From the Trenches World Report

Mail.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — A defense contractor whose subsidiary was accused in a lawsuit of conspiring to torture detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison has paid $5.28 million to former prisoners held there and at other U.S.-run detention sites in Iraq during the war.

The settlement on behalf of 71 former inmates marks the first successful effort by lawyers for former inmates at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers to collect money from a U.S. defense contractor in lawsuits alleging torture. Another contractor, CACI, is expected to go to trial over similar allegations this summer.
Continue reading “Iraqis held at Abu Ghraib, other sites receive $5M”

Ian 56 – by Ian Shilling

The Petraeus resignation had nothing whatsoever to do with his extra marital affair and everything to do with the pro Israel lobby and Benghazi being used by the CIA as a staging post to supply arms and fighters to the rebels in Syria.

Petraeus had angered the pro Israel lobby in 2010. The pro Israel lobby wanted to replace Petraeus with a more hard line pro Israel and neocon appointment as Director of the CIA.

The Benghazi incident provided the smokescreen and opportunity for them to do exactly that.
Continue reading “The Petraeus resignation, the Israel lobby, Benghazi and John Brennan”

Before It’s News – by Alton Parrish

Another vaccination program has inflicted large number of deaths on African children. This time the culprit is a new vaccine supposedly designed to protect against meningitis.

According to VacTruth.com:

“On December 20, 2012, a vaccination tragedy hit the small village of Gouro, located in northern Chad, Africa. According to the newspaper La Voix, out of five hundred children who received the new meningitis vaccine MenAfriVac, at least 40 of them between the ages of 7 and 18 have become paralyzed. Those children also suffered hallucinations and convulsions.
Continue reading “Gates Foundation Backs New Vaccine That Poisoned And Paralyzed Large Numbers Of African Children”

Town Hall – by Ashley Herzog

In last week’s column, “Good Guys With Guns,” I wrote about the Mayan 14 incident, in which a shooter was halted by an off-duty cop. I referred to the cop as a “good guy,” and my readers were quick to issue a correction: the good guy was actually a girl. Lisa Castellano shot the wannabe James Holmes after he ran into the Mayan 14 theater and began firing—and managed to snatch away his gun.

I don’t know about you, but Lisa Castellano is my new hero.
Continue reading “Girls With Guns”

Stop the Drug War – by Phillip Smith

Texas cop wanted cash to make a pot possession arrest go away, Hawaii cop had his own pot garden, Philly cop was peddling ‘roids, and then there’s the requisite prison guard. Let’s get to it:

In San Antonio, Texas, a San Antonio police officer was arrested last Thursday for taking $500 from a man he arrested with marijuana to make the charges go away. Officer Curtis Lundy, 36, went down in a sting after the man he had arrested contacted the FBI. Continue reading “This Week’s Corrupt Cops Stories”

RT News

Is it really all that easy to just get weapons off the streets? It’s hardly a challenge in Kansas City, Missouri, where six law enforcement vehicles were robbed of weapons in a single morning this week.

Authorities in Kansas City are searching for answers after four police cruisers and two Jackson County Sheriff’s Office cars were broken into early Monday.
Continue reading “Guns off the street? Fleet of cop cars robbed of weapons in Kansas City”

Gun Owners of America

Bank of America has once again shown its hostility and disdain for the 2nd Amendment, its gun owner customers and for free enterprise.  I first reported a story last year about McMillan Co. which had their accounts closed by BoA because they branched out into firearms manufacturing.

Well, apparently Bank of America has decided to double down on the harassment of gun manufacturers in an attempt to dictate how they should operate their business and what that business should entail.
Continue reading “If you are a gun owner at Bank of America…it’s time you left them”

Huffington Post – by Kavitha A. Davidson

Tough sanctions and a struggling economy have caused a severe medicine shortage in Iran, but the country is also facing a dire health crisis of another kind: air pollution.

Hassan Aqajani, an adviser to Iran’s health minister announced Sunday that 4,460 people have died from air pollution in Tehran in a one-year period since March 2011, AFP reports. The announcement came just as a five-day closure of government offices, schools, and banks because of air pollution came to an end — the second such shutdown in a month.
Continue reading “Tehran Pollution Crisis 2012: Thousands Dead In Iran’s Capital As Government Warns To Stay Indoors”

Huffington Post

MANILA, Philippines — An unarmed target drone found in central Philippine waters was launched from a U.S. Navy ship during a combat exercise off Guam last year and may have been washed by ocean currents to the country, officials said Tuesday.

U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Bettina Malone said the BQM-74E drone was launched from the USS Chafee, a guided-missile destroyer, as a mock missile target during naval combat exercises off Guam’s coast in September.
Continue reading “U.S. Drone In Philippines Came From Guam Drill, Says Embassy”

Huffington Post – by Karen Matthews

NEW YORK — Google said Tuesday it is teaming up with a New York City neighborhood business group to provide the company’s first urban Wi-Fi network.

The network will be available free to about a 10-block area surrounding Google’s offices in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, where Google has more than 3,000 employees. The area also is home to other tech companies, as well as high-end hotels and nightclubs and a housing project with more than 2,000 tenants.
Continue reading “Free Public Wi-Fi In Chelsea From Google: Mayor Bloomberg, Eric Fried Announce City’s Largest Wi-Fi Network”

New York CBS Local

HARTFORD, Conn. (CBSNewYork) – Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal announced plans to introduce federal legislation that he said would close a massive loophole in the law involving the sale of ammunition.

Blumenthal said that while convicted felons and others are prohibited from purchasing guns, there is nothing to stop them from buying ammunition.
Continue reading “Blumenthal Seeks To Close ‘Black Hole’ Of Gun Violence With Background Checks For Ammo”

Wall Street Journal – by TAMARA AUDI And ANDY PASZTOR

Two years after being severely wounded by a gunman who killed six people outside a Tucson, Ariz., grocery store, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband launched a political action committee aimed at curbing gun violence.

Spurred by last month’s killing of 20 children and six adults in a Connecticut elementary school, Ms. Giffords and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, wrote in an op-ed piece published Tuesday in USA Today that Americans for Responsible Solutions “will raise the funds necessary to balance the influence of the gun lobby.”
Continue reading “Giffords Makes a Push on Gun Control”

The Excavator

The mad man in the White House needs you to believe in his magic, and that those who question the U.S. government’s narrative of the war on terror are mentally ill deviants.

The modern totalitarian state is the psychotherapist for the whole of society. It acts on the elitist principle that it knows everything and the people deserve to be mind controlled and brainwashed for their own good.
Continue reading “Fear of Tyranny Is Now Treated As A Psychiatric Disorder In The West”

Huffington Post

In a blow to the NYPD’s controversial use of stop-and-frisks, a federal judge has ordered an “immediate cease” to some police stops conducted under “Operation Clean Halls” outside apartment buildings in the Bronx.

“Clean Halls” allows police to stop, question and search residents in and around New York City apartment buildings, with permission of the landlord.
Continue reading “NYPD ‘Clean Halls’ Stop-And-Frisk Policy: Judge Orders ‘Immediate Cease’ To Stops Without ‘Reasonable Suspicion’”

Washington Times – by Seth McLaughlin

A new poll shows that Congress is less popular than carnies, root canals and colonoscopies, but more popular than the ebola virus, meth labs and gonorrhea.

Those findings are in a Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey released Tuesday showed that 9 percent of the respondents held a favorable opinion of Congress, while 85 percent held an unfavorable view.
Continue reading “Congress less popular than root canal, cockroaches and lice, poll says”