By John R. MacArthur merican democracy now seems to be dead. Yet while party bosses backed by billionaires and corporate lobbyists snuff out any effort at serious reform, and President Obama prevaricates on all the great issues of the day, two vital national arguments have erupted that might […]
From Lingit Latseen r by Frank Hopper As the not guilty verdict of George Zimmerman was announced on July 13 I couldn’t help thinking about a similar shooting here in Seattle that was also caused by racial profiling, the shooting of First Nations carver John T. Williams by […]
From Malcolm X Grassroots Movement Proposed Next Steps for the National Justice for Trayvon Martin Movement Tuesday, July 16, 2013 Major Action We call for a massive mobilization to shut down either Tallahassee or Sanford, Florida in August or September to: a) present a comprehensive set of structural […]
Radley Balko is interviewed by Lucy Steigerwald High-profile police response to terrorism threats – as in the case of the Boston bombing – grab headlines, but it wasn’t the paranoias of our post-9/11 world that made cops often indistinguishable from an army. It started earlier. It started with […]
The Guardian Hello. My name is Ed Snowden. A little over one month ago, I had family, a home in paradise, and I lived in great comfort. I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications. Anyone’s communications at any time. […]
American Civil Liberties Union As Congress considers the nomination of James B. Comey to lead the FBI for the next ten years, lawmakers should examine measures to rein in a bureau that has undermined civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism. This is a false trade off: […]
washingtonpost.com By Juan Forero Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, October 5, 2009 Julio Cesar Rivas, 22, spent about three weeks in jail after taking part in a protest. He was released last Monday and launched a hunger strike to protest jailings of dissenters. (By Juan Forero — The […]
The Guardian Army Pfc Bradley Manning is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Maryland. Photograph: Jose Luis Magana/AP The lack of contemporaneous access to court documents has caused irreparable harm to the American public’s right to scrutinize the conduct of military prosecutors and the rulings of […]
By Stephen Walt Every year on the Fourth of July I sit down and read the Declaration of Independence. It’s a habit I got into some years ago, but I take a peculiar pleasure in reading through the founding principles of the American Revolution, archaic language and all. […]
By Jason Ditz US whistleblower Edward Snowden is stuck in the international section of a Moscow airport today, but that problem may be coming to an end as three nations have offered him asylum in the past 24 hours, all of them South American. Venezuela and Nicaragua came […]
By Diana Johnstone The Snowden affair has revealed even more about Europe than about the United States. Certainly, the facts of NSA spying are significant. But many people suspected that something of the sort was going on. The refusal of France, Italy and Portugal to allow the private […]
By Gary Leupp I don’t have a weak stomach, but I confess that watching TV news does get me nauseated. So I do so sparingly. I have of course been following the coverage of the Edward Snowden story, just to see how opinion is being shaped. In the […]
spiegel.de Jakob Augstein [AFP] People around the world were shocked to learn of the extent of US snooping. This anti-Obama poster comes from Hong Kong. Is Barack Obama a friend? Revelations about his government’s vast spying program call that assumption into doubt. The European Union must protect the […]
The Libertarian Republic Don’t talk to cops! But if you do, this is what you say… It seems like every day we see a new video emerge where a citizen almost immediately surrenders their 4th or 5th amendment rights. Free people need to know their rights in order […]
Russia Today A teenager from Texas could spend the next eight years in prison if a court decides that the sarcastic comment he made during an online argument is enough to convict him of issuing a terroristic threat. Justin Carter was only 18 years old when he and […]
By Justin Raimondo Amid all the drama over Edward Snowden‘s flight from “justice” – the media stakeout at a Moscow airport, the smear campaign aimed not only at Snowden but at Glenn Greenwald, the reporter who broke the PRISM/eavesdropping story, and the obsessive media focus on Snowden as […]
I’m not going to lie to you: I’m an American. I was born in the very cultural heart and soul of this blessed land — I mean Oklahoma, of course — and I have lived here for nearly seventy years, never residing abroad for more than six months […]
CNN Editor’s note: Convicted spy Christopher Boyce was jailed for 40 years for espionage in 1977 after selling U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union. In 1985, his story was turned into a Hollywood film — “The Falcon and the Snowman” – starring Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton. Released […]
CNN FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged the law enforcement agency uses drone aircraft in the United States for surveillance in certain difficult cases. Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that drones are used by the FBI in a “very, very minimal way and very seldom.” He […]
Antifascist Calling Ongoing revelations by The Guardian and The Washington Post of massive, illegal secret state surveillance of the American people along with advanced plans for waging offensive cyberwarfare on a global scale, including inside the US, underscores what Antifascist Calling has reported throughout the five years of […]
By Dana Milbank Where have all the liberals gone? President Obama, who as a Democratic senator accused the Bush administration of violating civil liberties in the name of security, now vigorously defends his own administration’s collection of Americans’ phone records and Internet activities. Hundreds of people marched to […]
By Justin Raimondo On a visit to Washington a couple of months ago, I was surprised to discover Politico has a dead-tree edition: there it was at the local Starbucks alongside the Washington Post and the New York Times, right next to the double-chocolate scones. As assorted government […]
Riding the Tiger Note: This article was contributed by guest author James C. Quinn, a Canadian citizen residing in Seoul, Korea. The views herein do not necessarily reflect the views of RidingTheTiger or its authors. The case of Edward Snowden has recently become international news. Snowden, a 30-year old […]
washingtonpost.com Peter Finn and Sari Horwitz Federal prosecutors have filed a criminal complaint against Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a trove of documents about top-secret surveillance programs, and the United States has asked Hong Kong to detain him on a provisional arrest warrant, […]
aclu.org Allie Bohm Montana just made history. It recently enacted the first state law in the nation (sponsored by Rep. Daniel Zolnikov (R-Billings)) requiring law enforcement to obtain a probable-cause warrant before tracking an individual based on his or her cell phone location information, social networking check-ins, or […]
techdirt.com Mike Masnick There’s been plenty of commentary concerning the latest NSA leak concerning its FISA court-approved “rules” for when it can keep data, and when it needs to delete it. As many of you pointed out in the comments to that piece — and many others are […]
By Justin Raimondo The widely noted poll showing Democrats are now the biggest cheerleaders for the Surveillance State has conservatives delightedly calling out the left for “hypocrisy,” noting with glee the leftie pundits who denounced George W. Bush’s administration for trampling on our civil liberties and are now […]
By Glenn Greenwald James Clapper, on Saturday decried the release of the information and said media reports about it have been inaccurate Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
By Michael Scheuer More than a decade ago, Osama bin Laden appeared in a brief video to speak about several issues. One of them was to advise the Islamic world that they should expect the U.S. military to be defeated by Islam, the Taleban, and its allies in […]
By Daniel Ellsberg In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden’s whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of […]
By John Whitehead There is a deep and abiding sense of unease permeating American society. From the IRS targeting politically conservative groups to the Department of Justice targeting journalists for surveillance, from the revelation that the National Security Agency (NSA) is tracking the telephone calls of most Americans […]
The Guardian The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA’s history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows • Q&A with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: ‘I do not expect to see home again’ Link to video: […]
forbes.com Andy Greenberg Icelandic legislator and Icelandic Modern Media Initiative co-founder Birgitta Jonsdottir When WikiLeaks burst onto the international stage in 2010, the small Nordic nation of Iceland offered it a safe haven. Now American whistleblower Edward Snowden may be seeking that country’s protection, and at least one […]
Political Outcast Surprise is actually the name of a city in Arizona. When you read a news article about an incident there, you keep waiting for some kind of punch line. In Surprise, Arizona, there was a Surprise man who was arrested by Surprise police officers. The surprise […]
By John Whitehead “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.” ~ A senior intelligence official previously involved with the Utah Data Center The recent revelation that the National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting the telephone records of millions of Verizon customers, with the complete blessing of the […]
Independent Institute Today the Court decided Maryland v. King, and held that if the police have probable cause to make an arrest for a “serious offense” they may also as a matter of course use a cotton swab to take the arrestee’s DNA. The Court said that this was a legitimate […]
New York Daily News Frank Eltman Monday, Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice announced the arrest of 104 men on charges of soliciting a prostitute at a news conference.
The Guardian Under the terms of the order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data and the time and duration of all calls. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US […]
Mike the Mad Biologist Or perhaps I should write persecuted? Recently, I discussed how the poor are prosecuted simply for being poor. The story of Methodist pastor Lorenza Andrade-Smith, who, in ministering to the homeless, sold her belongings and renounced her health insurance, provides a shocking example of […]
CNN Officer Richard DeCoatsworth stands beside Michelle Obama during a presidential speech in 2009. STORY HIGHLIGHTS Richard DeCoatsworth took a shotgun blast to the face in the line of duty in 2007 Wounded, he pursued the assailant and called for backup, who caught the gunman He was honored […]
Miami New Times Ever since police unloaded 115 rounds into a car driven by 22-year-old Palm Beach man Raymond Herisse on Memorial Day weekend two years ago — a firefight that wounded five bystanders and was caught on video — a key question has been, What triggered that […]
By John Whitehead “[F]orce alone cannot make us safe. We cannot use force everywhere that a radical ideology takes root; and in the absence of a strategy that reduces the well-spring of extremism, a perpetual war – through drones or Special Forces or troop deployments – will prove […]
The Daily Sheeple In a statement released from a Philadelphia federal prison, former marine and now imprisoned activist Adam Kokesh called for a new American revolution, complete with an American Revolutionary Army that would march on all 50 state capitals to put the federal government on notice.
CBS Seattle An Oregon woman was told by a 911 dispatcher that authorities wouldn’t be able be able to help her as her ex-boyfriend broke into her place because of budget cuts. Oregon Public Radio reports that an unidentified woman called 911 during a weekend in August 2012 […]
By Mark Crovelli No single issue in the American political arena illustrates the similarity of American liberals and American conservatives than the issue of gun control. This claim will no doubt appear counterintuitive, because conservatives and liberals have been bickering over gun rights for as long as anyone […]
Antiwar.com is taking the FBI to court! We demand records regarding surveillance of Antiwar.com. One FBI memo called us “a threat to national security.” We’re Americans engaged in peaceful, constitutionally protected activity: what used to be called journalism. The FBI must admit this, and promise to cease and […]
By Lucy Steigerwald This | Comment Photo credit: Cherri Gregg/via CBS Philly The 1993 Waco siege is often categorized as one of the more violent, militaristic, domestic actions by U.S. law enforcement in recent memory. And it should be. At the Branch Davidian’s “compound” a fatal combination of government arrogance, fear, impatience, […]
Libertarian Alliance The Beeb woke me at the crack of dawn to deal with these fatuous and endlessly-recycled lies about the tendency of porn to turn good men into sex-crazed zombies. Don’t be surprised if I sound as bored here as I felt. The most interesting thing for […]
Rand Paul epitomizes why we need revolutionary anarchism, not “constitutional conservatism.” Reason.Com In preparation for a 2016 presidential run, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is courting evangelical leaders. And we all know what that means! It’s time to throw those hedonistic, libertine, drug-obsessed libertarians under the bus. The Washington Post reports on […]
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson
Recent Comments