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The planned release of a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee on the CIA’s interrogation of terrorism suspects has broken down in a dispute between the committee and the Obama administration over how much of the document can be declassified. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D­Calif.), chairman of the committee, said Tuesday that she had written a letter to President Obama raising objections to material that was stripped from the report by the CIA and the White House. “I have concluded the redactions eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions,” Feinstein said in a statement. “Until these redactions are addressed to the committee’s satisfaction, the report will not be made public.”

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) has submitted a report to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor debunking Israeli claims that last summer’s attack on Gaza was an act of “self-defense.” Since the court began a preliminary examination into the events in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip beginning from 13 June 2014, Israel has attempted to ward off a full investigation by claiming that its 51-day assault on Gaza was an act of defense. NLG, a US human and civil rights organization, also sent its report to US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, who have suggested Israel’s right to defend itself justified the air bombardment and ground assault that left more than 2,200 people, the vast majority civilians, dead.

n their cover letter to the ICC and the White House, NLG notes that numerous respected sources have alleged war crimes, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations Human Rights Council and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.  “The central message that Israeli forces were protecting Israeli citizens from Hamas rockets was so ubiquitous in the Western media as to eclipse war crimes allegations,” said report author and Vermont attorney James Marc Leas. “But the facts and law do not support the self-defense claims.”

On Mar. 24, US president Barack Obama announced that all 9,800 US troops currently stationed in Afghanistan will remain until the end of 2015. This generated a fair amount of criticism: it was, after all, Obama’s promise that the last American troop would leave the country in 2014. How have Obama’s plans for pulling out of Afghanistan fared so far? http://t.co/avoxwJzzQw pic.twitter.com/3S5FJ3lgho — FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) March 26, 2015

Those expecting the US to leave Afghanistan, however, should take a minute to consider this: the US still hasn’t left Germany. In fact, there are quite a few places the US hasn’t left, and while certainly most of them don’t pose a threat to American soldiers, they reveal a pattern about the US staying, rather than leaving. According to official information provided by the Department of Defense (DoD) and its Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) there are still about 40,000 US troops, and 179 US bases in Germany, over 50,000 troops in Japan (and 109 bases), and tens of thousands of troops, with hundreds of bases, all over Europe. Over 28,000 US troops are present in 85 bases in South Korea, and have been since 1957. Altogether, based on information contained in the DoD’s latest Base Structure Report (BSR), the US has bases in at least 74 countries and troops practically all over the world, ranging from thousands to just one in some countries (it could be a military attaché, for instance).

By comparison, France has bases in 10 countries, and the UK has bases in seven. Calculating the extent of the US military presence abroad is not an easy task. The data released by the Department of Defense is incomplete, and inconsistencies are found within documents. Quartz has requested clarification from the Department of Defense, but hasn’t received a response. In his forthcoming book Base Nation: How US Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World, David Vine, associate professor of anthropology at American University details the difficulties of assessing the US military presence abroad. He writes: according to the most recent publicized count, the U.S. military currently still occupies 686 “base sites” outside the fifty states and Washington, DC. While 686 base sites is quite a figure in its own right, that tally strangely excludes many well-known U.S. bases, like those in Kosovo, Kuwait, and Qatar. Less surprisingly, the Pentagon’s count also excludes secret (or secretive) American bases, like those reported in Israel and Saudi Arabia. There are so many bases, the Pentagon itself doesn’t even know the true total. That is not the only issue—even a definitive count of bases would include a wide range of facilities. “Base” itself is an umbrella term that includes locations referred to as “post,” “station,” “camp,” or “fort” by different military bodies. Vine explains:

The figures are staggering. In what looks like a vast population transfer from a disintegrating Greater Middle East, nearly 200,000 refugees passed through Austria in September alone. About half a million desperate refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere have arrived in Greece since 2015 began (those, that is, who don’t die at sea), and the numbers are only expected to rise. Seven hundred children a day have been claiming asylum somewhere in Europe (190,000 between January and September 2015). And at least three million refugees and migrants from the planet’s war and desperation zones are expected to head for Europe in 2016. Under the circumstances, I’m sure it won’t surprise you that, once the first upbeat stories about welcoming European crowds had died down, the truncheons and water cannons came out in some parts of the continent and the walls began to go up. Nor, I’m sure, will you be shocked to learn that an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim fervor is now gripping parts of Europe, while far-right parties are, not coincidentally, on the rise.  This is true in France, where Marine Le Pen’s virulently anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-European-Union National Front is expected to make significant gains in local elections this winter (and Le Pen herself is leading early opinion polls in the race for the presidency), while in “tolerant” Sweden a far-right party with neo-Nazi ties is garnering more than 25% of the prospective vote in opinion polls. In Poland, an extreme party wielding anti-refugee rhetoric just swept into power. And so it goes across much of Europe these days.

All of this (and more) represents a stunning development that could, sooner or later, reverse the increasingly integrated nature of Europe, raise walls and barriers across the continent, and irreversibly fracture the European Union, while increasing nationalistic fervor and god knows what else. In the United States, in a somewhat more muted way, you can see similar developments in what’s being talked about here as an “outsider” election, but is, in fact, significantly focused on keeping outsiders separated from insiders. (Just Google Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and immigrants, and you'll see what I mean.) Isn’t it strange how we always speak of the “tribal” when it comes to Africa or the backlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but never when it comes to our world? And yet, if these aren’t, broadly speaking, “tribal” responses, what are?

If we want to curb terrorism in the United States, we must stop drone attacks in the Middle East.

It’s a sick myth that Islamic extremists attack the United States or other nations because they “hate our freedom.” They attack us for our foreign policy. In 2006, the United States National Intelligence Estimate reported that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq made the problem of terrorism worse by creating a new generation of terrorists. And since then, top ranking military and counter-terrorism authorities such as General Stanley McChrystal, General Mike Flynn and George W. Bush’s counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke say that drone strikes in particular are creating more terrorists than they’re killing. If we want to stop terrorist attacks, we should stop the barbaric blind bombings that are fueling radicalization.

“The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes … is much greater than the average American appreciates,” Gen. McChrystal, who led the US counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, said in 2013. “They are hated on a visceral level, even by people who’ve never seen one or seen the effects of one.” <a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/jump/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=defenseone-instream;sz=600x300;" title=""> <img alt="" src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/ad/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=defenseone-instream;sz=600x300;tile=4;"/> </a> <a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/jump/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=contextual-large-rectangle-tablet;sz=700x350;" title=""> <img alt="" src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/ad/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=contextual-large-rectangle-tablet;sz=700x350;tile=5;"/> </a> <a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/jump/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=contextual-large-rectangle-mobile;sz=300x150;" title=""> <img alt="" src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/ad/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=contextual-large-rectangle-mobile;sz=300x150;tile=6;"/> </a> Gen. Flynn, who until recently was the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and has become a harsh critic of President Obama’s strategy in the Middle East, has said, “When you drop a bomb from a drone … you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good.” Flynn, who has actually backs a more muscular military approach, doesn’t think it should include drones. Clarke has said that when we use unmanned drones to drop bombs which, no matter how hard we try otherwise, inevitably kill innocent people: [Y]ou cause enemies for the United States that will last for generations. All of these innocent people that you kill have brothers and sisters and tribe—tribal relations. Many of them were not opposed to the United States prior to some one of their friends or relatives being killed. And then, sometimes, they cross over, not only to being opposed to the United States, but by being willing to pick up arms and become a terrorist against the United States. So you may actually be creating terrorists, rather than eliminating them,

Though Assad has refrained from attacking foreign forces hostile to his regime that are operating within Syria’s borders, this recent escalation has prompted him to step up his rhetoric. In a recent interview with Phoenix TV, Assad stated that “any foreign troops coming to Syria without our invitation or consultation or permission, they are invaders, whether they are American, Turkish or any other one.” Though Assad didn’t specifically single out U.S. troops, he did state the following: “What are they [foreign troops] going to do? To fight ISIS [Islamic State, formerly ISIL]? The Americans lost nearly every war. They lost in Iraq, they had to withdraw at the end. Even in Somalia, let alone Vietnam in the past and Afghanistan.” Assad then added that the U.S. “didn’t succeed anywhere they sent troops, they only create a mess; they are very good in creating problems and destroying, but they are very bad in finding solutions.” “The complexity of this war is the foreign intervention. This is the problem,” he continued.

However, foreign intervention is increasingly seeming more likely than not. According to the head of U.S. Central Command Army General Joseph Votel, once Raqqa is liberated from Islamic State elements, U.S. forces will be “required” to stabilize the region as U.S. officials anticipate that “America’s allies,” i.e. anti-Assad rebels, will need assistance from the U.S. military to establish “Syrian-led peacekeeping efforts” in the area. This is a frank admission that U.S. troops will not be going anywhere even after the Islamic State is removed, despite the fact that the presence of the Islamic State is the only justification the U.S. military has offered for its technically illegal presence within Syria. If this comes to pass, the U.S. will once again be an occupying force in yet another Middle Eastern nation. It seems likely that the U.S. will return to its former mantra “Assad must go” and refocus its efforts on removing Assad from power once and for all.

Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates decided to sever diplomatic ties with Qatar over Doha’s sponsorship of terrorism and implement a number of sanctions including the closing of land, sea and air routes, and the expulsion of Qatari citizens. The development is consistent with the new U.S. administration’s declared goal to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood.

Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE accuse Qatar of undermining the stability of the region by supporting terrorism, including a number of terrorist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and affiliated group, the Taliban, and others. Authorities in these four countries have also given Qataris living in and visiting their countries two weeks to leave.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, has removed Qatar from the Saudi-led coalition that is fighting Iranian-backed Houthi fighters in neighboring Yemen. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also closed all of its borders “and urged all brotherly countries and companies to do the same.” That said, Saudi Arabia will still allow citizens from Qatar to enter the kingdom to perform the Hajj pilgrimage.

The just-retired long-time NSA chief, Gen. Keith Alexander, recently traveled to Australia to give a remarkably long and wide-ranging interview with an extremely sycophantic “interviewer” with The Australian Financial Review. The resulting 17,000-word transcript and accompanying article form a model of uncritical stenography journalism, but Alexander clearly chose to do this because he is angry, resentful, and feeling unfairly treated, and the result is a pile of quotes that are worth examining, only a few of which are noted below:

How Edward Snowden managed to steal an alleged 1.7 million documents from the NSA. Sunday: http://t.co/gbrIu5yMcc — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) December 13, 2013 Mike McConnell, the vice chairman of Booz Allen and former Director of National Intelligence in the Bush administration, then claimed that ”Snowden absconded with 1.7 million to 1.8 million documents.” Ever since then, that Snowden “stole” 1.7 or 1.8 million documents from the NSA has been repeated over and over again by US media outlets as verified fact. The Washington Post‘s Walter Pincus, citing an anonymous official source, purported to tell readers that “among the roughly 1.7 million documents he walked away with — the vast majority of which have not been made public — are highly sensitive, specific intelligence reports”. Reuters frequently includes in its reports the unchallenged assertion that “Snowden was believed to have taken 1.7 million computerized documents.” Just this week, the global news agency told its readers that “Snowden was believed to have taken 1.7 million computerized documents.”

AFR: Can you now quantify the number of documents [Snowden] stole? Gen. Alexander: Well, I don’t think anybody really knows what he actually took with him, because the way he did it, we don’t have an accurate way of counting. What we do have an accurate way of counting is what he touched, what he may have downloaded, and that was more than a million documents. It’s hard to recall a better and clearer example of how mindless and uncritical the American media is when it comes to the unproven pronouncements of the U.S. Government. Back in December, 60 Minutes broadcast a now-notorious segment of pure access journalism in which they gullibly disseminated one false NSA claim after the next in exchange for being given exclusive(!) access to a few Secret and Exciting Rooms inside the agency’s headquarters. The program claimed that Snowden “is believed to still have access to 1.5 million classified documents he has not leaked”. On its Twitter account, 60 Minutes made this claim to promote its show:

Al Qaeda's violent resurgence in Iraq and expansion into Syria now represents a "transnational threat network" that could possibly reach from the Mideast to the United States, according to the White House. The teaming of al Qaeda's Iraqi cell and affiliated Islamic militant groups in Syria into the new Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has developed into "a major emerging threat to Iraqi stability . . . and to us," a senior administration official told reporters on Wednesday. "It is a fact now that al Qaeda has a presence in Western Iraq" extending into Syria, "that Iraqi forces are unable to target," the official said. That growing presence "that has accelerated in the past six to eight months" has been accompanied by waves of bombings and attacks that threaten to throw Iraq into a full-blown civil war. 

Keeping ISIS from destabilizing the Iraqi government and expanding into other areas in the region is a "major focus" of this week's visit by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to Washington. The Iraqi delegation met with Vice President Joe Biden Wednesday morning, and will meet with congressional leaders later in the day. Top defense lawmakers are already sounding the alarm on ISIS growth in the region and the threat posed by the al Qaeda faction to Iraq, Syria and ultimately the United States. "As the situation in both countries grows worse . . . we are deeply concerned that Al-Qaeda could use its new safe haven in Iraq and Syria to launch attacks against U.S. interests and those of our friends and allies," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) along with Senate Armed Services Committee chief Carl Levin (D-Mich.), ranking member Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) wrote in a letter to President Obama. Senate Foreign Relations heads Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) also co-signed the letter, sent to the White House on Tuesday. 

"We urge you to press [al-Maliki] to formulate a comprehensive political and security strategy that can stabilize the country, enable Iraq to realize its vast potential, and help to safeguard our nation’s enduring national security interests in Iraq," they wrote. One area lawmakers are pressing the White House and Iraqi government on is increased U.S. assistance for counterterrorism operations in the country, backed by supplies of American military weapons and intelligence. 

Army illegally supplied  intelligence on nonviolent antiwar protesters to FBI and police in multiple states Tacoma, WA – Recently obtained public records confirm an Army-led, multi-agency spy network that targeted “leftists/anarchists” as domestic terrorists. The Army used illegal infiltration to gather information on nonviolent antiwar protesters, disseminate it to the FBI and police departments in multiple states, and in some cases used it to disrupt planned protests by preemptively and falsely arresting activists. Public records obtained last month by Olympia activist Paul French reveal new evidence in the widely-watched Army spying case Panagacos v. Towery. An email from November 2007, in particular, shows that intelligence analyst John J. Towery was paid by the Army to infiltrate political groups and share unlawfully obtained intelligence with a growing network of law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, and police departments in Los Angeles, Portland, Eugene, Everett, and Spokane. The Towery email not only represents a broader spying program than previously thought, it also confirms the program was led by the Army, a fact contradicted by Towery’s 2009 sworn statements.

“The latest revelations show how the Army not only engaged in illegal spying on political dissidents, it led the charge and tried to expand the counterintelligence network targeting leftists and anarchists,” said Larry Hildes, a National Lawyers Guild attorney who filed the Panagacos lawsuit in 2010. “By targeting activists without probable cause, based on their ideology and the perceived political threat they represent, the Army clearly broke the law and must be held accountable.” Previously obtained public records indicate that absent such accountability, the Army will continue to spy on and target protesters, which it did until at least 2010, long after Towery’s identity was exposed. Public records previously obtained in 2009 already established that over a two-year period beginning in 2006, Towery (under the alias “John Jacob”) spied on the Olympia antiwar group Port Militarization Resistance (PMR) as well as several other organizations, including Students for a Democratic Society, the Industrial Workers of the World, and Iraq Veterans Against the War. It has also already been established that Towery’s intelligence was passed on to the Washington State Fusion Center, a communications hub of  local, state and federal law enforcement, and then used by local police to target activists for repeated harassment, preemptive and false arrest, excessive use of force, and malicious prosecution

The recently disclosed Towery email was a follow-up to a 2007 Domestic Terrorism Conference he attended in Spokane, during which “domestic terrorist” dossiers on some of the Panagacos plaintiffs were distributed. The Towery email shows the development of a multi-agency spying apparatus in intimate detail. “I thought it would be a good idea to develop a leftist/anarchist mini-group for intel sharing and distro,” wrote the Army analyst to several law enforcement officials. Towery references books, “zines and pamphlets,” and a “comprehensive web list” as source material, but cautions the officials on file sharing “because it might tip off groups that we are studying their techniques, tactics and procedures.” Towery, who worked at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, not only coordinated his actions with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, many of whom are named defendants in the Panagacos case, he also admitted to eavesdropping on a confidential, privileged attorney-client email listserv of criminal defendants and their legal counsel. Such conduct is considered a constitutional violation, but Towery also took sensitive information from the listserv vital to a pending criminal trial in 2007 and passed it on to fusion center officials who then transmitted it to prosecutors, forcing a mistrial in a case the defense was winning handily. The case was later dismissed for prosecutorial misconduct.

ISTANBUL, Turkey — A diplomatic crisis looms. Turkey, a key U.S. ally and the only NATO member that borders areas controlled by ISIS jihadists in Syria and Iraq, is in a prime location to hit the extremists next door. But it prefers not to. Instead, Ankara is seeking a low-profile role—so low as to be almost invisible—in the international alliance that Washington is building up against the so-called caliphate, and that fact is undermining the American strategy to strike back against the terrorists President Barack Obama deems “unique in their brutality.”  

Washington, obviously aware of the problem, is working overtime to get some sort of concrete supportive commitments from the Turkish government for a strategy in which American airpower supports regional armies with boots on the ground to crush the ISIS forces. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited Ankara on Monday; Secretary of State John Kerry is expected in the Turkish capital Friday. But background briefings to the Turkish press suggest that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government will refuse to give the United States more than the bare minimum of support: It won’t allow the Americans to attack from NATO air bases in Turkey and it will decline to let Turkish troops take part in combat operations. Before traveling to Turkey, Kerry tried to downplay Ankara’s reluctance, despite the fact that the NATO ally refused to sign a joint declaration of Arab and other states outlining the battle against ISIS in a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Kerry said Turkey was dealing with some “sensitive issues,” according to the BBC.

Following talks by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu with top military and diplomatic officials on Wednesday, the newspaper Yeni Safak, which often reflects the government line, reported that Turkey would opt for a “passive” role in the fight against ISIS in Syria. Other news reports said Turkey would strengthen controls along the Syrian border and open its air space and its air force bases for logistical operations and for humanitarian flights—for example to save the lives of U.S. pilots—but not for the expected attacks on ISIS targets. Direct participation of Turkey’s modern air force in the attacks is out of the question as well.

The “USA Freedom Act”—the proponents of which were heralding as “NSA reform” despite its suffocatingly narrow scope—died in the august U.S. Senate last night when it attracted only 58 of the 60 votes needed to close debate and move on to an up-or-down vote. All Democratic and independent senators except one (Bill Nelson of Florida) voted in favor of the bill, as did three tea-party GOP Senators (Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Dean Heller). One GOP Senator, Rand Paul, voted against it on the ground that it did not go nearly far enough in reining in the NSA. On Monday, the White House had issued a statement “strongly supporting” the bill. The “debate” among the Senators that preceded the vote was darkly funny and deeply boring, in equal measure. The black humor was due to the way one GOP senator after the next—led by ranking intelligence committee member Saxby Chambliss of Georgia (pictured above)—stood up and literally screeched about 9/11 and ISIS over and over and over, and then sat down as though they had made a point.

So the pro-NSA Republican senators were actually arguing that if the NSA were no longer allowed to bulk-collect the communication records of Americans inside the U.S., then ISIS would kill you and your kids. But because they were speaking in an empty chamber and only to their warped and insulated D.C. circles and sycophantic aides, there was nobody there to cackle contemptuously or tell them how self-evidently moronic it all was. So they kept their Serious Faces on like they were doing The Nation’s Serious Business, even though what was coming out of their mouths sounded like the demented ramblings of a paranoid End is Nigh cult. The boredom of this spectacle was simply due to the fact that this has been seen so many times before—in fact, every time in the post-9/11 era that the U.S. Congress pretends publicly to debate some kind of foreign policy or civil liberties bill. Just enough members stand up to scream “9/11″ and “terrorism” over and over until the bill vesting new powers is passed or the bill protecting civil liberties is defeated.

Eight years ago, when this tawdry ritual was still a bit surprising to me, I live-blogged the 2006 debate over passage of the Military Commissions Act, which, with bipartisan support, literally abolished habeas corpus rights established by the Magna Carta by sanctioning detention without charges or trial. (My favorite episode there was when GOP Sen. Arlen Specter warned that “what the bill seeks to do is set back basic rights by some nine hundred years,” and then voted in favor of its enactment.) In my state of naive disbelief, as one senator after the next thundered about the “message we are sending” to “the terrorists,” I wrote: “The quality of the ‘debate’ on the Senate floor is so shockingly (though appropriately) low and devoid of substance that it is hard to watch.” So watching last night’s Senate debate was like watching a repeat of some hideously shallow TV show. The only new aspect was that the aging Al Qaeda villain has been rather ruthlessly replaced by the show’s producers with the younger, sleeker ISIS model. Showing no gratitude at all for the years of value it provided these senators, they ignored the veteran terror group almost completely in favor of its new replacement. And they proceeded to save a domestic surveillance program clearly unpopular among those they pretend to represent.

Hence, on the high end, anyone can purchase voice and internet communications software that are beyond the capacity of anyone to access without an electronic key.

It’s happening! According to a new poll, Americans have finally maxed out their tolerance for “lesser evils” in presidential politics. The survey, published by independent research firm, Data Targeting, found a majority of Americans now want an independent candidate to take on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — two of the most disliked candidates in recent history. Researchers for the poll, conducted among 997 registered voters via both home and mobile phones this month, reported that “58% of respondents are dissatisfied with the current group of Republican and Democratic candidates for President” — and that 55 percent believe there should be an independent ticket (it is unclear why 3 percent apparently dislike the current candidates but puzzlingly do not think there should be another option). In perhaps the most extreme finding of the analysis, “a shocking 91% of voters under the age of 29 favor having an independent candidate on the ballot.” Considering younger generations’ lack of party allegiance and disillusionment with the status quo, their disapproval of Clinton and Trump seems predictable — but 91 percent constitutes near-total rejection. Tellingly, over 68 percent of participants in the poll were over the age of 50. Older generations are more likely to be attached to party identity, making their acceptance of other options a telling indicator of the populace’s distaste for their current options.

The United States has notoriously clung to the narrow two-party duopoly for most of its history — even as the crafters of the Constitution, for all their staggering shortcomings, cautioned of the dangers of such myopic political representation and party allegiance. But considering the unpopularity of Trump and Clinton — the former has a 55 percent unfavorability liking, the latter 56 percent — Americans appear to be turning a corner on their perception of who deserves power in politics. In fact, 65 percent of poll respondents said they would be “at least somewhat, pretty or very willing to support a candidate for President who is not Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton” — a stark difference from 2012, when Americans resisted deviation from the norm. A Gallup poll from that year highlighted the nation’s two-party rigidity. “U.S. registered voters show limited support for third-party candidates…with the vast majority preferring Barack Obama or Mitt Romney,” analysts reported just a few months before the 2012 general election. They concluded about 5% of Americans would vote for a third-party candidate that year. Just four years later, however, that figure has exploded. As the Data Testing report explains: “In a ballot test against Clinton and Trump, a truly independent candidate starts off with 21% of the vote,” already far greater than 2012’s 5%. “But this number increases to 29% in the ‘Big Sky’ region, 30% in ‘New England’ and 28% in the ‘West’ region.”

Independents were even more willing to break away from the options they’ve been given. “Among voters with an unfavorable opinion of both Trump and Clinton, the independent actually wins the ballot test,” researchers reported, noting that of the three options, 7 percent of respondents chose Clinton, 11 percent chose Trump, and a staggering 56 percent chose the unspecified third-party candidate. Though these ballot test findings are lower than the statistic that 65 percent would be open to breaking away from Clinton and Trump, the increase of third-party interest from 2012 remains palpably significant. It should be noted that Data Targeting is a GOP-affiliated political research firm, however, the results indicate little room for bias. In fact, they are paramount in an election where, as the analysis notes, Clinton and Trump provoke more animosity than enthusiasm. Perhaps highlighting lingering attachments to two-party thinking, Clinton’s highest unfavorability rating (78 percent) came from Republicans, while Trump’s highest unfavorability rating (71 percent) came from Democrats. Regardless, it is undeniable Americans are fed up with the system at large. According to another recent poll, just over half believe elections are rigged. Interest in third-party options, like the Libertarian and Green parties, is also steadily growing. As Ron Paul, the outspoken former presidential candidate, whose 2012 campaign wasundermined by the media and Republican establishment, recently said, “I’ve never bought into this idea that the lesser of two evils is a good idea” — and Americans increasingly agree. According to a Gallup poll released last year, 43 percent of Americans identify as independent — the highest number in the history of the poll.

A new poll finds 80% of Americans think Iran has a nuclear weapons program and that it is a threat to the US and its NATO allies. The poll, commissioned by The Israel Project, asked likely voters and found “72% of Democrats, 81% of independents and 89% of Republicans were convinced the Iranians were building nuclear weapons.” This is a monumental success of war propaganda. And these results are largely consistent with other recent polls: one produced back in February by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Program on International Policy Attitudes found “An overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens believe that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and poses a serious threat to U.S. national security.”

Contrast these beliefs with the facts: The consensus in the whole of the intelligence community in the US (and Israel) is that Iran has no nuclear weapons program and has yet to demonstrate any intention of starting one anytime soon. But false beliefs persist even when there has been ample reassurances from elite sources in politics, the military, and the news media that Iran has no weapons program. A matter of months ago, the Obama administration marched out their minions, from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, all of whom reiterated the fact that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, despite constant rhetoric to the contrary.

In February the New York Times ran a front page story entitled “U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb.” It reported: “Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.” Again in March, they reported “top administration officials have said that Iran still has not decided to pursue a weapon, reflecting the intelligence community’s secret analysis.” Another in the Los Angeles Times was similarly headlined, “U.S. does not believe Iran is trying to build nuclear bomb.”

Greenwald is entirely admirable. He has intelligence, integrity, and courage. He is one of the brave to whom my just published book, How America Was Lost, is dedicated. As for RT’s Abby Martin, I admire her and have been a guest on her program a number of times. My criticism of Greenwald and Martin has nothing to do with their integrity or their character. I doubt the claims that Abby Martin grandstanded on “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine” in order to boost her chances of moving into the more lucrative “mainstream media.” My point is quite different. Even Abby Martin and Greenwald, both of whom bring us much light, cannot fully escape Western propaganda. For example, Martin’s denunciation of Russia for “invading” Ukraine is based on Western propaganda that Russia sent 16,000 troops to occupy Crimea. The fact of the matter is that those 16,000 Russian troops have been in Crimea since the 1990s. Under the Russian-Ukrainian agreement, Russia has the right to base 25,000 troops in Crimea.

So, here we have three of the smartest and most independent journalists of our time, and all three are under the impression created by Western propaganda that Russia has invaded Ukraine. It appears that the power of Washington’s propaganda is so great that not even the best and most independent journalists can escape its influence. What chance does truth have when Abby Martin gets kudos from Glenn Greenwald for denouncing Russia for an alleged “invasion” that has not taken place, and when independent Pat Buchanan opens his column dissenting from the blame-Russia-crowd by accepting that an invasion has taken place?

Apparently, neither Abby Martin nor Glenn Greenwald, two intelligent and aware people, knew this fact. Washington’s propaganda is so pervasive that two of our best reporters were victimized by it. As I have written several times in my columns, Washington organized the coup in Ukraine in order to promote its world hegemony by capturing Ukraine for NATO and putting US missile bases on Russia’s border in order to degrade Russia’s nuclear deterrent and force Russia to accept Washington’s hegemony. Russia has done nothing but respond in a very low-key way to a major strategic threat orchestrated by Washington. It is not only Martin and Greenwald who have fallen under Washington’s propaganda. They are joined by Patrick J. Buchanan. Pat’s column calling on readers to “resist the war party on Crimea” opens with Washington’s propagandistic claim: “With Vladimir Putin’s dispatch of Russian Troops into Crimea.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37847.htm No such dispatch has occurred. Putin has been granted authority by the Russian Duma to send troops to Ukraine, but Putin has stated publicly that sending troops would be a last resort to protect Crimean Russians from invasions by the ultra-nationalist neo-nazis who stole Washington’s coup and established themselves as the power in Kiev and western Ukraine.

WASHINGTON -- The National Security Agency has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches, according to a top-secret NSA document. The document, provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, identifies six targets, all Muslims, as “exemplars” of how “personal vulnerabilities” can be learned through electronic surveillance, and then exploited to undermine a target's credibility, reputation and authority. The NSA document, dated Oct. 3, 2012, repeatedly refers to the power of charges of hypocrisy to undermine such a messenger. “A previous SIGINT" -- or signals intelligence, the interception of communications -- "assessment report on radicalization indicated that radicalizers appear to be particularly vulnerable in the area of authority when their private and public behaviors are not consistent,” the document argues. Among the vulnerabilities listed by the NSA that can be effectively exploited are “viewing sexually explicit material online” and “using sexually explicit persuasive language when communicating with inexperienced young girls.”

The Director of the National Security Agency -- described as "DIRNSA" -- is listed as the "originator" of the document. Beyond the NSA itself, the listed recipients include officials with the Departments of Justice and Commerce and the Drug Enforcement Administration. "Without discussing specific individuals, it should not be surprising that the US Government uses all of the lawful tools at our disposal to impede the efforts of valid terrorist targets who seek to harm the nation and radicalize others to violence," Shawn Turner, director of public affairs for National Intelligence, told The Huffington Post in an email Tuesday. Yet Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said these revelations give rise to serious concerns about abuse. "It's important to remember that the NSA’s surveillance activities are anything but narrowly focused -- the agency is collecting massive amounts of sensitive information about virtually everyone," he said. "Wherever you are, the NSA's databases store information about your political views, your medical history, your intimate relationships and your activities online," he added. "The NSA says this personal information won't be abused, but these documents show that the NSA probably defines 'abuse' very narrowly."

None of the six individuals targeted by the NSA is accused in the document of being involved in terror plots. The agency believes they all currently reside outside the United States. It identifies one of them, however, as a "U.S. person," which means he is either a U.S. citizen or a permanent resident. A U.S. person is entitled to greater legal protections against NSA surveillance than foreigners are. Stewart Baker, a one-time general counsel for the NSA and a top Homeland Security official in the Bush administration, said that the idea of using potentially embarrassing information to undermine targets is a sound one. "If people are engaged in trying to recruit folks to kill Americans and we can discredit them, we ought to," said Baker. "On the whole, it's fairer and maybe more humane" than bombing a target, he said, describing the tactic as "dropping the truth on them." Any system can be abused, Baker allowed, but he said fears of the policy drifting to domestic political opponents don't justify rejecting it. "On that ground you could question almost any tactic we use in a war, and at some point you have to say we're counting on our officials to know the difference," he said.

Social Security Administration employees are being instructed to tell people who ask that if the debt ceiling is not raised, their social security benefits could be in danger. In an email sent Friday, obtained by The Daily Caller, employees are instructed: “If a member of the public asks whether their Social Security payment will be affected if the federal debt ceiling is not raised, you may give the following response: ‘Unlike a federal shutdown which has no impact on the payment of Social Security benefits, failure to raise the debt ceiling puts Social Security benefits at risk.’ “Direct all program–related and technical questions to your supervisor.”