From the Trenches World Report

MassPrivateI

Google Inc., the world’s largest Internet-search provider, is seeking to black out portions of a transcript from a public court hearing that includes information on how it mines data from personal e-mails.

Google has acknowledged scanning the contents of millions of email messages sent and received by student users of the company’s Apps for Education tool suite for schools.   Continue reading “Google doesn’t want the public to know how its spying on you”

MassPrivateI

Article first appeared at aclu.org:

The U.S. government (DHS/TSA) today maintains a massive watchlisting system that risks stigmatizing hundreds of thousands of people, including American citizens, as “known or suspected terrorists” based on secret standards and secret evidence, without a meaningful process to challenge error and clear their names. The watchlists in this system are shared widely within the federal government, with state and local law enforcement agencies, and even with foreign governments, heightening the negative consequences for listed individuals.    Continue reading “875,000 Americans On TSA’s No-Fly Terrorist Watchlist”

New York Times – by DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

CAIRO — United States Navy commandos seized a diverted oil tanker in the Mediterranean waters southeast of Cyprus on Monday morning, thwarting an attempt by a breakaway Libyan militia to sell its contents on the black market, the Pentagon said. No one was hurt in the operation, the Pentagon said in a statement.

The diverted tanker, called the Morning Glory, had sailed into the Libyan port of Sidra under a North Korean flag but North Korea disavowed the ship and denied having provided any authorization. News reports have said it was operated by a company based in Alexandria, Egypt, and that after leaving Libyan waters it appeared to have sailed the Mediterranean in search of a buyer for its oil.   Continue reading “U.S. Navy SEALs Take Control of Diverted Oil Tanker”

Public Intelligence

The following training circular was released by the U.S. Army in January 2014.

TC 7-100.3 Irregular Opposing Forces

• 210 pages
• January 17, 2014
• 6 MB   Continue reading “U.S. Army Irregular Opposing Forces Manual”

MuckRock – by Shawn Musgrave

FOI Requests:

• NYPD FOIL guide

Philly.com – by Sam Wood

WPXI -by SCOTT SONNER

RENO, Nev. — Authorities in a Nevada county are reviewing a “forfeiture program” and have settled lawsuits with two men who said a sheriff’s deputy violated their civil rights when they were stopped for speeding, searched for drugs and forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars.

CNN – by Matthew Ponsford and Nick Glass

Katie Hall was shocked the second she saw it: a light-bulb glowing in middle of a room with no wires attached.

Looking back, it was a crude experiment, she remembers: a tiny room filled with gigantic cooper refrigerator coils — the kind you’d see if you cracked open the back of your freezer.

She walked in and out between the coils and the bulb — and still the bulb glowed.   Continue reading “Wireless electricity? It’s here”

Chron – by ERIK SCHELZIG and BRUCE SCHREINER

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — If it isn’t fermented in Tennessee from mash of at least 51 percent corn, aged in new charred oak barrels, filtered through maple charcoal and bottled at a minimum of 80 proof, it isn’t Tennessee whiskey. So says a year-old law that resembles almost to the letter the process used to make Jack Daniel‘s, the world’s best-known Tennessee whiskey.

Now state lawmakers are considering dialing back some of those requirements that they say make it too difficult for craft distilleries to market their spirits as Tennessee whiskey, a distinctive and popular draw in the booming American liquor business.   Continue reading “Jack Daniel’s opposes changing Tenn. whiskey law”

Fox News

The United States and its European allies are expected to announce sanctions against Russia Monday after Crimea’s election chief announced that just under 97 percent of voters in the region supported leaving Ukraine and becoming a Russian province in a referendum held Sunday.

Mikhail Malyshev said in a televised news conference that the final tally of voters in favor of joining Russia was 96.77 percent. The announcement was merely confirmation of what had been expected once the referendum was announced by the region’s parliament earlier this month.    Continue reading “Crimea parliament declares independence, asks to join Russia after landslide vote”

Fox News – by Barnini Chakraborty

All Andy Johnson wanted to do was build a stock pond on his sprawling eight-acre Wyoming farm. He and his wife Katie spent hours constructing it, filling it with crystal-clear water, and bringing in brook and brown trout, ducks and geese. It was a place where his horses could drink and graze, and a private playground for his three children.

But instead of enjoying the fruits of his labor, the Wyoming welder says he was harangued by the federal government, stuck in what he calls a petty power play by the Environmental Protection Agency. He claims the agency is now threatening him with civil and criminal penalties – including the threat of a $75,000-a-day fine.    Continue reading “Wyoming welder faces $75,000 a day in EPA fines for building pond on his property”

Daily Slave – by Lee Rogers

The corporate media has literally spent over a week obsessing endlessly over conspiracy theories involving the alleged disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.  If you’ve tuned into any of the American cable news networks be it Fox News, CNN or MSNBC over the past several days you would think that this is the only news story of importance.  These propaganda pushers have logged countless hours engaging in speculation and conjecture over what may or may not have happened with this airplane.  Meanwhile, historically significant events are unfolding in Ukraine that could impact the world for years to come.  The whores in the corporate media have intentionally chosen to provide little coverage of these developments in favor of discussing hours upon hours of Flight 370 conspiracy theories.  It’d be one thing if they were providing real analysis but all of their coverage is designed for the purpose of distraction.   Continue reading “Media Focuses in on Flight 370 Conspiracy Theories while World Edges Closer to War”

Video Rebel’s Blog

The Russians pulled their Treasury bonds out of New York. And Russian corporations are pulling their money out of US banks. These are key signs that the dollar and the current US puppet government could collapse long before the 2016 elections. The dollar could never survive the sanctions Obama and Kerry are threatening. If we are lucky, President Putin of Russia and President XI Jinping of China, are too busy laughing at John Kerry to pay attention. It is not in China’s interest to force America into bankruptcy before China has squeezed every last gold bar out of US and London vaults. Their goal is to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency with a gold backed yuan.   Continue reading “If You Ever Wanted To Do Something, Do It Now. It’s All About To Blow Sky High.”

Paul Craig Roberts

In his March 6 Executive Order, “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine,” Obama declares that support for Crimean self-determination constitutes “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.” http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/06/executive-order-blocking-property-certain-persons-contributing-situation

Obama and the lawyers who drafted his executive order did not notice that the way the order is drafted it applies to Obama, to the unelected coup government in Kiev, and to the Washington and EU regimes. The order says that any person “responsible for or complicit in, or to have engaged in, directly or indirectly . . . actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in Ukraine” is subject to having his assets frozen.   Continue reading “Obama Declares Self-Determination To Be A Threat To US National Security”

Common Dreams

This month alone, “the United States delivered nearly 100 Hellfire missiles together with hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition and M4 rifles” to the Iraqi government, the U.S. Embassy to Iraq revealed Sunday.

In a public statement, the U.S. Embassy claimed the shipments were sent to aid the Iraqi government and military’s so-called “counter-terrorism” operations targeting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.   Continue reading “US Quietly Ships Hellfire Missiles, Rifles, and Ammo to Iraq”