The first videos of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have surfaced since he received asylum in Russia. The footage, provided by WikiLeaks, was taken during the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence awards ceremony. The video fragments of a meeting, attended by the former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, former NSA executive Thomas Andrews Drake and former FBI agent Coleen Rowley, Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, and Sarah Harrison of WikiLeaks – all whistleblowers in their own respects – were released by WikiLeaks on Friday. In the first video appearance since he was granted asylum in Russia, Snowden spoke about US government transparency and dangers to democracy caused by the NSA mass spying programs.

“This is not about any sort of particular program, this is about a trend in the relationship between the governing and the governed in America,” Snowden said speaking about the government transparency situation in the US. “That is increasingly coming into conflict with what we expect as a free and democratic people. If we can’t understand the policies and the programs of our government, we cannot grant our consent in regulating them.” “As someone very clever said recently, we don’t have an oversight problem in the US we have an undersight problem.”

Russia Today: 'US unchained itself from constitution': Whistleblowers on RT after secret Snowden meeting - VIDEO
Russia Today: Secret US court, unrestrained by privacy concerns, confirms NSA surveillance powers
PressTV: FISA Court: NSA can keep spying on phone calls

The US government is well-placed to blackmail "nearly every significant person in Latin America" because most of the region's electronic communications are routed through the United States, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says. ● "Ninety-eight per cent of Latin American telecommunications to the rest of the world - that means SMS, phone, email etc. - passes through the US," Assange said in an interview with Russia's RT television on Friday. US intelligence agencies "can easily intercept these communications ... and therefore gain understanding of how Latin America is behaving, where it is moving, its economic transfers, the activities of its leaders and major players," he said.

Jihadist fighters have been accused of war crimes over the killing of 190 civilians from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite minority, in the largest atrocity ever attributed to rebels. ● The massacre allegations came as the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons won this year's Nobel Peace Prize, which it said it would celebrate once it has completed the daunting task of eradicating Syria's vast chemical arsenal amidst a brutal civil war. A Human Rights Watch report on the killings of Alawite villagers said another 200 people - the vast majority women and children - were taken hostage in the rebel operations in August. The report, which urged an arms embargo on groups suspected of war crimes or crimes against humanity, said at least 67 people were "executed or unlawfully killed."

Alex Lantier: Report finds US-backed Syrian opposition responsible for sectarian atrocity ■ The atrocities near Lattakia also expose the treacherous role of the corporate media, which are deeply implicated by their promotion of the Syrian opposition. They have lied through their teeth, praising a collection of cutthroats and gangsters mobilized as part of an imperialist war against Syria, and who are capable of the bloodiest killings, as fighters for democracy. Such lies about the opposition, exposed by HRW’s material, played a key role in the drive by the United States and its European allies to the brink of war, halted only by the emergence of mass popular opposition. The media blamed several atrocities implicating Syrian opposition forces—such as the May 2012 Houla massacre, or the chemical attack in Khan al-Assal a year later—on the Syrian regime. These lies were used to justify further arming of the opposition against the regime and escalating the war. In the fighting near Lattakia—where Alawite civilians targeted in sectarian killings could only have been victims of the Sunni opposition, not Syria’s Alawite-led regime—it would have been difficult to blame atrocities on the regime. The media responded by downplaying the entire offensive.

Russia Today: "Foreigners" train Syrian rebels in Afghanistan to use chem weapons - Lavrov

What the hypocrites in the establishment media have concealed is that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef hated women. He hated gentiles. He hated Judaics who rejected the Talmud. He called publicly for the extermination of the Palestinians. He didn’t hate all gentiles, however. Rabbi Ovadia made an exception for Adolf Hitler. When he wasn’t busy fabricating magic amulets to give to superstitious Israeli voters who promised to vote for his Shas party, Ovadia’s kabbalistic Judaism revealed to him that the liberal Judaics who were killed by Hitler’s armed forces were “reincarnated sinners” and for this reason he declared Hitler to be an avenging angel sent by heaven. This is apparently how Ovadia Yosef “glorified” the “heritage of Israel.

Times of Israel: Rav Ovadia, the last giant
Al Jazeera: Israel's Rabbi Ovadia Yosef dies at 93
Times of India: Palestinians should perish from this world: Ovadia Yosef

A report by one of the world’s leading medical journals has supported earlier findings that Yasser Arafat, the late leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was poisoned to death nearly a decade ago. ● According to British journal the Lancet, Arafat was poisoned with the radioactive element polonium 210. The journal published a peer review of last year’s research by Swiss scientists, who have been researching the suspicious circumstances surrounding Arafat’s death. The earlier work “found high levels of the highly radioactive element in blood, urine, and saliva stains” on Arafat’s “clothes and toothbrush,” according to a report on Al Jazeera. The investigation into Arafat’s mysterious death led to the exhumation of his body in November 2012 for further testing. The decision to exhume Arafat’s body was made after French prosecutors opened a murder probe into his death in August 2012 following the discovery of high levels of polonium on his personal belongings. Arafat died in 2004 at the age of 75 in a Paris military hospital.

Al Jazeera: Arafat poisoning claim backed by journal

Two rabbis are among the 10 people who allegedly plotted to kidnap and torture Orthodox Jewish men with cattle prods to pressure them into divorcing their wives. ● According to the New York Daily News, Rabbi Mendel Epstein, 68, Rabbi Martin Wolmark, 55, Ariel Potash, 40, a man identified only as “Yaakov” and six other men were arrested in New York and New Jersey Wednesday night after they allegedly ran an operation charging wives up to $100,000 to kidnap their husbands and force them to agree to a religious divorce. As CBS New York points out, under Jewish law, a wife will only be granted a divorce if she is presented with a document called a “get.” A woman without a “get” is forbidden to date or remarry within the Jewish faith.

One of the commentators cited in the report was Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to George W. Bush, who made a series of high-profile media appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and Bloomberg TV arguing for military intervention against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over alleged use of chemical weapons. Hadley also wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post headlined “To stop Iran, Obama must enforce red lines with Assad.” In each case, the media outlets failed to inform their audience that Hadley serves as a director of Raytheon, the weapons manufacturer that makes the Tomahawk cruise missiles that were widely cited as a weapon of choice in a potential airstrike campaign against Syria.

21st Century Wire: At least 22 Defense Industry Stakeholders Used As ‘Pundits’ By US Media To Sell Syria War