem-insulting Charlie Hebdo. A million and a half people took to the streets in Paris this past weekend, the largest manifestation since the liberation of Paris after WWII in 1945. Some media report more than 6 million people marching throughout Europe. Almost all waving "I am Charlie" signs - was this solidarity, or stupidity? Hard to say. Most likely just sheer ignorance.

It's ignorance that kills our democracies, our human values; public ignorance allows leaders (sic) to wage wars, to aggress nations that refuse to submit and fall to their knees. It's ignorance perpetuated daily by the mainstream media and swallowed without question, day-in, day-out, like breakfast coffee.

I was in the middle of working on an article covering real U.S. economic stats versus manipulated statistics when the Charlie Hebdo shootings took place. And though I knew the implications of the event would be far-reaching, I was originally undeterred from my financial subject matter. I had already covered in previous articles the inevitability of ISIS attacks on Europe and America,including the "warnings" of Saudi Arabia in August of last year that jihadists would target the EU within months and the U.S. a month later.

In September of last year, ISIS publicly urged attacks on French and U.S. citizens.

I have also published extensive analysis on the covert funding and training of ISIS militants by Saudi Arabia and Western intelligence agencies, including my article "The Time Is Ripe For A False Flag Attack On American Soil."

Israeli hostilities against Syria should be considered an attack on all of Damascus' allies, said Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, warning that all necessary preparations for a future war with Israel have been made.

"The repeated bombings that struck several targets in Syria are a major violation, and we consider that any strike against Syria is a strike against the whole of the resistance axis, not just against Syria," Nasrallah told Al-Mayadeen television in Beirut.

"The axis is capable of responding," he said, referring to Syria itself, Iran, Hezbollah as well as Palestinian Hamas. "It could happen any time."

"We are now stronger than we ever were as a resistance movement," Nasrallah said, adding that Hezbollah has all the weapons one can "imagine" in "great quantities." The organization is fully prepared to fight Israel, and it would be a mistake for Tel Aviv to believe the resistance has been weakened or exhausted, he warned.

The International Criminal Court in the Hague has opened a "preliminary examination" of possible war crimes conducted on Palestinian territory during the last year's military conflict with Israel in Gaza.

A preliminary examination is the first step in the court's legal process, and evaluates whether a full investigation is necessary.

In a statement released on the ICC website, its Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda promised that her office "will conduct its analysis in full independence and impartiality," mentioning that no deadline has been set for announcing the results of the investigation.

At our house, the most interesting conversations take place around the breakfast table before we begin our day's work. The topics range from weird animal behavior to politics and everything in between. (Hmmm... in fact, "weird animal behavior" and "politics" may have more in common than one initially suspects!) Well, anyway, this morning the conversation led to an observation by one of the family members that everything is like I described in one of the chapters of The Wave some 16 years ago, that we can look out the window and see cars passing, birds hopping around, people going about their business as though everything was still the same, but it isn't; and knowing that it isn't the same can have a profound, visceral effect on a person.

In The Wave, I was addressing the issue of becoming aware, via collecting evidence and connecting dots, that our reality may be/must be embedded in some bizarre 'hyperdimensional reality', and that we live our lives similar to the example given by Plato in his story of The Cave. Reading about such things as Platonic realms of ideas is an interesting intellectual exercise, but for me, and many others, it is a visceral experience. Anyway, the passage in question goes as follows:

Translated into English for SOTT.net by the author

In an interview with the Montenegrin National News Agency (MINA), published 10 January 2015, the Chairman of the Movement for Neutrality of Montenegro (MNMNE), Professor Filip Kovacevic, stated that, in the first part of 2014, many government officials and their "Atlanticist mentors and highly-paid lobbyists" claimed that Montenegro would get an invitation to join NATO at the organization's summit in Wales last September.

"At the same time, I publicly stated that this would not happen. Now it is easy to see who was right. Getting the invitation depends on the overall geopolitical dynamic in Europe," said Kovacevic, asserting that we would see more and more skepticism toward the policies of Washington, especially given the open confrontation with Russia, which came about as a result of US imposition of its Atlanticist, neoliberal priorities on the European Union, which caused a great deal of economic damage.

According to Kovacevic, this means that NATO's influence, whose only reason for existing is "the military occupation and intelligence surveillance of Europe by the Anglo-American, imperial centers of power", will gradually weaken.

"In line with this trend, NATO will not have enough strength to expand further and it will find it more and more difficult to keep even the present member states together," said Kovacevic.

Members of the North Miami Beach Police have been caught using photos of actual black teenagers for target practice.

This was discovered during an incident last month when Sgt. Valerie Deant, a clarinet player in the Florida Army National Guard's 13th Army Band, showed up at the Medley Firearms Training Center after members of the department had been practicing, and recognized one of their targets - a mugshot of her brother from when he was just 18-years-old.

The other targets were also black men, and some just teenagers. But now the department is defending the practice.