Analysis

By MWC News

by Ivan Eland

The firestorm of media coverage over a whistleblower’s revelation—that the National Security Agency (NSA) likely has been monitoring the telephone calls of most Americans and is likely reading some Americans’ emails, photos, and other electronic data without a search warrant when trying to catch suspected terrorists (a program called “Prism”)—has become muddled by pundits conflating the two distinct agency efforts.

Read more: NSA Snooping on Americans Is Unconstitutional and Outrageous

By Marjorie Cohn

For nearly three weeks, thousands of protestors have gathered peacefully at Occupy Gezi in Taksim Square in Istanbul. Turkish police have unleashed a brutal crackdown, resulting in three confirmed deaths and nearly 5,000 injured. According to Turkish lawyer Kerem Gulay, a Fulbright Scholar and doctoral student at Cornell Law School, police tactics include excessive beatings with police batons and rifle handles, and the use of pepper spray and other chemicals, rubber bullets, and, allegedly, real bullets.

Read more: The Turkish Spring: Lawyers Rounded Up

By Jacob Hornberger

Ever since I was a kid, I have heard Americans ask, “How could the German people have allowed the Nazi regime to commit its evil acts?”

Well, here’s the answer to that question: The German people had the same warped and distorted concept of patriotism that American statists have today.

Read more: Who Were the Patriots and Traitors in Nazi Germany?

By Sheldon Richman

It’s bad enough the federal government spies on us. Must it insult our intelligence too?

The government’s response to Edward Snowden’s leaks about the National Security Agency’s secret monitoring of the Internet and collection of our telephone logs is a mass of contradictions. Officials have said the disclosures are (1) old news, (2) grossly inaccurate, and (3) a blow to national security. It’s hard to see how any two of these can be true, much less all three.

Read more: Obama Speaks with Forked Tongue on Surveillance

By MWC News

by Norman Solomon

In Washington, where the state of war and the surveillance state are one and the same, top officials have begun to call for Edward Snowden’s head. His moral action of whistleblowing -- a clarion call for democracy -- now awaits our responses.

Read more: Historic Challenge to Support the Moral Actions of Edward Snowden