HOW CAN USA CLAIM NSA SPYING AIMED AT TERRORISTS WHEN NATIONS LEADERS DATA COLLECTED?

From Glenn Greenwald: ” [Is] there any doubt at all that the US government repeatedly tried to mislead the world when insisting that this system of suspicionless surveillance was motivated by an attempt to protect Americans from The Terrorists™? Our reporting has revealed spying on conferences designed to negotiate economic agreements, the Organization of American States, oil companies, ministries that oversee mines and energy resources, the democratically elected leaders of allied states, and entire populations in those states….” (Link to story below)

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/25/europe-erupts-nsa-spying-chief-government?CMP=ema_follow

SNOWDEN NSA DOCUMENTS CONTAIN SECRETS ON COOPERATION BETWEEN COUNTRIES, USA REVEALS

From the Washington Post — ”The notifications come as the Obama administration is scrambling to placate allies after allegations that the NSA has spied on foreign leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The reports have forced the administration to play down operations targeting friends while also attempting to preserve other programs that depend on provisional partners. In either case, trust in the United States may be compromised….” (Link to story below)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/officials-alert-foreign-services-that-snowden-has-documents-on-their-cooperation-with-us/2013/10/24/930ea85c-3b3e-11e3-a94f-b58017bfee6c_story.html

30 MILLION LIVE IN SLAVERY WORLDWIDE, HALF IN INDIA

Walk Free Foundation report: “The countries with the highest prevalence of modern slavery were Mauritania, Haiti, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Moldova, Benin, Ivory Coast, Gambia and Gabon. Moldova — once part of the Soviet Union — was the only European nation in the top 10 …” (link to AFP story below)

http://tinyurl.com/mpwadr3

CHINESE DISSIDENT URGES STRONG EMPHASIS ON UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS

From the Princetonian — “[Chen Guangcheng’s] plan includes establishing a database of human rights violators, increasing international funding for software that breaks down firewalls as a means to promote internet freedom, encouraging nations to demand that the Chinese government end religious persecution and the “one-child policy,” forming an inter-parliamentary body on human rights, calling on legal experts to publicly support human rights lawyers in China and asking American citizens to contact their representatives in support of these measures…” (Link below)

http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2013/10/chinese-dissident-chen-guangcheng-advocates-universal-human-rights/

NSA LEAKS REPORTER TO LAUNCH INDEPENDENT NEWS VENTURE

From report: “Glenn Greenwald, an American living in Brazil, said the new project will be “a very well-funded…very substantial new media outlet.”  He added that “my role, aside from reporting and writing for it, is to create the entire journalism unit from the ground up by recruiting the journalists and editors who share the same journalistic ethos and shaping the whole thing – but especially the political journalism part – in the image of the journalism I respect most,” he told BuzzFeed.” (Link below) …

http://rt.com/news/greenwald-guardian-news-project-242/

 

AN EPITAPH FOR MAINSTREAM JOURNALISM – ‘WE SUBMITTED TO THE STATE’

From investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian: 

“Like many people, I’ve spent years writing and speaking about the lethal power-subservient pathologies plaguing establishment journalism in the west. But this morning, I feel a bit like all of that was wasted time and energy, because this new column by career British journalist Chris Blackhurst – an executive with and, until a few months ago, the editor of the UK daily calling itself “The Independent” – contains a headline that says everything that needs to be said about the sickly state of establishment journalism:

“In other words, if the government tells me I shouldn’t publish something, who am I as a journalist to disobey? Put that on the tombstone of western establishment journalism. It perfectly encapsulates the death spiral of large journalistic outlets…” (Link below)

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/14/independent-epitaph-establishment-journalism

 

NSA HARVESTS MILLIONS OF EMAIL, INSTANT MESSAGING CONTACT LISTS GLOBALLY

From the Washington Post: “During a single day last year, the NSA’s Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, according to an internal NSA PowerPoint presentation. Those figures, described as a typical daily intake in the document, correspond to a rate of more than 250 million a year. Each day, the presentation said, the NSA collects contacts from an estimated 500,000 buddy lists on live-chat services as well as from the inbox displays of Web-based e-mail accounts. The collection depends on secret arrangements with foreign telecommunications companies or allied intelligence services in control of facilities that direct traffic along the Internet’s main data routes….” (Link below) …

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-collects-millions-of-e-mail-address-books-globally/2013/10/14/8e58b5be-34f9-11e3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_story.html?hpid=z1