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The chances of Theresa May reintroducing her "snooper's charter" communications data bill are practically zero in the wake of the Guardian's disclosures on the scale of internet surveillance, leading Tory and Labour civil liberties campaigners have said.David Davis, a former contender for Conservative leadership, and Tom Watson, the Labour deputy chair, both said on Thursday they felt there had been a change in the atmosphere at Westminster compared with the "great rush" to legislate in the immediate aftermath of the Woolwich murder of Drummer Lee Rigby.Both MPs said the disclosure of the mass harvesting of personal communications, including internet data, by the American National Security Agency and Britain's eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, had shown that the existing UK regulatory framework was completely ineffective.Davis said in particular that GCHQ's Tempora operation, which harvests global phone and internet traffic by tapping into the transatlantic fibre-optic cables, had "put up a big red flag" indicating it was time to think again from scratch about the legal oversight arrangements.

He said it was necessary to look at ways of rewriting the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which sets out the legal oversight arrangements for the interception and surveillance of communications.But the former shadow home secretary and staunch Eurosceptic also praised the efforts of Viviane Reding, the EU commissioner for justice, who wrote to the foreign secretary, William Hague, on Wednesday giving him until the end of the week to answer the charge that the fundamental rights of citizens across Europe were being flouted."I hope that Viviane Reding keeps up the pressure. This is the only time you will hear me say that the European Union might be the answer," said Davis.Watson said he shared Davis's analysis of the poor prospects for the reintroduction of May's communications data bill, which would require internet and phone companies to store for up to 12 months data tracking everyone's use of email, phone and internet.

The meeting heard from surveillance experts Casper Bowden, a former chief privacy adviser to Microsoft, and solicitor/advocate, Simon McKay. Bowden said a huge debt was owed to Snowden, who had made the most important disclosures about surveillance for more than 25 years.He said the disclosures had serious implications for the corporate and individual stampede towards the use of "cloud computing" storage, much of which was housed in the US. He said that there was a real danger now that Britain would be left in an exposed position, with the rest of Europe not willing to allow their data to be stored through the UK. "Keep your cloudbase close and local and keep it in your jurisdiction," he said, adding that encryption was very limited as a defence.Bowden, who has worked as an adviser to the EU on its new data protection directive, which has yet to come into force principally because of British opposition, said he had secured an amendment giving protection for whistleblowers.He had also argued for a warning "pop-up" to be required when data was being transferred outside the EU's borders.

A bombshell White House memo has revealed for the first time details of the ‘deal in blood’ forged by George Bush and Tony Blair over the Iraq War.The damning memo, from secretary of state Colin Powell to president George Bush, was written on March 28, 2002, a week before Bush’s famous summit with Blair at his Crawford ranch in Texas.The Powell document, headed ‘Secret... Memorandum for the President’, lifts the lid on how Blair and Bush secretly plotted the war behind closed doors at Crawford. In it, Powell tells Bush that Blair ‘will be with us’ on military action. Powell assures the president: ‘The UK will follow our lead’.The classified document also discloses that Blair agreed to act as a glorified spin doctor for the president by presenting ‘public affairs lines’ to convince a skeptical public that Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction - when none existed.In return, the president would flatter Blair’s ego and give the impression that Britain was not America’s poodle but an equal partner in the ‘special relationship’. 

The sensational leak shows that Blair had given an unqualified pledge to sign up to the conflict a year before the invasion started.It flies in the face of the UK Prime Minister’s public claims at the time that he was seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis.He told voters: ‘We’re not proposing military action’ - in direct contrast to what the secret email now reveals. 

The disclosure is certain to lead for calls for Sir John Chilcot to reopen his inquiry into the Iraq War if, as is believed, he has not seen the Powell memo.A second explosive memo from the same cache also reveals how Bush used ‘spies’ in the Labour Party to help him to manipulate British public opinion in favor of the war.The documents, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, are part of a batch of secret emails held on the private server of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton which U.S. courts have forced her to reveal.Former UK Conservative shadow home secretary David Davis said: ‘The memos prove in explicit terms what many of us have believed all along: Tony Blair effectively agreed to act as a frontman for American foreign policy in advance of any decision by the House of Commons or the British Cabinet.

Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps – Qods Force, has been seen addressing Iranian military officers and members of Lebanese Hezbollah in western Syria. In the past, the leader of Iran’s expeditionary special operations forces has been spotted on key battlefields in Iraq and Syria prior to the launch of major operations against jihadist groups such as the Islamic State. Recent images of Soleimani (above) appeared on social media sites such as Twitter. His presence in the western province of Latakia in Syria was confirmed by Reuters. According to the news service, Soleimani was “addressing Iranian officers and Hezbollah fighters with a microphone, wearing dark clothes as he spoke to the men in camouflage.” In the photographs, Soleimani is flanked by by a handful of men wearing military fatigues. The faces of the individuals standing next to him are digitally altered to prevent their identity from being disclosed. A crowd of armed fighters who appear to be wearing US Marine Corps desert camouflage uniforms listens to his speech.

Latakia is a western coastal province that has long been a stronghold for the Assad family. Jihadists from the Jaysh al Fateh alliance, which is led by Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, and its close ally, Ahrar al Sham, have launched attacks in the province in an effort to break Assad’s power base. Just two days ago, Abu Muhammad al Julani, Al Nusrah’s emir, threatened to indiscriminately shell villages in the province to avenge regime attacks, including airstrikes and barrel bombs dropped from helicopters, on Sunni villages, towns, and cities controlled by jihadist groups and allied rebel forces. Iran is reported to have deployed significant forces, estimated at thousands of troops, to support the Assad regime’s offensive to retake areas controlled by Jaysh al Fateh in Hama and Aleppo. But Omran al Zoubi, Syria’s Information Minister, has denied a large Iranian presence in Syria. “Only some Iranian military advisers, whose mission is to provide consultations and nothing more, are present in Syria,” Zoubi said, according to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency. Soleimani is instrumental in organizing Syrian and Iraqi militias, as well as Hezbollah, to battle Sunni jihadists and allied rebels in Syria. He has played a similar role in Iraq, where he has organized, trained, and equipped Shiite militias along the lines of Lebanese Hezbollah to fight the Islamic State. The leaders of some of these militias are listed by the US as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, and remain hostile to the US. Soleimani is occasionally photographed with these militia leaders.

Hezbollah has also committed a large force to back the government’s offensive in Hama and Idlib in western Syria. Thousands of the group’s fighters are said to be involved in the operation. In the past week, a senior Hezbollah leader known as Hassan al Haj was killed during the offensive. A senior Lebanese government official told Reuters that Haj was “the most important [Hezbollah] figure killed in battles in Syria since the start of the war.” Russia has also committed an expeditionary military force to back the Assad regime’s offensive. After building up its forces in Syria, the Russian military launched airstrikes on Sept. 30 and have primarily targeted Jaysh al Fateh and allied rebel groups in the northwest. Russia entered the fight under the guise of attacking the Islamic State, but few of its airstrikes have hit the jihadist group. In addition to warplanes and attack helicopters, the Russian military has deployed “marines, paratroopers, and special forces” to Syria, and even executed a sea-launched cruise missile strike from the Caspian Sea. Russia very likely coordinated its entry into the Syrian civil war with Iran and Soleimani. In July, Soleimani is reported to have visited Russia and met with met President Vladimir Putin and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, despite a United Nations travel ban.

t the end of a meeting of the Ministers for Defence of the European Union, the General Secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, who had been «invited», gave a Press briefing [1].

Responding to a question from Reuters, Mr. Stoltenberg indicated that NATO would deploy AWACS to improve the Coalition’s view of the sky. However, Syrian air-space is legally used only by Syria and Russia, and illegally by the Coalition and Israël. The rebel or terrorist armies have no air force. It seems that NATO intends to test the methods of aerial surveillance which still function despite the deployment of the Russian system for disconnecting the Alliance’s command and control.

According to leaked documents released by Edward Snowden, British intelligence spied on Israeli diplomats and military officials in 2008 and 2009, the French newspaper Le Monde and Israel’s Haaretz reported on Wednesday. One of the files from 2009 said that “Britain’s GCHQ intelligence-gathering apparatus defined Israel as ‘a true threat’ to the Middle East”. “The Israelis constitute a true threat to regional security, notably because of the country’s position on the Iran issue,” the file said. The UK spy agency gathered data on the “second-highest ranking official in the Israeli foreign ministry”, who went unidentified by Le Monde and Haaretz. The two outlets also said that the UK gathered surveillance on the Palestinian Authority. GCHQ tapped the phone of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in December 2008, weeks before Israel launched an offensive the following month. GCHQ also monitored emails between Israel’s ambassadors to Kenya and Nigeria and the private Israel defence company Ophir Optronics. During those two years, the UK spied on the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s secretary general and several Palestinian diplomatic delegations, including former Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qurei and Israeli-Palestinian parliamentarian Dr Ahmad Tibi.

ysteria reigns supreme at the dawn of the Trump era, with the President rebranded across the whole ideological spectrum as an American Mao or even an American Hitler. Let’s step away from this “American [media] carnage” to examine a few facts concerning the unofficial G2: US-China relations. A case can be made that Beijing has already landed a 1-2-3 punch, pre-empting the possibility of a US-initiated trade war.

It started with Jack Ma’s by now notorious visit to Trump Tower, when he developed his idea of helping small American businesses sell their products in China and across Asia through Alibaba’s network, thus creating at least “1 million jobs” (Ma’s number) in the US. Then came President Xi Jinping’s masterclass at Davos, where he positioned himself as Ronald Xi Reagan selling “inclusive” globalization to the stalwarts of international turbo-capitalism. Finally Ma again, also at Davos, came up with a crystal clear, cause-and-effect formulation on globalization and US economic distress.

Ma said, “In the past 30 years, companies like IBM, Cisco and Microsoft made tons of money.” The problem was how the US spent the wealth: “In the past 30 years, America has had 13 wars at a cost of US$14.2 trillion.” So what if the US “had spent part of that money on building up their infrastructure, helping white-collar and blue-collar workers? You’re supposed to spend money on your own people. It’s not that other countries steal American jobs. It is your strategy – that you did not distribute the money in a proper way.” In the meantime, something quite extraordinary happened at the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong, one day before Xi’s Davos speech. China Investment Corporation (CIC) chairman Ding Xuedong, referring to Trump’s much-vaunted US$1 trillion infrastructure building plan, said that created fabulous investment opportunities for China and his US$800 billion sovereign fund. According to Ding, Washington will need at least an astonishing US$8 trillion to fund the infrastructure spectacular. Federal government and US private investors are not enough: “They have to rely on foreign investors.” And CIC is ready for it – focusing already on “alternative investments in the US”.

Israel's former foreign minister cancelled a trip to Brussels after Belgian prosecutors confirmed they wanted to question her over war crimes allegations. Tzipi Livni was expected to meet Jewish leaders in the city on Monday, but cancelled ahead of time. A spokesman for the event said Livni cancelled for "personal reasons" but local newspaper Le Soir said prosecutors had been hoping to question her over allegations of war crimes in the 2008-9 Israeli war in Gaza, when she was foreign minister. "We wanted to take advantage of her visit to try to advance the investigation," a spokesman for Belgium's federal prosecutor Thierry Werts told the AFP news agency. Livni is named along with other political and military leaders in a complaint filed in June 2010 over alleged crimes committed during the Gaza war. More than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, died during the Israeli offensive between December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009. 

Belgian authorities have the right to detain a suspect in its territory on crimes related to international law, as one of the victims had Belgian citizenship. The Belgian federal prosecutor's office believes Livni, now a member of parliament and opposition leader, is not protected by immunity.

The Belgian-Palestinian Association supporting the complaint said in a statement it wanted to hold Livni responsible for her role in the war, as well as Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, then prime minister and minister of defence. In December 2009, Livni cancelled a visit to London after being informed that she was the subject of an arrest warrant issued by a UK court over her role in the same war. An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said the planned interrogation was "a cheap publicity stunt with no legal basis".

A Spanish court has jailed five former executives who got millions in severance pay from a struggling bank that later had to be nationalised, a first in a country still reeling from banking bailouts. "These are people who managed a savings bank that had to be rescued by the state," Spain's top-level National Court said in a ruling seen by AFP on Tuesday, adding it had taken the decision to avoid allowing former bankers to enjoying "impunity". The ruling could act as a precedent for the other, more high-profile trial of former economy minister and ex-IMF chief Rodrigo Rato over alleged embezzlement when he was president of Bankia, another bank that was rescued during the financial crisis.

The five men, currently aged 59 to 85, had already been found guilty of embezzlement in 2015 and were then given a two-year jail sentence, which their defence asked to be suspended. In Spain, it is usual for first offences for non-violent crimes carrying a sentence of two years or less to be suspended.     But the National Court said that in this case, "the gravity of the offence given its macroeconomic impact means it is necessary that the five go to prison, in the interest of avoiding impunity." They added that the former executives had not paid a fine owed, and ruled against suspending the sentence.

Since taking the Oval office Trump has sparked global protests, outraged politicians and upset people over all corners of the globe.China’s state media has announced it will “step up preparedness for possible military conflict with US”Maritime security is being boosted particularly - especially since it began to look like Donald Trump will sanction an intervention in the row over the artificial islands in the South China Sea, which China stakes claim over.The billionaire businessman’s presidency has rapidly escalated chances of conflict, China has claimed, amid threats it would take a ‘war’ to take the disputed lands.The People’s Liberation Army said in a commentary on its official website last Friday, the day of Trump’s inauguration, that the chances of war have become “more real” amid a more complex security situation in Asia Pacific.An officials for the national defence mobilisation department in the Central Military Commission called for a US rebalancing of its strategy in Asia were causing problems.It said: “‘A war within the president’s term’ or ‘war breaking out tonight’ are not just slogans, they are becoming a practical reality.”

GCHQ's mass surveillance spying programmes are probably illegal and have been signed off by ministers in breach of human rights and surveillance laws, according to a hard-hitting legal opinion that has been provided to MPs.The advice warns that Britain's principal surveillance law is too vague and is almost certainly being interpreted to allow the agency to conduct surveillance that flouts privacy safeguards set out in the European convention on human rights (ECHR).The inadequacies, it says, have created a situation where GCHQ staff are potentially able to rely "on the gaps in the current statutory framework to commit serious crime with impunity".

Last year, Hague told MPs: "It has been suggested GCHQ uses our partnership with the US to get around UK law, obtaining information that they cannot legally obtain in the UK. I wish to be absolutely clear that this accusation is baseless."However, the legal advice poses awkward new questions about the framework GCHQ operates within, the role of ministers and the legality of transferring bulk data to other spy agencies.The advice makes clear Ripa does not allow GCHQ to conduct mass surveillance on communications between people in the UK, even if the data has briefly left British shores because the call or email has travelled to an internet server overseas.

The legal advice has been sent to the 46 members of the all-party parliamentary group on drones, which is chaired by the Labour MP, Tom Watson.

Scrutiny of American military bases in Britain could be increased dramatically for the first time in more than 60 years under cross-party proposals provoked by evidence that the installations are being used for drone strikes and mass spying activities. Draft proposals tabled by peers from all three major parties demand that the Government overhaul the “outdated” rules under which the Pentagon’s network of UK outposts operate following claims of British complicity in US drone missions in the Middle East and eavesdropping on European allies.

The revelations have fuelled concern in Parliament that British oversight of the bases, which operate under the 1951 Status of Forces Agreement, is outmoded and in urgent need of drastic revision because the legislation was drawn up long before technology such as drones or mass surveillance

Three senior peers from the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats - along with a crossbencher - have tabled amendments to defence legislation currently going through the House of Lords demanding that the Government considers the introduction of measures including a new “scrutiny group” for each US base to ensure all activities carried out comply with British law.Under current arrangements, each US base is nominally under the command of a British officer but critics say meaningful oversight is impossible.The proposed scrutiny panels would include a “member holding high judicial office” and an independent scrutineer “with expertise in the particular technology used and services carried out by the visiting forces”.

Saudi Arabia is in talks with Pakistan to provide anti-aircraft and anti-tank rockets to Syrian rebels to try to tip the balance in the war to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, a Saudi source said Sunday.

The United States has long opposed arming the rebels with such weapons, fearing they might end up in the hands of extremists, but Syrian opposition figures say the failure of Geneva peace talks seems to have led Washington to soften its opposition.

The head of the Syrian opposition, Ahmad Jarba, promised during a flying visit to northern Syria last week that "powerful arms will be arriving soon.""The United States could allow their allies provide the rebels with anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons following the failure of Geneva talks and the renewed tension with Russia," said the head of the Gulf Research Centre, Abdel Aziz al-Sager.Providing those weapons to the rebels "relieves pressure on the US in the short-term," said Simon Henderson, director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Programme at the Washington Institue for Near East Policy."But the long-term political worry is that Manpads (Man-portable air-defence systems) will leak and be used to bring down a civilian airliner somewhere in the world."

The Pentagon has secured a 630 billion dollar budget for next year, even though it's failed to even account for the money it's received since 1996. A whopping 8.5 trillion dollars of taxpayer cash have gone to defence programmes - none of which has been audited. This black budget has sparked concerns over potential fraud, as Gayane Chichakyan reports.

Unconfirmed news reports claim the Russian Navy is deploying land-based ‘Bastion’ anti-ship missile systems as a response to the recent U.S. move entering two naval vessels to the Black Sea. The two American Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Truxtun (DDG-103) crossed the Bosphorus Strait Friday, headed into the Black Sea, as tensions simmer over Ukraine’s Crimea region. The Russians also moved two naval combatants from the Mediterranean Task Force back to the Black Sea Fleet. Tension is mounting in the Crimea Peninsula with the preparations for a referendum on independence from Ukraine later this week. As of today, the Truxtun remain the only US warship in the Black Sea following the southbound passage of FF(G)-50 USS Taylor through the Bosphorus. The Taylor, a Perry class frigate was deployed to the Black Sea before the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games started. USS Taylor and the flag ship of the US 6th Fleet USS Mount Whitney were sent to the Black Sea to help with the evacuation of US athletes and spectators in case of an terror attack to the Games. However, when visiting the Black Sea port of Samsun, Turkey, the frigate damaged her propelled and had to be towed away to Souda, Crete for repairs

The US Navy said in a statement on Thursday that the ship was bound for the Black Sea to conduct military exercises with Bulgarian and Romanian naval forces. According to the Montreux Convention, warships of countries which do not border the Black Sea can only stay in the waters for 21 days. The Bastion anti-ship missile system was deployed last night (8-9 March) to Sevastopol from the Russian town of Anapa, Krasnodar, about 250 miles to the East. Follow bystanders recorded the movement of Bastion anti-ship launcher complex on the streets Crimea. The K-300P Bastion-P employs P-800 Yakhont (SS-N-26) anti-ship cruise missile hypersonic anti-ship missiles carried on mobile transporter-erector-launchers (TEL) is a Russian. The missiles are used as mobile coastal defence systems, having an effective range of 300 km.

Ukraine accused Russia on Saturday of having staged a “military invasion” of the country, saying Russian troops had seized one village outside Crimea and briefly landed at another.In a statement posted to its website, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said 80 Russian soldiers – supported by four helicopter gunships supported by four helicopter gunships and three “armoured combat machines” – seized the town of Strilkove on Saturday. Strilkove, which is home to 1,300 people, is about 16 kilometres outside of Crimea, on a thin peninsula in adjacent Kherson oblast.

Earlier in the day, the Ukrainian Defence Ministry said it had “repelled” – apparently without any shots being fired – another landing by dozens of Russian paratroopers 28 kilometres further into Kherson oblast, at Arbatskaya Strelka. The Ukrainian military said its air force had been used in forcing the Russians to withdraw.The alleged incursions come one day before a referendum in Crimea, a predominantly Russian-speaking region on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, asking its two million residents whether they wish to join the Russian Federation.The Kherson region supplies Crimea with most of its electricity, water and natural gas. The paratrooper landing at Arbatskaya Strelka appeared aimed at capturing a natural gas distribution facility there.

There was no immediate confirmation or denial from the Russian Foreign Ministry of the military moves outside Crimea. On Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at a meeting in London that Moscow “has no, and cannot have, any plans to invade the southeast region of Ukraine.”If the Ukrainian accusations are correct, the incursions would mark a serious escalation of the crisis here, which began last month when pro-Western protesters in Kiev ousted the Moscow-backed government of Viktor Yanukovych.

A United States surveillance drone has been intercepted above the Ukranian region of Crimea, a Russian state arms and technology group said Friday. "The drone was flying at about 4,000 metres (12,000 feet) and was virtually invisible from the ground. It was possible to break the link with US operators with complex radio-electronic" technology, said Rostec in a statement. The drone fell "almost intact into the hands of self-defence forces" added Rostec, which said it had manufactured the equipment used to down the aircraft, but did not specify who was operating it. "Judging by its identification number, UAV MQ-5B belonged to the 66th American Reconnaissance Brigade, based in Bavaria," Rostec said on its website, which also carried a picture of what it said was the captured drone.

The Crimean port of Sevastopol is home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which is believed to be equipped with detection equipment.

Information about ordinary Australian citizens has been offered to Australia's global spying partners, according to the latest reports of leaked intelligence from US whistleblower Edward Snowden. In revelations that will add pressure to the Abbott government, which is still reeling from the Indonesian spying leak, The Guardian is reporting that Australia's surveillance agency has indicated it would share “bulk” data with its “5-eyes” partners – an intelligence-sharing network comprising the US, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

“The document shows the partners discussing whether or not to share 'medical, legal or religious information',” the report states. Advertisement <iframe id="dcAd-1-4" src="http://ad-apac.doubleclick.net/N6411/adi/onl.smh.news/federalpolitics/politicalnews;cat=federalpolitics;cat1=politicalnews;ctype=article;pos=3;sz=300x250;tile=4;ord=3.4276163E7?" width='300' height='250' scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0"> </iframe> The latest spying revelations are based on a secret 2008 document obtained by Mr Snowden, a former contractor who had access to high-level US government intelligence. Mr Snowden's document reveals notes of what was discussed at a “5-eyes” conference hosted by Britain's GCHQ in Cheltenham on April 22-23, 2008. According to the report, Australia's intelligence agency, then known as the Defence Signals Directorate, told its global intelligence partners it could share “bulk, unselected, unminimised metadata as long as there is no intent to target an Australian national”.

The partners also agreed that medical, legal or religious would not be automatically excluded from the sharing arrangement, but would instead be considered by the owning agency ‘‘on a case-by-case basis’’.  The Australian intelligence agency was reportedly willing to reveal more about its country's citizens, with fewer privacy restraints, than other countries. According to The Guardian’s report, the documents reveal that Canada imposed more rigorous privacy restrictions than Australia, agreeing to share information on the condition that information about its citizens first be redacted. Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he was confident Australian intelligence agencies were acting in accordance with the law and there were adequate safeguards in place.

The Obama administration's international surveillance crisis deepened on Monday as representatives from a Latin American human rights panel told US diplomats that oversight of the programs was "illusory".Members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an arm of the Organization of American States, expressed frustration and dissatisfaction with the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of foreign nationals – something the agency argues is both central to its existence and necessary to prevent terrorism. "With a program of this scope, it's obvious that any form of control becomes illusory when there's hundreds of millions of communications that become monitored and surveilled," said Felipe Gonzales, a commissioner and Chilean national."This is of concern to us because maybe the Inter-American Committee on Human Rights may become a target as well of surveillance," said Rodrigo Escobar Gil, a commissioner and Colombian citizen.

Frank La Rue, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, told the commission that the right to privacy was "inextricably linked" to free expression. "What is not permissible from a human rights point of view is that those that hold political power or those that are in security agencies or, even less, those in intelligence agencies decide by themselves, for themselves, what the scope of these surveillance activities are, or who will be targeted, or who will be blank surveilled," La Rue said.While the US sent four representatives to the hearing, they offered no defence, rebuttal or elaboration about bulk surveillance, saying the October government shutdown prevented them from adequate preparation. "We are here to listen," said deputy permanent representative Lawrence Gumbiner, who pledged to submit written responses within 30 days.All 35 North, Central and South American nations are members of the commission. La Rue, originally from Guatemala and an independent expert appointed by the Human Rights Council, travels the world reporting on human rights concerns – often in countries with poor democratic standards.

The Obama administration has been fielding a week's worth of European outrage following media reports that the NSA had collected a similarly large volume of phone calls from France – which director of national intelligence James Clapper, who recently apologised for misleading the Senate about domestic spying, called "false" – and spying on German chancellor Angela Merkel's own cellphone, which US officials have effectively confessed to. Brazil and Mexico are also demanding answers from US intelligence officials, following reports about intrusive acts of espionage in their territory revealed by documents provided to journalists by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The White House has said it will provide some answers after the completion of an external review of its surveillance programs, scheduled to be completed before the end of the year. The Guardian reported on Thursday that the NSA has intercepted the communications of 35 world leaders.

In 1964, the year Dr Strangelove was made, "the missile gap" was the false flag. To build more and bigger nuclear weapons and pursue an undeclared policy of domination, President John F Kennedy approved the CIA's propaganda that the Soviet Union was well ahead of the US in the production of intercontinental ballistic missiles. This filled front pages as the "Russian threat". In fact, the Americans were so far ahead in production of the missiles, the Russians never approached them. The cold war was based largely on this lie.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has ringed Russia with military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of its Nato enlargement project. Reneging on the Reagan administration's promise to the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that Nato would not expand "one inch to the east", Nato has all but taken over eastern Europe. In the former Soviet Caucasus, Nato's military build-up is the most extensive since the second world war.In February, the US mounted one of its proxy "colour" coups against the elected government of Ukraine; the shock troops were fascists. For the first time since 1945, a pro-Nazi, openly antisemitic party controls key areas of state power in a European capital. No western European leader has condemned this revival of fascism on the border of Russia. Some 30 million Russians died in the invasion of their country by Hitler's Nazis, who were supported by the infamous Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the UPA) which was responsible for numerous Jewish and Polish massacres. The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, of which the UPA was the military wing, inspires today's Svoboda party.Since Washington's putsch in Kiev – and Moscow's inevitable response in Russian Crimea to protect its Black Sea fleet – the provocation and isolation of Russia have been inverted in the news to the "Russian threat". This is fossilised propaganda. The US air force general who runs Nato forces in Europe – General Philip Breedlove, no less – claimed more than two weeks ago to have pictures showing 40,000 Russian troops "massing" on the border with Ukraine. So did Colin Powell claim to have pictures proving there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. What is certain is that Barack Obama's rapacious, reckless coup in Ukraine has ignited a civil war and Vladimir Putin is being lured into a trap.

Following a 13-year rampage that began in stricken Afghanistan well after Osama bin Laden had fled, then destroyed Iraq beneath a false flag, invented a "nuclear rogue" in Iran, dispatched Libya to a Hobbesian anarchy and backed jihadists in Syria, the US finally has a new cold war to supplement its worldwide campaign of murder and terror by drone.A Nato membership action plan – straight from the war room of Dr Strangelove – is General Breedlove's gift to the new dictatorship in Ukraine. "Rapid Trident" will put US troops on Ukraine's Russian border and "Sea Breeze" will put US warships within sight of Russian ports. At the same time, Nato war games in eastern Europe are designed to intimidate Russia. Imagine the response if this madness was reversed and happened on the US's borders. Cue General Turgidson.And there is China. On 23 April, Obama will begin a tour of Asia to promote his "pivot" to China. The aim is to convince his "allies" in the region, principally Japan, to rearm and prepare for the possibility of war with China. By 2020, almost two-thirds of all US naval forces in the world will be transferred to the Asia-Pacific area. This is the greatest military concentration in that vast region since the second world war.