Saying "the time has come for a new policy" in Syria, veteran Republican Senator John McCain called Monday for U.S.-led airstrikes on President Bashar al-Assad's forces in an effort to protect civilians from a bloody year-long crackdown by the regime.

"The United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centers in Syria, especially in the north, through airstrikes on Assad's forces," McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a speech on the Senate floor.

"To be clear: This will require the United States to suppress enemy air defense in at least part of the country," said McCain, who has repeatedly called in recent weeks and months for a stepped-up U.S. effort to protect Syrian civilians.

Assad has waged a year-long, deadly crackdown on opposition to his regime, drawing fierce criticism from Washington and other world powers, though Moscow and Beijing blocked a UN Security Council resolution aimed at halting the bloodshed.

The White House has sharply criticized Russia and China, but has resisted calls to arm the Syrian opposition as premature.

Let's face it, most people don't have the time, energy or inclination to try to separate truth from lies in our world today. The ability to do so is, however, crucial for many reasons. For over ten years, we here at Sott.net have been analysing and writing on what passes for the 'news' and we've come to a conclusion that may be of help to those who can't, or won't, do their own digging for the truth.

The conclusion is that you can, with a reasonable degree of certainty, assume that the truth about any major political event can be found more or less 180 degrees from what politicians or the media (especially US and European politicians and media) claim. Try it out. To do this, you have to do it consciously. So take any current major political news item in the media and, in your mind, flip it 180 degrees. When reading the headline or summary of a news item, simply reverse the statement that it makes. I can assure you that this 180 version will be a lot closer to the truth.

Take for example Vladimir Putin's recent election victory. Check the headlines from major Western 'news' corporations and you'll see that they all smear, subtly and not so subtly, Putin's win with allegations of 'corruption'. Rupert Murdoch's Sky News went so far as to put 'scare quotes' around the words 'wins election'. Virtually all other media outlets carried the same disparaging headline in one form or another, which is not surprising since there are about 3 or 4 actual Western 'news' agencies that report on events and then simply share the information with their subsidiaries. In this case, our 180 degree approach works rather well.

On Feb. 23rd, 2012, an assembly bill (AB 2109) was submitted to the California Legislature by state assemblyman and pediatrician, Dr. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), which will make it harder for parents to refuse to vaccinate their children. The bill is sponsored by the California Medical Association (CMA), the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the California Immunization Coalition.

Right now in California if a child is enrolled in school their parents are legally required to have them vaccinated. However, exemptions may be obtained by parents who object for religious or philosophical reasons if they sign the portion of the immunization record that says immunizations are contrary to their beliefs and that they understand that in the case of an outbreak of a 'vaccine-preventable' disease the child may be temporarily excluded from attending school/child care institutions "for his/her protection."

If Bill AB 2109 passes, by July 1st, 2013, parents who wish to opt out will be required to bring with them on the day of enrollment a written statement from a medical doctor or conventional "health care practitioner" that states they have been informed of the benefits and risks of vaccines and the communicable disease they are said to prevent. The parent would also be required to submit a written statement that indicates that he or she received the information from the health care practitioner.

Another draft mental health bill, this time in Australia is mirroring global efforts in what is now an international and deliberate surge by government officials to remove parental consent. If passed, the shocking new law will allow children who are considered sufficiently mature, to be subjected to horrifying procedures including sterilization and electroshock.

An important message by the Director of Applied Scholastics in Western Australia based in Perth, Alison Tarrant was sent to the public on behalf of The Athena School. "Some very disturbing information has come across our path in relation to a Draft Mental Health Bill which concerns our precious children and our rights as parents," said Tarrant in a statement in the February 29, 2012 letter.

Tarrant initially thought the information lacked authenticity and was later astonished when she found out the document was legitimate. "When I read it I was quite shocked and thought someone was playing a joke on me but then I went onto the main website which is the Government Department of the Mental Health Commission and looked at the actual Draft Bill," she added.

PreventDisease.com recently reported that vaccinating without parental knowledge will soon become the norm across the world. There is now a confirmed global initiative to remove any consent parents have to safeguard their children's health while simultaneously removing any chance of informed consent by those who are considered of "mature" age regardless of their status as a child or teenager. These proposed bills are poised to become law and their frequency is increasing especially in the U.S, U.K, Canada, Australia.

As the first anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster arrives, the cover-up involving nuclear power is more extensive than ever.

The Big Lie was integral to the nuclear push from its start.

Promoters of nuclear power discounted the seriousness of nuclear plant accidents, although government documents acknowledged the vast scale of catastrophe. As the Atomic Energy Commission's "WASH-740 update," done at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the 1960s, repeatedly states about a major nuclear plant accident: "The possible size of the area of such a disaster might be equal to that of the State of Pennsylvania."

They pushed the "peaceful atom" - although knowing that any nation with a nuclear plant would have the materiel from it (the plutonium produced as a byproduct) and trained personnel to make atomic weapons.

They downplayed the effects of radioactivity claiming it needed to reach a "threshold" to cause harm - even as it became clear that any amount of radioactivity can injure and kill.

And nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter," they insisted.

And on and on...

A bill passed Monday in the US House of Representatives and Thursday in the Senate would make it a felony - a serious criminal offense punishable by lengthy terms of incarceration - to participate in many forms of protest associated with the Occupy Wall Street protests of last year. Several commentators have dubbed it the "anti-Occupy" law, but its implications are far broader.

The bill - H.R. 347, or the "Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011" - was passed by unanimous consent in the Senate, while only Ron Paul and two other Republicans voted against the bill in the House of Representatives (the bill passed 388-3). Not a single Democratic politician voted against the bill.

The virtually unanimous passage of H.R. 347 starkly exposes the fact that, despite all the posturing, the Democrats and the Republicans stand shoulder to shoulder with the corporate and financial oligarchy, which regarded last year's popular protests against social inequality with a mixture of fear and hostility.

Among the central provisions of H.R. 347 is a section that would make it a criminal offense to "enter or remain in" an area designated as "restricted."

The bill defines the areas that qualify as "restricted" in extremely vague and broad terms. Restricted areas can include "a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting" and "a building or grounds so restricted in conjunction with an event designated as a special event of national significance."

Gaza's poor infrastructure and lack of building material and equipments due to the blockade has led the war battered infrastructure to deteriorate.

Palestine - Dozens of homes were flooded in central Gaza by untreated sewage water after Israel opened a dam located in the eastern side of the impoverished territory which leads to the Gaza Valley off the Mediterranean .

With Egypt's refusal to allow fuel into the blockaded coastal enclave, it was extremely difficult for rescue crews to tackle the problem.

Families in the flooded area have been struggling since the early hours of the morning trying to retrieve their belongings. Some area residents described the flooding of as another Israeli aggression demanding international protection.

In 2007 Israel placed the Territory under an unprecedented blockade on nearly all movement and supplies in and out of the Strip.
To add insult to injury Gazans have to deal with 18 hours of power outage because Gaza's sole power generating plant has stopped working again after Egypt blocked the flow of diesel fuel through underground tunnels.

Introduction by Nick Turse: memories of a visit to New York City

When I covered the Occupy Wall Street protests last fall, I just couldn't stay focused, despite the fact that people from across the country and around the world were traveling to that block-long half-acre park of granite walls and honey-locust trees in lower Manhattan to build a new mini-society. It boasted free housing, free food, free medical care, free education, and free music. Every day in Zuccotti Park there were thrilling rap sessions and you could watch direct democracy in action as people came together to exchange ideas in provocative new ways. To steal a well-worn activist phrase, it looked like another world was possible.

© unknownOccupy Wall Street: NYPD evict protestors at Zuccotti Park

And there I was, staring across the street. While it seemed like 99% of the 99% were captivated by the excitement in the park, I was transfixed by the police.

Day after day, I would cover Occupy Wall Street and day after day, I would get hassled by members of the New York City Police Department. They didn't like it when I asked questions about their Sky Watch tower - a two-story-tall, Panopticon-like structure outfitted with black-tinted windows, a spotlight, sensors, and multiple cameras that spied on the park. They got angry when I counted their dozens of police vehicles around the plaza's perimeter, or when I asked questions about the unmarked white truck that just happened to have a camera mounted on a forty-foot pole protruding from its roof.

They trailed me, took pictures of me, demanded my identification, and repeatedly confronted me. One cop even declared my reporting "illegal." But I couldn't help myself. Watching the NYPD was like gawking at a car wreck. I was reminded of the police response to the 2004 Republic National Convention, but on steroids. To take just one example, back then, the NYPD had around 9,000 steel barricades to pen in protesters around the city - enough, that is, to stretch from one tip of Manhattan to the other. More than seven years later, the approximately 150 steel barricades that formed a cordon around Zuccotti Park were part of a NYPD inventory that could enclose the entire island in a formidable ring of steel.

In his latest article, TomDispatch regular Stephan Salisbury assures me that I was never alone in my fixation on the rise of a homeland security state, and his reporting gives even me pause. With Occupy protesters gearing up for a spring resurgence, Salisbury spells out just what activists will be up against - think unmanned drones, tanks, and super-sophisticated surveillance systems from New York City to Scottsbluff, Nebraska - in the months ahead. (To catch Timothy MacBain's latest Tomcast audio interview in which Salisbury discusses post-9/11 police "mission creep" in this country, click here, or download it to your iPod here.) Nick Turse

How to Fund an American Police State and get Real Money for an Imaginary War
By Stephan Salisbury

At the height of the Occupy Wall Street evictions, it seemed as though some diminutive version of "shock and awe" had stumbled from Baghdad, Iraq, to Oakland, California. American police forces had been "militarized," many commentators worried, as though the firepower and callous tactics on display were anomalies, surprises bursting upon us from nowhere.

There should have been no surprise. Those flash grenades exploding in Oakland and the sound cannons on New York's streets simply opened small windows onto a national policing landscape long in the process of militarization - a bleak domestic no man's land marked by tanks and drones, robot bomb detectors, grenade launchers, tasers, and most of all, interlinked video surveillance cameras and information databases growing quietly on unobtrusive server farms everywhere.

The ubiquitous fantasy of "homeland security," pushed hard by the federal government in the wake of 9/11, has been widely embraced by the public. It has also excited intense weapons - and techno-envy among police departments and municipalities vying for the latest in armor and spy equipment.

In such a world, deadly gadgetry is just a grant request away, so why shouldn't the 14,000 at-risk souls in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, have a closed-circuit-digital-camera-and-monitor system (cost: $180,000, courtesy of the Homeland Security Department) identical to the one up and running in New York's Times Square?

Tehran - Clerical Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has tightened his grip on Iran's faction-ridden politics after loyalists won over 75 percent of seats in parliamentary elections at the expense of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a near-complete count showed.

The widespread defeat of Ahmadinejad supporters - including his sister, Parvin Ahmadinejad - is expected to reduce the president to a lame duck after he sowed divisions by challenging the utmost authority of Khamenei in the governing hierarchy.

The outcome of Friday's vote, essentially a contest between conservative hardline factions with reformist leaders under house arrest, will have no big impact on Iranian foreign policy, notably its nuclear stand-off with the West. But it will boost Khamenei's influence in next year's presidential election.

With 90 percent of ballot boxes counted, Khamenei acolytes were expected to occupy more than three-quarters of the 290 seats in the Majlis (parliament), according to a list published by the interior ministry on Sunday.

In the race for the 30 seats in the capital Tehran, a Reuters tally of preliminary returns showed Khamenei supporters had taken 19 and pro-Ahmadinejad candidates the rest. Leading in popularity was Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel, a key ally of Khamenei and father-in-law to the paramount leader's son, Mojtaba.

Vladimir Putin faces new protests on Monday to challenge his victory in a presidential election he said had prevented Russia from falling into the hands of enemies trying to usurp power.

Putin's opponents, complaining of widespread fraud in Sunday's election, said they did not recognize the results and would rally near the Kremlin at 7 p.m..

But the former KGB spy, who after four years as prime minister will be returning to the post he held from 2000 until 2008, said with tears rolling down his cheeks that he had won a "clean" victory.

"I promised you we would win. We have won. Glory to Russia," Putin, dressed in an anorak and flanked by outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev, told tens of thousands of flag-waving supporters on Sunday night under the Kremlin's red walls.