Geopolitical – Week of 12.08.13

Iran Quits Nuclear Talks After US Expands Blacklist Sanctions
Zero Hedge | 13 December 2013
“We are evaluating the situation and will make the appropriate response,”…

Government Spies Are Forcing Privacy Email Services To Shut Down Because They Can’t Spy On Emails
InfoWars | 12 December 2013
PrivateSky developers speak out after being issued national security warrant…

Deal to Quell Budget Wars Sails Through U.S. House
Reuters | 12 December 2013
A breakthrough budget deal that avoids a government shutdown in January and blunts automatic spending cuts easily won passage…

Pope Francis Named Time Person of the Year 2013
CNN | 11 December 2013
Time named Pope Francis its person of the year Wednesday after nine months of a papacy…

Edward Snowden’s Statement to FP on His Selection as a Global Thinker
FP | 11 December 2013
Edward Snowden, who has become the public face of an international debate over surveillance, tops the list of Foreign Policy’s Global Thinkers for 2013…

Iceland Jails Former Kaupthing Bank Bosses
BBC | 12 December 2013
Four former bosses from the Icelandic bank Kaupthing have been sentenced to between three and five years in prison…

Chinese Don’t See United States As An Enemy, Study Finds, But They Distrust Its Government
Washington Post | 10 December 2013
While China’s anti-U.S. rhetoric gets a lot of attention, the country’s elites and public are in reality less antagonistic toward the United States…

Israel’s Fischer Picked to be Next Fed Vice Chair
Reuters | 11 December 2013
White House offered job to former head of Bank of Israel…

Icelanders Overthrow Government and Rewrite Constitution After Banking Fraud-No Word From US Media
Las Vegas Guardian Express | 02 December 2013
Can you imagine participating in a protest outside the White House and forcing the entire U.S. government to resign?

Snowden Leak Reveals NSA Tracks Cell Phone Locations on Unprecedented Scale – Report
RT | 04 December 2013
The US National Security Agency collects and logs almost 5 billion cellphone records each day…

Twitter, Facebook and More Demand Sweeping Changes to US Surveillance
The Guardian | 09 December 2013
The world’s leading technology companies have united to demand sweeping changes to US surveillance laws, urging an international ban on bulk collection of data to help preserve the public’s “trust in the internet”…

Russian News Agency RIA Novosti Closed Down
BBC | 09 December 2013
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has abolished the country’s state-owned news agency RIA Novosti.

Record Outdoor Radiation Level That ‘Can Kill In 20 Min’ Detected at Fukushima
RT | 09 December 2013
Outdoor radiation levels have reached their highest at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant,warns the operator company…

Israel Claims ‘Historic’ Water Agreement Will Save Dead Sea
The Telegraph | 09 December 2013
Israel on Monday hailed a “historic agreement” that it claimed would save the sinking Dead Sea by linking it with the Red Sea through a 112-mile underground pipeline…

Whose Sarin?
London Review of Books | 08 December 2013
Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack…

Budget Deal Expected This Week Amounts to a Cease-Fire as Sides Move to Avert a Standoff
The Washington Post | 08 December 2013
House and Senate negotiators were putting the finishing touches Sunday…

Let’s Get This Class War Started
TruthDig | 20 October 2013
“The rich are different from us,” F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have remarked to Ernest Hemingway…

The Pathology of the Rich – Chris Hedges

Information Clearing House | 08 December 2013
Chris Hedges discusses the psychology of the super rich…

ALEC Calls for Penalties on ‘Freerider’ Homeowners in Assault on Clean Energy
The Guardian | 04 December 2013
An alliance of corporations and conservative activists is mobilising to penalise homeowners who install their own solar panels…

Jerry Brown Signs California Ban On Indefinite Detentions
The Huffington Post | 02 October 2013
Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a statewide ban on indefinite detentions into law Tuesday, prohibiting compliance with provisions of federal law…