The April 2012 issue of Harper's Magazine includes "The Warrior Class," a feature by Charles Glass on the rise of private-security contractors since 9/11. The conclusion to the piece describes a series of videos shown to Glass by a source who had worked for the private-security company Blackwater (now Academi, formerly also Xe Services) in Iraq. Clips and photos from the videos are shown below, introduced by Glass's descriptions:

The first [video], identified as "Baghdad, Iraq, May - ­September 2005," showed Blackwater convoys racing through town. Suddenly, the door of a Blackwater SUV opened and a rifle fired at passing traffic. "They opened the door," my companion said. "You should never break the seal."

Vatican City, Italy - Pope Benedict XVI implored the Syrian regime Sunday to heed international demands to end the bloodshed and said he hopes the joy of Easter will comfort Christians who are suffering because of their faith.

Benedict, struggling with hoarseness and looking tired, celebrated Mass on Christianity's most joyous holy day on the flower-adorned steps of St. Peter's Basilica, before a crowd of faithful that swelled to far over 100,000 by the end of the 2-hour-long ceremony.

Only hours earlier the pontiff, who turns 85 on April 16, had led a long nighttime vigil service in the church.

At the end of Sunday's Mass, Benedict moved to the basilica's central balcony to read his Easter message "to the entire world," as he put it, delivering a ringing appeal for peace in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, and particularly in Africa, citing coup-struck Mali and Nigeria, where Christians and Muslims alike have been hit by terrorist attacks.

"May the risen Christ grant hope to the Middle East and enable all the ethnic, cultural and religious groups in that region to work together to advance the common good and respect for human rights," the pope said.

"Particularly in Syria, may there be an end to bloodshed and an immediate commitment to the path of respect, dialogue and reconciliation, as called for by the international community," Benedict said, making Syria the first of several strife-torn countries he mentioned in his traditional "Urbi et Orbi" (Latin for "to the city and to the world") Easter speech.

By now most people have heard of the death of Trayvon Martin, a black teen who was shot to death by the local Hispanic neighborhood watch coordinator, George Zimmerman. Trayvon was reportedly on his way home from buying skittles and iced tea, wearing a hoodie on February 26, 2012 in Stanford, Florida, when he was shot by George Zimmerman, who claims the shooting was a result of "self-defense". At this point in time there is no way of knowing what really happened on that night because as always, the media has gone into a frenzy to distract and distort the facts of the case.

The murder has elicited comments from everyone from the Reverend Al Sharpton to Spike Lee. Even Geraldo Rivera felt the need to get 'personal' and speak out against the "ghetto gangsta" fashion to which his own son has apparently fallen victim:

"Take that thing off," I snarled at my dashing, dark, handsome then late-teenage son. In those not so long ago days, Cruz styled himself a ghetto gangster, fashion-wise. [...]

No one black, brown or white can honestly tell me that seeing a kid of color with a hood pulled over his head doesn't generate a certain reaction, sometimes scorn, often menace.

When you see that kid coming your way, unless you specifically recognize him you are thinking ghetto or ghetto wannabe high-style or low-brow wise-ass. Pedestrians cross the street to avoid black or brown hoodie wearers coming their way.

Because this is a teachable moment let me speak plainly.

Whatever Reverends Sharpton and Jackson say in Florida Friday, after listening to the 911 tapes and hearing the witness' testimonials, I believe Trayvon Martin would be alive today but for his hoodie.

Stars of theatre and literature split over invitation to Israeli company to stage Merchant of Venice in London

Author Howard Jacobson has weighed into a debate over whether Israel's national theatre company, Habima, should be banned from performing at the Globe in London as part of next month's Cultural Olympiad event, saying art should never be censored.

Habima was invited to perform The Merchant of Venice in Hebrew as part of an ambitious programme to stage 37 Shakespeare plays, each in a different language, during the six-week festival. Yet a letter signed by 37 leading actors, directors, producers and writers - including Emma Thompson, Mike Leigh and Mark Rylance - published in the Guardian last week, called for the invitation to be withdrawn because Habima had performed in Israeli settlements.

The letter, also signed by Miriam Margolyes, Richard Wilson and Jonathan Miller, said: "We ask the Globe to withdraw the invitation so that the festival is not complicit with human rights violations and the illegal colonisation of occupied land. By inviting Habima, the Globe is associating itself with policies of exclusion preached by the Israeli state and endorsed by its national theatre company."

The modern totalitarian state is the psychotherapist for the whole of society. It acts on the elitist principle that it knows everything and the people deserve to be mind controlled and brainwashed for their own good. Defenders pf the totalitarian system demonize their democratic critics as insane, and target political speech with the mental weapons provided by modern psychological expertise and mental health research.

It does not matter what perverted ideology that the totalitarian power-seekers hide behind. It could be Communism, Nazism, Islamism, Neoconservativism, or Environmentalism. Every "ism" is a thought-control prison. Citizens are suppressed in the same manner under every totalitarian hellhole by their mental overlords.

Anti-democratic elites in all totalitarian prisons use the language of mental health to dismiss dissenters and enforce their dogmatic beliefs and totalitarian policies on an unwilling public. In 2009, Brendan O'Neill of Spiked.com wrote a powerful essay called,"The Psychologisation of Dissent: The Global Warming Skepticism Mental Disorder," about how the West is following in the footsteps of the Soviet Union. O'Neil wrote:

"The idea that 'climate change denial' is a psychological disorder - the product of a spiteful, willful or simply in-built neural inability to face up to the catastrophe of global warming - is becoming more and more popular amongst green-leaning activists and academics. And nothing better sums up the elitism and authoritarianism of the environmentalist lobby than its psychologisation of dissent. The labeling of any criticism of the politics of global warming, first as 'denial', and now as evidence of mass psychological instability, is an attempt to write off all critics and sceptics as deranged, and to lay the ground for inevitable authoritarian solutions to the problem of climate change. Historically, only the most illiberal and misanthropic regimes have treated disagreement and debate as signs of mental ill-health."

In the West, the mislabeling of dissent as "paranoia" and "crazy" has been taken to an extreme. People who believe there should be government transparency and media accountability have been exiled out of the mainstream political community.

CBS is reporting that Senate Bill 1813 that would "suspend passport rights for delinquent taxpayers" passed the Senate 74-22 on March 14th.

A bill authored by a Southland lawmaker that could potentially allow the federal government to prevent any Americans who owe back taxes from traveling outside the U.S. is one step closer to becoming law.

...The 'Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act' or 'MAP-21' includes a provision that would allow for the 'revocation or denial' of a passport for anyone with 'certain unpaid taxes' or 'tax delinquencies'.

This is the most recent example of the U.S. government treating rights as privileges that they can remove through legislation. This bill should be renamed "Keeping the Slaves on the Plantation Act."

The brand of Barack Obama is collapsing

"Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"He who abhors and shuns the light of the Sun, He who refuses to behold with respect the living creation of God, He who leads the good to wickedness, He who makes the meadows waterless and the pastures desolate, He who lets fly his weapon against the innocent, An enemy of my faith, a destroyer of Thy principles is he, O Lord!" - Zarathustra

The Obama brand is collapsing and nothing can save it. This was inevitable because the Obama brand is all surface and no substance. Barack Obama is a pseudo president of a propaganda state that has committed atrocities against innocent people in America and around the world. Obama's name, image, authority, and charisma were all artificially created by the mind controllers in the mass media.

As the legendary journalist John Pilger said in April 2009, "No one knew what the new brand actually stood for." Since it stands for nothing, the Obama brand is falling into oblivion. Obama, who was sold as the defender of the rule of law and the rights of the American people, is now being exposed to be a liar and a fraud.

Putting Syria into some perspective

The Holy Triumvirate - The United States, NATO, and the European Union - or an approved segment thereof, can usually get what they want. They wanted Saddam Hussein out, and soon he was swinging from a rope. They wanted the Taliban ousted from power, and, using overwhelming force, that was achieved rather quickly. They wanted Moammar Gaddafi's rule to come to an end, and before very long he suffered a horrible death. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was democratically elected, but this black man who didn't know his place was sent into distant exile by the United States and France in 2004. Iraq and Libya were the two most modern, educated and secular states in the Middle East; now all four of these countries could qualify as failed states.

These are some of the examples from the past decade of how the Holy Triumvirate recognizes no higher power and believes, literally, that they can do whatever they want in the world, to whomever they want, for as long as they want, and call it whatever they want, like "humanitarian intervention". The 19th- and 20th-century colonialist-imperialist mentality is alive and well in the West.

Next on their agenda: the removal of Bashar al-Assad of Syria. As with Gaddafi, the ground is being laid with continual news reports - from CNN to al Jazeera - of Assad's alleged barbarity, presented as both uncompromising and unprovoked. After months of this media onslaught who can doubt that what's happening in Syria is yet another of those cherished Arab Spring "popular uprisings" against a "brutal dictator" who must be overthrown? And that the Assad government is overwhelmingly the cause of the violence.

What are the odds? On December 15th 2011, the US Navy simulated the crash of one of its jet into the back bay area of Virginia Beach. Less than 4 months later, on April 6th 2012, a US Navy jet crashed into an apartment complex in the Virginia Beach area.

Coincidence? Are there any coincidences left these days? Or were they all used up on 9/11?

The civilian attorney representing the U.S. soldier accused of murdering 17 Afghan villagers wants to replace the military lawyer assigned to the case after disagreements over how to handle his defense.

"You are fired, sorry, but we have much more experience than you," Seattle-based John Henry Browne, the outspoken lawyer who has been the public face of the defense of Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, said in an email to military lawyer Major Thomas Hurley.

The Army assigns defense counsel such as Hurley to soldiers facing court martial but defendants also have the right to hire additional civilian counsel, in this case Browne. Any change in military counsel would have to be approved by the Army.

Browne's associate Emma Scanlan confirmed the decision, saying she and her boss looked forward to working with another lawyer. "We wish Major Hurley the best in his future endeavors," she said by email. Hurley declined to comment.

Browne's team wants to work with a military attorney with death penalty case experience, the email to Hurley from Browne, part of a chain obtained by Reuters, showed. Hurley has more than 60 military cases under his belt, with three involving homicide charges, but none were capital cases.