Proposed law scheduled for a vote next week originally increased Americans' e-mail privacy. Then law enforcement complained. Now it increases government access to e-mail and other digital files. - A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans' e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law, CNET has learned. Patrick Leahy, the influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has dramatically reshaped his legislation in response to law enforcement concerns, according to three individuals who have been negotiating with Leahy's staff over the changes. A vote on his bill, which now authorizes warrantless access to Americans' e-mail, is scheduled for next week.

Tom Burghardt: Senate Set to Introduce Bill for Broad Email Spying

Jane Harman with former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon

It's astounding to see reports by CNN, Politico, and others that former California Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman is being considered as a possible new head of the CIA, given the fact that she was implicated in an Israeli spy scandal in 2005.

Despite apparently strong evidence against Harman, the expected Justice Department investigation never happened; the powerful Congresswoman and Israel advocate from southern California got off; and today the media, at least so far, are failing to mention an incident that one would expect to be problematic for a potential director of the CIA. Below, based on reports by TPM, Salon, Time, Stephen Walt, the New York Times, Antiwar.com and a C&L, is the general story of Harman's apparent promise to an Israeli agent to help people indicted for espionage on behalf of Israel:

In 2005 a federal wiretap reportedly picked up a conversation between Congresswoman Harman and a suspected Israeli agent. According to the reports, Harman told the Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In return, the suspected Israeli agent (who may have been a dual-citizen American) reportedly pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi, then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee. Harman was already the ranking Democrat on the committee. At the end of the conversation, Harman reportedly said: "This conversation doesn’t exist.”

Harman advocated trying to break up Iran along ethnic lines - VIDEO

James Petras: Elite Intrigues: It’s Not About Sex, Stupid! - How could a proven collaborator with the Israeli-Mossad and Zionist zealot like Jane Harman emerge as a ‘leading candidate’ to replace General Petraeus, as Director of the CIA, within days of his resignation? What are the political links, past and present between Congressman Eric Cantor, (the fanatical leader of the pro-Israel power bloc in the US Congress, who handed Agent Humphries’ unauthorized files on Petraeus over to the FBI Director Muellar) and Zionist power broker Jane Harman, a prominent candidate to replace Petraeus?

European Commission enabling blockade of WikiLeaks by U.S. hard-right Lieberman/King, contrary to European Parliament’s wishes

WikiLeaks has released European Commission documents which allegedly show ‘hard-right US politicians’ orchestrated an ‘extrajudicial’ banking blockade against the whistle-blowing site. - In the heavily redacted documents, MasterCard Europe “admits” US Congressmen Joseph Lieberman and Peter T. King were involved in conversations with MasterCard in the United States, WikiLeaks said Tuesday. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange tweeted on Tuesday "it is concerning that hard-right elements in the United States have been able to pressure VISA & MasterCard," adding “there is no sovereignty without economic sovereignty."

Liberman, one-time chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also went after WikLeaks by introducing the so-called SHIELD Act (Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination) in 2010. The act would have made it a federal offense to publish information “concerning the identity of a classified source or informant of an element of the intelligence community of the United States,” or “concerning the human intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government” if said publication was in opposition to US interests.

The UN nuclear agency has confirmed that one of its servers has been hacked. A previously unknown group posted contact details of more than 100 experts working with the IAEA, calling on them to act against Israel’s alleged nuclear activities. The group, called "Parastoo" – Farsi for the swallow bird and a common Iranian girl's name – published the names along with a statement "Parastoo Hacks IAEA" on November 25.

"Israel owns a practical nuclear arsenal, tied to a growing military body and it is not a member of internationally respected nuclear, biochemical and chemical agreements," the group said demanding the experts sign a petition calling for an “open IAEA investigation” into activities at Israel’s Negev Nuclear Research Center located near the city of Dimona.

It is commonly believed that Israel possesses nuclear weapons, though it has never confirmed, nor denied the fact. Tel Aviv however takes a hawkish stance against Iran, claiming that it is seeking to create weapons of mass destruction and describes the Islamic Republic as the greatest threat to the Middle East.

PressTV: Hackers break into IAEA server, call for inquiry into Israel N-facility

Lawyer Argues Harsh Mistreatment Endured in Detention Sufficient Punishment.

Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of being behind the WikiLeaks document releases, is expected to testify on his own behalf this week, the first time he will speak publicly since his initial capture in 2010. Manning’s comments will be part of pre-trial testimony leading up to a planned February court-martial, with much of the testimony centering around Manning’s harsh mistreatment in detention at Quantico. During Manning’s multi-year detention he was subject to repeated abuse, imposing harsh restrictions on him and at one point seizing all of his clothing and ordering him to stand naked outside his cell. They later decided he could be allowed underpants, but only during certain times of the day. The criticism of his mistreatment at Quantico eventually forced his relocation, and the military brig was even shut down in 2011, though officials insisted the move wasn’t because of the abuse of detainees. The abuse could play a major role in sentencing, however, as his attorneys intend to argue that several years in a maximum security prison and pre-trial abuse rising to the level that even the UN was trying to investigate the matter needs to factor into any sentence, and indeed ought to be sufficient punishment for the crimes he is charged with.

Naomi Spencer: Bradley Manning hearing focuses on unlawful pre-trial punishment

Press TV: Franklin our guest there talks about the geopolitical purpose that Afghanistan as a whole serves for the United States. Can you expand on that for us?

Franklin Lamb: Well, frankly I can not think about legitimate purpose that it solves, the day that we began ten years ago, it was a tragedy, it has been a tragedy for ten years and the tragedy will continue even if we do pullout next year. What we tried to do failed, as an empire we tried to keep influence there, we tried to dominate, the same thing that the Soviet Union tried and failed to do. Now I think that history is going to note the ugly iconic images which are the death of the wedding parties by the so-called collateral damages and also the innocent civilians -who- were killed and also the burning of the Qur’an. There is no way we can stay there and there was an interesting conferences this weekend in the University of Oregon and the subject to the whole conference was about, why Afghanistan? Nobody wants to be there except some militarists in the American society. It is tragic; we have got to compensate to those people after we leave, we have got to submit reparations but I see no geopolitical advantage that we can now obtain and I think that we must just must leave as quickly as possible.

A Syrian newspaper yesterday published the names of 142 foreign fighters from 18 countries the regime said were killed alongside rebels in Syria's conflict. - The list, which the pro-regime Al Watan reported was sent to the United Nations Security Council by the Syrian government last month, included Arab, North African, Central and South Asian "terrorists", giving the date and place of their death. "Most are jihadists who belong to Al Qaeda's network, or who joined it after arriving in Syria," the paper reported. Among the people named were 47 Saudis, 24 Libyans, 10 Tunisians, nine Egyptians, six Qataris and five Lebanese. It also listed 11 Afghans, five Turks, three Chechens, one Chadian and one Azerbaijani.

SANA: Armed Forces Eliminate Armed Terrorist Groups' Leaders in Homs

A Canadian think tank warned oft the prevalence of hunger and poverty in the United States, and said that the number of Americans who received food stamps reached a new record in August. - The Global Research wrote that according to the latest figures released by the US Department of Agriculture a total of 47.1 million Americans received food stamps in August which is up by one million from last year, and up by more than half since October 2008 when the figure was 30 million. The word "poverty" virtually never appears in the speeches and comments of US President Barack Obama, elected to the highest office in a country where half the population is poor or near poor. The Obama administration epitomizes the callousness of the financial aristocracy and its political servants.

AP claims a mysterious diagram leaked by "a country critical of Iran's atomic program" suggests Iranian bomb-making. - An Associated Press report by a journalist with a reputation for speculative and misleading coverage of Iran’s nuclear program claims that a shoddy Iranian diagram, leaked by “a country critical of Iran’s atomic program” suggests the Islamic Republic is working on a nuclear weapon. “The diagram was leaked by officials from a country critical of Iran’s atomic program to bolster their arguments that Iran’s nuclear program must be halted before it produces a weapon,” reports George Jahn. “The officials provided the diagram only on condition that they and their country not be named.” Jahn provides anonymity to the leakers of the diagram, who even he admits are biased against Iran, not in order to protect them from punishment but to protect them from being held accountable to public scrutiny.

Members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot were nominated by Time magazine for the 2012 Person of the Year. - The punk band is among 40 candidates, who influenced news this year for better or worse. The list also includes US President Barack Obama, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, Olympic champion Michael Phelps and others. "In a year when so many voices of liberty and dissent have suffered harsh retribution, the Russian feminist punk group Pussy Riot has paid a particularly steep price for provocative political expression," the Time wrote describing the nominee. Five women from Pussy Riot performed in late February a "punk prayer" in downtown Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral, which is Russia's biggest Orthodox church. An edited clip of the band's protest posted online showed the group high-kicking near the entrance to the altar of the cathedral accompanied by the song "Holy S**t" urging the Virgin Mary to "drive (Vladimir) Putin out". The song mocked Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia and believers in insulting terms.

Police in Cairo used teargas against protesters after clashes erupted on Tahrir Square, leaving one dead. The violence came before a 100,000-strong rally demanding the country’s Islamist president withdraw decrees vastly expanding his power.

Police fired tear gas after hundreds of demonstrators began pelting them with rocks on a street between the US Embassy and the historic square which served as the epicenter of the uprising that toppled authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak nearly two years ago. Meanwhile, protesters stormed the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood in the country’s second largest city of Alexandria. The crowd broke into the building hurling papers and furniture from a balcony. Activists reported that a protester in his 20s died in Cairo as a result of being exposed to too much tear gas, making him the fourth person to lose his life in clashes across Egypt over the last five days. Egypt’s ministry of interior reported on Tuesday 348 “troublemakers” had been arrested following street battles between police and protesters. Around 216 policemen were reportedly injured in the clashes. Liberal and secular demonstrators, as well as those loyal to former president Hosni Mubarak, have been staging sit-in protests on the square since Friday to demand President Mohamed Morsi revoke recent decrees granting him sweeping powers. Later in the evening, tends of thousands poured onto Tahrir Square aftering marching from various points throughout the city. Amidst a sea of Egyptian flags, the crowd chanted slogans against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Reuters: Egyptians challenge Mursi in nationwide protests
Johannes Stern: Mass protests against Egyptian President Mursi

The first and second places are taken by Finland and South Korea. The rankings combine international test results and data such as graduation rates between 2006 and 2010. - The two education superpowers - Finland and South Korea - are followed by three other high-performing Asian education systems - Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore. The UK - which is considered as a single system, rather than four devolved administrations - is then ranked at the head of an above-average group including the Netherlands, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland. These are ahead of a middle-ranking group including the United States, Germany and France. At the lowest end are Mexico, Brazil and Indonesia. These comparisons draw upon tests that are taken every three or four years, in areas such as maths, science and literacy - and so present a picture lagging by several years.