People in Syria have held mass rallies to show their support for President Bashar al-Assad and the army.

Thousands of demonstrators gathered in the capital Damascus and its countryside on Saturday.

They expressed support for President Assad and the Syrian army forces in their fight against terrorism and foreign-backed militants.

Pro-government demonstrations were also held in the western city of Homs and its countryside.

On February 2, Syrians also took to the streets of Damascus and the town of Nabek in support of the government.

Similar rallies have frequently been staged in the country during the past couple of years.

The pro-government demonstrations came as 83 people, including children and women, were evacuated from Homs as part of a three-day ceasefire brokered by the UN between the Syrian army and the foreign-backed militants.

A year ago the Bundesbank announced that it intended to repatriate 700 tons of Germany's gold from Paris and New York. Although a couple of jumbo jets could have managed the transatlantic removal, it made security sense to ship the load in smaller consignments. Just how small, and over how long, has only just become apparent.

Last month Jens Weidmann, Bundesbank president, admitted that just 37 tons had arrived in Frankfurt. The original time scale, to complete the transfer by 2020, was leisurely enough, but at this rate it would take 20 years for a simple operation.

Well, perhaps not so simple. While he awaits delivery, Herr Weidmann is welcome to come and look through the bars in the Federal Reserve's vaults, but the question is: Whose bars are they?

In the "armchair farmer" fraud you are told: "Look, this is your pig, in the sty." It works until everyone wants physical delivery of their pig, which is why Buba's move last year caused such a stir. After all, nobody knows whether there are really 260 million ounces of gold in Fort Knox, because the US government won't let auditors inside.

Bosnia is bracing for more violence as anti-government sentiment is building in the country. Following Thursday's protests that left over 130 people injured Bosnia, which has the highest unemployment rate in the Balkans, is expecting more demonstrations on Friday. Police reported about 2,000 people took part in the anti-government demonstrations in Tuzla, whereas the opposition said the number of protesters reached 7,000. Amid the unrest federations' Prime Minister Nermin Niksic held an emergency meeting with regional security ministers and prosecutors. The Prime Minister condemned the violence in the country and urged people to stop using the situation to create more chaos. Stefan Karganovic, head of Srebrenica Historical Project, shared his insight on the issue with the VoR.

I'd like to share, especially with American readers, a great moment in the British parliament on 5 February when the MP for Gorton, Manchester, Sir Gerald Kaufman rose to speak in a debate on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Here is what he said word for word so that you get the full flavour:

I once led a delegation of 60 parliamentarians from 13 European parliaments to Gaza. I could no longer do that today because Gaza is practically inaccessible. The Israelis try to lay the responsibility on the Egyptians, but although the Egyptians' closing of the tunnels has caused great hardship, it is the Israelis who have imposed the blockade and are the occupying power. The culpability of the Israelis was demonstrated in the report to the UN by Richard Goldstone following Operation Cast Lead. After his report, he was harassed by Jewish organizations. At the end of a meeting I had with him in New York, his wife said to me, "It is good to meet another self-hating Jew."

Criminal investigators suspect hundreds of US Army soldiers exploited a recruitment program to receive illegal kickbacks worth more than $29 million, lawmakers and officials said.

The scale of the potential fraud was "astounding" and ranks as one of the largest criminal probes in the Army's history, said Senator Claire McCaskill, who held a hearing on the scandal.

An Army audit has found that more than 1,200 recruiters had received payments that were potentially fraudulent, defense officials said.

"We now know that thousands of service members, their families and friends, may have participated in schemes to defraud the government they served and the taxpayers," McCaskill said.

The kickbacks grew out of a 2005 project launched at a time when the US Army and National Guard were struggling to secure new recruits amid heavy casualties in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The National Guard program, which was eventually extended to the active-duty Army, essentially paid troops for referrals of recruits.

These "recruiting assistants," which included National Guard soldiers and civilians, were allowed to earn between $2,000 to $7,500 for each person they persuaded to enlist.

Of all the arrows fired at Gov. Chris Christie over the years, the one that inflicted the deepest wound came not from a rival, but from an ally.

David Wildstein, by all accounts, was thrilled to be part of the governor's inner circle. He was known as a loyal member of the palace guard, the governor's eyes and ears at the Port Authority, a buddy of Christie's since their high school days.

And now he has flipped, as spectacularly as John Dean flipped on Richard Nixon. And in the end, Wildstein could do just as much damage.

"This guy is really mad," says one leading Democrat who asked not to be named. "The way the letter is written is almost rambling, throwing everything in the kitchen sink. There's a lot of anger there. He feels dissed."

Why would Wildstein be so angry with his old boss? Look at it through his eyes. He closed those access lanes on orders from the governor's office after receiving the infamous message from Bridget Anne Kelly, the governor's deputy chief of staff: "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."

His reward for that loyal service? He was forced to resign from his job in disgrace. And then the governor, for no good reasons, belittled Wildstein at a press conference when asked about their friendship in high school.

Last Sunday, former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden was interviewed for the German television network ARD. The interview was big news in Germany and much of the world in both print and broadcast media. However, the interview appears to have been blocked intentionally by US government authorities. In fact, the media in the US appears to have gone to 'radio silence' about it. It has been posted on YouTube several times, but is taken down almost immediately. The video site Vimeo has it embedded, but as I write this, Vimeo is under a DDoS attack. LiveLeak also has it, and that video is embedded in this report by Jay Syrmopoulos for Ben Swann's news page.

Mr. Snowden spoke candidly in a thirty-minute English language interview with the reporter from ARD.

He says his "breaking point" was "seeing Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress." That was when Clapper denied the existence of a domestic spying programs when he testified before Congress in March of last year. Snowden added, "The public had a right to know about these programs. The public had a right to know that which the government is doing in its name, and that which the government is doing against the public."

In case Ben Swann's page is taken down, along with the LiveLeak video, here is the interview on Vimeo. Offered without commentary, since Edward Snowden can speak for himself.

Update: An internet search revealed the Edward Snowden interview is up on Rutube. It is a Russian video site somewhat similar to YouTube. The text is in Russian and doesn't have an English language version. I have a feeling Rutube will not be as knee-jerk responsive to take-down orders from western countries. Here is the Snowden interview as presented on Rutube. WordPress does not support Rutube for embedding, but this link will take you to the interview:

Are you watching the Winter Olympics? Or are you boycotting them like the morally righteous US, UK and French leaders, who are disgusted that Putin won't promote pedophilia?

Will the most expensive Olympic Games ever be a triumph for Russian peace over Western war, or will a CIA/Saudi-directed terror attack attempt to poke the Bear into a violent reaction before the world's watching media?

What's really happening next door in Ukraine? Will the people there soon be liberated from the 'yolk of Putinism' and be free to join the glorious future envisioned by the EU? Or is it too just another CIA-led revolution? And what about the real revolution in France, why is no one reporting on that?

This week on SOTT Talk Radio we discussed all this and more, not least the weird weather. What could be causing wildfires in Alaska while it snows in Georgia? Or prolonged drought and raging wildfires in Arctic Norway while hurricane force storms drown Britain for months on end?

Running Time: 02:25:00

Download: MP3

Moroccan authorities banned a sit-in on Saturday by hundreds of judges who want greater independence for the judiciary, deploying dozens of riot police to central Rabat and closing off streets around the Justice Ministry.

Nearly three years after protests inspired by the Arab Spring prompted King Mohamed to undertake limited reforms and propelled an Islamist party to power, his government is now re-asserting its authority in what rights groups describe as a step backwards.

Since independence in 1956, Morocco's justice system has been seen by critics as largely under the control of the North African country's powerful monarchy.

The reforms introduced by the king in 2011 did award the judiciary more autonomy, but the opposition says it is still not fully independent.

What is it that really "scared the hell" out of the Anglo-Americans?

Could Ukraine become an area of cooperation between Russia and Europe? Could European countries break free?
Concerning Ukraine, it now appears that the fury shown by the Anglo-Americans (that seems really too excessive and reckless even considering recent standards) is due not simply to the danger of losing Ukraine, but to the danger of losing Europe.

This issue was brought to the forefront in a speech given by the Russian president Vladimir Putin in the Armenian capital Yerevan on Dec 2:

"The events in Ukraine, they remind me less of a revolution than of a pogrom. And strange as it is, this all has little to do with Ukraine-EU relations... As I already said, everything that is happening is not directly related to cooperation between Ukraine and the European Union..." http://eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/636

Trilateral Agreement

I have the impression that Putin is not just aiming at "taking back" Ukraine from the West. Actually he intends to use the Ukraine issue in a very subtle way to establish a trilateral agreement - EU (or at least part of it), Ukraine, Russia.