War in Context

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• How Obama is undermining democracy around the world
• Many of 74 pro-Morsi protesters shot in Cairo were targeted killings
• Ex-CIA officer reveals lies and distortions behind Milan kidnapping
• Senators call on White House to end bulk collection of Americans’ phone records
• NSA faces backlash over collecting phone data
• German president says whistleblowers like Snowden merit respect
• Where the NSA will soon store all the data on everyone
• NSA surveillance program has had compliance problems, intelligence official says
• Americans increasingly wonder: Was Afghanistan even worth it?
• The sky darkens for American journalism
• Bradley Manning’s ‘sole purpose was to make a difference’, lawyer insists
• Life as a U.S. drone operator: ‘it’s like playing a video game for four years’

How Obama is undermining democracy around the world Posted: 28 Jul 2013 11:16 AM PDT Matt Lee reports: For decades, foreign armies that received U.S. assistance were on notice that toppling their freely elected civilian leaders would mean an aid suspension. After Egypt, that seems no more, despite a law requiring just that if Washington determined a coup had taken place. The Obama administration made a technically legal move to [...]

Many of 74 pro-Morsi protesters shot in Cairo were targeted killings Posted: 28 Jul 2013 11:12 AM PDT Human Rights Watch: Many of the at least 74 pro-Morsy protesters killed in clashes with Egypt’s riot police and plain clothed men who stood alongside were shot in the head or chest. They were killed on July 27 over a period of several hours during clashes on a road near the Muslim Brotherhood’s sit-in at [...]

Ex-CIA officer reveals lies and distortions behind Milan kidnapping Posted: 28 Jul 2013 11:08 AM PDT A former CIA officer involved in the 2003 kidnapping of a Muslim cleric, Osama Mustapha Hassan Nasr, in Milan, spoke to McClatchy: Confirming for the first time that she worked undercover for the CIA in Milan when the operation took place, Sabrina De Sousa provided new details about the “extraordinary rendition” that led to the [...]

Senators call on White House to end bulk collection of Americans’ phone records Posted: 28 Jul 2013 11:04 AM PDT Senators Mark Udall and Ron Wyden write: President Obama recently welcomed a public debate about how to protect both national security and privacy rights in the context of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance activities. Congress should not squander this opportunity to have an open, transparent discussion about the limits of executive power and the [...]

NSA faces backlash over collecting phone data Posted: 28 Jul 2013 11:00 AM PDT The Los Angeles Times reports: A reporter recently asked the National Security Agency’s chief a blunt question: Why can’t he come up with a better example of a terrorism plot foiled through the bulk collection of U.S. phone records? In the weeks since Edward Snowden disclosed that the NSA had been collecting and storing the [...]

German president says whistleblowers like Snowden merit respect Posted: 28 Jul 2013 10:57 AM PDT Reuters reports: Germany’s president, who helped expose the workings of East Germany’s dreaded Stasi secret police, said whistleblowers like U.S. fugitive Edward Snowden deserved respect for defending freedom. Weighing in on a debate that could influence September’s federal election, President Joachim Gauck struck a very different tone from that of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has [...]

Where the NSA will soon store all the data on everyone Posted: 28 Jul 2013 10:54 AM PDT At Forbes, Kashmir Hill writes: For the last two months, we’ve been bombarded with stories about the spying information-collection practices of the NSA thanks to documents leaked by the agency’s most regretted contract employee, Edward Snowden. The degree of forced exposure has gotten to the point that once secret information gathered for the agency — [...]

NSA surveillance program has had compliance problems, intelligence official says Posted: 28 Jul 2013 10:51 AM PDT The Washington Post reports: The Obama administration’s top intelligence official acknowledged Friday that there have been “a number of compliance problems” in the government program that has collected phone data on millions of Americans. James Clapper, director of national intelligence, also said the government had not collected any other bulk data on Americans using its [...]

Americans increasingly wonder: Was Afghanistan even worth it? Posted: 28 Jul 2013 10:48 AM PDT National Journal reports: Twelve years of war is a long time—not just for the troops fighting, but also for the American public watching the final stages of the U.S. drawdown. And it looks as if this war fatigue is translating in the polls. Americans are now questioning the very motivation for going to war in [...]

The sky darkens for American journalism Posted: 28 Jul 2013 10:46 AM PDT Chase Madar writes: Bradley Manning released hundreds of thousands of government documents and files to Wikileaks, most famous among them the unclassified video Wikileaks dubbed, “Collateral Murder”, a harrowing gun-sight view of an Apache helicopter slaughtering a couple of armed men and a much larger group of civilians on a Baghdad street in July, 2007. [...]

Bradley Manning’s ‘sole purpose was to make a difference’, lawyer insists Posted: 28 Jul 2013 10:44 AM PDT The Guardian reports: The lawyer representing the WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning has asked the judge presiding over the soldier’s court martial to decide between two stark portrayals of the accused – the prosecution’s depiction of him as a traitor and seeker of notoriety, and the defence’s account that he was motivated by a desire to [...]

Life as a U.S. drone operator: ‘it’s like playing a video game for four years’ Posted: 28 Jul 2013 10:42 AM PDT The Guardian reports: “It is a lot like playing a video game,” admits a former Predator drone operator matter-of-factly to the artist Omer Fast. “But playing the same video game four years straight on the same level.” His bombs kill real people though and, he admits, often not the people he is aiming at. The [...]