Entities

Secrets and lies

by News Sources 03.30.2012

Andrew Rosenthal writes: Governments have good reasons for keeping secrets – to protect soldiers in battle, or nuclear launch codes, or the identities of intelligence sources, undercover agents and witnesses against the mob. (Naturally that’s not an exhaustive list.) Governments also have bad reasons for keeping secrets – to avoid embarrassment, evade oversight or escape [...]

Read the full article →

U.S. Navy program to study how troops use intuition

by Paul Woodward 03.28.2012

The New York Times reports: The United States Navy has started a program to investigate how members of the military can be trained to improve their “sixth sense,” or intuitive ability, during combat and other missions. The idea for the project comes in large part from the testimony of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan who [...]

Read the full article →

The GOP’s woman problem

by News Sources 03.26.2012

Frank Rich writes: At the time, back in January in New Hampshire, it didn’t seem like that big a deal, certainly nothing to rival previous debate flash points like “9-9-9” and “Oops!” But in retrospect it may have been one of the more fateful twists of the Republican presidential campaign. The exchange was prompted by [...]

Read the full article →

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood push for Palestinian unity

by News Sources 03.25.2012

The New York Times reports: As it prepares to take power in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is overhauling its relations with the two main Palestinian factions in an effort to put new pressure on Israel for an independent Palestinian state. Officials of the Brotherhood, Egypt’s dominant Islamist movement, are pressing its militant Palestinian offshoot, Hamas, [...]

Read the full article →

Will Democrats strip civil liberties from their 2012 platform?

by News Sources 03.25.2012

Conor Friedersdorf writes: Four years ago, the last time the Democrats adopted a platform, their presidential candidate championed civil liberties, insisted that closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay would make us safer from terrorists, and righteously denounced the expansive Bush-Cheney understanding of executive power. Said the official 2008 platform contemporaneously adopted by Democratic delegates (links [...]

Read the full article →

Video: Qatari agenda drove Al Jazeera coverage of Bahrain says journalist who resigned in protest

by News Sources 03.24.2012

Share

Read the full article →

Video: Palestinian on hunger strike “in mortal danger”

by News Sources 03.24.2012

Share

Read the full article →

U.S. to keep intelligence data on Americans with no terror ties

by News Sources 03.23.2012

The Associated Press reports: The U.S. intelligence community will now be able to store information about Americans with no ties to terrorism for up to five years under new Obama administration guidelines. Until now, the National Counterterrorism Center had to immediately destroy information about Americans that was already stored in other government databases when there [...]

Read the full article →

NSA chief denies domestic spying but whistleblowers say otherwise

by News Sources 03.23.2012

James Bamford writes: In a rare break from the NSA’s tradition of listening but not speaking, NSA chief General Keith Alexander was grilled Tuesday on the topic of eavesdropping on Americans in front of a House subcommittee. The questioning from Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) was prompted by Wired’s cover story this month on the NSA’s [...]

Read the full article →

Democrats press Obama over U.S. complicity with Honduras’ dirty war

by News Sources 03.23.2012

Mark Weisbrot writes: Hondurans are still suffering from the effects of the June 2009 military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of President Manuel Zelaya. The coup has unleashed a wave of violence against political opposition, journalists, small farmers and others, with impunity for the security forces that have been implicated in these killings. [...]

Read the full article →

Video: Al Jazeera journalist explains resignation over Syria and Bahrain coverage

by News Sources 03.21.2012

Share

Read the full article →

StratforLeaks: Google Ideas director involved in ‘regime change’

by News Sources 03.20.2012

Al-Akhbar reports: Top Google execs, including the company’s CEO and one of Barack Obama’s major presidential campaign donors Eric Schmidt, informed the intelligence agency Stratfor about Google’s activities and internal communication regarding “regime change” in the Middle East, according to Stratfor emails released by WikiLeaks and obtained by Al-Akhbar. The other source cited was Google’s [...]

Read the full article →

Hamas leader calls for Palestinian unity after talks in Turkey

by News Sources 03.18.2012

Today’s Zaman reports: Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal has called for a unity agreement between Palestinian factions, saying peace is mandatory for Palestinians who are united in fighting Israeli occupation. Mashaal, speaking on Sunday after talks with Turkish leaders, dismissed rivalry between Palestinian groups as a “conspiracy” targeting the Palestinians. “We want to open a new [...]

Read the full article →

Video: America’s problem with UNESCO

by News Sources 03.18.2012

Share

Read the full article →

Senators say Americans would be ‘stunned’ by Obama administration’s secret application of Patriot Act

by News Sources 03.16.2012

The New York Times reports: For more than two years, a handful of Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee have warned that the government is secretly interpreting its surveillance powers under the Patriot Act in a way that would be alarming if the public — or even others in Congress — knew about it. On [...]

Read the full article →

Video: Lawrence Wilkerson — Obama, Panetta and Holder undermine basic constitutional rights

by News Sources 03.16.2012

Share

Read the full article →

The NSA is building the country’s biggest spy center targeting all communication everywhere

by News Sources 03.16.2012

James Bamford writes: Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the [...]

Read the full article →

Escalation is good for Israel

by News Sources 03.11.2012

Zvi Bar’el writes: Advocates of a strike on Iran couldn’t have hoped for a more convincing performance than the current exchange of fire between Israel and Gaza. “A million Israelis under fire” is only a taste of what is expected when Iran’s nuclear project is completed. When that happens, seven million Israelis will be under [...]

Read the full article →

Obama’s kill doctrine

by News Sources 03.11.2012

Jonathan Turley writes: On Monday, March 5, Northwestern University School of Law was the location of an extraordinary scene for a free nation. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder presented President Barack Obama’s claim that he has the authority to kill any U.S. citizen he considers a threat. It served as a retroactive justification for the [...]

Read the full article →

How Israelis tried to kill Anthony Shadid in 2002

by News Sources 03.10.2012

David Kindred writes: Until the Israeli sniper shot him, it had been a good day. Shadid’s notebook was full because he had been eyewitness to a drama that was a perfect metaphor for the latest Israel-Palestine war. He started a long walk back to the hotel. There he would write for his newspaper, The Boston [...]

Read the full article →

Why Hamas is not Iran’s proxy

by News Sources 03.08.2012

Tareq Baconi writes: Hamas officials have said that in the event of a war between Iran and Israel, they will not become involved on Tehran’s side. While this is not surprising, other officials within the movement were quick to deny such reports. Historically, Hamas has always gone to great lengths to assert its independence from [...]

Read the full article →

NSA whistle-blower: Obama ‘worse than Bush’

by News Sources 03.08.2012

Matthew Harwood writes: Thomas Drake, the whistle-blower whom the Obama administration tried and failed to prosecute for leaking information about waste, fraud and abuse at the National Security Agency, now works at an Apple store in Maryland. In an interview with Salon, Drake laughed about the time he confronted Attorney General Eric Holder at his [...]

Read the full article →

America and the imperialism of ignorance

by News Sources 03.05.2012

Rory Stewart reviews America and the Imperialism of Ignorance: US Foreign Policy Since 1945, by Andrew Alexander. What was the Cold War? For Professor John Lewis Gaddes, it was a conflict between two incompatible systems, democracy and communism, each with a different vision of liberty and human purpose. The result was a potential third world [...]

Read the full article →

Hamas rattles the Resistance Axis

by News Sources 03.04.2012

Rami G Khouri writes: The decision last week by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas to abandon its external headquarters in Damascus and support Syrians demonstrating for the removal of Bashar Assad’s regime is noteworthy on several levels. All of them affirm the vulnerable and changing nature of strategic conditions across the Middle East. The decision [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →