Watch as Irish journalist Vincent Browne makes a valiant effort to get a straight answer from European Central Bank spokesman Klaus Masuch about why ordinary Irish people are being forced to fork over billions to bondholders to 'save the Euro'.

From mikopeled.com:

"Miko was born in Jerusalem in 1961 into a well known Zionist family. His grandfather, Dr. Avraham Katsnelson was a Zionist leader and signer on the Israeli Declaration of Independence. His father, Matti Peled was a young officer in the war of 1948 and a general in the war of 1967 when Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and the Sinai.

Miko's unlikely opinions reflect his father's legacy. General Peled was a war hero turned peacemaker. The general clearly stated that contrary to claims made later, the 1967 war was one of choice, and not because there was no existential threat to the state of Israel. He then dedicated his life to the achievement of Israeli Palestinian peace.

For over a decade, under multiple administrations, the U.S. government had a secret agreement with the ruthless Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed it to operate with impunity, an in-depth investigation by a leading Mexican newspaper confirmed this week. In exchange for information and assistance in quashing competing criminal syndicates, the Bush and Obama administrations let the Sinaloa cartel import tons of drugs into the United States while wiping out Sinaloa competitors and ensuring that its leaders would not be prosecuted for their long list of major crimes. Other revelations also point strongly to massive but clandestine U.S. government involvement in drug trafficking.

Relying on over 100 interviews with current and former government functionaries on both sides of the border, as well as official documents from the U.S. and Mexican governments, Mexico's El Universal concluded that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the U.S. Justice Department had secretly worked with Mexican drug lords. The controversial conspiring led to increased violence across Mexico, where many tens of thousands have been murdered in recent years, the newspaper found after its year-long probe. The U.S. agents and their shady deals with Mexican drug lords even sparked what the paper called a "secret war" inside Mexico.

The newspaper's investigation also confirmed long-held suspicions that U.S. authorities were signing secret agreements with Mexican drug cartels - especially Sinaloa, which CIA operatives have said was a favorite for use in achieving geo-political objectives. Supposedly without the knowledge or approval of officials in Mexico, ICE and DEA, with a green light from Washington, D.C., made deals with criminal bosses allowing them to avoid prosecution for a vast crime spree that has included mass murder, corruption, bribery, drug trafficking, extortion, and more. In exchange, cartel leaders simply had to help U.S. officials eliminate their competitors - certainly a win-win scenario for crime bosses who prefer to operate without competition or fear of prosecution.

Estanislao Beltran, spokesman of the General Council and Community Self-Defense Forces of Michoacán, said the army opened fire on civilians, killing four people including a girl of eleven years.

According to Beltran, members of the Army gunned at least eleven people in the community Antunez in the municipality of Parácuaro.

Process envoy, Jose Gil Olmos confirmed the names of two dead: Rodrigo Benitez Perez Perez Mario 25 and 50, both laborers originating Antunez Parácuaro Township.

In an interview with journalist Carmen Aristegui, Estanislao Beltran rejected that the self-defense groups intend to lay down their arms, as requested by the federal government.

The U.S. Supreme Court today issued a decision in the landmark federal lawsuit, Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA) et al v. Monsanto. Farmers were denied the right to argue their case in court and gain protection from potential abuse by the agrochemical and genetic engineering giant, Monsanto. Additionally, the high court decision dashes the hopes of family farmers who sought the opportunity to prove in court Monsanto's genetically engineered seed patents are invalid.

"While the Supreme Court's decision to not give organic and other non-GMO farmers the right to seek preemptive protection from Monsanto's patents at this time is disappointing, it should not be misinterpreted as meaning that Monsanto has the right to bring such suits," said Daniel Ravicher, executive director of the Public Patent Foundation and lead counsel to the plaintiffs in OSGATA et al v. Monsanto.

"Indeed, in light of the Court of Appeals decision, Monsanto may not sue any contaminated farmer for patent infringement if the level of contamination is less than one percent," Ravicher explained. "For farmers contaminated by more than one percent, perhaps a day will come to address whether Monsanto's patents may be asserted against them. We are confident that if the courts ever hear such a case, they will rule for the non-GMO farmers."

Nancy Schaefer, former Georgia State Senator and President of Eagle Forum of Georgia and Eagle Forum's National Chairman of Parents' Rights, often spoke out against the corruption of Child Protective Services (CPS) in an effort to draw attention to widespread pedophilia and sex crimes against children in the United States.

She gave the following speech to the World Congress of Families in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on August 15, 2009 on the subject of 'The Unlimited Power of Child Protective Services', explaining to over 4,000 attendees from some 60 countries how the CPS itself is a threat to children and families not only in the U. S., but in many other countries that have patterned their Child Protective Services, Foster Care, Family Court and Adoption Services after the U.S. and supplied, with taxpayer dollars, the financial incentives to turn all Child Protective Services into a lucrative business.

Part 1:

They're called Special Operation Forces - and they're everywhere

"Dude, I don't need to play these stupid games. I know what you're trying to do." With that, Major Matthew Robert Bockholt hung up on me.

More than a month before, I had called U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) with a series of basic questions: In how many countries were U.S. Special Operations Forces deployed in 2013? Are manpower levels set to expand to 72,000 in 2014? Is SOCOM still aiming for growth rates of 3%-5% per year? How many training exercises did the command carry out in 2013? Basic stuff.

And for more than a month, I waited for answers. I called. I left messages. I emailed. I waited some more. I started to get the feeling that Special Operations Command didn't want me to know what its Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs and Delta Force commandos - the men who operate in the hottest of hotspots and most remote locales around the world - were doing.

Then, at the last moment, just before my filing deadline, Special Operations Command got back to me with an answer so incongruous, confusing, and contradictory that I was glad I had given up on SOCOM and tried to figure things out for myself.

The New York Times this morning has an extraordinary 13-minute video from a team of reporters including the independent journalist Jonathan Franklin, and an accompanying article by Mark Mazzetti, about the heroic anti-war activists who broke into an FBI field office in 1971 and took all of the documents they could get their hands on, and then sent those documents to newspapers, including the New York Times and Washington Post.

Some of those documents exposed J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO program, aimed at quashing internal political dissent through surveillance, infiltration and other tactics. Those revelations ultimately led to the creation of the Church Committee in the mid-1970s and various reforms. The background on the Church Committee's COINTELPRO findings and the "burglary" operation which exposed it is here.

With the statute of limitations elapsed on their "crimes", ones the FBI could never solve, the courageous perpetrators have now unveiled themselves. The NYT story is based on a new book by Post reporter Betsy Medsger and the forthcoming documentary 1971 (of which my journalistic partner, Laura Poitras, is an Exective Producer). There are four crucial points to note:

In an agreement reached with the Defense Ministry, the latter will pay 21 million NIS to a fund assisting IDF soldiers who were used in an anthrax experiment during their service. Each of the 716 participants in the voluntary experiment will be awarded 27,000 NIS as per the agreement reached and accepted by a district court.

The Omer 2 program refers to IDF experimentation fifteen years ago as the nation was concerned with threats of missiles armed with anthrax warheads. Hundreds of soldiers from different units took part in the program. The case has been in the district court for six years until the agreement was reached.

Many of the participants in Omer 2 feel that military used them as it wished and then forgot about them.

The governor of the US state of New Jersey, Chris Christie, is being investigated over the use of Superstorm Sandy relief funds.

Federal officials are looking into whether Mr Christie misused some of those funds to produce tourism adverts.

Advertising agency Sigma Group lost out to MWW for a campaign proclaiming the state was "stronger than the storm".

Mr Christie is also being sued over claims his office created gridlock on a bridge as part of a political vendetta.

Mr Christie, who is seen as a potential Republican presidential candidate, is being audited by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to determine if Sandy funds were misappropriated to finance an advertising campaign during an election year.