Nato apologises for killing seven Afghan children, aged six to 14, who were sitting around campfire in the snow

Nato has voiced regret for the killing of eight civilians in an airstrike in eastern Afghanistan last week.

The coalition dropped two bombs on February 8 in Najrab district in Kapisa province, after movements by eight people on the ground were assessed as a threat to Afghan police and Nato forces in the area.

Air Commodore Mike Wigston, the director of Nato air operations, said today that the international forces believed they were 'young teenagers' who were armed.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2101599/Nato-apologises-killing-seven-Afghan-children-aged-14-sitting-campfire-snow.html#ixzz1mbQBCZUf

Amerika: Land of The Snitch

Livin' in a Bankster's Paradise

Of all the things for which I have little patience — Willard Romney, lottery machines in convenience stores, and the current state of the Montreal Canadiens, to name only three — the notion that the best way to deal with things is to "look forward, not back" is right at the top of the list. This is especially true as regards the undeniable fact that, over the course of a decade, a bunch of cheats, thieves, and suited mountebanks stole most of the national economy and then wrecked whatever was left of it. But what's most extraordinary about the whole thing is that, after they swindled their swindles and heisted their heists, and got paid off by the rest of us for having looted our naional economy, they all kept doing the same things they were doing before. These included extravagant bonuses and, of course, continued crimes of capital that ought to be capital crimes.

This is extraordinary. All this Citigroup fraud and thuggery took place after the events of the great meltdown had taken place. This whisteblower's co-workers, instead of checking for fraud or making reports about underwriting defects to the FHA as required, argued with her over the soundness of the loans, she said. Employees who acted as "gatekeepers" applied "what they describe as 'brute force' to pressure Citi's quality control managers" into downplaying defects, according to the government's complaint.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Citigroup_walks_away_clean#ixzz1mZhO5vU0

Propaganda Alert: Esquire Blog Tackles Agenda 21 in Their Own Wicked Way

Some of the books on the table were old and musty-smelling, as though they'd been kept for a couple of decades in an attic with an ill-maintained roof. Their subjects were old and musty-smelling as well; William F. Buckley: Pied Piper of the Establishment was one of them. There were also tomes from ancient lost souls like Medford Evans and Dan Smoot. There was a creationist tract of indeterminate age. It was the early evening at the Endicott Estate, a lordly old pile here just outside Boston, and the John Birch Society had come to call.

Next to the old, musty-smelling books was a pile of new pamphlets and newsletters and flyers. These dealt with Agenda 21, a 20-year old plan for sustainable growth that came out of the United Nations, and out of the Rio Conference on the environment, in 1992. The program was a non-binding set of resolutions aimed at encouraging nations toward conservation of their resources and preserving their open spaces, and promoting what became known as "sustainable growth." In Agenda 21, however, the Birchers, and an increasing number of more mainstream conservatives — including Fox News, Newt Gingrich, and, rhetorically anyway, the Republican National Committee which, in January, called Agenda 21 "destructive and insidious" — see a worldwide plot to destroy private property rights and force upon us all a one-world government of "the elites" through radical environmentalism, forcing us all to live in the regimented hellholes of our cities. The other Republican candidates, alas, are seen by many people in the movement as being squishy on the subject.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/agenda-21-conspiracy-2012-6668296#ixzz1mZgtTuFF

Woman: TSA workers think I'm 'cute,' scan me three times at Dallas airport

The passenger, Ellen Terrell, is among a host of women who suspect they were randomly selected for body scans not because of any threat they posed, but because TSA workers wanted a closer look at their physiques, according to an investigation by CBS 11 in Dallas of more than 500 passenger complaints about the TSA.

"I feel I was targeted by the TSA employee to go through the see-you-naked machine because I am a semi-attractive female," according to one of the complaints reviewed by CBS.

The pattern of alleged abuses has caught the attention of U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), who Sunday said he wants to introduce a bill to address complaints by passengers.

"A passenger at Dallas Fort Worth claims she was asked to walk through a body scanner three times for the simple purpose of letting screeners in another room get multiple views of her image," Schumer said, according to CBS 11. "At one point the passenger was asked if she plays tennis because of her 'cute' figure, " he said.

Terrell’s story was brought to light by the Texas station during its investigation into the treatment of female passengers by the TSA. The report aired earlier this month.

According to the station, Terrell and her husband, Charlie, were traveling out of Dallas-Fort Worth Airport when her ordeal took place.

Read more: http://933flz.mjmorningshow.com/go/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=204719&article=9761669#ixzz1mZTtaGbg

Citigroup Whistle-Blower Says Bank’s ‘Brute Force’ Hid Bad Loans From U.S.

Four years after rotten mortgages helped trigger a global financial crisis, Sherry Hunt said her Citigroup Inc. quality-control team was still finding flaws in new loans that included altered tax forms, straw buyers and borrowers who listed fictitious employers.

Instead of reporting the defects to the Federal Housing Administration, the bank saddled the agency with losses by falsely declaring the loans fit for its federal insurance program, according to a complaint filed yesterday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. Citigroup agreed to pay $158.3 million to settle the claims, and admitted that it certified loans for FHA backing that didn’t qualify.

Hunt, who filed a sealed lawsuit against New York-based Citigroup in August that the government joined, will collect $31 million of that sum -- before taxes and attorney’s fees -- as a whistle-blower, she said in an interview yesterday. The settlement, which encompassed misconduct spanning 2004 to the present, indicates Citigroup has lingering problems in its O’Fallon, Missouri-based CitiMortgage unit.

“Citigroup in particular received government funding, taxpayer dollars, because of its risky operations,” said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. “It shows that they hadn’t really learned much of a lesson from the financial crisis.”

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The imperial way: American decline in perspective, part 2

In the years of conscious, self-inflicted decline at home, "losses" continued to mount elsewhere. In the past decade, for the first time in 500 years, South America has taken successful steps to free itself from western domination, another serious loss. The region has moved towards integration, and has begun to address some of the terrible internal problems of societies ruled by mostly Europeanized elites, tiny islands of extreme wealth in a sea of misery. They have also rid themselves of all US military bases and of IMF controls. A newly formed organization, CELAC, includes all countries of the hemisphere apart from the US and Canada. If it actually functions, that would be another step in American decline, in this case in what has always been regarded as "the backyard".

Even more serious would be the loss of the MENA countries – Middle East/North Africa – which have been regarded by planners since the 1940s as "a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history". Control of MENA energy reserves would yield "substantial control of the world", in the words of the influential Roosevelt advisor AA Berle.

To be sure, if the projections of a century of US energy independence based on North American energy resources turn out to be realistic, the significance of controlling MENA would decline somewhat, though probably not by much: the main concern has always been control more than access. However, the likely consequences to the planet's equilibrium are so ominous that discussion may be largely an academic exercise.

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NATO says found Afghan children dead after air strike

KABUL (Reuters) - NATO-led forces in Afghanistan said on Monday they found the bodies of dead children after a coalition air strike that has enraged the Afghan government, and said their deaths may have been linked to an anti-insurgent operation in the area.

The air strike took place last Wednesday near the village of Giawa, in eastern Kapisa province, and followed similar bombings that have stoked tension between the government and NATO over a civilian death toll that has risen annually for five years.

NATO aircraft and ground forces attacked insurgents on open ground in the Najrab district of Kapisa, said Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, a spokesman for NATO's 130,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

"Following the engagement additional casualties were discovered and these casualties were young Afghans of varying ages," Jacobson told reporters.

"At this point in our assessment we can neither confirm nor deny, with reasonable assurance, a direct link to the engagement. Nonetheless, any death of innocents not associated with armed conflict is a tragedy," he said.

Afghan government officials showed gruesome photographs of eight dead boys, and said seven of them had been aged between six and 14, while one had been around 18 years old. They were bombed twice while herding sheep in heavy snow and lighting a fire to keep warm, they said.

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DETROIT NEWS wants to put contraceptives in drinking water so that "POOR" girls don't get pregnant

Since the national attention is on birth control, here's my idea: If we want to fight poverty, reduce violent crime and bring down our embarrassing drop-out rate, we should swap contraceptives for fluoride in Michigan's drinking water.

We've got a baby problem in Michigan. Too many babies are born to immature parents who don't have the skills to raise them, too many are delivered by poor women who can't afford them, and too many are fathered by sorry layabouts who spread their seed like dandelions and then wander away from the consequences.

Michigan's social problems and the huge costs attached to them won't recede until we embrace reproductive responsibility.

Last year, 43 percent of the babies born in Michigan were to single mothers. And even though Medicaid pays for birth control, half of the babies born here were to mothers on welfare. Eighteen percent were born to teenagers who already had at least one child. And nearly 1-in-5 new babies had mothers with no high school diploma.

In Michigan, poverty is as much a cultural problem as it is an economic one.

I spoke with an educator who is dealing with a single mother, mid-30s, with 12 children and a 13th on the way. The kids have an assortment of fathers with one thing in common — none married their mother. This woman's womb is a poverty factory.

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Ron Paul suffers narrow loss to Mitt Romney in Maine

Police Shoot Sunday School Teacher For Rolling Up Her Window

Athens buildings burn as lawmakers weigh austerity

Historic cinemas, cafes and shops went up in flames in central Athens on Sunday as black-masked protesters fought Greek police outside parliament, while inside lawmakers looked set to defy the public rage by endorsing a new EU/IMF austerity deal.

As parliament prepared to vote on a new 130 billion euro bailout to save Greece from a messy bankruptcy, a Reuters photographer saw the buildings engulfed in flames and huge plumes of smoke rose in the night sky.

The air over Syntagma Square outside parliament was thick with tear gas as riot police fought running battles with youths who smashed marble balustrades and hurled stones and petrol bombs.

Government officials warned that Greeks faced "unimaginably harsher" sacrifices if parliament rejected the package, which demands deep pay, pension and job cuts, when it votes later in the evening.

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Koch Industries: Obama trying to silence private citizens

Koch Industries has accused President Barack Obama’s allies of trying to silence its wealthy executives, David and Charles Koch, following remarks made by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

“We will exercise our First Amendment rights and not be intimidated or silenced by the President’s aides and his allies who criticize private citizens that disagree with the President’s policies,” Philip Ellender of Koch Industries wrote Friday on KochFacts.com.

Facing well-funded Republican candidates like Mitt Romney, Obama’s campaign has recently encouraged rich donors to support Priorities USA Action, a Democratic super PAC. Ellender accused Obama of hypocrisy for previously railing against the influence of money in politics.

“It is worth noting that President Obama outraised and outspent his opponent by hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2008 Presidential campaign, relying in large part on the same corporate executive funding sources whose productivity, business practices, and profitability he pretends to denounce,” he said.

“Apparently, the President and his allies do not want to lose that perceived fundraising advantage during the 2012 Presidential campaign, and are trying to intimidate into silence those who may disagree with them and who may decide to support other candidates,” Ellender concluded.

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And the winner is ...

The Oscar's are coming up and a lot of people will be glued to their boob tubes watching to see who wins what and what will be worn on the red carpet. I don't have cable so I won't have the honor of seeing the latest fashions in 1080p. I dropped that expense when I realized that they weren't ever going to expose 9/11 as an inside job. There was no need to pay for my own brainwashing.

This week A.A. Dowd offered his Oscar predictions in the major categories.

Here is my pick for best actor:

Best Actor: Barack Obama - He was amazing when he performed in the movie - WE KILLED OSAMA BIN LADEN, AGAIN.

He was so believable. Judging from the last decade's precedents, his performance makes him the favorite to take the Oscar. Something about giving the award to Obama just feels right even though he's too new.

Let's look at his total body of work. He acted like he wasn't going to sign the NDAA legislation but he did.

He acted like he was going to go after the telecoms for eavesdropping but he didn't!

Obama acted like he was going to reinstate Glass-Steagell but he didn't!

Obama acted like he would close Gitmo but he hasn't, isn't and won't!

He acts like he cares about the US Constitution yet he kills American citizens without due process!

Click to read more ...

Hidden "Agent Orange" Chemical They Want to Sneak into Your Food

Agent Orange, produced by both Monsanto and Dow Chemicals, was used to defoliate jungles during the Vietnam War.

During that time, millions of gallons of the toxic chemical mixture were sprayed on trees and vegetation, and the aftermath left hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese sick, with countless numbers of their children suffering birth defects, and a still growing group of U.S. veterans with related diseases ranging from cancer to Parkinson's disease.

Agent Orange was a horrific chemical concoction that never should have been used, and if you want to see some of its effects on children who were exposed in the womb, you can do so here -- but I warn you the photos are very graphic and upsetting.

Agent Orange is no longer produced -- so why am I bringing it up now?

Because Dow AgroSciences (a subsidiary of Dow Chemicals), who was one of the original manufacturers of Agent Orange (AO), has developed a new generation of genetically modified (GM) crops -- soybeans, corn and cotton -- that are designed to resist a major ingredient in AO: the herbicide called 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D).

The use of 2,4-D, however, is not new, as it is actually one of the most widely used herbicides in the world.

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The Afghanistan Report the Pentagon Doesn't Want You to Read

ROLLING STONE

Earlier this week, the New York Times’ Scott Shane published a bombshell piece about Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis, a 17-year Army veteran recently returned from a second tour in Afghanistan. According to the Times, the 48-year-old Davis had written an 84-page unclassified report, as well as a classified report, offering his assessment of the decade-long war. That assessment is essentially that the war has been a disaster and the military's top brass has not leveled with the American public about just how badly it’s been going. "How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding?" Davis boldly asks in an article summarizing his views in The Armed Forces Journal.

Davis last month submitted the unclassified report –titled "Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leader’s Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort" – for an internal Army review. Such a report could then be released to the public. However, according to U.S. military officials familiar with the situation, the Pentagon is refusing to do so. Rolling Stone has now obtained a full copy of the 84-page unclassified version, which has been making the rounds within the U.S. government, including the White House. We've decided to publish it in full; it's well worth reading for yourself. It is, in my estimation, one of the most significant documents published by an active-duty officer in the past ten years.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/the-afghanistan-report-the-pentagon-doesnt-want-you-to-read-20120210#ixzz1m8LKxIV4

Israel, MEK and state sponsor of Terror groups

by Glenn Greenwald

One of the most under-reported political stories of the last year is the devoted advocacy of numerous prominent American political figures on behalf of an Iranian group long formally designated as a Terrorist organization under U.S. law. A large bipartisan cast has received substantial fees from that group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), and has then become their passionate defenders. The group of MEK shills includes former top Bush officials and other Republicans (Michael Mukasey, Fran Townsend, Andy Card, Tom Ridge, Rudy Giuliani) as well as prominent Democrats (Howard Dean, Ed Rendell, Bill Richardson, Wesley Clark). As The Christian Science Monitor reported last August, those individuals “have been paid tens of thousands of dollars to speak in support of the MEK.” No matter what one thinks of this group – here is a summary of its activities – it is formally designated as a Terrorist group and it is thus a felony under U.S. law to provide it with any “material support.”

There are several remarkable aspects to this story. The first is that there are numerous Muslims inside the U.S. who have been prosecuted for providing “material support for Terrorism” for doing far less than these American politicians are publicly doing on behalf of a designated Terrorist group.

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Ron Paul advisor Doug Wead on The Rachel Maddow Show MSNBC 2/10/12

Source Exposes FEMA Training Camp in Missouri

An anonymous source has sent photos to Infowars.com of a FEMA training camp located at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Sam will talk with Alex Jones on his nationally syndicated radio show today.

The FEMA camp whistleblower was contracted to work at the camp. He describes it as a “civilian inmate training camp” and told Infowars.com he has spotted foreign troops in maroon and purple uniforms instructing troops in the use of baton tactics and crowd control techniques.

He said there has been “incredible activity” at the camp since the passage of NDAA.

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Bin Laden Death Deemed Murder of CIA Case Officer as 9/11 Coverup

CIA officials report that, even after 9/11, they were actively seeking a kidney transplant for bin Laden to keep him alive.  They confirmed that he was actively being paid, had security clearances and was working on assignments received on or after 9/11.

They also confirmed bin Laden had, because of health reasons, not been living in Bahrain as thought but San Diego.  While there, he visited the White House and met with George H. W. Bush and other members of the Bush family including George W. Bush.

Bin Laden felt betrayed when the President, a man he knew as a personal friend, ordered his killing after 9/11, particularly since bin Laden was an active CIA agent.

Other “hunts” for bin Laden were staged to provide him cover while his severe illness put him in and out of American hospitals, something that would have destroyed his credibility with many groups he worked with.

I confirmed bin Laden’s death in a personal meeting with General Athar Abbas and his staff in 2010.  They confirmed that America has been aware of bin Laden’s death for all along.  General Abbas refused to answer other questions on this subject.

Click to read more...