A federal judge ruled that the General Services Administration (GSA) wrongly infringed on the First Amendment rights of Occupy Eugene protesters by severely restricting the hours and days they were allowed to demonstrate. The group, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement, sued the GSA for denying a permit so its members could protest in a public plaza in Eugene, Oregon in 2012. [...]

When Yahoo didn’t comply with a National Security Agency request to hand over user data under the PRISM surveillance program, the US government threatened it with daily fines of $250K, the company has revealed. Ron Bell, Yahoo’s general counsel, said in a blog post, that the company “refused to comply with what we viewed as unconstitutional and overbroad surveillance and challenged the US [...]

Prime Minister David Cameron is supportive of President Obama'€™s decision to authorize US airstrikes against Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria, Downing Street has confirmed. While UK government officials claim there are currently no plans for Britain to engage in airstrikes in Syria, such military action has not been ruled out in the future. [...]

France may take part in the US bombing campaign in Iraq aimed at crippling the Islamic State militant group if it would be called upon. "In Iraq... we support the formation of an inclusive government. We will participate if necessary in an aerial military action," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Wednesday in a speech in Paris. [...]

EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht wants to see oil and natural gas exports from the US to Europe included in the forthcoming transatlantic trade deal which will create the world's largest free trade zone. Europe wants US oil and gas to help offset its dependence on Russian energy. About 30 percent of Europe’s total gas requirement comes from Russia, approximately half of that is vulnerable [...]

USA Today reports: “President Obama spends Tuesday soliciting congressional support for expanded military action against the insurgent group known as the Islamic State.” The Jacksonville Journal-Courier in Illinois reports today: “President Barack Obama’s plans to expand the U.S. military role against Islamic extremist groups could overstep his authority, according to a longtime Jackson [...]

America – its government, businesses, and people – are nearly $60 trillion in debt, according to the latest economic data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve. And private debt – not government borrowing – is the biggest reason for the huge deficit. Total US debt at the end of the first quarter of 2014, on March 31 totaled almost $59.4 trillion – up nearly $500 billion from the end of t [...]

The United States will soon release a long-awaited report detailing the findings of a Senate investigation into the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques, and sources now say those tactics far exceeded what the world was led to believe. According to an article published on Sunday by the UK’s Telegraph, the American intelligence officers tasked with interrogating alleged Al-Qaeda memb [...]

Just two days after the President of Ukraine and Russia both expressed a desire to resolve the conflict in Ukraine peacefully, representatives from the two self-proclaimed republics in East Ukraine and Kiev’s government agreed to a ceasefire after meeting behind closed doors in Belarus. Interesting timing considering that on Wednesday, after his phone call with Poroshenko, President Putin p [...]

"The mismatch between the realities on the ground and the nature of the president’s pronouncements reveals a president who is out of touch with reality." This has been one of the underlying themes of those who have argued from the beginning of this drama that the West doesn’t have a stake in Ukraine’s fate to even approach the stake of Russia, which has included Ukraine within its sphere [...]

We are at the beginning of an epoch where at some point in the future there could be an open war between the advanced powers, and there is not much faith in the ceasefire in Ukraine, Samir Dathi, National Officer of the Stop the War Coalition, told RT. Ukraine's President is confident about a ceasefire - do you think he's right to be? [...]

Camp XRAYFew realize how expensive it is to keep Guantanamo Bay prison operational. The Joint Task Force (JTF) detention center, which opened in 2002, costs US taxpayers $140 million a year, breaking down to about $800,000 per detainee. The JTF was never meant to be permanent, yet twelve long years after the first round of prisoners arrived, 149 prisoners remain detained there indefinitely. [...]

A 2009 intelligence document provided to journalists by former government contractor Edward Snowden suggests the United States weighed someday conducting espionage to prevent losing its economic prowess to other countries. The document, published first by The Intercept on Friday this week, outlines tactics the American intelligence community may implement in the future in the event of certain s [...]

After admitting last week that "we do not have a strategy yet" for dealing with the Islamist militants in Syria who have beheaded two Americans, Barack Obama has struck a more confident note on a trip to Europe this week. The American president used a visit to Estonia on Wednesday to declare that the "defence of Tallinn and Riga and Vilnius is just as important as the defence of Berlin and Pari [...]

President Obama has been having a rough summer, reflected in poll numbers that are as low as they have been during his presidency. Clearly a concatenation of developments overseas that appear to most Americans to be to some degree threatening accounts for much of the sour public mood and the broadsides being directed at the president and his administration for how they have responded to those deve [...]

United States President Barack Obama said Friday that the US and European Union are still prepared to impose sanctions against Russia if the crisis in Ukraine continues to escalate following the signing of a ceasefire agreement. Speaking in Newport, Wales at the close of a major NATO alliance summit, Pres. Obama expressed skepticism over a pact signed only hours earlier in Minsk during a meetin [...]

The US President says it is now “provable” that "Russian combat forces and tanks" moved into Ukraine. But Kremlin says Obama’s words are in conflict with the State Department that said it has no proof of Russian troops in the area. A statement from the Russian president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov came in response to Barack Obama’s address to the Baltic States’ leader. Speaking ahead [...]

2014 has been the year of “Russian invasions”. But the farcical politicking and media charade surrounding Ukraine’s upheaval reminds us of the tale of Texas, and independent thinking too. Washington and Kiev would have us believe Russia invaded Poroshenko’s Ukraine. But Ukraine's Texicans* in the east have another story to tell. [...]

Official Washington draws the Ukraine crisis in black-and-white colors with Russian President Putin the bad guy and the U.S.-backed leaders in Kiev the good guys. But the reality is much more nuanced, with the American people consistently misled on key facts, writes Robert Parry. If you wonder how the world could stumble into World War III – much as it did into World War I a century ago – a [...]

Barack Obama says the "door to NATO membership will remain open" for new members, while also urging the organization to help strengthen Ukraine's military. Germany has promised to send non-lethal aid, such as bullet proof vests and medical supplies. Speaking in Estonia, Obama did not explicitly point to Ukraine when referring to expanding NATO membership to other nations. [...]

News anchor Piers Morgan's tenure with CNN officially ended on Tuesday this week, and according to a tweet sent by the British journalist, an exchange with radio host Alex Jones was among the highlights of his career there. "If I'm to be remembered for anything [at] CNN, I'd like it to be this" Morgan told his 4.23 million Twitter followers on Tuesday along with a link to a YouTube clip of his [...]

Stephen Cohen on Russia-Ukraine Crisis As negotiations over the crisis in Ukraine begin in Geneva, tension is rising in the Ukrainian east after security forces killed three pro-Russian protesters, wounded 13 and took 63 captive in the city of Mariupol. Ukrainian officials said the pro-Russian separatists had attempted to storm a military base. [...]