This past October, at an Occupy encampment in Cleveland, Ohio, "suspicious males with walkie-talkies around their necks" and "scarves or towels around their heads" were heard grumbling at the protesters' unwillingness to act violently. At meetings a few months later, one of them, a 26-year-old with a black Mohawk known as "Cyco," explained to his anarchist colleagues how "you can make plastic explosives with bleach," and the group of five men fantasized about what they might blow up. Cyco suggested a small bridge. One of the others thought they'd have a better chance of not hurting people if they blew up a cargo ship. A third, however, argued for a big bridge - "Gotta slow the traffic that's going to make them money" - and won. He then led them to a connection who sold them C-4 explosives for $450. Then, the night before the May Day Occupy protests, they allegedly put the plan into motion - and just as the would-be terrorists fiddled with the detonator they hoped would blow to smithereens a scenic bridge in Ohio's Cuyahoga Valley National Park traversed by 13,610 vehicles every day, the FBI swooped in to arrest them.

Right in the nick of time, just like in the movies. The authorities couldn't have more effectively made the Occupy movement look like a danger to the republic if they had scripted it. Maybe that's because, more or less, they did.

On May 15, the anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, its Arab citizens observed a day of mourning for the victims of the Naqba ("catastrophe") - the mass exodus of half the Palestinian people from the territory which became Israel.

Like every year, this aroused much fury. Tel Aviv University allowed Arab students to hold a meeting, which was attacked by ultra-right Jewish students. Haifa University forbade the meeting altogether. Some years ago the Knesset debated a "Naqba Law" that would have sent commemorators to prison for three years. This was later moderated to the withdrawal of government funds from institutions that mention the Naqba.

The Only Democracy in the Middle East may well be the only democracy in the world that forbids its citizens to remember a historical event. Forgetting is a national duty.

"We believe that there have been fewer suicide bombers coming through Syria, and we are cautious about this assessment, but we do think that the Syrians may have been taking more active steps against al Qaeda, which is understandable. I mean, if al Qaeda were ever to succeed in Iraq, the next thing they'd do is turn ... [to] Damascus. I can assure you." - General Petraeus, American Chief of Al-Qaeda. Source: ABC, "Time to Head to Congress," September 4, 2007.

"Take notes. Because this is how it's done, time and time again - another clear example how large media outlets can effectively drive reality in the direction of their choosing, and this is why so many millions of public media consumers are left misinformed and dis informed, eventually leading to a marginal public endorsement of Washington, London and Tel Aviv's interventionist foreign policy objectives." - Patrick Henningsen, "Phony 'Houla Massacre': How Media Manipulates Public Opinion For Regime Change in Syria," May 28, 2012.

"What on earth could the Syrian regime have stood to benefit from this macabre massacre of Sunnis? What could its "logic" or motives possibly have been? How could the regime have ensured or at least contributed to its longevity by this act? What interests could this heinous act have served other than militarizing the existing UN presence; inviting foreign military intervention into Syria; increasing calls among NATO countries for establishing "humanitarian corridors"; turning Sunnis (given the identity of those massacred) against Alawites; and further tarnishing the regime's already badly beaten public image?" - Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, "Why it is highly unlikely the Syrian regime was behind the Houla massacre," May 28, 2012.

Well, well, well, what do we have here? Another case of the media using the trail of blood and guts left in the streets by foreign-backed terrorists and savage Salafist mercenaries to discredit Syria's honourable resistance against Imperialism and the expansionist policies of Israel? I'm shocked, absolutely shocked.

The US government supports democracy and human rights protests everywhere, except in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Palestine -- and America.

The US government is the second worst human rights abuser on the planet and the sole enabler of the worst--Israel.

But this doesn't hamper Washington from pointing the finger elsewhere.

The US State Department's "human rights report" focuses its ire on Iran and Syria, two countries whose real sin is their independence from Washington, and on the bogyman- in-the-making--China, the country selected for the role of Washington's new Cold War enemy.

Hillary Clinton, another in a long line of unqualified Secretaries of State, informed "governments around the world: we are watching, and we are holding you accountable," only we are not holding ourselves accountable or Washington's allies like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the NATO puppets.

A U.S. drone strike Monday aiming for an al-Qaida leader has killed five [alleged] militants in the country's south as part of a Yemeni offensive against the Islamist group, Yemeni officials said.

They said the airstrike targeted Qaid al-Dahab, a[n alleged] local leader of al-Qaida, in a convoy of three cars near the town of Radda, 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of the capital, Sanaa. Four militants were wounded. The officials said al-Dahab's fate was not yet known.

Al-Dahab's sister was the wife of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born radical militant cleric killed by a U.S. drone strike last fall.

There was no immediate word from Washington on the strike that targeted al-Dahab.

On Sunday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta defended drone strikes in Yemen as a measure "to defend and protect the United States of America." He was interviewed by the American ABC TV network.

The Munafiqeen [Hypocrites] will be in the lowest depths of the Fire: no helper wilt thou find for them.

~ Sura 4 (An-Nisa), ayah 145, Qur'an

A couple of months ago, one of those dubious leaks made by "unnamed US officials" caught my eye. US media did something it doesn't often do; it publicised 'secret' Israeli government policy. Giving five minutes of prime time TV to Iranian scientist Mohammad Javad Larijani, brother of Ali Larijani, philosopher and chairman of the Parliament of Iran, two "senior U.S. officials" confirmed for NBC News what Mohammad Larijani was telling them: that Israel was behind the assassinations of Iranian scientists.

Specifically, the US officials stated that Israel's Mossad was financing, training and arming an Iranian dissident group that goes by many names, but which we'll call the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) for now. In return, the MEK is "providing Israel with information." Speaking through NBC, these unknown officials confirmed what Larijani and the Iranian government have been saying for years: that Israel, through the MEK, carried out the attacks in which motorcycle-borne assailants attached sophisticated magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims' cars. The US officials further stated that the Obama administration is aware of the assassination campaign but has no direct involvement.

No sooner had the story been leaked than a series of car bombings took place outside Israeli embassies in India, Georgia and Singapore. The same types of bombs used in the assassinations of Iranian scientists were used to blow up vehicles near Israeli diplomats. The Israelis never actually intended to kill any of their own, because the Mossad warned the embassies ahead of time. Israel of course blamed Iran for the bombings. But these stunts were clearly intended to deflect attention from the US government's confirmation that Israel is murdering Iranian scientists through its surrogate, the MEK, and, once again, portray Israel as the eternal victim.

Incentivize victimhood, fraudulent accounting of income/collateral and gaming the system, and guess what you get? A nation of liars and thieves.

Memorial Day is traditionally a day to speak of sacrifices made in combat. Like much of the rest of life in America, it has largely become artificial, a hurried "celebration" of frenzied Memorial Day marketing that is quickly forgotten the next day.

Instead of participating in this rote (and thus insincere) "thank you for your sacrifice" pantomime, perhaps we should ask what else has been sacrificed in America without our acknowledgement. Perhaps we should look at the sacrifices that need to be made but which are cast aside in our mad rush to secure "what we deserve."

The unvarnished reality is that most Americans have no idea what service members experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they don't want to know. When 4,488 white crosses were erected on a hillside to remind us of all those who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq, people didn't like it, labeling it "unpatriotic."That is not the real reason, of course; what is more patriotic than keeping those who served and sacrificed fresh in our awareness? One reason those 4,000 crosses make us uncomfortable is that they remind us of being conned by our civilian leadership into "wars of choice."

Another is that the reality of war and its long aftermath are not sufficiently "uplifting" for a brittle nation that prefers the distractions of "reality" TV to an acknowledgement of our problems and the sacrifices made and yet to be made.

Longtime readers know that one of my embedded concerns is the disconnect between the civilian populace and the U.S. Armed Forces. This disconnect starts with raw numbers: THANK YOU TO THE 0.45% of the population who served in the Global War on Terror (2001 to present).

Personnel are costly, not just in civilian life but in the Armed Forces, too, and so the Pentagon has "downsized" the Armed Forces to a smaller but more professional force. This reflects not just budgetary realities but the evolution of modern warfare.

But it's not just that fewer serve because fewer are needed; the number of civilians who want to know and want to acknowledge the experience of those who serve is dwindling everywhere, from Congress to the media to the living rooms of the nation.

The Cornucopia Institute is challenging what it calls a "conspiracy" between corporate agribusiness interests and the USDA that has increasingly facilitated the use of questionable synthetic additives and even dangerous chemicals in organic foods. In its new white paper, The Organic Watergate, Cornucopia details violations of federal law, ignoring congressional intent, that has created a climate of regulatory abuse and corporate exploitation.

When Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 it set up an independent advisory panel, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) that, uniquely, has statutory power. Any synthetic input or ingredient used in organic farming or food production must be reviewed by the NOSB to assure that it is not a threat to human health or the environment.

At the NOSB meeting in Savannah, Georgia last year, a giant Dutch-based multi-national conglomerate, Royal DSM N.V./Martek Biosciences, partnered with the nation's largest dairy processor, Dean Foods, to muscle through approval of DHA/ARA synthetic nutrient oils. The additives, derived from genetically mutated algae and soil fungus, are processed with petrochemical solvents, grown in genetically engineered corn, and formulated for use in infant formula, dairy and other products with a myriad of other unreviewed synthetic ingredients.

As many have learned the hard way, protecting your reputation online can be difficult. The way the web works, once just one person publishes something bad or inaccurate about you, it lives forever in the net's cache. Should you be unfortunate enough to have someone, or even a team of people, who know their way around the Internet writing malicious things about you, it can be impossible to ever fully correct the record. Bad stuff tends to thrive online.

Just ask Tom Vanden Brook or Ray Locker. They're both reporters at USA Today; Vanden Brook covering the Pentagon for the paper since 2006, and Locker the White House and other agencies. Recently they teamed up to explore what the Pentagon calls "information operations" in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. A term of military art, "Info Ops" is frankly just another phrase for propaganda: the transmission of information, factual or not, with the specific goal of changing beliefs. "Winning the hearts and minds," as President Lyndon Johnson was fond of saying during the Vietnam war.

An Army private charged in a massive leak of U.S. government secrets to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks is seeking dismissal of 10 of the 22 counts he faces.

Pfc. Bradley Manning's civilian defense lawyer posted the motions on his website Wednesday night. A military judge will hear oral arguments at a pretrial hearing starting June 6 at Fort Meade, Md.

Manning contends eight of the counts are unconstitutionally vague. He claims two other charges fail to state a prosecutable offense.

Manning faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy. He is being held at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

He allegedly sent WikiLeaks hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic cables and war logs downloaded from government computers.