Senator's tough stance against Wall Street is attracting voters on the left who are disenchanted with the party establishment. ● Not many political "rock stars" inspire audience members to knit, but, even by Washington's sedate standards, the darling of America's new left is a quiet revolutionary. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard professor turned Wall Street scourge, is one of a clutch of unlikely radicals giving hope to those disenchanted with mainstream Democrats. Hours before a rare public appearance last week, one of the largest rooms in Congress begins slowly filling up with an odd mix of groupies: policy wonks, finance geeks, Occupy activists, and, yes, the type of political conference attendee who brings their knitting in. Warren proceeds to calmly recite numbers that could inspire even librarians to storm a few barricades. The Wall Street crash has cost the US economy $14tn, she says, but its top institutions are 30% larger than before, own half the country's bank assets and are in receipt of an implicit taxpayer subsidy of $83bn a year because they are deemed too big to fail.

84.4% of Israeli religious sector supports Netanyahu's stance in disagreement with US; 58.7% of respondents against canceling sanctions. ● A poll by Yisrael HaYom this week reveals that most Israelis think that the IDF is strong enough to begin a military strike against a nuclear Iran - without US support. Over 2/3 of respondents (65%) believe that Israel should oppose a deal - which would reduce Iran's economic sanctions in exchange for a reduction in its nuclear capabilities - between Iran and the P5+1. Only 16.1% support the move. Talks for a possible deal are set to resume on November 20. More than half of respondents (52.1%) support the position of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in disagreements with the US over Iran, a number which jumps to a staggering 84.4% in the religious sector. Overall, Netanyahu's approval rating stands steady this week at 41.5%, with Opposition leader Shelly Yechimovich (Labor) at a distant second of 10%. Regarding an Israeli strike against Iran without US intervention, 52.4% of respondents support the move; 68.8% believe that the IDF has enough military might to succeed on its own.

Internet activist Jeremy Hammond who pleaded guilty to hacking servers of the private intelligence company Statfor and leaking its information to anti-secrecy site, WikiLeaks, was sentenced to ten years in jail on Friday, November 15.

The release of internal emails belonging to Strategic Forecasting Inc. or Stratfor, has become one of the most successful operations ever conducted by the hacktivist group, Anonymous, which Hammond admitted to being part of. A trove of emails attributed to Stratfor executives suggested that the private company, which employs many former officials from the CIA and other government agencies, kept close ties with the security apparatus. In particular, the emails published by WikiLeaks suggested that Stratfor was hired by private companies and government agencies alike to monitor political protesters and activists, including members of Occupy Wall Street and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). In addition to bringing attention to domestic civil liberties issues, the emails also suggested that numerous Pakistani officials knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden prior to the US raid on the Abbottabad complex, and that Russia was able to compromise the unmanned aerial vehicles Israel sold to Georgia prior to the 2008 war. After pleading guilty during the trial, Hammond released a statement admitting that he also worked with the activist group, Anonymous, to hack into other websites, including those of the military, private intelligence suppliers, law enforcement agencies, information security firms, and more. “I did this because I believe people have the right to know what government and corporations are doing behind closed doors. I did what I believe is right,” he wrote in his statement.

Wikileaks: Wikileaks releases all the Stratfor files following Hammond's sentencing [?]
Common Dreams: Jeremy Hammond: FBI Directed My Attacks on Foreign Government Sites
The Verge: LulzSec hacker sentenced to 10 years in jail for leaking Stratfor emails
Hedges: Jeremy Hammond Exposed State's Plan to Criminalize Democratic Dissent - VIDEO

Andy Worthington: New Report Condemns Role of Doctors, Psychologists and Psychiatrists as Torturers in Bush’s “War on Terror” ■ The report was published on November 5, and, as a press release explained, the task force of experts “charged that US military and intelligence agencies directed doctors and psychologists working in US military detention centers to violate standard ethical principles and medical standards to avoid infliction of harm.” Particular criticism was directed at the CIA’s Office of Medical Services, who, as the task force explained, “played a critical role in reviewing and approving forms of torture, including waterboarding, as well as in advising the Department of Justice that ‘enhanced interrogation’ methods, such as extended sleep deprivation and waterboarding that are recognized as forms of torture, were medically acceptable.” The task force added, importantly, that CIA medical personnel “were present during [the] administration of waterboarding,” which is true, but the even more alarming fact is that all the torture and abuse that was so widespread in the “war on terror” needed medical personnel to be present to make sure — or to try and make sure — that no one died.

The Central Intelligence Agency is collecting bulk records of international money transfers, including the financial and personal data of millions of Americans. ● Citing “officials familiar with the programs,” the Wall Street Journal reported that the CIA and FBI collect financial information when international transactions are filed through numerous money-transfer companies, including MoneyGram and Western Union. As with the National Security Agency’s surveillance efforts, the CIA’s actions are authorized under the 2001 Patriot Act and overseen by the same Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that has sanctioned the collection of millions of Americans’ phone records and digital data. As an agency that specializes in foreign intelligence gathering, the CIA is only permitted to target American citizens in connection to foreign activity. Officials told the WSJ that the intent of the program is to help track the flow of money financing terrorist organizations around the world.

● After years of secret trade negotiations over the future of intellectual property rights (and limits on those rights), the public gets a chance to looks at the results. For those of us who care about free speech and a balanced intellectual property system that encourages innovation, creativity, and access to knowledge, it’s not a pretty picture.
● Today [13 November 2013] Wikileaks published a complete draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement’s chapter on “intellectual property rights.” The leaked text, from August 2013, confirms long-standing suspicions about the harm the agreement could do to users’ rights and a free and open Internet. From locking in excessive copyright term limits to further entrenching failed policies that give legal teeth to Digital Rights Management (DRM) tools, the TPP text we’ve seen today reflects a terrible but unsurprising truth: an agreement negotiated in near-total secrecy, including corporations but excluding the public, comes out as an anti-user wish list of industry-friendly policies.

xymphora: Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement
Paul Craig Roberts: Trans Pacific Partnership: Corporate Escape From Accountability