Tag Archives: propaganda
US and West looking for World War 3 in Syria
Iranian lawmakers and commanders issued stark warnings to the United States and its allies on Tuesday, saying any military strike on Syria would lead to a retaliatory attack on Israel fanned by “the flames of outrage.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/28/world/middleeast/strike-on-syria-would-cause-one-on-israel-iran-declares.html?ref=todayspaper The warnings came against a backdrop of rising momentum among Western governments for a military intervention in the […]
American Civil Liberties Union lives up to their creed
In a detailed legal attack on the National Security Agency’s collection of Americans’ phone call data, the American Civil Liberties Union argued in court papers filed Monday that the sweeping data gathering violates the Constitution and should be halted. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/us/nsa-phone-data-collection-is-illegal-aclu-says.html?ref=us The A.C.L.U. cited the writings of George Orwell and the comprehensive East German surveillance portrayed […]
Egypt turns police state focus from Muslim Brotherhood
The Egyptian authorities have begun cracking down on other dissenters, sometimes labeling even liberal activists or labor organizers as dangerous Islamists. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/world/middleeast/egypt-widens-crackdown-and-meaning-of-islamist.html?pagewanted=1&ref=middleeast Ten days ago, the police arrested two left-leaning Canadians — one of them a filmmaker specializing in highly un-Islamic movies about sexual politics — and implausibly announced that they were members of […]
Tens of thousands protest corruption in Philippines
Tens of thousands of Filipinos protested in Manila on Monday, outraged over accusations that an estimated $141 million in public money had been diverted into the coffers of politicians and their associates. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/world/asia/filipinos-stage-anticorruption-protest-in-manila.html?ref=world The peaceful four-hour rally was fueled in part by photographs posted on social media sites by the daughter of one of the […]
Egyptian people: US, islamists allied in Divide and Conquer
When the conversation in Egypt turns to politics, the predominant topic is the conspiracy between the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood to destroy Egypt. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/world/middleeast/as-egyptians-ignore-curfew-talk-of-a-us-brotherhood-conspiracy.html?ref=world The idea is widespread among supporters of the military, which ousted the Muslim Brotherhood’s elected president, Mohamed Morsi, last month. For journalists who ventured out Saturday night in violation […]
German people to jealously guard internet privacy
Continuing revelations, based on documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, of sweeping American digital surveillance around the world are rattling the close ties between the United States and Germany. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/world/europe/surveillance-revelations-shake-us-german-ties.html?ref=world In a country scarred by Nazi and Communist pasts, the issue is prompting not just a debate about privacy and data protection, but also […]
Egypt military allows Islamists to attack churches
Egypt’s security forces, which have taken center stage in Egyptian political life in recent weeks, have made little effort to protect churches and other Christian property, leaving Christians in many parts of Egypt to fend for themselves. A majority of the attacks have happened in Upper Egypt, the country’s poorer and more conservative southern and […]
Fukushima on the verge of irreparably polluting the Pacific
The Japanese nuclear energy watchdog raised the incident level from one to three on the international scale that measures the severity of atomic accidents. This was an acknowledgement that the power station was in its greatest crisis since the reactors melted down after the tsunami in 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23779561 Some nuclear experts are concerned that the […]
EU bank deal gives Cyprus, warm water port to Russia
European leaders engineered a harsh bailout deal for this tiny Mediterranean nation in March and the Russians are now in a position to get something that has previously eluded even Moscow’s most audacious oligarchs: control of a so-called systemic financial institution in the European Union. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/world/europe/russians-still-ride-high-in-cyprus-after-bailout.html?pagewanted=1&ref=world “They wanted to throw out the Russians but in […]
UK bullies journalists: “there’s no need to write any more”
Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian newspaper, said that two months ago he was contacted by “a very senior government official claiming to present the views of the prime minister,” David Cameron. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/world/europe/british-news-organization-has-advantages-in-secrets-battle-with-government.html?pagewanted=1&ref=world There were two meetings in which officials “demanded the return or the destruction of the material we were working on,” and in […]
Water safety analysis after BP gulf spill erroneous
An analysis of water, sediment and seafood samples taken in 2010 during and after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has found higher contamination levels in some cases than previous studies by federal agencies did, casting doubt on some of the earlier sampling methods. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/science/earth/new-analysis-of-gulf-oil-spill.html?ref=us The lead author, Paul W. Sammarco of the […]
In the East as in the West, perils for tyranny
Several perils were enumerated in a memo, referred to as Document No. 9, that bears the unmistakable imprimatur of Xi Jinping, China’s new top leader. The first was “Western constitutional democracy”; others included promoting “universal values” of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation, and “nihilist” criticisms of the party’s traumatic past. […]
CIA admits overthrowing democracy in Iran because of oil
The C.I.A. has admitted orchestrating the 1953 coup that toppled democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran after he tried to nationalize his country’s oil wealth, which was controlled by Britain, according to a declassified document. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/middleeast/cia-orchestrated-1953-coup-in-iran-document-confirms.html?ref=world The agency’s role in the coup has long been known, but George Washington University’s National Security Archive, […]
US: We can’t spy on you if your not on the internet
The Obama administration has poured billions of dollars into expanding the reach of the Internet, and nearly 98 percent of American homes now have access to some form of high-speed broadband. But tens of millions of people are still on the sidelines of the digital revolution. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/19/technology/a-push-to-connect-millions-who-live-offline-to-the-internet.html?pagewanted=1&ref=us Barack Obama took office as president in […]
US meat inspecting computer system fails again
A troubled new computer system used by inspectors at the nation’s 6,500 meatpacking and processing plants shut down for two days this month, putting at risk millions of pounds of beef, poultry, pork and lamb that had left the plants before workers could collect samples to check for E. coli bacteria and other contaminants. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/us/computer-system-failed-at-meatpacking-plants-but-shipping-continued.html?pagewanted=2&ref=us […]
The new American Drug War
The new documentary by director Kevin Booth, American Drug War 2, highlights the case of a 2-year-old boy who lay in a coma not eating for over 40 days after surviving brain surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. His parents are told to make funeral arrangements. However, his father had read about a version of an ancient […]
US Defense Department sets up military base in Jordan
The Defense Department is using a warehouse to coordinate support for Jordan’s military as the kingdom copes with a refugee crisis spawned by civil war in neighboring Syria — and to help prepare if violence spills across the border. The Pentagon deployed Patriot air-defense missile batteries here, along with F-16s to train with the Jordanian […]
NSA admits to violating 4th amendment in leaked audit
The National Security Agency violated privacy rules protecting the communications of Americans and others on domestic soil 2,776 times over a one-year period, according to an internal audit leaked by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden and made public on Thursday night. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/us/nsa-often-broke-rules-on-privacy-audit-shows.html?hp&_r=0 The largest number of episodes — 1,904 — appeared to be […]
US pays Egypt 1.5 billion to kill journalists and civilians
A veteran cameraman for the Britain-based news network Sky News was among the hundreds of people killed in Cairo on Wednesday. Other journalists described close calls in the streets, and several were detained by local authorities. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/world/middleeast/cameraman-for-british-network-is-killed-in-cairo.html?ref=world&_r=0 Habiba Ahmed Abd Elaziz, a reporter for Xpress, a newspaper based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was also […]
Dirty Babylon 