Joseph Kishore

The detention and interrogation by UK authorities of David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, is a chilling act of political intimidation.

Miranda was detained and questioned for nine hours—the maximum allowed by the relevant section of the British Terrorism Act of 2000. He was denied the right to a lawyer and the right to remain silent. His personal effects were seized and not returned, including his computer, cell phone, camera, and memory sticks with documents leaked by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.

“They got me to tell them the passwords for my computer and mobile phone,” Miranda told the Guardian. “They said I was obliged to answer all their questions … They were threatening me all the time and saying I would be put in jail if I didn’t cooperate.”

These are the acts of political gangsters operating outside of all legal restraint. Miranda, a private citizen, was detained, questioned, threatened and had his property confiscated solely because of his relationship to Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras, whom Miranda had been visiting in Berlin. Both Greenwald and Poitras have worked with Snowden to expose secret and illegal spying programs by the United States and its international collaborators, including the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

While Miranda was detained in Britain, the central protagonist was the Obama administration, which has led an international campaign of vilification and persecution against Snowden since he first revealed himself in June. On Monday, a White House spokesman said that the US had been given a “heads up” about the British action before it happened, and that US and British intelligence agencies have had extensive discussions. While the administration claims that it did not ask the British to seize Miranda, a formal request was hardly necessary. The police and spy agencies of the two countries operate on the same wavelength.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Things Are Bad And Getting Worse

Terrible things are happening faster than we can keep up with them. Monsanto, widely regarded as a criminal enterprise, is expanding its monopoly over seeds and food production into Chile and Latin America. Monsanto has given up for now on monopolizing Europe’s agriculture, but has brought the EU around to allowing it to market GMO food products. Money speaks, which perhaps is the reason that Chile’s former president, Michelle Bachelet, introduced the pro-Monsanto legislation that one of the legislative chambers has passed. There are mass demonstrations in Chile against the legislation that destroys Chile’s sovereignty over its food production, but just as Monsanto can purchase the US government it also can purchase the Chilean government. In our day and time, governments are just another commodity to be bought and sold by powerful corporations.

And then there is Fukushima. Media have led us to think that this nuclear crisis is over, but it appears that it is only beginning. The risk of apocalypse is high. You can read here one assessment of the risks to all of us. Here another. And here another. And another. And here.

As soon as Egypt gets a democracy with an elected president, Washington has the military, which is dependent on Washington for money and equipment, to overthrow the democracy, just as Washington does in Honduras and elsewhere. The Egyptian government that democracy produced was Islamist. The Muslim Brotherhood is moderate, not radical, but the moderate Islamists showed lack of enthusiasm for supporting the Washington-Israeli policy of genocide for Palestine. Washington finds “freedom and democracy” unacceptable when it does not support Washington’s foreign policy.

This fall Congress will again be confronted with the debt ceiling limit. To keep this specter at bay, the US Treasury has been employing questionable means. The crisis that has been kicked down the road is likely to worsen, because the economy is likely to renew its decline in ways that cannot be disguised by manipulated statistics. Sooner or later the world will realize that the US cannot pay its bills and that the world’s reserve currency is being ruthlessly printed in order to prop up busted banks and the US Treasury. The house of cards that US economic policy has constructed in the 21st century can collapse at any time.

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M. K. Bhadrakumar

The US is immensely pleased with the Egyptian junta.

The appointment of Robert Ford as the new American ambassador to Egypt was indeed an ominous sign that the Obama administration expected civil war conditions to arise in Egypt. Ford’s forte during his hugely successful «diplomatic» assignment in Baghdad in the middle of the last decade was to organize the notorious death squads, which tore Mesopotamia apart and destroyed Iraq almost irreparably.

Equally, Ford played a seminal role in his subsequent ambassadorial assignment in Damascus in 2011 in successfully triggering the Syrian civil war. Ford is the living embodiment of the stunning reality that between the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, there has been no real shift in the United States’ policies in the Middle East aimed at perpetuating its regional hegemony…

Make no mistake about it that the US game plan is to destabilize and destroy Egypt just the same way Iraq and Syria have been destroyed so that Israel’s absolute security is assured in the region for the conceivable future.

This is the conclusion that can be safely drawn as the Egyptian junta launched the mass murder of hundreds of Egyptian protestors on Wednesday. A bloodbath of horrendous proportions has commenced in Egypt.

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Stephen Lendman

Anything's possible ahead. What follows remains to be seen. Revolutionary struggles are longterm. Regional ones just began.

February 11, 2011 marked the end of Mubarak's 30-year dictatorship. July 3, 2013 reflects its reincarnation. Iron fist junta power's reinstated. Perhaps it'll be worse than before. For sure it is now. Violence continues daily. Many hundreds, perhaps thousands, died. Countless numbers were injured and arrested.

State terror targets Morsi supporters. Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) generals demand things their way. Human lives are a small price to pay for power. Tyranny defines today's Egypt. It's always been that way. It's worse than ever now.

Police state terror targets dissenters. Egypt's Emergency Law was reinstated. It was enacted in 1958. It remained in force from 1967 through May 31, 2012. It did so except for an 18 month 1980/81 period. It reflects police state harshness. Authorities have sweeping powers. Constitutional rights are suspended. Unapproved street demonstrations are banned. Media censorship's enforced. Political activism's prohibited. Anyone can be arrested and imprisoned for any reason or none at all. Innocence is no defense. Indefinite detentions are commonplace. Torture is widespread. Trials, if gotten, are farcical. Military judges preside. Closed door proceedings follow. Guilt by accusation is policy. Thousands languish in Egypt's gulag. They did so under Mubarak. They still do. Police states operate this way.

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Barry Grey and Thomas Gaist

British authorities detained David Miranda, the partner of Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, for nine hours on Sunday under a counterterrorism law. They held Miranda, 28, a citizen of Brazil, incommunicado and interrogated him without giving him the opportunity to secure legal counsel.

Miranda was stopped by British officers as he passed through London’s Heathrow Airport on his way from Berlin to his Rio de Janeiro home, which he shares with Greenwald. The officials released Miranda without charge after nine hours, the maximum detention time allowed under the law. They confiscated Miranda’s electronic equipment, including his mobile phone, laptop computer, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and game consoles.

Greenwald has written a series of stories, mainly for the British Guardian, exposing the mass surveillance programs carried out by the US National Security Agency (NSA), based on documents given to him by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Along with Snowden, Greenwald has become a target for attacks by US politicians and media figures. Two months ago, David Gregory, the moderator of NBC News’ “Meet the Press” program, asked Greenwald in the course of an interview why he should not be prosecuted, along with Snowden, under US espionage laws. The Guardian has also published articles about blanket electronic surveillance carried out by Britain’s General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

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James Petras

Introduction: Representative democracies and autocratic dictatorships respond to profound internal crises in very distinctive ways: the former attempts to reason with citizens, explaining the causes, consequences and alternatives; dictatorships attempt to terrorize, intimidate and distract the public by evoking bogus external threats, to perpetuate and justify rule by police state methods and avoid facing up to the self-inflicted crises. Such a bogus fabrication is evident in the Obama regime’s current announcements of an imminent global “terrorist threat”[1] in the face of multiple crises, policy failures and defeats throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Southwest Asia.

Internet ‘Chatter’ Evokes a Global Conspiracy and Revives the Global War on Terror

The entire terror conspiracy propaganda blitz, launched by the Obama regime and propagated by the mass media, is based on the flimsiest sources imaginable, the most laughable pretext. According to White House sources, the National Security Agency, the CIA and other spy agencies claimed to have monitored and intercepted unspecified Al-Qaeda threats, conversations by two Al Qaeda figures including Ayman al Zawahiri[2].

Most damaging, the Obama regime’s claim of a global threat by al-Qaeda, necessitating the shutdown of 19 embassies and consuls and a world-wide travelers alert, flies in the face of repeated public assertions over the past five years that Washington has dealt ‘mortal blows’ to the terrorist organization crippling its operative capacity[3] and citing the US “military successes” in Afghanistan and Iraq, its assassination of Bin Laden, the drone attacks in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia and the US-backed invasion of Libya. Either the Obama regime was lying in the past or its current terror alert is a fabrication. If, as Obama and the NSA currently claim, Al Qaeda has re-emerged as a global terrorist threat, then twelve years of warfare in Afghanistan and eleven years of war in Iraq, the spending of $1.46 trillion dollars, the loss of over seven thousand US soldiers[4] and the physical and psychological maiming of over a hundred thousand US combatants has been a total and unmitigated disaster and the so-called war on terror is a failure.

The claim of a global terror threat, based on NSA surveillance of two Yemen-based Al Qaeda leaders, is as shallow as it is implausible. Every day throughout cyberspace one or another Islamist terrorist group or individual discuss terror plots, fantasies and plans of no great consequence.

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Stephen Lendman

They're responsible for state-sponsored terrorism. They violate fundamental international law doing. It's no longer tolerated.

Victor Hugo once said, "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." It's now. It arrived. It's here. It's real. August 17, 2013 won't be forgotten. It's a turning point in world history. It's hugely important. It's historic. It's long overdue. It's been long awaited. It finally arrived. It'll be long remembered.

UN Secretary-General Desmond Tutu will announce a momentous world body decision. He'll speak for many dozens of world leaders. They're united. They're committed like he is. They represent most of Europe, Latin and Central America, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Oceana. They're forthright. They're explicit. They're straightforward. They're unambiguous. They're not backing down.

Tutu will announce what's been long awaited. It's long overdue. He'll declare America and Israel pariah states. He'll accuse them of state-sponsored terrorism. He expelled both countries from the world body. He imposed binding sanctions. He filed charges with the International Court of Justice. He want both nations held fully accountable.

He named culpable officials, past and present. Many dozens of them. They're well known. They'll be held fully accountable. He directed the International Criminal Court to take appropriate action. He wants them prosecuted. He wants the full letter of the law enforced. Arrest orders were issued. Accusations were lodged. They include crimes of war, against humanity and genocide. Multiple counts were filed. Each one carries a binding life sentence. They exclude the possibility of parole.

Compassion's not considered. No extenuating circumstances. No statute of limitations. Nothing short of full accountability. Reparations are mandatory. Mitigation's out of the question. Trillions of dollars are involved. Victims are too numerous to list.

Standing room only packed the large General Assembly Hall. It seats 1,800. Up to double that number filled it. It's wall-to-wall. It's standing room only. Thousands can't get in. They waited outside. They filled nearby streets. Celebrations erupted. They did so across America. They did worldwide. Everyone awaits Tutu's arrival.

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Pepe Escobar

I have argued that what has just happened in Egypt is a bloodbath that is not a bloodbath, conducted by a military junta responsible for a coup that is not a coup, under the guise of an Egyptian "war on terror". Yet this newspeak gambit - which easily could have been written at the White House - is just part of the picture.

Amid a thick fog of spin and competing agendas, a startling fact stands out. A poll only 10 days ago by the Egyptian Center for Media Studies and Public Opinion had already shown that 69% were against the July 3 military coup orchestrated by the Pinochet-esque Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

So the bloodbath that is not a bloodbath cannot possibly be considered legitimate - unless for a privileged coterie of Mubarakists (the so-called fulool), a bunch of corrupt oligarchs and the military-controlled Egyptian "deep state".

The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) government led by Mohamed Morsi may have been utterly incompetent - trying to rewrite the Egyptian constitution; inciting hardcore fundamentalists; and bowing in debasement in front of the International Monetary Fund. But it should not be forgotten this was coupled with permanent, all-out sabotage by the "deep state".

It's true that Egypt was - and remains - on the brink of total economic collapse; the bloodbath that is not a bloodbath only followed a change in the signature on the checks, from Qatar to Saudi Arabia (and the United Arab Emirates). As Spengler has demonstrated on this site (see Islam's civil war moves to Egypt, Asia Times Online, July 8, 2013), Egypt will remain a banana republic without the bananas and dependent on foreigners to eat any. The economic disaster won't go away - not to mention the MB's cosmic resentment.

The winners, as it stands, are the House of Saud/Israel/ Pentagon axis. How did they pull it off?

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Stephen Lendman

US imperial interests and junta power square off against popular sentiment. Egypt holds its breath. A potential clash of civilizations looms.

On January 30, 1972, Northern Ireland's Bogside Massacre was called Bloody Sunday. UK soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilian protesters and bystanders. They did so in cold blood. Fourteen deaths resulted. So did numerous injuries. Reports said five civilians were shot in the back of the head.

The incident occurred during a nonviolent Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march. Critics called what happened reckless. Authorities largely cleared participating soldiers of blame. Controversy still resonates today. Everyone shot was unarmed. A belated 2010 Saville Inquiry said killings were "unjustified and unjustifiable."

Bloody Sunday paled by comparison to Wednesday's Egypt. Hundreds were massacred in cold blood. Some estimates say thousands. No one's sure how many. Bodies are stashed in makeshift morgues. Thousands perhaps were injured. Egypt's a rogue police state. State-sponsored repression is longstanding. Generals run things. What they say goes. Opposition isn't tolerated. Wednesday proved it writ large. A state of siege exists. Martial law's imposed.

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Johannes Stern

Recognize the moral sermons of Obama for what they are: propaganda in the pursuit of imperialism’s geostrategic interests.

Wednesday’s massacre of hundreds of unarmed protesters by the US-backed Egyptian military junta shatters Washington’s hypocritical claims that its Middle East policy is based on democracy and human rights.

Obama faced a dilemma as he spoke on Egypt yesterday, from his vacation spot in the multi-million-dollar mansion of a corporate finance manager on Martha’s Vineyard. Washington would have preferred to arrange a compromise between the army and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) of deposed President Mohamed Mursi. However, amid rising mass protests in July, it ultimately gave its blessing to a military coup, removing Mursi in order to preempt renewed revolutionary struggles by the working class.

Washington apparently failed to fully foresee the implications of allowing the military and its supporters in the liberal bourgeoisie to settle accounts with the MB. It now fears that with the latest massacre, the army has overreached itself, irretrievably destabilizing Egypt and undermining US Middle East policy.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Americans will soon be locked into an unaccountable police state unless US Representatives and Senators find the courage to ask questions and to sanction the executive branch officials who break the law, violate the Constitution, withhold information from Congress, and give false information about their crimes against law, the Constitution, the American people and those in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Guantanamo, and elsewhere. Congress needs to use the impeachment power that the Constitution provides and cease being subservient to the lawless executive branch. The US faces no threat that justifies the lawlessness and abuse of police powers that characterize the executive branch in the 21st century.

Impeachment is the most important power of Congress. Impeachment is what protects the citizens, the Constitution, and the other branches of government from abuse by the executive branch. If the power to remove abusive executive branch officials is not used, the power ceases to exist. An unused power is like a dead letter law. Its authority disappears. By acquiescing to executive branch lawlessness, Congress has allowed the executive branch to place itself above law and to escape accountability for its violations of law and the Constitution.

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Eric London

Army PFC Bradley Manning addressed the military tribunal at Ft. Meade, Maryland yesterday in the eleventh day of post-trial sentencing hearings. The 25-year-old whistle-blower was found guilty last month on 19 counts, including six charges of espionage. He faces up to 90 years in prison.

Manning’s comments yesterday reflect the tremendous element of coercion in the entire proceedings. In all, the episode more closely resembled a Stalinist show trial than a democratic court of law.

“First, your honor, I want to start off with an apology,” he told Army Col. Denise Lind, the military judge overseeing the proceedings. “I’m sorry that my actions hurt people, and I’m sorry that it hurt the United States. I understand what I was doing and the decision that I made. I’m sorry for the unintended consequences of my actions.”

Noting that he would “have to pay a price for my decisions and actions,” Manning pled for a lower sentence.

“How on Earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over those with the proper authority? I know that I can and will be a better person. I hope that you can give me the opportunity to prove, not through words but through conduct, that I can return to a productive place in society.”

Manning delivered these comments in a visible state of despondency—he shook and grew tearful as he spoke. That a defendant in a legal proceeding is forced to apologize for and denounce his acts of opposition underscores the advanced state of decay of American democracy. Such sordid events bear the badge of a police state.

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Stephen Lendman

The man who misled Congress on spying will pick Obama’s
intelligence review panel (8/12/13). Clapper said he’ll be
assembling the panel (8/12/13). DNI Clapper won’t control
spying review, White House says (8/13/13)...

You can't make this stuff up. It sounds like a bad film plot. The fix is in. Obama's reform assures business as usual. His promises aren't worth the paper they're written on. He says one thing. He does another. It happens every time. He broke every major promise made. He's a serial liar. He governs lawlessly. He claims Washington doesn't have a domestic spying. NSA monitors everyone everywhere all the time. Obama lied claiming otherwise.

A previous article said London's Guardian headlined "NSA loophole allows warrantless search for US citizens' emails and phone calls." Snowden revealed a secret NSA backdoor. It's a previously undisclosed rule. It lets NSA operatives "hunt for individual Americans' communications using their name or other identifying information."

Under the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) Section 702, warrantless intelligence data is collected. It's official policy. It includes foreign and domestic communications. Deceptive language calls it "incidental collection." There's nothing "incidental" about it. It's systematic meta-data mining. It's done extrajudicially. It's without oversight. Until now, it's been secret. It's far more intrusive than previously believed. It permits warrantless searches.

In 2011, Obama approved it. He did it secretly. On request, FISA court judges rubber-stamp approval. Whatever NSA wants it gets. Obama assurances about privacy, transparency and reform ring hollow. It bears repeating. Business as usual continues. Big Brother watches everyone.

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John W. Whitehead

“Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” – Michel Foucault

Once upon a time in America, parents breathed a sigh of relief when their kids went back to school after a summer’s hiatus, content in the knowledge that for a good portion of the day their kids would be gainfully occupied, out of harm’s way and out of trouble. Those were the good old days, before school shootings became a part of our national lexicon and schools, aiming for greater security, transformed themselves into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs and strip searches.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, instead of making the schools safer, we simply managed to make them more authoritarian. It used to be that if you talked back to a teacher, or played a prank on a classmate, or just failed to do your homework, you might find yourself in detention or doing an extra writing assignment after school. Nowadays, students are not only punished for transgressions more minor than those—such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight—but they are punished with suspension, expulsion, and even arrest.

As a result, America is now on a fast track to raising up an Orwellian generation—one populated by compliant citizens accustomed to living in a police state and who march in lockstep to the dictates of the government. Indeed, as I point out in my book, A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, with every school police raid and overzealous punishment that is carried out in the name of school safety, the lesson being imparted is that Americans—especially young people—have no rights at all against the state or the police. In fact, the majority of schools today have adopted an all-or-nothing lockdown mindset that leaves little room for freedom, individuality or due process.

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Stephen Lendman

Japan's apocalypse continues. Emergency conditions persist. No end in sight looms. Fukushima's radioactive discharges can't be stopped. They continue. They're uncontainable. At issue is by far the worst environmental disaster in history. It's multiples worse than Chernobyl. It's an unprecedented catastrophe. It's reason enough to abolish nuclear power.

According to Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, about 300 tons of radioactive groundwater flow into the Pacific daily. It's done so since Japan's March earthquake and tsunami triggered Fukushima's meltdown. Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) says water's getting over and around "chemical walls." It can't be stopped. Three Fukushima reactors suffered meltdowns. A fourth was badly damaged.

The worst fear remains. Unit Four's structural integrity was seriously undermined. It contains hundreds of tons of highly radioactive water. If an earthquake or other natural disaster occurs, its fuel rods almost certainly will catch fire. Radioactive emissions will follow. They'll compound what's already disastrous. Emissions will continue longterm. They'll circle the planet. They cause catastrophic harm.

Since March 2011, Tepco estimates around 20 to 40 trillion radioactive tritium becquerels leaked into the Pacific. So have large cesium and strontium discharges. They continue. They're much more dangerous.

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