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The National Security Agency has been recording and storing nearly all the domestic (and international) phone calls from two or more target countries as of 2013. Both the Washington Post and The Intercept (based in the US and published by eBay chairman Pierre Omidyar) have censored the name of one of the victim states, which the latter publication refers to as country "X". Both the Washington Post and The Intercept stated that they had censored the name of the victim country at the request of the US government. Such censorship strips a nation of its right to self-determination on a matter which affects its whole population. An ongoing crime of mass espionage is being committed against the victim state and its population. By denying an entire population the knowledge of its own victimisation, this act of censorship denies each individual in that country the opportunity to seek an effective remedy, whether in international courts, or elsewhere. Pre-notification to the perpetrating authorities also permits the erasure of evidence which could be used in a successful criminal prosecution, civil claim, or other investigations.

We know from previous reporting that the National Security Agency’s mass interception system is a key component in the United States’ drone targeting program. The US drone targeting program has killed thousands of people and hundreds of women and children in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia in violation of international law. The censorship of a victim state’s identity directly assists the killing of innocent people. Although, for reasons of source protection we cannot disclose how, WikiLeaks has confirmed that the identity of victim state is Afghanistan. This can also be independently verified through forensic scrutiny of imperfectly applied censorship on related documents released to date and correlations with other NSA programs (see http://freesnowden.is). We do not believe it is the place of media to "aid and abet" a state in escaping detection and prosecution for a serious crime against a population. Consequently WikiLeaks cannot be complicit in the censorship of victim state X. The country in question is Afghanistan.

Recent disclosures of the NSA's widespread dragnet program coupled with its frequent targeting of journalists are having a 'chilling effect' on American writers, stifling their freedom of expression at great detriment to society, says a new report Chilling Effects: NSA Surveillance Drives U.S. Writers to Self Censor.

Published Tuesday by the group PEN America—an organization of writers dedicated to advancing literature and promoting free speech for writers around the world—surveyed 520 American writers and found they are "not only overwhelmingly worried about government surveillance, but are engaging in self-censorship as a result."

Speaking to Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine in July 2015, Assange suggested that institutions within the international relations discipline have failed to understand the intersection between current geopolitical and technological developments. Specifically, Assange charged that the US journal International Studies Quarterly (ISQ), published by the prestigious International Studies Association (ISA), would not accept manuscripts based on WikiLeaks’ material. Professor of international politics Daniel W. Drezner hit back on July 30 in The Washington Post, arguing that there were other explanations for why the journal was not publishing WikiLeaks’ material. However, he did concede that it is possible that the “structural forces” opposing WikiLeaks were so powerful that a scholar would eschew WikiLeaks’ publications for “fear of being blackballed”. For the thousands of undergraduate to PhD students, fellows and academic researchers facing a precarious employment market, self-censorship for fear of freezing one’s career is not unlikely. One publicised incident from November 2010 concerning the office of career services at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), which according to The New York Times “grooms future diplomats”, provides the perfect illustration. That year the office sent an email to students warning them against commenting on or posting WikiLeaks’ documents on social media because “engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government”. The warning came to the office through a SIPA alumnus working at the State Department.

Years later, the tone of the warning continued to reverberate through the halls of one of the most reputable universities in the world. In documenting human rights abuses in June 2013 a Columbia University graduate class produced the anonymous academic paper “WikiLeaks and Iraq Body Count: the sum of parts may not add up to the whole — a comparison of two tallies of Iraqi civilian deaths”. The acknowledgements section of their report refers to the 2010 warning email and states that in light of that email it would be “unwise and perhaps unethical to acknowledge all the participating students by name”. Others participating in a peer-review process have cited additional factors curtailing their use of comprehensive and illuminating WikiLeaks publications. Former US presidential candidate for the Green Party Cynthia McKinney, for example, says that she was forced to scrub her PhD dissertation from any reference of WikiLeaks material. However Drezner, who is an ISA member and on the ISQ’s web advisory board, claims that WikiLeaks’ published diplomatic cables “are not nearly as significant as Assange believes” and that the “academic universe is indifferent to WikiLeaks”. A surprising claim, given that international human rights courts have not been indifferent to evidence derived from WikiLeaks’ published cables, including cables that show the insidious ways in which European officials attempt to conceal CIA torture in secret prisons.

To help address the gap in scholarly analysis of the more than 2 million US diplomatic cables and State Department records published by WikiLeaks since 2010, WikiLeaks has produced a new book, The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire, published September 7, 2015. The book brings together journalists, researchers and experts on international law and foreign policy to examine the current cables and records. The documents are extensive. They expose US efforts —  across Bush and Obama administrations — to use bribes and threats to keep the US protected from facing war crimes allegations, conveying the fading effervescence of concepts such as “international justice” or “rule of law” in the face of a superpower that clearly believes that “might makes right”. Analysts review the efforts US diplomats take to maintain ties with dictators. They examine the meaning of human rights in the context of a global “War on Terror”. Like the cables they seek to illuminate, the 18 chapters of the book touch upon most major regions of the world. Experts on US foreign policy such as Robert Naiman, Stephen Zunes and Gareth Porter examine cables that reveal US meddling in Syria, US acceptance of Israeli violations of international law, and how the US dealt with the International Atomic Energy Agency in relation to Iranian nuclear development. The book offers a user guide written by WikiLeaks’ investigations editor Sarah Harrison on how to research WikiLeaks’ cables including meta data and content.

As Saudi Arabia and its allies have begun the bombing campaign against Yemen, in the south, a separatist movement calling for a "State of South Arabia" is emerging. Fostered by the US, it will leave the Houthis with two hostile states at their borders and locked access to the sea, if it succeeds.

Welcome to phase two of US regime change operations. After Yemen's 2011 revolution failed and Houthi militias overthrew President Hadi, forces trained and sponsored by the US government are being activated as a separatist movement. The Southern People's Committees (SPC), founded around 2007 although USAID has been conducting political workshops as part of a $695,000 project and actively grooming leadership in Yemen since 2005. (Also in 2007, weekly protests began, organized by women's organizations, fostered by the workshops.) The SPC were similar to many color revolution movements such as Serbia's Otpor in that they did not have a central leadership, but rather an autonomous cell-based organization. In addition, they were very capable in the use of social media technologies, text messaging and the circumventing the government's internet censorship to organize protests.

Meanwhile, the Yemen Center for Human Rights Studies, which received $193,000 from the EU and US-funded Foundation for the Future in 2009, conducted a poll in January 2010, which found that 70 percent of southern Yemenis favored secession. Another USAID-funded project, the $43 million Responsive Governance Project (RGP), launched in May 2010, conducted "New Social Media training for Youth leaders to equip Yemeni youth groups in the use of media to enhance their participation in formulating public issues." The project focuses on establishing contacts with the Yemeni government and providing "leadership and civic education training to youth NGOs."

The “proxy war” model the US has been employing throughout the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and even in parts of Asia appears to have failed yet again, this time in the Persian Gulf state of Yemen. Overcoming the US-Saudi backed regime in Yemen, and a coalition of sectarian extremists including Al Qaeda and its rebrand, the “Islamic State,” pro-Iranian Yemeni Houthi militias have turned the tide against American “soft power” and has necessitated a more direct military intervention. While US military forces themselves are not involved allegedly, Saudi warplanes and a possible ground force are. Though Saudi Arabia claims “10 countries” have joined its coalition to intervene in Yemen, like the US invasion and occupation of Iraq hid behind a “coalition,” it is overwhelmingly a Saudi operation with “coalition partners” added in a vain attempt to generate diplomatic legitimacy. The New York Times, even in the title of its report, “Saudi Arabia Begins Air Assault in Yemen,” seems not to notice these “10” other countries. It reports:

Saudi Arabia announced on Wednesday night that it had launched a military campaign in Yemen, the beginning of what a Saudi official said was an offensive to restore a Yemeni government that had collapsed after rebel forces took control of large swaths of the country.  The air campaign began as the internal conflict in Yemen showed signs of degenerating into a proxy war between regional powers. The Saudi announcement came during a rare news conference in Washington by Adel al-Jubeir, the kingdom’s ambassador to the United States.

Indeed, the conflict in Yemen is a proxy war. Not between Iran and Saudi Arabia per say, but between Iran and the United States, with the United States electing Saudi Arabia as its unfortunate stand-in. Iran’s interest in Yemen serves as a direct result of the US-engineered “Arab Spring” and attempts to overturn the political order of North Africa and the Middle East to create a unified sectarian front against Iran for the purpose of a direct conflict with Tehran. The war raging in Syria is one part of this greater geopolitical conspiracy, aimed at overturning one of Iran’s most important regional allies, cutting the bridge between it and another important ally, Hezbollah in Lebanon. And while Iran’s interest in Yemen is currently portrayed as yet another example of Iranian aggression, indicative of its inability to live in peace with its neighbors, US policymakers themselves have long ago already noted that Iran’s influence throughout the region, including backing armed groups, serves a solely defensive purpose, acknowledging the West and its regional allies’ attempts to encircle, subvert, and overturn Iran’s current political order.

Much is due to the fame of the White Helmets Syrians, if they're coming in a few days than 1.5 million signatures the petition on Avaaz  Protect Aleppo's children, now! Asking for no-fly zone (a successful workhorse for Avaaz also to time of Libya, on the basis of false information). And award-winning source doc The White Helmets or white helmets, autodefinitisi Syria Civil Defense, active in areas controlled Syrian armed opposition, have recently received the Right Livelihood Award , or "alternative Nobel", normally assigned since 1990 to people who have really helped mankind - the first to receive it were an Egyptian architect of the poor and organization solutions for the vegetable against world hunger. In the words of the founder, " the award is intended to help the North find a wisdom to match the science he possesses, and the South to find a science to match the ancient wisdom that has ." Good intentions. The White Helmets Syrians are the "source" credited with many of the news coming from Aleppo East - for example on the use of "barrel bomb" or the "deliberate shelling of hospitals" - days ago in a twitter have put together the two crimes talking about a cowardly "attack on a hospital with bomb barrels." To be believed on bombs and hospital nature of the affected buildings, the helmets do not need proof, just a few photos of rubble. Of course, what they fail to tell the same International Red Cross admitted to our question (we preserve their email): the 'hospitals' in opposition areas are in no way signaled, rather they are well hidden.

Those who support them and what they really do, they know a few. censored The White Helmets spread video in which always appear in the rubble with babies in their arms (parents, where are they?). But, nevertheless, their deeds are other videos that are real autodenunce, but that the world has chosen to ignore, or to censor. It 'just been cleared from the site of Change the petition that the anti-war activists network Syria Solidarity Movement had addressed to the organizers of the Nobel Prize (which have already been received from: Obama, Kissinger, pears, European Union ...). The petition was titled very clearly , " Do not give the Nobel Prize in 2016 to the Syrian White Helmets ". But a few days, if you try to type on the search engine, you will see this inscription: " The petition is not available ." The authors denounce the removal, stating : " He had collected 2,800 signatures and thousands of comments. This is a clear case of censorship . " So we summarize the news on the White Helmets contained in the aforesaid petition, supported with a video (more pictures can be found at the link above). Activists wrote: " Please watch the video of Steve Ezzedine Al Qaeda with a facelift  . The White Helmets will say neutral, independent, self-financed, exclusively civilian. It does not. Have received more than $ 40 million from USAID and the British Foreign Office, entities directly involved in the conflict in Syria. I am not helpless: there are photographs and films of the group members who support Al Nusra Front / Al Qaeda. More photos and video showing their 'activists' while attending the execution of civilians or while cheering on the bodies of dead soldiers. The White Helmets work only in areas controlled by armed extremist groups. Fomenting sectarianism in Syria, asking for example to set fire Kafarya and Foua two Shiite villages besieged by five years in the area of Idlib. They have repeatedly called for the no-fly zone in Libya, whose results are seen. " Added: the White Helmets or Syria Civil Defense are the highlight of the stated Maydayrescue , organization "humanitarian" founded by former British Colonel James Le Mesurier based in Dubai and Amsterdam, and training centers in Turkey and Jordan.

How did you do? One explanation for this world enchantment for a group to say the least objectionable? And 'the effect' chain of suffering. " In April their leader Raed Saleh had been invited to the United States to pick up a humanitarian award assigned by InterAction, a platform of 180 non-governmental organizations with development projects in all countries of the world "The voice united for global change with lay and religious members, small and large, engaged with the most vulnerable populations. " (For a mixup in communication, Saleh had been dismissed as a suspect of terrorism immigration Use on arrival. Then the US State Department had the face to say that this was not about the White Helmets). Interaction between members of perhaps counted on the fingers of one hand those that have to do with the Syrian armed opposition. There is, for example, the Syrian American Medical Association, specializes in the complaints of hospitals bombed. But all the other organizations that Syria do not know and do not mind (because maybe riforestano the Sahel, or dealing with the blind, or fair trade in Asia, Latin America or build latrines) they trust their sisters' informed ». And so, in one stroke, 180 NGOs all over the world take the White Helmets as heroes, they spread the word ...