Wed Jun 19 2013

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International Issues : Recent Articles

Boozing it up in the UK with the NSA
by Lawrence Richards
Continuing its string of highly damaging revelations about British and American surveillance operations, the Guardian has released leaked documents showing that the British government spied on finance ministers and diplomats at the G20 talks in 2009. The new evidence was leaked by Edward Snowden, the Booz Allen whistleblower currently in hiding in Hong Kong.
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Has Twitter been retweeting your every move to the NSA all along?
by Gerry Bello and Lawrence Richards
Since the beginning of the current privacy scandal, Twitter has been careful to brand itself as a champion of privacy rights – but are they? As other tech titans first denied complicity, then joined together seeking permission to discuss it in the compliant American media, Twitter remained outside the fray.
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The national security state thanks you for your participation
by Gerry Bello
On a cold night in January 1990 in Berlin, a mob of angry citizens and western intelligence agents struck a blow for freedom. They stormed the headquarters of Stasi, the secret police service of the GDR. Guards were beaten, furniture was thrown, files were stolen, files were destroyed. The most effective and pervasive apparatus of surveillance the world has known until today was exposed and dismantled.
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How the Pentagon removes entire peoples
by David Swanson
If we think at all about our government's military depopulating territory that it desires, we usually think of the long-ago replacement of native Americans with new settlements during the continental expansion of the United States westward.
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America in the eye of Sauron
by Gerry Bello
In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the great good wizard Saruman becomes slowly corrupted by a malign influence named Sauron. Hoping to look into the future, the distance and the past he gazes into a magical crystal ball called a palantir. He finds Sauron's great unblinking eye looking back at him, bending his will, subverting him, causing him to both compete with Sauron and become just like him. He slowly breeds foul creatures and converts his citadel of Isengard into a replica of the great furnace factory of death that is Sauron's own seat of power at Mount Doom.
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Real law abiding patriotic cell phone subscribers tell Uncle Sam what they had for lunch
by Gerry Bello
The Guardian.uk recently released a classified court order [pdf] detailing U.S. Justice Department instructions to Verizon Wireless to release information on their entire domestic customer base. While the actual recordings of calls were not released under this order, the government acquired data that includes who called whom, how long they spoke for, and up to the minute location data on every single subscriber.
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Obama must see Africa in new light
by Rev. Jesse Jackson
When President Obama and the first lady travel to Africa at the end of this month, they will receive a rapturous greeting. The president’s deep roots in Kenya, the land of his father, resonate throughout the continent. His success in the United States evokes pride and joy in Africa.
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China escalates drug war into southeast Asia's Mekong River
by Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- After executing four killers from Thailand, Laos and Myanmar last year, China's security forces have extended their reach by uniting those countries along the Mekong River in a "war on drugs" and arrested 812 people in the narcotics-rich Golden Triangle.
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Racism at the heart of fight among Buddhists and Muslims
by Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Buddhists and Muslims are clashing with increasing ferocity in Myanmar, Thailand and Sri Lanka where minority Islamic ethnic groups blame racism by majority Buddhists more than religious intolerance.
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Boston Suspect's Writing on the Wall
by Ray McGovern
Quick, somebody tell CIA Director John Brennan about the handwriting on the inside wall of the boat in which Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding before Boston-area police riddled it and him with bullets. Tell Brennan that Tsarnaev's note is in plain English and that it needs neither translation nor interpretation in solving the mystery: "why do they hate us?"
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