Mainstream News

New York judge’s ruling sparks nationalist surge in Argentina

"A legal tug-of-war with a $20 billion US hedge fund plays out in a New York case that has sent nationalist sentiment soaring in Argentina and raised concerns about the impact on future efforts to help debt-ridden countries recover. NML Capital, part of American billionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Management, is among a handful of creditors demanding full repayment of bonds that Argentina defaulted on in 2002. In recent months, the government’s inability to settle with a handful of holdouts led by NML has resulted in one of its Navy tall ships being impounded in Ghana and an expensive court case in New York." Continue reading →

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Black boxes in cars raise privacy concerns

"Many motorists don't know it, but it's likely that every time they get behind the wheel, there's a snitch along for the ride. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Friday proposed long-delayed regulations requiring auto manufacturers to include event data recorders—better known as 'black boxes'—in all new cars and light trucks beginning Sept. 1, 2014. But the agency is behind the curve. Automakers have been quietly tucking the devices, which automatically record the actions of drivers and the responses of their vehicles in a continuous information loop, into most new cars for years." Continue reading →

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Obama signs Russian human rights law, angers Putin

"President Barack Obama Friday signed legislation that sanctions alleged Russian human rights abuses, which outraged Moscow after being coupled with a bill granting it normal trade relations. Obama signed the measure into law a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the so-called Magnitsky Act, which blacklists Russian officials allegedly implicated in the prison death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The Russian foreign ministry issued a statement minutes after Obama formally signed the legislation in the Oval Office, saying the move amounted to 'open meddling' in its internal affairs and was 'a blind and dangerous position.'" Continue reading →

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Mandatory Sentences Face Growing Skepticism

"Three decades of stricter drug laws, reduced parole and rigid sentencing rules have lengthened prison terms and more than tripled the percentage of Americans behind bars. The United States has the highest reported rate of incarceration of any country: about one in 100 adults, a total of nearly 2.3 million people in prison or jail. State spending on corrections, after adjusting for inflation, has more than tripled in the past three decades, making it the fastest-growing budgetary cost except Medicaid. Even though the prison population has leveled off in the past several years, the costs remain so high that states are being forced to reduce spending in other areas." Continue reading →

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Prison Labor Booms As Unemployment Remains High; Companies Reap Benefits

"The American government has been critical of China's forced-labor policies, but the United States has a burgeoning prison labor pool of its own. Hundreds of companies nationwide now benefit from the low, and sometimes no-wage labor of America's prisoners. Nearly a million prisoners are now making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles, shoes, and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day. Companies that pay workers can get up to 40 percent of the money back in taxpayer-funded reimbursements." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingPrison Labor Booms As Unemployment Remains High; Companies Reap Benefits

The Woes of an American Drone Operator

"A soldier sets out to graduate at the top of his class. He succeeds, and he becomes a drone pilot working with a special unit of the United States Air Force in New Mexico. He kills dozens of people. But then, one day, he realizes that he can't do it anymore. For more than five years, Brandon Bryant worked in an oblong, windowless container about the size of a trailer, where the air-conditioning was kept at 63 degrees Fahrenheit and, for security reasons, the door couldn't be opened. Bryant and his coworkers sat in front of 14 computer monitors and four keyboards. When Bryant pressed a button in New Mexico, someone died on the other side of the world." Continue reading →

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A Plan to Stop the Feds From Reading Your Emails

"The reform proposals are all pretty simple: Don't spy on Americans (which the government claims it's not doing anyway), tell Americans how much the government has spied on them in the past, and explain to the American people exactly how much authority the government believes it has to spy on its own citizens without a warrant. For a Congress bubbling over with Republican anti-big-government crusaders and Democrats who slammed Bush for shredding the Constitution, that ought to be an easy sell, right?" Continue reading →

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Border Agents’ Power to Search Devices Is Facing Increasing Challenges in Court

"The government has historically had broad power to search travelers and their property at the border. But that prerogative is being challenged as more people travel with extensive personal and business information on devices that would typically require a warrant to examine. Several court cases seek to limit the ability of border agents to search, copy and even seize travelers’ laptops, cameras and phones without suspicion of illegal activity. Courts have long held that Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches do not apply at the border, based on the government’s interest in combating crime and terrorism." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBorder Agents’ Power to Search Devices Is Facing Increasing Challenges in Court

Indefinite Detention and the NDAA: The rise of America’s imperial presidency

"In the eleven years since the terrorist attacks on 9/11, America has effectively lived under a perpetual state of emergency. Last year, President Barack Obama while vacationing in Hawaii signed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act which included an embedded provision allowing the presidency what some have termed as indefinite detention powers. The political firestorm and continuing controversy over both the Global War on Terror and the NDAA has led many American citizens to wonder just what all of this means for their individual freedom." Continue reading →

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CIA beat and sodomized wrongly detained German citizen

"CIA agents tortured a German citizen, sodomising, shackling, and beating him, as Macedonian state police looked on, the European court of human rights said in a historic judgment released on Thursday. In a unanimous ruling, it also found Macedonia guilty of torturing, abusing, and secretly imprisoning Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese origin allegedly linked to terrorist organisations. Masri was seized in Macedonia in December 2003 and handed over to a CIA 'rendition team' at Skopje airport and secretly flown to Afghanistan. It is the first time the court has described CIA treatment meted out to terror suspects as torture." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCIA beat and sodomized wrongly detained German citizen