David Cole

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon’s decision on Monday finding that the NSA’s telephony metadata program is likely unconstitutional is a welcome and important recognition that advances in digital technology require advances in Fourth Amendment doctrine if we are to preserve the privacy that the framers sought to protect. In particular, Judge Leon reasoned that the Supreme Court’s analog-era ruling that the Fourth Amendment does not restrict the government’s access to phone “pen register” data – the numbers you call, when you call, and how long you talk – does not necessarily govern whether the NSA’s collection of all Americans’ phone records for five years constitutes an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. The sheer quantity of data that the NSA gathers – about every phone call and text that every American engages in every day, maintained in a massive NSA database for five years – coupled with the ease of collecting, storing, and analyzing that digital data by computer, makes the NSA program qualitatively different from the simple collection of phone data on a single user over a limited period of time that the Supreme Court addressed in 1979.

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Joseph Kishore

A report released Wednesday by the Obama administration’s hand-picked presidential advisory panel on the National Security Agency’s (NSA) spying programs consists of minor reforms intended to preserve and legitimize the government’s illegal operations, while strengthening safeguards against leaks like those from whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The administration’s decision to expedite the public release of the report, which was presented to the president over the weekend, comes in the wake of a US federal court decision earlier this week that referred to one of the principal domestic spying programs as “almost Orwellian.” Judge Richard Leon said that the bulk collection of telephone records of almost all US citizens is an “indiscriminate” and “arbitrary” invasion of privacy rights. The program was initiated under the Bush administration and has been strongly defended by Obama.

While the report is being presented in the media as a call for major constraints on the National Security Agency (NSA), a core recommendation of the advisory panel is that this program should continue, if in a somewhat altered form. It calls for Congress to enact legislation to “end such storage [of telephone records] and transition to a system in which such meta-data is held privately for the government to query when necessary for national security purposes.” This transition should be carried out “as soon as reasonably possible.”

It suggests a “general rule” that any programs involving the government collection and storage of “mass, undigested, non-public personal information about individuals” should be “narrowly tailored to serve an important government interest.”

In other words, mass data collection in violation of Constitutional rights, including the telephone records program, should be carried out when possible by private companies working for the government, and the government should collect this information directly only when it is in its “interest” to do so.

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Andrew P. Napolitano

Donetsk, Ukraine graffiti reads "Big Brother is watching you,"
a reference to government surveillance in George Orwell's dys-
topian classic "1984." (CC/Борис У)

“Almost Orwellian” – that’s the description a federal judge gave earlier this week to the massive spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on virtually all 380 million cellphones in the United States.

In the first meaningful and jurisdictionally grounded judicial review of the NSA cellphone spying program, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee sitting in Washington, D.C., ruled that the scheme of asking a secret judge on a secret court for a general warrant to spy on all American cellphone users without providing evidence of probable cause of criminal behavior against any of them is unconstitutional because it directly violates the Fourth Amendment.

Readers of this page are familiar with the purpose of that Amendment and the requirements it imposes on the government. The Framers intended it to prevent the new government in America from doing to Americans what the British government had done to the colonists under the king.

The British government had used general warrants – which are not based on individualized probable cause and do not name the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized – to authorize British soldiers to search the colonists wherever they pleased for whatever they wished to seize.

The reason for the Fourth Amendment requirement of individualized probable cause and specificity in the warrant is to prevent the very type of general warrant that the NSA has claimed is lawful. The reason for preventing general warrants is that they have become an instrument of tyranny.

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Stephen Lendman

On December 16, Federal District Court of the District of Columbia Judge Richard Leon issued a damning 68-page ruling. He called NSA spying unconstitutional. It's "almost Orwellian," he said.

"The threshold issue is whether plaintiffs have a reasonable expectation of privacy that is violated when the Government indiscriminately collects their telephone metadata along with the metadata of hundreds of millions of other citizens without any particularized suspicion of wrongdoing, retains all of that metadata for five years, and then queries, analyzes, and investigates that data without prior judicial approval of the investigative targets."

"I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary' invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval." "Surely, such a program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment."

It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. Doing so violates core constitutional law. Mass NSA surveillance does it writ large. It has nothing to do with national security. America's only enemies are ones it invents. NSA spies globally. It watches everyone. It monitors allies. 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.

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Gilad Atzmon

In the Palestinian Solidarity Movement we really love celebrities – those famous, rather special people who write great books, play musical instruments (drums included) or even just think great thoughts. We like those people to stand up for Palestine and denounce ‘Zionism’, ‘Israeli Colonialism’ and ‘Apartheid.’ We love them - as long as they don’t say what they really think.

Here’s the problem. Celebrities are often famous and successful because they’re clever and independent. Unlike our progressive, dysfunctional activists, who in most cases lives on income support and repeat our ‘party line’, the celebrity is a confident, career-oriented, self-sufficient subject and, because of their capacity to make autonomous decisions, he or she is assertive and thriving . In short, the activist and the celebrity are made of very different stuff – so a collision is inevitable.

Time after time it happens to us in the Palestinian Solidarity Movement. We manage to pull in a great human being, we tell them what to say and they comply. For a while, they call to boycott Israel and, like parrots, they repeat our slogans. But then, against all odds, these damn, self-centred stars start to speak their minds.

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Eva Bartlett

Photos and updates from Gaza paint one of the most dire scenarios the Palestinians locked in the Strip have faced, Israeli bombing campaigns aside.

For over a month Palestinians in Gaza have endured 18 or more hours/day power outages. Now, with unusually heavy rains, cold temperatures, Israeli-released torrents of water (suddenly opening of dams along the border with Gaza), and even snow, Gaza is under water, under siege, and people are suffering freezing conditions. According on one international in Gaza, a baby has frozen to death in one of Gaza’s refugee camps.

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Stephen Lendman

Weeks of Ukraine street protests continue. Washington's dirty hands are involved. They're manipulating things disruptively. Imperial ruthlessness operates this way. International law is clear and unequivocal. Meddling in the internal affairs of other countries is illegal. Doing so is longstanding US policy.

■ It's to eliminate independent sovereign states. It's about replacing them with pro-Western vassal ones.
■ It's about weakening major rivals. It aims to eliminate them altogether if possible. It's for unchallenged global dominance.
■ It's to make the world safe for corporate American profiteers.

John Perkins was an "economic hit man." He explained, saying:

"(H)ighly paid professionals cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, (IMF, and other international lending agencies, as well as) other foreign aid organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization."

Their mandate is plundering nations for profit. It's controlling their resources. It's impoverishing and bankrupting them. It's trapping them debt bondage. Nations refusing terms face major reprisals. Washington stops at nothing to achieve [its] goals. Tactics include bullying, intimidation, punishing sanctions, assassinations, coups and lawless aggression.

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Wayne Madsen

Photo: An intense NATO propaganda is under way in Ukraine. On 16-17 June there was a NATO-Ukraine summit in Kiev. On the same date, there was a Paul MacCartney concert, "free", of course. In this way, a former Beatle is acting as a cultural rep of Nato ambitions in Ukraine. These ambitions are aimed, of course, against Russia. Meanwhile, a "philosopher" of Organization of Marxists, in Ukraine, by the name of Alexander Budilo, maintains that Ukraine has no other way but to join the Nato. In this way, the OM (Organization of Marxists) reveals itself as a rep of imperialist forces. Fuck them! (Fractal-Vortex)

Ever since the democracy manipulation efforts of international hedge fund brigand George Soros were joined with the artificial street revolution tactics of CIA tactician Gene Sharp to form the core strategy of the U.S. neo-conservative goal of imposing a «New American Century» on the entire world, Ukraine has served as the prize of America’s interventionist foreign policy. And the neocons are still alive and active as ever inside Secretary of State John Kerry's State Department.

In the wake of what has been called the «Orange Revolution II» in Ukraine, Kerry's Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, who previously served as Hillary Clinton's State Department mouthpiece, threatened sanctions against Ukraine’s government led by President Viktor Yanukovych. Gazing over protesters in central Kyiv from his hotel window, Arizona’s fanatical Republican Senator John McCain was licking his chops over the prospect of an anti-Russian Ukraine coming into being. McCain is a Cold War throwback and someone who remains mentally-unbalanced between flashbacks from a prisoner of war cell in Hanoi and to present-day reality.

Ukraine, which resisted efforts by the European Union to integrate it into Europe's banker-led federation of austerity and poverty, came into the EU's cross hairs after it abandoned an «Association Agreement» pact with the EU. Instead, Kyiv opted for a more lucrative economic union with Russia. That move triggered off a mass street uprising in Kyiv's Maidan (Independence) Square that demanded the resignation of Ukraine's democratically-elected President and government.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Washington has had the US at war for 12 years: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, and almost Syria, which could still happen, with Iran waiting in the wings. These wars have been expensive in terms of money, prestige, and deaths and injuries of both US soldiers and the attacked civilian populations. None of these wars appears to have any compelling reason or justifiable explanation.

The wars have been important to the profits of the military/security complex. The wars have provided cover for the construction of a Stasi police state in America, and the wars have served Israel’s interest by removing obstacles to Israel’s annexation of the entire West Bank and southern Lebanon.

As costly and destructive as these wars have been, they are far below the level of a world war, much less a world war against nuclear armed opponents.

The fatal war for humanity is the war with Russia and China toward which Washington is driving the US and Washington’s NATO and Asian puppet states. There are a number of factors contributing to Washington’s drive toward the final war, but the overarching one is the doctrine of American exceptionalism.

According to this self-righteous doctrine, America is the indispensable country. What this means is that the US has been chosen by history to establish the hegemony of secular “democratic capitalism” over the world. The primacy of this goal places the US government above traditional morality and above all law, both its own and international.

Thus, no one in the US government has been held accountable for unprovoked aggression against other countries and for attacking civilian populations, unambiguous war crimes under international law and the Nuremberg standard. Neither has anyone in the US government been held accountable for torture, a prohibited crime under US law and the Geneva Conventions. Neither has anyone been held accountable for numerous violations of constitutional rights–spying without warrants, warrantless searches, violations of habeas corpus, murder of citizens without due process, denial of legal representation, conviction on secret evidence. The list is long.

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Patrick O’Connor

The release of a United Nations chemical weapons inspectors’ report pointing to multiple sarin gas attacks carried out by so-called “rebel” forces further exposes the Obama administration’s lies about Syrian government responsibility for an August 21 chemical shelling of the Ghouta area outside of Damascus.

Washington seized on the incident as the pretext for a planned bombing campaign and stepped-up drive for regime-change against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The UN report’s appearance last Thursday follows the publication of Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s detailed article in the London Review of Books revealing that the Obama administration deliberately manipulated intelligence to falsely assert it had proof of Syrian government and military responsibility for the Ghouta attack.

Hersh cited current and former US military and intelligence officials on the falsification of intelligence regarding the August 21 attack as well as the Obama administration’s concealment of the existence of intelligence reports warning that the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front militia had the capacity to manufacture and weaponise the nerve gas sarin used in the Ghouta attack.

The 82-page UN chemical weapons report is based on extensive on-the-ground investigations of multiple sites where allegations of chemical weapons use were raised by either the Syrian government or the American, British and French governments. The inspectors analysed soil and other environmental samples, examined hair, urine, tissue and blood samples for trace chemicals, interviewed survivors, witnesses and medical personnel, and documented munitions allegedly used to deliver the sarin in each incident.

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Stephen Lendman

Lynne's crime was compassion. She was imprisoned for doing the right thing. She did it honestly, admirably and courageously. She did it defending some of America's most disadvantaged for 30 years. Previous articles explained.

She's dying. She has Stage Four cancer. She was given 12 months to live. She qualifies in all respects for compassionate release. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) authorities denied her. Doing so reflects official Obama administration policy. In Lynne's words, BOP "stonewall(ed) since August." Lynne stressed:

"They know (she's) fully qualified." Over 40,000 supporters "signed on to force (BOP) to do the right thing which is to let (her) go home to (her) family and receive the advanced care in New York City, (her) home. Yet they refuse to act. I must say it is entirely within the range of their politics and their cruelty to hold the political prisoners until we have days to live before releasing us."

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Mark Glenn

Let’s face it–the only reason we are allowed (not to mention willing) to talk about it these days is because it begins with the letter ‘z’ and not the letter ‘j’. That is the single barrier demarcating the two items–a simple issue of letters and pronunciation, despite the fact that they are basically the same animal. Stay within that safe ‘z’ zone and all will be relatively fine. You will be championed as a friend of humanity and a warrior for the truth. Venture into that other area though and bring up that dreaded ‘j’ word and suddenly the same ‘open-minded’ people who a moment before were erecting a monument in your honor start to loosen their collars and clear their throats uncomfortably.

‘Apples and oranges’ they say, or, as one apologist-minded writer on the internet once put it, ‘apples and rocks’ …Two entirely different creatures…One the lion and the other the lamb…black and white…good and evil…love and hatred…

Oh, if only it were as simple as that. If only we could take things at face value and not have to go any deeper. If only the bad guys could ‘play fair’ as it were and dress in black all the time while the good guys dressed in white…What a wonderful world, as the old song goes.

Unfortunately though it is not as simple as that. Unfortunately the bad guys are a lot smarter than they are given credit for being and know that victory is much easier achieved by deceiving their opponents than by fighting them on a level playing field. They have no place in their vocabulary for words like ‘fair’, ‘honesty’ or ‘justice‘. As far as they are concerned, there is only one rule that applies when playing the game and that is to win at any cost.

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Mohammed Omer

We decided to make this urgent report from Mohammed Omer into an action alert—Gazans need our help now!
Contact Secretary of State John Kerry
U.S. Department of State
2201 C ST., NW
Washington, DC 20520
Call: 202-647-4000; select option 4 and ask operator for the comment line.
202-647-6575 (Public Communication Division); select option 8 to leave your comment.

It is cold, there is no power, and I am charging my computer using a car battery in order to get this message out. It is so cold in Gaza that everyone has cold feet and a cold nose. A new storm is hitting this besieged enclave. There is no electricity, and shortages of water, fuel, and vital services mean people just sit and wait for the unknown.

Tens of houses east of Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, in Khan Younes and Rafah are flooded with rain today. The sewage system cannot function and Gaza municipalities announced a state of emergency. Schools and most shops are shut, there is no traffic and few people are walking in the street.

Gaza City’s garbage trucks have been at a standstill due to the ongoing fuel shortage. I’d gotten used to the bright orange truck that usually passes by, sounding its horn, a sign for all my neighbors to bring out their garbage for collection.

Now the donkey is our only remaining hope. Since last week—when fuel supplies ran dry—the only sound one hears now is the click-click of their hooves as they pull their carts along the road at 4 a.m. By noon, they have collected all they can on their busy route. In Gaza’s Barcelona neighborhood, garbage containers are overflowing—a normal occurrence since fuel ran out.

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Dmitry Minin

Image: Obama-backed jihadists attack Christian Village
Jihadists attack St. Thecla's convent and nuns. Witnesses report desecrations, forced conversions to Islam in the Aramaic Christian village of Maaloula.

After suffering one military defeat after another, the Syrian radical opposition, backed by the support of the West and the monarchies of the Persian Gulf, are increasingly retaliating cruelly against the civilian population. The jihadists seize towns and cultural and religious sites which up to that point had remained outside the combat zone, loudly proclaiming their victories.

For example, in response to the advance of the government army into the Qalamoun mountains between Damascus and Homs, where a powerful group of rebels had gathered for a sudden advance on the capital from the north (this group grew from 5,000 men a year ago to 20,000 in November of this year), the jihadists once again rushed into the nearby Christian town of Maaloula. After vandalizing and desecrating the ancient churches, on December 2 they took 12 nuns from the Orthodox convent of St. Thecla hostage, hiding them in the city of Yabrud, which is held by the rebels. The rebels stated that they would burn the convent and kill the hostages, including the abbess, Mother Pelagia Sayyaf, after which the army retreated. The Free Qalamoun Brigades, which are part of the Army of Islam (Jeysh al-Islam), took responsibility for these barbarous acts. News agencies reported only an offer to exchange the kidnapped sisters for a thousand female prisoners accused of aiding terrorists, but in fact the rebels demanded that the government forces stop their attack on Yabrud and lift the siege against the rebels in East Ghouta in exchange for the lives of the unfortunate nuns, in other words, encourage their barbarism by handing them the victory.

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John W. Whitehead

“No power on earth has a right to take our property from us without our consent.” — John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States

“How ‘secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and … forcibly enter?” — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the lone dissenter in Kentucky v. King

If the government can tell you what you can and cannot do within the privacy of your home, whether it relates to what you eat, what you smoke or whom you love, you no longer have any rights whatsoever within your home.

If government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property. If school officials can punish your children for what they do or say while at home or in your care, your children are not your own—they are the property of the state.

If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Likewise, if police can forcefully draw your blood, strip search you, and probe you intimately, your body is no longer your own, either.

This is what a world without the Fourth Amendment looks like, where the lines between private and public property have been so blurred that private property is reduced to little more than something the government can use to control, manipulate and harass you to suit its own purposes, and you the homeowner and citizen have been reduced to little more than a tenant or serf in bondage to an inflexible landlord.

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