United States – Page 45

US drone kills 16 suspected militants in Pakistan

Unmanned U.S. aircraft fired four missiles at a house in northwest Pakistan before dawn Wednesday, killing 16 suspected militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

The strike elicited a swift condemnation by the Pakistani government, which released a statement saying the strikes are a violation of its sovereignty.

The strike in the Sarai Darpa Khel area of the North Waziristan tribal region also wounded two suspected militants, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The suspected militants who were targeted were believed to be from the Afghan Haqqani network. U.S. officials consider the Haqqani network to be one of the most dangerous militant factions fighting American troops in neighboring Afghanistan. The leadership of the Haqqani network pledges allegiance to Taliban chief Mullah Omar but operates fairly independently.

U.S. drone strikes have become a serious source of tension between Washington and Islamabad. The Pakistani government regularly denounces the strikes as a violation of the country’s sovereignty, even though senior officials are known to have supported some of the attacks in the past.

“The Government of Pakistan has consistently maintained that drone strikes are counter-productive, entail loss of innocent civilian lives and have human rights and humanitarian implications,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement Wednesday.

“These drone strikes have a negative impact on the mutual desire of both countries to forge a cordial and cooperative relationship and to ensure peace and stability in the region,” the ministry said.

U.S. officials rarely provide details publicly about the covert CIA drone program in Pakistan.

Elsewhere in northwest Pakistan, militants attacked a police post before dawn Wednesday and killed six policemen, said a local government administrator, Habibullah Khan.

Ten policemen were wounded in the attack about 25 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of the city of Peshawar, said another government official, Feroz Shah. The post was staffed by both paramilitary police from the Frontier Constabulary force and also by tribal policemen.

Khan said policemen retaliated in a gunbattle that lasted several hours and killed several militants.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. But the Pakistani Taliban have carried out many similar attacks against security personnel in the area. – AP

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Associated Press writer Riaz Khan contributed to this report.

‘Blacks are being pushed to the back of the bus’

It’s been a great week for gay activists, but Dr. Cornel West is not happy. As the postmodern professor par excellence explained to radio host Tavis Smiley last Sunday, the advances made by gays and lesbians mean that “we black folk are just being pushed to the back of the bus”:

Again this has something to do of course with what history books will say. The irony of the age of Obama in which black folks found themselves pushed to the back, [and] our gay brothers and lesbian sisters more and more pushed to the center.

Perhaps West is right, and identity politics really is a zero-sum game. Then again, the good doctor may simply be suffering from a touch of radical conditionedness. – National Review

New Snowden bombshell coming

Another big National Security Agency scoop is coming soon, Glenn Greenwald said on Tuesday.

“Just wait a little bit, you’ll have it,” The Guardian journalist who broke the NSA surveillance story said on “Fox & Friends.”

Although Greenwald wouldn’t reveal exactly what the new revelations are, he said the world “will be shocked.”

“I will say that there are vast programs, both domestic and international spying, that the world will be shocked to learn about, that the NSA is engaged in with no democratic accountability and that’s what driving our reporting,” Greenwald said.

Greenwald also said President Barack Obama’s administration is using leaker Edward Snowden as an example to prevent future whistleblowers from coming forward.

“I think what the Obama administration wants, and has been trying to establish for the last almost five years now with the unprecedented war on whistleblowers that it is waging, and to make it so that everybody is petrified of coming forward with information about what our political officials are doing in the dark that is deceitful, illegal or corrupt,” Greenwald said.

He added that the administration doesn’t care about Snowden anymore.

“They don’t care about Edward Snowden at this point; he can no longer do anything that he hasn’t already done; what they care about is making an extremely negative example out of him to intimidate future whistleblowers from coming forward because they’ll think that they’ll end up like him,” Greenwald said.

Greece hires Goldman Sachs, Rothschild to ‘help economy’

Who better to help Greece escape financial turmoil than Wall Street mafia head Goldman Sachs and the international banking elite family known as the Rothschilds?

According to an official statement as reported by Reuters, Greece’s bank rescue fund has turned to the banking mafia duo in order to sell off two Greek banks (Proton and Hellenic Postbank) that were all but decimated by the economic turmoil in the nation. And who better to help sell these banks and help Greece to get back to a stable economic than Goldman Sachs, who actually was very helpful in helping to wage financial warfare on the Greek people through hiding Greece’s debt.

But that, of course, is just seasoning on top of the ironic yet horrific dish cooked up by this rescue fund in choosing the very origin of the modern banking mafia through turning to the notorious Rothschild family. From funding mega wars to originally making their massive wealth through outright deception following the Battle of Waterloo, electing any Rothschild to act as a Greek adviser is a choice that goes against the interests of the Greek people.

But then again, that is the way of the international banking cartel.

As we saw with the Cyprus incident, the wealthy bankers and connected corporate moguls pulled their voluminous amounts of cash from their accounts within the nation before the government went in and took finances from the savings of the people in order to pay for the country’s mega bailout. Even Cyprus President Nikos Anastasiadis was found to be on the list of individuals who withdrew their finances before the government-backed theft began.

According to Reuters on the partnership between the Greek bank rescue fund and the corrupt banking tag team Goldman and Rothschild in an article that has received virtually zero attention:

“Greece’s bank rescue fund has hired Rothschild and Goldman Sachs as advisers on the sale of lenders Proton and Hellenic Postbank (TT), which are most likely to be bought by bigger Greek banks, officials told Reuters on Friday.”

Back in April 2012 Zero Hedge – to loud jeers by the “pundits” who were convinced there is no chance in hell of it happening – that Goldman’s take over of the world’s central bank triumvirate: the NY Fed (Bill Dudley), the ECB (Mario Draghi) and the Bank of England, would soon be completed with Mark Carney taking over the world’s oldest central bank located on Threadneedle street.

This process has now been concluded and we have photographic evidence. – Anthony Gucciardi/Zero Hedge

Residents anxious as shootings in black Baltimore surge

The surge in violence continues in Baltimore as the police report more shootings, the last of which happened late Saturday in Northeast Baltimore.

Clergy and lawmakers are trying to calm anxious residents.

There have been three shootings in the last 24 hours in Baltimore. At least 40 shootings have happened in the last 10 days and 16 of them were deadly.

City clergy are now asking residents to step up and end this violent trend.

At Lafayette Avenue, a man is shot in the leg and at South Haven street, a woman is shot and killed.

“We’ve never had anything like this happen on Haven Street. I’ve been here for 15 years and never seen anything like that,” said concerned resident John Wrencher.

His block becomes the latest home to Baltimore’s nearly 40 shootings in two weeks. More than a dozen people are dead.

City clergy and members of 120 churches are rallying and praying this weekend for peace.

Even a 21-car motorcade drives through the city showing just how deadly this violent trend is becoming.

“If you put a police officer in every block, you still could not solve the program when the problem is inside of the individual, ” said Bishop Angel L. Nunez of Bilingual Christian Church.

This recent surge in shootings highlights the city’s problem with gun violence and homicide rate. So far this year, there have been around 117 homicides, the highest in six years.

But for Stephanie Rawlings Blake, it’s personal.

Her cousin, was gunned down last month near his home.

“Whether our homicide rate is 200 or 300 or one, we can never get that life back,” said Rawlings-Blake.

With the violence spotlighting Baltimore, the mayor said the solution starts with us.

“When we have a spike, we have cameras from all over the city, outside of the city, national reporters. I welcome them back for the miracle. I know that as you are standing here, you are not going to tolerate it,” said Rawlings-Blake.

City leaders say that call to action, may stop the next shot from being fired in your neighborhood.

In the latest shooting, an adult male was shot in the back on a basketball court. He is being treated for non life-threatening injuries at a local hospital.

Police plan to step up enforcement through Fourth of July weekend. – CBS

Snowden speaks from Moscow

Snowden resides at Sheremetyevo Airport, for now

Former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden broke his silence on Monday for the first time since fleeing to Moscow over a week ago, blasting the Obama administration and saying he remains free to make new disclosures about US spying activity.

Snowden, who faces espionage charges in the United States and is believed to be staying in a transit area at Moscow’s airport, surfaced with a letter to the Ecuadorean government and in a statement released through the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, which has taken up his cause.

In the WikiLeaks statement he accused the Obama administration of deception in a campaign to prevent him from finding political asylum and of “leaving me a stateless person” by revoking his US passport.

Snowden, 30, had not been heard from in the eight days since he flew to Moscow from Hong Kong, where he had first taken refuge after fleeing Hawaii.

Snowden has sought asylum in Ecuador and in an undated letter sent to Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa seen by Reuters, said the United States was illegally persecuting him for revealing its electronic surveillance programme, Prism, but made it clear he did not intend to be muzzled.

“I remain free and able to publish information that serves the public interest,” Snowden, who had been a contract employee for the US National Security Agency, said in the letter.

“No matter how many more days my life contains, I remain dedicated to the fight for justice in this unequal world. If any of those days ahead realise a contribution to the common good, the world will have the principles of Ecuador to thank.”

Snowden said the US government was persecuting him.

“While the public has cried out support of my shining a light on this secret system of injustice, the government of the United States of America responded with an extrajudicial man-hunt costing me my family, my freedom to travel, and my right to live peacefully without fear of illegal aggression,” Snowden wrote.

In his WikiLeaks statement, Snowden lashed out at US President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden for pressing Ecuador to turn him away.

“This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile,” he said.

“Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right,” Snowden said. “A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum… Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.”

US Justice Department spokeswoman Nanda Chitre rejected Snowden’s claim that he was marooned “since he is still a United States citizen and his country is willing to take him back”.

“As the State Department has already said, the US government is prepared to issue individuals wanted on felony charges a one-entry travel document to return home,” she said.

Snowden has given Russian diplomats a list of 15 countries, including Russia, where he wanted to apply for asylum, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing an unidentified Russian Foreign Ministry official. A Russian immigration source told Reuters that Snowden had applied for asylum in Russia.

Foreign Ministry and Kremlin officials declined immediate comment.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Snowden could stay in Russia on one condition.

“He must stop his work aimed at harming our American partners, as strange as that sounds coming from my lips,” he told reporters after a gas exporters’ conference in Moscow.

Putin said he suspected that Snowden would continue leaking information because “he feels himself to be a human rights activist”.

“So he must choose a country of destination and go there,” he said, speaking before the asylum request to Russia was reported. “Unfortunately, I don’t know when this will happen.”

Putin said Russia was not working with Snowden and had no intention of handing Snowden over to the United States.

“Russia has never given up anyone to anybody and does not plan to. And nobody ever gave anyone up to us,” Putin said.

Correa said on Sunday that Snowden’s fate was in Russia’s hands because Ecuador could not consider the plea until he reached Ecuador or one of its embassies.

Shortly after Snowden fled the United States to Hong Kong in May, and long before he arrived in Russia, Putin suggested the surveillance methods he revealed were justified in fighting terrorism, if carried out lawfully.

Although Russia has sometimes exchanged captured spies with the United States, Putin suggested on Monday that this was not on the cards for Snowden. “As for Mr Snowden, he is not our agent and he is not working with us,” Putin said.

Obama, at a news conference in Tanzania, repeated that the United States was working through law enforcement channels to prod Russia to extradite Snowden.

Obama said there had been “high-level discussions with the Russians about trying to find a solution to the problem”. – Reuters

Snowden: ‘Ecuador an example to the world’

Edward Snowden, shortly after his arrival in Moscow

Fugitive intelligence analyst Edward Snowden has thanked Ecuador for its support in his bid to avoid extradition to the US, saying the country was an “example to the world” in a letter publicised on Monday.

“There are few world leaders who would risk standing for the human rights of an individual against the most powerful government on earth, and the bravery of Ecuador and its people is an example to the world,” he told President Rafael Correa in a letter obtained by Britain’s Press Association.

Snowden singled out Fidel Narvaez, the Ecuadorian consul in London, for guaranteeing his protection upon fleeing Hong Kong eight days ago.

“I could never have risked travel without that,” said the letter, which was written in Spanish.

“Now, as a result, and through the continued support of your government, I remain free and able to publish information that serves the public interest.” – AFP

Obama on last leg of African tour in Tanzania

Obama with Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete durng a welcoming ceremony at Julius Nyerere Airport, Dar es Salaam

US President Barack Obama and his predecessor George W Bush are to lay a wreath Tuesday in Tanzania at the site of the 1998 bombing of the US embassy, the White House said.

Obama touched down in Dar es Salaam on Monday, for the last leg of his three-country tour of Africa. Bush has been in Africa since last week promoting causes linked to cancer awareness.

On August 7, 1998, twin bomb attacks by Islamist militants on US diplomatic missions in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam killed more than 200 people.

Obama is due to meet his Tanzanian counterpart, Jakaya Kikwete, and then visit a power plant, following up on his announcement that Washington will invest 7 billion dollars in expanding power networks in Africa.

Shortly after touching down in the East African nation and receiving a 21-gun salute at the airport, the president announced new US support for tackling poaching, in particular rhino and elephants.

Obama said poaching had become an “international crisis that continues to escalate”. The administration set up a task force to aid African governments in combating the illegal trade in animals while also seeking to curb the demand for items such as rhino horns.

The horns are most in demand in Asia, where some people believe they have medicinal value, although there is no science to back the claim.

The president is being accompanied by first lady Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha. Numerous trade and business officials are travelling with Obama, who is drumming up support for deepening commerce links between the United States and the continent.

The president announced that he would invite African heads of government to the US next year to take part in a summit to relaunch relations between Washington and African nations.

During his visit to South Africa and Senegal, the US leader urged for better governance in Africa, to match the fast pace of economic expansion.

Obama has been criticized for not engaging enough with the continent and ceding ground and influence to China and other emerging powers.

Much of the president’s trip has been overshadowed by the continued ill health of Nelson Mandela, who remains in critical but stable condition in a Pretoria hospital.

Obama has lauded the former South African president throughout the trip and met with his family privately. – dpa

Snowden asking 15 countries for asylum

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked U.S. security secrets and is now a fugitive, met Monday morning with Russian diplomatic officials and handed them an appeal to 15 countries for political asylum, a Russian Foreign Ministry official told The Times.

“It was a desperate measure on his part after Ecuador disavowed his political protection credentials,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. ”In the document Snowden reiterated once again that he is not a traitor and explained his actions only by a desire to open the world’s eyes on the flagrant violations by U.S. special services not only of American citizens but also citizens of European Union including their NATO allies.”

The official didn’t disclose the countries that were on the list. The meeting took place at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, where Snowden has apparently holed up in a transit lounge since fleeing from Hong Kong while seeking a route to Ecuador or somewhere else that might grant him asylum.

Kirill Kabanov, a member of the Presidential Council on Human Rights, a Kremlin advisory body, said he believes that Russia is on the list.

“In the given circumstances, Russia has two workable options: Firstly is to provide Snowden with some refugee-status papers so that he could buy a ticket and leave for some other country, or secondly to grant him political asylum,” Kabanov said in an interview with The Times.

“Snowden’s actions were motivated by a desire to protect human rights and freedoms and now many rights activists in Russia are talking about him as a human rights advocate who deserves to be granted asylum, although this measure is fraught with some political inconveniences for Russia,” he said. – latimes.com

The Obamas do Africa

The President and his family are spending a week in sub-Saharan Africa, with Senegal, Tanzania and South Africa on the itinerary. The focus of the trip, if you believe the White House, is trade, an arena in which the United States has been eclipsed by China since 2009. China, by some measurements, now does nearly twice as much business with Africa as the U.S., and the gap is growing. It is now commonly accepted that the Chinese offer far better terms of trade and investment than the Americans, that they create more jobs for Africans, and their investments leave behind infrastructure that can enrich their African trading partners in the long haul.

No one expects Obama to offer anything on this trip that will reverse America’s declining share of the African market. That’s because the U.S. is not in the business of fair and mutually beneficial trade – it’s about the business of imperialism, which is another matter, entirely. The Americans ensure their access to African natural resources through the barrel of a gun.

So, while the Chinese and Indians and Brazilians and other economic powerhouses play by the rules of give and take, the U.S. tightens its military grip on the continent through its ever-expanding military command, AFRICOM.

To justify its rapid militarization of Africa, Washington plunges whole regions of the continent into chaos. U.S. policies, under presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, have utterly destroyed Somalia, made the Horn of Africa a theater of war, drawn the northern tier of the continent into America’s cauldron of terror, and killed six million people in the eastern Congo.

The face of America in Africa is war, not trade; extraction of minerals by military intimidation, not conventional commerce. Washington’s priority is to embed AFRICOM ever deeper into the militaries of African states – rather than configuring more favorable trade relationships on the continent. But you won’t learn that from the U.S. corporate media, which chooses to focus on the $100 million cost of Obama’s African trip, or to look for human interest angles on Obama’s decision not to touch down in his father’s homeland, Kenya. However, even that angle is too sinister for deeper exploration by the corporate press, because Kenya’s absence from the itinerary is meant as a threat.

The United States is angry because Washington wanted the Kenyan people to elect a different president, one more acceptable to U.S. policymakers. The Americans expected the whole of Kenyan civil society to bend to Washington’s will, and reject the candidacy of Uhuru Kenyatta, simply to please the superpower. When that didn’t happen, it was decided that Kenya must be shunned, despite its past services to U.S. imperialism.

Skipping Kenya was a warning that more serious repercussions may lurk in the future – which is a potent threat, because the U.S. controls most of the guns of Africa. As the U.S.-backed warlord in Somalia said in Jeremy Scahill’s excellent film The Dirty War, “The Americans are masters of war.” War, and the threat of war, is the reality behind every U.S. presidential visit, to Africa and everywhere else. Whether the terms of trade are good or bad, the declining U.S. empire will get access to the resources it needs, or thousands – millions! – will die.

Glen Ford. BlackAgendaReport.com.

Germany prepares charges against US and British intelligence

Germany is preparing to bring charges against US and British intelligence amid fresh allegations that the services spied far more extensively than thought on German phone and internet traffic and bugged European Union offices in America.

A report alleging a major and continuous US National Security Agency spying operation in Germany was published by Der Spiegel magazine yesterday, prompting outrage from Berlin MPs still reeling from reports about extensive British surveillance in their country.

The German Justice Minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenburger, demanded an immediate explanation and said the behaviour of the intelligence services was “reminiscent of the actions against enemies during the Cold War”. “It defies belief that our friends in the US see the Europeans as their enemies,” she said.

The leak, which Der Spiegel said came from fugitive ex-CIA analyst Edward Snowden, claimed that the NSA tapped into half a billion German phone calls, emails and SMS messages each month. Reports last week revealed extensive tapping of German phone and internet traffic by British intelligence under its so-called Tempora programme. The information was said to be shared with the NSA.

A spokesman for the Federal Prosecutor said the office was preparing to bring charges against “persons unknown” in relation to the reports.

There was also widespread and mounting anger at official European Union level yesterday following disclosures that the NSA had spied on EU computer networks at its offices in New York and Washington and that it had also bugged the premises. Martin Schulz, head of the European Parliament, demanded “full clarification” from the US and said that if the disclosures proved true they would have a severe impact on US-EU ties.

It also emerged that the UK Government had invited German MPs and justice officials to attend a video conference at British Embassy in Berlin today during which the issue of spying would be addressed.

Der Spiegel said the NSA’s German phone and internet surveillance operation was the biggest in the EU. On 7 January 2013 it tapped into some 60 million German phone calls in a single day.

The magazine said that Canada, Australia, Britain and New Zealand were exempt from NSA surveillance but Germany was regarded as a country open for “spy attacks”. – Belfast Telegraph

The Guardian deletes ‘scoop’ from website

The Guardian released another shocking NSA scoop on Saturday, revealing collusion and mass harvesting of personal communications among the United States and at least six European Union countries — only to delete it from their website hours after publication.

The article, titled “Revealed: secret European deals to hand over private data to America,” was written by Jamie Doward, who reported information from Wayne Madsen, a former Navy Lt. and NSA employee for 12 years.

Doward wrote:

Madsen said the countries had “formal second and third party status” under signal intelligence (sigint) agreements that compels them to hand over data, including mobile phone and internet information to the NSA if requested.

Under international intelligence agreements, confirmed by declassified documents, nations are categorised by the US according to their trust level. The US is first party while the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy second party relationships. Germany and France have third party relationships.

He went on to say that seven European countries and the U.S. have access to a fiberoptic cable network, intercepting phone calls, emails, and user logs from websites. The article describes Madsen as having “been attacked for holding controversial views on espionage issues.”

That’s a light way of putting it.

Some of Madsen’s controversial views include the belief that President Obama is secretly a homosexual and that the Boston bombing suspects were government agents. He’s also reported on a “former CIA agent” alleging the 2000 USS Cole bombing was perpetrated not by al Qaeda terrorists, but by a missile fired from an Israeli submarine.

John Schindler, a professor at the Naval War College and intelligence expert, called Madsen ”batsh– crazy, to use the technical term.”

The pulled article now bears the message, “this article has been taken down pending an investigation” but appears to still be on tomorrow’s front page of the print edition. It was originally published in The Observer, a Sunday newspaper owned by The Guardian and hosted on their website. – Business Insider

Obama to Africa: Don’t trust foreign powers

President Obama pledged $7 billion in aid Sunday to provide electricity to sub-Saharan Africa, as he warned Africans to be wary of exploitation by other countries, including the U.S.

“I’m calling for America to up our game when it comes to Africa,” Mr. Obama said in a speech at the University of Capetown in South Africa, midway through his weeklong tour of the continent. “We want to unleash the power of entrepreneurship and markets to create opportunity here in Africa.

Funds from the electricity initiative, dubbed Power Africa, will be distributed over the next five years to six countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria and Tanzania. Mr. Obama said the U.S. wants to help Africa without interfering like colonial powers did in the past.

“You will always find the extended hand of a friend in the United States of America,” he said.

But on his three-nation tour, the president also has been warning Africans not to automatically trust foreign powers offering help, including the U.S.

“When we look at what other countries are doing in Africa, I think our only advice is make sure it’s a good deal for Africa,” Mr. Obama told reporters in Johannesburg.

“If somebody says they want to come build something here, are they hiring African workers? If somebody says that they want to help you develop your natural resources, how much of the money is staying in Africa? … Don’t just assume that folks come here and they’re automatically benefiting Africans. And that includes the United States. Ask questions in terms of what we do.”

Although Mr. Obama has been emphasizing initiatives such as food security and international funding to combat AIDS, much of his African trip has been overshadowed by his inability to meet over the weekend with the critically ill Nelson Mandela, 94, hospitalized with a lung infection.

The president and his aides held out the possibility of a meeting with Mr. Mandela until Saturday, when Mr. Obama decided to meet instead with several members of the civil rights icon’s family, saying he didn’t want to intrude at the hospital. He praised Mr. Mandela as a “hero for the world” and said America’s prayers were with him.

Mr. Obama told the audience at the University of Capetown that Mr. Mandela inspired his first political act, when he was a 19-year-old student at Occidental College in California.

He said he was motivated to give a short speech about divesting from South African companies after learning about Mr. Mandela and other political prisoners fighting for equality in South Africa.

“My own government in the United States was not standing on their side,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s why I got involved in what was known as the divestment movement in the United States. It was the first time I ever attached myself to a cause.

“I know now that something inside me was stirring at that time, something important,” he said. “And that was the belief that I could be part of something bigger than myself, that my own salvation was bound up with those of others.”

Earlier Sunday, Mr. Obama and his family toured the South African prison that held Mr. Mandela. The president wrote in a visitors log that they were “deeply humbled” by the experience, although this was Obama’s second visit to the prison.

Mr. Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, daughters Malia and Sasha, and the Obamas’ niece Leslie Robinson arrived on Robben Island after a five-minute helicopter flight from Capetown on Marine One. They were accompanied by a press helicopter and a contingent of Secret Service agents.

They got a tour of the prison, where Mr. Mandela spent 27 years as a political prisoner, from 83-year-old former inmate Ahmed Kathrada. They also saw the small cell that Mr. Mandela once occupied.

The president and first lady paused at the prison’s logbook, and Mr. Obama wrote the following entry:

“On behalf of our family we’re deeply humbled to stand where men of such courage faced down injustice and refused to yield. The world is grateful for the heroes of Robben Island, who remind us that no shackles or cells can match the strength of the human spirit. Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, 30 June 2013.” – Washington Times

Lady Gaga: ‘Land of the free, home for the gay’

Lady Gaga sang the American national anthem at Pier 26 to kick off New York City’s gay pride celebration Friday night, changing some of its words to fit the occasion, The Blaze first reported.

Holding a rainbow flag, the performer sang, “O say does that star-spangled flag of pride yet wave,” then substituted “land of the free, and the home for the gay.”

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal provision that denied benefits to legally married same-sex couples and, in a separate case, cleared the way for California to resume offering marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Lady Gaga posted a photo of herself in a wedding gown to her Twitter account Wednesday.

“We stand tall today.#DomaStruckDown So many fought for so long. Be proud, the prejudice are now the minority,” the singer tweeted. – Washington Times