"Israel is the world's biggest exporter of military drones, used around the world for everything from surveillance to precision rocket attacks on speeding cars in remote locales. Israel's drone program hasn't stirred as much controversy as its American counterpart, but not because their targeted killings are any less fatal. VICE sent Simon Ostrovsky to a drone testing airfield in Israel to find out what their latest eye-in-the-sky can see." Continue reading →
"Continuing the long tradition of deference to the national-security state by the U.S. federal judiciary, a federal judge recently dismissed a lawsuit by the sons of a man named Frank Olson seeking damages for the CIA’s murder of their father. The excuses that the judge used to dismiss the case were the statute of limitations and a previous settlement that had been entered into regarding the case. The CIA confessed to its LSD experiment on Olson, but the confession, along with all the remorse and regret, were nothing more than a highly sophisticated way to cover up the fact that the CIA had actually murdered Olson by pushing him out of that high-rise New York City hotel room." Continue reading →
"The Justice Department is reviewing a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit that passes tips culled from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a large telephone database to field agents, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday. 'It’s my understanding… that the Department of Justice is looking at some of the issues raised in the story,' Carney said during his daily briefing at the White House on Monday. Carney referred reporters to a Justice Department spokesman, who confirmed that a review was under way, but declined further comment." Continue reading →
"The Drug Enforcement Agency has a secret unit that has been funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, and a massive database of phone records. The unit has been passing this data to law enforcement agencies across the nation and assists in launching criminal investigations against American citizens. Matthew Feeney, assistant editor for Reason 24/7, joins us with more on the findings and how this affects people's Fourth Amendment rights." Continue reading →
"When John Wrana was a young man, fit and strong and fighting in World War II with the U.S. Army Air Corps, did he ever think he'd end this way? Just a few weeks shy of his 96th birthday, in need of a walker to move about, cops coming through the door of his retirement home with a Taser and a shotgun. The old man, described by a family member as 'wobbly' on his feet, had refused medical attention. The paramedics were called. They brought in the Park Forest police.First they tased him, but that didn't work. So they fired a shotgun, hitting him in the stomach with a bean-bag round. Wrana was struck with such force that he bled to death internally." Continue reading →
"The country’s citizens, faced with an annual inflation rate of around 25%, are turning their backs on their national currency. Official figures put the annual rate of inflation at around 10%, but private economists estimate it to be more than double this. In February 2011, the government started issuing fines of up to 500,000 pesos ($123,442) to economists and consulting firms that refuted the official figures. To access dollars legally in Argentina, buyers have to make a request through the central bank and AFIP (the tax revenue office), which check how much the buyer is requesting and what it is for." Continue reading →
"Amash cautions that you need to have actual facts to support allegations, and in the meanwhile, he'd favor focusing on what previously unknown information is now known to Americans. 'Members of Congress were on the whole not aware of what these programs were being used for,' he says, and in that respect, he considers him a 'whistleblower' for the time being. 'He may be doing things overseas that we'll find to be problematic or dangerous, we'll find those facts out over time,' he says, 'but as far as Congress is concerned, sure, he's a whistleblower. He told us what we needed to know.'" Continue reading →
"It’s official, every single American can now be classified as a terrorist by the US government. The label of ‘terrorist’ no longer applies to members of al-Qaeda of ‘extremists’, but the average citizen of this nation. And I can show you how literally 100% of the population can be classified as a terrorist under the truly outrageous Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FBI characteristics that define a terrorist or terrorist activity. These broad qualifications of ‘terrorism’ that have spawned a new wave of absolute paranoia within the population regarding their fellow citizens, who the nightly news says may be sleeper cell terrorists." Continue reading →
"Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald on Monday suggested that President Barack Obama had ordered 19 U.S. embassies in the Middle Easy closed not because of a legitimate terror threat, but to silence a debate on recently-revealed details of National Security Agency (NSA) data collection programs. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said that the embassies had been temporarily closed after the NSA learned of a terrorist plot. Speaking to Democracy Now‘s Amy Goodman on Monday, Greenwald observed that the Obama administration may have shuttered the posts just to stop discussion about his reporting." Continue reading →
"Reuters has uncovered previously unreported details about a separate program, run by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, that extends well beyond intelligence gathering. Its use, legal experts say, raises fundamental questions about whether the government is concealing information used to investigate and help build criminal cases against American citizens. The DEA program is run by a secretive unit called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Here is how NSA efforts exposed by Snowden differ from the activities of the SOD." Continue reading →