Obama is a ‘war criminal’ for supporting Israel’s treatment of Palestinians – Cornel WestPublished time: August 06, 2014 00:18 Edited time: August 08, 2014 12:16 A Palestinian woman sits on the remains of her destroyed house after returning to Beit Hanoun town, which witnesses said was heavily hit by Israeli shelling and air strikes during the Israeli offensive, in the northern Gaza Strip August 5, 2014.

Michigan community rebels against huge expansion, militarization of policeAfter acquiring some military hardware, one local Michigan police chief’s plan to also add more than 30 non-certified officers to the force has residents in Barry Township clamoring for an investigation – and, in some cases, his job.

UFO DocumentaryUFO Documentary: Walt Disney’s intriguing UFO documentary ‘Alien Encounters’ shows powerful evidence of the existence and cover-up of UFOs.

Obama on CIA’s post-9/11 tactics: ‘We tortured some folks’President Barack Obama made a rare acknowledgment during a Friday press briefing concerning the United States’ past use of enhanced interrogation tactics in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. “In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some things that were wrong.

NSA mass spying undermines journalists and attorneys’ ability to workDozens of journalists and attorneys surveyed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch for a new report say that the United States government’s surveillance operations are eroding their ability to work.

Earth is headed for its sixth mass extinction – studyAFP Photo / NASA The rapid depletion of Earth’s biodiversity indicates that the planet is in the early stages of its sixth mass extinction of life since becoming habitable 3.5 billion years ago, according to a new study published in Science.

With Liberty to Monitor AllWhether reporting valuable information to the public, representing another’s legal interests, or voluntarily associating with others in order to advocate for changes in policy, it is often crucial to keep certain information private from the government. In the face of a massively powerful surveillance apparatus maintained by the US government, however, that privacy is becoming increasingly scarce and difficult to ensure.

Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz Hails New BRICS Bank Challenging U.S.-Dominated World Bank & IMFA group of five countries has launched its own development bank to challenge the U.S.-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Leaders from the so-called BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – unveiled the New Development Bank at a summit in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza.

Carlos Slim calls for three-day working week to improve quality of lifeMexican billionaire tycoon, Carlos Slim, has called for the introduction of a three-day working week, offset by longer hours and a later retirement, as a way to improve people’s quality of life and create a more productive labour force.

Solar has won. Even if coal were free to burn, power stations couldn’t competeLast week, for the first time in memory, the wholesale price of electricity in Queensland fell into negative territory – in the middle of the day. For several days the price, normally around $40-$50 a megawatt hour, hovered in and around zero.

Phil Donahue’s vindication: Media icon unloads on Fox, Cheney and what happened at MSNBCLegendary TV host was fired for opposing Iraq war. Here’s how he feels seeing the return of those who got it wrong As has been well-documented, and will hopefully long be taught in journalism schools nationwide, the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not the American mainstream media’s finest hour.

Meet Executive Order 12333: The Reagan rule that lets the NSA spy on AmericansJohn Napier Tye served as section chief for Internet freedom in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor from January 2011 to April 2014. He is now a legal director of Avaaz, a global advocacy organization.

BRICS announce $200B challenge to world financial order | Al Jazeera AmericaAfter years of railing against the Western-dominated global financial order, a powerful bloc of the world’s emerging economies has finally done something about it. On Tuesday, the BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – formally introduced their long-awaited $100 billion development bank, to be headquartered in Shanghai, and a currency reserve of the same size, institutions that aim to be both competitor and antithesis to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

BIS chief fears fresh Lehman from worldwide debt surge – Telegraph40pc of syndicated loans are to sub-investment grade borrowers The disturbing twist in this cycle is that China, Brazil, Turkey and other emerging economies have succumbed to private credit booms of their own, partly as a spill-over from quantitative easing in the West. Their debt ratios have risen 20 percentage points as well, to 175pc.

CIA employee’s quest to release information ‘destroyed my entire career’His CIA career included assignments in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq, but the most perilous posting for Jeffrey Scudder turned out to be a two-year stint in a sleepy office that looks after the agency’s historical files.

The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population controlWilliam Binney is one of the highest-level whistleblowers to ever emerge from the NSA. He was a leading code-breaker against the Soviet Union during the Cold War but resigned soon after September 11, disgusted by Washington’s move towards mass surveillance.

The Senate Judiciary Committee Just Backed an Amendment to Overturn ‘Citizens United’ | Blog | BillMoyers.comThis post originally appeared at The Nation. Constitutional amendments are often proposed but rarely advanced to the stage of serious debate. What moves any meaningful amendment from mere paperwork to serious consideration is the popular will of the great mass of Americans.

ACLU Digs Deep Into The Law Enforcement War Machine | Techdirt“Advocates from every corner of the political compass have produced a mountain of disinformation about the ‘militarization’ of American law enforcement.”

​Germany’s failed attempts to get its gold back from the US ‘opens question of its sovereignty’There is neither real criticism from German politicians, nor any visible efforts to return German gold held in the US, so it seems that US controls Germany, economic analyst Michael Mross told RT.

The Pathology of the Rich – Chris Hedges on Reality Asserts Itself pt1On RAI with Paul Jay, Chris Hedges discusses the psychology of the super rich; their sense of entitlement, the dehumanization of workers, and mistaken belief that their wealth will insulate them from the coming storms