For a decade, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has had a tight grip on power. But it suddenly looks to be weakening. Thousands have taken to the streets across the country and the threats to Erdogan's rule are many. His reaction has revealed him to be hopelessly disconnected.

The rooftops of Istanbul can be seen in the background and next to them is a gigantic image of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey's powerful prime minister is watching over the city -- and is also monitoring the work of the political party he controls. At least that seems to be the message of the image, which can be found in a conference room at the headquarters of Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP).

These days, though, Istanbul is producing images that carry a distinctly different meaning -- images of violent protests against the vagaries of Erdogan's rule. And it is beginning to look as though the prime minister, the most powerful leader Turkey has seen since the days of modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, might be losing control.

• Two soldiers admitted offences during tour of Afghanistan
• Given anonymity after judge ruled naming them would risk their life
• Solider X was fined £1,000 after admitting pulling a child's hand to his crotch while saying 'Touch my special place'
• Soldier cleared of disgraceful conduct of an indecent kind and of forcing an Afghan girl to touch him on a separate occasion
• Soldier Y, a serving NCO, has been reduced to the ranks
• Admitted photographing man holding a racist sign that read 'Silly P*ki'

Two disgraced soldiers who abused Afghan civilians will be allowed to stay anonymous because of fears they could become victims of a 'lone wolf' attack like soldier Lee Rigby.

A 22-year-old ex-private was fined £1,000 after admitting pulling a young boy's hand towards his genitals and saying 'Touch my special place'.

His 23-year-old comrade, a serving non-commissioned officer, was demoted in rank after pleading guilty to racially insulting a local man by photographing him holding a sign reading 'Silly Paki'.

But controversially the judge at the court martial today ruled the shamed troops' names should be shrouded in secrecy following the murder of soldier Lee Rigby.

Two Islamic extremists have been charged with allegedly hacking Drummer Rigby, 25, to death with cleavers and knives outside Woolwich barracks in south east London two weeks ago.

Hillary Clinton isn't the only one in their powerful family to be raking in cash on the speakers circuit as former President Bill is scheduled to make a half a million dollars for speaking less than an hour.

President Clinton is being paid $500,000 to speak at Israeli President Shimon Peres' birthday celebration in Israel on June 17.

The fee is being paid by the Jewish National Fund, a non-profit group that will write the check to the former President's charity, the William J. Clinton Foundation.

The interests of the two groups align as they are both dedicated to environmental preservation initiatives and global health programs.

Clinton is due to speak at the Peres Academic Center in Rehovot, Israel where a celebration is being held in honor of Peres' 90th birthday in two weeks.

I recently wrote an analysis of the Boston Bombings and the idea that 'actors' were used in place of victims. In that article I made reference to other websites and researchers who had taken up this meme and run with it. Author and researcher Dave McGowan has been cited most often (to me at least) as having made the best case for 'actors'. McGowan has published a multi-part series of articles, all of which rely heavily on photographs to make his case. In this article I'll be looking at the 'evidence' that he presents for the 'actors' theory. Before I begin though, I should explain how and why my approach differs from what appears to be the way McGowan has approached this event.

The short explanation is that my approach employs a sane mind, logic and critical thinking. McGowans' approach employs mostly his imagination possibly fueled by crack cocaine or psychotropic drugs. I also assume he uses some metaphorical surgical gloves and tweezers or similar intangible instruments, because he pulls most of his 'evidence' out of his ass, metaphorically-speaking.

The longer explanation is that, when trying to decide whether a particular conspiracy theory or particular angle on a conspiracy theory is likely to be true or false, my approach is to first look at the plausibility of the theory in question. In terms of the Boston bombings, the idea that 'actors' took the place of real victims is the theory. When I first was forced to consider this theory, it took me about 3 minutes of rumination before it began to make no logical sense whatsoever. I more or less spelled out the lack of logic in my previous article, but it can be summed up as: why would a US intel agency chose to use actor victims at a bombing that is designed to terrify the US population into believing that evil terrorists are out to kill them when they could VERY easily just plant a bomb and let the bomb do what bombs do best, kill and maim people? Why would a US intel agency chose to do this when, if you think about it, it massively complicates the planning of such an operation and greatly increases the chances of the official story falling apart? To date, no one has offered a sensible answer to this question. For his part, at the end of his series of articles on the topic, Dave McGowan suggests that all of the alleged "fakery" is:

a campaign aimed at erasing the line between reality and fantasy - between what is objectively real and what is make-believe. For many years now we have seen a blurring of the line between news and entertainment, as well as, through 'reality' television, a blurring of the line between what is 'real' and what is scripted. We are now entering an age when there will be no dividing line at all between news, scripted entertainment and 'reality' TV. It will all be one and the same. In the new 'reality' we will be living in, nothing will be real and everything will be true.

That's fair enough, but hasn't that already been achieved, to a great extent, with the long list of US/Israeli/British false flag "Muslim terror attacks" over the past 15 years? Isn't the yawning chasm between what most people believe about "Muslim terror attacks", and the likely truth behind them, wide enough that it constitutes an already massive break with reality? What do the PTB have to gain, vis a vis the public, by adding the 'actor victims' element into the mix. If the average person in the street is none the wiser about the presence of 'actors', isn't that functionally the same, from a psy-ops point of view, as if victims were real people and not actors? If people believe the 'actors' to be real victims, what's the point in having actors rather than real victims? Maybe the answer is that US intel agencies have suddenly grown a conscience and an aversion to killing people, hence their use of 'actors'? But the last time I checked, those high-level intel and government types were still a bunch of conscienceless, blood-thirsty, murderous bastards who delight in the suffering of others.

So basically, that's where I was coming from when I began to look at the 'actors' theory. I could find no logical reason for the inclusion of 'actors' and many reasons why they should NOT be used. In addition, I found the alleged evidence for 'actors' at Boston sorely lacking in that it relied on conjecture, supposition and a good measure of imagination, all to make the evidence fit the pre-established theory. Basically, all of the 'actors' theorists seem to have used an "ink blot test" approach to their analysis of the photographic evidence from the Boston bombings.

Note, it wasn't that I was averse to the idea of the Boston bombings being staged by some element of US intel agencies - far from it. I was more or less fully convinced (based on the hard evidence and historical context) that the Boston bombings were a dyed-in-the-wool, false flag "homegrown terrorism attack", designed, like all others, to justify US imperial warmongering and to terrorize the American people into trusting their authorities and looking to them for protection.

So, let's look at some of McGowan's 'evidence':

Our own Jon Green wrote in December about how, following the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, GOP Sheriff Joe Arpaio was going to have his 3,000-strong gun-toting "posse" of volunteers patrolling Arizona's schools, just like the NRA wanted. (This article was co-authored by John Aravosis.)

Today we find out that the posse reportedly included at least one man convicted of sex crimes against children. And even worse, and what no one has apparently yet realized: The convicted child sex criminal posse member worked for Arpaio for years in the Sheriff's office until he was arrested in 2009.

Are we to believe that Arpaio had no idea who this guy was?

Armed child-sex criminals roaming Arizona's schools. What could possibly go wrong?

What's worse is that Arpaio has been facing heavy criticism for his alleged laxity on prosecuting sex crimes, particularly sex crimes against children. From the NYT:

The Bilderberg Group, an annual gathering of royalty, statesmen and business leaders, will this week take place at the Grove Hotel, a golf resort in Watford, Hertfordshire.

Guests will include George Osborne, the Chancellor; Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor; and Ken Clarke, the Cabinet Minister who also sits on the group's steering committee, according to a list of participants published on www.bilderbergmeetings.org.

Other attendees include Lord Mandelson, the former Labour First Secretary; Henry Kissinger, the former US Secretary of State; Timothy Geithner, the former Secretary of the US Treasury, and Gen David Petraeus, the former Allied commander in Afghanistan and head of the CIA.

As the situation in Syria intensifies, its neighbor Turkey, which is at the frontline of the offensive against President Assad's government, is being dubbed as the world's leading jailer of journalists by a New York - based media watchdog.

­The latest investigation says that 76 journalists were detained in Turkey as of August 1, 80 per cent of which were imprisoned as a direct result of their work. The remaining 20 per cent of the cases are still being investigated by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) workers. The report also claims that three-quarters of jailed journalists have not yet been convicted of any crime but are held while they await "resolution of their cases."

The findings claim that "the Turkish government is engaging in a broad offensive to silence critical journalists through imprisonment, legal prosecution and official intimidation," as 70 per cent of those in jail were Kurdish and the rest being accused of participating in plots against the government, or membership of outlawed organizations.

A number of people have been killed in an exchange of fire between Syrian rebels and fighters from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, say reports.

Lebanese security sources said the clashes took place on Lebanon's side of the border, near the town of Baalbek.

Hezbollah is fighting alongside the army in Syria, but the clashes have rarely crossed onto Lebanese soil.

Meanwhile the Red Cross has said it is alarmed by the worsening situation in the besieged Syrian town of Qusair.

It has appealed for access to the town, which lies just 10km (6 miles) over the Lebanese border.

Thousands of civilians are believed to be trapped as pro-government forces - including Hezbollah fighters - battle rebels.

UN Committee Against Torture report recommends 40 separate measures to be taken before UK is given clean bill of health

The British government's human rights record since the attacks of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq is facing ferocious criticism from a United Nations panel, which warns that prompt action is needed to ensure the country meets its obligations under international law.

In a report published on Friday, the UN Committee against Torture recommends more than 40 separate measures which it says will need to be taken if the UK is to be given a clean bill of health.

While the committee has focused on the failure to hold to account those responsible for human rights abuses in the so-called war on terror, and for the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq, it also raises a series of other serious concerns over matters that include the controversial Justice and Security Act, the forced removal of failed asylum seekers to Sri Lanka, and the failure to hold a public inquiry into the state's involvement in the murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.

The report - which will doubtless make uncomfortable reading across Whitehall - contains the harshest criticism that the committee has yet made of a British government. It is the first substantial criticism since 1992, when the UK was told that were it not for the mistreatment of terrorism suspects in Northern Ireland, it would have been found to have "met in virtually every respect" its obligations under the UN convention against torture.

Gunmen have shot dead the prosecutor investigating the murder of Pakistan's ex-leader Benazir Bhutto.

The men on a motorcycle killed Chaudhry Zulfikar as he left his home and headed to a hearing in the case.

Chaudhry Zulfikar was at the helm of a number of highly controversial cases, including the 2007 Bhutto assassination in which Musharraf is accused of involvement.

Zulfikar was on his way to a court in Islamabad when gunmen fired at him from a taxi, hitting him in the head, shoulder and chest, said police officer Mohammed Ishaq.

Zulfikar then lost control of his car, which hit a woman passer-by and killed her, said another police officer, Mohammed Rafiq.

Zulfikar's guard, Farman Ali, returned fire and is believed to have wounded at least one of the attackers, Rafiq said. Ali also was injured in the attack.

Police official Yasin Farooq said the attackers fled after killing Zulfikar, and that a massive search has been launched to find them.

A motive for the killing was unclear, but Zulfikar's involvement in the two particularly high-profile cases will likely be scrutinized closely.

Government prosecutors have accused Musharraf of being involved in the Bhutto assassination and not providing enough security to Pakistan's first female prime minister. Musharraf, who was in power when was killed, has denied the allegations. At the time of the attack, he blamed the assassination on the Pakistani Taliban.

The Bhutto case has lingered for years in the Pakistani court system. A number of alleged assailants are on trial but no one has been convicted. The case burst into the headlines when Musharraf returned in March after four years in exile.

Zulfikar was also the government's lead prosecutor in a case related to the 2008 terrorist attack on the Indian city of Mumbai that killed 166 people.