PaulCraigRoberts.org | On May 31, 2010, the Israeli right-wing government sent armed military troops to illegally board in international waters Gaza aid ships of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla organized by the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief. The Israelis murdered 8 Turkish citizens and one US citizen in cold blood. Many others were wounded by the forces of “the only democracy in the Middle East.”

The Blaze | On rare occasions, members of the hacker collective Anonymous speak out as individuals. Recently, a member known as Commander X (his real name is Christopher Doyon) granted the Montreal Gazette in Canada an interview in which he revealed the hackvists claim to have access to every federal government database.

Business Insider | With Osama bin Laden dead, al-Qaeda's capabilities severely diminished, and the United States scaling back operations in Afghanistan, what will President Barack Obama and his successors do with the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)? A look at what they've already been doing outside of war zones gives us some hints.

Mother Jones | Capitol Hill conservatives and Pentagon brass fighting cuts to defense spending have argued that the military is limping off the battlefield with decrepit hardware. It's quite the sob story: At a hearing last week, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), the chair of the House armed services committee, cut his remarks short to literally cry for "these young men that are going outside the wire over in Afghanistan, every day on patrol."

MSNBC | Friday's news on GDP shows the double dip has arrived — an expansion of only 1.3 percent and consumer spending up 0.1 percent in the second quarter. Astonishingly low by any account. The debt ceiling trouble and lack of a longer term resolution to the deficit will make it worse. The U.S. has entered a second recession. It may not be as bad as the first. Economists say that the Great Recession began in December 2007 and lasted until July 2009. That may be the way that the economy was seen through the eyes of experts, but many Americans do not believe that the 2008-2009 downturn ever ended. A Gallup poll released in April found that 29 percent of those queried thought the economy was in a “depression” and 26 percent said that the original recession had persisted into 2011.

Washington Times | Foreign spies broke into a U.S. defense contractor’s computer network and stole valuable weapons data, Pentagon officials disclosed for the first time on Thursday in releasing a cybersecurity strategy aimed at bolstering Internet defenses. Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III declined to name the contractor or to provide further details of the intrusion in March, except to say that 24,000 files “related to [weapons] systems being developed for the Department of Defense” had been stolen.

YouTube | Rebel fighters in Libya have blamed a lack of ammunition, and a lack of NATO support, for their failure to advance towards the capital Tripoli. It comes just days after Libya reportedly intercepted two vessels with Belgian weapons intended for the rebels. For more about what's going on there, RT crosses live to Tripoli and Dr. Franklin Lamb, a Director of Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace.

Anti-War.com | President Obama’s claims that the United States is not engaged in hostilities against Libya are centered around the premise that they are purely providing “support” for the British and French attacks, and that as such they are not a direct combatant.

Examiner | A noted human rights group spokesperson has stated that the mandatory military detention provision that the Senate Armed Services Committee secretly discussed and passed this week, is what martial-law states, not democracies do. The Senate Armed Services Committee's vote this week redefined rules for detaining terrorism suspects, including giving power to military judges to review cases of prisoners in Afghanistan and mandating military detention for important Qaeda suspects even captured on United States soil according to The New York Times.