In May 2010, when the United Nations Security Council was weighing sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, several members were undecided about how they would vote. The American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, asked the National Security Agency for help “so that she could develop a strategy,” a leaked agency document shows. The N.S.A. swiftly went to work, developing the paperwork to obtain legal approval for spying on diplomats from four Security Council members — Bosnia, Gabon, Nigeria and Uganda — whose embassies and missions were not already under surveillance. The following month, 12 members of the 15-seat Security Council voted to approve new sanctions, with Lebanon abstaining and only Brazil and Turkey voting against. Later that summer, Ms. Rice thanked the agency, saying its intelligence had helped her to know when diplomats from the other permanent representatives — China, England, France and Russia — “were telling the truth ... revealed their real position on sanctions ... gave us an upper hand in negotiations ... and provided information on various countries ‘red lines.’ ”

Snowden’s Story, Behind the Scenes: ‘No Place to Hide,’ by Glenn Greenwald

Kevin Barrett ■ USA insulting world's intelligence || Governments lie. Imperial governments construct vast empires of lies. But in the past, most official lies carried at least a thin veneer of plausibility. Today, the US government and its media echo chamber do not seem to care whether their lies are even slightly credible. The Ukraine crisis has been a non-stop festival of American lies, each one more ridiculous than the last.

At a recent debate concerning the National Security Agency’s bulk surveillance programs, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden admitted that metadata is used as the basis for killing people. “Of course knowing the content of a call can be crucial to establishing a particular threat. But metadata alone can provide an extremely detailed picture of a person’s most intimate associations and interests, and it’s actually much easier as a technological matter to search huge amounts of metadata than to listen to millions of phone calls. As NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker has said, 'metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content.' “When I quoted Baker at a recent debate at Johns Hopkins University, my opponent, General Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, called Baker’s comment 'absolutely correct,' and raised him one, asserting, ‘We kill people based on metadata.’”

Donetsk People's Republic has proclaimed itself a sovereign state and has asked Moscow to consider its accession into Russia, the Republic’s council said. ● “We, the people of Donetsk, based on results of the May 11 referendum and the declaration of sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic, declare that from now on DPR is now a sovereign state,” Republic Co-Chairman Denis Pushilin said. “Given the will of the people of the Donetsk People's Republic, and in order to restore historical justice, we ask Russia to consider the issue of our republic’s accession into the Russian Federation,” he added. Earlier on Monday the results of referendums have been announced in Donetsk and Lugansk Regions, showing the majority of voters support self-rule, amid an intensified military operation by Kiev which resulted in several deaths. Almost 90 percent of voters in Donetsk Region have endorsed political independence from Kiev.

RT.com: Moscow in no rush to respond to Donetsk People's Republic plea for accession
Stephen Lendman: Democracy Landslide in Eastern Ukraine

Contrary to what the mainstream media has tried to convince you, it's not at all a mystery how the fire started in Odessa, Ukraine and it's not at all a mystery who started it. We owe it to the victims to expose what really happened. ● On May 2nd 2014 over 40 people were murdered in Odessa Ukraine. Some eyewitnesses claim the real number is over a hundred. Some of them were burned alive. Others were strangled or beaten to death. A pregnant woman was among those killed. I'm not going to show the images of the dead bodies directly in this video because doing so would either get the video blocked or age-restricted. In the description you will find a link to a page where you can view those images if you are so inclined. I warn you though that they are truly horrific, and should not be viewed in front of children. ● Now the mainstream media and western politicians have glossed over what happened that day. They've attempted to blur the chain of events and have completely avoided condemning those responsible. Instead they've blamed the anti-Kiev protesters and Russia for the violence. ● Ah but what about the video that showed the anti-Kiev protesters firing automatic weapons during the clash? You're probably thinking about [this] video. This is the video that corporate media outlets broadcasted to the public which shows what appears to be anti-Kiev protesters firing on Maidan protesters on May 2nd. Open and shut case right? These guys brought this on themselves. If you just saw this clip that would be the obvious conclusion, however this isn't the only clip that we have. ● We have quite a bit of footage that the mainstream media isn't showing you, and that footage tells a very, very different story. Here's that same scene with the shooter video taped from another angle. Now pay close attention to the people he's with. The red arm bands these guys are wearing are supposed to symbolize the anti-Kiev contingent. In particular pay attention to this man in the brown jacket. Also take note of the padding that the man in the brown jacket is holding in his right hand. This guy with the brown jacket is important, and you'll see why when we show you the next clip. This next clip I'm going to show you first once at normal speed, then we're going to slow it down and freeze frames to point out important details. ● Now if we freeze this frame, the man in the back of the ambulance that invites the police officer to get in looks a lot like the shooter, but this is a very brief scene and the image isn't clear enough to hang a case on it. However what we see next is very clear. Remember the man with the brown suit and the odd padding that was with the contingent that was firing on the other protesters? Here he is again, helping a police officer get into that ambulance carrying that masked man. Notice the men with red arm bands with him. It turns out that we have lots of images and footage tying the police to this provocation. The officer being escorted into the ambulance was photographed and video taped from multiple angles. Witnesses have identified him as Colonel Fucheji. Here we see him and other police consulting with masked men who are presenting themselves as anti-Kiev protesters. ● Here we see an unidentified officer giving instructions to a group of these masked men. Why would the Ukrainian provisional government work with thugs presenting themselves as the opposition. Why would they stand by and allow those thugs to escalate the situation by firing into the crowd, then flee the scene with them? Doesn't that strike you as a little bit odd? This is a very old tactic. The technical term, which has been in use since the 1870d, is agent provocateur. That's French for provoking agent. Authorities use agent provocateurs when they want to manufacture a justification for a crackdown against their opponents. And boy did they capitalize on that justification in Odessa. The Maidan protesters, which eyewitnesses say outnumbered the anti-Kiev protesters 10 to 1, headed straight for the opposition's camp ground. First they burned down their tents. The anti-Kiev protesters tried to put up a defense at the door, but the Maidan crowd began throwing Molotov cocktails. Soon the building was engulfed in flames. [The next video was blocked by Google but is available here.] Here's what the scene looked like on the ground. You can hear the crowd cheering as they set the building ablaze. The Maidan can be seen beating those who try to escape. Here you can see a Maidan activist shooting at those trying to escape from the windows. There was a fire station less than a kilometer away, but they didn't intervene for hours. Why? Here's why: The Maidan crowd blockaded the fire truck and wouldn't let the firefighters operate. It's not unclear how the fire started as the mainstream media has been trying to convince you. Nor is it unclear who started the fire. Here we see a group of Maidan girls doing their part by filling up Molotov cocktails behind the scenes while the boys are busy using them to burn people alive. This wasn't a tragic accident, this was murder.

Mike Head: Washington responsible for fascist massacre in Odessa

Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, was sentenced Tuesday to six years in prison by a judge who likened him to a “traitor” for taking bribes while mayor of Jerusalem in connection with the construction of a luxury housing development. Mr. Olmert, who on Tuesday vowed to appeal his March conviction, would be the highest-ranking official in Israel’s history to serve prison time. The sentence matched the prosecutors’ request; Mr. Olmert’s lawyers had asked that he be required only to do community service. Judge David Rozen of Tel Aviv District Court said that Mr. Olmert and the nine government officials and business figures convicted alongside him had all “harmed the public trust,” and that the former prime minister deserved a harsh sentence because he is a public figure and a clever man.

White House officials confirm US is sharing satellite imagery with Nigerian government as well as using manned surveillance aircraft in hunt for more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Islamist insurgents. ● The United States has deployed surveillance aircraft over Nigeria and is working closely with the Nigerian government to find more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Islamist insurgents, a senior Obama administration official said on Monday. "We have shared commercial satellite imagery with the Nigerians and are flying manned ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) assets over Nigeria with the government's permission," the official said. The United States has sent military, law-enforcement and development experts to Nigeria to help search for the missing girls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram militants from a secondary school in Chibok in remote northeastern Nigeria on April 14.

A fifth-grader says he was terrified when a police officer pointed a gun at him and his friends while they built a tree fort. ● Omari Grant, 11, said he and his friends often play in a wooded area behind his home and were building a fort when a neighbor in the next subdivision called police to complain about what the boys were doing. But no one anticipated what Omari and his mother say happened next.

Virtually everything that you do is being watched. Do you drive a car? Do you watch television? Do you use a cell phone? As you do any of those things, information about you is being recorded and tracked. We live at a time when personal privacy is dying. And it is not just governments that are doing this. In fact, sometimes private companies are the biggest offenders. It turns out that gathering information about all of us is very, very profitable. And both government entities and private companies are going to continue to push the envelope when it comes to high tech surveillance until people start objecting to what they are trying to do. If we continue down the path that we are currently on, it is inevitable that we will end up living in an extremely restrictive “Big Brother” police state where basically everything that we do is very closely watched, monitored, tracked and controlled. And such a day may be much closer than you think. The following are 10 examples of how “Big Brother” is steadily creeping into our daily lives…

Popular TV shows such as 24, Homeland and Spooks blamed for one in three Britons condoning use of torture. ● Up to one in three Britons think torture can be justified – because of what they have seen in fictional TV shows, Amnesty International has revealed. The British public is more likely to condone torture practices than people in Russia and almost half are against an outright ban. The civil rights organisation was surprised by the results of its poll and blamed programmes such as 24, Homeland and Spooks for their glorification of ill-treatment of terror suspects and criminals. Some 29 per cent of Britons said practices such as beatings, scalding and needles rammed under fingernails could be justified if it is to protect the public – compared to 25 per cent in Russia.