Peshawar, Pakistan - A Pakistan doctor who assisted the CIA in tracking down Osama bin Laden was sentenced to 33 years in prison for conspiring with an Islamist militant commander, not his involvement the American spy agency.

A copy of the verdict obtained by The Associated Press Wednesday adds to questions about Pakistan's treatment of Shakil Afridi.

Afridi was sentenced last week in a tribal court. Few details were released about the verdict, but officials did nothing to challenge the widely held assumption he was punished for his role in helping the CIA.

The five-page document, first reported by Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, says Afridi was guilty of conspiring with militant commander Mangal Bagh.

Afridi's family says he is innocent and will appeal.

Source: The Associated Press

French President Francois Hollande has said the use of armed force could be possible in Syria if it is backed by the United Nations Security Council. Hollande was speaking to France 2 television on May 29 following the massacre of 108 people -- most of them children and women -- in the Syrian village of Houla last week.

"[An armed intervention] is not excluded on the condition that it is carried out with respect to international law, meaning after deliberation by the United Nations Security Council," Hollande said. In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the United States had not taken any options off the table, but believed armed action was not the right course at present.

"We do not believe that militarization -- further militarization -- of the situation in Syria at this point is the right course of action. We believe that it would lead to greater chaos, greater carnage," Carney said. Meanwhile, the United States, Canada, Australia, and a number of European countries, said they were expelling senior Syrian diplomats in response to the May 25 killings in Houla. The United Nations says most of the victims were executed. UN monitors said spent tank and artillery shells, as well as fresh tank tracks on the ground, were clear signs that Syrian government forces had shelled the town. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed concern that "certain countries" were beginning to use the Houla massacre as "a pretext for voicing demands relating to the need for military measures to be taken." Speaking to UN special envoy Kofi Annan by telephone, he urged an end to violence on all sides, and called for an "impartial" UN-led probe into the massacre. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland welcomed Lavrov's call.

Cairo - Mohamed Ibrahim el-Sayyed, 42, lost a lot to Egypt's revolution - his brother was killed during the initial 18-day uprising that led to former president Hosni Mubarak's ouster, and his son was killed in one of the many bouts of clashes between protesters and police that have marked the post-Mubarak transitional period. So when el-Sayyed heard that the Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission (SPEC) had rejected all appeals challenging last week's election results, thus pitting Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi and Mubarak minister Ahmed Shafiq against each other in the runoff, he came straight to Cairo's Tahrir Square.

"Disqualify Shafiq!" he chanted, raising his shoe in the air. El-Sayyed, who voted for Nasserist candidate Hamdeen Sabahi in the country's first post-Mubarak presidential elections, said that Egypt would not tolerate a return of the old regime. He was joined in Tahrir by hundreds of other Egyptians enraged by the realization of what many called the "nightmare scenario:" a contest for the country's top post being played out between an Islamist and a felul, or "remnant" of the old regime, thus sidelining more secular, independent forces.

"War with Iran is already here," wrote a leading Israeli commentator recently, describing "the combination of covert warfare and international pressure" being applied to Iran.

Although not mentioned, the "strategic prize" of the first stage of this war on Iran is Syria; the first campaign in a much wider sectarian power-bid. "Other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself," Saudi King Abdullah was reported to have said last summer, "nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria."¹

By December, senior United States officials were explicit about their regime change agenda for Syria: Tom Donilon, the US National Security Adviser, explained that the "end of the [President Bashar al-] Assad regime would constitute Iran's greatest setback in the region yet - a strategic blow that will further shift the balance of power in the region against Iran."

Shortly before, a key official in terms of operationalizing this policy, Under Secretary of State for the Near East Jeffrey Feltman, had stated at a congressional hearing that the US would "relentlessly pursue our two-track strategy of supporting the opposition and diplomatically and financially strangling the [Syrian] regime until that outcome is achieved".²

What we are seeing in Syria is a deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down the Assad government so as to replace it with a regime "more compatible" with US interests in the region.

Sakhr al-Taifi led foreign insurgents and directed attacks against Nato and Afghan forces, according to alliance
Al-Qaida's second-in-command in Afghanistan has been killed, according to Nato.

Sakhr al-Taifi, also known as Mushtaq and Nasim, led foreign insurgents and directed attacks against Nato and Afghan forces, the alliance said.

The air strike that killed Taifi and another al-Qaida militant took place on Sunday in the Watahpur district of Kunar. A later assessment of the area determined that no civilians had been harmed, Nato said.

The coalition declined to reveal the name of al-Qaida's top leader in Afghanistan "due to ongoing operations and security concerns".

Western states have announced they are expelling senior Syrian diplomats following the killing of 108 people in the Houla region of Syria on Friday.

The United States, France, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Switzerland all took action.

Most of the victims in Houla were summarily executed, the UN says.

UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan said, after talks with President Bashar al-Assad, Syria was at a "tipping point".

He said he had asked Mr Assad to take "bold steps" to see that his peace plan was implemented.

President Assad blamed the violence on "terrorists". His remarks were quoted by state TV.

Earlier, UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said initial investigations had suggested that most of those killed in the village of Taldou, near Houla, were summarily executed.

At the G8 Summit held two weeks ago at Camp David, President Obama met with private industry and African heads of state to launch the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, a euphemism for monocultured, genetically modified crops and toxic agrochemicals aimed at making poor farmers debt slaves to corporations, while destroying the ecosphere for profit.

And Bono, of the rock group U2, is out shilling for Monsanto on this one.

It's phase 2 of the Green Revolution. Tanzania, Ghana, and Ethiopia are the first to fall for the deception, with Mozambique, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso and other African nations lining up for the "Grow Africa Partnership," under Obama's "Global Agricultural Development" plan.

Guess which institution had the following to say about Israel's human rights record in 2011:

• "Arab citizens of the country faced institutional and societal discrimination."
• "Resources devoted to Arabic education were inferior to those devoted to Hebrew education in the public education system."
• "Human rights organizations reported that 'physical interrogation methods' permitted by Israeli law and used by Israeli security personnel could amount in practice to torture."
• "In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Israeli Civil Administration, part of Israel's Ministry of Defense, continued to demolish homes, cisterns, and other buildings and property constructed by Palestinians in areas under Israeli civil control on the basis that these buildings lacked Israeli planning licenses. Compensation was generally not offered in these cases."
• "In East Jerusalem, under Israeli authority, displays of Palestinian political symbols were punishable by fines or imprisonment."
• "The [Israeli military] IDF continued its use of a 1967 military order that effectively prohibited Palestinian demonstrations and limited freedom of speech in the West Bank. The order stipulates that a 'political' gathering of 10 or more persons requires a permit from the regional commander of military forces. The penalty for a breach of the order is 10 years' imprisonment or a heavy fine."
• "The Israeli government obstructed refugee access to [United Nations agency for Palestine refugees] UNRWA-provided humanitarian assistance in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip."
• "Some Israeli settlers reportedly used violence against Palestinians as a means of harassment and to keep them away from land that settlers sought to expropriate ... Settlers also exploited religious tensions to harass Palestinian villages by vandalizing, breaking into, or burning 10 mosques.

If you were the typical member of Congress who believes that Israel is a shining beacon of light to humanity and the greatest thing since sliced bread, then you would probably answer one of the following: some anti-Semitic agency of the United Nations, an obviously biased Palestinian organization, or one of those self-hating Israeli organizations.

Of course, you would be wrong.

Warren Buffett once said that derivatives are "financial weapons of mass destruction", and that statement is more true today than it ever has been before. Recently, JP Morgan made national headlines when it announced that it was going to take a 2 billion dollar loss from derivatives trades gone bad. Well, it turns out that JP Morgan did not tell us the whole truth.

As you will see later in this article, most analysts are estimating that the losses will eventually be far larger than 2 billion dollars. But no matter how bad things get for JP Morgan, it will not be allowed to fail. JP Morgan is the largest bank in the United States, so it is essentially the "granddaddy" of the too big to fail banks. If JP Morgan gets to the point where it is about to collapse, the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve will rush in to save it. Because of this "security blanket", banks such as JP Morgan feel free to take outrageous risks.

Today, JP Morgan has more exposure to derivatives than anyone else in the world. If they win, they win big. If they lose, U.S. taxpayers will be on the hook. Not only that, but thanks to Dodd-Frank, U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for bailing out the major derivatives clearinghouses if there is ever a major derivatives crisis. So when the derivatives market crashes (and it will) you and I will be left holding a gigantic bill.

Derivatives almost caused the complete collapse of insurance giant AIG back in 2008. But instead of learning our lessons, the derivatives bubble has gotten even larger since that time.

A Bloomberg article that was published last year contained a great quote from Mark Mobius about derivatives....

Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management's emerging markets group, said another financial crisis is inevitable because the causes of the previous one haven't been resolved.

"There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner because we haven't solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis," Mobius said at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo today in response to a question about price swings. "Are the derivatives regulated? No. Are you still getting growth in derivatives? Yes."

Never in the history of the world have we ever seen anything like this derivatives bubble.

But instead of getting it under control, we just allowed it to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

Now JP Morgan is in quite a bit of trouble. A recent Daily Finance article summarized how JP Morgan got into this mess....

Bruno Iksil, a trader working in the bank's London office, placed a massive bet in the derivatives market. Derivatives "derive" their value from the value of an underlying asset, like stocks, bonds, currencies, or a market index. The specific type of derivative used in Iksil's bet was a credit default swap index, known as "CDX.NA.IG.9."

CDX.NA.IG.9 tracks a basket of corporate bonds. Iksil's positions on the index were so big (one report put it at $100 billion) that they were moving the market and interfering with other traders' positions. These annoyed traders -- hedge-fund managers -- dubbed Iksil "the London Whale" for his outsize bets.

So if the real number isn't 2 billion dollars, how much will JP Morgan eventually lose?

A new NYT article sheds considerable light on the character of the Democratic Commander-in-Chief

"I am not going to play in this dirty game. This is not democracy. These elections are a joke" - Abdel Fattah, Egyptian subway worker, explaining why he cannot support either Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, or Ahmed Shafik, President Hosni Mubarak's final prime minister, in the two-candidate election runoff to determine Egypt's next President (NYT, "Some Disdain Both Options in Egypt's Narrowed Race," May 26, 2012).

Last week, the journal Foreign Policy published an extraordinary article - not extraordinary because of what it says, but because of who said it. It was written by Aaron David Miller, a lifelong D.C. foreign policy bureaucrat who served as a Middle East adviser to six different Secetaries of State in Democratic and GOP administrations. Miller's article, which compared Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on foreign policy, was entitled "Barack O'Romney," and the sub-headline said it all: "Ignore what the candidates say they'll do differently on foreign policy. They're basically the same man." It began this way: "If Barack Obama is reelected, he ought to consider making Mitt Romney his new secretary of state" because "despite his campaign rhetoric, Romney would be quite comfortable carrying out President Obama's foreign policy because it accords so closely with his own."