The Bush and Obama administrations both claimed that spying on Americans was justified by 9/11. Specifically, they said that they could have caught one of the 9/11 hijackers living in San Diego if they could have spied on phone calls on American soil. However – as demonstrated below – that claim is totally false.

New documents have been leaked shining further light on the top-secret surveillance programs operated by the NSA. According to The Guardian, the National Security Agency can retain and use information obtained through domestic communications. - According to two documents published in full by the newspaper on Thursday, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has approved a handful of policies that allow the National Security Agency to make use of intelligence on United States persons. President Barack Obama and his administration’s top intelligence chiefs have previously denied the NSA targets American citizens in the wake of classified documents leaked earlier this month. ■ The two new documents — including one-marked “top-secret” — were both authorized by Attorney General Eric Holder on July 29, 2009, and were leaked two weeks-to-the-day since The Guardian first began publishing NSA papers attributed to former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against Holder and other Obama administration officials for a number of constitutional rights they alleged to have been violated under the surveillance practices previously disclosed by the newspaper.

Thomas Gaist: NSA monitoring US communications without a warrant, documents show
The Guardian: How Brits Set Out to Spy on the World Wide Web
Russia Today: British spy agency has access to global communications, shares info with NSA

An estimated 1 million people took to the streets in cities across Brazil on Thursday as the country's biggest protests in two decades intensified despite government concessions meant to quell the demonstrations. - Undeterred by the reversal of transport fare hikes that sparked the protests, and promises of better public services, demonstrators marched around two international football matches and in locales as diverse as the Amazon capital of Manaus and the prosperous southern city of Florianopolis. While the protests remained mostly peaceful, the growing number of participants led to occasional outbursts of violence and vandalism in some cities. In central Rio de Janeiro, where 300,000 people marched, police afterwards chased looters and dispersed people crowding into surrounding areas.

Google/AFP: Brazil's mainstream media slammed for protest coverage

Gilad Atzmon: In the last few days, we have been learning about the emerging unrest in Brazil. The protests began early this month in response to a rise in bus fares in São Paulo and elsewhere, but have grown rapidly into a general outpouring of discontent after widespread anger at the heavy-handed police crackdown. In case you are perplexed by Brazil’s police violence, The Lab, a new Israeli film by Yotam Feldaman, provides the answers. Watch the Brazilian Gaza. The 'numbers' are also familiar...

The message is clear, Israel exports death, in other words, we are all Palestinians.

JERUSALEM — An Israeli security guard shot dead a Jewish visitor at Jerusalem's Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, on Friday, apparently mistaking him for a Palestinian militant. "There was a Jewish guy, an Israeli guy, who was in the bathroom area," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP. "He for some reason shouted 'Allahu Akbar'," Rosenfeld said. "A security guard drew his weapon and fired several shots at the suspect... He died from his wounds a few moments ago." The shooting took place shortly before 8 am (0500 GMT) as the plaza in front of the Wall filled with worshippers for morning prayers ahead of the start of the Jewish Sabbath at sundown. The site was closed to the public for at least an hour afterwards.

Global stocks plunged Thursday in the biggest one-day sell-off so far this year, after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the US central bank might consider paring back its cash infusions into the financial markets within the next six months. The panic in stock and bond markets sparked by the remarks of Bernanke, who on Wednesday suggested the Fed might start winding down its $85 billion per month in asset purchases, was compounded by the release of data on Thursday showing that Chinese manufacturing activity hit its lowest level in nine months. [...] The market panic of the past two days demonstrates that none of the underlying issues that led to the 2008 financial meltdown have been addressed, let alone resolved. Far from engineering any real economic recovery, governments and central banks have merely papered over the contradictions in the global economy while further enriching the financial elite, on the one hand, and brutally attacking the working class, on the other. The response of the ruling class to the latest eruption of the financial crisis will be to intensify the assault on social programs and workers’ jobs, wages and pensions.

The Guardian reported June 17 that UK Defence officials issued a confidential D-Notice (Defence Advisory Notice)[under a 100 year gag-order] June 7 to the BBC and other media organisations. - D-Notices are official requests to news editors not to publish or broadcast items on specified subjects on the grounds of “national security”. They are issued by the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee, which operates between government departments dealing with intelligence and national security, and the media. The D-Notice was issued the day after the Guardian had exposed, based on leaks provided by former US National Security Agency (NSA) sub-contractor Edward Snowden, vast and systematic police-state surveillance conducted under the Obama administration by the NSA. Its purpose was to censor any further coverage.

Thousands of Palestinian children were systematically injured, tortured and used as human shields by Israel, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reported. Israel’s foreign minister denied the report’s accusations, calling it "recycled old stuff." - During the 10-year period examined by UN human rights experts, up to 7,000 children aged 9 to 17 were arrested, interrogated and kept captive, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) said in its new report. At least 14 cases of abuse were reported to have taken place in the past three years. As conflict in the Gaza Strip and West Bank continues, children on both sides continue to be killed and wounded; however, the majority of victims are Palestinian.

A hard-hitting journalist, war reporter and author Michael Hastings, whose revelatory article brought down a four-star general, the US military chief in Afghanistan, has died in a car accident in Los Angeles at the age of 33. - There are few details about the accident that killed the journalist in the early hours of Tuesday. Police have determined that speed was main factor. However, neither Los Angeles officers nor the county coroner's office could confirm his death as the body still has not been officially ID’d. Coroner's Lieutenant Fred Corral said it was impossible immediately identify the driver as his body was burned beyond recognition. It would also take weeks to get results from toxicology tests.

David Brown: Questions surround death of journalist Michael Hastings - Hardly a day after the death of 33-year journalist Michael Hastings in a fiery car crash in Los Angeles, California, police have hastened to declare that there was no “foul play” involved. The speed with which this declaration was made is clearly an effort to suppress the many questions that have been raised about Hastings’ death. Several media reports have referred worriedly and dismissively to what are invariably described as “conspiracy theories” about the incident. There is, to say the least, something highly suspicious—and, for some, convenient—about Hastings’ death.

Red Dirt Report: Hastings likely murdered for what he knew and wrote about
AWIP: Journalist Michael Hastings dies in car crash

PressTV: Obama called 'hypocrite of the century' - A member of the Irish parliament has sharply attacked U.S. President Barack Obama’s policies, calling him a “war criminal” and “hypocrite of the century.” "Is this person going for the hypocrite of the century award?" Left wing Member of Parliament Clare Daly asked of Obama during a speech before parliament at the end of the G8 summit held in Northern Ireland. "Because we have to call things by their right names, and the reality is that by any serious examination, this man is a war criminal," she was quoted as saying by The Huffington Post. "This is the man who has facilitated a 200 percent increase in the use of drones, which have killed thousands of people including hundreds of children," Daly said. The Irish politician also criticized the Obama administration for escalating war in Syria and sending arms to foreign-backed militants in the country. Obama is “in essence stalling the Geneva peace talks by trying to broker enhanced leverage for the Syrian opposition by giving them arms - and to hell with the thousands more who’ll lose their lives, or the tens of thousands who will be displaced,” she argued.

The New South Wales Parliament has passed new laws covering childcare centres and vaccination. - From next January, a childcare centre can refuse to enrol a child whose parents or guardians cannot show proof of vaccination or provide an approved exemption. Health Minister Jillian Skinner says parents who are seeking an exemption will first need to speak to a general practitioner. Childcare centres will face fines if they do not complete checks to ensure a child is vaccinated, or that they have exemption.

US authorities have accused two men of building a portable X-ray weapon that they intended to use to secretly sicken opponents of Israel. - The men, 49-year-old Glendon Scott Crawford and 54-year-old Eric J. Feight, have been charged with conspiracy to provide support to terrorists with the weapon. Investigators said Mr Crawford approached Jewish organizations last year looking for funding and people to help him with technology that could be used to surreptitiously deliver damaging and even lethal doses of radiation against those he considered enemies of Israel. He and Mr Feight assembled the mobile device, which was to be controlled remotely, but it was inoperable and nobody was hurt, authorities said. "Crawford has specifically identified Muslims and several other individuals/groups as targets," investigator Geoffrey Kent said in a court affidavit. According to the indictment, Mr Crawford also traveled to North Carolina in October to solicit money for the weapon from a ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan, who informed the FBI. Mr Crawford claimed to be a member. They could face up to 15 years in prison. Messages left at their homes weren't returned on Wednesday.

Gizmodo: The Feds Say That Two Guys Made an X-Ray Weapon to Sicken People

When John F. Kennedy delivered his “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate on June 26, 1963, 450,000 people flocked to hear him. Fifty years later a far more subdued invitation-only crowd of 4,500 showed up to hear Barack Obama speak at the same location in Berlin. As The National Journal noted, “he didn’t come away with much, winning just a smattering of applause from a crowd that was one-hundredth the size of JFK’s,” and far smaller than the 200,000 boisterous Germans who had listened to his 2008 address as a presidential candidate. JFK had a clear message when he came to Berlin a half century ago – the free world must stand up to Communist tyranny. 24 years later, President Reagan stood in the same spot famously calling on the Soviets to “tear down this wall.” Reagan’s speech was a seminal moment that ushered in the downfall of an evil empire, and gave hope to tens of millions of people behind the Iron Curtain. It was a display of strength and conviction by the leader of the free world, sending an unequivocal message of solidarity with those who were fighting for freedom in the face of a monstrous totalitarian ideology. In stark contrast to that of his presidential predecessors, Barack Obama’s message on Wednesday was pure mush, another clichéd “citizens of the world” polemic with little substance.

Barry Grey: Obama in Berlin - In his speech in Berlin on Wednesday, President Barack Obama made much of the fact that he was the first American president to speak from the eastern side of the Brandenburg Gate, in what was once Stalinist-controlled East Berlin. This was meant to symbolize the triumph of what Obama called “open societies that respect the sanctity of the individual” over oppressive political systems. He felt obliged, however, to include an explicit defense of the newly exposed surveillance network over which he presides, whose massive and illegal operations dwarf the spying apparatus of the old Stasi secret police. Obama once again resorted to outright lies, declaring that National Security Agency (NSA) programs that seize the phone records of all Americans and tap into the electronic communications of people all over the world are “bound by the rule of law” and do not target “the communications of ordinary persons.”