FEDS WANT MAJOR EXPANSION OF SECRET WIRETAP POWERS OVER WEB-BASED SERVICES. Facebook, Google, Skype and other brand names behind your favorite internet sites and programs are chafing at proposed new rules from the Obama administration that would force companies to comply with sweeping wiretaps and information requests from the FBI and Justice Department. While companies [...]
A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING EUROPE AND AMERICA: AND IT’S NAME IS AUSTERITY. The literally killing effects of austerity measures undertaken as a solutions to the “financial crisis” are documented in a new book by David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu. Decimation of health support services is blamed with creating epidemics of everything from HIV and [...]
FOILED BY CONGRESS, GUN CONTROL ADVOCATES TURN TO STATE BALLOTS IN BID TO END VIOLENCE. Lawmakers and organizations in several states are considering whether to place gun-related amendments such as universal background checks on state ballots as soon as the 2014 elections.Though the piecemeal approach is not ideal, activists are beginning to tire of [...]
Captured by law enforcement after what was often a violent 24-hour manhunt. the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings last Monday now recovers in a hospital under the careful watch of state and federal officials. With considerable video evidence of his role in the crime, few think Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is innocent of participating in [...]
“INSUFFICIENTLY PRO-ISRAELI?” New U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had his appointment held up on such “insufficiency” charge but now, on a trip to Israel, he seems to be establishing his sufficiency bones. In presenting a large deal for U.S. arms shipments to Israel, he says that the deal is a “clear signal” to Iran [...]
BOMB AT BOSTON MARATHON KILLS 3 PEOPLE, INCLUDING 1 CHILD AND THERE IS AN OUTPOURING OF U.S. SYMPATHY FOR THE VICTIMS. A secret C.I.A. counter-terrorist raid in Afghanistan kills 17 people, including 12 children. Sympathy out-pouring?—not so much, at least in the U.S. Not so, however, in Afghanistan itself, where the PM Hamid Karzai [...]
THE WAY OF THE KNIFE: THE C.I.A., A SECRET ARMY, AND A WAR AT THE ENDS OF THE EARTH. A new book of this title by Mark Mazzetti is about to be released and is excerpted in the New York Times. It describes the “secret deal” in 2004 between the C.I.A. and the Pakistani state [...]
ANTI-DRONE ACTION: IT’S NOT JUST A 13-HOUR RAND PAUL FILIBUSTER ANYMORE. Medea Benjaming and Noor Mir describe an April “month of uprising” against drone use both domestically and in pursuit of U.S. foreign policy interests. This “uprising” is taking many forms, including prohibitions for police use in many cities and states, protests at the [...]
THE FACTS BE DAMNED, THE U.S. AND ISRAEL MAINTAIN THAT IRAN IS A MAJOR THREAT TO DEVELOP NUCLEAR CAPABILITIES. Numerous independent reports and even one by the U.S. Intelligence Agency have established that Iran is nowhere near a “red line” of nuclear development that could represent any kind of serious threat to other nations. [...]
The White House has signaled it is willing to make enormous political sacrifices and deep concessions to noisy partisan critics in order to ensure the continued secrecy of the government’s legal justification for using drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists. Having already been forced to offer a limited acknowledgement of the legal details behind the [...]
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