● The NSA surveillance of millions of emails and phone calls. The dogged pursuit of whistleblower Edward Snowden across the globe, regardless of the diplomatic fallout. And the sentencing of Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for giving a cache of government files to the website WikiLeaks. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg sees these events as signs that the United States is becoming a police state.
● "We have not only the capability of a police state, but certain beginnings of it right now," Ellsberg told HuffPost Live Wednesday. "And I absolutely agree with Edward Snowden. It's worth a person's life, prospect of assassination, or life in prison or life in exile -- it's worth that to try to restore our liberties and make this a democratic country."
● Ellsberg was a military analyst with the RAND Corporation in 1969 when he secretly copied thousands of classified documents about U.S. decision-making during the Vietnam War. In 1971, he leaked the files (known as the Pentagon Papers) to The New York Times and 18 other newspapers.

Syria: Chemical Attack in Ghouta 'an Accident Caused by Free Syrian Army' - The attack that killed over 200 people in the Damascus suburbs could be an accident caused by a riot control agent, and those responsible may be a faction of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and not the Assad regime, according to a chemical weapons specialist. Gwyn Winfield, editorial director at CBRNe World, a magazine specialising in chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive weapons, told IBTimes UK [that]

● We can say there is some form of chemical used. But until we take blood samples, samples of the soil and the water in the area we can't say that a chemical agent has been used," he said. "It can be a riot control agent, like in the recent Egyptian case of the tear gas used in the back of a van that killed 36 prisoners. We have the same symptoms in the children and casualties.

● Winfield said he finds it "suspicious" that in the week UN inspectors enter the country with the acquiescence of Assad, the Government welcomes them with a chemical weapons missile barrage. "It is not impossible that some faction in the Free Syrian Army did it to get attention or maybe it was an accident by an inexperienced operator who may have not realised what he was doing." The security expert said there are numerous cases of riot agent used in a lethal way, for example in confined spaces and not to disperse a crowd.

Gwyn Winfield: Reflections on Ghouta [22 August 2013]
RIA Novosti: Syrian Chemical Weapons Reports May Be ‘Provocation’ – Moscow
AWIP: Reports of massive chemical attack near Damascus as UN observers arrive in Syria

Nick Clegg and Theresa May are heading for a confrontation over the future of Britain's anti-terror laws in the aftermath of the controversy over the detention of the partner of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald. ● As Europe's human rights watchdog warned that the treatment of David Miranda could have a "chilling effect" on press freedom, senior Liberal Democrat sources indicated they were prepared to press for major revisions to the Terrorism Act 2000. ● The Lib Dem move was flatly rejected by the home secretary, who ruled out any further changes to the act beyond proposals announced before the detention of Miranda. ● But the home secretary received a blow when the 47-strong Council of Europe, which polices human rights on the continent, wrote a strongly worded letter to May about the detention of Miranda.

The Guardian: David Miranda's lawyers apply for interim injunction over seized data

■ France has said that the international community would need to respond with force if allegations that Syrian government forces had carried out a mass chemical attack on civilians proved to be true. But the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said there was no question of sending troops on the ground, in an interview with the television network BFM. He added that if the UN security council could not make a decision, one would have to be taken "in other ways." He did not elaborate.
■ The Syrian government acknowledged it had launched a major offensive in rebel-held districts in the east of the capital – described by pro-regime media as the biggest since the start of the civil war – but strongly denied using chemical weapons. "These are lies that serve the propaganda of the terrorists," a Syrian official said, referring to the armed opposition. "We would not use such weapons."

AWIP: Reports of massive chemical attack near Damascus as UN observers arrive in Syria

● A federal judge sharply rebuked the National Security Agency in 2011 for repeatedly misleading the court that oversees its surveillance on domestic soil, including a program that is collecting tens of thousands of domestic emails and other Internet communications of Americans each year, according to a secret ruling made public on Wednesday.
● The 85-page ruling by Judge John D. Bates, then serving as chief judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, involved an NSA program that searches the contents of Americans' international Internet communications without a warrant, in a hunt for discussions about foreigners who have been targeted for surveillance.
● The Justice Department had told Bates that NSA officials had discovered that the program had also been gathering domestic messages for three years. Bates found that the agency had violated the Constitution and declared the problems part of a pattern of misrepresentation by agency officials in submissions to the secret court.

USA Today: NSA collected thousands of e-mails by Americans
Wall Street Journal: New Details Show Broader NSA Surveillance Reach
EFF Victory Results in Release of Secret Court Opinion Finding NSA Surveillance Unconstitutional

Preface: German pastor Martin Niemöller initially supported Hitler. But he later opposed him, and was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp for years. Niemöller learned the hard way that keep your head down doesn’t keep one out of trouble … in the long run, it increases the danger to all of us. Niemöller wrote a brilliant poem – First They Came – about the manner in which Germans allowed Nazi abuses by failing to protest the abuse of “others” … first gypsies, gays, communists, and Jews, then Catholics … and eventually everyone. This is my modern interpretation of Niemöller’s poem …

We've got to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership that's being drawn up in Washington before it becomes law. ● The giant multinationals are pushing a trade deal that will literally let them bypass our laws. This deal is called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and it is coming at us in the next few months. The corporations are trying to switch this gravy-train onto the “Fast Track.” For them this deal is the light at the end of the tunnel of democracy and self-government that has been trying to reign them in. We need to get this runaway train back on the rails or We the People will be begging for scraps thrown from the caboose. Call your Senators and Representative today and let them know that people are paying attention and oppose “Fast Track trade authority.”

New American: EU/U.S. — Transatlantic Convergence

The US National Security Agency is collecting much more of Americans’ internet communications than US officials have previously revealed, a new report says. ● According to The Wall Street Journal, the NSA has built a surveillance network that covers roughly 75 percent of all US Internet traffic in the hunt for so-called foreign intelligence. The NSA hunts Internet communications that either originate or end abroad, or are entirely foreign but pass through the US, officials had previously acknowledged, according to the WSJ. However, the officials are now saying that the system also monitors and keeps the content of some emails and phone calls sent by US citizens over the Internet.

Tom Carter ● Floyd Abrams’ July 31 letter to the New York Times praising the Bradley Manning verdict underscores the degree to which what was once the liberal intelligentsia has abandoned any serious defense of democratic rights. Abrams famously served as one of the lawyers for the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case (1971), establishing a certain reputation at the time as a defender of free speech and freedom of the press. In the intervening decades Abrams has shifted far to the right, together with an entire layer of once-liberal professionals, intellectuals, and academics. Abrams now writes in support of the conviction of Bradley Manning on espionage charges, which constitutes a monumental assault on those basic principles he once defended. ● Not a hair has been touched on the heads of any of the criminals exposed by Manning within the US political establishment, military, and intelligence apparatus, as well as their corporate and financial co-conspirators. These individuals continue to sit comfortably in their luxurious offices enjoying lavish incomes and lifestyles. On the subject of the “guilt” of such individuals, figures such as Abrams are silent. Instead of prosecuting the criminals exposed by Manning, the Obama administration has done its utmost to make an example of Manning, including through the use of torture.