BEIRUT: Islamist Al-Nusra Front rebels killed seven Syrian soldiers at a checkpoint in the northern city of Safireh on Friday, after losing more than 100 men in the area over the past 72 hours, a watchdog said. The checkpoint was guarding a heavily fortified military factory in the south of the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that a convoy of reinforcements arrived after the attack. "At least 112 rebels have been killed since Wednesday in fighting with troops between Safireh and the town of Khanasir" about 40 kilometres (25 miles) farther south, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP by phone. He said regime forces were stationed at defence establishments in Safireh and have set up checkpoints on the route to Khanasir, but Al-Nusra and several other rebel battalions control the streets of Safireh. The watchdog said the city has become a "ghost town", after residents fled army bombardments en masse. The Observatory, which gather

BEIRUT: A bombing at a bus stop near a military factory in central Syria this week killed 54 people, all civilian workers at the plant, an activist group said on Friday. Rami Abdul-Rahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the explosion took place on Wednesday in the village of Al Buraq, near the central city of Hama. The area is government-controlled, which is why reports on the blast were slow to emerge, he said. A mini-bus packed with explosives blew up near a bus stop where factory workers were waiting to go home after work, said Abdul-Rahman. The dead included 11 women. He said the factory makes military supplies, but not weapons. “These people work for the Ministry of Defence, but they are all civilians,” he said “There was no one from the military” killed in the blast. Syria’s state news agency reported the explosion on Wednesday evening, saying “terrorists” detonated a car bomb near a factory. It did not say what

By Conrad Jaeger February 09, 2013 " Occupy.com " --   U.S. intelligence agencies will soon be able to trawl through all British government documents stored online including ministerial files, local authority records and public sector data thanks to an unchallenged amendment to a spy law in Washington. Britain’s ambitious plans to store all government data on the so-called  G-Cloud  have led to  warnings  from the European Union that security will be compromised now that U.S. intelligence agencies have the legal right to survey all data held on U.S. owned Cloud services. At least four U.S. companies are involved in the U.K. government’s G-Cloud project which Whitehall hopes will slash costs and “deliver fundamental changes in the way the public sector procures and operates.” Eventually, it is hoped the G-Cloud will hold the bulk of State data in addition to that of schools, charities, the BBC and police, even the Bank of England. While the recent amendments to the F

By Alec Scheer    President Obama, February 09, 2013 " Information Clearing House " - It is my understanding, throughout the duration of your Presidency, that you have persistently authorized drone strikes on innocent Middle Eastern civilians who were supposedly working for, or somehow affiliated with Al-Qaeda. As a further matter, you have gone so far as to publicly announce – in accordance to your Administration’s white paper concerning the legalities and justifications concerning your drone policy, which was leaked to NBC – that you have the authority to drone bomb any American citizen. The Hill wrote, “In the document, the Justice Department concludes that a lethal strike against a senior operational leader of al Qaeda — or an affiliated terrorist group — can occur if a three-part test is met: that a high-level American intelligence official has determined the individual poses an imminent threat, that capture is infeasible, and that the strike is conducted acco

By RT February 09, 2013 " RT " --  CIA Director-designate John Brennan strongly defended the use of drones for fighting terror suspects as he was grilled by the Senate over one of Washington’s most-criticized policies. John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s nominee to be the new CIA chief, had a tough time answering some questions posed by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. Repeated interruptions by anti-war protesters did not make it any easier for him to explain the advantages of the controversial drone policy. Brennan assured that any actions the CIA would take “ will be legally grounded, will be thoroughly anchored in intelligence, will have the appropriate review process, approval process before any action is contemplated, including those actions that might involve the use of lethal force ." One of those skeptical of Brennan’s words is Jayel Aheram, an Iraq War and Marine Corps veteran, activist and writer who, in an interview with RT, expressed

By Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja A "war of religion" is unfolding, with a view to justifying a global military crusade. In the inner consciousness of many Americans, the "holy crusade" against Muslims is justified. While President Obama may uphold freedom of religion, the US inquisitorial social order has institutionalized patterns of discrimination, prejudice and xenophobia directed against Muslims.” Michel Chossudovsky, ”America's Holy Crusade against the Muslim World”, Global Research , 8/30/2010 February 09, 2013 " Information Clearing House " - Does the US war strategy require other nations to follow the American policy lead of war against all - the terrorism of war instigated by the Clash of Civilizations theory? Stephen Lendman (“ America's Permanent War Agenda ” 3/01/2010), an American political intellectual and a man of universal conscience puts the history in one nutshell: “America glorifies wars in the name of peace, what historian Charles Bea

By Gareth Porter February 09, 2013 -- LONDON, Feb 7 2013 ( IPS ) - Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov’s dramatic announcement Tuesday on the Bulgarian investigation of the July 2012 terror bombing of an Israeli tourist bus was initially reported by Western news media as suggesting clear evidence of Hezbollah’s responsibility for the killings. But more accurate reports on the minister’s statement and the only details he provided reveal that the alleged link between the bomb suspects and Hezbollah was merely an “assumption” rather than a conclusion based on specific evidence. Tsvetanov was quoted by various Western news outlets as saying, “We have established that the two were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah.” The minister also said, “There is data showing the financing and connection between Hezbollah and the two suspects,” according to the BBC and Jerusalem Post. Those statements implied that the Bulgarian investigators had uncovered direct evidence of Hezbollah’s