As the first formal probe by an international rights body into allegations of U.S. mass surveillance began here Monday, privacy advocates from throughout the Americas accused Washington of violating international covenants and endangering civil society. Monday’s...
Don’t Take Your Eye Off Regime Change
Recent revelations about Iraq have exposed a pattern that may be just as revelatory about Syria. When the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons recently won the Nobel Peace prize, its former director general, José Bustani, decided to finally...
The Fantasy of a Clean War
The foreign leaders are dropping like flies – to American surveillance. I’m talking about serial revelations that the National Security Agency has been spying on Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, two Mexican presidents, Felipe Calderón (whose office the...
Turkey’s Arms Purchase Should Jolt US Alliance Policies
Sending a shock wave through the U.S. military-industrial complex, NATO ally Turkey passed up the usually dominant American defense industry in favor of an obscure Chinese defense company for a contract on a long-range missile defense system. Unlike the American...
Suicide Bombers Attack Banquet, 37 Iraqis Killed
Brave New World
The first reports in early May of 1960 were that a U.S. weather plane, flying out of Turkey, had gone missing. A silent Moscow knew better. After letting the Americans crawl out on a limb, expatiating on their cover story, Russia sawed it off. Actually, said Nikita...
UN Will Censure Illegal Spying, But Not US
When the 193-member General Assembly adopts a resolution next month censuring the illegal electronic surveillance of governments and world leaders by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), the U.N.’s highest policy-making body will spare the United States from...
Bombs, Clashes, Kill 27 Iraqis, Wound 28 More
Taking Big Brother to Task
There was a definite "BS" and "AS" order to things at the major Stop Watching Us rally against government surveillance in Washington, DC, on Saturday. That’s Before Snowden and After Snowden, and though it doesn’t matter really which is which, it...
Israel and the NSA: Partners in Crime
It wasn’t the US government breaking into the private communications of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, according to top secret documents unearthed by Edward Snowden and published in Le Monde – it was the Israelis. A four-page internal précis regarding...


