Leading members of the United States intelligence community continued to defend the government's vast surveillance programs in Washington on Thursday and suggested that those agency's capabilities exceed what's been previously reported. During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon, lawmakers asked representatives from the National Security Agency, [...]

Officials refuse to say in Senate testimony whether cell site data had ever been used to pinpoint an individual's location. US intelligence chiefs used an appearance before Congress on Thursday to urge lawmakers not to allow public anger over the extent of government surveillance to result in changes to the law that would impede them from preventing terrorist attacks. [...]

The Nobel Prize-winning New York Times columnist argues the rich are even more selfish than you thought. In a post at his blog, New York Times columnist and award-winning economist Paul Krugman argues that while it may appear the rich want to destroy all forms of government, that isn’t the case. What they really want to do, Krugman writes, is destroy all forms of government that don’t benefit [...]

New legislation changes will shut down the Monsanto Protection Act rider that granted Monsanto protection from legal action. This unprecedented move shows the true power of the anti-GMO, anti-Monsanto movement, and how elected officials are now being forced to side with the concerned population over the money-spewing Monsanto. [...]

The murder of Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi was an organized hit to cover up direct arm deals. A former CIA gun runner revealed that the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, was killed in the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in order to cover up the U.S. State Department’s direct arm shipments to al-Qaeda. [...]

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff took to the world stage yesterday at the United Nations General Assembly meeting and blasted the U.S.’s global spying empire.The leader of Brazil has had enough of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) spying on her country. And she’s not hiding any of her outrage. [...]

There are hundreds of formerly prosperous communities all over America that are being steadily transformed into rotting, decaying hellholes. The good paying middle class jobs that once supported those communities are long gone, and they have been [...]

Recipients of arms sales include the Department of Homeland Security. Money makes the world go round. Nowhere is this motto more relevant than in the shadowy world of smuggling weaponry and drugs, not to mention legal arms sales which all too often lead to modern weaponry falling into the hands of America’s worst enemies. [...]

Judge says requests for mass customer data have not been challenged "despite the mechanism for doing so." No telecommunications company has ever challenged the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court's orders for bulk phone records under the Patriot Act, the court revealed on Tuesday. [...]

Washington seems certain that exerting sanctions on countries is the safest way to achieve their foreign policy goals. In reality economic and political sanctions do little to control the governments they target, hitting ordinary citizens hard instead. “The aim of sanctions is to harm the state. But the real victims are ordinary, regular people. Experience has shown that there’s a huge wedge b [...]

Guardian editor says depth of NSA surveillance programs greatly exceed anything the 1984 author could have imagined. The potential of the surveillance state goes way beyond anything in George Orwell's 1984, Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor-in-chief, told an audience in New York on Monday. [...]

Eric Harroun gets "sweet plea deal" despite supporting terrorists who killed US troops. An Army veteran whose father said he was working for the CIA has been released from jail despite fighting alongside an Al-Qaeda terrorist group in Syria that was responsible for killing US troops in Iraq. [...]

President Barack Obama said in August that an independent panel will review the United States€™ surveillance capabilities in the wake of damaging NSA leaks. One month later, though, that group'€™s game plan is being called into question. A steady stream of disclosures credited to former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden have revealed since June previously unreported details about the Nati [...]

Adan Salazar | Technical snafu adds extra layer of mystery to Navy Yard shooting's questionable events. In a report that has gone virtually unnoticed in the mainstream press, D.C. police and firefighters who first arrived to assist at the Washington Navy Yard earlier this week say they were frustrated when their radios failed during inspection of the building, adding yet another strange developmen [...]

US president tells memorial for Washington navy yard victims Americans must not accept mass shootings as inevitable. President Barack Obama has called for a transformation in US gun laws at a memorial service for the Washington navy yard shooting victims, saying, "There's nothing inevitable about it." Obama said Americans should honour the victims of last Monday's shooting by insisting on a change [...]

A college student from California is making waves this week after being told he could'€™t pass out copies of the United States Constitution on campus. Robert Van Tuinen, 25, was attempting to hand out complimentary copies of the US Constitution at Modesto Junior College in central California on Tuesday when a police officer informed him that he could only distribute pamphlets on campus if done f [...]

Exclusive: Journalist uses Freedom of Information Act to disclose 1961 accident in which one switch averted catastrophe. A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima [...]

Venezuela has sent a letter to the UN chief asking him to take measures against the United States over the denial of visas for some members of its delegation who are scheduled to attend the UN General Assembly in New York. The letter sent by Venezuela’s ambassador to the UN, Samuel Moncada, requests that the Secretary General Ban Ki-moon take action in response to the apparent denial of visas, w [...]

Democratic leaders from Mexico to Argentina are so resentful of American influence that they are now willing to take action. Spies did the trick. America for the Americans - this is a cornerstone of United States’ foreign policy. That doctrine, introduced 190 years ago by President James Monroe, means this: foreigners keep out of the US’ backyard. For decades it [US foreign policy] also sat w [...]

The American Empire stands naked, called out by one man among a hundred thousand who knew its dirty secrets and systematic betrayal of the world's trust. While international politics in the West has been leaping over each other to suck up to The Empire's New Clothes following September 11, 2001, the United States wasted no time in reinforcing the order of Pax Americana - that the US would establis [...]

If this doesn't wake you up, I don't know what will. [...]

An investigative history of Western complicity in Saddam Hussein's crimes reveals the story his trial never will. In February 1991, the Shia of southern Iraq rose against Saddam Hussein. Barry M. Lando, a former investigative producer for 60 Minutes, argues compellingly that this ill-fated uprising represents one instance among many of Western complicity in Saddam Hussein's crimes against humani [...]