Gilad Atzmon

Ariel Sharon, 2nd from the right, flanked by Netanyahu,
Olmert and Peres, psychopaths and murderers one and all.

Not many people doubt that Israel was behind Arafat’s death, especially now, when it became immanently clear that it was radioactive Polonium 210 that was responsible for the late leader’s lethal symptoms.

It has been already established that just a few countries could produce Polonium let alone deliver it to the besieged Arafat’s Headquarters in Ramallah. The Palestinian committee investigating the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004 confirmed today that Israel is actually the "only suspect” in this murder case.

Yet, one question puzzles me. What did Israeli leaders had in mind when they decided to poison the Palestinian leader with a radioactive substance that would leave forensic traces in Arafat’s remains for millenniums to come? What kind of a murderer consciously leaves fingerprints behind? After all, the decision to kill Arafat and in such a manner was taken by the Israel’s supreme decision makers. They must have closely examined the idea, the consequences and the means involved.

The more I look into it, I gather that the Israelis who took the decision to poison Arafat with radioactive polonium came to the conclusion that the Goyim must be stupid, and they had a good reason to come to such a conclusion.

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Stephen Lendman

Three days of Iran nuclear talks were fruitless. It didn't surprise. Multiple previous rounds failed. Will future ones fare better? Don't bet on it.

France was blamed this time. Washington bears most responsibility. So does Israel. Netanyahu called any deal a bad one. The Israeli Lobby exerts enormous pressure on Congress. America negotiates in bad faith. Longstanding anti-Iranian hostility persists. Regime change plans remain firm.

Iran's nuclear program is a red herring. The program is entirely legitimate. Western countries and Israel know it. Pretending otherwise doesn't wash. Nor does putting a brave face on failure. Agreement was only reached to meet again. November 20 is scheduled. Senior diplomats will attend. Foreign ministers won't participate.

Public comments belie what's at issue. Washington wants Iran kept isolated. It wants pressure maintained. It wants stiff sanctions continued. It wants Iran's economy to scream. It wants ordinary Iranians suffering most. It wants regime change. It wants pro-Western puppet governance replacing sovereign Iranian independence. It wants war if other methods fail to achieve its goals. It wants an Israeli rival eliminated. It wants unchallenged regional dominance. It wants control of Iranian oil, gas and other resources.

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Wayne Madsen

September 18, 2014 could either ensure that the United Kingdom remains a virtual U.S. intelligence «Trojan horse» inside the European Union or could herald a radical shakeup of America’s «Five Eyes» signals intelligence alliance. On a Thursday in September, Scottish citizens will go to the polls to vote «Yes» or «No» on a simple referendum question: «Should Scotland be an Independent Country?» The referendum was worked out in an agreement between Scotland’s Scottish Nationalist Party First Minister Alexander Salmond and British Prime Minister David Cameron.

The United Kingdom intelligence and national security establishment, aided and abetted by the virtually indistinguishable three major British political parties, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, and Labor, have all weighed in to urge Scots to vote «No» and remain a part of the United Kingdom.

Conservative Home Secretary Theresa May has issued another in a series of ultimatums to a Scotland that would consider breaking free of English rule: Scotland would find itself severed from the British intelligence agencies of MI6 (foreign intelligence), MI5 (domestic intelligence), and the Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ). The latter is the British component of the «Five Eyes» alliance of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. May stated that Scotland would be at risk because the Five Eyes alliance would cut Scotland off from receiving critical intelligence, including counterterrorism information.

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Jonathan Carp

On Tuesday in Santa Rosa, California, two of that city’s “finest” cowered behind a car door and gunned down a thirteen-year-old boy carrying a toy rifle. This little boy, Andy Lopez Cruz, was walking down the street with a fake plastic rifle when the two “heroes” boldly got out of their police cruiser, hid behind the passenger side door, and called out to him. When Andy reacted like any human being would and turned to face them, our brave boys in blue shot a child carrying a toy, because they were scared.

Physical courage is hardly the highest virtue, nor one linked particularly closely with any other measure of moral worth. But physical courage is a virtue all the same, and one sadly lacking today in our cowardly police departments, who hide behind a comical array of war machines and gun down anyone of any age or species who inspires the slightest tremor of fear in their faint hearts. Family pets, the mentally disabled, the elderly — seemingly anything that can move can terrify our brave police officers, so overwhelming them with abject, presumably pants-wetting fear that they draw their weapons and open fire willy-nilly on whatever has their teeth chattering in terror.

In July in Hawthorne, California, a police officer was so overcome by fear at the sight of a little doggy less than a quarter his size that he had no choice but to fire five shots into the animal in front of its owner. Of course one can hardly blame the officer in question, as he only had three of his colleagues there with him and could not possibly have prevailed against the ferocious animal, which reached nearly to the officer’s waist when on its back legs.

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Bill Van Auken

"...because the CIA requires a certain speed, agility and
tactical responsiveness that differs from other agencies..."

The report Thursday of a CIA-AT&T operation exposes a whole new layer of state-corporate spying on the people of the United States and the world.

Details of the operation, first published by the New York Times, make clear that AT&T, the largest US telecommunications provider, is allowing the CIA to sift through its vast call database, not in response to any subpoena or court order, but rather as part of a voluntary contract under which the company is being paid more than $10 million a year by the intelligence agency.

In addition to its millions of customers, the company also handles connections between long distance carriers and local telephone networks all over the world, with tens of billions of minutes of voice calls per year passing through its facilities around the globe.

The CIA-AT&T operation duplicates some of the massive data-mining and domestic spying operations carried out by the National Security Agency, details of which have been exposed in recent months through documents released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The Times report cited a senior "intelligence official” who argued that this overlap was justified because the CIA requires “a certain speed, agility and tactical responsiveness that differs from other agencies. The need to act without delay is often best met when the CIA has developed its own capabilities to lawfully acquire necessary foreign intelligence information.”

Acting “without delay” in the CIA’s case increasingly involves launching drone missile attacks to assassinate perceived enemies of Washington, while killing significant numbers of innocent civilians.

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Stephen Lendman

Suha Arafat and late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat attend
a conference in the Gaza Strip on April 5, 1995. (N. Judah)

On November 11, 2004, Arafat died in a Paris hospital. He was 75. He was hospitalized for an undiagnosed illness. It developed in April. It got worse. He deteriorated badly. He needed special care. On November 3, he slipped into a coma. Days later he died.

Previous articles discussed his death. It wasn't accidental. It wasn't natural. Credible evidence points to assassination. Israel wanted him eliminated. He became more liability than asset. His former aide, Hani al-Hassan, said he personally witnessed 13 attempts on his life.

Arafat said he survived 40 attempts. In 1985, he narrowly escaped an Israeli air attack on his Tunisian headquarters. It killed 73 people. He went jogging shortly before Israel struck. In December 2001, Israeli missiles struck his Ramallah compound. He was rushed to safety shortly before the attack. An Israeli military spokesman called the strike a warning. It sent a message. Arafat was marked for death.

At the time, he was a virtual prisoner inside his presidential compound (the Mukataa). Medical reports showed him in good health. Close associates said Ariel Sharon wanted him dead. As defense minister in 1982, he failed trying to kill him during Israel's siege of Beirut. He let Phalangist fascists do his dirty work. He called slaughtering Palestinians "ridding the world of international terrorism." Evidence suggests Sharon succeeded. He killed Arafat.

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Stephen Lendman

Out-of-control spying reflects America's true face. At stake are fundamental rights too important to lose. They're gravely eroded already. They're headed toward disappearing altogether. They may not survive much longer.

Everybody spies on everyone else. America likely does it best of all. It spies on friends and foes alike. In "Animal Farm," Orwell said "All animals are equal but some are more equal than others." As the world's sole superpower, America is most of all.

Expect no policy change. A previous article discussed Senate legislation legitimizing lawless surveillance. Obama wants it and then some.

On November 2, The New York Times headlined "No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming NSA."

"Mr. Obama and top intelligence officials have defended the agency's role in preventing terrorist attacks. But as the documents make clear, the focus on counterterrorism is a misleadingly narrow sales pitch for an agency with an almost unlimited agenda. Its scale and aggressiveness are breathtaking." No amount spent is too much if "it adds to the agency's global phone book."

"The agency, using a combination of jawboning, stealth and legal force, has turned the nation's Internet and telecommunications companies into collection partners, installing filters in their facilities, serving them with court orders, building back doors into their software and acquiring keys to break their encryption."

NSA wants nothing escaping scrutiny. Privacy no longer exists. Rule of law principles don't matter. Anything goes is policy. Everything transmitted electronically is fair game for intrusion.

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Kevin Barrett
PressTV

Is the New World Order crumbling before our eyes? Are people everywhere rising up against the all-seeing-eye of “total information awareness”?

The Snowden-triggered NSA spy scandals have thrown a monkey wrench into US-NATO plans for the world empire. Apparently, the world's seven billion people do not want their every email stolen and stored, every phone call wiretapped and recorded, every pore on every face under the permanent scrutiny of spy satellites ... and every world leader blackmailed and controlled.

Last Monday and Tuesday, November 4th and 5th, rallies were held around the world unmasking the global surveillance state. The “Million Mask March” brought together supporters of Anonymous, Wikileaks, Occupy, Oath Keepers, whistleblowers, and hacktivists in more than 430 locations around the world.

The day before, Monday, November 4th, all across Iran, people were rallying to commemorate the 1979 seizure of the US Embassy, otherwise known as “the Den of Espionage.”

The Iranians - who have been rallying against the “Den of Espionage” since 1979 - are ahead of their time. Today, 34 years after the US embassy seizure, the whole world is following in their footsteps and protesting against American spying.

Western corporate media, whose mission is keeping people ignorant and confused, are peddling lies and half-truths about these events. Big media tells us the students who seized the US embassy in Iran were scary-looking fanatics, as depicted in the film Argo. And big media will also portray the Million Mask March as a frightening, confusing phenomenon. - But what were these protests really all about?

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Neil Clark

The only surprising thing about the news that the US is sabotaging peace moves in Afghanistan and Pakistan is that anyone should find the news surprising.

As reported on RT, Pakistan has accused the US of sabotaging peace talks between the authorities in Islamabad and the Taliban following last Friday’s drone assassination of the Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud.

“The murder of Hakimullah is the murder of all efforts at peace," Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisa said. "Brick by brick, in the last seven weeks, we tried to evolve a process by which we could bring peace to Pakistan and what have you [the US] done?"

The killing of Hakimullah Mehsud comes less than a month after the US effectively wrecked the Afghan government’s efforts to engage with the Taliban by capturing Latif Mehsud, Hakimullah’s lieutenant. Latif Mehsud was the man that the Afghan government hoped would be a go-between for peace talks with the Taliban. Afghan President Hamid Karzai was reported to have been furious about the US operation. Karzai has also said that the drone strike against Hakimullah Mehsud “took place at an unsuitable time.”

The fact is that on several important occasions in the last 30 years or so, the US has wrecked peace efforts and used its power to provoke or prolong conflicts which could have been avoided or solved without further bloodshed.

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John Pilger

In its bid to continue lawlessly spying on almost everyone, Britain's "intelligence" and "security" establishment has launched an assault on the Guardian. Such is the rise of the totalitarian state that the secret police enter a newspaper to witness the smashing of computer hard-drives, as happened at the Guardian, and the government, via a poodle MP, can call for the paper's prosecution for treason. As if to prove its respectability, the Guardian has sought the endorsement of notables, including Nick Clegg, Harold Evans and other specialists in faint praise.

The most effective defender of the paper is not one of these. He has shaggy dark hair and a beard - or he did when I last saw him. For more than 20 years I have turned to his work as you would reach for coffee in the morning. He is outrageous, anarchic, brilliant, sometimes inexplicable and a bit mad (not really). For those who doubt the truth is subversive and often absurd, I point them towards two pages in the Guardian, where he resides.

Only Steve Bell exposes consistently, fearlessly, the bullshit of "public life". Indeed, his characters are often drowning in or water-skiing on the stuff. "Right, that's it," says the last governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, to Gordon Brown, then prime minister, and chancellor Alistair Darling, "heads down, tea break over!" They are up to their chins in a tank of turds.

Steve Bell is a cartoonist and a true journalist with few rivals. He is Hogarth and Swift with a touch of Peter Sellers and a sprinkling of Orwell. He is more of an English original than one of his prime targets, Margaret Thatcher, the former petit-bourgeois totem. Often using the wickedly all-seeing penguin star of his strip, "If..." he rumbled both Thatcher and her protege, Blair, early in their criminal ascendancy.

While his Guardian colleagues swooned over Blair as a mystic of the "Third Way", Steve Bell planted Thatcher's crazed eye on Blair's rictus mask. A print of that first appearance of the Thatcher/Blair eye, which he sent me, hangs in pride of place, though the gaze is disconcerting. Opening the Guardian news pages recently to find Blair boasting about his ability to absorb "the sense of pain" of others was like reading a Steve Bell cartoon.

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Chris Marsden

Recently released police documents on the August 18 arrest and questioning at London’s Heathrow airport of David Miranda, the domestic partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, are a serious warning on the advanced stage of the decay of democracy in Britain and internationally.

They show that Miranda was held on blatantly trumped up terrorism charges, aiming to block reporting on the NSA spying scandal. While British, US, and European intelligence agencies have developed the mass electronic spying apparatus of a police state—as Greenwald and whistleblower Edward Snowden have revealed—the internal security forces have developed the legal and police apparatus of an authoritarian regime.

A document from the Metropolitan Police HQ at Scotland Yard, released as a result of a court action taken out by Miranda, states: “Intelligence indicates that Miranda is likely to be involved in espionage activity which has the potential to act against the interests of UK national security... Additionally the disclosure, or threat of disclosure, is designed to influence a government and is made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause. This therefore falls within the definition of terrorism.”

Such remarks could easily be made by officials of any police-state dictatorship. Under such a broad definition, virtually any genuine reporting on the conduct of the state—which could embarrass or expose criminal behavior by state officials, and is written with distrust towards them—can be pursued as terrorism.

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James Petras

“Pro-Israel Policy groups such as AIPAC work with unlimited funding to divert US policy in the region (Middle East)”
Jack Straw, Member of Parliament and former Foreign Secretary of the British Labor Party

“The United States should drop a nuclear bomb on Iran to spur the country to end its nuclear program”
Sheldon Adelson, biggest donor to the Republican Party and major fundraiser for pro-Israel political action committees, speech at Yeshiva University, New York City, October 22, 2013.

The question of war or peace with Iran rests with the policies adopted by the White House and the US Congress. The peace overtures by newly elected Iranian President Rohani have resonated favorably around the world, except with Israel and its Zionist acolytes in North America and Europe. The first negotiating session proceeded without recrimination and resulted in an optimistic assessment by both sides. Precisely because of the initial favorable response among the participants, the Israeli government escalated its propaganda war against Iran. Its agents in the US Congress, the mass media and in the Executive branch moved to undermine the peace process. What is at stake is Israel’s capacity to wage proxy wars using the US military and its NATO allies against any government challenging Israeli military supremacy in the Middle East, its violent annexation of Palestinian territory and its ability to attack any adversary with impunity. To understand what is at stake in the current peace negotiations one must envision the consequences of failure: Under Israeli pressure, the US announced that its ‘military option’ could be activated – resulting in missile strikes and a bombing campaign against 76 million Iranians in order to destroy their government and economy. Teheran could retaliate against such aggression by targeting US military bases in the region and Gulf oil installations resulting in a global crisis. This is what Israel wants. We will begin by examining the context of Israel’s military supremacy in the Middle East. We will then proceed to analyze Israel’s incredible power over the US political process and how it shapes the negotiation process today, with special emphasis on Zionist power in the US Congress.

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Norman Pollack

The New York Times, a recipient, along with the Guardian, of Snowden’s disclosures about the illegal activities of Obama and USG, is breaking out, as now, of its reticence about the nation’s profound disregard of constitutional principles AND its related policies of global hegemony at all costs—here Scott Shane’s lengthy article (3 Nov.), “No Morsel Too Miniscule for All-Consuming N.S.A.” NSA to all intents and purposes appears as a “rogue” organization, extremism in the putative service of liberty, except that the designation is a way of distracting attention, and removing accountability, from its authorization and mission at the highest levels—call it, licensed roguery, official (with Obama’s eyes supposedly averted). Or better, call it, stripped of all cosmetics, the unerring mark of a Police State, itself become identical with Fortress America, the National-Security State.

Eavesdropping on foreign leaders speaks to an arrogance of power, in which the US claims for itself every right, unilaterally, to script both sides of the foreign dialogue as well as micromanage to its own advantage the rhythm and content of global events, from regional trade partnerships to the use of military force in shoring up alliance systems against a host of enemies, some terrorist groups to be sure, but, using that as pretext, mounting counterrevolution globally against alternative modes, notably, socialist, of modernization: autonomous national and/or radical aspirations seeking distance from US market penetration, the tarnished necklace of its worldwide military bases and CIA stations, and not least, the ideological saturation (assisted by IMF and World Bank applications of pressure) of market fundamentalism, the property right, unrestricted capital flows, and the honor of serving American industry with the lowest possible labor costs, as meanwhile we see the financialization of capitalism here and the gutting of the manufacturing base.

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Edward Snowden

This short article by Edward Snowden was published yesterday in Der Spiegel.

In a very short time, the world has learned much about unaccountable secret agencies and sometimes illegal surveillance programs. Sometimes the agencies even deliberately try to hide their surveillance of high officials or the public. While the NSA and GCHQ seem to be the worst offenders – this is what the currently available documents suggest – we must not forget that mass surveillance is a global problem in need of global solutions.

Such programs are not only a threat to privacy, they also threaten freedom of speech and open societies. The existence of spy technology should not determine policy. We have a moral duty to ensure that our laws and values limit monitoring programs and protect human rights.

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Stephen Lendman

Equating journalism with terrorism shows how low Britain has sunk.

Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) operates like NSA. They work cooperatively. They're out-of-control rogue agencies. They spy on their own populations. They do it globally. They conduct espionage. They collect enormous amounts of personal information. They do it illegally.

Obama wages war on freedom. He targets whistleblowers and investigative journalists exposing government wrongdoing. So does Britain. It equates doing so with terrorism.

London's Guardian is threatened. Its offices were raided. Hard drive stored information was destroyed. Its editor, Alan Rusbridger, was warned. Cease and desist or else. He asked if steps would be taken "to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route - by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working." "The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intentions." It was "one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history," he said. It was likely the most chilling.

Two GCHQ security experts oversaw the destruction of Guardian hard drives. They checked to be sure nothing but "mangled bits of metal" remained. Whitehall was satisfied.

Freedom in Britain sustained another body blow. It's fast disappearing like in America. Both nations are more police states than democracies. They mock virtually all democratic principles. They govern lawlessly. They do it ruthlessly. Sweeping surveillance is official policy.

So is suppressing information about government wrongdoing. Journalists involved in exposing it are threatened. Guardian disclosures fall under parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee's remit. It reinforces government claims about compromising national security. When good journalism is equated with doing it, freedom dies. Guardian contributors are targeted for doing their job. Doing so amounts to state censorship. Warnings about prosecutions and imprisonments follow. Free expression is the most important of all rights. Without it, all others at risk. On the bogus pretext of fighting terrorism, America and Britain want none of their lawless activities exposed.

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Jeff Gates

The issue at hand is how best to protect a peace-seeking world from a psychopathic ideology that assumed the appearance of legitimacy so that a Christian Zionist president could be deceived to recognize as a nation a criminal state.

While Zionism is clearly a nationalist ideology, that narrow framing does the term an injustice as it is so much more. Zionism is more accurately described as a strategy for targeting thought and emotion as a means to influence behavior. Naïve Jews were its first victims when induced to identify with an enclave in the Middle East that President Harry Truman, a Christian Zionist, was induced to recognize as a “state.”

Zionism is first and foremost a mental state that manifests as a dispersed form of internalized nationalism—a Diaspora—that binds to an extremist enclave those who may never set foot there. After 1967, this “state” became the “Land of Israel” based on a more expansive area seized by Israel Defense Forces along with other occupied lands that Zionists claim a god gave them.

Zionism recruits by sustaining a shared sense of insecurity within the broader Jewish community. It progresses by marketing its perceived vulnerability and victimhood among those on whom it relies for financial, military and diplomatic support.

When, as now, policies of the Zionist state come under attack, media campaigns herald an outbreak of anti-Semitism and hatred—not for Zionism but for Jews, enhancing recruitment.

By choosing to identify their interests with those of Zionism, Jews choose to make themselves feel insecure. Zionism relies for its success not only on deception but also on self-deceit.

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David Stockwell

As CO2 climate models falter and even the IPCC backs off its estimates, it just may be that a radical shift in thinking is looming. Wouldn't it be funny if it was the sun all along?

Remember Thomas Kuhn and his paradigm shift? According to his Structure of Scientific Revolutions, theories change only when anomalous observations stress the ”dominant paradigm” to the point that it becomes untenable. Until then, failure of a result to conform to the prevailing paradigm is not seen as refuting the dominant theory, but explained away as a mistake of the researchers, errors in the data, within the range of uncertainty, and so on. Only at the point of crisis does science become open to a new paradigm. So, does Kuhn inform the current climate debate, help identify important information or an alternative paradigm?

Climate models can be seen as encapsulating the dominant theory, even though they are composed of many different theories regarding land, the ocean and atmosphere. Despite their differences they are also similar in many ways, sharing terminology such as the ‘radiative kernel’. Lets agree, for the purpose of argument, that the dominant AGW paradigm is of global temperature’s high sensitivity to CO2 doubling, resulting in an increase of around 3°C, which appears to be about the central estimate of the climate models.

Does the 15-year ‘pause’ in global temperatures stress this theory? Certainly to some, the stress has already reached a ‘crisis’; while to others the divergence can be explained away by natural variation, uncertainty, and errors in the data.

Do failed models and their predictions of increasing extreme events, like hurricanes, droughts and floods, stress the climate models? Possibly not. From a physical perspective, these phenomena lie at the boundaries of the theory. Hurricanes, droughts and floods are ‘higher order’ statistics — extremes not climate averages. Surface temperature is only a part of the greater global climate system. Because anomalous behavior at the margins can be discarded without sacrificing the main theory, their power to confirm or reject the dominant paradigm is somewhat limited.

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Stephen Lendman

Israel gets away with daily crimes of war, against humanity and slow-motion genocide. It does so with impunity. It does it because world leaders able to act do nothing. Failure to hold Israel accountable reflects complicity with crimes too great to ignore.

They've persisted for decades. They show no signs of ending. On October 30, reports said Israeli warplanes struck Latakia. It's Syria's principle port city. Damascus was attacked. An administration official confirmed what happened.

Washington partners with Israeli crimes. Annual billions of dollars in military aid supports them. Going along with attacking Syria shows Obama's true intentions. He deplores peace. He intends escalated war. His planned intervention earlier was delayed. It's not deterred. More on Israel's reported attack below.

Ahmed el-Helah and Mariam Itani's book[.pdf] titled, "The Suffering of the Palestinian Child under the Israeli Occupation," says they "live and suffer every moment of their lives under the painful reality of occupation." Growing numbers are killed, injured, maimed, handicapped, arrested, imprisoned, and tortured.

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Joseph Kishore

Radomes are the most distinctive feature of the secretive base known
as RAF Menwith Hill, England. In the foreground, sheep(le).

The entire political system has been caught out in a massive conspiracy against the democratic rights of the people.

"The ability of the ruling class to maintain its stranglehold through its traditional ideological and political structures is breaking apart. The emergence of individuals like Snowden and Manning is itself a reflection of shifts taking place more broadly. Within broad sections of the population, what is emerging is disgust and hostility to the entire system—a pre-revolutionary sentiment."

Underlying the crisis that has erupted over the latest National Security Agency (NSA) revelations is a deep fear within the ruling elite over the political consequences of the continuing exposures of its global spying apparatus.

Top officials in the Obama administration have predictably waved the bloody shirt of 9/11 to justify the programs and denounce those who have exposed them, above all, former NSA contractor-turned whistleblower Edward Snowden. Their real concern is not that terrorists will know what the US government is doing, but that the American people and broad masses of people around the world are beginning to see what the US government is doing.

What remains of the political and ideological foundations of capitalist rule in the United States? Since the end of World War II, the American government has sought to present itself as the leader of the “free world,” the supposed champion of democratic rights and individual liberty.

It now stands exposed as the perpetrator of a global police state operation involving the illegal monitoring of the communications of hundreds of millions of people. With its vast data-bases, the American government has the ability to discover the social and political connections of virtually any individual. This negates the basic freedoms—speech, political assembly, privacy—laid down by the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

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Barry Grey

Last Sunday, the web site of the New York Times carried an exchange of comments between the newspaper's former executive editor and current columnist Bill Keller and Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who has played the central role in publishing revelations of illegal National Security Agency spying based on documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

In an introduction and in the course of his comments, Keller presents the exchange with Greenwald as a debate between “traditional” journalism, represented by himself and the Times, and the “more activist, more partisan brand of journalism” that he attributes to Greenwald.

In fact, the exchange is an attempt by Keller to whitewash his role and that of the Times in withholding information at the behest of the government and publishing state propaganda in the guise of “news.”

The Times column appears in the midst of a deepening crisis facing the Obama administration and the entire political and military/intelligence establishment over continuing exposures of massive state spying on the people of the United States and populations all around the world.

The Times and the rest of the establishment media have sought to contain the crisis while attacking Snowden and other whistle-blowers such as Julian Assange and Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, aiding and abetting the efforts of the US government to witch-hunt and silence them. Journalists such as Greenwald who have helped disseminate Snowden's revelations have been vilified as criminals and traitors.

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