The US National Security Agency (NSA) is linked to the latest decision by European satellite provider Intelsat to take Iranian channels off the air, a political analyst tells Press TV. - “The removal of Iranian channels from the air in July 1 is directly linked to the NSA (US National Security Agency) spying, and not merely spying, but the NSA destruction of the access to communications across the world,” said Ralph Schoenman in a Friday interview with Press TV. On June 19, communications satellite services provider Intelsat said it will no longer provide services to Iranian channels, including English-language news channel Press TV. The decision has been made under the pretext that the company should be “abiding by” the sanctions against the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB). Intelsat noted that it had been ordered by the US government to avoid extending IRIB’s license, saying that it will stop providing services to Iranian channels as of July 1. “The attempts are being made by United States through this banning on Intelsat and other locations to prevent the truth of its operation from being understood by the people of the world,” Schoenman said.

A video allegedly showing an extrajudicial public beheading of two Bashar Assad loyalists has been uploaded onto the internet. Its authenticity has been verified by pro and anti-Assad sources, though it remains unclear who is behind the execution. - In the nine-minute clip, a group of several hundred people, including men, women and children stands around a hill, when the sentenced men, bound with ropes and wearing bags on their heads are led out. As the crowd closes in with shouts of Allah Akbar (“Glory to God!”) the two, who are wearing civilian clothes, are laid on the floor, and a bearded ‘executioner’ methodically saws through the throat of first one, then the other with a knife. The heads of the dead men are then placed on top of their bodies as the crowd continues to bay. The phone-filmed video was uploaded on Wednesday to video-sharing site YouTube by Syrian Truth, a group that supports President Bashar Assad, which previously uncovered a clip of an anti-government fighter eating what appeared to be a human heart. According to the voices in the footage, it was shot in Khan al-Assal, near the city of Aleppo the north of the country. The authenticity of the video was also endorsed by resources that have chiefly backed the rebels in the internal conflict that has lasted over two years – such as the UK-based Observatory for Human Rights and all4Syria.info, which moved to condemn its contents. The identities of all parties involved in the video remain unclear.

Chris Marsden: US ships arms to Al Qaeda-linked forces in Syria
Russia Today: Horrific video of beheading raises questions of arms supply to Syrian rebels
Intifada Palestine: Three Christians beheaded by militants belonging to the Syrian opposition
PressTV: US-backed Takfiri militants behead 2 Christians including priest in Homs

Turkish government officials are investigating Twitter and similar social media platforms in an attempt to identify and eventually prosecute the organizers of mass demonstrations, Erodgan administration officials said this week. - In the latest attack on social media’s role in protests, the country’s Transportation and Communications Minister Binali Yildirim called on social media networks on Friday to cooperate with authorities in the probe. "Yes to the Internet ... but an absolute no to its misuse as a tool for crimes, violence, chaos and disorder," Yildirim said quoted as saying by the local Dogan news agency. Authorities have scoured social networks searching for protest leaders since national unrest began on May 28 at a rally in Instanbul's Taksim Square. Police have turned over at least 35 names to prosecutors in the city, according to Turkey's Aksam newspaper.

The Economist: A familiar face appeared in many of the protests taking place in scores of cities on three continents this week: a Guy Fawkes mask with a roguish smile and a pencil-thin moustache. The mask belongs to “V”, a character in a graphic novel from the 1980s who became the symbol for a group of computer hackers called Anonymous. His contempt for government resonates with people all over the world. The protests have many different origins. In Brazil people rose up against bus fares, in Turkey against a building project. Indonesians have rejected higher fuel prices, Bulgarians the government’s cronyism. In the euro zone they march against austerity, and the Arab spring has become a perma-protest against pretty much everything. Each angry demonstration is angry in its own way. Yet just as in 1848, 1968 and 1989, when people also found a collective voice, the demonstrators have much in common. Over the past few weeks, in one country after another, protesters have risen up with bewildering speed. They have been more active in democracies than dictatorships. They tend to be ordinary, middle-class people, not lobbies with lists of demands. Their mix of revelry and rage condemns the corruption, inefficiency and arrogance of the folk in charge. Nobody can know how 2013 will change the world—if at all.

Steve James: Transcripts released this week by the Irish Independent record conversations in 2008 between leading Irish bank executives, joking about how they had scammed billions of euros to bail out the now-defunct Anglo-Irish Bank. The conversations provide an insight into the reckless, sneering cynicism of the ruling elite as they proceeded to swindle the working people to the tune of trillions of euros. The conversations focussed on the Anglo-Irish Bank board’s attempt to stem the massive losses it suffered following the collapse of the Irish property bubble out of which it had made billions. The board’s sting was to downplay the scale of the bank’s mounting losses and sucker the authorities into offering large sums of cash. The hope was that, once committed, the Irish government and central bank would be unable to back out of further support. In one conversation, the retail banking director Peter Fitzgerald asked the head of capital markets, John Bowe, how he had arrived at a sum of €7 billion to bail out the bank. Bowe responded, “as Drummer [David Drumm, Anglo-Irish CEO] would say, I picked it out of my arse.”

AWIP: Ireland: Inside Anglo Irish Bank - the secret recordings

RINF Alternative News looks at the reality of the global surveillance network and explains how PRISM is just a small part in a decades-long agenda to monitor citizens. [Source 1] [Source 2] [Source 3] [Source 4] [Source 5] [Source 6] [Source 7] [Source 8] [Source 9] [Source 10] [Source 11] [Source 12]

[...] So the truth is much worse than Edward Snowden is telling us. Our rulers are not just criminals - they are madmen, psychopathic liars and mass murderers of the worst imaginable sort. If the mainstream media publicized the most dangerous whistleblowers, the American National Security State would come crashing down. Let us hope and pray that Edward Snowden's example will inspire other whistleblowers to come forward...and that the most powerful and dangerous truths will finally be revealed.

The Chinese Ministry of National Defence has accused the United States of hypocrisy over cybersurveillance and said the disclosures made by Edward Snowden bolstered the case for China's internet security efforts. - These were the harshest public comments so far from the Chinese government about Mr Snowden's revelations. Until now, the Chinese government's comments on the disclosures have come through its foreign ministry, which has used relatively muted words to answer reporters' questions about Mr Snowden's allegations. Mr Snowden, a former CIA [NSA] employee, has described US monitoring of Chinese internet sites and installations, and Prism, a National Security Agency program to mine internet information. In recent days, Chinese state-run media have amplified criticisms of the United States, and the remarks from the defence ministry spokesman, Colonel Yang Yujun, struck a tougher tone. He did not refer explicitly to the United States, but he left no doubt about his target.

Reports indicate the British intelligence agency GCHQ has monitored internet users much more heavily than its counterparts in the US. Constanze Kurz of the Chaos Computer Club explains why that should alarm us.

Deutsche Welle: Following the revelation of the US surveillance program Prism, there are now reports that British intelligence agencies have gone even further than the American National Security Agency (NSA) in intercepting data from the internet. Does that surprise you?
Constanze Kurz: There have been reports for years that the British have been helping themselves to the communication cables that cross their islands. As such, it was only surprising to see the extent to which these agencies were able to operate without legal intervention.

DW: Is the British surveillance program Tempora in fact more ominous than its US counterpart Prism?
CK: It's when taken together that both programs seem especially ominous. The British as well as the Americans have rules for this groundless monitoring - namely that part of the communication has to take place outside of the US or Great Britain. By cooperating, the American and British agencies can now exchange the data mutually. And that amounts to a large percentage of global communication. With the British, we're talking about over 20 petabytes (Ed. Note: 20 million gigabytes) that - according to the "Guardian" publications - have been combed through and saved for a certain amount of time. The number of people who are involved there is enormous and actually no longer in acceptable relationship to a democracy.

DW: What goals are the intelligence agencies pursuing?
CK: The goal of fighting terrorism that always gets mentioned is, in my view, outrageous nonsense. It has more to do with exercising control - just as people always complain of with dictatorships. If one were to go through these huge mountains of data for the sake of fighting terror, that would be an inconceivably inefficient method. Traditional intelligence methods would be much more effective there. In the end, there's only the very big and increasing need for control among the governments. I find that very unsettling, and we should definitely not resign ourselves to it.

The UK government’s spying scandal is causing concerns among Europeans with the EU chief justice writing to British authorities demanding urgent answers. - The EU's Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding has written to Foreign Secretary William Hague demanding answers by the end of the week on leaked reports that Britain's spy services are tapping cables that carry the world's phone calls and Internet traffic. "I have sent a letter to express my concern," Reding told a briefing on Wednesday, adding: "I have asked for a very urgent reply by the end of this week." The EU chief justice demanded answers about the scope and extent of the online eavesdropping program and called for clear answers about the alleged details published in British papers this week. The revelations, published by The Guardian newspaper, are based on leaked documents from U.S. former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who has been accused by the White House of espionage. The report on the British programme codenamed Tempora has sparked a fresh outcry from privacy campaigners. Reding said she had asked Hague to “clarify the extent of the programme, whether the data stayed in Britain or was passed to other countries, whether the spying was limited to individual cases and what the possibilities for legal redress were”.

PressTV: Germany describes UK/US global spying operation as disaster

Felicity Arbuthnot: Lies, Perfidies and Tony Blair - Having learned nothing from the catastrophes of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, it seems President Obama, the equally clueless UK Prime Minister Cameron and his culturally challenged Foreign Secretary William Hague are cheer-leading another bloodbath in formerly peaceful, secular, outward looking Syria. Having covertly provided arms and equipment to insurgents from numerous different countries for over two years, they have now moved to the overt stage, a move over which even arch hawks such as former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, and former Republican Senator Richard Luger, six term leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urged caution. Luger said such action would boost extremists, with Brzezinski dismissing Obama’s talk of “red lines” as thoughtless and risking: “a large-scale disaster for the United States.”