War in Context

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• A boy killed by his own government. The Obama administration still refuses to explain why
• Senate and CIA spar over secret report on torture
• What happens when the U.S. government wants to hack your network?
• Helen Thomas 1920-2013
• Rise of America’s warrior cops
• Attention, shoppers: store is tracking your cell
• People, power, or propaganda? Unraveling the Egyptian opposition
• Egypt’s return to military rule
• U.S. provides refuge for fugitive ex-CIA convict
• When it comes to Israel, EU no longer willing to act like a sucker
• Music: Mateus Aleluia & Thalma de Freitas — ‘Pelebé Nitobé’
• Secret court lets NSA extend its trawl of Verizon customers’ phone records
• Bradley Manning ‘aiding the enemy’ charge is a threat to journalism
• Intelligence chiefs would consider NSA data collection changes – top DNI lawyer
• Fugitive former CIA officer arrested in Panama
• White House stays silent on renewal of NSA data collection order

A boy killed by his own government. The Obama administration still refuses to explain why Posted: 20 Jul 2013 10:20 AM PDT Nasser al-Awlaki writes: I learned that my 16-year-old grandson, Abdulrahman — a United States citizen — had been killed by an American drone strike from news reports the morning after he died. The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians on Oct. 14, 2011, while the boys were eating dinner [...]

Senate and CIA spar over secret report on torture Posted: 20 Jul 2013 10:16 AM PDT The New York Times reports: The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says she is planning a push to declassify hundreds of pages of a secret committee report that accuses the Central Intelligence Agency of misleading Congress and the White House about the agency’s detention and interrogation program, which is now defunct. The 6,000-page report, [...]

What happens when the U.S. government wants to hack your network? Posted: 20 Jul 2013 10:12 AM PDT Pete Ashdown, CEO of an internet service provider in Utah, received a Foreign Intelligence Service Act (FISA) warrant in 2010 mandating he let the feds monitor one of his customers: The first thing I do when I get a law enforcement request is look for a court signature on it. Then I pass it to [...]

Helen Thomas 1920-2013 Posted: 20 Jul 2013 10:08 AM PDT Helen Thomas died today at the age of 92. Bloomberg reports: In 2012, Palestinian leaders gave Thomas an award for her career. According to an account in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a magazine critical of U.S. foreign policy in the region, Thomas told supporters at the Virginia home of Maen Areikat, the [...]

Rise of America’s warrior cops Posted: 20 Jul 2013 10:04 AM PDT Radley Balko writes: On Jan. 4 of last year, a local narcotics strike force conducted a raid on the Ogden, Utah, home of Matthew David Stewart at 8:40 p.m. The 12 officers were acting on a tip from Mr. Stewart’s former girlfriend, who said that he was growing marijuana in his basement. Mr. Stewart awoke, [...]

Attention, shoppers: store is tracking your cell Posted: 20 Jul 2013 10:00 AM PDT The New York Times reports: Like dozens of other brick-and-mortar retailers, Nordstrom wanted to learn more about its customers — how many came through the doors, how many were repeat visitors — the kind of information that e-commerce sites like Amazon have in spades. So last fall the company started testing new technology that allowed [...]

People, power, or propaganda? Unraveling the Egyptian opposition Posted: 20 Jul 2013 09:57 AM PDT Max Blumenthal writes: The debate over the legitimacy of Egypt’s new, military-installed government has become a popularity battle, with some of the most vocal supporters of the coup claiming that the June 30 protests against President Mohammed Morsi represented the largest demonstrations in human history, a real-life Cecil B. DeMille production, with crowd sizes ranging [...]

Egypt’s return to military rule Posted: 20 Jul 2013 09:55 AM PDT The Washington Post reports: When the military ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Zeinhom Hassan Ibrahim slaughtered a sheep, hired a DJ and threw a block party for his neighbors. Ibrahim, a former parliamentarian from longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak’s now-defunct National Democratic Party, had lived through the year of Mohamed Morsi’s rule in blinking disbelief, [...]

U.S. provides refuge for fugitive ex-CIA convict Posted: 20 Jul 2013 09:53 AM PDT The Associated Press reports: A former CIA base chief convicted in the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect is being sent to the United States instead of Italy, which wanted him to serve prison time for his role in the notorious anti-terrorism program known as extraordinary rendition, the U.S. State Department said Friday. Robert [...]

When it comes to Israel, EU no longer willing to act like a sucker Posted: 20 Jul 2013 09:51 AM PDT Alan Philps writes: On Sunday, the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy published a startling article. As a patriotic Israeli, he wrote in Haaretz newspaper, he had no choice but to declare himself in favour of an economic boycott of his own country until it withdrew from the occupied territories. Given the prospects of “another round of [...]

Music: Mateus Aleluia & Thalma de Freitas — ‘Pelebé Nitobé’ Posted: 20 Jul 2013 09:48 AM PDT

Secret court lets NSA extend its trawl of Verizon customers’ phone records Posted: 19 Jul 2013 05:14 PM PDT The Guardian reports: The National Security Agency has been allowed to extend its dragnet of the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon through a court order issued by the secret court that oversees surveillance. In an unprecedented move prompted by the Guardian’s disclosure in June of the NSA’s indiscriminate collection of Verizon [...]

Bradley Manning ‘aiding the enemy’ charge is a threat to journalism Posted: 19 Jul 2013 05:11 PM PDT Yochai Benkler writes: Thursday, Colonel Denise Lind, the judge in the Bradley Manning court martial, refused to dismiss the “aiding the enemy” charge. The decision is preliminary, and the judge could still moderate its effect if she finds Manning not guilty. But even if she ultimately acquits Manning, the decision will cast a long shadow [...]

Intelligence chiefs would consider NSA data collection changes – top DNI lawyer Posted: 19 Jul 2013 05:07 PM PDT The Guardian reports: The top lawyer for the US director of national intelligence suggested Friday that the intelligence community would consider changes to its controversial bulk surveillance of telephone records. The apparent openness to modifying the surveillance efforts comes after a week of increasing criticism on Capitol Hill by Republican and Democratic legislators. Robert S [...]

Fugitive former CIA officer arrested in Panama Posted: 19 Jul 2013 01:04 PM PDT Edward Snowden is accused of breaking the law, but Robert Seldon Lady, the former CIA chief in Milan, was convicted of kidnapping and given a nine-year prison sentence. In 2003, Lady initially claimed diplomatic immunity but after that was rejected by an Italian judge in 2005 and he has been on the run ever since. [...]

White House stays silent on renewal of NSA data collection order Posted: 19 Jul 2013 01:02 PM PDT The Guardian reports: The Obama administration is refusing to say whether it will seek to renew a court order that permits the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of phone records on millions of Verizon customers when it expires at the end of this week. Officials declined to discuss what action they intend to take about [...]