Perhaps in an attempt to soften coming revelations that Syria's opposition will be increasingly armed and backed by the West for a final military push to divide and destroy a sovereign Syria, Reuters released a report titled, "Outgunned Syria Rebels Make Shift to Bombs." The report admits that the Syrian rebels, depicted so-far as hapless pro-democracy protesters, are now turning to bombing tactics.

Reuters quotes one rebel fighter as saying, "we are starting to get smarter about tactics and use bombs because people are just too poor and we don't have enough rifles." The unnamed rebel continued, "it is just no match for the army, so we are trying to focus on the ways we can fight." Reuters attempts to allay the fears of its readers by claiming rebels they interviewed insisted that, "unlike al Qaeda, their bombs were aimed at military, and never civilian, targets."

Paradoxically, however, the Reuters story reveals that the rebel bombing campaign is being carried out by Sunni "hardliners" who learned their bombing skills from fighting (and killing) US troops in neighboring Iraq - or in other words, the very "al Qaeda" the rebels claim they are not like. A "Syrian Liberation Army" spokesman also admitted that his fighters were operating "manufacturing facilities" for bombs - like the one in Hama that recently exploded, killing 70 and leveled the greater part of a city block.

The recent bombings in Syria and their deadly civilian toll has brought a great deal of attention to the U.S./NATO destabilization campaign in that country. Some news agencies like Press TV have now taken to referring to the situation in Syria as a "destabilization campaign" and that's a good start though I wouldn't expect Fox and CNN to follow suit anytime soon. And don't expect "dissidents" on the left like Amy Goodman or Chris Hedges to point this out either. Maybe in 25 years when the files are declassified the American public will get the truth but by then there will be none of us conspiracy theorists left to report on it.

The bombings are taking an unusually brutal toll. The Western-backed NATO terrorists are desperate to derail any political solution to the problem especially now that the parliamentary elections have been held (the NATO-backed opposition refused to take part) and the new Syria constitution has been approved by the population (89% approved of the new constitution) which again, the NATO-backed opposition refuses to recognize because the White House wants to write their own neo-liberal constitution for the Syrian people just like they did in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

The PR blow-back from the recent bombings has the globalist Clinton run State Department doing back-flips trying to spin the story one way then the other.first they say it's al Qaeda, then they say it's Assad himself, now we're back to the al Qaeda story.

"Our policy is to try to accelerate the arrival of that tipping point" at which the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad is toppled, Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman explained last March to the US Senate's foreign relations committee.

Thursday saw the latest incarnation of this policy. The devastating car bombs that slaughtered 55 people and left nearly 400 more wounded in Damascus mark a new stage in the criminal imperialist campaign for regime change in Syria.

Having hijacked the protest movement that began in Syria in March of last year in the bid to turn it into a vehicle for installing a client regime in Damascus, Washington went on to back the formation of the "Friends of Syria", modeled upon a similar international formation used to prepare the war on Libya.

It declared the Syrian National Council, a collection of Islamist politicians from the Muslim Brotherhood and aging exile assets of various Western intelligence agencies to be the "legitimate representative" of the Syrian people and backed the formation of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) to carry out armed attacks on Syrian security forces.

Video posted online says twin car bombings that killed 55 people in Syrian capital were revenge for Assad regime's aggression

An obscure Islamist group, the al-Nusra Front, has posted a video online claiming responsibility for two bomb attacks that killed 55 people in Syria's capital, Damascus, earlier this week.

The video, narrated by a man whose voice was disguised, showed no images of militants making or setting up the bomb and did not claim the attacks as suicide bombings.

Footage showing black smoke rising over Damascus from the day of the blast was shown at the end of the statement, labelled as coming from the 'Camera of the Mujahideen [holy warriors]'.

The video emerged amid reports by activists of renewed fighting between rebels and the army in northern Syria on Saturday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported fighting in Idlib province, on Syria's northern border with Turkey - a hotspot of the 14-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad's rule.

Arsala Rahmani, a senior member of Afghanistan's high peace council, killed by an unknown attacker in Kabul

A gunman has shot dead a top member of the Afghan peace council in Kabul, striking another blow to efforts to negotiate a political resolution to the decade-long war.

Arsala Rahmani, a former Taliban official turned Afghan peace negotiator, was in his vehicle when he was killed by an unknown attacker at an intersection in the west part of the city, according to Mohammad Zahir, head of the Kabul police department's criminal investigation division.

The Taliban denied responsibility for the killing, although they had earlier indicated that they would target peace negotiators.

Crowd Control: the LRAD was designed in the US, tested in Iraq and now it's coming to the London Olympics to keep protesters/terrorists (same thing really) away.

American-built 'long-range acoustic device', used by US military in Iraq, can produce deafening 150db levels at one metre

The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that a device that can be used as a "sonic weapon" will be deployed in London during the Olympics.

The American-built long-range acoustic device (LRAD), which has been used by the US army to control crowds in Iraq, can emit an ear-piercing beam of sound.

An MoD spokesman said the device, which can also be used as a loudspeaker, was among a "broad range of assets" being used by the armed forces to provide security during the Games.

He said it would be used primarily in loud hailer mode to issue verbal warnings to any boats on the river Thames that were causing concern.

Who's playing fast and loose with your data? The Big Brother Awards, billed as the "Oscars for data leeches" by the hackers and privacy advocates who hand out the prizes, shine a high-intensity spotlight on companies and individuals with poor privacy track records. Since 1998, Privacy International and a host of affiliated organizations have singled out the worst privacy violators in various countries including the UK, Austria, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Japan, New Zealand and the U.S. The title evokes the totalitarian cult personality featured in George Orwell's 1984, set in a dystopic world of mass surveillance.

In Germany, privacy advocates held their annual edition of the Big Brother Awards in April. The panel of judges was made up of representatives from privacy advocate FoeBuD and other organizations campaigning for data protection and human rights. Curious to know who made Germany's list of privacy offenders? Here's the rundown.

Markus Ulbig, Saxon Minister of the Interior

Markus Ulbig, Saxon Minister of the Interior, snagged a Big Brother Award in the category "Government and Administration" for presiding over a veritable data tsunami that swept up mobile phone data belonging to hundreds of thousands of law-abiding citizens. Police filed data requests with cell phone service providers for connection logs over a 12-hour period in Dresden, resulting in the staggering release of more than a million phone records associated with some 55,000 identified subscribers. The requests were filed in the wake of a February 2011 mass demonstration against a Dresden Nazi parade. The police were targeting the anti-Nazi protesters.

Only three months ago, I wrote an article entitled "Cashless Society: India Implements First Biometric ID Program for all of its 1.2 Billion Residents," where I discussed the implementation of a relatively new policy in India geared toward the creation of a massive biometric identification database for all 1.2 billion Indian residents.

The system consists of fingerprints, iris scans, and facial photographs - information which will be attached to a Unique Identification Number to be referenced when combined with the traditional methods of identification and included on the chip-enhanced National ID card.

Thankfully, after some time with little or no opposition, the UID program is receiving a bit more attention in the mainstream press as well as from privacy protection organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation which recently produced an excellent article entitled, "Growing Mistrust of India's Biometric ID Scheme," which reaffirms everything I had previously written.

Although the program is allegedly voluntary, as I have written on numerous occasions in the past, the mask of being "voluntary" is inevitably removed after the program has been in place for a set amount of time, particularly as more and more people begin to participate or as the government gradually forces more and more to participate for one reason or another. Eventually what was once voluntary always becomes mandatory. In addition, it always carries with it the full force of the State backing the change.

A trial to assign blame and damages that could total tens of billions of dollars for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been put off until January, in a setback for the U.S. government, which wanted to try its case this summer.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans on Thursday scheduled a trial for Jan. 14, 2013, more than 10 months after it had originally been scheduled.

The decision means the federal government and Gulf Coast states, which also wanted a summer trial, may have to wait longer to recover money from BP Plc and its drilling partners.

It is unclear how the new timetable will affect strategy, or whether it might spur the federal government to press harder for settlements and help local residents seeking money for cleanup or restoration.

"This may spur the government to settle," said Edward Sherman, a professor at Tulane University Law School in New Orleans. "The Obama administration may want to show its stuff before the November elections."

As London prepares for the Olympics, bureaucrats and law-makers have been busy too - enacting a range of rules and regulations. Draconian measures are already excluding some people from the country, while a number of residents have been banned from the games -simply because they've objected to the construction of Olympic facilities near their homes. RT's Laura Smith has more.