Lee Harvey Oswald was your typical America-hating communist from Louisiana, and like every Russkie-loving pinko from the South he grew up watching American spy dramas, volunteered for a Civilian Air Patrol run by a CIA contract agent and joined the US Marines. Nicknamed Oswaldski for his tendency to speak Russian and spout pro-Soviet propaganda, he was given special training and assigned to one of the most sensitive facilities in the world running the radar for the U2s spying on the Russkies and the ChiComs. After contracting gonorrhea in the line of duty, Oswald was tested for Russian proficiency before being honorably discharged to take care of his mother who wasn't ill and flew to Europe using money he didn't have on planes that didn't exist to arrive at Helsinki, where he stayed at the most luxurious hotel in town before waltzing into the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. While there he kept a detailed log of Soviet facilities, made notes about microdots, and carried a CIA standard-issue Minox camera, before getting bored and returning to the United States on a military jet using money loaned to him from the US Embassy.

A U.S. government contractor kidnapped by al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan in 2011 has recorded a video message calling on the Obama administration to negotiate with his captors, saying he feels "totally abandoned and forgotten."

Warren Weinstein looked ashen and sounded lethargic as he pleaded for renewed interest in his case and asked the U.S. government to consider releasing al-Qaeda militants in its custody. The 72-year-old development expert from Rockville, Md., began his address by urging President Obama to step up efforts to get him released.

"You are now in your second term as president of the United States and that means that you can take hard decisions without worrying about reelection," said Weinstein, who was recorded sitting against a white wall wearing a gray tracksuit top and a black woolen hat. No one else appeared in the video.

The video, which included the yellow logo of As-Sahab, al-Qaeda's media production outlet, was sent in an anonymous e-mail to several journalists who have reported from Afghanistan. Included were links to a handwritten note that purports to be from Weinstein, saying "Letter to Media" at the top. The note is dated Oct. 3. It is not clear when the video was made.

A State Department spokeswoman and a member of Weinstein's family said Wednesday night that they had not independently received the note or video. The Washington Post provided a copy to both of them.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf later said that U.S. officials were "working hard to authenticate" the contents of the message.

"We reiterate our call that Warren Weinstein be released and returned to his family," she said in a statement. "Particularly during this holiday season - another one away from his family - our hopes and prayers are with him and those who love and miss him."

Palestinians and Israelis have met more than twenty times since July 2013 with little progress. Israel security issues dwarfed the final status negotiators while it continued to build, at an accelerated rate, "Jewish only" colonies undermining the very peace talks.

Fearing its collapse, US Secretary of State John Kerry amassed earlier this month a team of 160 American diplomats and security specialists led by General John Allen, former commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, to draft a framework "that could help both Israelis and Palestinians get to an agreement."
Inarguably, President Barak Obama and Secretary Kerry are much more serious on pushing a peace agreement than any previous U.S. administration. Nevertheless, they have proven equally powerless overcoming Israel's mercurial demands.

Since Oslo, Palestinians have endorsed all of the U.S. and Israeli pre-conditions, starting with UN resolution 242, the recognition of Israel and annulling the Palestinian National Charter without any reciprocal recognition of their rights by Israel.

Today, Israel is requesting to prequalify previous Palestinian recognition of it, not just as a nation of people, but as an ethnocentric 'Jewish state'. It is also demanding that any future peace agreement must codify its occupation of parts of the West Bank - the Jordan River valley - under a euphemism called "security arrangements."

Preface: D.C. and the mainstream media are trumpeting the passage of a budget bill as a victory for bipartisanship and the American people. But the truth is very different.

Military Spending Is Destroying Our Economy

We've repeatedly documented that military waste and fraud are the core problems with the U.S. economy.

For example, we've noted that we wouldn't be in a budget crisis in the first place if we hadn't spent so much money on unnecessary wars ... which are killing our economy.

But it goes far beyond actual fighting. We could easily slash the military and security budget without reducing our national security.

For example, homeland security agencies wasted money on seminars like "Did Jesus Die for Klingons Too?" and training for a "zombie apocalypse" instead of actually focusing on anti-terror efforts.

Republican Senator Tom Coburn notes that the Department of Defense can reduce $67.9 billion over 10 years by eliminating the non-defense programs that have found their way into the budget for the Department of Defense.

BusinessWeek and Bloomberg point out that we could slash military spending without harming our national security. Indeed, we could slash boondoggles that even the generals don't want.

There has been yet another violent attack with mass casualties. This was not the act of a lone gunman, or of an armed student rampaging through a school. It was a group of families en route to a wedding that was killed. The town was called Radda - not in Colorado, not in Connecticut, but in Yemen. The weapon was not an easy-to-obtain semiautomatic weapon, but missiles fired from U.S. drones. On Thursday, Dec. 12, 17 people were killed, mostly civilians. The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has consistently tracked U.S. drone attacks, recently releasing a report on the six months following President Barack Obama's major address on drone warfare before the National Defense University (NDU) last May. In that speech, Obama promised that "before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured - the highest standard we can set." The BIJ summarized, "Six months after President Obama laid out U.S. rules for using armed drones, a Bureau analysis shows that covert drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have killed more people than in the six months before the speech." In a nation that abhors the all-too-routine mass killing in our communities, why does our government consistently kill so many innocents abroad?

One significant problem with assessing the U.S. drone-warfare program is its secrecy. U.S. officials rarely comment on the program, less so about any specific attack, especially where civilian deaths occur. As Obama admitted in the speech, "There's a wide gap between U.S. assessments of such casualties and nongovernmental reports. Nevertheless, it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties." The BIJ's estimate of the death toll from U.S. drone strikes during the past 12 years in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia is well over 4,000.

The Raptr hovers stubbornly at an altitude of about 100 feet despite a lashing Oklahoma wind, its 73-inch rotor blades whirring like a swarm of buzzing bees. Then handler Curtis Sprague disconnects the remote device that he is using to control the mini-helicopter, leaving the pilotless aircraft to move entirely under its own steam - a flying robot let loose in the clear blue sky. The unmanned plane does a pirouette, then flies back to the spot from which it was launched. It lowers itself slowly to the runway, landing with a slight shudder before switching itself off.

Equipped with a military-grade autopilot that can make up to 500 flight corrections per second even as it carries out fully-autonomous surveillance of an area with a 10-mile radius, the Raptr is one of a new generation of drones now poised to burst onto the civilian scene. The helicopter's ability to transmit real-time video and thermal imaging over a wide area has already attracted interest from as far afield as South Africa, where game keepers want to use it to thwart rhino poachers. (Drones are also being eyed as a means of carrying snake antivenom to the Australian outback.)

In the US, a diverse group of interests have their eyes on the technology - fire fighters combatting wild fires, police departments tracking fugitives, farmers on the watch for diseased or parched crops, TV crews filming breaking news.

© WND

'We lost control of the software. It's all going nuts'

Aaron Klein's WABC Radio show experienced what the host called a "tech meltdown" while he was conducting a live, on-air interview with the lawyer who won an injunction against the National Security Agency's collection of phone records.

Software used by the radio station dropped the guest, Larry Klayman, and listeners who had called in to ask Klayman questions were cut off in mid-sentence. Other callers could not be put on the air due to technical difficulties at the radio station.

Audio clips saved on an independent system played at the wrong time.

Klein's headphones had massive feedback that could be heard on the air.

At one point, the WABC call screener said, "We lost control of the software. It's all going nuts."

The technical difficulties started on the show about 10 minutes prior to the Klayman interview. They subsided following the two segments that featured Klayman.

"In my three years of broadcasting at WABC we never had such a technological meltdown as we are having today," Klein told the audience.

He continued: "Calls are dropping. We cant get the guests on. Once the guests are on they are dropping. We've had several meltdowns. Feedback from the microphone. I can barely broadcast. ... However we are going to land this airplane and we're going to have fun doing it."

Get Larry Klayman's fascinating account of his battle with the powers that be: "Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment"

During the interview, Klayman called NSA data collection the "worst violation of constitutional rights in American history."

The United States is sending Iraq dozens of missiles and surveillance drones to help it combat a recent surge in Al-Qaeda-backed violence, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

The weapons include a shipment of 75 Hellfire missiles purchased by Iraq, which Washington delivered to the country last week, the Times reported.

The daily wrote that 10 ScanEagle reconnaissance drones - smaller versions of the larger Predator drones that once were frequently flown over Iraq - are expected to be sent by March.

Administration sources told the Times that the delivery comes as the Iraqis had virtually run out of Hellfire missiles.

The shipments are being sent as Baghdad confronts the worst wave of Islamic militant violence in half a decade.

So you've signed up for health care on the ObamaCare exchanges. Think you're covered? Not quite.

As with any insurance plan, new enrollees still have to pay their first month's premium to lock in coverage. But the deadlines for that task are different all over the country, adding to the confusion over an already-perplexing sign-up process.

"It makes an already kind of chaotic situation even more chaotic," Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers said.

The deadlines in the ObamaCare enrollment process have been a moving target. For those seeking coverage for the start of the new year, the deadline to sign up was originally Dec. 15. Then it was moved to Dec. 23, and then again to Dec. 24. Even after that deadline passed Tuesday night, the administration announced that those who ran into technical problems on HealthCare.gov could still seek an exemption and get covered by Jan. 1.

Divide and conquer, works everytime... The Egyptian Revolution has been completely neutralized and its revolutionary energy funnelled back towards tight control of the masses by the small US-backed Egyptian elite.

Announcement criminalises all activities, financing for and membership of group from which ousted President Morsi hailed

Egypt's military-backed interim government has declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, criminalising all its activities, its financing and even membership to the group from which the country's ousted president hails.

The announcement on Wednesday is a dramatic escalation of the fight between the government and the Brotherhood, which has waged near-daily protests since the 3 July popularly backed military coup that toppled President Mohamed Morsi. An Egyptian court had banned the group in September.

Hossam Eissa, the minister of higher education, read out the cabinet statement after a long meeting, saying: "The cabinet has declared the Muslim Brotherhood group and its organisation as a terrorist organisation."