With unrest spreading across the Arab world from Egypt to other countries, protesters said at least two people were killed in a crackdown on demonstrations in Bahrain.

ABC News correspondent Miguel Marquez was caught in the crowd, and beaten by men with billy clubs in Bahrain's capital, Manama.

The country's main opposition group, Al Wefaq, said two men were killed in Pearl Square, in the center of Manama, when riot police used tear gas and rubber bullets early Thursday to break up the protests, according to the Associated Press. Hospitals across the city were on alert for more casualties.

Libya crushes 'day of anger' efforts Libyan security forces arrested activists and clashed with protesters on Thursday as Muammar Gaddafi's regime cracked down on efforts to organise a "day of anger" on the back of uprisings that forced the Tunisian and Egyptian presidents from office.

Activists and human rights officials said protesters and security forces clashed in Benghazi, the oil-rich nation's second city, and Al-Bayda, the scene of violence the previous night.

Tripoli, the capital of the oil-rich nation, appeared calm as several hundred supporters of Mr Gaddafi, who has ruled Libya since 1969, held a demonstration in the centre of the city.

"There were clearly attempts to demonstrate in Benghazi and al-Bayda since this morning and there have been arrests since last night," said Heba Morayef, North Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. "What we have seen in the last couple of days is a crackdown on peaceful protestors though arrests, beatings, tear gas, and in Al-Bayda, live fire."

Security source says Jewish state taking steps ahead of anniversary of Mughniyeh killing

Beirut - Israel ratcheted up its activities close to the Blue Line Monday, violating Lebanese airspace, according to reports from the south.

Reports also suggested Israel was bolstering its border patrols in the region from which two of its soldiers were abducted by Hezbollah in 2006, sparking the devastating month-long war which followed.

"Israeli war drones have been flying over Nabatiyeh, Iqlim Al-Toufah and Khiyam, all in south Lebanon, since 11 a.m. Monday," the National News Agency reported.

A spokesperson for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon told The Daily Star that UNIFIL "had not reported any violation" of Lebanese territory by Israeli patrols in recent weeks.

The Central News Agency, quoting an unidentified security source, said Israel had stepped up its maneuvers close to the Blue Line in anticipation of the anniversary of the assassination of Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughnieh, who was killed in an attack in Damascus in 2008 which the party blames on Israel.

"Security sources declared having observed movements of Israeli patrols in the Israeli side facing the border towns of Ramya and Aayta al-Shaab," the CNA said. "The patrols were accompanied by shots fired from machine guns in Khillet Warde and the vicinity of Israeli Area 716 inside Israeli territories.

The floods that swept across vast tracts of land from July to September 2010 covered many fields, houses and roads in a sea of swirling water - but they also played a part in exposing the depth of existing poverty and deprivation in Pakistan.

"The malnutrition we are seeing is not new. It has nothing to do with the floods; it is just that we are seeing it now as people come into contact with medical teams," Shershah Syed, a gynaecologist who has devoted himself to caring for impoverished women requiring care during pregnancy and birth, told IRIN.

Some of the ways in which powerful feudal families - in many cases linked to the political and bureaucratic elite - acted to protect their own interests at the cost of ordinary villagers have been well documented. Feudal overlords have been accused, both in the southern Punjab and in Sindh Province of influencing decisions regarding the diversion of floodwater or the breach of over-flowing dams to protect their own land.

A judicial investigation continues into allegations that in other places protective dykes were breached by wealthy landowners to save their farms, while flooding those of impoverished - and powerless - villagers.

[Note: This article appeared in issue 12 of The Dot Connector Magazine. Part 2 will appear in Issue 13, coming soon! Get your subscription today!]

"Today Christians ... stand at the head of [this country]... I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit ... We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past ... (few) years."
- Adolf Hitler

Since WWII, many people, groups and nations have been compared to the Nazi regime and the personalities therein. In fact, the analogy is overdone in American culture to the point of being meaningless. There is even a satirical law called Godwin's Law which states that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving the Nazis goes to 1." This is quite true. I've witnessed this law in action in online discussions, and it tends to be sardonically humorous when somebody calls it out. Despite the comedic value, the main point Godwin makes is that many Nazi comparisons tend to be baseless, and many others employ a good deal of pseudo-logic. A better understanding of history, while fostering a saner world, would probably prevent a good deal of invocations of Godwin's Law too.

When it comes to bad Nazi comparisons, few have been more boisterous and outright buffoonish than the vituperations of Tea Party mouthpiece and Fox News host Glenn Beck. One of Beck's recent Nazi comparisons involved taking a closer look at the concept of empathy in politics and - get this - how Hitler used 'empathy' to euthanize baby Knauer, a child born with significant birth defects in 1938 Germany, amid the debate over Hitler's eugenics policies. Beck's conclusion: "Empathy leads you to bad decisions every time." While Glenn Beck's logic is certainly twisted, I think we can safely say that he takes Godwin's Law to new heights.

A jaunty romp through all the lovely things our governments have thrown at us and where they might one day lead to in the not so far off future.

Pentagon employees who view child pornography continue to operate without the prospect of investigation, even though several of them used military e-mail address as part of their payment information.

Upon discovering that 264 Pentagon employees or contractors had downloaded child pornography, only 70 workers were investigated, including nine who had top security clearances. But the Department of Defense has failed to explain the lack of further action. So Pat Trueman, CEO of Morality in Media, tells OneNewsNow it is imperative to conduct the probe "because if someone is a collector of child pornography, they are subject to blackmail by those who want material that the Pentagon might have -- and we know various spy agencies from other countries have used tactics like this."

Trueman also points out that a credibility issue arises if Pentagon violators are not prosecuted.

"What you have is the federal government enforcing very strictly the child pornography law on others in society. But if it's the federal employees themselves [who have violated the law], the federal government [doesn't] seem to take it very seriously," he laments. "Doesn't the law apply equally to people in federal government as well as common citizens?"

Jerusalem - Israel's foreign minister claimed Wednesday that Iran is about to send two warships through the Suez Canal for the first time in years, calling it a "provocation," but he offered no evidence. The Egyptian authority that runs the canal denied it.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the ships would cross later Wednesday, en route to Syria. He offered no evidence and did not say how he knew it.

"This is a provocation that proves that Iranian audacity and insolence are increasing," he said in a statement.

The Egyptian body that runs the Suez Canal denied the claim.

Ahmed el-Manakhli, head of the canal operations room, said warships must get permission 48 hours before crossing, and "so far, we have not been notified."

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in an e-mailed statement that "Israel is closely following the movements of the Iranian ships and has updated friendly states on the issue. Israel will continue to follow the ships movements."

The following is largely extracted from two articles:

Twilight of the Psychopaths, by Dr. Kevin Barrett and The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade by Silvia Cattori. Both articles are recommended. Both articles reference the book Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes, by Andrzej Lobaczewski. Cattori's article is longer and includes an interview with the book's editors, Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Henry See.

I make the effort to share this information because it gives me, at last, a plausible answer to a long-unanswered question: Why, no matter how much intelligent goodwill exists in the world, is there so much war, suffering and injustice? It doesn't seem to matter what creative plan, ideology, religion, or philosophy great minds come up with, nothing seems to improve our lot. Since the dawn of civilization, this pattern repeats itself over and over again.

The answer is that civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths. All civilizations, our own included, have been built on slavery and mass murder. Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, cheat, steal, torture, manipulate, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse, in order to establish their own sense of security through domination. The inventor of civilization - the first tribal chieftain who successfully brainwashed an army of controlled mass murderers - was almost certainly a genetic psychopath. Since that momentous discovery, psychopaths have enjoyed a significant advantage over non-psychopaths in the struggle for power in civilizational hierarchies - especially military hierarchies.

Bernard Madoff, in a prison interview Tuesday, told The New York Times his family knew nothing of his schemes but the banks he dealt with "had to know." The interview was Madoff's first since he was charged with running a multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme in December 2008. The Times said he spent 2 hours with a reporter in a visitor's room at the prison in Butner, N.C.

Madoff said he did not realize how the tumbling of his financial house of cards would destroy his family. His son, Mark, hanged himself in December, and neither Mark Madoff nor Bernard Madoff's surviving son had spoken to either of their parents since their father's arrest. While the whole family worked for Bernard Madoff's company, he said Ruth Madoff and his sons did not realize what he was up to. But he said the funds that steered their clients' money to him and the banks and hedge funds had information from regulatory filings and other sources to figure it out.