Never mind 9/11. American authorities are all set to exchange top Taliban officials with the Afghanistan government in hopes of coming to a truce between Washington and Kabul.

High-ranking insurgents with ties to the Taliban will be released from American custody and shipped out of Guantanamo Bay if the deal materializes. The US is agreeing to free the alleged terrorists in exchange for Afghanistan’s agreement to cooperate with peace talks and open a political office in the nation of Qatar.

To some, it’s a move that only cements what many have said all along — that the America’s war in Afghanistan, the lengthiest the US has ever involved itself in — was waged for nothing.

“I think this marks that point in time where there’s an admission, maybe not openly, that we’re not going to achieve a military overwhelming dominance with the Taliban,” Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer from the Center for Advanced Defense Studies tells RT. “I think the idea of releasing these individuals without an idea of what we’re getting in return is not really a good idea and I think it’s almost an act of desperation.”

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Palm Springs, CA – A new Speakers Bureau is being kicked off at The Center with an   inaugural presentation by Eric Harrison of Love, Honor and Cherish on Wednesday, January 11th at 5 pm. Love, Honor and Cherish is an organization launched in May 2008 that aims to repeal Proposition 8 in the next general election in 2012. Love, Honor and Cherish continues to lead the struggle to repeal Prop 8 and Harrison will discuss his organization’s continuing fight for marriage equality.

This will be followed by Getting All Your Ducks in a Row, With Smart Sensible Planning, presented by Joseph Hahn and Cary Boisvert on Thursday, January 12th at 5 pm. Joe Hahn, attorney at law, and Cary Boisvert, mortuary supervisor at Forest Lawn, present in tandem on a range of practical considerations for educating the LGBT community about the tools available to assist in setting up simple, smart and sensible legal and financial controls in their lives.  They will also address how to communicate personal preferences regarding health care and funeral choices to make sure your wishes are respected.

These two FREE lectures will be followed by other upcoming lectures on Stopping Elder Abuse presented by the Palm Springs Police Department on Tuesday, January 17th, and a presentation on How to Manage Your Online Reputation and avoid negative consequences on Wednesday, January 25th.’

In October, 2011, The Golden Rainbow Center became The LGBT Community Center of the Desert.  The mission of The Center is to enrich the lives of the LGBT community.  While maintaining and strengthening senior services as a SAGE affiliate, The Center has undertaken a transformation.  Key areas of change are a major expansion of the counseling program, a youth crisis collaboration with the Trevor Project and more outreach to women, people of color and the transgender community.

Activists of the Anonymous online hacker community have launched a web campaign against German neo-Nazi and other far-right sites. Their website nazi-leaks.net makes it obvious the hactivists favor the Wikileaks strategy.

A statement alleged to be attributed to the Anonymous group announced the start of what it calls Operation Blitzkrieg, stating the goal of identifying “sites where the nazis gather.”

The campaign started with nazi-leaks.net publishing a list of names and personal data, including e-mail addresses and telephone numbers, of those who Anonymous consider linked to the National Democratic Party (NPD), an extreme-right political party in Germany, donating to it, or alleged to have had some business with various extreme-right sites.

Emails of NPD members and customer lists from far-right shops have been posted online for public access as part of the operation. Some of those who wrote for the Junge Freiheit (Boys Freedom) newspaper are also on the ‘black’ list, which contains hundreds of names.

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The North Korean regime does not seem to be softening with its new, young leader Kim Jong-un succeeding his father Kim Jong-il, as reports say he is taking tough measures on potential defectors.

Following the death of the country’s longtime “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il on December 17, power was handed to his son, who North Korean official media call a “meticulous and tender-hearted man.” The official agencies burst with excitement and piety when Kim Jong-un was reported to have sent hot sweet drinks to mourners paying their last respects to his late father despite harsh weather conditions.

But when it comes to more concrete actions, the young leader seems neither sweet nor tender-hearted – though he is surely meticulous. This week, sources reported Kim the younger gave an order to shoot defectors attempting to flee the country.

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