Home Search
NSA - search results
If you're not happy with the results, please do another search
Video: Think the NSA Can’t Hack an iPhone Without Apple’s Help? Think Again.
http://democracynow.org - We speak with Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept, which has obtained a secret, internal U.S. government catalog of dozens of cellphone ...
Via...
NSA must end planned expansion of domestic spying, lawmakers say
Two members of the House Oversight Committee, a Democrat and a Republican, have asked the director...
Video: Heated debate over Brexit in wake of Brussels attacks: M. Ansar vs. T....
Twin blasts went off at Brussels' Zaventem Airport and an explosion rocked the Maalbeek Metro station close to EU institutions on Tuesday morning. The...
Peacefully protesting pensioner arrested outside NSA spy base
Police arrested a 74-year-old peace activist who refused to leave a protest site outside an...
Cops caught on camera eating sweets after raiding medical marijuana dispensary will be charged
Police who were filmed passing around candy bars and joking about feeling “light headed” after raiding...
Secret Court Approves FBI's Classified Changes to NSA Database Access
The FBI has implemented new protocols that allegedly enhance privacy safeguards for Americans, when bureau agents search through the NSA's massive intelligence databases for information.
It...
FBI and Access to NSA Data on Americans
Peter Van Buren
Hear that hissing sound? That is the last gasps for air from the Bill of Rights. The Bill is one breath away...
NSA Chief Warns Black Energy Attack On U.S. Power Grid A “Matter Of When,...
On March 1, 2016, Admiral Michael S. Rogers, U.S. Navy, Commander, U.S. Cyber Command, Director, National Security Agency/Chief, Central Security Service, was a keynote...
A Bad Day for Monsanto and a Good Day for Public Health in Europe
Monsanto needs to be stopped, the health of the world literally depends on it.
Aisha Dodwell
A battle of corporate profit vs people’s needs has been...
Video: ‘I’d move heaven & Earth to access Lavrov’s emails’ – ex- NSA,...
Privacy seems less and less attainable these days, as foreign spy agencies target top political figures. The former director of both the NSA and...
Monsanto’s War on Mother Nature
Joseph Sanders
(RINF) - A perfect example of how insane the system actually is.. Monsanto Company is ranked number 52 among over 30 million US...
Video: MIT Professor Stephanie Seneff: “I Have Evidence That Monsanto’s Roundup Causing Cancer!”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFCrtcL1iJ4&w=580&h=385]
Please Support The Show – http://richieallen.co.uk/ https://www.facebook.com/therichieallenshow http://www.youtube.com/RichieAllenShowMedia Tune in at ...
Via Youtube
Video: The Real Effects of a Transaction Tax
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A-7CLxasgU&w=580&h=385]
Robert Pollin details the tax on Wall Street that he proposed in the Inclusive Prosperity Act, which Bernie Sanders has adopted as the...
Video: Immigration, deaths & rapes: Katie Hopkins vs Mo Ansar
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyWi_iLZ5YA&w=580&h=385]
UK columnist Katie Hopkins and political commentator Mo Ansar engage in a war of words on RT, discussing whether the huge influx of...
Or your money back: Monsanto execs return $4mn in bonuses after SEC settlement
Two Monsanto executives returned their lavish bonuses, amounting to nearly $4 million, after the agribusiness giant agreed to pay federal regulators $80 million as...
Video: Kelly Slater Vote Nobody 2016, Investigate 9/11 and Screw Monsanto!!!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFF9Bax8me0&w=580&h=385]
In this video Luke Rudkowski interviews professional surfing legend Kelly Slater in Oahu Hawaii. The two discuss the 2016 presidential elections, the truth...
The Sanders Sensation
When I crossed paths with a Democratic campaign consultant in Austin last March, I suggested he come to the local International Brotherhood of Electrical...
Washington Post’s Food Columnist Goes to Bat for Monsanto–Again
Washington Post food columnist Tamar Haspel on organic food: “It’s easy to make it look like people care a whole lot more than they...
West Coast US cities sue Monsanto over toxic chemicals
Genevieve Leigh
Last week, Seattle, Washington became the latest addition to the list of cities filing lawsuits against multinational corporation Monsanto, joining San Diego, San...
New Documents Uncover Monsanto’s Secret Role in Illinois Professor Bruce Chassy’s Academics Review Website
The consumer group U.S. Right to Know today called for improved transparency and public disclosure of industry funding for and coordination with public university professors.
Email...
Monsanto sues California agency over plans to list Roundup as cancer-causing chemical
Agrochemical giant Monsanto has taken a fight for its leading weed killer to court in California, seeking to prevent glyphosate, the main ingredient in...
Neocons Flack for Unsavory Saudis
Exclusive: Since Israel decided that Iran was its big enemy — and made Saudi Arabia its quiet ally — American neocons have fallen in...
Video: Barbara Lee on What Was Left Unsaid in Obama’s State of the Union
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkYuwoAY7Nk&w=580&h=385]
In the premiere episode of The Real Capitol Hill, we sit down with Congresswoman Barbara Lee to get her thoughts on President Obama's...
War criminal Tony Blair refuses to attend IRA-Libya compensation inquiry
Declining to answer additional questions at an inquiry into Libyan-backed IRA terror activities, former Prime Minister Tony Blair claims he has already given all...
Monsanto to face tribunal at The Hague for ‘ecocide’ against humanity and the planet
An international tribunal made up of some of the world's leading environmental and human rights groups, is set to hold the world's most evil...
Taiwan bans GMOs from school lunches… mandates GMO labeling nationwide… throws down gauntlet on...
Even as the fascist, corrupt U.S. government and its regulators (FDA and USDA) actively conspire with the biotech industry to poison Americans with genetically...
NSA Whistleblower Tells UK Parliament: “Snooper’s Charter” Is Deadly
'Britain should not go further down this road and risk making the same mistakes as my country did, or they will end up perpetuating...
Monsanto announces 1,000 job cuts after first-quarter losses
Agrotech giant Monsanto said that it will eliminate 1,000 jobs as part of a bid to cut costs in the wake of lower profits....
Video: Keiser Report: ‘Bankism’, oil prices and US election insanity (E856 feat. Gerald Celente)
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SROM52ibmpw&w=580&h=385]
Check Keiser Report website for more: http://www.maxkeiser.com/ In this special New Year's Eve episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert...
If a Close US Ally Backdoored Juniper, Would NSA Tell Congress?
You may have heard that Juniper Networks announced what amounts to a backdoor in its virtual private networks products. Here’s Kim Zetter’s accessible intro of...
NSA helped GCHQ spies hack Juniper firewalls — Snowden leak
British spies enlisted the help of the US National Security Agency (NSA) to learn how to hack firewalls made by top internet security provider...
Your Business Been Hacked? Thanks NSA!
It appears that the NSA (“or someone”) hacked into the code of a popular firewall and planted a password in there that would allow...
The Toxic Agriculture of Monsanto and Big Agribusiness vs Agroecology Rooted in Communities and...
"We are being far too kind to industrialised agriculture. The private sector has endorsed it, but it has failed to feed the world, it...
Video: “Loss and Damage”: U.S. Stymies Push for Compensation for Climate Devastation at U.N....
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-GRv1EKIWc&w=580&h=385]
On Monday, the prime minister of Tuvalu, Enele Sopoaga, said world leaders must prevent the world from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius,...
Monsanto in the Dock! Rolling Back the Destructive Influence of the Global Agribusiness Cartel
And now for the good news.
As the rest of the world eats denutrified, poisoned 'food' and capitulates to the criminal cartel of US agribusiness,...
Video: Jim Fetzer On The Sensational New Book “Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ymxtL-jsE&w=580&h=385]
Please Support The Show — http://richieallen.co.uk/ http://www.JamesFetzer.BlogSpot.co.uk/ https://www.facebook.com/therichieallenshow ...
Via Youtube
NSA documents reveal bulk email collection continues despite official claims
By Nick Barrickman
A series of declassified National Security Agency (NSA) documents have revealed that the government’s program of bulk metadata collection of the population’s internet...
Video: Prove GMOs have safety standards will pay $10mn – Scientist to Monsanto
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxqiuUoKUD0&w=580&h=385]
One of the world's largest GMO producers has been challenged by an MIT graduate who claims there are absolutely no GMO safety assessment...
Who Needs Gates And Monsanto? Confronting Hunger, Poverty and Climate Change: “Tremendous Success” of...
It is essential that we get off the chemical treadmill that the modern industrial urban-centric food and agriculture system is based on. It is...
Leaked NSA doc reveals ‘sheer luck’ needed to find useful info in sea of...
The NSA didn’t know it was already sitting on a “goldmine” of data on one of its targets until one of its analysts discovered...
After selling out to Monsanto, National Geographic now purchased by Rupert Murdoch and hit...
The photographers and reporters for National Geographic are in a unique and very influential position to document and record the failures of...
$10mn dare: MIT grad challenges Monsanto over ‘nonexistent GMO safety standards’
One of the world’s largest GMO producers has been challenged by an MIT graduate who claims there are absolutely no GMO safety assessment standards....
European Agency Says Monsanto’s Flagship Product Is Not ‘Likely’ Carcinogenic Based on Flawed Science
With the European Union’s approval of glyphosate set to expire at the end of the year, the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) today announced...
Video: Passengers say listen to pilots! Lufthansa cabin crew strike over retirement benefits enters...
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn2NLnUzUPY&w=580&h=385]
Passengers say listen to pilots! Lufthansa cabin crew strike over retirement benefits enters 4th day Published on 10 Nov 2015 A strike by...
Shaker Aamer should be denied Gitmo compensation — Tory MPs
Former Guantanamo detainee Shaker Aamer should not be given compensation for his 13-year imprisonment without charge by US authorities because he “freely chose” to...
Seeds of Corruption: “Unneeded, Unwanted and Unsafe,” the Case of Genetically Modified Mustard in...
In India, genetically modified (GM) mustard is edging closer to becoming the first officially approved GM food crop to be placed on the commercial...
Shouldn’t the U.S. Compensate Syria for Invading?
Eric Zuesse
On Friday the 30th of October, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that he will send 50 U.S. Special Forces soldiers into Syrian territory, though...
Snowden: NSA, GCHQ Using Your Phone to Spy on Others (and You)
You are a tool of the state, according to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The NSA in the U.S., and its equivalent in the UK, GCHQ,...
Video: Lack of Water, Unsanitary Conditions Prompt Seniors to Protest at City Housing Project
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGUlTpsYed4&w=580&h=385]
Residents of Lakeview Towers tell TRNN's Eddie Conway the city has been negligent in maintaining aging complex.
Via Youtube
Private NSA Army is Attacking YOU!
Privatized NSA Army is Attacking YOU!
In the first part of this article series, the post 9/11 rise of a private NSA was detailed. Some started...
American Jihadi Starts Private NSA and Attacks America
Have you ever wanted to put somebody on a no-fly list because they were black, white, Christian, Muslim, liberal or conservative? Maybe because they believed...
Monsanto cuts 12% of its workforce to save money amid profit drop
Falling commodity prices have sowed the seeds of destruction for 2,600 employees of agricultural giant Monsanto. The world’s top seed supplier is cutting 12...
Video: “Einstein’s Definition of Insanity”: Father of Slain Reporter on GOP Candidates’ Gun Control...
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba2Gbws1itY&w=580&h=385]
Democracynow.org - As the United States experiences more than one mass shooting per day, the issue of gun regulation is emerging as a...
No Safe Harbor: How NSA Spying Undermined US Tech and Europeans’ Privacy
Danny O'Brien
The spread of knowledge about the NSA's surveillance programs has shaken the trust of customers in U.S. Internet companies like Facebook, Google, and...
Video: Insane storm crashes crane, blows off houses & cars: Strongest 180kmph Mujigae hits...
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MwC2Y5uQ_E&w=580&h=385]
At least seven people have been killed after a typhoon with winds in excess of 180km/h battered the coast of south China. The...
Why is the University of Illinois Receiving $1 Million from Monsanto?
Monsanto likes to say that those of us against GMOs don’t use ‘real’ science to support claims that genetically modified crops are unsafe, but...
SLEAZE: Monsanto shill PR firm Ketchum also ran Bush Administration propaganda for the Honduran...
A New York-based public relations firm that has been engaged in a number of controversies including conducting covert propaganda for the George W. Bush...
NSA to snoop on Iranian president at UN meeting: NBC News report
The US National Security Agency (NSA) is most likely to spy on Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his delegation during the UN General Assembly...
Modi and Monsanto: A Wake Up Call For India
Immediately prior to Narendra Modi being elected India’s PM last year, there were calls from some quarters for him to usher in a Thatcherite-style...
Video: Kansas City cop fires on fleeing vehicle as news copter records it from...
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xae0zN4VE4&w=580&h=385]
Story here. http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2015/09/kansas-city-cop-fires-at-fleeing-car-as-news-copter-records-from-above/
Via Youtube
Monsanto’s ‘Hand of God’: Planned Obsolescence of the Indian Farmer
The mantra of global agribusiness companies is that they care about farmers. They also really care about humanity and want to help to feed...
1 dead after 8 people shot in Kansas City
At least one person has been killed and about eight people, many of whom are children, have reportedly been injured in a shooting and car...
Senate passes NSA reform measure
The National Security Agency lost its authority to collect the phone records of millions of Americans, thanks to a new reform measure Congress passed...
New Monsanto Spray Kills Bugs by Messing With Their Genes
In a fascinating long piece in MIT Technology Review, Antonio Regalado examines the genetically modified seed industry's latest blockbuster app in development–one that has...
U.S. Drops Bombs; EU Gets Refugees & Blame. This is insane.
Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org
Starting in 2011 in Libya, the United States dropped bombs on Libya in order to replace its pro-Russian dictator,...
EPA now trying to swindle Native Americans out of compensation after polluting their land...
The Obama administration, which regularly touts itself as a champion for minorities, is attempting to cheat thousands of Native Americans out of future compensation...
Watch Neil Young’s ‘Seeding Fear’ documentary exposing Monsanto’s attacks on family farmers who refuse...
Following the release of his latest album The Monsanto Years, Neil Young has released a short film documentary entitled Seeding Fear that tells one...
The Unsafe Child: Less Outdoor Play is Causing More Harm than Good
By Angela Hanscom
The third grade classroom that was visiting our nature center for the day consisted of mostly boys—rowdy, loud and rambunctious boys. As...
Video: Meet Jim O’Kelly, Father And Grandfather, Fighting Vaccine Insanity For 40 Years!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBq6KihabW0&w=580&h=385]
Please Support The Show — http://richieallenshow.com/donate/ richieallenshow.com www.facebook.com/richieallenshow ...
Via Youtube
Video: US court rules in favor of NSA bulk snooping despite public opposition
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmrk9hupKdk&w=580&h=385]
Despite the opposition of the US public and lawmakers to NSA surveillance, the courts keep handing the Obama administration the license to snoop....
Video: Gun insanity: Call To Ban Emojis
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwYYU5FeFdQ&w=580&h=385]
"Reasonable" gun control has lead to calls to ban digital firearms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqzY0Nrriuw.
Via Youtube
NYT calls out Coca-Cola’s harmful junk food science while ignoring Monsanto’s fraudulent GMO science
The New York Times recently published an in-depth article on one of its blogs exposing the Coca-Cola Company's efforts to promote flawed science downplaying...
Monsanto secretly gave legal defense money to GMO farmer who contaminated neighbor’s organic farm
Global biotech and agricultural giant Monsanto lent financial support to a West Australian farmer who was being sued by a neighbor over alleged cross-contamination...
Video: ‘NSA put surveillance cone over Salt Lake City during 2002 Olympics without warrant’...
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vpxUMfItLU&w=580&h=385]
RT talks to Salt Lake City's former mayor Rocky Anderson, who takes on the NSA and George W. Bush — suing them for...
Video: Snowden Documents Reveal AT&T’s “Extreme Willingness to Help” NSA Domestic Spy Program
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEdAVb6tZ8U&w=580&h=385]
http://democracynow.org - Documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have exposed how extensively the NSA relied on telecommunications giant ...
Via Youtube
Video: Meet the Whistleblower Who Exposed the Secret Room AT&T Used to Help the...
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqeMkv5FHfU&w=580&h=385]
http://democracynow.org - As documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden expose how AT&T aided the NSA's vast spying operations, we speak to ...
Via Youtube
Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: Monsanto’s Silence is Deafening
In his book ‘Altered Genes,Twisted Truths’, US public interest attorney Steven Druker exposed the fraudulent practices and deceptions that led to the commercialisation of GM food...
Video: Kansas Deputy Claims he was “Provoked” into Threatening Man with Camera who Asked...
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrlfNC-SQ3Y&w=580&h=385]
Story here. http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2015/08/kansas-deputy-claims-he-was-provoked-into-threatening-man-with-camera-who-asked-question/
Via Youtube
China’s Cyberspying Is ‘on a Scale No One Imagined’—if You Pretend NSA Doesn’t Exist
Stories about cyberespionage—like the data theft at the US Office of Personal Management believed but not officially stated to have been carried out by...
NSA spied on Japanese PM Shinzo Abe: Wikileaks
The whistleblowers at WikiLeaks have published a trove of documents, that reveal a systematic mass surveillance program that the US National Security Agency (NSA)...
NSA pledges to eventually delete old bulk surveillance records. Oh sure, we can trust...
The National Security Agency will eventually delete the trove of millions of telephone records it controversially amassed under the Patriot Act, the Office of...
Hypnotic Trance in Delhi: Monsanto, GMOs and the Looting of India’s Agriculture
We are about to enter August. And that's a special month in India. Each year, on the 15th, the country commemorates the anniversary of independence...
Majority of Americans oppose compensating Israel over Iran accord
A great majority of Americans oppose the provision of any special compensation to Israel for its concern over the nuclear agreement with Iran, a...
Poll: Most Americans Oppose Compensating Israel for Iran Nuclear Deal
An overwhelming majority of Americans oppose providing any special compensation to the state of Israel in order to assuage its concerns about the Iran...
You Don’t Matter. House Votes for Monsanto’s Right to Deceive Consumers
Ronnie Cummins
On Thursday, 275 members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of H.R. 1599, the DARK (Deny Americans the Right to...
Video: Lufthansa jet escapes collision with drone during landing at Warsaw’s Intl airport
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v5rUyJU_TM&w=580&h=385]
A Lufthansa passenger plane carrying 108 passengers narrowly avoided a possible drone fewer than 100 meters away during a landing at Warsaw's ...
Via...
US should hang NSA leaker Edward Snowden: Former senator
The United States should publicly hang National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden if he is captured by the US government, according to a...
Video: Insane Life In Tokyo Japan and Robot Wars
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWR-LTgo3m8&w=580&h=385]
In this video Luke Rudkowski gives you a behind the scenes look at life in Tokyo, he shows you the best and worst...
ACLU Asks Appeals Court to Halt NSA’s Resumption of Bulk Phone Records Collection
NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union today asked the U. S. Court of Appeals for...
Video: ‘NSA can’t keep its secrets forever’ — hacking expert to RT
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YdlqLsNHo0&w=580&h=385]
According to a recent release by Wikileaks, the NSA has been spying on 125 German officials. Hacking expert Dirk Engling shares his thoughts....
NSA Surrounded Merkel in ‘Web of Surveillance’: WikiLeaks
Spy target list includes not only confidential numbers for Merkel, but also for her top officials, her aides, her chief of staff, and even...
Contracting and Expanding the NSA’s Powers
Can we be generous enough to say that Edward Snowden scored a considerable coup last week with the change in Washington’s attitudes to the...
Video: The End of Encryption? NSA & FBI Seek New Backdoors Against Advice from...
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh_j3V3EFOk&w=580&h=385]
http://democracynow.org - FBI Director James Comey is set to testify against encryption before the Senate Intelligence Committee today, as the United States ...
Via...
WikiLeaks: NSA spies on 98 percent of Latin American countries
Founder of whistleblower website WikiLeaks Julian Assange says the US National Security Agency intercepts almost all communications in the South American continent.
"Ninety-eight percent of...
Video: An NSA Whistleblower’s Guide to Encryption
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOVRNL5u1iU&w=580&h=385]
Thomas Drake, a former senior executive at the NSA turned whistleblower, sat down with the Real News to talk about the USA Freedom...
Video: An NSA Whistleblower’s Guide to Encryption
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlZt7-5hxL0&w=580&h=385]
Thomas Drake, a former senior executive at the NSA turned whistleblower, sat down with the Real News to talk about the USA Freedom...
Video: NSA tapped the phones of 29 top Brazilian officials – WikiLeaks
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iffgzax7ee4&w=580&h=385]
he NSA tapped the telephones of 29 top Brazilian government officials as well as economists and bankers, WikiLeaks claims in a new release....
Video: Kansas City MO cop attacks man for taking pictures in a public space.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-QrSJ2Myc&w=580&h=385]
A day after filing a complaint against Kansas City police for violating his right to record, Robel Bekele received a call from his...
Neil Young invites Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir to Open for ‘The...
Sharing their opposition to Monsanto and Starbucks and Walmart, Reverend Billy and the 40 singing-activists join forces with the radicalized rocker on Tuesday, July...
NSA spied on German chancellor, ministers: Report
New WikiLeaks documents show that the United States not only spied on German Chancellor Angela Merkel but also on several ministers of the country.
Relations...
US court approves resumption of NSA’s bulk data collection
A court in the United States has ruled that the National Security Agency can continue with the systematical collection of Americans’ domestic phone calls...
Mega-merger: Monsanto still seeks takeover of Syngenta, world’s largest crop chemical company
Transnational agrochemical and seed giant Monsanto has reiterated its desire to merge with fellow chemical-producing behemoth Syngenta, a company that has already rebuffed three...
Video: Friendly Spying: Wikileaks reveals NSA ‘economic espionage’ of French companies
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJgP6fGjI5o&w=580&h=385]
Last month, the US government charged six Chinese nationals with economic espionage - claiming they stole secret wireless technology from American ...
Via Youtube
NSA spied on French economy ministers, companies: WikiLeaks
The US National Security Agency (NSA) wiretapped the communications of two French economy ministers and spied on the country's largest companies, according to the...
Video: Google’s ‘listening network’ could be exploited by NSA – Falkvinge
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNXj9V3BbuM&w=580&h=385]
Voice recognition technologies are part of the future, but should trigger concern that IT companies are essentially building “listening networks” which can be...
Monsanto’s Covert War on European Food Security
Working quietly on the back of political turmoil driven by Western special interests (including itself) Monsanto has begun literally planting the seeds of genetically...
Obama tells Hollande NSA stopped spying on French officials
US President Barack Obama has reassured his French counterpart Francois Hollande that Washington is no longer spying on him following leaks that the US...
Video: ‘I’m shocked, but not surprised ‘ – frmr French FM on NSA spying
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgYb7rBvfN4&w=580&h=385]
France has been left confused and angered after the revelation 3 of its most recent Presidents - including the incumbent Francois Hollande -...
Leaks reveal NSA surveillance on at least 3 French presidents
The US National Security Agency (NSA) spied on the last three presidents of France from 2006 until 2012, according to newly released documents from...
Video: ‘Espionnage Élysée’: Wikileaks says NSA spied on last 3 French presidents
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCvawbHzcuo&w=580&h=385]
The newest Wikileaks revelations names the three of France's most recent presidents, as direct victims of US intelligence spying. RT's correspondent Alexey ...
Via...
The "Monsanto Protection Act" Is Back
In today's On the News segment: If approved, House Resolution 1599 would make it nearly impossible to regulate GMOs in any way, even if...
Video: NSA, GCHQ hacked Kaspersky, other cybersecurity companies — Snowden docs
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhtC-oUhWU4&w=580&h=385]
US and British spy agencies worked to reverse-engineer antivirus software in order to "exploit such software and to prevent detection of our activities."...
Video: Insane Overblown Security Shows Bilderberg Insecurity
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggMJjHKuNfQ&w=580&h=385]
In this video luke rudkowski takes you along the ride for his coverage of Bilderberg 2015. You can literally go through the whole...
Surveillance court moving toward renewal of NSA spying program for 6 months
(RT) - The secretive court that oversees US government spying requests has indicated that it will temporarily renew the National Security Agency's bulk phone records...
Video: Obama Pushes Internet ID Verification in Response to NSA Hacking
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JfjqOdPxRQ&w=580&h=385]
After a catastrophic breach of Government employee records, the White House ordered federal agencies to implement cyber security fixes "without delay", using ...
Via...
Video: Insane Heights: Russian daredevil skis down active volcano
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmIEAf0wqkA&w=580&h=385]
A Russian adventurer has become the first man to ski jump into an active volcano. RT LIVE http://rt.com/on-air Subscribe to RT!
Via Youtube
Video: “Insanity”: Critics React to the Troop Increase in Iraq
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjKuTFLej44&w=580&h=385]
The Real News spoke to former Army Lt. Col. and Iraq vet Daniel Davis, journalist Dahr Jamail and policy expert Stephen Miles about...
Leaked memo reveals NSA searches for hackers
The Obama administration has stepped up the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program on U.S. soil to search for signs of hacking.
by Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, and...
Unsatisfied with Weak Spy Reforms, Movement Snowden Built Vows to Fight On
'Two years ago, debating these modest changes would’ve been unthinkable, and it is absolutely a vindication for Edward Snowden.'
Jon Queally
(Common Dreams) - The law itself...
Neil Young vs Starbucks, Monsanto
Abby Zimet
(Common Dreams) - The indefatigable rocker and activist Neil Young has released a new video featuring an anti-Starbucks anthem, part of Young's fierce fight...
Snowden Opened This Door for NSA Reform
On the passage of the USA Freedom Act
(Freedom of the Press Foundation) - On Tuesday, the Senate passed a version of the USA Freedom Act,...
Monsanto Bids to Take Over European Agrichemical Giant Syngenta
Monsanto recently made a bid to take over European agrichemical giant Syngenta, the world’s largest pesticide producer. The $45 billion bid was rejected, but...
Glenn Greenwald: As Bulk NSA Spying Expires, Scare Tactics Can’t Stop ”Sea Change” on...
Democracy Now! - The government’s authority to sweep up millions of Americans’ phone records has expired.
The practice exposed by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward...
It Took Three to Out NSA Snooping on Us; Can We Really Afford to...
There's a little-known backstory to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's famous "not wittingly" lie, in response to Sen. Ron Wyden's March 2013 question, "Does...
Monsanto’s Chemical War in Colombia
Monsanto Corporation’s glyphosate, sold as “Roundup,” is the world’s most widely used herbicide. For the globalized capitalist economy it’s a tool for wealth accumulation...
Marching on Monsanto and its Government Protectors
Controlling and knowing what we eat should be a fundamental human right beyond questioning. That it is not sent hundreds of thousands into the...
Patriot Act/NSA Surveillance, Call Your Senators Now!
The Senate is in recess, but they will be returning on Sunday for a last minute vote on the extension of the Patriot Act’s...
The New Challenge to Monsanto
In a challenge delivered to Monsanto’s headquarters on May 20, 2015, US public interest attorney Steven Druker calls on that corporation to find any inaccurate statements of fact...
What the NSA Really Wants
“The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.”–William Binney, NSA whistleblower
We now have a fourth branch of government.
As I document in my...
Senate kills bill on NSA domestic surveillance reform
The USA Freedom Act has failed in the Senate, stalling an effort to reform certain federal surveillance programs before an end-of-the-month deadline ends the...
Monsanto helps fund all-expense-paid ‘reporter boot camp’ for food writers
Biotech company Monsanto is helping fund a “reporter boot camp” that will be hosted by the National Press Foundation, featuring an all-expense-paid journalism conference...
‘No More Poison’: World Unites for Annual #MarchAgainstMonsanto
(Common Dreams) - For the third year in a row, activists around the world are taking up the mantle against Monsanto.
The March Against Monsanto is...
Snowden talks NSA surveillance reform, reveals Papa John’s exists in Russia
National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden took to Reddit Thursday, once again answering questions about surveillance reform, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s 10-hour filibuster, and...
‘Altered Genes, Twisted Truths’ Author Challenges Monsanto’s Robb Fraley to respond to his Book
In a challenge delivered to Monsanto’s headquarters on May 20, 2015, US public interest attorney Steven Druker calls on that corporation to find any inaccurate statements...
Monsanto Wants to Move to Switzerland. Why Is Obama Doing It Favors?
(Common Dreams) - The longstanding principal goal of U.S. trade policy is to advance U.S. economic interests.
So, why is the Obama administration fighting so hard...
Daily Mirror owners to compensate celebrity phone-hacking victims
London's High Court has ordered Mirror Group Newspapers to pay £1.2m in compensation to eight celebrities who were found victims of phone-hacking.
Celebrities awarded payments...
Americans Don’t Trust the Government – Everyone Hates NSA Spying
Washington's Blog
Americans Don’t Trust the Government
A poll released today shows that Americans across the political spectrum hate the Patriot Act and NSA spying.
The bipartisan...
Are Monsanto’s Worst Fears Coming True?
The decision of the Chipotle restaurant chain to make its product lines GMO-free is not most people’s idea of a world-historic event. Especially since Chipotle, by...
NSA Chief Threatens War Against Cyber Attacks
"Abusive language being turned into actual abuse of humanity" - David Swanson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V29S2a5Oyfw
Arkansas Connections: The media tried to turn the Clinton story into Camelot II
1950s
When Bill Clinton is 7, his family moves from Hope, Arkansas, to the long-time mob resort of Hot Springs, AR. Here Al Capone is...
Snowden cost US control of ‘geopolitical narrative’ — former NSA official
Mass surveillance was necessary after 9/11, but not expanding the law to authorize it was a “strategic blunder” that landed the agency in hot...
Poland pays compensation to ex-inmates of CIA torture sites on its territory
Published time: May 15, 2015 19:36
Szymany airport in Poland, allegedly used for covert prisoner transportation by the CIA in 2003 Poland.(AFP Photo / Piotr Placzkowski )
Warsaw has paid €230,000 to two former inmates of CIA "black site" prisons, which used to be on Poland's territory - a move that has raised questions in the country.
"Poland has fulfilled the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights," Deputy Foreign Minister Rafał Trzaskowski said on Thursday, RIA Novosti reports. He said that money had been sent to one victim's bank account. The other's share had been transferred to his court deposit, as he is under international sanctions.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in July 2014 that Poland must pay compensation to the two terror suspects: Palestinian Abu Zubaydah and Saudi Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who were held and tortured in CIA-run detention centers in Poland between 2002 and 2003. The court set this Saturday as the deadline for the payments.
The two men are now being held in America's Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. They are to receive €100,000 each for psychological damage, plus Zubaydah is due an additional €30,000 in court expenses.
READ MORE: Renewed suspicions US was ‘lobbied’ to leave UK out of CIA torture report
Warsaw's decision to pay up raised questions in Poland. Opposition lawmaker Witold Waszczykowski, cited by AP, said: “I think we shouldn’t pay, we shouldn’t respect this judgment. This is a case not between us and them – it’s between them and the United States government.”
However, no US officials have been held accountable to date. The only other related ruling handed down by the European Court of Human Rights was to Macedonia. In 2012, it was ordered to pay €60,000 for the detention of a Lebanese-German, who was subjected to abuse by the CIA on trumped up terror suspicions.
Poland has been investigating allegations of secret CIA detention centers or "black sites" on its territory since 2008. In December 2014, Poland's former President Aleksander Kwaśniewski officially admitted that a secret CIA prison had existed at an airbase, where terror suspects were brought for torture and interrogation. He insisted, though, that Warsaw had no idea about the abuse happening at the site.
Kwaśniewski's statement came on the heels of a US Senate committee report on CIA activities. In August the same year, Barack Obama admitted for the first time that torture had indeed taken place in American custody after the 9/11 attacks.
READ MORE: 'Crimes and Impunity': Amnesty slams US failure to act on torture report
The authorities should have expected to be held accountable sooner or later, criminology professor Ben Davis told RT. "The only people who have been betrayed in all of this are the ordinary people in all of these countries," he said. "The ordinary citizens who count on their governments not to torture people, to comply with their obligations in international law or domestic law."
Monsanto knew of glyphosate / cancer link 35 years ago
According to evidence unearthed from the archives of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) in the United States, it has been established that Monsanto was...
Why the ACLU’s Big Victory Against NSA Surveillance Falls Short
I don’t like to be a wet blanket, but at the risk of mixing metaphors, I’m going to throw some cold water on the...
White House, senators call for end to NSA phone data collection as Patriot Act...
(RT) - A handful of US senators used a series of speeches to denounce the NSA’s ability to collect mass amounts of Americans phone...
German govt actively assisted NSA in mass surveillance – WikiLeaks
(RT) - The former monitoring base of the National Security Agency (NSA), which belongs to the German Federal Intelligence Agency (BND), is seen in...
Monsanto’s Glyphosate Blankets GMO Crops Near Schools
Genetically engineered crops, or GMOs, have led to an explosion in growers’ use of herbicides, with the result that children at hundreds of elementary...
Credit Rating Company Moody’s Changes Monsanto’s Investor Rating to “Negative”
Approximately $8 billion in debt securities are affecting a popular investor’s service decision about one of biotech’s biggest. Investing credit rating company Moody’s has...
NSA asked Germany to spy on tech giant
The US intelligence agency NSA asked its German partner service BND to spy on the European country’s engineering and technology giant Siemens, a German...
Revealed: NSA Labeled Al Jazeera Journalist a Member of Al Qaeda
Al Jazeera Islamabad bureau chief Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan put on watch list after years of reporting on terror groups
The U.S. government labeled Al Jazeera...
Appeals Court Strikes Down Bulk NSA Phone Spying
Appeals Court Strikes Down Bulk NSA Phone Spying
by Stephen Lendman
On June 11, 2013, the ACLU challenged "the constitutionality of the National Security Agency's mass collection of Americans' phone records (ACLU v. Clapper)."
It argued that doing so violates Fourth and First Amendment rights, saying:
"Because the NSA's aggregation of metadata constitutes an invasion of privacy and an unreasonable search, it is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment."
"The call-tracking program also violates the First Amendment, because it vacuums up sensitive information about associational and expressive activity."
NSA claims authorization under the Patriot Act's Section 215 - the so-called "business records" provision.
It permits warrantless searches without probable cause. It violates fundamental First Amendment rights. It does so by mandating secrecy.
It prohibits targeted subjects from telling others what's happening to them. It compromises free expression, assembly and association.
It authorizes the FBI to investigate anyone based on what they say, write, or do with regard to groups they belong to or associate with.
It violates Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections by not telling targeted subjects their privacy was compromised.
It subverts fundamental freedoms for contrived, exaggerated, or nonexistent security reasons.
At the time of its suit, the ACLU said "(w)hatever Section 215's 'relevance' requirement might allow, it does not permit the government to cast a seven-year dragnet sweeping up every phone call made or received by Americans."
The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authorized surveillance relating to "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign powers" and "agents of foreign powers."
It restricts spying on US citizens and residents to those engaged in espionage in America and territory under US control.
No longer. Today anything goes. America is a total surveillance society. Obama officials claim no authority can challenge them. Governing this way is called tyranny.
The US Second Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. It held Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act doesn't permit bulk collection of Americans' phone records. A three-judge panel ruled unanimously - overturning a lower court decision.
The Obama administration argued that the ACLU lacked "standing" to challenge NSA surveillance practices, and Congress "precluded" judicial review except by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court most often only hearing government arguments.
The appeals court rejected this reasoning, saying:
"If the government is correct, it could use Section 215 to collect and store in bulk any other existing metadata available anywhere in the private sector, including metadata associated with financial records, medical records, and electronic communications (including e‐mail and social media information) relating to all Americans."
"Such expansive development of government repositories of formerly private records would be an unprecedented contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans."
ACLU staff attorney Alex Abdo called the ruling "a resounding victory for the rule of law."
"For years, the government secretly spied on millions of innocent Americans based on a shockingly broad interpretation of its authority."
"The court rightly rejected the government’s theory that it may stockpile information on all of us in case that information proves useful in the future."
"Mass surveillance does not make us any safer, and it is fundamentally incompatible with the privacy necessary in a free society."
ACLU deputy legal director/lead counsel in the case Jameel Jaffer explained:
"This ruling focuses on the phone-records program, but it has far broader significance, because the same defective legal theory that underlies this program underlies many of the government’s other mass-surveillance programs."
"The ruling warrants a reconsideration of all of those programs, and it underscores once again the need for truly systemic reform."
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) executive director Cindy Cohn called the ruling "a great and welcome decision and ought to make Congress pause to consider whether the small changes contained in the USA Freedom Act are enough."
''The 2nd Circuit rejected on multiple grounds the government's radical reinterpretation of Section 215 that underpinned its secret shift to mass seizure and search of Americans' telephone records.''
“While the court did not reach the constitutional issues, it certainly noted the serious problems with blindly embracing the third-party doctrine - the claim that you lose all constitutional privacy protections whenever a third-party, like your phone company, has sensitive information about your actions."
EFF's legislative analyst Mark Jaycox added:
"Now that a court of appeal has rejected the government's arguments supporting its secret shift to mass surveillance, we look forward to other courts - including the Ninth Circuit in EFF's Smith v. Obama case - rejecting mass surveillance as well."
"With the deadline to reauthorize section 215 looming, we also call on Congress to both expressly adopt the interpretation of the law given by the court and to take further steps to rein in the NSA and reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court."
One court victory doesn't mean overall triumph. The right-wing Supreme Court may have final say - or Congress able to legislatively circumvent High Court or other judicial rulings with no administration opposition by either party.
US governance serves powerful entrenched interests at the expense of popular ones. It's fundamentally anti-democratic, anti-freedom.
Odds strongly favor no change in business as usual. Sacrificing precious liberties for greater security assures losing both.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.
It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.
Germany’s NBD restricts cooperation with NSA: Reports
Germany’s foreign intelligence agency has reportedly restricted intelligence cooperation with the US National Security Agency (NSA) amid a recent scandal over alleged joint spying by the two organizations against European officials.
According to German media reports, Bundesnachrichtendienst, commonly known by its acronym BND, started demanding that the NSA provide a justification for each online surveillance request this week.
Citing sources close to a German parliamentary inquiry into the allegations, national daily Süddeutsche Zeitung and other German media said the BND stopped sharing internet surveillance data with the American agency after it failed to provide the required explanation.
Such a rule had long been in place for phone and fax surveillance, which Berlin continues to share with the NSA.
Konstantin von Notz, the German Green Party ombudsman in the parliamentary committee investigating revelations of NSA spying by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, welcomed the move, saying it was an acknowledgement that the operation was out of control.
“This is certainly a drastic step. It’s like pulling the emergency rip cord, because even in the year 2015, they’re still not able to control these search terms for internet traffic,” he said.
He also accused the government in Berlin of failing to protect German and European interests.
On April 30, a report surfaced that the BND had helped the NSA carry out “political espionage” on high-ranking French officials and the European Commission.
Merkel defiance
On Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended her country’s intelligence agency over its cooperation with the US to spy on EU countries and entities.
“In the face of international terrorism threats, they can only do this in cooperation with other intelligence agencies – and that includes first and foremost the NSA,” said Merkel during her first public comments on the spying scandal.
She said, however, that she would fully cooperate with a parliamentary investigation committee probing the accusations.
In 2013, Snowden blew the whistle on the agency, revealing that Washington had been conducting massive internet and phone data spying on “friendly countries and their leaders,” including Germany itself.
DB/HJL
Snowden Docs: NSA Technology Lets Gov’t Generate Transcripts of Private Phone Calls
(Democracy Now!) - A new article by The Intercept details how the National Security Agency is converting people's private phone conversations into searchable text....
Monsanto intimidate and bully academics who expose truth
Agrochemical and biotech giant Monsanto claims it is just a global company seeking to help mankind engineer a better life. However, the company is...
Appeals court rules NSA bulk data collection illegal
A federal appeals court ruled the National Security Agency’s controversial mass collection of Americans’ phone records is illegal.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 97-page opinion Thursday that the laws used to justify the bulk data collection program “have never been interpreted to authorize anything approaching the breadth of the sweeping surveillance at issue here.”
The ruling by the three-judge panel in New York comes as Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which has been used as a basis for the NSA’s data collection, is due to expire next month and members of Congress are debating whether to renew the law, modify it, or let it die.
The court’s decision was in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) arguing the data collection program violates privacy rights of Americans.
A lower court judge had ruled the program was constitutional and the ACLU appealed that ruling.
The appeals court, however, did not say whether the NSA’s program violates the privacy rights of Americans because it was never properly authorized by existing law.
The judges also did not order the bulk data collection to stop.
In June 2013, Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, began leaking classified intelligence documents showing the extent of the NSA’s spying activities.
According to the documents, the agency has been collecting phone records of millions of Americans as well as foreign nationals and political leaders around the world.
US civil liberties advocates argue that the collected phone records could give intelligence agencies a road map to Americans' private activities.
HRJ/HRJ
Suppressing Science For Monsanto? Groups Demand Investigation of USDA
'It is imperative that the USDA maintains scientific integrity and does not allow for harassment, censorship or suppression of findings that counter the interests...
NSA Converting Spoken Words into Searchable Text
Most people realize that emails and other digital communications they once considered private can now become part of their permanent record.
But even as they...
German opposition demands probe into BND/NSA surveillance & industrial espionage
(RT) - The German opposition is threatening legal action against the government unless it shares detailed information on the extent of ties between the...
Shocker: court document asserts Hawaii inspectors clueless about what Monsanto is spraying
Shocker: court document asserts Hawaii inspectors clueless about what Monsanto is spraying by Jon Rappoport May 2, 2015 NoMoreFakeNews.com “So we found stuff… but we don’t know what it means.” On Thursday, April 30th, the Shaka Movement filed a brief with the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. (Appeal No. 15-15641, IN THE UNITED STATES […]
Monsanto has the FBI in its pocket
Monsanto corporate executives probably thought they had a decent amount of influence with the federal government, but they may never have thought that their...
German govt accused of lying to parliament about NSA spying
Angela Merkel’s government has been accused of lying to the country’s parliament after it was alleged that it knew German spies were conducting economic...
How Monsanto’s Glyphosate is Generating Deadly Antibiotic Resistance
More and more individuals are becoming aware of Monsanto’s evils, especially concerning it’s best-selling herbicide Round Up and its carcinogenic ingredient glyphosate. But we’re...
Who Needs Neil Young When We’ve Got Monsanto?
Neil Young is reportedly about to release a new album called, ‘The Monsanto Years’. Don’t expect the lyrics to be music to the ears...
Monsanto and Others Caught Paying Internet ‘Trolls’ to Attack Activists
Have you ever seen a post, comment, or reply that absolutely reeked of behind-the-scenes compensation by corporations like Monsanto? In the growing age of...
Brazil Confirms Monsanto’s Roundup Causes Cancer
Brazilian authorities recently approved new types of GM corn and soy meant to be used with 2,4-D chemicals, as well as a genetically modified eucalyptus trees. But...
Monsanto Employee Admits an Entire Department Exists to “Discredit” Scientists
Dare to publish a scientific study against Big Biotech, and Monsanto will defame and discredit you. For the first time, a Monsanto employee admits that there is...
Glenn Greenwald: NSA Surveillance Program is ‘Antithesis’ of Fourth Amendment
Glenn Greenwald, the lawyer and journalist who became a left-wing celebrity for his articles helping whistle-blower Edward Snowden expose the NSA’s mass-surveillance program, admits...
5 Reasons Monsanto Will Continue Losing Money in 2015
The biotech giant known as Monsanto is facing major financial downturn amid the backlash from consumers over their concerning GMO creations and the international...
Damage Limitation Time For Monsanto: Time To Wheel Out Patrick Moore Again… Or Maybe...
It’s been a bad couple of weeks for Monsanto. The company agreed to pay $600,000 in fines for not reporting hundreds of uncontrolled releases of toxic chemicals at its eastern Idaho phosphate plant. It also paid out a string of lawsuit settlements totaling $350,000 as a result of its GMOs tainting wheat in seven US states. Such amounts represent little more than a tap on the wrist for a company that rakes in sales of almost $16 billion dollars annually.
However, on 20 March the World Health Organisation reached a decision that strikes at the heart of the company. The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said that glyphosate was "classified as probably carcinogenic to humans." This is just one step below the risk designation of "known carcinogen."
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, which was primarily responsible $5.1 billion of Monsanto’s revenues in 2014. But that’s not all. The herbicide is used to support Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops, which comprise the vast bulk of the balance of its revenue stream.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, herbicide-tolerant biotech plants were grown on virtually all (94%) soybean fields in the US last year and on 89% of all cornfields. Food & Water Watch found the volume of glyphosate applied to those crops increased almost 1,000% between 1996 and 2012, from 15 million pounds to 159 million pounds. The increase in usage has been accelerating in recent years.
Glyphosate has been detected in human bodies, food, water and in the air. Its use is strongly associated with various diseases (see this and this).
Aaron Blair, a scientist emeritus at the National Cancer Institute who chaired the 17-member working group of the IARC that classified glyphosate as "probably" cancer-causing, says that the classification is appropriate based on current science. Blair also states that there have been hundreds of studies on glyphosate with concerns about the chemical growing over time and added that the IARC group gave particular consideration to two major studies out of Sweden, one out of Canada and at least three in the US.
He stressed that the group did not classify glyphosate as definitely causing cancer:
"We looked at, 'Is there evidence that glyphosate causes cancer?' and the answer is 'probably.' That is different than yes… It is different than smoking and lung cancer. We don't say smoking probably causes cancer. We say it does cause cancer. At one point we weren't sure, but now we are."
By the end of last week, Monsanto's shares had fallen by 2.9% on the back of the IARC’s decision.
Unsurprisingly, Monsanto has wasted no time in trying to rubbish the WHO findings. The work of cancer specialists from 11 countries was speedily dismissed by Monsanto. In a press release, the company argued the findings are based on ‘junk’ science and cherry picking and are agenda driven.
Philip Miller, Monsanto's vice-president of global regulatory affairs, said:
"We don't know how IARC could reach a conclusion that is such a dramatic departure from the conclusion reached by all regulatory agencies around the globe."
Miller implies that regulatory agencies used objective reason supported by credible science when sanctioning glyphosate. Nothing could be further from the truth. The sanctioning and testing of glyphosate for commercial was seriously corrupted (for example, see this,this, this and this). Moreover, if Monsanto is going to accuse others of ‘junk’ science and ‘bias’, it has a serious credibility issue given that is has been a long-time leading exponent of junk science and biased agendas.
For instance, Sustainable Pulse has discovered documents from 1991 that show how the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was fully aware of glyphosate’s carcinogenic potential. In 1985, the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate was first considered by an EPA panel. This committee went on to classify glyphosate as a Class C Carcinogen with “suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential.”
This Class C classification was changed by the EPA six years later to a Class E category which suggests “evidence of non-carcinogenicity for humans.” Sustainable Pulse concludes that the US government is to blame for allowing glyphosate onto the commercial market because it wanted to push it as part of as global campaign to support the US biotech industry in its attempt to dominate global agriculture. In other words, the health of the public was put before the need to protect company profits and foreign policy aims.
We can now expect to see a massive propaganda campaign by Monsanto to deny the science of the IARC and a huge amount of pressure placed on the WHO to retract the study. We can expect to see the usual cheerleaders proclaiming the faith and mouthing the tired cliches about glyphosate's safety, regardless of mounting evidence that demonstrates its harmful health and environmental impacts.
But who needs science when the cherry-picked type mixed with a good old dose pro-biotech ideology will suffice? Time to wheel out Patrick Moore again... or maybe not!
According to Dave Schubert, head of the cellular neurobiology laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California:
“There are a number of independent, published manuscripts that clearly indicate that glyphosate … can promote cancer and tumor growth. It should be banned.”
Monsanto has for many decades been covering up its toxic practices and poisonous chemicals and has shown no regard at all for human life (read The Complete History of Monsanto). Banning the commercial use of glyphosate (and GMOs) would be a first but significant step on curbing the corrosive impact of a company that has over the decades caused so much misery and suffering.
However, as we cannot rely on governments or regulatory agencies to act in the public interest, ordinary people should act for themselves. See this by John Rappoport for advice on a practical strategy for activism directed at Monsanto.
Damage Limitation Time For Monsanto: Time To Wheel Out Patrick Moore Again… Or Maybe...
It’s been a bad couple of weeks for Monsanto. The company agreed to pay $600,000 in fines for not reporting hundreds of uncontrolled releases...
Monsanto fined a mere $600k for releasing toxic chemicals
Monsanto has agreed to pay the US government $600,000 for not reporting hundreds of uncontrolled toxic chemical releases from its Idaho phosphate plant. The...
Watch This Monsanto Lobbyist Refuse To Drink Glass Of Roundup That He Claims Is...
A controversial lobbyist who claimed that the chemical in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer was safe for humans refused to drink his own words when...
Here’s What Monsanto Hopes You NEVER Learn
In the absence of a federal requirement to label GMOs, food activists have taken matters into their own hands, passing labeling laws in Vermont,...
World’s top tech companies ask Congress to relax NSA spying laws
Global technology giants like Google and Microsoft have teamed up with civil liberties groups to get Congress to change the country’s spying laws. Tech...
Scientists Agree – Monsanto’s Roundup is carcinogenic
Are the full body protective suits not enough of a tip off that pesticides are toxic? If not, consider this: Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide — the...
‘NSA is straining the backbone of democracy’
'By tapping the backbone of the Internet, the NSA is straining the backbone of democracy.'
Jon Queally
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia and one of the most...
What the NSA tried to do with your iPhone is detestable
New documents and reporting by The Intercept detail sustained attempt to break encryption of iPhone and iPad
Jon Queally
New reporting by The Intercept published Tuesday...
Wikimedia joins civil rights groups in lawsuit against NSA internet spying
The Wikimedia Foundation, Amnesty International and a host of civil rights groups sued the National Security Agency and the US Department of Justice on...
I Toured Stasi HQ with NSA Whistleblowers
The Stasi offices in Berlin have been frozen in time since they were stormed by activists on January 15th, 1990, shortly after the fall of...
Monsanto Wants to Know Why People Doubt Science
On Twitter recently, someone asked the question “Why do people doubt science?” Accompanying the tweet was a link to an article in National Geographic that...
Sharp Criticism Follows Rejection of NSA Whistleblower’s Retaliation Claim
Thomas Drake, a National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower, who reported billions of dollars in waste and rampant civil liberties abuses by the NSA on...
Paid By Monsanto: Universities Taking Money From The Biotech Bully
I want food that Grandma ate. How hard is that to understand? I don’t want it chemically lobotomized and coated with poison. I don’t...
NSA chief declines comment on hard drive spyware reports – but insists programs lawful
The head of the National Security Agency refused to comment on Monday on reports that the U.S. government implants spyware on computer hard drives...
‘Privacy Critical to Human Freedom’: Snowden, Poitras, and Greenwald Talk NSA
Though Snowden beamed in remotely, conversation hosted by New York Times brings together trio that revealed vast secretive surveillance network to global public
Jon Queally
Common...
Why Do People Doubt Science? Monsanto Wants To Know
On Twitter this week, someone asked the question “Why do people doubt science?” Accompanying the tweet was a link to an article in National Geographic that implied people who are suspicious of vaccines, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), climate change, fluoridated water and various other phenomena are confused, adhere to conspiracy theories, are motivated by ideology or are misinformed as a result of access to the ‘University of Google.’ The remedy, according what is said in the article, is for us all to rely on scientific evidence pertaining to these issues and adopt a ‘scientific method’ of thought and analysis and put irrational thought processes to one side.
Who tweeted the question and posted the link? None other than Robert T Fraley, Monsanto’s Vice President and Chief Technology Officer.
Before addressing that question, it is worth mentioning that science is not the giver of ‘absolute truth’. That in itself should allow us to develop a healthy sceptism towards the discipline. The ‘truth' is a tricky thing to pin down. Scientific knowledge is built on shaky stilts that rest on shifting foundations. Science historian Thomas Kuhn wrote about the revolutionary paradigm shifts in scientific thought, whereby established theoretical perspectives can play the role of secular theology and serve as a barrier to the advancement of knowledge, until the weight of evidence and pressure from proponents of a new theoretical paradigm is overwhelming. Then, at least according to Kuhn, the old faith gives way and a new 'truth' changes.
Philosopher Paul Feyerabend argued that science is not an 'exact science'. The manufacture of scientific knowledge involves a process driven by various sociological, methodological and epistemological conflicts and compromises, both inside the laboratory and beyond. Writers in the field of the sociology of science have written much on this.
But the answer to the question “Why do people doubt science” is not because they have read Kuhn, Feyerabend or some sociology journal. Neither is it because a bunch of ‘irrational’ activists have scared them witless about GM crops or some other issue. It is because they can see how science is used, corrupted and manipulated by powerful corporations to serve their own ends. It is because they regard these large corporations as largely unaccountable and their activities and products not properly regulated by governments.
That’s why so many doubt science - or more precisely the science corporations fund and promote to support their interests.
US sociologist Robert Merton highlighted the underlying norms of science as involving research that is not warped by vested interests, adheres to the common ownership of scientific discoveries (intellectual property) to promote collective collaboration and subjects findings to organised, rigorous critical scrutiny within the scientific community. The concept of originality was added by later writers in order to fully encapsulate the ethos of science: scientific claims must contribute something new to existing discourse. Based on this brief analysis, secrecy, dogma and vested interest have no place.
This is of course a highly idealised version of what science is or should be because in reality careers, reputations, commercial interests and funding issues all serve to undermine these norms.
But if we really want to look at the role of secrecy, dogma and vested interest in full flow, we could take a look at in the sector to which Robert T Fraley belongs.
Last year, US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack called for “sound science” to underpin food trade between the US and the EU. However, he seems very selective in applying “sound science” to certain issues. Consumer rights groups in the US are pushing for the labelling of GMO foods, but Vilsack said that putting a label on a foodstuff containing a GM product “risks sending a wrong impression that this was a safety issue.”
Despite what Vilsack would have us believe, many scientific studies show that GMOs are indeed a big safety issue and what’s more are also having grave environmental, social and economic consequences (for example, see this and this).
By not wanting to respond to widespread consumer demands to know what they are eating and risk “sending a wrong impression,” Vislack is trying to prevent proper debate about issues that his corporate backers would find unpalatable: profits would collapse if consumers had the choice to reject the GMOs being fed to them. And ‘corporate backers’ must not be taken as a throwaway term here. Big agritech concerns have captured or at the very least seriously compromised key policy and regulatory bodies in the US (see this), Europe (see this), India (see this) and in fact on a global level (see here regarding control of the WTO).
If Robert T Fraley wants to understand why people doubt science, he should consider what Andy Stirling, Professor of Science and Technology Policy at Sussex University, says:
“The main reason some multinationals prefer GM technologies over the many alternatives is that GM offers more lucrative ways to control intellectual property and global supply chains. To sideline open discussion of these issues, related interests are now trying to deny the many uncertainties and suppress scientific diversity. This undermines democratic debate – and science itself.” (see here)
Coming from the GMO biotech industry, or its political mouthpieces, the term “sound science” rings extremely hollow. The industry carries out inadequate, short-term studies and conceals the data produced by its research under the guise of ‘commercial confidentiality’ (see this), while independent research highlights the very serious dangers of its products [see this and this). It has in the past also engaged in fakery in India (see this), bribery in Indonesia (see this ) and smears and intimidation against those who challenge its interests [see this), as well as the distortion and the censorship of science (see this and this).
With its aim to modify organisms to create patents that will secure ever greater control over seeds, markets and the food supply, the widely held suspicion is that the GMO agritech sector is only concerned with a certain type of science: that which supports these aims. Because if science is held in such high regard by these corporations, why isn't Monsanto proud of its products? Why in the US doesn't it label foods containing GMOs and throw open its science to public scrutiny, instead of veiling it with secrecy, restricting independent research on its products or resorting to unsavoury tactics?
If science is held in such high regard by the GMO agritech sector, why in the US did policy makers release GM food onto the commercial market without proper long-term tests? The argument used to justify this is GM food is ‘substantially equivalent’ to ordinary food. But this is not based on scientific reason. Foreign genes are being inserted into organisms that studies show make them substantially non-equivalent (see this). Substantial equivalence is a trade strategy on behalf of the GM sector that neatly serves to remove its GMOs from the type of scrutiny usually applied to potentially toxic or harmful substances. The attempt to replace processed-based regulation of GMOs in Europe with product-based regulation would result in serving a similar purpose (see this).
The reason why no labelling or testing has taken place in the US is not due to ‘sound science’ having been applied but comes down to the power and political influence of the GMO biotech sector and because a sound scientific approach has not been applied.
The sector cannot win the scientific debate (although its PR likes to tell the world it has) so it resorts to co-opting key public bodies or individuals to propagate various falsehoods and deceptions (see this). Part of the deception is based on emotional blackmail: the world needs GMOs to feed the hungry, both now and in the future. This myth has been blown apart (see this, this and this). In fact, in the second of those three links, the organisation GRAIN highlights that GM crops that have been planted thus far have actually contributed to food insecurity.
This is a harsh truth that the industry does not like to face.
People’s faith in science is being shaken on many levels, not least because big corporations have secured access to policy makers and governments and are increasingly funding research and setting research agendas.
“As Andrew Neighbour, former administrator at Washington University in St. Louis, who managed the university’s multiyear and multimillion dollar relationship with Monsanto, admits, "There’s no question that industry money comes with strings. It limits what you can do, when you can do it, who it has to be approved by”… This raises the question: if Agribusiness giant Monsanto [in India] is funding the research, will Indian agricultural researchers pursue such lines of scientific inquiry as “How will this new rice or wheat variety impact the Indian farmer, or health of Indian public?” The reality is, Monsanto is funding the research not for the benefit of either Indian farmer or public, but for its profit. It is paying researchers to ask questions that it is most interested in having answered.” - 'Monsanto, a Contemporary East India Company, and Corporate Knowledge in India'.
Ultimately, it is not science itself that people have doubts about but science that is pressed into the service of immensely powerful private corporations and regulatory bodies that are effectively co-opted and adopt a ‘don’t look, don’t find approach’ to studies and products (see this, this and this).
Or in the case of releasing GMOs onto the commercial market in the US, bypassing proper scientific procedures and engaging in doublespeak about ‘substantial equivalence’ then hypocritically calling for 'sound science' to inform debates.
The same corporate interests are moreover undermining the peer-review process itself and the ability of certain scientists to get published in journals - the benchmark of scientific credibility. In effect, powerful interests increasingly hold sway over funding, career progression as a scientist, journals and peer review (see this and this, which question the reliability of peer review in the area of GMOs).
Going back to the start of the piece, the question that should have been tweeted is: “Why do people doubt corporate-controlled or influenced science?” After that question, it would have been more revealing to have posted a link to this article here about the unscrupulous history of a certain company from St Louis. That history provides very good reason why so many doubt and challenge powerful corporations and the type of science they fund and promote (or attempt to suppress) and the type of world they seek to create (see this).
“Corporations as the dominant institution shaped by capitalist patriarchy thrive on eco-apartheid. They thrive on the Cartesian legacy of dualism which puts nature against humans. It defines nature as female and passively subjugated. Corporatocentrism is thus also androcentric – a patriarchal construction. The false universalism of man as conqueror and owner of the Earth has led to the technological hubris of geo-engineering, genetic engineering, and nuclear energy. It has led to the ethical outrage of owning life forms through patents, water through privatization, the air through carbon trading. It is leading to appropriation of the biodiversity that serves the poor.” Vandana Shiva
Monsanto on the Menu: Science, Power and GMOs
Colin Todhunter
RINF Alternative News
On Twitter this week, someone asked the question “Why do people doubt science?” Accompanying the tweet was a link to an article...
Monsanto Is Making Us Sick: A Protest at Monsanto’s Headquarters
On January 30, the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) joined Moms Across America (MAA), SumofUs, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Harrington Investments and...
Monsanto’s Shares Surge as its Drive to Force GM Crops into India Gathers Pace
It was a case of Modi mania when Narendra Modi and his BJP ‘swept’ to power in last year’s Indian general election. It was...
Monsanto’s Shares Surge As Its Drive To Force GM Crops Into India Gathers Pace
RINF and Countercurrents 4/2/2015, The 4th Media and Global Research 5/2/2015, Morning Star 10/2/2015, Counterpunch 27/3/2015
It was a case of Modi mania when Narendra Modi and his BJP ‘swept’ to power in last year’s Indian general election. It was however hardly the sweeping endorsement from the voters that much of the corporate media liked to portray it as. The BJP might have took 282 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, but it ‘swept’ to power on only 31 percent of the vote.
It was a case of Modi mania when Narendra Modi and his BJP ‘swept’ to power in last year’s Indian general election. It was however hardly the sweeping endorsement from the voters that much of the corporate media liked to portray it as. The BJP might have took 282 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, but it ‘swept’ to power on only 31 percent of the vote.
Parts of corporate India and the well-off middle classes nevertheless celebrated Modi’s rise to Prime Minister in the belief that they would materially benefit from a ‘Thatcherite-style’ revolution (see here). And many ordinary folk also swallowed the PR about Modi's ‘vibrant Gujarat’ PR campaign, which has been shown to be anything but ‘vibrant’.
Writing on the Countercurrents website, Rohini Hensman shows that GDP growth in Gujarat under Chief Minister Modi was nothing special compared with many other states in India and was supported by wholesale privatisation of public assets, which has in effect meant the state government abdicating responsibility for decision-making processes that impact millions of people's lives by handing them to elite interests (see here). In terms of poverty, rural population displacement, hunger, farmer suicides, corruption, disease and debt, Hensman demonstrates that under Modi the extreme economic neoliberalism practised was anything but a resounding success.
Now at the political helm nationally, Modi and his administration are helping to accelerate a process that could eventually result in the selling of the economic and social bedrock of the country - agriculture - to foreign GMO agribusiness, not least by pushing for open field trials of various GM food crops. (The BJP does not stand alone here, though, as the process was gathering pace under the previous Congress-led administration and Veerappa Moily near the end.)
Some might find it perplexing that a nationalist outfit like BJP would appear willing to hand over food sovereignty and security to foreign agribusiness, such as US giant Monsanto, which seeks to secure control over the supply and growing of seeds and thus the global food chain (for example, see this). (The GMO issue is ultimately about geopolitics, seed freedom and food democracy, see here.)
Investigative journalist and geopolitical analyst Shelley Kasli has outlined the makeover that Modi received from the US-Israeli led APCO Worldwide, a major 'global communications, stakeholder engagement and business strategy' company. Kalsi shows that APCO is well connected to the US/Israeli establishment, helping to promote militaristic policies, economic neoliberalism and the overall strategies of and engagements between governments and powerful corporate interests across the globe (see Kasli’s piece on APCO here).
This is who Modi has previously partnered with to promote Gujarat as ‘vibrant’ and thus himself as potential PM material. There was the suspicion that once in power, Modi would become the go-to man for foreign corporate interests, especially those which are part of the extensive APCO network (and that includes Monsanto).
Facilitating powerful Western corporations' entry into India is not unique to the current administration. The Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture helped the likes of Monsanto, Archer Daniel Midland, Cargill and Wal-Mart’s push into India’s seed, trade and retail sectors in return for concessions in the nuclear field (see here).
Under the Modi-led administration, however, there is a stated commitment to clear away ‘blockages’ that the previous administration was unwilling or unable to do and would no doubt hinder the type of economic neoliberalism Modi presided over in Gujarat. And it is increasingly apparent those ‘blockages’ include smoothing the way for the entry of GM crops.
Ignoring all the evidence and warnings
Writing in The Hindu last year, Aruna Rodrigues noted that the Technical Expert Committee (TEC) Final Report (FR) is the fourth official report exposing the lack of integrity, independence and scientific expertise in assessing GMO risk (see here). The four reports are: The ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’ of February 2010, imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal, overturning the apex Regulator’s approval to commercialise it; the Sopory Committee Report (August 2012); the Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) Report on GM crops (August 2012) and the TEC Final Report (June-July 2013). There is a remarkable consensus here.
The TEC recommended an indefinite moratorium on the field trials of GM crops until the government devised a proper regulatory and safety mechanism. No such mechanism exists, but open field trials are being given the go ahead, regardless of a history of blatant violations of biosafety norms, hasty approvals, a lack of monitoring abilities, general apathy towards the hazards of contamination and a lack of institutional oversight mechanisms (see this).
The BJP-ruled Maharashtra government has just granted ‘no-objectiion certificates’ for GM open-field trials of rice, chickpeas maize, brinjal and cotton. Some regard this as a game changer in the push to get GM crops into India. (Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh have given NOCs for field trials of some biotech crops, while states like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have banned such research activities.)
On the 2nd February, the Coalition for GM Free India posted the following on its website:
“In the wake of media reports about the Maharashtra Govt granting No Objection Certificates (NOCs) for the open air field trials of GM crops in the state, the Coalition for a GM Free India along with the Coalition for a GM Free Maharashtra has sent a letter… to the Chief Minister of Maharashtra urging him not to overlook the growing scientific evidence on the adverse impacts of GM crops as well as the public opposition to it. The fact that the announcement regarding approvals of field trials was made on the sidelines of an event arranged by the International biotechnology industry lobby group, ISAAA, shows in a way the influence International biotech giants like Monsanto as well as their Indian promoters have in every government. Besides this there seems to be no basis on which these open trials could be permitted at a time every other credible agency be it the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture or the Supreme Court appointed Technical Expert Committee or the TSR Subraminiam committee appointed by the Union Minister of Environment, Forests and Climate Change to look into environmental laws in the country have cautioned against any open release of GMOs at this juncture…” (see here)
The negative health, environmental and potential dangers of GM crops (not least the surrendering of food sovereignty and security to Western agribusiness and the US) have been well documented (see here, here and here), while those who legitimately oppose and campaign against GMOs are smeared and portrayed by India's internal intelligence agency as working against the ‘national interest’ (see here).
Monsanto and the GM biotech sector forward the myth that GM food is necessary to feed the world’s burgeoning population. It is not (in India's case, see this and this). Aside from a report from GRAIN (here) that concluded small farms family/peasant farms are more productively efficient than large industrial-scale farms and that the former can (and virtually does) feed the world, the World Bank-funded International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge and Science for Development Report also stated that smallholder, traditional farming can deliver food security in low-income countries through sustainable agri-ecological systems
By attempting to sideline opposition and ignoring expert advice and credible evidence pointing to potential catastrophic consequences if India were to adopt GM crops that it doesn't even need, no one can be in any doubt that there is an agenda at the highest level to push GMOs into India at any cost. It is clear the 'national interest' and (foreign) 'corporate interest' are being conflated (see here).
Agribusiness setting the agenda
If politicians fail to sanction GMO trials, there is a habit that they will be replaced until one of them does (see here). Backed by the US State Department (see here) and parts of the Indian political(-intelligence) elite (as alluded to above), the GMO agribusiness sector has gained a strategic and influential foothold in India and many of its national public bodies. Along with US food processing giants Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, it threatens to destroy the rural economy by recasting it (and thus Indian society, given that hundreds of millions depend on it for a living) according to its own needs. This would mean moving over 600 million who depend on agriculture and local food processing activities into urban areas (as foreign interests move in). These sectors currently employ tens of millions. Livelihoods will be decimated. What will these people do?
Consider that the number of jobs created in India between 2005 and 2010 was 2.7 million (the years of high GDP growth). According to International Business Times, 15 million enter the workforce every year (see here).
In APCO’s India Brochure, there is the claim that India’s resilience in weathering the global downturn and financial crisis has made governments, policy-makers, economists, corporate houses and fund managers believe that India can play a significant role in the recovery of the global economy in the months and years ahead. APCO describes India as a trillion dollar market. The emphasis is not on redistributing the country’s wealth among its citizens or the empowerment of farmers, but on positioning international funds and facilitating corporations’ ability to exploit markets and extract profit the best way they can.
In the mainstream media and among many politicians and economists, this constitutes growth and development, but it is neither. It is financial-corporate plunder under the guise of ‘globalisation’. The evidence doesn’t lie. In the West, decades of such policies have culminated in austerity, disempowerment and increasing hardship for the masses and the concentration of ever more wealth and power in the hands of the few.
The evidence doesn’t lie where global agriculture is concerned either. Last year, the Oakland Institute stated that the first years of the 21st century will be remembered for a global land rush headed by institutional investors (the kind of entities that 'global communications and business strategy companies' deal with to 'facilitate 'stakeholder engagement' and 'position funds' to 'exploit markets') of nearly unprecedented scale, often at the expense of local food security and land rights (see here).
Small farmers are currently squeezed onto less than a quarter of the world’s farmland and the world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands big agribusiness and the rich and powerful. According to the report GRAIN (referred to earlier), the concentration of fertile agricultural land in fewer and fewer hands is directly related to the increasing number of people going hungry every day.
US agribusiness via the World Bank/IMF/WTO has for some time been eyeing Indian agriculture as a cash cow for themselves (see here), and the Modi-led administration is promoting GMO biotechnology as business investment opportunity for foreign companies under the trendy-sounding 'Make in India' campaign. The political subjugation of India by the US partly rests on Monsanto’s overriding control of the nation’s agriculture (see here). Monsanto already dominates the cotton industry in the country and is increasingly shaping agri-policy and the knowledge paradigm by funding agricultural research in public universities and institutes (see here). Moreover, public regulatory bodies are now severely compromised and riddled with conflicts of interest where decision-making over GMOs are concerned, as outlined by Aruna Rodrigues in her article in The Hindu (referred to earlier).
Responding to the decision to sanction the field trials in Maharashtra, Monsanto India shares jumped 18 percent on Monday 2 February and the company was headed towards its biggest daily gain since September 2014.
Mark Halton, head of Global Marketing and Communications for Monsanto has praised APCO for helping the GMO giant to:
“… understand how Monsanto could better engage with societal stakeholders surrounding our business and how best to communicate the social value our company brings to the table.” (see here)
As far as powerful corporations are concerned, not least big agribusiness, it is increasingly clear that Modi is the go-to man. But that's what some in India feared all along.
White House reveals ‘weak’ NSA reform nearly 2 years after Snowden scoops
The Obama administration has announced changes to the surveillance operations conducted by the United States intelligence community, but critics are already using words like...
NSA Began Warrantless Surveillance Without Congressional Approval
Newly declassified documents show intelligence agency spied on emails, phone calls before passage of surveillance act
Nadia Prupis
The National Security Agency began its warrantless surveillance...
New document reveals FBI’s role in NSA surveillance program
Documents provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation suggest that the FBI has played a part in the National Security Agency’s surveillance operations to...
The Government Spent a Lot of Time in Court Defending NSA Spying Last Year
NADIA KAYYALI
EFF was suing the NSA before it was cool. We filed our first lawsuit against the NSA for mass spying in 2008,...
The Future Is Local, The Future Is Not Monsanto
The US as a nation consumes more than anyone else, virtually at the expense of everyone else. The petrodollar system has ensured that imports...
NSA’s internet surveillance faces constitutional challenge in court
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) this week will challenge the National Security Agency (NSA) in a federal court, where the advocacy group will argue that...
GMO-labeling initiative defeated by Monsanto-sponsored groups
Supporters of an Oregon ballot initiative requiring labels on genetically-modified food acknowledged defeat on Thursday after an automatic recount failed to sway the results...
Farmers, Consumers Challenge Monsanto-Backed GMO Bill Designed to Keep Public in the ‘DARK’
Anti-labeling bill would also allow food manufacturers to use the word "natural" on products that contain GMO ingredients
Deirdre Fulton
Farmers, states' rights activists, and consumer...
US court extends NSA surveillance rules in current form
A U.S. secret court has extended the authorization of the National Security Agency to continue surveillance of phone records in its current form after...
Top NSA Whistleblower: Federal Government Has Gone Rogue
Binney, a 36-year veteran of the NSA, detailed multiple aspects of the agency’s current agenda, including its “treasonous” role in lying to judges in...
Organic Food Activists Take Thanksgiving Fight to Monsanto’s Front Lawn
'What better day than Thanksgiving to remind the world that eating local, organic food is one way to stop this profit-mongering, biodiversity-destroying monopoly,' asks...
Are All Psychiatric Drugs Too Unsafe to Take?
Dr. Peter R. Breggin
Psychiatric drugs are more dangerous than you have ever imagined. If you haven't been prescribed one yet, you are among the...
NSA officials ignored own expert advice to end total eavesdropping on Americans
NSA experts advised the agency’s top executives to ax the mass collection of domestic landline phone conversation records as crossing a previously sacrosanct red...
Comprehensive Trade And Economic Agreement And The Transatlantic Trade And Investment Partnership: Don’t Let...
Colin Todhunter
As part of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), there are plans to enshrine massive powers for corporations that will allow them to challenge...
Living with Insanity: Harper, Abbott, and Cameron at the Brisbane G-20
John Chuckman
RINF Alternative News
Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is reported by a spokesman, to have had the following exchange with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin...
Crops Are Drenched with Monsanto Roundup Pesticide Right Before Harvest
Roundup Is Dumped On Crops Right BEFORE Harvest … to Save a Buck
Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide (technically known as “glyphosate”) has been linked to many diseases.
However, farmers...
Monsanto’s GMO Creations Caused 291,000 Suicides in India
Mike Barrett
It is no secret that Monsanto is making life difficult for countless farmers in America with its parented seeds. After all, the biotech...
Monsanto sues Hawaii county over GMO ban
Two biotechnology behemoths have followed through with vows to sue Hawaii’s Maui County for passing a law last week that bans the cultivation of...
Monsanto to pay $2.4mn to farmers over 2013 GMO-wheat scare
GMO giant Monsanto will have to fork out $2.4 million to settle a lawsuit with US wheat farmers after its genetically engineered strain, supposedly...
New Study: Monsanto’s #1 Herbicide Directly Linked to Chronic Disease Spike
A new correlation study published in the Journal of Organic Systems has linked glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide, Roundup, to an enormous...
Plumbing the Depths of NSA’s Spying
Lars Schall
William Binney, who spent 36 years in the National Security Agency rising to become the NSA’s technical director for intelligence, has emerged as...
POLL: Monsanto Third Most Hated Company in the World
Back in 2011, we declared Monsanto to be the worst company of the year for threatening both human health and the environment at large.
Mike Barrett
Our...
New NSA Documents Shine More Light Into Black Box Of Executive Order 12333
What is arguably the most powerful of the U.S. government's surveillance authorities is also the most secretive, and it operates with the least amount...
Maui v. Monsanto: Hawaii County Voters Defy Agriculture Giant’s Spending to OK Landmark Ban...
Ballot initiatives to require labeling of foods with genetically modified ingredients, or GMOs, failed to pass Tuesday in Colorado and Oregon, after agribusiness giants...
Selling Out To Monsanto In India
“It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still...
How Monsanto Keeps Halting GMO Labeling Despite Over 96% Approval
ANTHONY GUCCIARDI
From the New York Times to Reuters and the Washington Post, all of the major publications agree: the general public is in full support...
GMO Crops Are Destroying Farmland, And Monsanto Doesn’t Want You to Know
The European Association for bio-industries, EuropaBio, wants you to believe that “GM crops can protect soils from erosion through less ploughing, conserving soil moisture, too. GM...
America’s Insane Policy of Committing War Crimes in the Name of Preventing Other War...
Nicholas JS Davies
Post-Cold War U.S. war policy can be roughly divided into two periods. From 1990 until 1998, in a rational response to the...
Behind the Mask of Altruism: Monsanto and The Gates Foundation in Africa
Colin Todhunter
Since 2006, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to the tune of...
The Subjugation Of India By The US Rests On Monsanto’s Control Of Agriculture
Colin Todhunter
RINF Alternative News
After a study of GMOs over a four-year plus period, India’s multi-party Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture recommended a ban on...
Monsanto’s Minion, Patrick Moore, Ambassador for EXPO 2015?
GMO supporters promote climate denialist and corporate front man as champion of science*
GMO supporters are campaigning to have climate science denialist and GMO promoter...
Unsafe: The Truth Behind Everyday Chemicals
It is an unfortunate fact that we are now living immersed in a chemical soup. If you’ve been paying attention to the headlines, many...
Monsanto Spends Millions in Bid to Defeat Local GMO Labeling Initiative
This is not the first time the biotech giant has funneled millions into efforts to defeat labeling laws
Sarah Lazare
Monsanto, the largest genetically-modified seed corporation...
NSA Documents Suggest a Close Working Relationship Between NSA, U.S. Companies
Documents describe “contractual relationships” between NSA and U.S. companies, as well as undercover operatives at some U.S. companies.
Jeff Larson and Julia Angwin
Newly disclosed National...
Monsanto Records $156 Million Loss For Fourth Quarter
Monsanto Co. reported that the company recorded a loss of $156 million in the latest quarter, a loss that was considerably higher than expected....
NSA agents may have infiltrated the global communications industry
Leaked Snowden documents published by Laura Poitras and Peter Maass in The Intercept describe the NSA's SENTRY EAGLE program describe six programs aimed at...
Google, Facebook’s spying on users bigger intrusion than NSA’s
Unlike Facebook and Google who collect enormous amount of users’ data, the NSA is not actively snooping on Americans’ internet and e-mail accounts and...
Un-Earthed: Is Monsanto’s Glyphosate Destroying The Soil?
"The nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself." – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“If we have declared a war against the soil itself, then we are literally...
Monsanto Scandal Causes Reopening of US Investigation of GMO Wheat
Biotech giant has little regard for regulatory approval
CHRISTINA SARICH
Last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service...
Monsanto Announces “Global Center” for Developing GMO Corn
Anastasia Pantsios
Monsanto announced this week that it is opening a new facility in Mexico to research and develop new hybrid types of corn resistant to...
How the NSA Tried to Stop Exposé of the Agency
The tone of the answering machine message was routine, like a reminder for a dental appointment. But there was also an undercurrent of urgency....
Failure to pass US surveillance reform bill could still curtail NSA powers
If the Senate doesn’t pass the USA Freedom Act after the midterm elections, a key section of the Patriot Act could expire
Two members of...
Monsanto GMO Wheat Contamination Discovered In Montana
Monsanto’s experimental genetically modified wheat has been discovered growing in the second US field in Montana, about a year after the discovery of the...
Middle-School Dropout Codes Clever Chat Program That Foils NSA Spying
The National Security Agency has some of the brightest minds working on its sophisticated surveillance programs, including its metadata collection efforts. But a new...
‘Organic Ready’ Corn to Replace Monsanto’s GMO Corn, Cross-Pollination
CHRISTINA SARICH
Here’s some of the best news all year for non-GMO supporters. Frank Kutka is working to save our heirloom corn from cross-breeding with genetically modified...
U.S. Propaganda Delves Into The Insane
Thanks to a dizzying barrage of lies, mainstream media fear-mongering and a couple of beheadings, the Obama Administration finally achieved its long sought after war in...
School Secretly Monitoring Students’ Facebook Posts–On Advice from NSA
A Huntsville, Alabama, public school superintendent says that after taking a friendly call from the NSA, he decided to start secretly monitoring students' social...
Monsanto Sneaks Dangerous Chemicals Past Regulators
The only Europeans to ban glyphosate (the main active ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide roundUp) and its dangerous additions (surfactants) thus far are the Dutch, with...
Google Acts Like Privatized NSA
In interviews with BBC and Sky News, WikiLeaks founder explains how Google's behavior, though legal, is like that of surveillance agencies.
Andrea Germanos
Google's practices are...
New Questions Raised About NSA-Israel Intelligence Sharing
As Israeli reservists accuse spy unit of "political persecution," relationship between Israel and NSA challenged
Nadia Prupis
Recently reported comments made by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden...
CIA, NSA And Facebook Create ‘Threat Matrix Score’ On Every American
Dave Hodges
RINF Alternative News
Participation on Facebook could prove very dangerous to your future well-being. There is a reason that Facebook is aligned with both...
MIT Scientist Discover Monsanto’s RoundUp Causes Autism
By 2025, half the kids born in the U.S. will be diagnosed with autism, according to Dr. Stephanie Seneff, Senior Research Scientist at the...
GCHQ and NSA Hack German Telecoms To Track ‘Every Device’
Intelligence agencies, including the NSA and GCHQ used Deutsche Telekom's network to create a 'Treasure Map' of the internet that could be used to...
Senators and Other Experts to Appeals Court: NSA’s Phone Records Program Is a Massive...
ANDREW CROCKER
Smith v. Obama, a challenge to the NSA’s warrantless collection of phone records, currently before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, has received...
Hip Hop is not down with Monsanto
Brentin Mock
And you thought rap was all cars, Riff Raff, and Gucci Mane. Yeah, there’s plenty of that, but there are also plenty of rappers...
Insanity: War Criminal Tony Blair Awarded ‘Philanthropist Of The Year’
Mick Meaney
RINF Alternative News
Philanthropy
noun, plural philanthropies.
1.
altruistic concern for human welfare and advancement, usually manifested by donations of money, property, or work to...
NSA Docs Reveal US Hand in Tracking and Killing Kurdish Separatists
The United States has been inextricably involved in Turkey's surveillance and targeting of Kurdish rebel groups for years and even had a hand in...
NSA Data-Sweep Lawfulness Challenged in NY Appeal Hearing
The National Security Agency’s program of collecting phone records, deemed lawful by a Manhattanfederal judge, was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union as the...
Top NSA Whistleblower: We Need a New 9/11 Investigation
Bill Binney is the NSA’s former senior technical director, 32-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency, one of the world’s...
Obama’s NSA review gives the lie to Britain’s timid platitudes: a debate is possible
What a relief. It is, after all, possible to discuss the operations of modern intelligence agencies without having to prove one's patriotism, be turned...
NSA and GCHQ: snooping because we can
The crucial thing about the latest revelations from the secret documents leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden is their scope. When the Guardian first began publishing...
Leaked Documents Show NSA ‘Google-Like’ Search Engine Of People’s Lives
The United States National Security Agency has built a massive information sharing system intended to allow intelligence community analysts from across the US government...
Main Ingredient in Monsanto’s RoundUp, Patented as an Antibiotic, Destroying GI Tract
A global threat? A slight nuisance? Whatever you decide to call it, the U.S. government gave Monsanto a patent for the main ingredient in toxic RoundUp,...
Yemeni Government Pays Over $1m Compensation to Civilian Drone Strike Victims
LONDON - The Yemeni government has paid compensation to civilian victims of a 2013 drone strike that hit a wedding convoy - which US...
Snowden Reveals NSA Program Described as ‘Last Straw’ Before Leak
Snowden tells investigative journalist James Bamford that NSA was behind 2012 internet blackout in Syria
Lauren McCauley
In an in-depth interview published by Wired Magazine on Wednesday, Edward Snowden discloses...
NSA bot MonsterMind can wage cyberwar on its own — Snowden
The US National Security Agency owns a “MonsterMind” program designed to prevent foreign cyberattacks and, also, automatically strike back, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden...
Snowden: NSA Took Down Syria’s Internet, Targeted China
NSA recently provided Israel with intel to target Palestinians
National Security whistleblower Edward Snowden claims the super-secret agency was responsible for taking down Syria’s internet two years...
Secret programs to stay secret: Court sides with NSA in surveillance lawsuit
A federal judge in California sided mostly with the United States government this week in a decision handed down concerning classified documents pertaining to...
Our Privacy and Liberty Still at Risk, Even if Leahy NSA Bill Passes
Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein
After a brief hiatus, legislative reform of the NSA’s bulk collection program appears to be back on track. Thanks to skillful negotiations...
Monsanto’s PR Makeover: Lubricating The Wheels Of The GMO Trojan Horse
Colin Todhunter
RINF Alternative News
Monsanto believes it is having trouble getting its message across to the public. Last year, it began a makeover. It realised...
Greenwald: NSA Docs Show ‘Israeli Action in Gaza has US Fingerprints All Over It’
New documents leaked by Edward Snowden show how intelligence cooperation enables repeated Israeli aggression against Palestinians
Jon Queally
A new analysis of the intelligence and military...
NSA sued over fears that former director is selling secrets
The National Security Agency has received its fair share of lawsuits since former contractor Edward Snowden began to disclose secret documents last year, and...
Democratic senator boasts NSA “reform” bill vetted by US intelligence agencies
Thomas Gaist
A revised version of the USA Freedom Act, previously passed by the US House of Representatives, was introduced before the Senate Tuesday by...
NSA Court Judges Invest in Verizon While Surveillance Warps Law and Journalism
We must never be surprised when we learn once again that our lawmakers and law interpreters are in bed with the country’s largest corporations–this...
“Eavesdropping on America”: The NSA’s Orwellian Surveillance State
As a matter of faith, some people believe that God can see and hear everything. But as a matter of fact, the U.S. government...
Former NSA Chief: Why I’m Worth $1 Million a Month to Wall Street
Critics say Keith Alexander's rapid move to the private sector is cause for concern
Max Ocean
Former NSA Director Keith Alexander says his services warrant a...
NSA mass spying undermines journalists and attorneys’ ability to work
Dozens of journalists and attorneys surveyed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch for a new report say that the United...
NSA partnering with Saudi regime ‒ Snowden leak
The National Security Agency has increasingly been working hand-in-glove with the repressive Saudi Arabian government since 2013, sharing intelligence and assisting with surveillance, according...
Monsanto Ordered to Pay $93 Million to Small Town for Poisoning Citizens
Big wins can happen in small places. The West Virginia State Supreme Court finalized a big blow to the biotech giant Monsanto this month,...
GMO Food Crops in India: BJP Government Grants the “Green Light” to Monsanto and...
The Indian government is facing strong opposition for its decision to allow field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops. The Coalition for a GM-Free...
Fine Print of the Food Wars: Monsanto and Biotech Industry Pushing for World Food...
Creating ‘ownership’ of seed through patents and intellectual property rights and imposing it globally through the WTO, the biotech industry has established a monopoly...
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden plans to work on easy-to-use privacy tools
Ian Paul
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden doesn't yet know whether he'll be spending the next year in a U.S. prison or an undisclosed location in...
Snowden: NSA snoops shared intercepted sextings
Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden says the analysts who monitored the texts and e-mails of millions of Americans would sometimes share intercepted...
High-Level NSA Whistleblower Says Blackmail Is a Huge — Unreported — Part of Mass...
The Untold Story In the NSA Spying Scandal: Blackmail
It is well-documented that governments use information to blackmail and control people.
The Express reported last month:
British security services...
Obama’s ratings tumble in Germany, Russia in wake of NSA spying, Ukraine crisis
Revelations of the National Security Agency’s global spy program, together with civil strife in Ukraine has severely damaged Barack Obama’s popularity among Brazilians, Germans...
UK media show weakness for sensationalism & propaganda in wake of MH17 tragedy
Bryan MacDonald
There are no words in the English lexicon which can properly summarize the horrors of events yesterday in Eastern Ukraine. Like all right-thinking...
Snowden: NSA Employees Routinely Pass Around Nude Photos Obtained Via Mass Surveillance
NSA Spies On Americans, Then Passes Around Their Nude Pictures and Videos
Edward Snowden just told the Guardian:
Snowden …. Made a startling claim that a culture exists...
Obama’s Failure to Rein in CIA and NSA
Melvin A. Goodman
The political embarrassments for President Barack Obama coming from the intelligence community, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency,...
Monsanto’s Herbicide Linked to Fatal Kidney Disease Epidemic: Could It Topple the Company?
Monsanto's herbicide Roundup has been linked to a mysterious fatal kidney disease epidemic that has appeared in Central America, Sri Lanka and India.
Jeff Ritterman,...
NSA Whistleblower Binney: NSA Recording 80% of U.S. Phone Calls
NSA whistleblower William Binney (shown) has made the startling claim that the NSA is recording the audio of at least 80 percent of Americans' telephone calls....
Monsanto Hides Toxicity Test Results on RoundUp, Calling them ‘Commercial’ Secret
Christina Sarich
Talking about Monsanto’s latest attempt to obstruct justice, halt transparency, and prevent people from stopping their seed and herbicide businesses from spreading is...
NSA Spying: Now It’s Personal
EVA GALPERIN AND NADIA KAYYALI
Imagine that you watched a police officer in your neighborhood stop ten completely ordinary people every day just to take a look...
New Study finds Monsanto’s Roundup Herbicide 125 Times More Toxic Than Regulators Say
Sayer Ji
RINF Alternative News
A highly concerning new study published in the journal Biomedical Research International reveals that despite the still relatively benign reputation of agrochemicals such...
More Proof that the NSA Is Spying On American Politicians
The NSA Has Become “J. Edgar Hoover On Super Steroids”
The newly-published revelations from Edward Snowden show that the NSA and FBI spied on anAmerican citizen running...
NSA Targeting: ‘Nobody Is Safe When One Group Is Singled Out’
Following Intercept report, rights groups and Muslim-American organizations slam NSA targeting
Deirdre Fulton
Rights organizations responded harshly to reports that the National Security Agency and FBI covertly monitored...
Former NSA Chief Will Work for Wall Street-backed ‘Cyber War Council’
Keith Alexander slated to 'facilitate' government-industry effort to combat cyberattacks
Max Ocean
Wall Street's largest trade group is proposing a government-industry coalition 'cyber war council'——and they've...
Greenwald: GOP Official Spied on by NSA Without Warrants
Thomas R. Eddlem
The NSA warrantless surveillance program nominally geared at spying on foreigners has also spied on innocent Americans without a warrant, including a...
The Latest Snowden Leak Is Devastating to NSA Defenders
Conor Friedersdorf
Consider the latest leak sourced to Edward Snowden from the perspective of his detractors. The National Security Agency's defenders would have us believe...
Senate committee passes CISA cybersecurity bill that could broaden NSA powers
New cybersecurity legislation cleared the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday during a closed session. Critics fear it may broaden the NSA’s already formidable access...
Monsanto begins compensating victims of dioxin exposure
Residents of a West Virginia town that formerly hosted a Monsanto factory that produced noxious, cancer-causing chemicals can begin receiving assistance promised through a...
400k Americans’ E-Mails, Texts Read by NSA Without Warrant
Thomas R. Eddlem
The Washington Post reported July 5 that 400,000 or more innocent Americans have their intimate email and text messages read by the NSA every year...
The Latest Snowden Leak Is Devastating to NSA Defenders
The agency collected and stored intimate chats, photos, and emails belonging to innocent Americans–and secured them so poorly that reporters can now browse them...
Report: 9 out 10 Caught in NSA Dragnet Are ‘Ordinary People’
Washington Post reveals unprecedented look at how 'voyeuristic' spy agency manages private communications it collects
Jon Queall
New reporting by the Washington Post based on materials leaked by NSA whistleblower...
NSA targets anyone interested in online privacy
Joseph Santolan
An article published on July 3 by German public broadcaster Das Erstereveals that the National Security Agency (NSA) is using its surveillance program XKeyScore to target...
NSA sued for hoarding details on use of ‘zero day’ exploits
The National Security Agency has been hit with several lawsuits since leaks began to expose its spy programs last year. Now the latest legal...
Secret studies proving Monsanto sells poison
Secret studies proving Monsanto sells poison by Jon Rappoport July 3, 2014 www.nomorefakenews.com Claire Robinson has written a stunning article exposing hidden proof Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide is poison: “The glyphosate toxicity studies you’re not allowed to see,” gmwatch.org, July 2, 2014. Glyphosate is the main ingredient in Roundup, Monsanto’s product, which is used in hurricane-like […]
Monsanto’s “Insidious” GM0 Food and its Dark Connections to the Military Industrial Complex
Steven MacMillan
RINF Alternative News
Monsanto, the world’s largest genetically modified (GM/GMO) seed producer, has been at the centre of controversy for decades as evidence of...
Obama’s panel of experts claim NSA’s internet surveillance program is constitutional
A five-person panel handpicked by US President Barack Obama concluded Tuesday that the National Security Agency’s use of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provision...
Second NSA whistleblower comes forward – vindicates Snowden
RINF Alternative News
Bill Binney confirms that all content of all phone calls within the United States are recorded and one million a day are...
Panel: NSA Bulk Spying Edges ‘Constitutional Unreasonableness’
PCLOB review report is informative but flawed, say critics
Jon Queally
A government panel tasked to examine how a controversial program of the National Security Agency...
EFF Sues NSA, Director of National Intelligence for Zero Day Disclosure Process
Government Needs to Reveal Decision-Making Process for Publicizing Vulnerabilities
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)...
New Snowden Docs Reveal Near Global Reach of NSA
FISA court--which operates in secret and provides no real oversight--gave OK for vast scope of "foreign intelligence gathering."
Andrea Germanos
The U.S. National Security Agency was...
Does Cell-Phone Case Imperil NSA Spying?
Marjorie Cohn
In one of the most significant Fourth Amendment rulings ever handed down by the Supreme Court, all nine justices agreed in an opinion...
All but four nations are subject to NSA surveillance — new Snowden leak
Previously undisclosed files leaked to the media by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden now show that the United States National Security Agency has been...
Greenwald: NSA is attack on our dissent
Diego Ibanez
“Good people don’t hide; bad people have to hide because they are planning evil things like trying to bomb this auditorium,” said Glenn...
Look At How These Activists Created A Unique Way To Protest Illegal NSA Spying
Bluffdale, UT - The environmental campaigning group Greenpeace, digital rights watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Tenth Amendment Center (TAC) joined forces today...
Naming NSA Victims? Greenwald Says Game-Changer “Imminent”
Thomas R. Eddlem
Investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald (shown) has promised to name victims of NSA warrantless surveillance, calling such an expose “imminent” in an interview...
Microsoft lawyer says future is ‘bleak’ because of NSA surveillance
Microsoft’s top lawyer doesn’t see much reason to be optimistic going forward if the National Security Agency doesn’t stop its bulk collection of private...
Monsanto Tries to Patent & Control Natural, Non-GMO Tomatoes
Christina Sarich
In an appalling attempt to patent yet another seed, Monsanto has resorted to fraud to try to gain rights to a tomato which...
New leaks show Germany’s collusion with NSA
Several new Snowden-leaked documents show how closely Germany's intelligence agencies work with the NSA. But did the German government deliberately soften laws protecting privacy...
Vermont and the People are “Fighting Monsanto” for their Lives and For Now “They...
Joachim Hagopian
The world’s most powerful chemical manufacturer, Monsanto, and the powerful food and agri-industries have had their way in America for many decades. Through...
House unexpectedly votes to stop warrantless NSA searches
In what’s being billed as a momentum boost for anti-surveillance advocates, the US House of Representative on Thursday approved an amendment that significantly reigns...
Criminalising Dissent against GMOs and Monsanto
Colin Todhunter
RINF Alternative News
Before being voted out of office this year, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance administration sanctioned open-field trials of 200 GM food...
Criminalising Dissent In India Against GMOs And Monsanto
Global Research and Countercurrents 20/6/2014, The 4th Media 22/6/2014
Before being voted out of office this year, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance administration sanctioned open-field trials of 200 GM food crops inIndia
Before being voted out of office this year, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance administration sanctioned open-field trials of 200 GM food crops in
Filmmaker Mahesh Batt called Minister Moily, who sanctioned the decision, a “corporate mole” and the Coalition for a GM Free India and Greenpeace condemned Moily's action as "unscientific, anti-people and reeking of vested interests."
Moily’s decision was set against the backdrop of the Supreme Court appointed Technical Expert Committee (TEC) recommending a ten-year moratorium on GM organism approvals till scientifically robust protocols, independent and competent institutions to assess risks and a strong regulatory system were developed. It recommended an indefinite stoppage of all open field trials of GM crops. The Committee insisted that the government bring in independence, scientific expertise, transparency, rigour and participative democracy into GMO regulation and policy.
Environmentalist Aruna Rodrigues points out the risks and drawbacks of GMOs by stating that there is increasing evidence of the health and environment risks from these crops; GM yields are significantly lower than yields from non-GM crops; and pesticide use, the great ‘industry’ claim on these GM crops, instead of coming down, has gone up exponentially. Rodrigues argues that in India , notwithstanding the hype of the industry, the regulators and the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), Bt cotton yield is levelling off to levels barely higher than they were before the introduction of Bt (2).
Rodrigues wants to know where is the advantage and why are we experimenting given all the attendant risks. We have hard evidence from every UN study and particularly the World Bank-funded International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge and Science for Development Report, which India signed in 2008.
She adds:
“The IAASTD was the work of over 400 scientists and took four years to complete. It was twice peer reviewed. The report states we must look to small-holder, traditional farming (not GMOs) to deliver food security in third world countries through agri-ecological systems which are sustainable. Governments must invest in these systems. This is the clear evidence.”
The MoA strongly opposed the TEC Committee’s report. This, according to Rodrigues, was to be expected given the conflict of interests:
“The Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) promotes public-private-partnerships with the biotechnology industry. It does this with the active backing of the Ministry of Science and Technology. The MoA has handed Monsanto and the industry access to our agri-research public institutions placing them in a position to seriously influence agri-policy in. You cannot have a conflict of interest larger or more alarming than this one. Today, Monsanto decides which Bt cotton hybrids are planted and where. Monsanto owns over 90 per cent of planted cotton seed, all of it Bt cotton.” India
All the other staggering scams rocking the nation do have the possibility of recovery and reversal, but, as Rodrigues argues, the GM scam will be of a scale hitherto unknown:
“We have had the National Academies of Science give a clean chit of biosafety to GM crops - doing that by using paragraphs lifted wholesale from the industry’s own literature! Likewise, ministers who know nothing about the risks of GMOs have similarly sung the virtues of Bt Brinjal and its safety to an erstwhile Minister of Health. They have used, literally, “cut & paste” evidence from the biotech lobby’s “puff” material. Are these officials then, “un-caged corporate parrots?”
Arun Shrivastava notes that as early as 2003, when the first ever Bt cotton crop was harvested in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra , Gene Campaign evaluated the performance of Bt Cotton (3). These studies proved that GE seeds don’t increase yield. He goes on to note that the impleadment to ban GMOs was backed by 6.5 million farmers through their respective associations. It was admitted by the Supreme Court in April 2007 and contains a long list of hard scientific evidences.
Shrivastava states that the Standing Committee on Agriculture in Parliament unanimously and unequivocally concluded that GE seeds and foods are dangerous to human, animal and environmental health and directed the Government of Manmohan Singh to ban GMOs. The 400-page report was submitted to Parliament in October 2012 (4).
As is the case in the UK (5), officialdom in India is working closely with global biotech companies to force GMOs into fields and onto the public, despite evidence pertaining to the deleterious impacts of GMOs on various levels (6,7,8). These companies are in fact playing a key role in determining the overall development agenda for India
New report attacks anti-GMO activists and organisations
Given the evidence pertaining to the risks and efficacy of GMOs, organisations and activists opposing such crops are being singled out for putting a break on development and growth and for being in the pocket of foreign interests.
A recent Intelligence Bureau (IB) leaked report, ‘Impact of NGOs on Development’, has a special section on GMOs and is clearly supportive of the introduction of GM crops into Indian agriculture. The IB said foreign NGOs and their Indian arms were serving as tools to advance Western foreign policy interests in various areas, of which GMOs comprise one aspect.
In response to the report, Aruna Rodrigues, Vandana Shiva and Kavitha Kuruganti, who were all mentioned in the report, released a statement that turned the tables on the IB by saying that it is conspiring with global corporate interests to haemorrhage India's agricultural economy (12). The report quotes Dr Ronald Herring of Cornell University, who is a known promoter of genetically-modified organisms and Monsanto’s monopoly. Speaking to The Statesman newspaper in India, Aruna Rodrigues said:
"Here is a real foreign hand that informs the IB report. Cornell University, where Dr Herring works, was one of the main forces, along with USAID and Monsanto, behind the making of Bt brinjal in India." (13)
Their joint statement goes on to say:
“… the biggest foreign hand by ‘STEALTH’ and official ‘COVER-UP’ will be in GMOs/GM crops if introduced into Indian agriculture. All that stands between a corporate takeover of our seeds and agriculture is the committed and exemplary work by the not-for-profit sector… In conspiring with deeply conflicted institutions of regulation, governance and agriculture… to introduce GM crops into India, the IB will in fact aid the hand-over of the ownership of our seeds and foods to multi-national corporations. This will represent the largest take-over of any nation’s agriculture and future development by foreign-hands… (and)… will plunge India into the biggest breach of internal security; of a biosecurity threat and food security crisis from which we will never recover…. GM crops have already demonstrated no yield gain, no ability to engineer for traits of drought, saline resistance etc and have some serious bio-safety issues which no regulator wishes to examine.”
The statement says that India’s Bt cotton is an outstanding example of the above scenario:
“This ‘VALUE CAPTURE’ for Monsanto which was contrived and approved by our own government mortgaging the public interest has ensured that in a short 10 years, 95% of cotton seeds in the form of Bt cotton are owned by Monsanto… It is Monsanto now that decides where cotton should be planted and when by our farmers… The Royalties accruing to Monsanto that have been expatriated are approximately Rs 4800 Crores in 12 years, (excluding other profit mark-ups)… The IB is thus conspiring with global corporate interests to hemorrhage India’s agricultural economy… We call for an investigation on the foreign influence in writing the GMO section in the IB report.”
The statement concludes:
“If India’s intelligence agencies become instruments of global corporations working against the public interest and national interest of India, our national security is under threat. This IB report is deeply anti-national and subversive of constitutional rights of citizens in our country. It does India no credit.”
Criminalising dissent
The leaked IB report has been sent to the Prime Minister's Office, the Home Minister, the National Security Adviser, the Finance Minister and others. Apart from attacking those campaigning against GMOs, the report accuses Greenpeace and other groups of receiving foreign funds to damage economic progress by campaigning against power projects and mining.
The IB is India’s domestic spy service and garners intelligence from within India and also executes counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism tasks. Its report attempts to portray certain NGOs and activists as working against the ‘national interest’ and being in the pay of foreigners. Discrediting certain sections of civil society as being ‘unpatriotic’, by working to undermine some bogus notion of the ‘national interest’, always sits well with ruling elites that are all too ready to play the nationalist card to garner support. Yet, in this case the report itself sides with powerful foreign corporations and, as far as GMOs are concerned, their agenda to secure control over Indian agriculture. Whose interest does that serve?
Those who are exercising their democratic right to challenge and protest corporate-driven policies that are all too often based on staggering levels of corruption and rampant cronyism (14) - and are thus non-transparent and secretive - are being discredited and smeared in the report. However, this should come as no surprise. Various nation states have used their intelligence agencies to monitor, subvert and undermine grass-root activists and civil organizations that have (by acting legitimately and within the law) attempted to hold power holders to account (15). Governments the world over have a tendency to dislike genuine democracy and transparency.
Greenpeace India was singled out for particular criticism in the report and has responded by saying:
"We believe that this report is designed to muzzle and silence civil society who raise their voices against injustices to people and the environment by asking uncomfortable questions about the current model of growth." (16)
Massive human rights abuses, violent oppression and the trampling of democracy in order to push through various industrial projects have been a feature of various administrations in recent decades (17). The clamping down on funding for NGOs and attempts to dampen dissent is nothing new. But the leaking of the IB report is timely. The new Modi administration seeks to speed up projects and the opening of India’s economy to private interests and to more fully embrace the tenets of neo-liberal economic doctrine (18). The report signals that even tougher times lie ahead for civil society and ordinary people who seek to hold officialdom to account as it continues to acquiesce to powerful corporate interests.
Notes
4) “Cultivation of Genetically Modified Food Crops,” Committee on Agriculture, 37th Report, August 2012. Summary of the report: http://www.gmwatch.eu/
Facebook NSA Connection To Be Investigated
RINF Alternative News
Following Edward Snowden's disturbing revelations that Facebook has leaked private data to the NSA, including that of EU users, the European Court of Justice...
How Did ‘Don’t Mess with the Money’ Become the NSA’s Motto?
In one corner of America, we need lots more snooping.
Jeff Vogel and Sam Pizzigati
Imagine we had a brazen and powerful gang stealing trillions of...
‘Politically Explosive’ Docs Show How NSA Wiretaps Earth
Latest reporting on Snowden-leaked documents detail importance and reach of agency's third-party agreements
Jon Queally
New reporting by The Intercept and a partner newspaper in Denmark...
Congress Decides This Week Whether to Shut the NSA Backdoor: Here’s How You Can...
The NSA may seem like an intimidating giant, but it has a serious Achilles' heel– the enormous budget it claims from taxpayer dollars every year. While change...
NSA: Our Surveillance System Is Too Complex to Stop
The National Security Agency (NSA) claims that its computers are so powerful that to try to protect data from erasure would have “an immediate,...
US tech giants seek protection against overseas NSA snooping
In an epic battle of behemoths, Microsoft and four other US technology companies are seeking legal protection in a Manhattan court against US intelligence...
Psychiatry: the NSA with toxic drugs
Psychiatry: the NSA with toxic drugs by Jon Rappoport June 13, 2014 www.nomorefakenews.com This piece follows on from my previous one, “2 new smoking guns: Psychiatry is a complete fraud.” That article refuted the whole scientific basis of the profession. Here are quotes from a work-in-progress, The Underground: “Psychiatry is a system of arbitrary definitions. […]
How NSA Can Secretly Aid Criminal Cases
Ray McGovern
Rarely do you get a chance to ask a just-retired FBI director whether he had “any legal qualms” about what, in football, is...
US pressures El Salvador to buy Monsanto’s GMO seeds
As one of the preconditions to authorizing close to $300 million in aid, the United States is pressuring El Salvador to purchase genetically modified...
Did Microsoft hand the NSA access to encrypted messages?
Zafar Anjum
In July last year, when the news broke that Microsoft had allegedly collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be...
NSA Whistleblower: Snowden Never Had Access to the JUICIEST Documents
With permission of Washington’s Blog
NSA whistleblower Russel Tice was a key source in the 2005 New York Times report that blew the lid off the Bush administration’s use...
Monsanto, Syngenta, Pioneer et al.: Through Political Cooptation and Corruption, the GMO Biotech Sector...
Colin Todhunter
The proposal to hand back some decision powers to member states of the European Union regarding GMO approvals is currently being discussed (1). It...
On 6/5, 65 Things We Know About NSA Surveillance That We Didn’t Know a...
It’s been one year since the Guardian first published the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order, leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, that demonstrated...
Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone to film thriller based on Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks
The story of how fugitive Edward Snowden leaked classified documents on state surveillance is to be made into a film by Oscar-winning director, Oliver...
How GCHQ & NSA tap Internet cables
RINF Alternative News
Going against pressure from the British government to keep details of how GCHQ and NSA tap underwater Internet cables private, the Register has...
NSA collects facial images of hundreds of millions of people
Patrick Martin
In the latest exposure of the US National Security Agency based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the New York Times reported...
Techno-Fascism (NSA) and the Obama Administration
History is a holistic political-structural process, Marx’s dialectical framework notwithstanding, because even allowing for contradiction there are successive stages of integration, from each of...
The Top 5 Claims That Defenders of the NSA Have to Stop Making to...
Over the past year, as the Snowden revelations have rolled out, the government and its apologists have developed a set of talking points about...
Blacklisting Compensation Talks May Collapse Over ‘Grossly Inadequate’ Offer
TALKS to agree compensation for blacklisted construction workers are close to collapse.
General union GMB says the settlement proposed by eight firms at the heart...
America’s Insatiable Demand For More Expensive Cars, Larger Homes And Bigger Debts
One of the things that this era of American history will be known for is conspicuous consumption. Even though many of us won't admit it, the truth is that almost all of us want a nice vehicle and a large home. They say that "everything is bigger in Texas", but the same could be said [...]
NSA Gathering Millions of Images for Facial Recognition Technology
New York Times report shows spy agency obtains images from social media, text messages, and emails
Sarah Lazare
The National Security Agency is mass collecting facial...
There’s No Doubt the Government Destroyed NSA Spying Evidence
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) told a federal court today that there was no doubt that the government has destroyed years of evidence of...
Lawsuit to Uncover Secret Court Opinions Authorizing NSA Spying
Oakland - At a hearing on Tuesday, June 3, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Staff Attorney Mark Rumold will argue before a judge that the...
How the NSA Violates International Human Rights Standards
Even before Ed Snowden leaked his first document, human rights lawyers and activists were concerned about law enforcement and intelligence agencies spying on the...
Mothers demand that Monsanto stop poisoning America
"We will get Roundup recalled, and we will have an impact on the chemical treadmill," said Zen Honeycutt of Moms Across America
Andrea Germanos
It's time...
NSA gets away with it again – Germany drops prosecution
RINF Alternative News
German officials in charge of data protection are shocked by the federal prosecutors' decision to not commence a criminal-investigation into the much-publicized NSA's...
Dust In The Wind: Dust Bowl Conditions Have Returned To Kansas, Oklahoma And North...
In early 1978, a song entitled "Dust in the Wind" by a rock band known as Kansas shot up the Billboard charts. When Kerry Livgren penned those now famous lyrics, he probably never imagined that Dust Bowl conditions would return to his home state just a few short decades later. Sadly, that is precisely what [...]
‘Biggest yet’: Greenwald to publish names of Americans whom NSA is spying on
Glenn Greenwald, who helped Edward Snowden leak sensitive documents about the National Security Agency spying on its citizens, says he’s set to publish his...
AFTER THE MARCH AGAINST MONSANTO, MOMENTUM FAVORS THE PEOPLE
While the smoke is still clearing from what may be the final 'March Against Monsanto' it appears that momentum favors the people.
NSA “reform” bill would continue to allow for bulk phone record collection
Matthew MacEgan
WSWS
Reprinted with permission
On Thursday, the United States House of Representatives passed the “USA Freedom Act,” a piece of legislation that has been presented...
Millions Worldwide March Against Monsanto
Dr. Vandana Shiva: "We did not choose to target Monsanto. Monsanto chose to target our seed and food freedom, our scientific and democratic institutions,...
Interview 892 — Michael Maharrey Delivers Good News About the Nullify NSA Campaign
Michael Maharrey of the The Tenth Amendment Center\'s Nullify The NSA campaign joins us to discuss the latest campaign success: the passage of a bill in the California state Senate that would end state cooperation or support with the illegal collection of electronic data or metadata. We also discuss the status of similar campaigns across the United States and the passage of a new law in Minnesota that bans warrantless cellphone tracking. Monsanto’s Campaign Contributions to US House and Senate Candidates
For further details see the incisive article by Josh Sager Monsanto Controls both-the-White House and the US Congress
M.Ch., GR.Ed.
House
Total to Democrats: $72,000
Total to Republicans: $190,500
Recipient
Total
Barrow,...
The Sinister Monsanto Group: From ‘Agent Orange’ to Genetically Modified Corn
The Americans do not only spy on governments, authorities and private individuals across the world with the help of their secret services; they also...
March Against Monsanto
On May 24, millions of activists from around the world will once again March Against Monsanto, calling for the permanent boycott of Genetically Modified...
Monsanto Threatens People and Planet
Duncan Roden
RINF Alternative News
An international March Against Monsanto is scheduled for May 24. Hundreds of events around the world have already been scheduled to...
6 ways Monsanto are destroying humanity
Mick Meaney
RINF Alternative News
Just in case you've been living under a rock (or absorbing the limited range of carefully selected and controlled news reports from the corporate...
How the NSA is Transforming Law Enforcement
Nadia Kayyali
RINF Alternative NewsIf you've been imagining NSA surveillance as something distant, with analysts sitting in remote data centers quietly analyzing metadata--stop now. NSA...
WikiLeaks ignores ‘deaths’ warning, threatens to name NSA-targeted country
Despite warnings that doing so “could lead to increased violence” and potentially deaths, anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks says it plans to publish the name of...
NSA Records and Stores Content of All Phone Calls in Two Countries
Eric London
According to new documents made public yesterday by Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency records the content of every phone call made to,...
Giving NSA the boot — California bids to end spying on its citizens
The state of California is looking to pass a law stating the federal government would need a warrant from a judge if it wants...
NSA collecting content of all phone calls in the Bahamas, according to Snowden leak
The United States National Security Agency is reportedly collecting the contents of effectively every phone call dialed or received within the Bahamas, putting the...
Monsanto Double Standards and the Crumbling “Scientific Myths” of the GMO Biotech Sector
Colin Todhunter
RINF Alternative News
The GMO biotech sector is involved in a multi-pronged campaign to influence governments and the public about the benefits of its...
Proof That Most Politicians And CEO’s Are Certifiably Insane
After writing one of my most recent articles with regard to what typically happens when a currency collapse occurs, due to a currency devaluation...
Monsanto’s Darkest Secret: Roundup’s Effect On The Fetus
Multiple studies clearly show glyphosate causes birth defects, and that the pesticide industry has known about for a surprisingly long period of time.
The Great Boycott: Monsanto and the GMA
Defying repeated threats of a lawsuit from Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), on May 8, Peter Shumlin, Governor of Vermont, signed a historic bill...
Everyone should know just how much the government lied to defend the NSA
Trevor Timm
If you blinked this week, you might have missed the news: two Senatorsaccused the Justice Department of lying about NSA warrantless surveillance to the...
How the NSA & FBI made Facebook the perfect mass surveillance tool
Harrison Weber
The National Security Agency and the FBI teamed up in October 2010 to develop techniques for turning Facebook into a surveillance tool.
Documents released alongside security...
Skeptics on NSA Reform: Beware the ‘Backdoors and Loopholes’
Jon Queally
RINF Alternative News
'Bill to curb NSA spying looks like change, but isn’t really.'
That's the headline on the latest McClatchy reporting focused an a series of...
Illegal NSA Surveillance of Americans: Secret Authorizations Granted by Bush and Obama
Eric Zuesse
RINF Alternative News
The May 13th PBS “Frontline” documents that on 4 October 2001, President George W. Bush signed a secret authorization for the...
NSA spying on foreign embassies helped US ‘develop’ strategy
The National Security Agency in 2010 provided the US ambassador to the United Nations with background information on several governments and their embassies that...
Orwell’s Nightmare: The NSA and Google–Big Brother Meets Big Business
“The Google services and apps that we interact with on a daily basis aren’t the company’s main product: They are the harvesting machines that dig up and process the stuff that Google really sells: for-profit intelligence.”—Journalist Yasha Levine “We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what […]
Former NSA and CIA Director: We Kill People Based On Metadata
Since the very first Snowden leak a year ago, one of the more common refrains from defenders of the program is "but it's just...
Glenn Greenwald Debate NSA’s Michael Hayden On The Surveillance State (VIDEO)
Lively debate on the surveillance state with journalist Glenn Greenwald and Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian versus former NSA chief Michael Hayden and war on...
Barack Obama and the Monsanto betrayal
Barack Obama and the Monsanto betrayal by Jon Rappoport May 7, 2014 www.nomorefakenews.com Under the selective radar of mainstream media, Barack Obama has been carving out a whole new level of support for Monsanto and other destructive biotech giants. From Scott Creighton, “Obama Pitches India Model of GM Genocide to Africa”: “At the G8 Summit […]
Barack Obama and the Monsanto betrayal
Barack Obama and the Monsanto betrayal by Jon Rappoport May 7, 2014 www.nomorefakenews.com Under the selective radar of mainstream media, Barack Obama has been carving out a whole new level of support for Monsanto and other destructive biotech giants. From Scott Creighton, “Obama Pitches India Model of GM Genocide to Africa”: “At the G8 Summit […]
Can You Crack The Code? NSA Using Twitter To Recruit With Coded Messages
By Susan Duclos The National Security Agency (NSA) posted a cryptic tweet to Twitter on May 5, 2014, which had other users wondering if they had been hacked or if someone was playing a joke, but it turns out the tweet, shown below, was put out by ...
Russian sanctions, NSA spying top the agenda at Merkel’s White House visit
Germany’s Chancellor Merkel is in the White House for the first time since it was revealed the NSA monitored her personal communications. During bilateral...
Germany Blocks Edward Snowden from Testifying in Person in NSA Inquiry
The German government has blocked Edward Snowden from giving personal evidence in front of a parliamentary inquiry into NSA surveillance, it has emerged hours...
The US Supreme Court Needs to Keep Up with Our Cellphones — and the...
The era of incremental justice ends now, because the age of metadata is already getting out of hand
Yochai Benkler
Tuesday's US supreme court arguments involved...
How Monsanto Annihilated A Paradise And Turned It Into An Island Of Illness
Joe Martino
A beautiful island in Hawaii called Molokai has been subject to biotech giant Monsanto for some time now and the results of Monsanto’s...
Panel discussion on NSA surveillance covers for government spy programs
Nick Barrickman
RINF Alternative News
A panel discussion last week in the downtown Washington, DC headquarters of the Washington Post featured journalists who contributed to the Post’s coverage...
Activists want net neutrality, NSA spying debated at Internet conference
Participants at the conference also want concrete measures to emerge from the conference
John Ribeiro
A campaign on the Internet is objecting to the exclusion of...
Monsanto’s Dream Bill is a Nightmare for State GMO Labeling Efforts
Genna Reed
RINF Alternative News
Last week, Representative Mike Pompeo (R-KS) introduced the “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2014” (HR 4432), a brainchild of...
‘Borderline Insane’: HMRC To Sell Taxpayers’ Financial Data To Private Companies
Government plans to share taxpayers' data with private firms were condemned as "borderline insane" by a senior Tory MP.
Under the proposals, HM Revenue and...
Monsanto and Big Food Losing the GMO and “Natural” Food Fight
Ronnie Cummins
After 20 years of battling Monsanto and corporate agribusiness, food and farm activists in Vermont, backed by a growing Movement across the country,...
NSA Spying Is Here to Stay
Jim Hightower
On Monday, April 14, the the Washington Post and the Guardian US newspapers received the Pulitzer for Journalism Public Service for their reports...
Pulitzer Prize awarded for Snowden exposures of NSA spying
Patrick Martin
RINF Alternative News
Columbia University has given the most prestigious award in journalism, the Pulitzer Prize gold medal for public service, to the newspapers...
Meet the NSA’s New Minister of Radio Propaganda
One of the Top Republican NSA Cheerleaders in Congress Is Retiring to Become a Right-Wing Radio Host
Rep Mike Rogers, former FBI Special Agent and...
Would You Trust the NSA’s Advice on How to Deal with Heartbleed?
Somewhat late to the game (by about a week), after the Heartbleed vulnerability was publicly revealed, and a few days after it was reported and denied that...
What the Proposed NSA Reforms Wouldn’t Do
Ten months after Edward Snowden’s first disclosures, three main legislative proposals have emerged for surveillance reform: one from President Obama, one from the House Intelligence Committee,...
NSA exploited Heartbleed bug
Joseph Santolan
RINF Alternative News
On Friday, Bloomberg News published a report citing two sources “familiar with the matter” revealing that the National Security Agency (NSA)...
Big Brother Insanity: Countries Who Protect Citizens From NSA Spying “ViolateTrade Laws”
NSA spying is costing the U.S. tech industry tens of billions of dollars, and people around the world are trying to find non-U.S. companies to...
What the Proposed NSA Reforms Wouldn’t Do
Kara Brandeisky
Ten months after Edward Snowden's first disclosures, three main legislative proposals have emerged for surveillance reform: one from President Obama, one from the House Intelligence...
Nearly Half Of Americans Claim They’ve Changed Their Behavior Due To NSA
Mike Masnick
The folks at the NSA and their defenders used to use the argument that we were on the verge of a“cyber pearl harbor” in...
Do Google, Facebook Know More Private Info Than NSA and Soviet-Era Secret Police?
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Julia Angwin joins us to discuss her new book, "Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a...
Clapper Confesses: NSA Searching Americans’ Calls and Emails
Lauren McCauley
RINF Alternative News
Despite professions by intelligence officials that "backdoor" searches have been strictly limited to foreign individuals, reporting Tuesday has revealed that the NSA has...
Monsanto aliens
Monsanto aliens by Jon Rappoport April 1, 2014 www.nomorefakenews.com “I recognized my two selves: a crusading idealist and a cold, granitic believer in the law of the jungle” – Edgar Monsanto Queeny, Monsanto chairman, 1943-63, “The Spirit of Enterprise”, 1934. “Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in […]
Over 100 World Leaders Targeted by NSA Spying
Der Spiegel report reveals Germany especially targeted by US and UK surveillance
Sarah Lazare
RINF Alternative News
Over 100 leaders of foreign states are secretly surveilled by...
Little Change to NSA Metadata Collection
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D.
President Obama’s proposal to curtail the collection capabilities of the National Security Agency (NSA) passes the buck for protecting the...
Jimmy Carter Says The NSA Are Spying On Him
Andre Damon
RINF Alternative News
Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, told reporters this week that he believes that the National Security Administration...
Obama “reform” seeks new framework for illegal NSA spying
Thomas Gaist and Joseph Kishore
RINF Alternative News
The Obama administration is preparing to propose legislative changes to the bulk telephone data collection program run...
Capitulating to Monsanto and the Wall Street Jackals: What Future India?
.jpg)
Countercurrents and Global Research 24/3/2014
Indian Oil and Environment Minister Veerappa Moily has added fuel to the debate about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) by approving field trials of 200 GM food crops on behalf of companies like Monsanto, Mahyco, Bayer and BASF. This is despite Supreme Court appointed Technical Expert Committee (TEC) recommending a ten-year moratorium on GM organism approvals until scientifically robust protocols, independent and competent institutions to assess risks and a strong regulatory system are developed.
Indian Oil and Environment Minister Veerappa Moily has added fuel to the debate about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) by approving field trials of 200 GM food crops on behalf of companies like Monsanto, Mahyco, Bayer and BASF. This is despite Supreme Court appointed Technical Expert Committee (TEC) recommending a ten-year moratorium on GM organism approvals until scientifically robust protocols, independent and competent institutions to assess risks and a strong regulatory system are developed.
This will involve a deliberate release of GM organisms in the open environment and a potential contamination of non-GM crops, as has been the case in the US , with GM open field trials having contaminated parts of the wheat supply (1). Despite mounting evidence appearing in peer-reviewed journals that GM and glyphosate are adversely impacting human health, the nutritional value of food crops, plant immunity, soil fertility, biodiversity, the environment and yields (2 - 15), politicians seem hell-bent on facilitating the aims of the GM biotech sector.
It was a similar story with the ‘Green Revolution’. The Rockefeller and Ford Foundations backed this chemical-laden revolution in agriculture and managed to co-opt strategically placed scientists, institutions and politicians in various areas of the globe (16). With their compliance, the result has been that over the past 50 to 60 years, thanks to chemical fertilizers and pesticides, agriculture has changed more than it did during the previous 12,000 years.
We need look no further than Punjab to see the impact of the Green Revolution. Reports of water scarcities and contamination, increasing levels of cancer, farmer indebtedness and decreasing yields highlight the unsustainable and deleterious impacts of chemical-industrial agriculture (17). It all begs the question, what was wrong with agriculture in the first place that warranted this disastrous shift towards chemical agriculture and now GMOs? The answer to that is, by comparison, probably not a lot.
In 2013, researchers at the University of Canterbury New Zealand Western Europe (18). Led by Professor Jack Heinemann, the study’s findings were published in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability. The study found that Europe is decreasing chemical herbicide use and achieving even larger declines in insecticide use without sacrificing yield gains, while chemical herbicide use in the US Europe has learned to grow more food per hectare and use fewer chemicals in the process.
Moreover, a September 2013 report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) states that farming in rich and poor nations alike should shift from monoculture towards greater varieties of crops, reduce the use of fertilisers and other inputs, provide greater support for small-scale farmers and move towards more locally focused production and consumption of food. More than 60 international experts contributed to the report (19).
The report states that monoculture and industrial farming methods are not providing sufficient affordable food where it is needed, while causing mounting and unsustainable environmental damage. The system actually causes food poverty, not addresses it.
As for India, Arun Shrivastava notes that the world doesn’t need modern technology of poisonous pesticides, destructive fertilizers and patented GE seeds that can’t match 1890 or even 1760 AD yields in India (12). But even if we discard the debate over yields, Shrivastava (and others) asserts that modern technology has actually destroyed the nutrition in common foods and that, failing to set any yield or nutrition standard in any food crop, it is part of an insane industry that has muddled through.
So, how did we arrive at this stage, whereby 12,000 years of conventional farming were swept aside in favour of chemical/oil-based agriculture?
As William F Engdahl argues, the Green Revolution was a Rockefeller family plan to monopolize global agriculture as it had done with oil. It was aimed at removing traditional agriculture from farmers and placing it in the hands of corporate agribusiness. As a result, large multinational seed companies were able to control seed supplies. Moreover, the introduction of modern US agricultural technology, chemical fertilizers and commercial seeds made local farmers in developing countries dependent on US agribusiness.
Developing nations could not pay for the huge amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. This new form of agriculture was also water intensive and required large irrigation projects. Nations would therefore get credit courtesy of the World Bank and special loans made large US banks to construct huge dams and flood previously fertile farmland. The loans went mostly to the large landowners. For the smaller peasants the situation worked differently. Small peasant farmers could not afford the chemical and other modern inputs and had to borrow money at higher rates of interest from elsewhere.
Engdahl notes that super-wheat produced greater yields only by saturating the soil with huge amounts of fertilizer per acre, the fertilizer being the product of nitrates and petroleum, commodities controlled by the Rockefeller-dominated major oil companies.
After two generations of the green revolution, is it any surprise that agriculture in India is in the grip of a combined social, financial and environmental crisis (20)?
Ordinary people, if they are not to be what Vandana Shiva calls ‘ignorant links' in a malicious corporate-controlled food chain, therefore need to question why governments have kowtowed to a US-driven agenda of chemical and now GMO agriculture. Africa is now targeted for more of the same as the Gates Foundation spearheads the GMO onslaught in that continent (21).
12,000 years of traditional agriculture and biodiversity are being swept aside along with ordinary farmers by vested interests in the US whose geopolitical aim has to been to monopolize markets and ultimately use food as a weapon to control nations and people by destroying national food sovereignty and potentially using food as a means to depopulate (22,23).
“If you control the oil you control the country; if you control food, you control the population.” - Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (12)
This is in addition to the fact that wider ‘corporate America ’ is already setting the broad political, ‘development’ and economic agenda in India :
“And something Americans don’t know much about, the nuclear deal with India India India
It’s not just ‘Americans’ that don’t know about this, but most ordinary Indians too!
But even with the upcoming national elections, no one should expect self-proclaimed Hindu-nationalist party BJP to protect the country from the foreign jackals if it gains power. BJP candidate for PM Narendra Modi is fully backed by Wall Street (25).
What future Indian agriculture?
What future India ?
600 million booted off the land and the further hollowing out of Indian society at the behest of Wall Street (26)?
Notes
Facebook and Monsanto: top shareholders are identical
Facebook and Monsanto: top shareholders are identical by Jon Rappoport March 22, 2014 www.nomorefakenews.com Seven of the top 12 shareholders of Facebook and Monsanto are identical. Even more to the point, three of the top five shareholders are the same. The top shareholder, at the moment, in Monsanto is The Vanguard Group, which is number […]
How the NSA Targets Those with ‘Keys to Digital Kingdoms’
Jon Queally
RINF Alternative News
Though accused of no wrongdoing whatsoever, spy agency targets personal computers of individuals whose job it is to protect online networks
The...
Video: CIA and NSA Wrong Doing Requires Independent Investigation
Burt Wides, a former chief investigator for the Church Committee, who helped create the Senate and House intelligence committees, says these oversight bodies are...
Is the NSA manipulating the stock market?
Is the NSA manipulating the stock market? By Jon Rappoport March 20, 2014 www.nomorefakenews.com Trevor Timm of the Electronic Freedom Frontier dug up a very interesting nugget. It was embedded in the heralded December 2013 White House task force report on spying and snooping. Under Recommendations, #31, section 2, he found this: “Governments should not […]
Chilling Revelation: NSA Illegally Recording All Phone Calls
RINF Alternative News
The NSA is recording all of the phone calls in an unnamed foreign country, and the agency planned to expand the program...
Evil Monsanto GMO Corn Banned – Temporarily
John Deike
RINF Alternative News
On Saturday, France’s agriculture ministry temporarily banned the sale, use and cultivation of Monsanto’s MON 810 genetically engineered (GE) corn–the only variety that had...
Likening NSA Surveillance to Abusive Colonial-Era General Warrants, TRI Asks Appeals Court to Declare...
Likening the National Security Agency’s (NSA) domestic spying program to a modern-day incarnation of the abusive colonial-era general warrants and writs of assistance which prompted the Framers of the U.S. Constitution to adopt the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures, The Rutherford Institute has asked the United States Court of Appeals for the […]
Malware “Industrialises Spying”: The NSA has “Automated its Spying Operations”
Jonathan Cook
RINF Alternative News
The report from Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher, based on the Edward Snowden leaks reveals that the NSA — surprise, surprise...
‘Is Obama Simply Insane?’: Military & Obama Fmr DoD Staffer
By Susan DuclosBelow is a message sent to Citizens for a Free Republic by Ambassador Chas Freeman, founder of the Middle East Policy Council and a former member of the Obama Administration Defense Department, although it is noted that it was written by...
Docs Reveal ‘Disturbing’ Scale of NSA’s Global Hacking Abilities
Automated hacking by US agency can infect millions with malware
Jon Queally
RINF Alternative News
The "most significant revelations to date."
"This is huge, in scale and...
Snowden Leak: NSA Sees Erosion of Privacy Laws as Progress
Key decisions by secret court and executive orders hidden from public view welcomed by rapidly expanding National Security State
Jon Queally
RINF Alternative News
Since the attacks...
Snowden, Feinstein, CIA, NSA: the internal war
Snowden, Feinstein, CIA, NSA: the internal war by Jon Rappoport March 11, 2014 www.nomorefakenews.com Senator Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, blows up. She claims the CIA made efforts to sabotage her Committee’s investigation of illegal CIA interrogation/torture of detainees. The CIA vehemently denies it did anything wrong. So a new front in […]
TTIP: A Transatlantic Constitution of Corporations?
The TTIP, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement, threatens the economics, health and food policies of countries beyond the EU and the US. The...
5 Reasons Monsanto’s ‘Science’ Doesn’t Add Up
Ronnie Cummins and Katherine Paul
How long can Monsanto ignore the mounting actual scientific evidence that their technology is not only failing to live up...
Monsanto’s Roundup Found in 75% of Air and Rain Samples
John Deike
RINF Alternative News
In recent years, Roundup was found to be even more toxic than it was when first approved for agricultural use, though...
“The NSA May Enable a Police State”: Former Counter-Terror Czar
“Once You Give Up Your Rights, You Can Never Get Them Back. Once You Turn On That Police State, You Can Never Turn It...
What the Whole Foods-Monsanto connection really means
What the Whole Foods-Monsanto connection really means by Jon Rappoport February 26, 2014 www.nomorefakenews.com Yesterday, I wrote and posted an article, “Top shareholders in Whole Foods and Monsanto: identical.” I laid out the five investment funds that hold huge numbers of shares of both companies. http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2014/02/25/top-shareholders-in-whole-foods-and-monsanto-identical/ This means very little to Monsanto. But to Whole […]
Top shareholders in Whole Foods and Monsanto: identical
Top shareholders in Whole Foods and Monsanto: identical By Jon Rappoport February 25, 2014 www.nomorefakenews.com Is there a Whole Foods-Monsanto connection? The answer is yes. But the important question is: what does this connection mean? What does it imply? Is it significant? If you consult open listings (for example, investors.morningstar.com), you can look at the […]
Study: Monsanto’s Roundup causes “gluten intolerance”
Study: Monsanto’s Roundup causes “gluten intolerance” by Jon Rappoport February 21, 2014 www.nomorefakenews.com A recent study proposes that gluten intolerance and celiac disease are on the rise as a result of glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. The National Library of Medicine states that celiac disease “damages the lining of the small intestine […]
Ed Snowden, the NSA and the American Fear Mime
Herbert Calhoun
RINF Alternative News
This, book, "The Ed Snowden Files," is a story about what one American saw atop the tip of an iceberg...
US-EU Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement: More Secrecy and More Duplicity Revealed
Colin Todhunter
RINF Alternative News
Current bilateral free trade agreement negotiations are shrouded in secrecy and are closed to proper public scrutiny (1,2). This is because...
Polk Awards Go To Journalists Entrusted with Snowden NSA Docs
Jon Queally
RINF Alternative News
Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Barton Gellman receive prestigious award for revealing extent of secret US surveillance programs
The four...
NSA spying poses “direct threat to journalism,” watchdog group warns
Kate Randall
RINF Alternative News
Massive spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) poses a “direct threat to journalism,” according to a report by the Committee...
James Bamford Says NSA “Exploiting” U.S. Citizens With Info About Their Online Porno Viewing...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSKy3vcSBdM
Lights Out For The NSA? Literally! (Video)
By Susan DuclosIf the courts won't stop the NSA from violating Americans' 4th Amendment rights, then states, one by one, need to cut the NSA off at the knees by proposing and in some cases passing bills that will prevent the NSA from operating in ...
"Obama Murdered My Son" – Father Of Slain SEAL Team 6 Sailor Speaks Out,...
For two and a half years, the families of the members of SEAL Team Six - The SEAL Team that killed Osama Bin Laden - have been searching for answers. They want to know why their sons were put aboard a decrepit CH-47 helicopter and flown into a hot LZ w...
Revealed: NSA Receiving Data of Tens of Thousands of Internet Users
Sarah Lazare
RINF Alternative News
Internet giants Google, Facebook, Yahoo, LinkedIn and Microsoft release new details about government surveillance requests
Every six months, data from tens of...
Obama names advocate of cyber-warfare to head NSA
Eric London
RINF Alternative News
President Barack Obama nominated the next director of the National Security Agency on Thursday, announcing that Navy Vice Admiral Michael Rodgers...
Monsanto’s Roundup: new deadly scam exposed
Monsanto’s Roundup: new deadly scam exposed by Jon Rappoport February 2, 2014 www.nomorefakenews.com Roundup is the Monsanto herbicide that is touted as the cornerstone of GMO food crops. Monsanto claims these crops are genetically engineered to withstand heavy spraying of Roundup. Therefore, the crops live and the weeds die. Breakthrough. There are several key lies […]
NSA hit with Class Action Suit
From Absio:
There is much more here.
Senator Rand Paul hits NSA with Class Action Suit
Like him or not, Sen. Rand Paul is an interesting guy. His latest move is libertarian activism writ large. He is suing the NSA over its bulk data collection programs. Why do I get the feeling Gen. Keith Alexander is out shopping for a bass boat right about now? I cannot think of a more important job that is less fun to do in the current environment. Except, perhaps for a grunt in Afghanistan carrying 120 lbs up and down the Hindu Kush.
Sen. Paul’s suit against the NSA is a class action and it will not help anyone at Ft. Meade sleep better any time soon.The vocal critic of the NSA told the State of the Net Conference on Tuesday that the complaint has already been written and predicted that the challenge would likely reach to the Supreme Court.Paul has been working for months on the lawsuit against the NSA over its surveillance of Americans' phone and Internet records, which he plans to file as a private citizen. On Tuesday, he asked for the public to back the effort.Paul is one of those pesky types who read the US Constitution and expect that it means what it actually says. And Amendment IV pretty clearly says that:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized....
There is much more here.
Forget Metadata … The NSA Is Spying On EVERYTHING
Don’t Get Too Distracted By The Details … The Government Is Spying On ALL Of Your Digital Communications
Reprinted with permission
The NSA’s spying on everyone’s...
Is Monsanto’s Gene-Silencing Weapon Next?
RINF Alternative News
As biotech giants move forward with the technology, specialists warn it could be dangerous
News that biotechnology corporations are developing new technology that...
The Risky Business of Being a Monsanto Shareholder
Anna Meyer
RINF Alternative News
When readers of the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch opened their papers yesterday morning, they saw a full-page ad welcoming Monsanto shareholders into town and...
Cut Off the NSA’s Juice
Norman Solomon
RINF Alternative News
The National Security Agency depends on huge computers that guzzle electricity in the service of the surveillance state. For the NSA’s...
NSA, GCHQ Using Data From ‘Leaky’ Smartphone Apps to Spy
Andrea Germanos
RINF Alternative News
As part of their arsenal of spying tools, the National Security Agency and its British counterpart, the GCHQ, are sucking up...
The NSA Fiasco: A Carefully Choreographed Stage Show
James Corbett
RINF Alternative News
As the public finally becomes outraged over the NSA’s illegal spying, members of government and the corporate media wage an information...
Snowden: NSA Involved in ‘Industrial Espionage’
In an exclusive television interview to air Sunday night, the NSA whistleblower speaks at length with German public broadcaster ARP TV
Lauren McCauley
RINF Alternative News
The...
The NSA and the 9/11 Deception
by James Corbett
GRTV.ca
January 26, 2014
As the public finally becomes outraged over the NSA’s illegal spying, members of government and the corporate media wage an information war to misdirect that anger to issues of less importance. To counter...
Forget the Goodfellas, The NSA and CIA are Criminal Enterprises
David R. Hoffman
RINF Alternative News
When I first started writing for Pravda.Ru over ten years ago, I thought I could help change the world. However, at some...
Snowden defends his exposure of NSA’s mass spying in online chat
Ed Hightower
RINF Alternative News
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden answered questions online Thursday posted by an audience via Twitter. The questions ranged from the openly hostile...
Justifying the Unjustifiable: Deconstructing the Lies of the NSA
As the public finally becomes outraged over the NSA's illegal spying, members of government and the corporate media wage an information war to misdirect...
‘End It’: Govt Oversight Panel Calls NSA Spying Illegal
Strongest-yet rebuke from within U.S. government; only Bush-era lawyers dissent
Sarah Lazare
RINF Alternative News
The National Security Agency’s program to bulk collect phone data breaks the...
Why the NSA’s Metadata Program Won’t Change Anytime Soon
Bill Blum
RINF Alternative News
Of all the applause lines President Obama delivered in his speech Friday on NSA spying, none matched his promise to end the agency’s...
Ukrainian Government Uses NSA-like Tactics to Track Cell Phone Location of Protesters
Aaron Cantú
RINF Alternative News
As smoke and flames billow upward from the streets of Ukraine's capital city Kiev after days of increasingly violent civil unrest,...
Obama’€™s Lies, NSA Spies, and the Sons of Liberty: Will You Choose Dangerous Freedom...
John W. Whitehead
RINF Alternative News
President Obama has managed, with singular assistance from Congress and the courts, to mangle the Constitution through repeated abuses, attacks,...
Obama’s Lies, NSA Spies, and the Sons of Liberty: Will You Choose Dangerous Freedom...
“All governments are run by liars.”—Independent journalist I.F. “Izzy” Stone President Obama has managed, with singular assistance from Congress and the courts, to mangle the Constitution through repeated abuses, attacks and evasions. This is nothing new, as I’ve documented in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State. However, with his recent speech […]
Apologists for NSA redouble witch-hunt of Edward Snowden
Bill Van Auken
RINF Alternative News
If anyone had any doubts about the real content of President Barack Obama’s “reform” of the National Security Agency’s massive...
NSA Spying and Search Engine “Tracking Technologies”
It’s not Okay if the NSA Spies on us, but it’s okay when Google does…
Ming Chun Tang
RINF Alternative News
One of the defining stories of...
Reactions to Obama’s NSA Address
Reactions to Obama's NSA Address
by Stephen Lendman
Hundreds of Stop Watching Us activists protested outside the Justice Department. They did so before he spoke.
They wore STOP SPYING glasses. They held signs saying "Stop Spying on Us." "Big Brother In Chief." "Obama = Tyranny."
CODEPINK members were there. On Thursday, co-founder Medea Benjamin said:
"Though President Obama is scheduled to lay out reforms for the NSA spying program, we have little reason to believe they will be sufficient of implemented."
"The intelligence agencies in the US are totally out of control - from mass dragnet spying, to killing by remote control…" and it's time for transparency and accountability."
Bill of Rights Defense Committee executive director Shahid Buttar said:
"Despite pledging to stop Bush era abuses, President Obama has repeatedly chosen to leave the NSA free to monitor the American people en masse."
"More than any other issue, his administration's complicity in mass surveillance will come to define its legacy."
It's certain unless he "chooses to finally support reforms like the USA FREEDOM Act, which would end bulk collection, and start a longer process needed to remove the officials caught lying to Congress, and fix the broken secret FISA court process."
Clearly, he has no intention of doing it. A same day article said the worst of business as usual will continue.
Skepticism and then some followed Obama's address. Center for Constitutional Rights President Emeritus Michael Ratner said:
"I didn't expect a lot, but I think we got almost nothing in terms of actually reining in what I call this national surveillance state."
"We have a right to privacy." Not according to Obama. "So you have this vast surveillance apparatus."
"And then you have a speech that basically lauds the people who are spies, talks about them really as, oh, they're your neighbor. They don't want to do anything wrong to you. They're only out to protect you."
His address was a shameless PR stunt. It was smoke and mirrors. It was long on rhetoric. It was short on substance. It delivered empty promises.
It was filled "with a lot of BS about oversight (and) transparency," said Ratner. It was "completely meaningless."
Obama wants us to trust the government "which we've shown can't (be) trust(ed)."
Former Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson called Obama's address "disappointing, but not surprising."
"It is simply not realistic to expect the federal government to voluntarily relinquish powers it has granted itself, even when (they're) unconstitutional."
"And when the government has convinced itself that it is OK to sweep up the phone calls, texts and emails of hundreds of millions of Americans, it is no surprise that the President is not really proposing to change anything."
TechFreedom president Berin Szoka said Obama's "speech will probably be remembered most for the much-needed reforms it didn't announce."
Law Professor Jonathan Turley called Obama's address "a nothing burger served hot and with a sympathetic smile."
"It was much of the same. Another review board composed of government officials. Another promise for the Executive Branch to review itself."
"I was underwhelmed. It seemed like another attempt to reinvent privacy in a new surveillance friendly image."
Mass surveillance "will continued and the intelligence community will retain its authority with little outside independent limits."
Obama's reform is "basically 'trust us, we're your government' (including a reminder that NSA people are your neighbors)."
His speech was "more spin than substance." It was typical Obama.
The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) said Obama's "proposed reforms (far) short of what is needed, particularly in terms of actionable solutions."
CDT director Greg Nojeim said:
"(W)e were disappointed in (Obama's) failure to offer a clear path forward on (vital) reforms."
His "proposed changes do not fully address the fundamental problem of bulk collection of personal metadata and fail to adequately protect the rights of people around the world."
Partnership for Civil Justice Fund co-founders Carl Messineo and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard said:
"Rather than dismantling the NSA's unconstitutional mass surveillance programs, or even substantially restraining them, President Obama today has issued his endorsement of them."
"The speech today was 'historic' in the worst sense. It represents a historic failure by a president to rein in mass government illegality and violations of fundamental rights."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said Obama's so-called reforms have "have a long way to go. Now it's up to Congress and courts" to act.
EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn said:
"Mass non-targeted surveillance violates international human rights law."
"It is disproportionate because it sweeps up the communications and communications records of million of innocent people first and only sorts out second what is actually needed."
"(T)he NSA must be forbidden from engaging in mass, untargeted surveillance in the US or abroad."
ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said:
Obama's "decision not to end bulk collection and retention of all Americans' data remains highly troubling."
Glushko-Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic staff lawyer Tamir Israel said:
"Protecting foreigners' privacy rights" is essential. Recognizing it "in principle is unhelpful, as (Obama's) Directive leaves the US foreign intelligence apparatus' capacity to indiscriminately spy on all the activities of all foreigners all the time largely untouched."
Privacy International Legal Director Carly Nyst said:
"The reforms proposed by President Obama fundamentally ignore those who are spied on simply because they don't have an American passport."
"We need genuine, effective changes that account for the way the world now communicates. Secret international intelligence-sharing arrangements must come to an end and human rights must be properly guaranteed to humans, not just American citizens."
Amnesty International executive director Steven Hawkins said:
"The big picture takeaway from today's speech is that the right of privacy remains under grave threat both here at home and around the world."
Access executive director Brett Solomon said:
"The human right to privacy is universal. The rights of persons outside of the United States are as fundamental as the rights of U.S. citizens."
"However, the President’s defense of ongoing overseas intelligence collection programs ensures that the citizens of the world will continue to be subject to mass surveillance."
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange called Obama's speech "embarrassing." He spoke "for almost 45 minutes and sa(id) almost nothing."
"He's been very reluctant to make any concrete reforms, and unfortunately, today we see very few" presented.
On January 17, London's Guardian headlined Obama NSA reforms receive mixed response in Europe and Brazil," saying:
"Europeans were largely underwhelmed by Barack Obama's speech on limited reform of US espionage practices, saying the measures did not go far enough to address concerns over American snooping on its European allies."
NSA supporters loved Obama's speech. House and Senate intelligence committee chairpersons Rep. Mike Rogers (R. MI) and Diane Feinstein (D. CA) issued a joint statement, saying:
"Today President Obama gave a strong speech in defense of the need to collect and use intelligence in order to protect the nation and to prevent terrorist attacks around the world."
"We strongly agree with his comments in support and praise of the professionals in our intelligence community who do this work while upholding the civil liberties and privacy rights of all Americans."
Democrats largely supported Obama's speech. Republicans offered mixed reactions. Speaker John Boehner said:
"I look forward to learning more about how the new procedure for accessing data will not put Americans at greater risk."
"And the House will review any legislative reforms proposed by the administration." It "will not erode the operational integrity of critical programs that have helped keep America safe."
Senator Rand Paul dissented strongly, saying:
"The Fourth Amendment requires an individualized warrant based on probable cause before the government can search phone records and e-mails."
"I intend to continue the fight to restore Americans' rights through my Fourth Amendment Restoration Act and my legal challenge against the NSA. The American people should not expect the fox to guard the hen house."
The Financial Times called Obama "defiant on US surveillance activities."
Wall Street Journal editors said he delivered "a conflicted address…His new anti-terror proposals will do little to secure American privacy but they might make the country less safe."
New York Times editors support the worst of Obama's policies. They praised his speech. It "was in large part an admission that he had been wrong," they said.
He "announced important new restrictions on the collection of information about ordinary Americans…He called for greater oversight of the intelligence community..."
He "acknowledged that intrusive forms of technology posed a growing threat to civil liberties." At the same time, "his reforms (lacked) specifics..."
Calling "on Congress to create a panel of independent advocates (is) a huge improvement" over current practice.
Times editors largely defended the worst of lawless mass surveillance. They left rule of law principles unaddressed. They ignored America's fast track toward tyranny. They betrayed their readers in the process.
The Chicago Tribune defended Obama saying:
His "proposals outlined Friday are modest enough to give Americans some confidence that their privacy will be better protected without creating a greater risk to their security."
Los Angeles Times editors called Obama's "NSA reforms a significant step."
His "overarching theme...was that, with the best of intentions, the government over which (he) presides has gone too far in taking advantage of advanced technology."
He must "restore the proper balance between security and privacy."
Since mid-2013, the Washington Post discussed Snowden documents in detail. Numerous articles explained how NSA violates personal privacy.
Unless Obama acts to change current policy, intrusive "programs will carry on unabated," said WaPo.
Obama tried putting lipstick on a pig. Expect nothing substantive ahead to change. Washington is a cesspool of lawlessness. Things are worse than ever now.
Congress and federal courts are in lockstep with the worst administration policies. Rule of law principles don't matter.
Government by diktats threatens everyone. Freedom is fast disappearing. It's happening in plain sight.
Obama did more to destroy it than any previous president. It takes a giant leap of faith to think he'll reverse things.
He waged war on democratic values. He did so from day one in office. He's a duplicitous con man. He broke every major promise made.
He wants Americans to trust him. He gives chutzpah new meaning. He intends business as usual.
Sustained in-his-face public outrage is the only chance to stop him. Inertia so far keeps it contained.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book is titled "Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity."
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.
It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour
Should Obama be tried for treason after his NSA speech on Friday?
Ralph Lopez
RINF Alternative News
Floating an administration source's trial balloon on just where Obama is trying to go on this NSA thing, the New York...
Beyond the NSA: What About Big Data Abuse by Corporations, Politicians?
John Nichols
RINF Alternative News
Taking steps to end, or at the very least to constrain, the federal government’s practice of storing information on the personal communications of...
My Doctor Can Disclose My Medical Records to the NSA Without My Authorization (and...
Peter Van Buren
RINF Alternative News
You can learn a lot about a person from their medical records— what’s that STD test all about? Mental health...
Obama NSA Speech: Intelligence Whistleblowers Available for Interviews
Binney and Wiebe – as well as Thomas Drake – are among the authors of a USA Today op-ed published today titled “We Need Real Protection...
ACLU Comment on President’s NSA Speech
President Obama today announced changes to some aspects of the NSA’s surveillance programs and left others in place. Anthony D. Romero, the executive director...
4 Questionable Claims Obama Has Made on NSA Surveillance
Kara Brandeisky
RINF Alternative News
Today President Obama plans to announce some reportedly limited reforms to National Security Agency surveillance programs.
Since the first disclosures based on documents provided...
Pentagon & NSA Officials say They Want Snowden Extrajudicially Assassinated
David Sirota
RINF Alternative News
President Obama claims the right to extrajudicially execute American citizens, keeps a so-called “kill list,” and has bragged he’s “really good at killing people.”...
Will Court Beat Back NSA’s Police State Desires?
Marjorie Cohn
RINF Alternative News
Edward Snowden, who worked for the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed a secret order of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC),...
Governments Ignore Definitive Proof that Monsanto’s Roundup Causes Birth Defects
by Melissa Melton Originally published at The Daily Sheeple Big Agra giants Monsanto, Dow and Syngenta have flatly denied any negative reproductive effects of the best-selling herbicide glyphosate, stating: Glyphosate does not cause adverse reproductive effects in adult animals or birth defects in offspring of these adults exposed to glyphosate,Read the Rest...
Video: The Safest Asset in an Unsafe World
Egon von Greyerz
RINF Alternative News
In this presentation, which includes various slides, Egon initially explains why we are at the end of a major era....
The Surveillance State. NSA Telephony Metadata Collection: Fourth Amendment Violation
Marjorie Cohn
RINF Alternative News
Edward Snowden, who worked for the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed a secret order of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC),...
Obama’s NSA “Reform” Defends Illegal Spying
Bill Van Auken
RINF Alternative News
The Obama White House is preparing a National Security Agency “reform” package that is aimed at legitimizing and institutionalizing the...
The Surveillance State. NSA Telephony Metadata Collection: Fourth Amendment Violation
Edward Snowden, who worked for the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed a secret order of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), that requires Verizon...
NSA to Sen. Sanders: We Can’t Legally Tell You if We Spied on You
Senator Bernie Sanders. (Photo: 350 Vermont/cc/flickr)The National Security Agency won't deny that it may be spying on members of Congress, informing Sen. Bernie Sanders...
NSA Uses Radio Waves to Snoop on Off-line Computers Worldwide
Fox NewsJanuary 15, 2014
Nothing will stop the NSA from trying to capture all the digital...
Supreme Court Gives Monsanto Full Ability to Sue Farmers
by Heather Callaghan Originally published at Activist Post Do you remember the 2011 lawsuit from the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association 80+ plaintiffs (farmers and small businesses) against Monsanto? They were fighting biotech giant Monsanto’s ability to sue them for patent infringement when genetically modified seeds inadvertently appear in organic/conventional fields. Yes, wereRead the Rest...
Monsanto readies first-ever GMO wheat
Biotech titan Monsanto has made significant advances in the development of herbicide-tolerant wheat, the company announced recently, and could have the first-of-its-kind crop ready...
US judiciary rejects NSA reform proposals from Obama’s review group
US federal judges have strongly criticized proposals to reform the NSA from the Obama-appointed Review Group, saying some of them would “hamper the work”...
NSA’s Fake War on Terror
A New America Foundation report suggests it. More on this below.
NSA spying is longstanding. It's ongoing abroad and at home. It has nothing to...
Implanted Eyes: NSA Puts Radio Spyware Inside Computers
The headquarters of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Md. “We do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of...
NSA to Congress: F@ck Off
Washington's BlogJanuary 15, 2014
We've shown that the NSA has been spying on Congress for some...
NSA’s Fake War on Terror
NSA's Fake War on Terror
by Stephen Lendman
A New America Foundation report suggests it. More on this below.
NSA spying is longstanding. It's ongoing abroad and at home. It has nothing to do with national security. It's unrelated to uncovering terrorist plots.
Homegrown ones virtually don't exist. Alleged ones are hatched. They're fake. Claiming dozens were foiled in time is false.
They're Big Lies. Previous articles discussed dozens of innocent victims. They included:
- a fake shoe bomber;
- fake underwear bomber;
- fake Times Square bomber;
- an earlier one there;
- fake shampoo bombers;
- fake Al Qaeda woman planning fake mass casualty attacks on New York landmarks;
- fake Oregon bomber;
- fake armed forces recruiting station bomber;
- fake synagogue bombers;
- fake Chicago Sears Tower bombers;
- fake FBI and other building bombers;
- fake National Guard, Fort Dix and Quantico marine base attackers;
- fake 9/11 bombers;
- fake Boston bombers; and
- numerous others.
At issue is generating fear. Washington's fake war on terror needs public support. FBI operatives are involved.
Orchestrated stings are used. Innocent victims are entrapped. Familiar schemes repeat. 9/11 is the Big Lie of our time. So is the fake war on terror.
Innocent victims languish in America's gulag. NSA spying watches everyone. It's unconstitutional. It's for police state control. It's ending privacy. It's destroying freedom.
Global spying is espionage. It's for political and economic advantage. It's to be one up on foreign competitors. It's for information used advantageously in trade, political, and military relations.
The New America Foundation (NAF) is an establishment organization. Bilderberg Group/CIA-connected Google CEO Eric Schmidt chairs its board of directors.
Right-wing ideologue Anne-Marie Slaughter is president and CEO. NAF study co-author Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst. His articles appear in establishment publications.
NAF's report is titled "Do NSA's Bulk Surveillance Programs Stop Terrorists?"
Two weeks after Edward Snowden's first revelations were published, Obama lied saying:
"We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information not just in the United States, but," abroad as well.
NSA director General Keith Alexander repeated the lie claiming:
"information gathered from these programs provided the US government with critical leads to help prevent over 50 potential terrorist events in more than 20 countries around the world."
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chairman Mike Rogers (R. MI) said:
"Fifty-four times (NSA spying) stopped and thwarted terrorist attacks both here and in Europe - saving real lives."
False! According to NAF's analysis, government contentions "about the role that NSA 'bulk' surveillance of phone and email communications records has had in keeping the United States safe from terrorism shows that these claims are overblown and even misleading."
Mass NSA surveillance "had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism."
So-called evidence NSA claimed to uncover is easily gotten through conventional investigatory methods.
NAF analyzed 225 instances of alleged post-9/11 terrorism. Only two involved NSA meta-data.
None were legitimate. Alleged homegrown terrorism is fabricated. So are others abroad. They're fake. NAF's report didn't explain. It said:
"The overall problem for US counterterrorism officials is not that they need vaster amounts of information from the bulk surveillance programs, but that they don’t sufficiently understand or widely share the information they already possess that was derived from conventional law enforcement and intelligence techniques."
On Friday, Obama will address so-called NSA reforms. Last month, his hand-picked advisory committee recommended minor changes. They're too inconsequential to matter.
They legitimized lawless spying. They ignored what federal Judge Richard Leon called unconstitutional. They're "almost Orwellian," he said.
Expect Obama to rubber-stamp continuity. He'll maintain business as usual. He'll stress balancing civil liberties with protecting national security. He'll lie claiming it.
He'll legitimize what Electronic Frontier Foundation's Kurt Opsahl called "heinous."
He'll leave NSA's worst lawlessness untouched. He'll whitewash its crimes. He'll lie claiming otherwise.
Last November, the General Assembly addressed privacy rights in the digital age. Over 50 member states co-sponsored a resolution. It supports what's too precious to lose.
On December 18, the 193-member body unanimously approved a resolution titled: "The Right to privacy in the digital age."
It reaffirmed a fundamental human right. No one should be denied the right to privacy. No one should be lawlessly spied on.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called the General Assembly's resolution "one small step for privacy, one giant leap against surveillance."
Obama stacked his so-called Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies with longstanding Washington insiders.
A previous article discussed them. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) head James Clapper supervised. He's an acknowledged perjurer. He's complicit in NSA crimes.
On December 12, Obama's committee released its report. It's titled "Liberty and Security in a Changing World." Its handpicked members included:
- former acting CIA head Michael Morell;
- former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counterterrorism Richard Clarke;
- former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein; Francis Boyle calls him a neocon;
- Democrat party connected/political advocacy group Center for American Progress member Peter Swire; and
- University of Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone.
Forty recommendations were made. They stopped well short of what's needed. They legitimized mass surveillance.
They ignored what's most important. Constitutional issues were unaddressed. Mass surveillance is illegal. It's unacceptable everywhere.
It's unrelated to alleged terrorism. It's police state ruthlessness writ large. It's Obama's war on freedom.
He promised no warrantless spying. Straightaway he authorized it. His explanation fell short and then some. He said:
"When I came into this office, I made two commitments that are more important than any commitment I made: number one to keep the American people safe, and number two to uphold the Constitution."
Americans are less safe than ever. Freedom is disappearing in plain sight. Obama's done more to subvert constitutional law than any previous president.
He made freedom a four-letter word. He claimed:
"You can't have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience."
"We're going to have to make some choices as a society. I think that on balance, we have established a process and a procedure that the American people should feel comfortable about."
He lied saying mass surveillance "help(s) prevent terrorist attacks." None whatever exist.
He lied again calling NSA spying "modest encroachments on privacy." It's sweeping, pervasive and lawless. It's unrelated to alleged terrorism.
Obama wants Americans to trust him. Why anyone would, they'll have to explain. He's a war criminal multiple times over. He's done more to destroy freedom than any of his predecessors.
He wants it eliminated altogether. He's a serial liar. Nothing he says has credibility. He lied claiming:
"When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That's not what this program is about. As was indicated, what the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers and durations of calls."
"They are not looking at people's names and they are not looking at content." Permission to do so, he claimed, requires "go(ing) back to a federal judge just like (for) a criminal investigation."
"With respect to the Internet and emails, this does not apply to US citizens and it does not apply to people living in the United States."
False! Obama authorized sweeping domestic spying. He did so unconstitutionally. He institutionalized it. It's ongoing daily. It's warrantless.
No one escapes NSA's spying eye. Everything communicated electronically is vulnerable. It's fair game.
NSA's mandate is "Get it all." Phone calls, emails, and other electronic communications are secretly collected. They're gotten without court authorization.
Probable cause isn't needed. Major telecom and Internet companies cooperate. They do so willingly.
All three branches of government are involved. They're complicit in sweeping lawlessness. Police states operate this way. America is by far the worst.
Expect nothing ahead to change. Expect worse with increasingly sophisticated NSA technology.
Cyberwar on freedom is official US policy. NSA is Big Brother writ large. Privacy no longer exists. Obama's waging war on freedom. It's vanishing in plain sight.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book is titled "Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity."
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.
It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour
NSA spying on world computers
In most cases, the radio frequency hardware must be physically inserted by a spy or manufacturer. A new report has revealed that the US...
NSA able to target offline computers using radio-waves for surveillance, cyber-attacks
The National Security Agency has implanted software in about 100,000 computers around the world, allowing the United States to surveil those machines while creating...
NSA Bulk Surveillance has had no Impact on Fighting Terrorism
Jon Queallyjuancole.comJanuary 14, 2014
An in-depth analysis of 227 individuals recruited by al Qaida or like-minded...
The Presidential Task Force on the NSA, A Diversionary Tactic Not Meant to Uncover...
Dave Lefcourt
RINF Alternative News
What seems par for the course in America, after a serious trauma affects the nation such as the Kennedy assassination or...
Record Growth For Privacy Search Engines In Wake Of NSA Revelations
“Snowden Effect” Sees Web Browsers Steering Clear Of Big Names
Steve WatsonInfowars.comJanuary 14, 2014When...
Obama’s NSA ‘Reform’ Plan: ‘No More Edward Snowdens’
(Image: castigated fish/ cc via Flickr)As President Obama puts the final touches on what is being billed as his "overhaul of the NSA," sources...
Did the NSA kill Hugo Chavez?
During 2013, Venezuela experienced one of the most difficult times in its history with the death of President Hugo Chavez on March 5. Chavez,...
DANGER: Nullify NSA Gaining Ground (Racism! Slavery!)
by James Corbett
BoilingFrogsPost.com
January 14, 2014
Here at The Eyeopener we always have an eye out for potential dangers on the road ahead. With that in mind, Democratic party spokesman Rachel Maddow has identified one of the greatest potential dan...
Vidéo : ¿Mató la NSA a Hugo Chávez al espiarlo?, se pregunta Eva Golinger
(Caracas, 2 de enero. Noticias24) - La abogada e investigadora Eva Golinger se pregunta hoy si pudiera ser responsable la NSA de la enfermedad...
Vidéo : ¿Mató la NSA a Hugo Chávez al espiarlo?, se pregunta Eva Golinger
(Caracas, 2 de enero. Noticias24) - La abogada e investigadora Eva Golinger se pregunta hoy si pudiera ser responsable la NSA de la enfermedad...
Spending bill takes first swipe at NSA over domestic spying
Stephen Dinanwashingtontimes.comJanuary 14, 2014
Tucked inside the massive new government spending bill are several demands from...
Why Does Anyone Still Believe the NSA?
The NSA and other intelligence officials have been repeatedly caught lying about their spying programs.
Officials in the legislative, judicial and executive branches of government...
Supreme Court Hands Monsanto Victory Over Farmers on GMO Seed Patents and Ability to...
Photo: Reuters / Darren Hauck
The US Supreme Court upheld biotech giant Monsanto's claims on genetically-engineered seed patents and the company's ability to sue farmers...
Only a FOOL Still Believes the NSA
Washington's BlogJanuary 14, 2013
The NSA and other intelligence officials have been repeatedly caught lying about...
NSA ‘abjectly’ violated Constitution
An American journalist and commentator says the National Security Agency has Å“abjectly” violated the US Constitution and should be Å“reined” by authorities.
Å“Spying on...
Interview 806 — #NullifyNSA is Catching On Says Michael Maharrey
Michael Maharrey of the Tenth Amendment Center joins us once again for an update to our previous conversation on the #NullifyNSA campaign at OffNow.org. We talk about some of the newest states to begin implementing the 4th Amendment Protection Act and ...
10 Myths About the NSA Debunked
"If you have nothing to hide,...
European Parliamentary rapporteur denounces NSA/GCHQ spying as illegal
Robert Stevens
RINF Alternative News
A draft report from the European Parliament's civil liberties committee rapporteur, Claude Moraes, condemned mass surveillance by the US National Security...
Supreme Court Sides With ‘Notorious Patent Bully Monsanto’
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied a group of farmers the right to challenge Monsanto's seed patents, a decision critics charge allows the...
​Supreme Court hands Monsanto victory over farmers on GMO seed patents, ability to sue
​The US Supreme Court upheld biotech giant Monsanto's claims on genetically-engineered seed patents and the company's ability to sue farmers whose fields are inadvertently...
MLK: Also a victim of NSA surveillance
Abdus-Sattar Ghazali
RINF Alternative News
Martin Luther King Jr. day is being celebrated on January 20th 2014 amid heated debate on massive dragnet surveillance by the...
NSA’s Preference for Metadata
Kirk Wiebe
RINF Alternative News
Senior national security officials, from President Barack Obama on down, have made light of the National Security Agency’s intrusive monitoring of the...
NSA snooping failing to prevent terrorist attacks, watchdog group says
Out of 225 terrorism cases on the territory of the United States since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the NSA's PRISM program did...
What got NSA mad?
I spent two hours talking with NSAâ„¢s big wigs. Whatâ„¢s Got Them Mad?I entered the glass leviathan whose image accompanies virtually every story in...
Congress Defers to President On NSA Reform
Ron PaulInfowars.comJanuary 13, 2014
Congress's decline from the Founders' vision as “first among equals” in government...
NSA role minimal in fighting terrorism
NSA surveillance program Å“has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism.”The National Security Agencyâ„¢s massive data collection has barely helped the United...
Obama to seek little change in NSA
Obama suggested he was leaning against a proposal made by a presidential review panel to modify NSA data collection.US President Barack Obama plans to...
Video: From the Bathroom to the Bedroom, the NSA Is Watching You
Infowars.comJanuary 12, 2014
Through smart appliances and computers, the NSA can track everything you do in...
NSA lobbying to retain ‘horrific powers’
The US National Security Agency has Å“gone past its authority” with its Å“blanket surveillance” and is seeking to retain Å“its horrific powers,” a social...