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President Obama today canceled a long-scheduled summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in part because the US president is upset that Russia defied his personal directive to hand over Edward Snowden despite the lack of an extradition treaty between the two nations. That means that US media outlets will spend the next 24 hours or so channeling the government's views (excuse the redundancy) by denouncing the Russian evil of refusing extradition. When doing so, very few, if any, establishment media accounts will mention any of these cases:
Edward Snowden
Responding to questions from Brazilian legislators about details of the files, Greenwald said, "I did not do an exact count, but he gave me 15,000, 20,000 documents. Very, very complete and very long. The stories we have published are a small portion. There will certainly be more revelations on the espionage activities of the US government and allied governments... on how they have penetrated the communications systems of Brazil and Latin America."
According to AFP, Greenwald said he could not give the Brazilian lawmakers details about the content of the files because the US government is currently conducting investigations. But he said, "The pretext [given by Washington] for the spying is only one thing: terrorism and the need to protect the [American] people. But the reality is that there are many documents which have nothing to do with terrorism or national security, but have to do with competition with other countries, in the business, industrial and economic fields."
© AP Photo/Hani MohammedA Yemeni soldier stops a car at a checkpoint in a street leading to the U.S. embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2013. Security forces close access roads, put up extra blast walls and beef up patrols near some of the 21 U.S. diplomatic missions in the Muslim world that Washington ordered closed for the weekend over a "significant threat"of an al-Qaida attack
No travel warnings were issued for Yemen citizens ahead of a US drone attack on Tuesday.
According to ABC News, Yemeni officials said a suspected US drone "fired a missile at a car carrying four men in the al-Arqeen district of Marib province, setting it on fire and killing all of them. They believed that one of the dead is Saleh Jouti, a senior al-Qaida member."
The US bombing - the latest in a string against the poverty-stricken and politically fractured nation - comes amid a global travel warning for US citizens issued by the State Department late last week and the closure of more than twenty embassies and consulates across the Middle East and North Africa.
© Jack Guez / AFP/Getty Images / February 24, 2011A plane glides toward touchdown at Eilat airport in southern Israel in 2011.
[Updated 1:28 p.m. PDT, Aug. 8: The airport was reopened about two hours later.]
The airport is predominantly used by tourists traveling to the Red Sea resort city, and the shutdown comes during the peak vacation season.
Due to the airport's proximity to the restive Sinai Peninsula, the military has from time to time closed the facility for security reasons.
Israel's military has long been concerned about the possibility that Sinai militants would attempt to shoot down Israeli airplanes using shoulder-fired missiles and recently considered equipping planes with anti-missile defenses.
The last shutdown, lasting a few hours, was in April after rocket attacks against Eilat.
The latest closure may be related to an ongoing crackdown by the Egyptian military against militants operating in the Sinai, Israeli media reported.
Back in February this report from Turkey got me interested:
The suspicious deaths of four engineers who were declared to have committed suicide might have been murder, according to a new indictment into an espionage gang within the naval forces.Was the police really interested in those suicides or was this one of those political investigations, not unheard of in Turkey, that are held simply to remove the suspects from their job?
All four men worked for ASELSAN, a defense industry giant that produces technology for the Turkish military. The deaths are being investigated again as part of the ongoing probe into a gang that faces accusations of making use of prostitutes, blackmail and espionage. There are 56 suspects in the investigation, including military officers.
Recently, the İstanbul Police Department's Anti-Organized Crime Unit requested the closed case files of Hüseyin Başbilen, Halim Ünsem Ünal and Evrim Yançeken -- who were reported to have killed themselves between 2006 and 2007 -- in order to re-launch an investigation. All three were assigned to encryption and decryption projects at ASELSAN and had worked on highly strategic projects in the past.
Comment: While Mossad's involvement in a possible assassination ploy isn't really surprising, recent report by the Turkish Prime Ministry Inspection Board citing 'telekinesis' as possible cause of mysterious suicides does add an interesting twist to the story.
© Khaled Abdullah/ReutersYemeni security forces have been deployed across Sana'a. Tribal sources and unnamed officials says US drone strikes have killed four al-Qaida operatives in Marib province
Yemeni security forces remained on high alert on Tuesday night amid fears of an imminent attack by al-Qaida in the capital, Sana'a, after the US and Britain withdrew all embassy staff and again urged their citizens to leave the country. The US state department later described a "specific and immediate threat".
BBC Arabic quoted a Yemeni military official as saying that "extraordinary and unprecedented" security measures had been put in place, with armoured vehicles deployed around the presidential palace and other sensitive government and foreign installations in the capital.
Dozens of al-Qaida operatives are said to have streamed into Sana'a in the last few days, apparently to take part in a terrorist attack, the BBC said. The Yemeni claim could not be confirmed but it appeared consistent with US statements.
Google co-founder and lab-grown meat investor Sergey Brin
Brin says he was partially motivated to invest in his lab-grown burger ventures by animal welfare concerns, saying that people imagine "pristine farms" while he's "not comfortable" with the reality of factory farming conditions. But he also thinks synthetic meat is a "transformative" technology on the "cusp of viability," even if it sounds like science fiction to the general public.
But thanks to Brin's investment in the work of Mark Post of Maastricht University, it's no longer science fiction even if it's still decades from being on the consumer market. To grow the meat, Post took muscle stem cells from living cows via a biopsy and fed it with fetal bovine serum. One barrier to the process is the $250 per liter cost of the serum, which can require as many as three cow fetuses to produce a liter.
Comment: The claim that raising livestock has negative environmental impact is hugely uninformed. Read Lierre Keith's book, The Vegetarian Myth, to get all the facts that prove that it is agriculture indeed that destroys the top soil and the entire ecosystem of the planet.
Lierre Keith on 'The Vegetarian Myth - Food, Justice and Sustainability'
The Vegetarian Myth
Maj. Nidal Hasan made that blunt declaration Tuesday at the outset of his court-martial in the 2009 massacre at Fort Hood. The Army psychiatrist is charged with killing 13 and wounding 32 at a processing center for soldiers heading into combat zones overseas.
"The evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter," Hasan told the panel of 13 senior officers who will decide his fate. "The evidence presented with this trial will show one side. The evidence will also show that I was on the wrong side. I then switched sides."
But the declaration wasn't exactly news to now-retired Staff Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, who was shot seven times that November day. Lunsford, the first of several survivors scheduled to testify against Hasan, recounted how the now-admitted gunman rose from a chair in the processing center, pulled out a pistol and began shooting.
Comment: Hasan himself may believe he was the lone shooter that day, but the evidence suggests otherwise:
Reviving the War of Terror: Patsy framed in Secret Team psy-op to generate public support for wars
Writer and activist Arundhati Roy, interviewed on Democracy Now, on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, 19 March 2013. She also says Barack Obama is no different from Bush or Blair.
If you are Monsanto, you can commit the most egregious crimes against humanity but you are never guilty of any safety violations. In Fact the EPA, FDA and USDA approve your products for public consumption.
Monsanto is a glaring example of everything that is wrong with Congress, the White House, the FDA, the EPA, the USDA, Media and Corporate America.
Representative Democracy ? Ya Right !
Comment: Propaganda Alert! Yemen on 'high alert' over warning of imminent al-Qaida attack
Yemen is America's Next Battleground
51st state of USA (UK) follows suit by ordering British subjects to leave Yemen