TV News LIES

Two U.S. administrations declined in recent years to place sanctions on Syrian officials who now are involved in that country's harsh crackdown on dissidents, despite the officials' involvement in crushing internal opposition previously, according to secret State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks.

In one instance, the top diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Damascus asked the State Department in 2007 to impose sanctions on Ali Mamluk, the chief of intelligence for Syrian President Bashar Assad.

As the world struggles to make sense of the tragic attacks in Norway last week, it has become apparent that Anders Behring Breivik, the main suspect held by police, left a long trail of online comments, a YouTube video, and a manifesto outlining his political beliefs.

The New York Times reports today, Breivik “endeavored to find common cause with xenophobic right-wing groups around the world, particularly in the United States” and his manifesto “quoted extensively from the anti-Islam writings of American bloggers.”

In an affront to free speech, Canadian committee declares that criticism of Israel should be considered anti-Semitic. Between November 2009 and January 2010, the CPCCA held ten separate hearings during which time representatives of various non-governmental organizations, religious institutions, police departments and Canadian and Israeli universities presented papers meant to assess the level of anti-Semitism in Canada.

While groups critical of Israel were denied the chance to address the committee, major Zionist organizations like B'nai Brith Canada, Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, and the Canadian Jewish Congress were welcomed.

The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is on course for its first major clash with Israeli settlers in the West Bank, before a court deadline expires tomorrow to destroy three homes which have been built without permission in a hilltop outpost near Ramallah.

Israel's high court last month ordered the destruction within 45 days of three permanent dwellings in Migron, an outpost of 48 families mostly living in caravans.

A J Street poll published Thursday shows that 57% of U.S. Jews back a Middle East peace plan based on 1967 borders with mutually agreed-upon land swaps, while 43% opposed such a move.

According to the poll, 83% of the American Jews support a U.S.-brokered solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while 70% want the administration to offer a peace plan that proposes set borders and security arrangements.

New Zealand security officials suspect Israeli Mossad agents were trying to obtain sensitive information from the state's databases, reported the local Southland Times newspaper on Tuesday. Authorities suspect that one of the agents was Ofer Mizrahi, one of three Israelis killed in the earthquake in the city of Christchurch last February.

Authorities have launched an investigation into what a senior security official called "suspicious activities of several groups of Israelis during and immediately after the earthquake."