Pepe Escobar: Digging in: Why US won’t leave Afghanistan ■ We came, we saw, we stayed. Forever. That’s the essence of the so-called Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) to be struck between the Obama administration and Afghanistan – over 12 years after the start of the never-ending War on Terror. All about pivoting to Asia: The Maliki government in Baghdad had the balls to confront the Pentagon and veto the immunity for US forces – effectively kicking out the occupying force in Iraq. Hamid Karzai, for his part, caved in on virtual every US demand. The key question in the next few months is for what; Mob-style protection if he stays in Afghanistan, or the equivalent of the FBI’s witness protection program if he moves to the US? Even assuming the Loya Jirga endorses the BSA (not yet a done deal) and Karzai’s successor signs it (with Karzai removing himself from the tight spot), to say this opens a new Pandora’s box is an understatement. The occupation, for all practical purposes, will continue. This has nothing to do with fighting the War on Terror or jihad. There’s no Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The few remnants are in Waziristan, in Pakistani territory. The US is – and will remain - essentially at war with Afghan Pashtuns who are members of the Taliban. And the Taliban will keep staging their spring and summer offensives as long as there are any foreign occupiers on Afghan soil. The drone war will continue, with the Pentagon and the CIA using these Afghan bases to attack Pashtuns in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Not to mention that these US bases, to be fully operational, need unrestricted access to the Pakistani transit routes from the Khyber Pass and the Quetta-to-Kandahar corridor. This means Islamabad keeps profiting from the scam by collecting hefty fees in US dollars. No one knows yet how the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will respond to this.

The United States lacks moral authority to condemn other nations' use of chemical weapons.

Staggering new numbers are shedding light on a critical problem in the American healthcare system. ● A recent report by the Journal of Patient Safety indicates that between 200,000 and 440,000 people are killed each year in the United States from preventable medical errors. These patients aren’t dying from the condition that forced them to go to the hospital in the first place. They’re dying from unintended mishaps. Eric Andrist is overcome with emotion as he remembers the death of his sister Cali. Andrist cared for his mentally disabled sister day and night, and recalls that once he took her to the emergency room at Providence St Joseph's in Burbank, California for a stomachache. Days later she was dead.

The deal that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the international community to strike with Tehran is basically an Iranian surrender, not a proper agreement, John Limbert, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran, tells RT.

RT: You were the highest-ranking diplomat dealing solely with Iranian issues. Given your expertise, do you see a real chance that a deal can be made?

John Limbert: I do, but it is going to take time, and it is going to take lots of patience. The rule on these things is whatever you’re going to do is going to take longer than you think. And it is going to be harder than you think.

Stephen Lendman: US hostility toward Iran over ‘sovereignty’

The American intelligence service - NSA - infected more than 50,000 computer networks worldwide with malicious software designed to steal sensitive information. Documents provided by former NSA-employee Edward Snowden and seen by this newspaper, prove this. A management presentation dating from 2012 explains how the NSA collects information worldwide. In addition, the presentation shows that the intelligence service uses ‘Computer Network Exploitation’ (CNE) in more than 50,000 locations. CNE is the secret infiltration of computer systems achieved by installing malware, malicious software. One example of this type of hacking was discovered in September 2013 at the Belgium telecom provider Belgacom. For a number of years the British intelligence service - GCHQ – has been installing this malicious software in the Belgacom network in order to tap their customers’ telephone and data traffic. The Belgacom network was infiltrated by GCHQ through a process of luring employees to a false Linkedin page.

Officials at the National Security Agency, intent on maintaining its dominance in intelligence collection, pledged last year to push to expand its surveillance powers, according to a top-secret strategy document. In a February 2012 paper laying out the four-year strategy for the N.S.A.'s signals intelligence operations, which include the agency's eavesdropping and communications data collection around the world, agency officials set an objective to "aggressively pursue legal authorities and a policy framework mapped more fully to the information age." Written as an agency mission statement with broad goals, the five-page document said that existing American laws were not adequate to meet the needs of the N.S.A. to conduct broad surveillance in what it cited as "the golden age of Sigint," or signals intelligence.

Russia Today: Latest Snowden leak reveals NSA’s goal to continually expand surveillance abilities

Ordinary Americans Have No Say, Officials Insist ● Government lawyers are demanding that the US District Court immediately throw out an ACLU lawsuit against NSA surveillance, insisting that there is no avenue by which “ordinary Americans” could even theoretically challenge its legality. The ACLU is arguing that the surveillance, involving collecting every phone record of every American, exceeds the authority the NSA has under either the Patriot Act or the Constitution. The government is arguing that only phone companies could challenge the collection orders, however, and then only in super-secret FISA courts, which have already rubber-stamped the surveillance time and again. The lawyers are also arguing that the judge himself isn’t qualified to hear questions of “national security” and that he should simply trust the administration’s officials to figure things out on their own, outside of courts.

The Guardian: NSA bulk data collection violates constitutional rights, ACLU argues

Eric London: US Congress moves to legalize unconstitutional surveillance programs ■ In the wake of damning revelations about the Obama administration’s illegal surveillance operations, Democrats and Republicans in Congress are moving forward competing bills that would both secure the indefinite use of the spying programs. The proposal with the widest Congressional support, a bill sponsored by California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss, would entrench and expand many of the most sinister features of the National Security Agency (NSA) programs. The bill would “legalize” backdoor warrantless content searches of government-collected metadata, authorize bulk record collection of phone and Internet data under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, allow for bulk data to be kept by the government for five years, and maintain non-adversarial, ex-parte judicial proceedings in the secret FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] Court [FISC]. Section 6 of the Feinstein-Chambliss bill states explicitly that the proposal “does not limit the authority of law enforcement agencies to conduct [content] queries of data acquired pursuant to Section 702 of FISA [the bulk-collection provision] for law enforcement purposes.”

Le texte mérite d'étre lu jusqu'au bout. A méditer....et c'est bien triste de vivre dans un tel monde. - Prends cinq minutes, et signe, copain. La pétition, à relayer et à signer, est là. Ça vaut le coup d'essayer, vous croyez pas? Toutes les infos et tous les chiffres m'ont été fournis par l'association Bloom, rendez-vous sur leur site vous voulez plus de précisions. (IMPORTANT : Suite à une forte adhésion du public à la pétition, les serveurs de l'association Bloom sont un peu en difficulté, si la page n'est pas accessible du premier coup, revenez quelques temps après.) Take 5 minutes, and sign this, friend. Read it in english HERE