August 2015


Michael Hudson Counterpunch

This autumn may see anti-austerity coalitions gain power in Portugal, Spain and Italy, while Marine le Pen’s National Front in France presses for outright withdrawal from the eurozone. These countries face a common problem: how to resist the economic devastation that the European Central Bank (ECB), European Council and IMF “troika” has inflicted on Greece and is now intending to do the same to southern Europe. (more…)

The bribery scandal made headlines when Former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. was alleged to have taking $1 million in bribes from juvenile detention centers to fill their cells with children who came before him in court. (more…)

Guardian U.K.

An assistant professor in the law department of the US Military Academy at West Point has argued that legal scholars critical of the war on terrorism represent a “treasonous” fifth column that should be attacked as enemy combatants. (more…)

In order to obtain a copy of the NSA’s main XKeyscore software, whose existence was first revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency agreed to hand over metadata of German citizens it spies on (more…)

Guardian U.K

The first UN privacy chief has said the world needs a Geneva convention style law for the internet to safeguard data and combat the threat of massive clandestine digital surveillance. (more…)

Seumas Milne Guardian U.K.

What is taking place in the Labour party is a democratic explosion unprecedented in British political history. Last week more than 168,000 registered to vote in Labour’s leadership election – on one day. About 400,000 people have applied to join Labour as members or supporters since May, tripling the size of the party to more than 600,000. (more…)

Computing.co.uk

The United Nations has told member states that they must respect its right to privacy following allegations that telecoms operator AT&T helped the US National Security Agency (more…)

Democracy Now!

As documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden expose how AT&T aided the NSA’s vast spying operations, we speak to former AT&T technician Mark Klein, who worked at the company for 22 years. (more…)