The NSA (National Security Agency) has been extensively involved in the US government's targeted killing program, collaborating closely with the CIA in the use of drone strikes abroad, The Washington Post reports after a review of documents provided by former NSA employee Edward Snowden ● Hassan Ghul was a known al-Qaeda operative in Iraq who was captured in 2004 and turned over information regarding bin Laden’s courier network. He was transferred to a secret CIA prison before being released to Pakistan in 2006. Ghul was killed six years later in the country’s tribal belt, eliminated by a drone strike that the US has never publicly acknowledged. The NSA used signals intelligence (SIGINT) methods to catch Ghul by secretly monitoring laptops and obtaining audio files and other messages. The agency is also thought to have levied similar efforts on other drone targets. The NSA was withholding many details about the drone-strike missions at the request of US intelligence officials, and other ongoing operations, The Washington Post reports, citing the documents provided by Edward Snowden. The documents make clear that the CIA-operated drone campaign relies heavily on the NSA's ability to vacuum up enormous quantities of e-mail, phone calls and other fragments of signals intelligence, or SIGINT, according to the newspaper.

Washington Post: Documents reveal NSA’s extensive involvement in targeted killing program
Business Insider: The NSA Has A Much Bigger Role In Drone Strikes Than We've Realized
Russia Today: Latest Snowden leak details NSA’s involvement in lethal drone strikes

How Many Constitutional Freedoms Have We Lost? - This post explains the liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights – the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution – and provides a scorecard on the extent of the loss of each right. (This is an updated version of an essay we wrote in February. Unfortunately, a lot of information has come out since then.)

President Barack Obama early on Thursday signed legislation that ends a US government shutdown and raises the US debt ceiling, the White House said. ● The US Congress has passed a bill to reopen the government and raise the federal debt limit, with hours to spare before the nation risked default. The Democratic-controlled Senate's bipartisan compromise won approval by 81 votes to 18. The deal was then passed by 285-144 in the House of Representatives, whose Republican leadership begrudgingly agreed to support the measure. It came hours before the deadline to raise the $16.7tn (£10.5tn) limit.

Reuters: U.S. Congress ends default threat, Obama signs debt bill
Russia Today: US avoids default as Congress passes deal to end shutdown
Raw Story: China downgrades U.S. credit rating and accuses lawmakers of holding world hostage
Zero Hedge: Complete House Debt Ceiling Vote Roll Call
CNS News: 150 Straight Days: Treasury Says Debt Stood Still at $16,699,396,000,000

Is there door-to-door spying by Israelis in Utah? ● Some very strange activities are occurring in America. Take the latest activity that came across my radar this morning. Perhaps you have heard about it, but most likely you have not. In a recent article by Brent Hunsaker for ABC4, online, we find that: “Sales people working neighborhoods in Northern Utah County have been asking some odd questions that have nothing to do with making the sale. Folks are reporting that they’re asking about the new National Security Agency’s data center that is being built at Camp Williams.”

Salon.com: The Israeli “art student” mystery
Raw Story: Utah residents fear ‘Israeli art students’ prying into NSA data center

A new report says Israeli settlement construction on the Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank has increased by about 70 percent. ● Israeli organization Peace Now said on Thursday that the Tel Aviv regime began the construction of 1,708 new settler units in the West Bank between January and June of 2013, compared with 995 units during the same period in 2012. The organization also stated that the new illegal settlement activities were “drastic,” and that some 50 percent of the new construction projects were started in “isolated settlements.” Most of the settlement projects were carried out within the 1967 borders, the organization added.

"Communitarianism is a collectivist philosophy that explicitly rejects individualism. It does not merely relegate individualism to a subordinate position, but is openly hostile to it. It is an ideology of 'civic society' which is nothing less than one version of Post-Marxist collectivism which wants privileges for certain wealthy and influential organized groups, and in consequence, a renewed feudalization of society." ~ Vaclav Klaus.

We are joined this week by Alaskan-based author, researcher and blogger Niki Raapana, whose investigations into the mind-bending philosophy/religion of Communitarianism led her (with her daughter Nordica Friedrich) to pen The Anti-Communitarian Manifesto and 2020: Our Common Destiny. Niki, who has adopted a traditional life-style in order to "live outside the dialectic", shares with us what triggered her investigations, and how Communitarianism - the favoured tool of globalists - is gradually effecting a dialectical reinterpretation of our world, and preparing us to accept a New World Order.

What the Communitarians Stand For.
The Corbett Report: The Anti-Communitarian Manifesto - Audio

Abstract - The Anti Communitarian Manifesto ■ In order to fully grasp the enormity of the system of global governance we faced in 1999, we started by understanding the formula for changing society. The Hegelian formula was well identified by many writers before we began our studies. What no one else had ever done before us was to identify the final synthesis in the Hegelian dialectic as communitarianism. The Anti Communitarian Manifesto is the only antithesis to communitarianism in the world.

Mark Steyn: I’m currently being sued in the DC by Dr. Michael Mann, the eminent global warm-monger, for mocking his increasingly discredited climate-change “hockey stick.” So Dr. Mann has sued for what his complaint to the court called “defamation of a Nobel prize recipient.” ● Five years ago, I and my fellow rightwing blowhard Ezra Levant were in the midst of a spirited campaign to rid Canada of its disgusting censorship laws and restore a centuries-old tradition of free speech to a land that, in the name of “human rights,” had surrendered it too easily. The Canadian Islamic Congress had brought simultaneous complaints before the federal, Ontario and British Columbia “human rights” regimes against Maclean’s magazine for publishing an excerpt from my book. Despite the advantages of triple jeopardy, they struck out all three times, and at the federal level their suit so damaged the reputation of “Section 13” (the national censorship law with a 100% conviction rate) that last year Parliament finally repealed it. But the urge to litigate disagreement is never far from the surface in contemporary discourse. So both Ezra Levant and I find ourselves back in court yet again. In my case, I’m currently being sued in the District of Columbia by Dr. Michael Mann, the eminent global warm-monger, for mocking (in America’s National Review) his increasingly discredited climate-change “hockey stick.” So Dr. Mann has sued for what his complaint to the court called “defamation of a Nobel prize recipient.” In fact, Dr. Mann is not a “Nobel prize recipient.”

Toiling in terrible conditions, no salaries for months, passports confiscated by employers – that’s the horrendous reality for migrant workers helping with preparations for the World Cup 2022 in Qatar, as revealed by German filmmaker, Peter Giesel. He and his cameraman were detained and imprisoned after they tried to investigate the story. The two went to Qatar following the publication of a report in the Guardian, claiming that workers are enduring appalling labor abuses. Giesel said that they were arrested in their hotel rooms on October 3 and taken to police headquarters. There, all their equipment was impounded, and police then took the filmmakers to the State Security prison in the suburbs of Doha. RT exclusively interviewed filmmaker Peter Giesel to find out about their experiences, and what they witnessed while covering the issue in Doha.

Patrick O’Connor: Australian treasurer pledges austerity during US trip ■ Hockey travelled to the US to participate in meetings of the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors, as well as International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank annual meetings. He met with Congressional Democrat and Republican figures, outgoing US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, and finance ministers from several countries. Hockey also scheduled meetings with the CEOs of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, before concluding his trip with discussions with leading credit ratings agencies. Hockey’s US visit had the character of a loyal servant of finance capital reporting for duty and receiving orders. It came just a month after credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s stripped Western Australia, previously the centre of the country’s mining investment boom, of its AAA status, on the basis that the state Liberal government had demonstrated “limited political will” in slashing spending.