USA
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More than 2,400 Dead as Obama’s Drone Campaign Marks Five Years
Five years ago, on January 23 2009, a CIA drone flattened a house in Pakistan’s tribal regions. It was the third day of Barack Obama’s presidency, and this was the new commander-in-chief’s first covert drone strike. Initial reports said up to ten militants were killed, including foreign fighters and possibly a ‘high-value target’ – a… Continue reading
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High Risk GMOs Set to Benefit from TTIP EU-US Free Trade Deal
23 January 2014 — Sustainable Pulse Today, Testbiotech has published a new report on future developments in agro-biotechnology and genetic engineering. It focuses on genetically engineered organisms pending for market authorisation in the EU and those that are in the pipeline and might soon be on the market. Continue reading
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Cracks in the alliance: Is there finally daylight between Israel and the US? By Jonathan Cook
Things have come to a strange state of affairs when Washington regards Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s far-right foreign minister, as the voice of moderation in the Israeli cabinet. Continue reading
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US embarrassment “trumps British justice” in drone victim’s case By David Swanson
The Court of Appeal today ruled that, despite Mr Khan’s arguments being “persuasive,” they accepted the British Government’s claims that the case should not proceed as “a finding by our court that the notional UK operator of a drone bomb which caused a death was guilty of murder would inevitably be understood…by the US as… Continue reading
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TPP: WikiLeaks releases the Environment Chapter
On Wednesday, 15 January 2014, WikiLeaks released a draft for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Environment Chapter. Previously, on 13 November 2013, WikiLeaks released the secret draft text of the Intellectual Property Rights Chapter. Continue reading
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The “Top 10” Surveillance Lies Edward Snowden’s Leaks Shed “Heat and Light” Upon By Lauren Harper
Despite stating he was “not going to dwell on Mr. Snowden’s actions or motivations,” the President did criticize Snowden’s “sensational” disclosures for “shedding more heat than light.” What the President did not say was that these surveillance reforms would never even have been contemplated without the Snowden revelations. In fact, these leaks did not just… Continue reading
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Video: Boston Marathon Bomb Simulators Exposed
The exposé uses footage of controlled bomb simulations and on-the-scene eyewitness testimony from Boston to suggest that the explosions appear to have originated from pyrotechnic instruments or props resembling trash cans. The purported “bombs” in fact consisted of mortars and flammable powder that generate a more-or-less benign explosion devoid of any shrapnel, a hypothesis that… Continue reading
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“One Fund Boston” and the Boston Mass Casualty Event By James F. Tracy
An integral and by now much-anticipated element of a spectacle such as the Boston Mass Casualty Event (BMCE) of April 15, 2013 involves establishment of charities through which the incident may gain legitimacy in the public mind. Such entities provide fiscal channels by which event participants may be compensated and are also vital for public… Continue reading
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The Strategic Consequences of Edward Snowden’s Revelations (I) By Dmitriy Sedov
In the final days of last year, the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor addressed the international community in a televised speech in order to once again point out the seriousness of the problem. In his speech Snowden referred to George Orwell’s novel ‘1984’, saying that the means of monitoring people described by Orwell (the… Continue reading
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Privatizing the Internet: US telecoms seek to make internet enhanced form of cable TV’
On Tuesday, January 14, the DC Court of Appeals struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) “net neutrality” rules. This is one of the fundamental principles of the internet, meaning equal access to everything online. The initiative was pushed by Verizon, the largest mobile phone operator among telecom providers, which demanded that high-speed broadband providers… Continue reading
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Climate Activists Slapped With Terrorism Charges for Devon Energy Protest By Richard Smallteacher
Two climate activists who staged a protest at the headquarters of Devon Energy, a Fortune 500 company based in Oklahoma city, have been charged with a “terrorism hoax” after black powder drifted down from a banner that they unfurled. Continue reading
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Press release: Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) – Environment Chapter
Today, 15 January 2014, WikiLeaks released the secret draft text for the entire TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Environment Chapter and the corresponding Chairs’ Report. The TPP transnational legal regime would cover 12 countries initially and encompass 40 per cent of global GDP and one-third of world trade. The Environment Chapter has long been sought by journalists… Continue reading
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Video: Corporate Deregulation To Blame for Toxic Spill in West Virginia
A toxic spill in West Virginia’s Elk River has left 300,000 local residents without water for the past week. The leak came from a storage facility for chemicals used to process coal, and it’s left many wondering if industry regulations are too lax, especially for the company responsible for the leak, Freedom Industries. Continue reading
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The West Virginia chemical disaster By Andre Damon
The release of a toxic coal-treatment chemical into the drinking water of nine counties in West Virginia, shutting off water supplies for over three hundred thousand people for five days, is the latest in a string of industrial disasters resulting from the systematic gutting of corporate regulations in the United States. Continue reading
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Fracking study finds combustible levels of methane in water after EPA gave the all clear
A report has found contaminated drinking water in parts of Texas, infuriating residents who had pressured the EPA to test for methane only to see the agency back off when the company allegedly responsible claimed that its own tests proved otherwise. Continue reading
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TAO: The NSA’s Band of Technology Criminals By Alfredo Lopez
The TAO unit, founded in 1997 and now comprised of an estimated 1,000 technologists and support staff in a half dozen offices nationwide, attacks highly selective and well-protected targets. It steals data, conducts on-line denial of service and other attacks against computers and servers in other countries (including government servers and websites), sneaks into offices… Continue reading
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U.S. Human Radiation Experiments Covered up by Public Broadcasting By William Boardman
When the military scientists of an advanced technological nation deliberately explode their largest nuclear bomb (and 66 others) over Pacific islands and use the opportunities to study the effects of radiation on nearby native people, which group is best described as “savage”? And what should you call the people who prevent a documentary about these… Continue reading
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American and British Spy Agencies Have INTENTIONALLY Weakened Security for Many Decades
Norway’s largest newspaper (Aftenposten) reports today that British spies pressured the developers of cellphone standards in the 1980s to intentionally weaken the cellphone’s encryption. In other words, hackers can break into cellphone calls much more easily because the British spies intentionally made the encryption 1,000 times weaker than it otherwise would have been. Continue reading