Alex Lantier

The US military-intelligence complex has developed through criminal means the surveillance infrastructure of a global police state.

The National Security Agency (NSA) is spying on hundreds of millions of users of Google and Yahoo services, according to a report yesterday in the Washington Post based on internal documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The NSA has broken into the main communication links connecting Yahoo and Google data servers worldwide. In a program codenamed “MUSCULAR,” operated jointly with Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the agencies collect and monitor all communications—involving US and non-US citizens alike—between these servers.

Because the data culling is indiscriminate, the NSA refers to it as “full take,” “bulk access” and “high-volume.” After the communications are collected, they are searched based on undisclosed criteria, with much of it sent on to permanent locations run by the NSA.

The report shatters claims by the Obama administration and American legislators that US agencies respect privacy rights and operate under strict legal oversight. Testimony by spy agency chiefs before the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, aimed at defusing the diplomatic crisis over the exposure of US spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and hundreds of millions of phone and SMS communications in Europe, consisted of disinformation and lies.

A top secret NSA document shows that in the one-month period ending January 9, 2013 the MUSCULAR program sent back more than 181 million new records for storage at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. These records include both “metadata” information—such as the identity or location of the sender and receiver of messages—and the content of text, audio and video communications.

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John W. Whitehead

“The perception here is of a United States where security has trumped liberty, intelligence agencies run amok (vacuuming up data of friend and foe alike), and the once-admired “checks and balances” built into American governance and studied by European schoolchildren have become, at best, secret reviews of secret activities where opposing arguments get no hearing.” – Roger Cohen

Recent reports indicating that President Obama was aware of and personally approved an NSA program that involved spying on the personal communications of various international leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have once again highlighted the deception and intransigence of the Obama administration in dealing with the revelations that the National Security Agency has been acting outside the bounds of the law, sucking up electronic communications the world over.

While this may come as a shock to most Americans, I’ve been writing about the NSA’s illegal surveillance tactics since the 1980s, which features prominently in my new book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State. However, this latest development in the spying saga—that the NSA has been aiming its surveillance activities at the citizens of allied countries, including France and Germany—has thrown a kink into the Obama administration’s attempts at maintaining a cozy relationship with its foreign allies.

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Joseph Kishore

There is no constituency within the American political establishment or military-intelligence apparatus that retains any commitment to democratic rights. The mentality of a police state pervades official political circles, in the US and internationally.

Over the course of the past week, the Obama administration has been rocked by an escalating international diplomatic scandal sparked by a new series of leaks from Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor-turned whistleblower.

At the heart of the crisis is the exposure of an American intelligence apparatus that operates without any legal constraints, international or domestic. Thanks to these and previous revelations from Snowden, the world now has concrete evidence that the NSA sweeps up communications records—including telephone calls and emails—of hundreds of millions of people all over the world.

While European governments have shown little concern about NSA spying on their own populations—and, indeed, have collaborated with the US in this—reports that the NSA has been wiretapping German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s personal cell phone have produced warnings of a rupture in US-German relations. The monitoring began in 2002, when Merkel was still in the opposition as the chairperson of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

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Wayne Madsen

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, attends a coffee ceremony
with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal. (Photo: VOA)

But one thing that is certain about Bandar and his neocon allies in Washington and Israel. When backed up against the wall, they will strike like desert asps.

A number of seasoned observers of Middle Eastern affairs agree that U.S. - Saudi relations are at their lowest ebb since U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established America’s «special relationship» with the Saudi monarchy on February 14, 1945, just a few months before FDR’s death.

Subsequent to the Yalta Conference, Roosevelt met Saudi King Ibn Saud on board the USS Quincy on Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal in Egypt. Roosevelt and Saud inked the «Quincy Agreement», by which the United States would provide Saudi Arabia with military equipment and training in return for the U.S. establishing a military base at Dhahran in the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia guaranteeing the United States a steady flow of Saudi oil. Except for the Arab oil embargo instituted against the West in the 1970s, the Quincy Agreement has survived six Saudi kings. However, the Quincy Agreement is in trouble.

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Ulrich Rippert

Wärmebild der US-Botschaft in Berlin: je heller die Farbe,
desto wärmer das Mauerwerk. (Foto: Reuters/Süddeutsche.de)

New revelations on the National Security Agency’s activities and the consequences of its bugging of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone dominated German media at the start of the week.

Under the headline “The Sinister Friend,” the German weekly Der Spiegel warned Monday of the threat of an “ice age” in German-American relations. It reported that a likely centre of the US spying operation was the massive, recently built US embassy at Brandenburg Gate, just a stone’s throw from the Chancellery and the main German government buildings. Der Spiegel suggested that a listening post had been established in the embassy, which has a forest of antennae on its roof.

Infrared images indicate that enormous amounts of energy are being consumed inside the building, indicating surveillance activities.

Systematic monitoring of leading German politicians and officials began in 2002, when the Social Democratic (SPD)-Green Party government headed by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) spoke out against German participation in the impending Iraq war. Over the ensuing years, the monitoring of the German government was systematically extended. In addition to the German chancellor, the NSA has monitored at least 34 other international leaders.

The NSA surveillance operations are not limited to politicians, but target masses of people throughout Europe. It was reported at the weekend that the US secret services had monitored 60 million phone calls in Spain in December alone. According to Spanish news reports, the NSA had gathered information on phone numbers, the origin and duration of calls, and their content. On Monday, the Spanish Foreign Ministry officially summoned the US ambassador to inform him of the displeasure of the Spanish government and demand an explanation.

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Stephen Lendman

Obama encourages global spying. He wants world leaders monitored. He wants stepped up surveillance doing it. Despite official disclaimers, it continues.

Obama lied claiming otherwise. He's a serial liar. He's a moral coward. He's a war criminal multiple times over. He did what supporters thought impossible. He exceeds the worst of George Bush. He plans lots more ways to prove it through 2016. Humanity may not survive the ordeal.

On October 27, Deutche Welle (DW) headlined "Media reports suggest Obama knew NSA spied on Merkel." Der Spiegel said NSA's Special Collection Service (SCS) monitored her cell phone conversations since 2002. Obama lied telling Merkel he knew nothing about it. According to DW, "a report in Bild am Sonntag published Sunday cites an unnamed NSA official who said (Obama) ordered the program be escalated." NSA chief Keith Alexander told Obama about monitoring Merkel's phone calls. It hacked into her "supposedly secure phones". "Only a special, secure landline phone in her office was reportedly not accessible to electronic tapping." Hacked information was reported directly to the White House. Evidence suggests monitoring Merkel continued at least through the "immediate past."

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Stephen Lendman

Mossad's credentials are notorious. They're well known. It's expertise is acknowledged. Its rap sheet is longstanding and nefarious. Its tactics include targeted assassinations, satellite, drone and other type spying, hacking and espionage expertise, computer viruses, other cyber attacks, bombings, sabotage, and other lawless practices.

On October 25, France's Le Monde headlined "The NSA's intern inquiry about the Elysee hacking revealed." Edward Snowden connected important dots for millions. Documents he released included "a four-page internal NSA memo," said Le Monde. It's marked "top secret." France sent it.

It said French secret service technical director Bernard Barbier and National Agency for IT systems security head Patrick Pailloux "are coming to ask their American counterparts, whom they suspect are (conducting Elysee Palace espionage) for an explanation." It's the official French president's residence. It includes his office. It's where government ministers meet to discuss official business.

[France] "learn(ed) that none of the services capable of carrying out this type of electronic attack came from America, Britain or Canada. Carefully chosen wording said the NSA "intentionally did not ask either the Mossad or the ISNU (Israeli technical administration services) whether they were involved."

Penetrating Elysee began while Nicolas Sarkozy was president. Security systems were in place to detect electronic espionage. The attack conducted wasn't "part of an act of sabotage which was to be made public but of the desire to be permanently installed invisibly at the centre of the Presidency," said Le Monde.

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Kevin Gosztola

Family of Mamana Bibi, 68-year-old grandmother killed in US
drone strike in Pakistan

Human rights organization, Amnesty International, has released a report that presents two case studies on victims of United States drone strikes in Pakistan and also details the practice of signature strikes, which has led to rescuers being killed in follow-up attacks while they are trying to help wounded individuals. Both of the drone strikes detailed in the report, “Will I Be Next?”, occurred in 2012 and were reported. In the aftermath of one of the strikes, there was particular focus on the fact that the US was deliberately attacking civilian rescuers after the first strike was launched against whomever had been targeted.

On July 6, 2012, laborers from the Zowi Sidgi village were gathered in a tent after working a long day in the summer heat. Residents nearby could clearly see four drones were flying overhead. Then, as the Amnesty International report describes, “the sound of multiple missiles” suddenly was heard “piercing the sky, hitting the tent and killing at least eight people instantly.”

Ahsan, a chromite miner who lives in Zowi Sidgi, said, “When we went to where the missiles hit to help people; we saw a very horrible scene. Body parts were scattered everywhere. [I saw] bodies without heads and bodies without hands or legs. Everyone in the hut was cut to pieces.” There was panic, with people running to their homes, to trees, anywhere to escape. Some villagers chose to go see if there were any survivors.

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Stephen Lendman

Left: Mamana Bibi was killed by a US drone aircraft while tending to her
crops on the afternoon of 24. October 2012. Right: Impact crater left by the
second US drone strike that hit a vacant area of land a few feet from whrere
Mamana Bibi was killed minutes earlier. (amnestyusa.org)

Two UN reports highlight the problem. More on them below.

Sixteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai is an activist for women's education, a blogger, and Sakharov Prize winner. She's a Pakistan National Youth Peace Prize recipient. She was a 2013 Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Desmond Tutu nominated her for the International Children's Peace Prize. On October 16, Canada said it plans to grant her honorary citizenship. Obama invited her to the White House. Perhaps he wishes he hadn't. She took full advantage. She didn't hold back.

"(D)rone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people."

Predator drones sanitize killing on the cheap. Remote warrior teams operate computer keyboards and multiple monitors. They murder by remote control. They target faceless victims. They kill indiscriminately. They do so unaccountably. Studies show mostly innocent civilians are killed. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Drones are instruments of state terror.

A previous article discussed a joint Stanford University International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic (SU)/New York University School of Law Global Justice Clinic (NYU) report. It's titled "Living Under Drones." The dominant Washington narrative claims drone strikes are precise and effective. Targeted killings "minimi(ze) downsides or collateral impacts," it says. Doing so makes America safer, it alleges.

False! Drone attacks kill indiscriminately. Mostly noncombatant civilians are affected. "Living Under Drones" exposes what Washington won't say. Obama's a serial liar. He falsely claims drones haven't "caused a huge number of civilian casualties. They're targeted, focused at people who are on a list of active terrorists trying to go in and harm Americans." Hard evidence proves otherwise. On site investigations and eyewitness testimonies are damning.

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Steve Goreham

Climate science is in turmoil. Contrary to predictions by the world’s leading climate models and despite rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, global surface temperatures have been flat for 16 years. How can the climate models be wrong?

Last October, the Daily Mail (London) announced that temperature data from the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office showed no global warming for 16 years. In December, an advance chart from the upcoming Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed a divergence between model projections and actual global temperatures. In January of this year, the Met Office revised its forecast of temperatures down to almost no increase over the next five years.

Media publications that have been staunch supporters of the theory of man-made climate change have noted the model failure. In March, The Economist stated, “The climate may be heating up in response to greenhouse gases less than was once thought.” The New York Times noted in June that the temperature slowdown “is a bit of a mystery to climate scientists.”

All major climate models have overestimated the effects of man-made warming. Analysis by Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy shows that 44 of the world’s leading climate models projected an average temperature rise of about 0.5 degrees C during the last 16 years when measured temperatures were flat. The analysis was recently updated to include 73 of the leading climate models. Not a single model made an accurate forecast.

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Guillaume Henchoz

Le film sur Hannah Arendt rouvre le débat

Hannah Arendt, de la réalisatrice allemande Margarethe von Trotta, sort sur les écrans romands cette semaine. Assistant au procès du criminel nazi Eichmann, Arendt développe un concept qui continue de susciter la polémique de nos jours: la banalité du mal.

L’homme est aux abois. Dans son lit, il attend la mort, alors que son amie de toujours, Hannah Arendt, cherche à se réconcilier avec lui avant la fin. Peine perdue. Comme beaucoup de proches de la philosophe, le sioniste Kurt Blumenfeld ne lui pardonne pas ses propos tenus dans son dernier ouvrage et se détourne dédaigneusement. La caméra s’arrête un instant sur le visage déconfit d’Arendt. La polémique l’a emporté sur l’amitié. Fin du plan.

Le dernier film de la réalisatrice allemande Margarethe von Trotta, Hannah Arendt, revient sur un moment particulier de la vie de cette intellectuelle juive allemande qui a fui l’Europe pour les Etats-Unis pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. En 1961, Arendt obtient du mensuel New Yorker la possibilité de couvrir le procès d’Adolf Eichmann qui est sur le point de s’ouvrir à Jérusalem. Ce criminel nazi, pièce maîtresse du processus d’élimination des juifs pendant la guerre, a été capturé en Argentine l’année précédente et ramené en Israël. L’ouvrage Eichmann à Jérusalem, que Hannah Arendt consacre à l’affaire, va susciter une violente polémique qui ne s’est pas encore éteinte cinquante ans après sa parution. Cette dernière porte notamment sur l’utilisation d’un terme qui va devenir un concept: la «banalité» du mal.

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Stephen Lendman

On October 1, French newspaper Le Monde headlined "France in the NSA's crosshair: phone networks under surveillance." More on that below.

Previous articles explained. NSA operates lawlessly. It does so by rules it invents. It spies globally. Enormous amounts of data are collected. It's longstanding. It's been ongoing for decades.

Post-9/11, it intensified. It's out-of-control today. It doesn't matter. NSA is a rogue agency. It's a power unto itself. Congressional leaders support it. So does Obama.

Spying domestically isn't for national security. Nor is monitoring allies. It's old-fashioned espionage using state-of-the-art technology. It's about control. It's for economic advantage.

It's to be one up on foreign competitors. It's for information used advantageously in trade, political, and military relations. Foreign embassies, consulates and missions are bugged. NSA calls them "targets."

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John W. Whitehead

“Democracy means that if the doorbell rings in the early hours, it is likely to be the milkman.” ~Winston Churchill

It’s 3 a.m. You’ve been asleep for hours when suddenly you hear a loud “Crash! Bang! Boom!” Based on the yelling, shouting and mayhem, it sounds as if someone—or several someones—are breaking through your front door. With your heart racing and your stomach churning, all you can think about is keeping your family safe from the intruders who have invaded your home. You have mere seconds before the intruders make their way to your bedroom. Desperate to protect your loved ones, you scramble to lay hold of something—anything—that you might use in self-defense. It might be a flashlight, your son’s baseball bat, or that still unloaded gun you thought you’d never need. In a matter of seconds, the intruders are at your bedroom door. You brace for the confrontation, a shaky grip on your weapon. In the moments before you go down for the count, shot multiple times by the strangers who have invaded your home, you get a good look at your accosters. — It’s the police.

Before I go any further, let me start by saying this: the problem is not that all police are bad. The problem, as I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, is that increasing numbers of police officers are badly trained, illiterate when it comes to the Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment, and, in some cases, willfully ignorant about the fact that they are supposed to be peacekeepers working for us, the taxpayer.

Unfortunately, with every passing week, we are hearing more and more horror stories in which homeowners are injured or killed simply because they mistook a SWAT team raid by police for a home invasion by criminals. Never mind that the unsuspecting homeowner, woken from sleep by the sounds of a violent entry, has no way of distinguishing between a home invasion by a criminal as opposed to a government agent. Too often, the destruction of life and property wrought by the police is no less horrifying than that carried out by criminal invaders.

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Solomon Comissiong

A common description for the term addiction is, “the continued repetition of a behavior despite adverse consequences, or a neurological impairment leading to such behaviors…” This definition is most appropriate in regard to the world’s most destructive killing machine – the United States military.

The United States government has long developed an acquired taste for war. And because much of the US population is completely obsequious to whatever their duplicitous government tells them, they, too, have become complacent to a perpetual state of war. Americans punch-drunk on nationalism fail to realize that “their” government is beholden to the interests of imperialism, not their general well being. Like well controlled puppets they chant, “USA number one”, over and over and over again, failing to ever question what “their” country is actually number one in.

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Gilad Atzmon

This must-see short documentary by David Sheen and Max Blumenthal is about the appalling treatment of African migrants in Israel.

The film reveals a most ugly manifestation of Jewish ethnocentrism, exclusivism and bigotry, but you may notice that none of the Israeli racists in the film identifies as a ‘Zionist’ or showed any concern for the Zionist nature of Israel. Instead they, and without exception, express their deep concern with the ‘Jewish State’ its ‘Jewish character’ and matters pertaining to the Jewish religion and Jewish ‘purity’.

We see MK Ben Ari on camera saying “We are not an immigration State,.. our state is different – it is a Jewish State.. for me the Jewish people are precious…this is our only Jewish state”, and PM Benjamin Netanyahu speaks about demographic fears and the ‘Jewish character’ of Israel.

For over a decade now, I have been suggesting that Israeli racism is driven by Jewish supremacism rather than any Zionist ideology. I have argued that Zionism, largely, a foreign notion to most Israelis, is just one symptom of Jewish exclusivism – and for saying it, I have been denounced, harassed and smeared by most Jewish Left organisations and even a few Palestinians. But this documentary actually proves that, all along, I was right. For the Israeli, Jewishness rather than Zionism, is the guiding political signifier. This film is not about Zionist abuse or Israeli ‘new racism’, it is actually about Goy-hatred that is intrinsic to the Jewish political discourse.

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Daniel McAdams

The Times of London yesterday [October 19, 2013] published a sensational Syria story "Assad’s snipers target unborn babies" based on an interview with British doctor David Nott, who had volunteered his medical expertise in Syria over the past several weeks. Dr. Nott said that he had seen several pregnant women come in with abdominal wounds. He speculated that snipers must have been playing some sort of game where they would target the fetuses of pregnant women -- a grisly business to be sure. Said Dr. Nott:

It seemed to me that it was some sort of a game they (the snipers) were having with each other... One day we'd have pregnant women being brought in with gunshot wounds to the uterus. Not just one or two, but seven or eight, which meant to me they (the snipers) must be targeting pregnant women.

Nott "heard local rumors" that these snipers, who seemed were playing a game, were Chinese or Azeri mercenaries fighting with Assad's government forces. None of this was confirmed in any way. Speculation.

But how did Rupert Murdoch's Times of London report this very imprecise bit of speculation on the part of Dr. Nott -- in a huge dramatic spread? How is that for thorough journalism?

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John Pilger

On the set: Cate Blanchett, Woody Allen + unidentified extra

As an inveterate film fan, I turn to the listings every week and try not to lose hope. I search the guff that often passes for previews, and I queue for a ticket with that flicker of excitement reminiscent of matinees in art deco splendour.

Once inside, lights down, beer in hand, hope recedes as the minutes pass. How many times have I done a runner? There is a cinema I go to that refunds your money if you're out the door within 20 minutes of the opening titles. The people there have knowing looks. My personal best is less than five minutes of the awful Moulin Rouge.

The other day, I saw 'Blue Jasmine', written and directed by Woody Allen. The critics' applause was thunderous. "A work of brilliance" ... "Pure movie-going pleasure" ... Smart, sophisticated and hugely enjoyable" ... Brilliantly funny". One journalist called it a "miracle". So I queued for a ticket, even conjuring the wonderful scene from 'Annie Hall' (1975) when Woody Allen, standing in a movie queue, meets his hero, Marshall Mcluhan: he of "the medium is the message".

Today, he might as well call up Hans Christian Andersen's parable about a naked emperor, which applies to his latest "work of brilliance". By any fair and reasonable measure, it is crap.

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Ray McGovern

Consortiumnews Exclusive: President Obama says he welcomes the debate on post-9/11 surveillance of Americans and the world, but that debate was only made meaningful by the disclosures of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who was then indicted and sought asylum in Russia, where he just met with some ex-U.S. intelligence officials, including Ray McGovern.

I’ve had a couple of days to reflect after arriving back from Moscow where my whistleblower colleagues Coleen Rowley, Jesselyn Radack, Tom Drake and I formally presented former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden with the annual Sam Adams Associates award for integrity in intelligence.

The thought that companioned me the entire time was the constant admonition of my Irish grandmother: “Show me your company, and I’ll tell you who you are!” I cannot remember ever feeling so honored as I did by the company I kept over the past week.

That includes, of course, Snowden himself, WikiLeaks journalist Sarah Harrison (and “remotely” Julian Assange) who, together with Russian civil rights lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, helped arrange the visit, and – last but not least – the 3,000 Internet transparency/privacy activists at OHM2013 near Amsterdam, whom Tom, Jesselyn, Coleen and I addressed in early August and who decided to crowd-source our travel. (See: “In the Whistleblower Chalet” by Silkie Carlo.)

As representatives of Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, we were in Moscow last Wednesday not only to honor Snowden with the award for integrity, but also to remind him (and ourselves) that we all stand on the shoulders of patriots who have gone before and pointed the way.

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Paul Driessen

Computer models, scare stories and ad hominem rants underscore the alarmists’ desperation.

Al Gore is in full attack mode, employing his ridiculous “Climate Reality Project” to “Draw the Line on Denial,” even as he laid off 90% of the staff at his “Alliance for Climate Protection.” Greenpeace has joined the fray, launching a “Dealing in Doubt” campaign that blames ExxonMobil for funding the “global warming denial machine.”

ClimateProgress.org blogger Joe Romm faithfully echoes “Goreacle” and Greenpeace hysterics and blame-casting. To serve his partisan propaganda, he completely ignores the reality that the climate cataclysm cabal outspends the “deniers” by at least $1,000 to $1; ExxonMobil hasn’t supported skeptic groups for years; and the real Big Oil money has gone to extreme green groups.

Chesapeake Energy alone gave $25 million to the Sierra Club, to advance the radical organization’s anti-coal campaign. That one grant is ten times more money than the Heartland Institute received from all fossil fuel energy companies in its entire 29-year history, notes Heartland president Joseph Bast.

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Julie Hyland

Ultimately, the mass impoverishment determined upon by the ruling elite can be implemented only through dictatorial means.

The campaign of vilification and intimidation against the Guardian newspaper for publishing the disclosures of former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden is without precedent in a supposedly democratic country.

Raids on newspaper offices, the forced destruction of computer drives and threats to arrest journalists are actions more commonly associated with military dictatorships. But this is exactly what has been meted out against the Guardian, with threats of worse to come.

On Tuesday, a parliamentary debate is scheduled, instigated by Conservative backbencher Julian Smith, on whether the newspaper is guilty of treason for reporting the illegal surveillance programmes operated by the NSA and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Smith has already written to the Metropolitan Police calling for the Guardian to be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act and the Terrorism Act 2000.

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