From the Saudi-Yemen border to lawless Somalia and the north-central African desert, the U.S. military is more engaged in armed conflicts in the Muslim world than the U.S. government openly acknowledges, according to cables released by the WikiLeaks website.
U.S. officials have struck relationships with regimes that generally aren't considered allies in the war against terrorism, and while the cables show U.S. diplomats admonishing the regimes to respect the laws of war, they also underscore the perils of using advanced military technologies in complex, remote battlefields with sometimes shifty friends.
WikiLeaks: Cables reveal U.S. military role in Muslim world
E.P.A. Delays Tougher Rules on Emissions
The Obama administration is retreating on long-delayed environmental regulations — new rules governing smog and toxic emissions from industrial boilers — as it adjusts to a changed political dynamic in Washington with a more muscular Republican opposition. The move to delay the rules, announced this week by the Environmental Protection Agency, will leave in place policies set by President George W. Bush. President Obama ran for office promising tougher standards, and the new rules were set to take effect over the next several weeks.
Now, the agency says, it needs until July 2011 to further analyze scientific and health studies of the smog rules and until April 2012 on the boiler regulation. Mr. Obama, having just cut a painful deal with Republicans intended to stimulate the economy, can ill afford to be seen as simultaneously throttling the fragile recovery by imposing a sheaf of expensive new environmental regulations that critics say will cost jobs.
US Department Of State Cleared The Wikileaks Documents
Wikileaks' reluctance to post the materials to the internet probably results from a combination of factors. First and foremost, they have been threatened with prosecution in the US although this author believes that is no more than a bluff and accused of having "blood on their hands" already, despite the fact that even after several months, they haven't yet released the scandalous "Afghan war logs" documents which, among other things, accused the Pakistani ISI of running a suicide bomber network in Kabul, and former DG ISI Hamid Gul of being the ISI's liaison to the Taliban.
Tortured FBI whistleblower warns WikiLeaks fans
An FBI whistleblower has alerted that supporting WikiLeaks founder, Julius Assange and subsequently calling for revolution due to government cover-ups are intended results of a counterintelligence reverse tactic not in best interest of the public.
Bob Levin, FBI targeted whistleblower since 2000, knows sophisticated counterintelligence tactics designed to manipulate the unwitting.
“People NEED to be supporting Julian Assange through this ridiculous time. What a brave man for sharing the truth with the world. The governments of the world are just digging themselves a hole. IT'S TIME FOR A REVOLUTION!!!”
WikiLeaks cables: Pfizer used dirty tricks to avoid clinical trial payout
The world's biggest pharmaceutical company hired investigators to unearth evidence of corruption against the Nigerian attorney general in order to persuade him to drop legal action over a controversial drug trial involving children with meningitis, according to a leaked US embassy cable. Pfizer was sued by the Nigerian state and federal authorities, who claimed that children were harmed by a new antibiotic, Trovan, during the trial, which took place in the middle of a meningitis epidemic of unprecedented scale in Kano in the north of Nigeria in 1996.
Last year, the company came to a tentative settlement with the Kano state government which was to cost it $75m.
Nigeria: Halliburton plans plea bargain in Cheney corruption case
Halliburton is planning to make a plea bargain in former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's corruption case, Nigerian officials told GlobalPost. Nigeria's anti-corruption agency charged Cheney as the head of Halliburton when its engineering subsidiary, KBR, allegedly paid bribes totaling $180 million to secure contracts worth $6 billion.
KBR has admitted to bribing officials. Last year the company pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court to paying the bribes to Nigerian officials prior to 2007, when it was a subsidiary of Halliburton. KBR, which is now independent from Halliburton, agreed to pay $597 million in fines, according to the Associated Press.
LEAKED EMAIL: Fox boss caught slanting news reporting
At the height of the health care reform debate last fall, Bill Sammon, Fox News' controversial Washington managing editor, sent a memo directing his network's journalists not to use the phrase "public option." Instead, Sammon wrote, Fox's reporters should use "government option" and similar phrases -- wording that a top Republican pollster had recommended in order to turn public opinion against the Democrats' reform efforts.
Journalists on the network's flagship news program, Special Report with Bret Baier, appear to have followed Sammon's directive in reporting on health care reform that evening.
Tobacco smoke causes immediate damage: U.S. report
Cigarette smoke causes immediate damage to the lungs and to DNA, and President Barack Obama's administration will make stop-smoking efforts a priority, federal health officials said on Thursday. Smoking hurts not only the smokers, but people around them, and taxes, bans and treatment all must be used together to help get smoking rates down, U.S. Surgeon-General Dr. Regina Benjamin said in a report on smoking.
"The chemicals in tobacco smoke reach your lungs quickly every time you inhale causing damage immediately," Benjamin said in a statement. "Inhaling even the smallest amount of tobacco smoke can also damage your DNA, which can lead to cancer."
Ex-intelligence official blast lobbying to free Israeli spy
Jonathan Pollard’s ex-wife Anne and her father were settled in Israel by the government there this week, the latest chapter in a renewed campaign to free the confessed spy. Israel has angled periodically for Pollard’s release since 1998, when it admitted, after 13 years of denials, that the former naval intelligence analyst was not a rogue agent but an officially sanctioned spy.
Last September Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu relit the fires under the case when, according to Israeli Army Radio, he asked the Obama administration to release Pollard in exchange for a temporary halt in Israel's construction of Jewish settlements.
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