Terri Judd — The Independent May 17, 2013

The judge investigating the killing of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko said that the British Government’s cover-up of vital evidence was making it impossible for him to conduct a fair inquest.

The inquest into the death of the 42-year-old spy, who was poisoned by polonium-210, appeared in danger of collapsing before it had begun last night after Sir Robert Owen suggested that a public inquiry might be a better forum to examine the evidence.

Mr Litvinenko died in November 2006 after meeting two former KGB contacts – Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun – at the Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square, London. British prosecutors named Mr Lugovoy as the main suspect in the case but Russia has refused to extradite him to the UK for questioning.

Mr Litvinenko’s widow Marina Litvinenko has always maintained that her husband, who fled to the UK in 2000, was working with MI6 and that Mr Lugovoy was acting under instruction from the Kremlin. The long-postponted inquest had been due to start in October.

Lawyers for the Foreign Secretary William Hague had applied for information relating to Russian state involvement, as well as how much British intelligence services could have done to prevent the death, to be excluded from the inquest. Yesterday in his ruling Sir Robert, assistant deputy coroner in charge of the inquest, rejected parts of the application but upheld the Secretary of State’s claim on the two central issues of Russian involvement and preventability.

Pointing out that he had no power to take evidence in secret in an inquest, Sir Robert said this left him with two unsatisfactory options. If he kept the issues within the scope of the inquest relying on the limited open evidence available, he would “fail to discharge my duty to undertake a full, fair and fearless inquiry into the circumstances of Mr Litvinenko’s death”.

But to exclude them all together, he added, would be “to leave uninvestigated two issues that are of central importance”, adding: “To attempt to address such issues without being able to take such material into account has the inevitable consequence that the inquiry would be incomplete, and a verdict potentially misleading and/or unfair to the Interested Parties or to others who might be implicated, in particular the Russian State.”

He therefore concluded that a public inquiry, where evidence could be heard in secret, might be the best option, if this was requested by any of the interested parties, which include Mrs Litvinenko, Mr Lugovoy, the Metropolitan Police and the Russian state.

Sir Robert said he was very aware that, as the international arrest warrants issued by the Metropolitan Police for Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun were unlikely ever to be executed, the inquest was Mrs Litvinenko’s only chance to have the circumstances surrounding her husband’s death examined in a British court.

On a recent pre-inquest hearing, Mrs Litvinenko’s barrister Ben Emmerson QC accused the British government of conspiring with the Russians to withhold evidence that the latter was responsible for the former KGB agent’s death. He said for the coroner to have to exclude evidence of Russian involvement would be “staggering”.

Source

Louise Gray — Telegraph.co.uk May 15, 2013

Wind and rain hit the west of Britain through Tuesday, with local surface flooding in Wales, the west country and the west midlands.

In some areas on high ground like Dartmoor, the wintry showers turned to snow.

Sheila Coates, from Princetown, told BBC Radio Devon: “It’s crazy. When I went to bed last night I couldn’t see out of my front window for the snow.

“I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never known weather like it at this time of year.”

Two inches of snow also fell in Shropshire overnight and up to three inches of rain in places.

Floods alerts were issued by the Environment Agency for Wales, the South West and the Midlands.

Gales in the South West of up to 65mph brought down trees and caused blackouts.

Western Power Distribution said power cuts had affected nearly 1,800 homes in Penzance, Cornwall.

The winds are expected to die down on Wednesday but the weather will remain wet and cool for this time of year.

Showers are forecast for most of the country with more heavy downpours of up to half an inch in an hour possible, especially in the west of the country and the north. On Friday there is more likely to be showers in the east. On high ground showers could turn wintry.

The temperature will remain a few degrees below normal at around 16 or 17C in the south and 12 to 15C in the north. It will feel even colder in the rain.

Scotland is on alert for floods on Saturday.

The unsettled weather is expected to last into this weekend and half term at the end of next week.

Source

Tim Shipman — Daily Mail May 14, 2013

Labour sent out ‘search parties’ for immigrants to get them to come to the UK, Lord Mandelson has admitted.

In a stunning confirmation that the Blair and Brown governments deliberately engineered mass immigration, the former Cabinet Minister and spin doctor said New Labour sought out foreign workers.

He also conceded that the influx of arrivals meant the party’s traditional supporters are now unable to find work.

By contrast, Labour leader Ed Miliband has said his party got it wrong on immigration but has refused to admit it was too high under Labour.

Between 1997 and 2010, net migration to Britain totalled more than 2.2million, more than twice the population of Birmingham.

The annual net figure quadrupled under Labour from 48,000 people in 1997 to 198,000 by 2009.

Lord Mandelson’s remarks come three years after Labour officials denied claims by former adviser Andrew Neather that they deliberately encouraged immigration in order to change the make-up of Britain.

Mr Neather said the policy was designed to ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’.

He said there was ‘a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural’.

Senior Labour figures have been reluctant to concede they deliberately engineered the influx of migrants who have transformed communities over the past decade.

But, at a rally for the Blairite think-tank Progress, Lord Mandelson said: ‘In 2004 when as a Labour government, we were not only welcoming people to come into this country to work, we were sending out search parties for people and encouraging them, in some cases, to take up work in this country.’

He said: ‘The problem has grown during the period of economic stagnation over the last five, six years.’

When Labour encouraged new arrivals ‘we were almost … a full employment economy’ but, he admitted: ‘The situation is different obviously now.

‘We have to just realise… entry to the labour market of many people of non-British origin is hard for people who are finding it very difficult to find jobs, who find it hard to keep jobs.

‘For these people immigration tends to loom large in their lives and in their worlds, now that is an inescapable fact, and we have to understand it, address it, engage with people in discussion about it.’

His words are far franker than Mr Miliband’s. Asked earlier this month whether ‘too many people were allowed to come’, he replied: ‘I wouldn’t put it that way, no.’
Tory chairman Grant Shapps said: ‘Peter Mandelson’s candid admission that Labour were purposefully letting immigration spiral out of control when in government is yet another damning indictment on their record on immigration.’

Sir Andrew Green of Migration Watch said: ‘This is an astonishing admission from the highest level that Labour’s mass immigration policy was entirely deliberate.

‘It will be a very long time before their own working class supporters forgive them for the enormous changes that have been imposed on their communities.’

Gordon Brown yesterday accused the Tories of emulating Enoch Powell by using immigration to head off the growing electoral threat from UKIP.

Mr Powell’s 1968 ‘rivers of blood’ speech ignited huge controversy in the debate on immigration.

Former prime minister Mr Brown – who once called for ‘British jobs for British workers’ – told a pro-union rally in Glasgow: ‘A party that was anti-Powellite on immigration is now becoming very close to being Powellite on that issue.’

Source

Tim Walker — The Independent May 14, 2013

A Philadelphia doctor has been found guilty of first-degree murder in relation to the deaths of three babies born alive during illegal, late-term abortions at his squalid back-street clinic.

Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty for Dr Kermit Gosnell, who was acquitted of murdering a fourth baby, but also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of 41-year-old woman, who died from an overdose of drugs administered during an abortion.

When the accepted procedure of injecting drugs into the mother failed to terminate the foetuses in utero, the prosecution claimed Dr Gosnell would deliver the babies alive, and then kill them by cutting their spinal cords with surgical scissors. However, the 72-year-old’s defence team argued that there had been no live births at the clinic.

Most national media outlets failed to report Dr Gosnell’s trial when it first began in March, perhaps due to its grisly details, but it has since become a national cause celebre, giving ammunition to both sides of America’s heated abortion debate.

Though pro-choice campaigners condemned Dr Gosnell’s practices, they argued that his clinic was the sort of unsavoury facility to which women would be forced to resort if abortion was more strictly regulated in the US.

Already in 2013, Arkansas and North Dakota have reduced the legal limit for abortions to 12 and six weeks respectively, while several other states including Mississippi are in the process of passing laws intended to close abortion clinics altogether.

When authorities raided Dr Gosnell’s clinic in 2010, they found it filthy and stinking of urine. Foetuses were stored in bottles, instruments were unsterilised; there was blood on the floor, and even a flea-infested cat. The under-regulated facility served mostly underprivileged women who sought cheap, late-term abortions.

Lead prosecutor Edward Cameron told the court that Dr Gosnell ran an “assembly line” for poor minority women, who often ended up ill.

At the heart of the case was the question of whether the foetuses were alive or dead once they left the womb. The defence maintained that the movements seen in the babies were simply post-mortem muscular spasms.The jury took 10 days to reach its verdicts. As well as the murder counts, Dr Gosnell faced around 260 lesser charges, including running a corrupt organisation.

Source

Also see:

Gosnell the baby-killer and the liberals who shielded him

Richard Silverstein — Tikum Olam May 11, 2013

A highly-placed Israeli source elaborates on a partially truthful Ynetnews report that Israel destroyed an advanced Shoval (“Heron”) drone that was on a mission over the sea between Tel Aviv and Netanya. Israel did indeed destroy the drone, one of the most advanced in its fleet. Here is what its manufacturer had to say about it after its October 2012 launch:

The drone, called Heron 1 (Shoval), will help improve Israel’s Naval and Air Force’s recognition of unknown or hostile ships and aircraft even if they are 300 km away, with a radar that can reach Turkey, Cyprus or Egypt.

“The system can inquire and intercept any object within just a few minutes,” an IAI official told the newspaper on Sunday, after the Shoval drone had concluded a demonstration in which the new cameras captured every detail of a ship sailing the Mediterranean.

“The Shoval has satellite communication abilities, which means any footage it takes will be broadcasted [sic] online to distant location like Paris [!],” the official said.

But there was no “malfunction.” Rather an unknown hostile force exploited a breach in the navigation system and took control of the vehicle.

Once the drone became unresponsive, the IAF realized either it could be crashed into a sensitive Israeli target or else hijacked to Lebanon or Syria. At that point, the IAF launched flares over Israeli territory in a search to find it. They must’ve succeeded, which enabled them to destroy it.

I do not know who took control of the aerial vehicle. It was either Iranian forces or Hezbollah (or both). That makes it likely the drone was patrolling over Lebanon or Syria. The Ynetnews report said it was on a “routine” mission, which could mean anything or nothing.

Further support for my source may be found in the decision to ground the entire Shoval fleet. The hijackers discovered a weakness in the drone’s software controls and they can’t be flown again until it’s fixed.

Last year, the Iranians claimed to have done precisely the same thing to a U.S. Predator drone over Iranian territory. Though we claimed there had been a navigational malfunction, our protestations sounded hollow. The current incident points to a hitherto unknown or unappreciated ability by the Iranians to penetrate Israeli aerial guidance systems.

Just before the Shoval upgrade was announced above, Hezbollah had launched a drone which penetrated 30 miles into Israeli territory near the Dimona nuclear plant. A few weeks ago, Israel shot down another drone that may’ve been launched from Lebanon.

I should note that Hezbollah, with the likely help of the Iranians, compromised the IDF communications systems to devastating effect during the 2006 Lebanon war.

In 1997, Hezbollah intercepted the transmission (Hebrew) of Israeli aerial surveillance images which allowed the militant group to ambush IDF navy commandos, causing the death of 12. At the time, the army told the public the ambush had not been planned, but the result of a lucky break for Hezbollah. Then Hassan Nasrallah released the stolen images, which put egg on the face of lying Israeli generals. They were even forced to acknowledge that some intelligence data of this sort wasn’t even encrypted, thus allowing it to be intercepted.

Israel likes to tout its military invincibility and superiority over its enemies. Incidents like this remind us there are large chinks in the IDF’s armor.

Source

Red Ox — henrymakow.com May 12, 2013

[EDITOR'S NOTE: While not in a position to confirm these claims, I present them for your consideration.]

Jimmy Savile sporting his OBE at Buckingham Palace 1972. Many have wondered whether he wasn't 'protected' with his crimes only being revealed after his death. Click to enlarge

If you ask a local Mason about “The Royal Arch,” they might be scared, assuming they know what goes on. Maybe they joined Masonry to progress up the career ladder, get told what to do by a semi-official government official and call it a day.

You can join The Royal Arch after joining the friendly and relatively insignificant local lodge. It is for the people who “will do anything, absolutely anything to get on”. A British Intelligence Officer involved – an ex Director General – told me “we have our fair share of sociopaths”.

Indoctrination is by degree, but if you are caught by the Royal Arch as a child, as I was,  you will be subject to such deliberately traumatic rape, torture and “mind control” that a normal person disassociates.

Injections are administered to prevent recall, and drugs such as Rohypnol are used along with electroshock punishment. Most of the people involved in the Royal Arch would have been through this at the hands of their own “Illuminati” or “multi-generational-Satanic” family. For example, Douglas Hurd (Foreign Secretary) and his son Thomas Hurd (‘Diplomat’/MI-6 Officer). They will then often suffer displacement – meting out similar punishments to others – and cognitive dissonance identifying with the organization that abused them.

The best way to understand how they work together is to see the agenda as “a force”. They are Luciferian but some take it more seriously than others. Either way they all agree that the way to prove one’s power is to cause suffering to others and that “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”. If you can imagine what ‘normal’ people regard as the worst possible philosophy, you will also be pretty close.

In a previous article, I went through the torture techniques of electroshock with cattle prod. My parents were not Satanists, but those who are in with the Royal Arch can let their offspring be ‘treated’ with electroshock therapy three times a week. At the extreme, Miley Cyrus’s father used to rape her live at Bohemian Grove as one of the leading attractions.

MUSIC & ENTERTAINMENT TOTALLY SATANIC

Continues ….

Suzan Frazer, Mehmet Guzel — Associated Press May 12, 2013

In one of the deadliest attacks in Turkey in recent years, two car bombs exploded near the border with Syria on Saturday, killing 43 and wounding 140 others. Turkish officials blamed the attack on a group linked to Syria, and a deputy prime minister called the neighboring country’s intelligence service and military “the usual suspects.”

The blasts, which were 15 minutes apart and hit the town of Reyhanli’s busiest street, raised fears that Turkey could increasingly be drawn into Syria’s brutal civil war.

Turkey already hosts Syria’s political opposition and rebel commanders, has given shelter to hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and in the past retaliated against Syrian shells that landed in Turkey.

Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said the assailants were from Turkey, but were linked to Syria’s intelligence service.

“We have to a great extent completed our work toward identifying the assailants,” he told reporters. “We have established that the organization and assailants have links to the pro-regime mukhabarat (intelligence) organization.”

He did not name the group, but said the aim of the attack was to pit Turks against Syrian refugees in Reyhanli.

Earlier, another deputy prime minister, Bulent Arinc said: “Our thoughts are that their mukhabarat and armed organizations are the usual suspects in planning and the carrying out of such devilish plans,” he said.

Arinc said the attacks were still being investigated, but that If it’s proven that Syrian was behind the attack, Turkey would “do whatever is necessary,” without specifying if that included military action.

One of the car bombs exploded outside the city hall while the other went off outside the post office. Reyhanli, a main hub for Syrian refugees and rebels in Turkey’s Hatay province, is just across the border from Syria’s Idlib province. Private NTV television, citing unnamed security sources, said the explosions were remote-controlled and that plastic explosives were used.

Images showed people frantically carrying the wounded through the rubble-strewn streets to safety. Black smoke billowed from a tall building.

The explosions came days before Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is scheduled to travel to the U.S. for talks, which are expected to be dominated by the situation in Syria. The car bombings also follow allegations by Erdogan the Syrian regime has fired about 200 missiles tipped with chemical weapons.

Syrian mortar rounds have fallen over the border before, but if the blasts turn out to be linked to Syria it would be by far the biggest death toll in Turkey related to its neighbor’s civil war.

Syria shares a more than 500-mile (800-kilometer) border with Turkey, which has been a crucial supporter of the Syrian rebel cause. Ankara has allowed its territory to be used as a logistics base and staging center for Syrian insurgents.

Atalay said 43 people were killed and 140 others were wounded in the blasts. There was no immediate information on the identities or nationalities of the victims.

The bombings” will increase the pressure on the U.S. president next week to do something to show support to Turkey when Erdogan visits him in Washington,” said Soner Cagaptay, an expert on Turkey at the Washington Institute. “Washington will be forced to take a more pro-active position on Syria, at least in rhetoric, whether or not there is appetite for such a position here.”

Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center, said the attack may force Turkey to take action.

“It should be a defining moment for Turkey,” Shaikh said. “It has been supporting the rebels, and there has been strong rhetoric. But this may be a moment where it really has to assert itself – if it is the Assad regime (behind the bombings), and it is quite conceivable it is.”

Turkey’s opposition criticized the government’s policy on Syria, saying its active support of the rebels had put the country’s security at risk.

“Erdogan’s discourse of hatred toward Assad and provocations against the administration in Damascus is coming back to us in the form of attacks and provocations,” said Devlet Bahceli, chairman of a nationalist opposition party.

The force of Saturday’s explosions gutted some buildings, and the charred shells of cars littered the streets.

“Three buildings partly collapsed and became unusable,” Talat Karaca, who witnessed the second explosion from his rooftop, told The Associated Press by telephone. “We couldn’t approach the scene for a long time because of the blaze.”

Khawla Sawah, the medical director of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations in Reyhanli, said the town’s main hospital was full and many of the wounded were taken to the nearby city of Antakya and to a clinic set up by the Syrian medical relief group on Reyhanli’s outskirts. The center received 11 wounded, including one Turk and 10 Syrians.

She said some of the injured told her that the cars that exploded had Syrian license plates.

Both Sawah and another witness, Suzan Alhasoglu, said the incident raised tension in Reyhanli with angry youths attacking Syrians cars and other targets.

“The authorities are asking Syrians to stay home and not drive around in Syrian cars,” Sawah said. “Syrian doctors at the Reyhanli hospital were asked to go home too.”

Turkey’s military released a statement condemning the attack and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu vowed from Berlin that Turkey would act.

“Those who for whatever reason attempt to bring the external chaos into our country will get a response,” he said.

The U.S. Embassy in Ankara issued a statement condemning the “murderous attack” in Reyhanli and said Washington “stands with the people and government of Turkey to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice.”

The main Syrian opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, condemned the attack and said it stands together with the “Turkish government and the friendly Turkish people.”

The coalition sees “these heinous terrorist acts as an attempt to take revenge on the Turkish people and punish them for their honorable support for the Syrian people,” it said.

The frontier area has seen heavy fighting between rebels and the Syrian regime. In February, a car bomb exploded at a Syrian border crossing with Turkey, just a few kilometers from Reyhanli, killing 14. Turkey’s interior minister at the time blamed Syria’s intelligence agencies and its army for involvement.

Four Syrians and a Turk are in custody in connection with the Feb. 11 attack at the Bab al-Hawa frontier post. No one has claimed responsibility, but a Syrian opposition faction accused the Syrian government of the bombing, saying it narrowly missed 13 leaders of the group.

In that bombing, most of the victims were Syrians who had been waiting in an area straddling the frontier for processing to enter Turkey.

Tensions also flared between the Syrian regime and Turkey after shells fired from Syria landed on the Turkish side, prompting Germany, the Netherlands and the U.S. to send two batteries of Patriot air defense missiles each to protect their NATO ally.

___

Suzan Fraser reported from Ankara. Associated Press writers Ezgi Akin in Ankara, and Bassem Mroue, Yasmine Sakher and Karin Laub in Beirut contributed to this report.

Source

Dave Higgens — The Independent May 10, 2013

Jimmy Savile sporting his OBE at Buckingham Palace 1972. Click to enlarge

A lawyer for victims of Jimmy Savile has said that a report which concluded there is no evidence he was protected by police officers “doesn’t add up”.

The West Yorkshire Police (WYP) report, published today, examined the history of the DJ and TV presenter’s relationship with the force, including how officers attended his well-known Friday Morning Club at his Leeds flat.

But the report concluded: “There is no evidence that he was protected from arrest or prosecution for any offences as a result of his relationship with WYP, or individual friendships with officers.”

But Alan Collins, who represents 40 victims of the disgraced broadcaster, said: “Savile was able to run rings around the police for decades. He used police officers.”

Mr Collins told ITV’s Daybreak: “”He was engrained with them, dovetailed with them.

“The report begs a lot more questions. It provides some answers but the report reveals memories that are not as sharp as perhaps they ought to be, ‘can’t remember’, documents that can’t seem to be located.

“It doesn’t add up.”

The report said 68 of Savile’s victims have now come forward in the force area. None came forward in his lifetime.

The youngest of these was five years old at the time and eight others were aged nine or under.

The report said: “No evidence has been found to conclude that there was any impropriety or misconduct in relation to the Friday Morning Club.”

The report also examined the way in which WYP used Savile’s celebrity status to front a range of campaigns and appeals.

It concluded: “The review team have concerns regarding the absence of a process to secure Savile’s services for some of these events and also the over-reliance on personal friendships that developed between Savile and some officers over a number of years to secure that support.”

The report said it was “of greater concern” that the force continued to used Savile as part of crime prevention campaigns even after it received a request from Surrey Police in 2007 to check what records were held on the broadcaster as part of its investigation into abuse at Duncroft School.

The report said: “Although rumours did exist of previous investigations taking place into allegations made against Savile, when these were explored they were found to be without any foundation.”

Jimmy Savile and a younger Tony Blair. Click to enlarge

Despite numerous interviews, system searches and inquiries with other agencies, the review team found no evidence of any previous allegations being made to West Yorkshire Police against Savile.

It said: “The force does recognise that some people may have difficulty in reconciling this fact; indeed WYP has difficulty in reconciling this as, since October 2012, 68 victims have come forward to report Savile’s abuse in the West Yorkshire area.”

Assistant Chief Constable Ingrid Lee said in her introduction to the report: “There is no doubt that police forces made mistakes in relation to sharing and keeping information relating to Savile so no single clear picture of his offending could be made.

“As Savile’s home police force, WYP would have been the obvious place to collect all such information, but investigation has shown that much of the available information during Savile’s lifetime was never shared with WYP and, when it was, WYP did not connect the events to recognise a potential pattern of offending.”

Ms Lee said the review was started “to separate myth and rumour from fact”.

She said: “When taken in context, Savile lived for over 80 years as an individual who has duped millions into believing that he was a genuine celebrity, a charity fundraiser and a harmless eccentric who did nothing but good in our communities.”

Jon Christopher, of the West Yorkshire Police Federation, said people would ask precisely what was “going on” between Savile and senior police officers.

He told BBC Breakfast: “I think people will look at it and think ‘What is going on there?’.

“Because clearly he has been involved with a lot of officers and not just police officers, but other professionals as well.

“Nevertheless, it’s the police officers who are in the light with this one and clearly the lessons have to be learned from that, if he was under suspicion in other force areas that something could and should have been done at that time.”

Source

Jack S. — henrymakow.com May 9, 2013

Helping to further the LGTB agenda: Elton John, partner and adopted children. Click to enlarge

Before the laws on gay discrimination, there were many adoption agencies operating across the United Kingdom. These charities, many of them Catholic, used to handle more than half of all the adoptions in the UK. They were more successful than the local authorities in finding adoptive families that “worked” because they took more time to vet the prospective parents and because, unlike state officials, really had the welfare of the children at heart.

None of these societies ever had a policy of “anyone can adopt”. They placed children only with legally married couples and took many other factors into account  – whether the parents were physically healthy, whether they had any history of crime or mental illness in their family, whether they had a regular job and so on. References and recommendations had to be obtained, records scrutinized. In some cases, these charities had been operating for hundreds of years.

Then along came the LGBT fanatics and demanded to adopt. They claimed that this was somehow their “right”. When the adoption societies replied that they believed it was in the best interests of the children to be placed in a home where there is a mother AND and father, the aggressive homosexuals went to court and claimed “discrimination”.

All these religious adoption societies one by one have been forced to close down. It started in 2005, under the Labour government that brought in the law, and the last one is closing this year.

Continues …

Russia Today — May 9, 2013

A US State Department official testified Wednesday that he was one of the last people to speak with an American ambassador before his death in Benghazi and was later demoted in retaliation for questioning how the September 11, 2012 attack was managed.

During a six-hour hearing with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Gregory Hicks told lawmakers he spoke with J. Christopher Stevens at the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Hicks said Stevens sounded frantic and communicated a quick “Greg, we’re under attack” before the call was lost.

Hicks, who was in Tripoli at the time, added that he had requested air support from a US Air Force base in Aviano, Italy and later for ground troops to fend off Libyan insurgents but was denied by the State Department in both instances. Fearing their consulate would be the next to be overrun, Hicks and his aides began destroying communications equipment with an ax, according to The New York Times.

“None of us should ever experience what we went through in Tripoli and Benghazi,” he said.

The diplomat claimed that his later pleas for answers about what happened and what could be improved were swept under the rug and out of the news cycle, perhaps for fear of a political backlash in the heat of the presidential election. One example he cited was that several of the people who were directly involved in the attack were never interviewed about what happened.

“I’ve been effectively demoted from deputy chief of mission to desk officer,” Hicks said.

“They stopped short of interviewing people who I personally know were involved in key decisions,” said Eric Nordstrom, who works in the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

The Benghazi attack has become a point of bitter contention between the Obama administration and Congressional Republicans, who assert that the nation’s Democratic leadership was slow to respond to the attack and has since attempted to cover up what truly happened on the eleventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Hicks testified that he got a sense that he “needed to stop the line of questioning” after he asked superiors why then-UN ambassador Susan Rice initially blamed the anger that led to the attack on a YouTube video, not terrorists.

“I was stunned,” he said of her explanation. “My jaw dropped and I was embarrassed.”

After his relations with bosses turned frosty, Hicks said, he was told not to speak with a congressman investigating the attack. Upon defying that order Hicks claimed to receive an angry phone call from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.

Republicans have claimed that the issues they’ll uncover during the hearings this week will be enough to undercut Obama’s ability to lead the US.

“This is a subject that has, from its beginning, been subject to attempts to politicize it by Republicans,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Wednesday.

If White House officials are anxious for the story to disappear they should prepare to be disappointed. A cursory glance at a recent Google trends report, highlighted by Foreign Policy Magazine, reveals that based on their Internet searches, Americans care more about the Benghazi attack now than when it actually happened.

On the week September 9-15, 2012 “Benghazi” as a search query scored 24 out of 100 peak interest points. The term then peaked at 100 points during the week preceding the presidential election, then dipped before rising again to 64 points this week.

Source

Introduction by Paul Powers — May 9, 2013

Graphic from Facebook page of the February 17th Martyrs Brigade

The following article by Newsmax presents compelling evidence that the February 17th Martyrs Brigade (Libyans hired by the US State Department to protect U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens ) were in fact in league with the group that attacked the American diplomatic mission at Benghazi in Libya.  Known as the Benghazi killings which are currently under “investigation” by Washington D.C.  The final result will no doubt be concluded as incompetence and inefficiency but certainly not intentional.

How could the government intentionally kill its own people right?

How could anyone in the highest levels of the government be so stupid?  Has the U.S. State Department ever heard of the U.S. military?  Special forces such as the Navy Seals, Green Berets, Delta Force, Army Rangers or even the United States Marines Corps could have easily provided the high level of security needed.  Instead of course, the State Department opts to rely on a local Libyan “security squad” to provide the much needed protection after removing the U.S. special forces (see video below).

The United States Air Force had recently bombed Libya into the stone age most likely killing untold thousands of innocent civilians in the process.

No doubt plenty of pissed off people in that country.

Just like Iraq in 2003, Libya did not have any weapons of mass destruction and in no way threatened the United States or NATO.

Nor should we overlook the timing of the Benghazi attack, 09/11/12.  It was exactly eleven years after destruction of the twin towers in New York on 09/11/01. The first plane to hit the first tower on that fateful day just happened to be “American” Airlines flight 11 out of Boston. New York is the 11th American state. The twin towers were designed to look like the number 11. There are more “numerical coincidences” but that should suffice to connect the dots. Are we to accept stupidity and coincidence or a meticulously organized occult sacrifice?

Newsmax Exclusive: US Hired al-Qaida-Linked Group to Defend Benghazi Mission

Rowena Mason and Steve Swinford — Telegraph.co.uk May 6, 2013

The Tory MP, who was arrested over the weekend on suspicion of rape and sexual assault, was accused of making an unwanted advance on a man he had been drinking with in 2009.

He was interviewed by Patrick McLoughlin, the then opposition chief whip who is now Transport Secretary, but the matter was not reported to police by either the Conservatives or the complainant.

According to a friend of Mr Evans, the MP explained to the whips that the matter was a “misunderstanding”. The friend said there was no “verbal warning” but Mr Evans may have received some “friendly advice”.

The complaint was not taken any further. It is understood Mr Evans, 55, and the man who accused him of inappropriate conduct continued to associate with each other afterwards.

Downing Street refused to say whether David Cameron was made aware of the allegations at the time.

Mr Evans has spoken of his “incredulity” about his arrest over an allegation of sexual assault and another of rape between July 2009 and March 2013, both of which he strongly denies.

The MP for Ribble Valley, Lancs, said he could not understand why complaints have been made to police by “two people who are well known to each other and until yesterday, I regarded as friends”.

He added: “The complaints are completely false and I cannot understand why they have been made, especially as I have continued to socialise with one as recently as last week,” he said. “I appreciate the way the police have handled this in such a sensitive manner and I would like to thank my colleagues, friends and members of the public who have expressed their support and, like me, a sense of incredulity at these events.”

Mr Evans revealed in December 2010 that he was homosexual, saying that he was “tired of living a lie”. In an interview at the time, he said: “With my background in South Wales it was hard enough being a Tory, let alone being gay.”

Tory MPs rallied round the deputy speaker as he resisted calls to stand down, after being released on police bail. Mr Evans is expected to return to the House of Commons as usual but has asked to be excused from his ceremonial duties during the Queen’s Speech in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

Number 10 has so far remained silent on Mr Evans’s arrest. However, Philip Hammond, a Cabinet minister, said he thought it would be “difficult” for the MP to carry on in his role as Deputy Speaker under such public scrutiny.

Mr Hammond, the Defence Secretary, said: “I stick rigidly to the view that we should treat people as innocent until they are proven guilty but it is quite difficult to carry out a sensitive and high profile role while being under this kind of scrutiny,” he told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One.

William Hague, the Foreign Secretary described Mr Evans as a “long-standing friend” and said that MPs of all parties would be “very sorry to see this situation”.

Other Tory MPs said Mr Evans has their backing to continue in the role, which involves helping to keep the Commons debates in order. David Davis, a former Tory leadership candidate and senior MP, said he finds it “impossible to believe the allegation that has been made”.

He said there is no need for the Deputy Speaker to resign over an accusation when he has not been charged, let alone convicted.

Among the MPs supporting Mr Evans was Andrew Bridgen, a Tory who was accused of a sex assault two years ago only for police to drop their inquiries six days later.

“Fortunately in this country we have a rule that says you are innocent until proven guilty and I think that should be maintained,” Mr Bridgen told Sky News. “I personally think that Nigel should be able to continue as Deputy Speaker while the police, quite rightly, carry on with their investigations.”

A Conservative Party spokesman said: “It would inappropriate to comment while there is a police investigation going on.”

Mr McLoughlin also declined to comment. A statement on the Ribble Valley Conservatives Association website said Mr Evans was “widely liked and respected” and it expected him to continue with his duties in the constituency as normal.

“In our democracy everyone accused is innocent until proven guilty and therefore unless Nigel chooses himself to cease to be our MP or the electorate vote him out or the justice system intervenes, we expect him to continue as normal to fulfil his duties in representing the people of the Ribble Valley,” it said.

Lancashire Police said last night: “We take all allegations of a sexual nature extremely seriously and understand how difficult it can be for victims to have the confidence to come forward.

“As a constabulary, we are committed to investigating sexual offences sensitively but robustly recognising the impact that these types of crimes have on victims.”

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Sky News — May 4, 2013

The Deputy Speaker, Nigel Evans, has been arrested on suspicion of rape and sexual assault of two men, Sky sources reveal.

The 55-year-old Conservative MP was arrested on Saturday morning at his constituency home in the village of Pendleton, near Clitheroe, in Lancashire.

He is being questioned by police over an allegation of raping one man and sexually assaulting another between July 2009 and March 2013.

Prime Minister David Cameron and Speaker John Bercow have been informed of the arrest of the popular MP, who is a prominent gay rights campaigner.

Sky News Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said: “The allegations are one of rape against one man and sexual assault against another man. Both of those men are now in their early 20s.”

He said: “The offences are said to have been committed at his home in the village of Pendleton near Clitheroe which is in his constituency of Ribble Valley.”

Mr Evans, who comes from Swansea and whose parents ran a newsagent, has been MP for Ribble Valley since 1992.

He has held a number of front bench posts for the Conservative Party and was a Parliamentary Private Secretary in John Major’s government and Mr Major’s spokesman of Welsh Affairs.

In 2010 he was promoted to deputy speaker, earning £102,000-a-year, including his MP’s salary.

In December 2010 he came out as gay in an interview with the Mail on Sunday newspaper in which he said that he was “tired of living a lie”.

Mr Evans, who was vice chairman of the Conservative Party from 1999 to 2001, said he had been threatened with exposure by political opponents.

Sky News Chief Political Correspondent Jon Craig said: “Since then he has become quite a prominent gay rights campaigner.

“He had held, for example, at least one function in the Speaker’s apartments on gay rights. John Bercow let him use the Speaker’s apartment for a function and he has been prominent in that campaign.

“He is a very sociable MP. He is very well known.”

Mr Evans is in custody in Preston police station in Lancashire.

A Lancashire Police statement confirmed that a 55-year-old man from Pendleton had been arrested on suspicion of rape and sexual assault and that he was being interviewed by officers.

The statement said: “We take all allegations of a sexual nature extremely seriously and understand how difficult it can be for victims to have the confidence to come forward.

“As a constabulary, we are committed to investigating sexual offences sensitively but robustly recognising the impact that these types of crimes have on victims.

“We would encourage anyone who has experienced sexual abuse, or who has information about it, to have the confidence to report it to us knowing that we will take it seriously, deal with it sensitively and investigate it thoroughly.”

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Sherwood Ross — The Rebel.org May 3, 2013

In a recent interview, Noam Chomsky said he never expected much of  President Obama, adding, ”The one thing that did surprise me is his attack on civil liberties. They go well beyond anything I would have anticipated, and they don’t seem easy to explain.”

Maybe the reasons for Obama’s transformation from a Chicago law professor into a world-class totalitarian thug is that he is a creature of the Central Intelligence Agency; that both his parents were CIA payrollers; that the CIA financed his college education and gave him his first job afterwards—-so that we may well have a president beholden to this international criminal organization, an agency that has left a trail of blood, turmoil, and assassinations around the globe.

According to the May 6th The New Yorker, when General James Cartwright, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked at an Obama Situation Room meeting why the U.S. was building a second air force in the form of a CIA drone attack fleet, Obama told him, “The CIA gets what it wants.”

Continues …

Press TV — May 2, 2013

Fresh evidence has surfaced shedding light on the role of foreign countries, the US in particular, in providing training and assistance to the militants and al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria.

In an interview with the state-run BBC, an unnamed senior commander from the terrorist Free Syrian Army (FSA) said the US has been secretly training the militants and the al-Qaeda operatives in neighboring Jordan.

“Most of the rebels have some education; it was not hard for them to detect the American accent of the trainer. He spoke through a translator. But the way he spoke indicated that he was American,” he explained.

He said the two-week-long training courses, which take place at a military facility outside the Jordanian capital, focus on small and medium arms, as well as mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades.

Despite Amman’s denial, other militant leaders have also confirmed taking two-week-long training courses in relatively small groups on Jordanian soil.

According to an interview with a Jordanian Salafi extremist leader, Mohamed al-Shalabi, known as Abu Sayyaf, he is currently recruiting Jordanian youths to fight in Syria. After being sent to Syria, the young men join the terrorist al-Nusra Front.

Shalabi says that 30 of the 500 al-Qaeda-linked Salafis currently operating in Syria, have so far been killed. The Salafi leader also said that he motivates his men by telling them that ‘it is the duty of every Muslim to help the defenseless people of Syria.’

The al-Nusra Front has formally pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

For the time being, the FSA and the al-Nusra Front have common objectives in Syria. However, Shalabi says his personal belief is that ‘more wars will be on the way after a regime change in Syria.’

Meanwhile, an FSA commander says that secular foreign-backed militants in Syria will break away from different groups fighting against Syria and eventually join the al-Qaeda operatives for financial reasons. The commander added that the FSA’s financial problems have led many of its militants to join the al-Nusra Front. The al-Nusra Front is bankrolled by the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

The unrest in Syria began in March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of army and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

The Syrian government says that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.

Damascus says the West and its regional allies, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey are supporting the armed groups.

In addition, several international human rights organizations have accused the militants fighting in Syria of committing war crimes.

MRS/AS/SZH/HJL

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Natasha Leonard — Salon May 2, 2013

Andy P. Hart, 38, a federal public defender representing a number of detainees at Guantanamo Bay was found dead last week, reportedly owing to a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Although Hart left a suicide note, its contents are unknown. The Ohio lawyer also left a thumb drive with his current case files. Jason Leopold, Truth-Out’s investigative reporter, noted:

Hart’s death comes amid escalating chaos that has engulfed Guantanamo over the past three months—from a mass hunger strike to military commissions and renewed pressure on the White House to shut down the prison facility. Hart was one of three-dozen Guantanamo attorneys who signed a letter in March urging Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to take immediate action and bring about an end to the hunger strike.

Because Hart was a federal employee working on sensitive legal issues the FBI was contacted about his death. It is unknown if the agency has been investigating the circumstances surrounding his death.

…Hart was assigned by the government to defend Mohammed Rahim al-Afghani, who was detained by the CIA and allegedly subjected to torture methods until his transfer to Guantanamo in March 2008. The government maintained that al-Afghani was Osama bin Laden’s translator and a top al-Qaida official.

Hart also represented Saudi Khalid Saad Mohammed, who was transferred back to Saudi Arabia from Guantanamo in 2009. He was also the attorney for Adel Hakeemy, a Tunisian who has been detained at Guantanamo for 11 years.

Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon, covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow her on Twitter @natashalennard, email nlennard@salon.com.

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Martyn Brown — Daily Express May 2, 2013

It lays bare the effect of decades of immigration and claims that white Britons will be in a minority by 2066.

A mass influx of migrants has given the UK the fastest-rising percentage of ethnic minority and foreign-born populations.

The report – which also reveals the huge impact of Labour’s open-door policy to immigration between 1997 and 2010 – says foreigners and non-white Britons living here will double by 2040 and make up one third of the UK population.

Report author Professor David Coleman said: “On current trends European populations will become more ethnically diverse, with the possibility that today’s majority ethnic groups will no longer comprise a numerical majority.”

The findings mean that the UK could overtake the United States as the world’s melting pot, with fewer people describing themselves as British or white.

The projection comes after David Cameron sought to reassure voters that the influx of migrants from Bulgaria and Romania will be “nothing like” the levels seen when Poland joined the European Union.

The professor of demography at Oxford made his findings from a study of international population projections, carried out for the academic organisation Migration Observatory.

In the study, minorities are classed as people who also describe themselves in censuses as Irish or another nationality, as well as by their skin colour.

Prof Coleman said migration has become the “primary driver of demographic change”.

According to the data, around a fifth of people in the UK are non-white or non-British. But this is expected to rise to a quarter by 2025, a third by 2040 and reach up to 38 per cent by 2050.

The increase from 2010 to 2050 in the UK – by 22 percentage points – is the highest of the main western countries analysed.

Over the same period, the proportion of non-whites and migrants in Denmark will rise from 10 per cent to 14 per cent.

Declining birth rates among white Britons is another factor.

In England and Wales, 25 per cent of births are to foreign-born mothers, the report said. A similar trend is seen in France and Germany.

The calculations are based on the current net rates of immigration, which have been running at more than 200,000 a year.

Prof Coleman pointed to a study which suggests “the crossover for the whole country when the combined population of all ethnic minority groups together would exceed the population of white British will occur at around 2066.

However, he says the Coalition’s plans to limit net migration could have an enduring effect on the impact on the make-up of the British population. Immigration campaigners yesterday raised concerns about newcomers’ ability to integrate into society, and their impact on the health and education systems.

The UK’s population is estimated to hit 77 million by 2051.

Andrew Green, from campaign group MigrationWatch, praised the importance of the study.

He said: “It brings out the consequences if the mass immigration triggered by Labour is not rapidly brought under control.

“Nearly four million immigrants have arrived since 1997 and the impact is felt in maternity units, housing and primary schools.

“We now need concrete proposals to reduce immigration. No less important is the task of integrating such huge numbers into society.”

The Government has promised to control the impact of new arrivals from Romania and Bulgaria next year.

Mr Cameron said the huge number coming from Poland since it joined the EU in 2004 – put at 1.1 million – was due to Britain putting no controls on immigration. He said: “When a country joins the European Union you can put in place transitional controls. You can say to that country, ‘You can’t all come here for the first seven years’.

“The last government, when Poland and a lot of other countries joined, didn’t put those controls in place.

“Because other European countries did, we did have an enormous influx of people from Poland and those other countries. This time, because the transitional controls have been put in, we are not lifting the restrictions on Romania and Bulgaria alone, it’s happening across Europe.

“So I don’t think we’ll have anything like the situation we had in the Polish situation.”

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Damien Thompson — Telegraph.co.uk April 27, 2013

One of the most disgusting serial killers in American history is standing trial in Philadelphia at the moment – and, since it’s happening in the US, where reporting restrictions are light, the media are free to discuss his case.

Only they haven’t – at least, not until recently, and even when the crimes are reported, they haven’t merited many headlines. Which is horrifying, when you consider what the killer is accused of. I’m going to leave out the nastiest details – but, seriously, if you don’t want to feel sick to your stomach, look away now.

Dr Kermit Gosnell, 72, “regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns”. That quote is taken from the grand jury report on the case. It describes Gosnell’s practice, called the Women’s Medical Society, as “a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread disease with infected instruments… and on at least two occasions, caused their deaths”.

According to one witness, when women were given medicine to speed up their deliveries “it would rain foetuses”. A former employee described the noise made by a baby delivered live during an abortion: “It sounded like a little alien.”

This month, to their credit, Kirsten Powers of USA Today and Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic ran articles asking why this wasn’t front-page news. The answer? Gosnell was a registered abortion provider. His killings blurred the line between late-term abortions and infanticide in a way that embarrassed pro-choice journalists.

Gosnell killed babies of the same age both inside and outside the womb. How can one be a legal termination and the other murder? Pro-choice writers and activists didn’t want to focus on that question. Indeed, reports of Gosnell’s foul clinic – which had a policy of treating white women more carefully than penniless black women – were routinely ignored by the Pennsylvania Department of Health, local hospitals, the National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood, a lobby group supported by Barack Obama.

The president – as a senator, the most hardline pro-abortion politician in Congress – was due to address a Planned Parenthood gala on Thursday. But then he suddenly curtailed his visit, in order to spend more time in Texas… and just possibly because we now know that the lobby group were warned about Gosnell but didn’t pass their concerns to the police.

In short: pro-choicers averted their eyes to the crimes of a racist “doctor” whose worst acts are beyond imagining. They did so because making a fuss would give ammunition to the pro-life movement.

Only in America, you might say. But I’ve been gauging the response of British social media to the Gosnell case; many tweets reek of the same culture of evasion, to put it politely. Earlier this week I raised the question on Twitter with the Rev Richard Coles, a Left-wing pop-musician-turned-vicar who presents Radio 4’s Saturday Live and does a nice line in clerical whimsy. He said his views were “not entirely formed yet”. And in a second tweet: “Too much brouhaha at the moment.”

That says it all, I reckon. Gosnell was protected not just by pro-choice extremists such as Barack Obama, but also by run-of-the-mill liberals who, despite their distaste for late-term abortions, didn’t want to provide ammunition for the Sarah Palins of this world. So, for years, they took steps to avoid a “brouhaha”. The results are available for anyone to see online in the form of a heart-rending photograph of a baby killed by Gosnell. Unlike Mr Coles’s views on the subject, it is “entirely formed”.

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Lori Hinnant, Sylvie Corbet — AP April 23, 23, 2013

France legalized gay marriage on Tuesday after a wrenching national debate that exposed deep conservatism in the nation’s heartland and triggered huge demonstrations that tapped into intense discontent with the Socialist government. Within hours, fiery clashes broke out between protesters and riot police.

Legions of officers stayed late into the night, and a protest against the measure turned violent near the Invalides complex of museums and monuments. Protesters threw glass bottles, cans and metal bars at police, who responded with tear gas.

It was an issue that galvanized the country’s faltering right, which had been decimated by infighting and their election loss to President Francois Hollande. France is the 14th country to legalize gay marriage nationwide -and the most populous.

The measure passed easily in the Socialist-majority Assembly, 331-225, just after the president of the legislative body expelled a disruptive protester in pink, the color adopted by French opponents of gay marriage.

Justice Minister Christiane Taubira told lawmakers that the first weddings could be as soon as June.

“We believe that the first weddings will be beautiful and that they’ll bring a breeze of joy, and that those who are opposed to them today will surely be confounded when they are overcome with the happiness of the newlyweds and the families,” she said.

Earlier in the day, there appeared to be more police than protesters outside the Parliament building on Paris’ Left Bank, but that calculation soon shifted as night fell and thousands gathered to protest the bill. The protest dwindled to a few stalwarts shortly before midnight, when the violence began among a few hundred demonstrators including some who carried signs saying “Socialist dictatorship.”

Claire Baron, 41, a mother of two, said that she “will oppose the bill until the end.”

“I’ll keep going to the protests, I don’t give in. The bill is not effective yet, the president of the Republic must listen to our voices. We are here to defend family values. Children need a mom and a dad,” Baron said.

In recent weeks, violent attacks against gay couples have spiked and some legislators have received threats – including Claude Bartelone, the Assembly president, who got a gunpowder-filled envelope on Monday.

One of the biggest protests against same-sex marriage drew together hundreds of thousands of people bused in from the French provinces – conservative activists, schoolchildren with their parents, retirees, priests and others. That demonstration ended in blasts of tear gas, as right-wing rabble-rousers, some in masks and hoods, led the charge against police, damaging cars along the Champs-Elysees avenue and making a break for the presidential palace.

Following the vote members of the gay and lesbian community flocked to a square in central Paris, just behind City Hall, to celebrate the vote.

“I feel immense joy, gigantic joy,” said 39-year old Sylvain Rouzel. “At last, everyone has the same rights. This is huge! France was lagging behind. We had to wait 14 years after the civil union to finally obtain the right to get married, with equal rights for everyone. I feel great!”

Paris’ openly gay mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, was among the crowd of hundreds gathered for the street celebration in the Marais, the city’s historic gay neighborhood.

When Hollande promised to legalize gay marriage, it was seen as relatively uncontroversial. The issue has become a touchstone as his popularity has sunk to unprecedented lows, largely over France’s ailing economy.

“The opposition is in a weakened position, but they know which buttons to press in order to get a reaction in society, in a country as liberal as France, where nobody thought it was an issue,” said Hossein Alizadeh, a coordinator with the U.S.-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission who has followed the issue.

But the most visible face in the fight against gay marriage – a former comedienne who goes by the name of Frigide Barjot – said the movement named “A Protest for Everyone” will continue beyond the law’s passage and possibly field candidates in 2014 municipal elections. She said anyone involved in protest violence would be marginalized, but blamed the government for its failure to listen.

“The violence comes from the way in which this was imposed,” Barjot told France Info radio.

French conservatives, demoralized and divided by the election loss of standard-bearer Nicolas Sarkozy, found common cause in opposing same-sex marriage. Hoping to keep the issue alive, the conservative UMP party planned to challenge the law in the Constitutional Council.

“The controversy that we’ve seen has been a stoked and manipulated controversy that’s really kind of a last-ditch attempt to block the tide of history,” said Evan Wolfson, president of the American activist group Freedom to Marry, which he said worked with the French on the bill. “I don’t think it spoke to a deep or wide opposition among the French people.”

French civil unions, allowed since 1999, are at least as popular among heterosexuals as among gay and lesbian couples. But that law has no provisions for adoption, and the strongest opposition in France as far as same-sex couples goes comes when children are involved. According to recent polls, just over half of French are opposed to adoption by same-sex couples – about the same number who said they favored same-sex marriage.

Christophe Crepin, spokesman for the police union UNSA, says the extraordinary security Tuesday included a total of about 4,000 officers in the area near the National Assembly building and water cannon positioned nearby.

On the cover of Tuesday’s Liberation newspaper, the famed gay photographers Pierre and Gilles took over the front page and several of the inside pages, splashing them with some of their most provocative photos, including one of three soccer players – nude but for the footwear – facing the camera.

In New Zealand, where gay marriage enjoys popular support, people gathered outside Parliament and joined in singing a traditional Maori love ballad after a vote last week making it legal. Nine states and the District of Columbia in the U.S. also recognize such marriages, but the federal government does not.

—

AP reporter Bastien Inzaurralde contributed to this report.

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Russia Today — April 24, 2013

A new forward-looking campaign is hoping to shape public perception in a bid to make sure that the concept of armed drones that attack targets without human input never become a reality.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch has announced the creation of an international coalition, which it hopes can push for a global treaty for a pre-emptive ban on artificially intelligent weapons before they can be fielded in battle.

These “killer robots,” as the group calls them, are not yet being operated by any army in the world, though the pace at which drone technology and robotics are advancing has led to speculation that they could be developed within the next few decades.

According to Humans Right Watch, which cites a report it co-authored with Harvard Law School in November of 2012, a fully autonomous machine that could select and fire upon a target selected of its own volition could be available within 20 years, if not sooner.

That report, entitled “Losing Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots,” outlines the legal, ethical and policy concerns surrounding the development of self-directed weaponry. While in certain contexts advanced weaponry already possesses some semblance of “intelligence,” such as guided missiles or drones capable of adapting to battlefield conditions, present technology still requires human input, and in that sense involves basic humanitarian law.

Leading the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is Jody William, a Nobel Peace laureate for her efforts to enact a ban on anti-personnel landmines. She believes that exposure of the issue will bring about public opposition.

“As people learn about our campaign, they will flock to it. The public conscience is horrified to learn about this possible advance in weapons systems. People don’t want killer robots out there,” William said in comments to the BBC.

“Normal human beings find it repulsive,” she added.

Already the use of semi-autonomous weapons, such as aerial drones, has led to mounting criticism over the legal processes behind both the selection of foreign targets, and also their unilateral use on foreign soil. More recently in the US, there’s been a heated debate over whether they should be used on American citizens at all.

Current semi-autonomous technology at least requires a human operator, and in theory does not kill without proper authorization. As Human Rights Watch points out, the development of artificial intelligence-equipped machines presents a number of issues circumventing conventional law, and might even lead to an international arms race not unlike the one currently happening within the field of drone tech.

For its part, a directive issued by the US Department of Defense in 2012 and quoted by the BBC has stated that weapons with a degree of autonomy “shall be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.”

While in March of 2012, Lord Astor of Hever – the UK’s parliamentary undersecretary of state for defense – stated that the Ministry of Defence “currently has no intention of developing systems that operate without human intervention.”

According to a report produced by the Teal Group, in 2011 its market study estimated that in the coming decade worldwide spending on drones will reach $94 billion, with countries such as China looking to quickly close the gap with US technology.

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