It is just a technical matter, the Obama administration says: We just need to make a slight change in a law to make clear that we have the right to see the names of anyone’s e-mail correspondents and their Web browsing history without the messy complication of asking a judge for permission.

It is far more than a technical change. The administration’s request, reported Thursday in The Washington Post, is an unnecessary and disappointing step backward toward more intrusive surveillance from a president who promised something very different during the 2008 campaign. Read the rest of this entry »

(BaldwinLive) – The Monday, July 19, 2010, edition of The Washington Post featured an investigative report entitled “Top Secret America,” with the subtitle, “A hidden world, growing beyond control.” The report begins, “The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

“These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

“The investigation’s other findings include: Read the rest of this entry »

(RawStory) – In yet another terrifying expose, The Washington Post continues to lift the veil on just how massive the US government’s spying operation has become.

Dana Priest — whose Pulitzer prize winning journalism exposed the existence of  U.S. secret prisons abroad, continues in today’s story to show just how much money is being shelled out to the private companies that now operate the lion’s share of America’s spy network. Read the rest of this entry »

(Boston) – The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy, and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it, or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

Other findings include: Read More Here

(WashingtonPost) – The government has built a national security and intelligence system so big, so complex and so hard to manage, no one really knows if it’s fulfilling its most important purpose: keeping its citizens safe. View More Here

(WorldCantWait) – Casualty figures are still arriving in the wake of Israel’s Sunday night-Monday morning commando attack on an unarmed flotilla trying to bring relief supplies to the 1.5 million Palestinians crowded into Gaza.

Already, at least nine civilian passengers aboard the ships are reported killed, and dozens wounded.

Yet, seldom has an act of aggression been so well advertised in advance. Israel had made clear that it would use force to prevent the ships from reaching Gaza and heard no stern protest from President Obama, who apparently could not overcome his fear of Israel’s legendary political clout. Read the rest of this entry »

(WorldCantWait) – Casualty figures are still arriving in the wake of Israel’s Sunday night-Monday morning commando attack on an unarmed flotilla trying to bring relief supplies to the 1.5 million Palestinians crowded into Gaza.

Already, at least nine civilian passengers aboard the ships are reported killed, and dozens wounded.

Yet, seldom has an act of aggression been so well advertised in advance. Israel had made clear that it would use force to prevent the ships from reaching Gaza and heard no stern protest from President Obama, who apparently could not overcome his fear of Israel’s legendary political clout. Read the rest of this entry »

(Truthout) – Iraq war veteran Eric Jasinski, after seeking treatment for his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is being punished by the Army.

Jasinski turned himself in to the Army late last year, after having gone absent without leave (AWOL) in order to seek help for his PTSD. Help, he told Truthout, he was not receiving from the Army, even after requesting assistance on multiple occasions. Read the rest of this entry »

(C4L) – The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein (who has not come out either for, or against, an audit of the Fed) raises the same question many of us at Campaign for Liberty had when looking at the Sanders amendment…

The amended version of Audit the Fed passed the Senate 96 to 0 today. A version that was closer to the original — that is to say, it would’ve created a regular audit rather than a one-time audit — lost, 37 to 62. I’m a bit confused by a world in which 96 senators think we need to know what the Fed did in 2008 and 2009 but only 37 think we’ll need to know what the Fed did in 2012 and 2013.

What the Sanders amendment really called for was a mere one-time disclosure of some emergency lending powers used by the Federal Reserve during the most recent fiscal crisis, not an audit. Read the rest of this entry »

(SteveWatson) – The Federal Reserve is secretly engaged in an intense lobbying effort in an attempt to stave off moves to have the Government Accountability Office audit it, internal documents reveal.

The Huffington Post has obtained the documents, which were distributed to Senate offices by a Fed official, whose identity the online news site agreed not to reveal. Read the rest of this entry »

(SteveWatson) – In the same breath Pulitzer prize winning dinosaur decries use of “loaded” rhetoric Read the rest of this entry »

(PublicIntelligence) – Public Intelligence has received a request from FEMA to remove a “For Official Use Only” document regarding the National Level Exercise 2010 (NLE 10), which was scheduled for this coming May. The exercise was to be based on National Planning Scenario 1 which simulates a nuclear detonation in a U.S. city. However, recent political pressure has led to the exercise being “scaled back” according to the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and a variety of other publications. At the behest of Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), the exercise’s Nevada events have reportedly been canceled and the FEMA website now shows no mention of NLE 10. Read the rest of this entry »

(Business&MediaInstitute) – Last year many Americans were convinced the H1N1 virus, commonly called the swine flu, would turn into a pandemic. That’s no surprise given the fear mongering media.

News media helped make the case for the government to rush a vaccine and the government spent over a billion dollars producing those vaccinations. But now, according to the April 1, 2010 Washington Post millions of vaccines are still unused – 71.5 million vaccinations will soon expire and may even have to be thrown away. Read the rest of this entry »

(NorCalTruth) – What Really Happened on September 11th?
You didn’t see anything about it in the mainstream media, but two weeks ago at a conference in San Francisco, more than one thousand architects and engineers signed a petition demanding that Congress begin a new investigation into the destruction of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11. Read the rest of this entry »

(AlJazeera) – Jesse’s latest book is American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies that the Government Tells Us Read the rest of this entry »

(PaulWatson) – Whitewash fails to mention that deal to build nuclear bomb was offered by the Bush administration’s favorite peddler of weapons of mass destruction Read the rest of this entry »

(ForeignPolicyJournal) – An editorial in the Washington Post yesterday slammed Japanese member of parliament Yukihisa Fujita because he “seems to think that America’s rendering of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, is a gigantic hoax.” His “ideas” about the terrorist attacks “are too bizarre, half-baked and intellectually bogus to merit serious discussion.” Read the rest of this entry »

(C4L) – The Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote “Oh what a gift a gift to gie us, to see ourselves as others see us.” Burns could not have possibly predicted a hubris ridden twenty-first century America not much given to introspection, but there were certainly enough examples of over mighty kings and princes in his own time for him to draw upon. Read the rest of this entry »

(MotherJones) – Does John Kerry have good reason to be so optimistic about a climate bill? The Washington Post reports that he’s getting strong signals that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants a bill ASAP, indicating that senators might be closer to a deal on climate and energy than many people around Washington have assumed. Read the rest of this entry »

(DenverPost) – Haitians are piling bodies along the devastated streets of their capital after a powerful earthquake flattened the president’s palace and the main prison, the cathedral, hospitals, schools and thousands of homes. Untold numbers are still trapped. Read the rest of this entry »

By 1967, King had become the country’s most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 — a year to the day before he was murdered — King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
Time magazine called the speech “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi,” and the Washington Post declared that King had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.” Read the rest of this entry »

American military personnel are continuing to take their own lives in unprecedented numbers, as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq wars drag on. By late November, at least 334 members of the armed forces had committed suicide in 2009, more than the 319 who were killed in Afghanistan or the 150 who died in Iraq. While a final figure is not available, the toll of military suicides last year was the worst since records began to be kept in 1980. Read the rest of this entry »

(AFP) – The US Post Office could play a key role in distributing medical aid in the event of a biological attack, according to an executive order released by the White House. Read the rest of this entry »

(PressTV) – As Western powers batten down the hatches and prepare sanctions against Tehran, a senior Russian official says there still is no proof of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Read the rest of this entry »

(JerusalemPost) – In face of the growing missile threat against Israel, the IDF Home Front Command and the US National Guard have decided to exchange liaisons to enable a steady exchange of information on civil defense, The Jerusalem Post has learned. Read the rest of this entry »

(WashingtonPost) – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Friday that world powers will soon impose “significant additional sanctions” on Iran over its failure to engage in talks on its nuclear ambitions. Read the rest of this entry »

US Army Specialist Lateef Al-Saraji, a decorated combat veteran, came back from the occupation of Iraq with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Read the rest of this entry »

(CNN) – Agency continues to lose money despite $6 billion in cost-cutting measures, and proposes that it drop Saturday delivery. Read the rest of this entry »

Richard Gage’s comments after a delegation met with Senator Feinstein’s staff to present the evidence that the World Trade Center was destroyed by explosives on 9/11/2001. Read the rest of this entry »

(JPost) – If world powers are not successful in efforts to contain the Iranian nuclear threat, an Israeli strike on Iran could become a reality, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said during a visit to Beirut, the Daily Telegraph reported Monday. Read the rest of this entry »

(RawStory) – A little-noticed tidbit in Saturday’s Washington Post is sure to raise eyebrows among liberal supporters of a gorvernment-run healthcare plan: the plan is likely to be administered by a private insurance company, the very companies that progressive activists are trying to unseat. Read the rest of this entry »

(RawStory) – A little-noticed tidbit in Saturday’s Washington Post is sure to raise eyebrows among liberal supporters of a gorvernment-run healthcare plan: the plan is likely to be administered by a private insurance company, the very companies that progressive activists are trying to unseat. Read the rest of this entry »

“A new online computer game attempts to capitalize on the current strain of right-wing paranoia and activism, embodied by Glenn Beck’s televised blustering and the Tea Party protests, by allowing players to inhabit a world of the near-future that represents a conservative nightmare,” writes Eric Sorensen for The Huffington Post. Read the rest of this entry »

The postal workers’ struggle is as vital for democracy as any national event in recent years. The campaign against them is part of a historic shift from the last vestiges of political democracy in Britain to a corporate world of insecurity and war. If the privateers running the Post Office are allowed to win, the regression that now touches all lives bar the wealthy will quicken its pace. A third of British children now live in low-income or impoverished families. One in five young people is denied hope of a decent job or education. Read the rest of this entry »

(RawStory) – A Washington Post report published Sunday is drawing a wave of cheers across the Internet for revealing what is being hailed as “the truth” about Iran’s nuclear program. Read the rest of this entry »

(RawStory) – A Washington Post report published Sunday is drawing a wave of cheers across the Internet for revealing what is being hailed as “the truth” about Iran’s nuclear program. Read the rest of this entry »

(NYPost) – Ben Bernanke’s dollar crisis went into a wider mode yesterday as the greenback was shockingly upstaged by the euro and yen, both of which can lay claim to the world title as the currency favored by central banks as their reserve currency. Read the rest of this entry »

(NYPost) – Ben Bernanke’s dollar crisis went into a wider mode yesterday as the greenback was shockingly upstaged by the euro and yen, both of which can lay claim to the world title as the currency favored by central banks as their reserve currency. Read the rest of this entry »

(JPost) – Iran’s central bank governor says the country gained “big profits” by shifting its foreign currency reserve basket from the US dollar to the euro. Read the rest of this entry »

(JPost) – Iran’s central bank governor says the country gained “big profits” by shifting its foreign currency reserve basket from the US dollar to the euro. Read the rest of this entry »

To Mr. Dan Haley October 8, 2009
Denver Post Editorial Page Editor
Since we have not heard back from you after sending this letter, and after several phone calls to which you have not responded, we have chosen to publish our letter as an open letter. Read the rest of this entry »

So now it turns out that the whole Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was a flop or more likely a scam. Remember Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson telling us last September that credit markets had locked up, and then, after half of the $750 billion that he extorted out of Congress was handed out to Wall Street firms, new President Barack Obama justifying the spending of the second half of the money because we needed to “get the banks lending again”? Read the rest of this entry »

(JPost) – Israel needs to make every effort to stop the S-300 missile defense system from reaching countries where the air force may need to fly, IAF commander Maj.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan has told The Jerusalem Post in an exclusive interview. Read the rest of this entry »

The right-wing accusations against Barack Obama are true. He is a socialist, although he practices socialism for corporations. He is squandering the country’s future with deficits that can never be repaid. He has retained and even bolstered our surveillance state to spy on Americans. He is forcing us to buy into a health care system that will enrich corporations and expand the abuse of our for-profit medical care. He will not stanch unemployment. He will not end our wars. He will not rebuild the nation. He is a tool of the corporate state. Read the rest of this entry »

(HuffingtonPost) – Breaking Down the Under-Oath Disclosures of the Formerly-Gagged Sibel Edmonds…
It has now been over a week since the video tape and transcript from the remarkable 8/8/09 deposition of former FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds was publicly released. Previously, the Bush Administration invoked the so-called “state secrets privilege” in order to gag Edmonds, in attempting to keep such information from becoming public. Read the rest of this entry »