President Barack Obama ordered national security leaders to compile a list of potential overseas “adversaries” for US cyber-attacks which could be targeted with “little or no warning”, a top secret document reveals. The 18-page, classified document, entitled Presidential Policy Directive 20, outlines plans for Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO), cyber-attacks which would target US adversaries around the world. Under the heading "Policy Reviews and Preparation", a section marked "TS/NF" - top secret/no foreign - states: "The secretary of defense, the DNI [Director of National Intelligence], and the director of the CIA … shall prepare for approval by the president through the National Security Advisor a plan that identifies potential systems, processes and infrastructure against which the United States should establish and maintain OCEO capabilities…," the Guardian reports. The deadline for the plan is six months after the approval of the directive. It further recognizes the potential for collateral damage in the wake of cyber operations, noting: “even subtle and clandestine operations, may generate cyber effects in locations other than the intended target, with potential unintended or collateral consequences that may effect [sic] US national interests in many locations.”

Patrick Martin: Obama ordered planning for cyberwarfare first strike - The directive essentially reiterates the doctrine of preventive warfare, enunciated by George W. Bush in 2002 in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Bush declared that the United States had the right to attack other countries, not merely to preempt an impending attack, but to prevent any potential attack at any time in the future—a formula for unlimited worldwide aggression. Bush himself was giving little more than a rehash of the Nazi doctrine condemned by the Nuremburg Tribunal after World War II, when a US prosecutor declared that the supreme crime of Hitler’s Germany was the “planning, preparation, initiation and waging of a war of aggression,” from which all the other crimes, including the Holocaust, ultimately stemmed. The directive’s pro-forma declaration that the “United States Government shall reserve the right to act in accordance with the United States’ inherent right of self defense as recognized in international law” cuts no ice, since both the Bush and Obama administrations include such actions as the invasion of countries, bombing, missile strikes and assassinations under the rubric of “self defense.”

■ In the two and a half weeks since President Barack Obama’s speech at the National Defense University justifying his policy of drone assassination, as many as 25 people have been killed and as many as 12 others injured in four US drone missile attacks in Pakistan and Yemen. The attacks demonstrate that the Obama administration intends to continue indefinitely its illegal assassination campaign.
■ In Pakistan, seven people were killed and as many as four more injured in a drone strike June 7. According to Pakistani intelligence officials, the attack came shortly after sunset in the village of Gubez in North Waziristan’s Shawal region, near the border with Afghanistan. The area is known to be a stronghold of Tahreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a coalition of militias fighting the US occupation of Afghanistan and the Pakistani state, which is collaborating with the US war. The June 7 attack came approximately a week and a half after the last strike in Pakistan. A CIA drone May 29 killed at least seven people in North Waziristan, including Wali Ur-Rehman the second in command of the Pakistani Taliban.

BNF/Scribd: Youth Disrupted: Effects of U.S. DroneStrikes on Children in Targeted Areas

US to dictate Pakistani government’s policy: Atif Ali - Video - Press TV: Now, [Pakistani] Prime Minister [Nawaz] Sharif has said that he was against US drones operating in Pakistan and just after a couple of days after his inauguration we saw the first American drone attack, which killed several people. What message is Washington trying to give Islamabad? Ali: Well, it is a pretty standard operating procedure for Pakistan now, there is a new government sworn in; a democratic government who came with a heavy mandate from the people of Pakistan. And this drone attack, which should be called now by its name that is arbitrary extrajudicial killing wire flying machine; we call it drone, it is sending us a clear message to Pakistanis that nothing has been changed. There is going to be a consistency in the policy; there will be the same reign of terror and fear on Pakistan.

RE: Samantha Power: And there is also this--in addition to the vote of confidence from Israel's ambassador: “Her views came out of the political and cultural environment she was in at the time,” said Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “But that’s in the past. She’s matured and moved on, and I look forward to working with her at the U.N.”

The German authorities have responded officially with great restraint to the revelations of the whistle-blower Edward Snowden about wire-tapping by American and British intelligence agencies, although millions of German citizens are affected. - German reluctance on the issue is grounded in the fact that the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) also spies intensively on the Internet, and is massively expanding its capacity to do so. The German foreign intelligence service also knew—at least partially—about the American and British spying programs, and has benefited from them. The BND has systematically monitored international telephone and communications traffic since at least 1968, when it officially received the authority for strategic intelligence. In the context of the Cold War, practically every telephone call in both directions between East and West Germany was monitored by the secret services on both sides of the Berlin Wall. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990, international monitoring operations were not halted, but rather extended.

Peter Schwarz: NSA, European intelligence agencies work closely together

The Obama regime which was already in the midst of three high profile scandals now has a fourth one to deal with. Top secret documents were recently leaked to the Washington Post and the London Guardian detailing a vast government surveillance program code named PRISM. According to the leaked documents, the program allows the National Security Agency (NSA) back door access to data from the servers of several leading U.S. based Internet and software companies. The documents list companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and Apple as some of the participants in the program. There have also been other reports indicating that the NSA is able to access real-time user data from as many as 50 separate American companies. Under the program, the NSA is able to collect information ranging from e-mails, chats, videos, photographs, VoIP calls and more. Most importantly is the fact that PRISM allows the NSA to obtain this data without having to make individual requests from the service providers or without having to obtain a court order. To say that this is a violation of the Fourth Amendment which forbids unreasonable searches and seizures would be a gross understatement. This is actually much more than that. This is a program designed specifically to serve as a Big Brother like control grid and to end privacy as we know it.

The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows. - The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell. The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said. Snowden will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world's most secretive organisations.

The Guardian: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower answers the essential questions on the biggest leak in NSA history
Q: When did you decide to leak the documents?
A: "You see things that may be disturbing. When you see everything you realise that some of these things are abusive. The awareness of wrong-doing builds up. There was not one morning when I woke up [and decided this is it]. It was a natural process. "A lot of people in 2008 voted for Obama. I did not vote for him. I voted for a third party. But I believed in Obama's promises. I was going to disclose it [but waited because of his election]. He continued with the policies of his predecessor."
Q: What is your reaction to Obama denouncing the leaks on Friday while welcoming a debate on the balance between security and openness?
A: "My immediate reaction was he was having difficulty in defending it himself. He was trying to defend the unjustifiable and he knew it."

The Guardian: US surveillance has 'expanded' under Obama, says Bush's NSA director
Forbes: Icelandic Legislator: I'm Ready To Help NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden Seek Asylum
Russia Today: US security officials said NSA leaker, journalist should be 'disappeared'
Justin Raimondo: Edward Snowden, American Hero

Washington's Blog - We reported in 2008 that foreign companies have had key roles scooping up Americans’ communications for the NSA: At least two foreign companies play key roles in processing the information. Specifically, an Israeli company called Narus processes all of the information tapped by AT &T (AT & T taps, and gives to the NSA, copies of all phone calls it processes), and an Israeli company called Verint processes information tapped by Verizon (Verizon also taps, and gives to the NSA, all of its calls). Business Insider notes today: The newest information regarding the NSA domestic spying scandal raises an important question: If America’s tech giants didn’t ‘participate knowingly’ in the dragnet of electronic communication, how does the NSA get all of their data? One theory: the NSA hired two secretive Israeli companies to wiretap the U.S. telecommunications network.

Reuters: U.S. snooping revelations cause trouble for allies
Stephen Lendman: Israeli Involvement in NSA Spying
The Guardian: UK gathering secret intelligence via covert NSA operation
Washington's Blog: Top NSA Official: Government Tapping CONTENT, Not Just Metadata … Using Bogus “Secret Interpretation” of Patriot Act
Jason Ditz: Surveillance State: NSA’s PRISM Spying on Virtually All Americans
Marc Ambinder: Sources: NSA sucks in data from 50 companies
Steven Rosenfeld: 10 Things Americans Underestimate About Our Massive Surveillance State
Glenn Greenwald: Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data
Russia Today: Boundless Informant: NSA’s complex tool for classifying global intelligence
Mike Adams: New PRISM slide leaked by the Guardian: NSA has direct access to servers of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple and others
Mike Adams: How Google, Facebook, Skype, Yahoo and AOL are all blatantly lying to their own users in denying NSA spy grid scheme
Elias Groll: Google's PRISM spin war has begun

Former Netherlands prime minister, Ruud Lubbers has noted that 22 US nuclear bombs are stored at an airbase on Dutch territory, Dutch media reported. - The Dutch daily, De Telegraaf, said on Monday that Lubbers confirmed that the American nuclear bombs have been kept in underground strong-rooms at the Volkel Air Base in Brabant. Lubbers, Netherlands’ PM from 1982-94, made the revelations in a National Geographic documentary. He has become the first senior Dutch official to admit the issue, as the presence of the nuclear bombs on Dutch territory has long been rumored.

The 2013 meeting of the Bilderberg Group is currently underway, with the usual clampdown on media coverage, but it appears that “big data” is one of the main topics on the agenda. - Big data refers to the massive amounts of information that are currently being gathered through the use of modern technology. The Bilderberg Group mostly uses big data to analyze global megatrends and the information gathered by intelligence agencies. Other topics of discussion this year include economic growth, US foreign policy, Africa's challenges, cyber-warfare, and online education. The meeting opened in Watford, England on June 6 and closes on June 9. British Prime Minister David Cameron, International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google chairman Eric Schmidt, and former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger are some of the people attending the 2013 Bilderberg meeting. Although the names of attendees and the agenda for meetings are available on their website, the group holds its meetings in private and there are no press releases about them, which has raised suspicions about the Bilderbergers. The group first convened in 1954 at the Hotel de Bilderberg in The Netherlands, which the group was named after.

[May 5, 2013] - U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday. The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte. "Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated," Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television. "This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities," she added, speaking in Italian.

Human rights activist Jawad Abu Eysheh, 39, was arrested Friday 7th June following a complaint he made four months ago about a settler attack. - At 4:20 pm on 7th June, Israeli Police arrived at the house of the Hebron organisation Youth Against Settlements and demanded to see the ID’s of Jawad and three other men present. The police then told Jawad that they wanted to take him away ‘for investigation’, and called the Israeli military to escort Jawad away in handcuffs. Jawad was then paraded through the adjacent illegal Tel Rumeida settlement and taken to the nearby checkpoint 56, before being transferred to the police station in the settlement of Givat Ha’avot outside the city centre. The line of questioning from the police made clear that Jawad was being detained as a result of events that happened back in February, when Jawad and other activists were attacked by American-born extremist Baruch Marzel and other settlers. Despite being a victim of that violent assault in February, it was Jawad who was subjected to arrest today, not the perpetrators. During his detention, Jawad was also forced to submit a DNA sample against his will, and to sign conditions that he will not speak with Baruch Marzel for the next 30 days. Jawad stated he is happy to comply with this stipulation at least. Jawad was released at around 9pm.As well as today’s arrest, Jawad has faced other harassment recently, including not being allowed to walk on the street where his factory space and uncle’s house are located. The Israeli army and police in Hebron have a long history of harassing human rights defenders such as Jawad and his colleague Issa Amro, and of following the wishes of extremist settlers when deciding who to harass.

Amal Saad-Ghorayeb: As much as I would like to comment on the irony of Erdogan’s repression of “his own people” (terms normally reserved for Assad); or the flagrant hypocrisy of his depiction of unarmed protesters who are being shot in the head with tear gas canisters as ‘“extremists” (“Taksim Square cannot be an area where extremists are running wild,”) while he portrays Turkish- backed terrorists who have torn Syria apart and killed tens of thousands, as the defenseless “Syrian people” who must be protected with Turkish military aggression and NATO missiles; or how “out of touch with his people” (another anti-Assad trope) he has become, considering that a large portion of them reject his government’s neo-liberal economics, low-intensity, procedural democracy— which has rendered Turkey yet another US/NATO/Israeli-supported “democratic regime” with all the authoritarian connotations such an oxymoron carries — and are alienated from the AKP’s House Islamism; or how he is being caricatured as an Ottoman sultan given his neo-Ottoman imperialist pretensions, which have been also been the subject of recent popular protests, specifically those against Turkey’s military intervention in Syria— opinion polls reveal that over two-thirds of the Turkish people staunchly oppose the AKP’s military assistance to the Syrian/foreign rebels. As much as I would like to write academic commentaries on all that, I would really prefer to be infantile and content myself with an : ” IN YO FACE *****”.

The Canadian Forces’ elite police unit deployed teams of investigators to determine the source of two leaks to Citizen reporter David Pugliese in 2011, according to documents released under access to information. - In one case, the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service (NIS) concluded that the leaked information — which appeared in a story about the cancellation of a planned Parliament Hill tribute to Canada’s Afghan war veterans — violated no regulations or orders. In the other, Pugliese was tipped that Canada was about to deploy CF-18 fighter jets to Libya before it was announced by the government. But investigators were unable to finger the culprit, concluding only that the leak came from someone at CFB Cold Lake in Alberta. The two investigations were among five by the NIS, which is called in for serious crimes or sensitive matters, involving the unauthorized release of information to the news media in 2011 and 2012.