Whistleblower Edward Snowden, who revealed the mass surveillance programmes organised by the US and other governments, gives this year’s The Alternative Christmas Message on Channel 4.
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See also: Edward Snowden: My Mission is Already Accomplished
A shocking, eye-opening look at Afghanistan. “This is What Winning Looks Like” is a disturbing new documentary by British film maker Ben Anderson about the ineptitude, drug abuse, sexual misconduct, and corruption of the Afghan security forces as well as the reduced role of US Marines due to the troop withdrawal.
Read the full article at VICE Media.
Edward Snowden (photo courtesy of The Washington Post)
Six months after the first revelations appeared in The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Snowden agreed to reflect at length on the roots and repercussions of his choice. He was relaxed and animated over two days of nearly unbroken conversation, fueled by burgers, pasta, ice cream and Russian pastry.
Snowden offered vignettes from his intelligence career and from his recent life as “an indoor cat” in Russia. But he consistently steered the conversation back to surveillance, democracy and the meaning of the documents he exposed.
“For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” he said. “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.”
“All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed,” he said. “That is a milestone we left a long time ago. Right now, all we are looking at are stretch goals.”
Snowden is an orderly thinker, with an engineer’s approach to problem-solving. He had come to believe that a dangerous machine of mass surveillance was growing unchecked. Closed-door oversight by Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was a “graveyard of judgment,” he said, manipulated by the agency it was supposed to keep in check. Classification rules erected walls to prevent public debate.
Toppling those walls would be a spectacular act of transgression against the norms that prevailed inside them. Someone would have to bypass security, extract the secrets, make undetected contact with journalists and provide them with enough proof to tell the stories.
The NSA’s business is “information dominance,” the use of other people’s secrets to shape events. At 29, Snowden upended the agency on its own turf.
Full interview at The Washington Post
The Drunken Glory movement — spawned by events like the Florida Outpouring and Toronto Blessing in the 90s, at which people appeared to be inebriated and high purely off the power of God — is on the rise, as godly YouTube channels find innovative ways of reaching their younger audience.
One of those channels, Red Letter Ministries, is run by former meth addict Brandon Barthrop. We went to Brandon’s hometown of Minneapolis, which boasts the largest concentration of drug addicts and churches in America, to try to get high on the glory of God.
Brandon and his posse of waifs, strays, and former addicts spend their days sniffing “diamond oil” and tripping out to the sound of Brandon’s YouTube preaching. Christian EDM DJs down the road are going to raves and attempting to “heal” clubbers high on drugs, and mega-churches run by rehab charities like Teen Challenge are preaching the drunken glory to thousands.
An inquest in the Evangelical world of the United States in 2004 by Martin Meissonnier & Roger Trilling. Cinematography by Christophe Petit, edited by Gilles Bovon.
By Adrian Salbuchi
A young, soft-spoken girl living the Syrian tragedy spells it out with far more common sense, truth and honesty than powerful Western governments and their money-controlled mass media puppets.
Identifying herself only as “Syrian, Patriot, anti-Neocon, anti-NWO, anti-Zionist”, early last year she set up her own YouTube Channel. In a short (nine-minute) video she explains “Why the NWO (New World Order) Hates Syria.” We would all do well to listen in…
Her ‘Top Eight Reasons Why They Hate Us’ is an excellent wrap-up, applicable to just about every self-respecting country in the world: no Rothschild-controlled Central Bank, no IMF debt, no genetically modified foods, oil and pipelines, anti-secret societies, anti-Zionism, secularism and nationalism.
Her brief message unravels as a sort of common sense manual which explains why the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the European Union (especially France) and Israel are so keen on destroying Syria, a country whose leadership just won’t bow down to the New World Order elites embedded deep inside the Western powers’ own public (government) and private (corporate/banking) power structures.
She describes these eight reasons succinctly and convincingly, giving the world much food for thought and should hopefully inspire deep soul-searching. Especially amongst the people of the US, UK, EU and Israel who are the only populations that can put very direct pressure on their elected politicians in Washington, London, Paris, Tel Aviv and other Western capitals, forcing them to stop behaving like global criminals gone berserk, and to start heeding the word of We the People, in a responsible and democratic manner.
Source: RT Op-Edge
Welcome to the United States of Scandinavia
A newly-leaked document from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden confirms Denmark’s formal agreement to work with the US surveillance agency NSA.
The document was revealed by Swedish television channel SVT as part of a documentary on Sweden’s participation in spying operations. Nine European countries – Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain – are listed in the document as “Third Party partners” to the Five Eyes nations (the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). The document can be viewed here.
Although Denmark’s participation with the NSA has been slowly revealed in bits and pieces, this marks the first time that written documentation from the NSA confirms Denmark’s status as one of the US’s trusted partners. And that is “very worrying”, says Enhedslisten’s Pernille Skipper.
“When Denmark is one of the US intelligence services’ close allies, one must ask themselves what it is we are giving in return,” Skipper said to public broadcaster DR. “When you consider this along with the other revelations that have come out, which insinuate that the US systematically spies on residents throughout Europe in violation of very basic rights, then you can naturally fear that the collaboration between Denmark and the US means that Danes have been spied upon.”
The document revealed by SVT came in connection to the channel’s interview with Glenn Greenwald, the journalist behind many of the Snowden leaks. SVT‘s interview with Greenwald can be seen here.
Source: The Copenhagen Post
Related: Glenn Greenwald: Denmark “Submissive” to the US | New NSA Leak: High Level of Danish and US Intelligence Sharing
Abby Martin speaks with British Parliamentarian George Galloway, discussing his upcoming film, ‘The Killing of Tony Blair’, and his brand new show on RT, ‘Sputnik: Orbiting the World with George Galloway.’
Related: The Wonderful World of Tony Blair | International War Criminals
“I envy Obama because he can spy on his allies without any consequences,” said Putin when asked about how his relations had changed with the US following Snowden’s espionage revelations.
During an annual question-and-answer session with journalists, Putin praised Edward Snowden’s actions, saying that he was working for a “noble cause.” At the same time he accepted the importance of espionage programs in the fight against global terrorism, but said the NSA needed guidelines to limit its powers.
“There is nothing to be upset about and nothing to be proud of, spying has always been and is one of the oldest professions,” said Putin.
Referring to the vast amounts of metadata gathered on citizens by the NSA, Putin said it is impossible to sift through all of that information. It is “useless” to look at the analysis of spy agencies because it is the opinion of analysts and not facts and as such can be misleading.
“You need to know the people who analyze them, I know, I did it,” said Putin, harking back to his career as a KGB agent.
The Russian president described Snowden as a “curious character” and said it was not clear why the former CIA contractor had decided to blow the whistle on the NSA’s international espionage program at such a young age.
Russia is not working with Snowden and has not received classified documents from him, Putin said. The whistleblower has been allowed to reside in Russia but only on the condition he does not “engage in anti-American propaganda.”
Source: RT News
Abductions, torture, killing, sharia courts, secret prisons with “inhuman” conditions – that’s what an Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group in Syria is accused of in the latest report by Amnesty International. Victims included children as young as eight.
According to the Amnesty report, people were seized by masked men, held for weeks on end in solitary confinement at unknown locations and tried by self-styled Islamic sharia courts, which frequently pass death sentences or impose harsh corporal punishment.
Former detainees described being beaten with rubber generator belts or cables, tortured with electric shocks and being forced into a painful stress position known as the “scorpion” in which the detainee’s wrists are bound over one shoulder.
All the prisoners detained by the group ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham) were held in “cruel and inhuman conditions.”
For instance, two 14-year-olds were among those sentenced to floggings, and one of the fathers was forced to listen to his son’s screams of pain as the boy was tortured in a nearby room.
Another example provided by Amnesty concerns a child of about 14 receive a flogging of more than 90 lashes during interrogation at Sadd al-Ba’ath, an ISIS prison in al-Raqqa governorate. Another child of about 14 who ISIS accused of stealing a motorbike repeatedly received severe corporal punishment over several days.
Some people were held by ISIS for common crimes like theft, while others were detained for smoking, sex outside of marriage, or because they challenged the group’s rule or belong to other armed organizations.
Source: RT News
Also see: ‘Slaughtered Like Sheep’: Eyewitnesses Recount Massacre in Adra, Syria | Al-Qaeda, Saudi Arabia and the Collapsing Free Syrian Army
Against the Grain 