Die Debatte um eine zu enge Verbindung von Journalisten deutscher Leitmedien mit transatlantischen Lobbynetzwerken reißt nicht ab. Detailliert äußert sich zu den Vorwürfen nun auch der Außenpolitikchef der Süddeutschen Zeitung, Stefan Kornelius. Stimmen aus der Medienwissenschaft kritisieren seine Stellungnahme. Auch die kürzlich erfolgte Umstellung der Leserforen bei der Süddeutschen sorgt für Kritik.

In 2007, Jeffrey Scudder, a veteran information technology specialist at the Central Intelligence Agency, came across the archives of the agency's in-house magazine, Studies in Intelligence. The catch: They were classified. So Scudder filed a Freedom of Information Act request. And then things got messy. "I submitted a FOIA and it basically destroyed my entire career," he told the Washington Post.He was confronted by supervisors and accused of mishandling classified information while assembling his FOIA request. His house was raided by the FBI and his family's computers seized. Stripped of his job and his security clearance, Scudder said he agreed to retire last year after being told that if he refused, he risked losing much of his pension. Now, in response to a lawsuit filed by Scudder, the CIA has declassified and released some of the hundreds of journal articles he's requested. Nearly 250 of them have been posted on the CIA's website. Published over four decades, they offer a fascinating peek at the history of US intelligence as well as the corporate culture of "the Company."

We received trade execution reports from an active trader who wanted to know why his large orders almost never completely filled, even when the amount of stock advertised exceeded the number of shares wanted. For example, if 25,000 shares were at the best offer, and he sent in a limit order at the best offer price for 20,000 shares, the trade would, more likely than not, come back partially filled. In some cases, more than half of the amount of stock advertised (quoted) would disappear immediately before his order arrived at the exchange. This was the case, even in deeply liquid stocks such as Ford Motor Co (symbol F, market cap: $70 Billion, NYSE DMM is Barclays). The trader sent us his trade execution reports, and we matched up his trades with our detailed consolidated quote and trade data to discover that the mechanism described in Michael Lewis's "Flash Boys" was alive and well on Wall Street.

"Überwachungsstaat Bundesrepublik Deutschland? Historische Grundlagen und notwendige Konsequenzen." Vortrag zum Whistleblower-Preis 2013 - Verleihung an Edward J. Snowden

Der ehemalige "Tagesschau"-Redakteur, Publizist und Autor Volker Bräutigam hat beim Rundfunkrat des NDR Beschwerde wegen der desinformierenden Berichterstattung über die Festnahme von Nato-Militärbeobachtern in der Ukraine eingereicht. Die Redaktion ARD-aktuell mit Sitz in Hamburg behaupte den Tatsachen widersprechend, die Gefangenen seien Teilnehmer einer "OSZE-Mission" gewesen. Bräutigam sieht in der von Berichterstattung einen Verstoß gegen die Bestimmungen des Staatsvertrages des Norddeutschen Rundfunks, vor allem gegen den Programmauftrag ("objektiver und umfassender Überblick"), die Programmgrundsätze ("internationale Verständigung fördern, für die Friedenssicherung eintreten") sowie die Programmgestaltung ("zur Wahrheit verpflichtet", "sachlich und umfassend zu unterrichten"). Das Schreiben im Wortlaut:

Schmitt beweist in seinem Antrag, dass Politik immer da ist, wo auch Noten sind. Oder, um es in Schmitt'schen Original-Worten wiederzugeben: "Heißt, bei Liedern, Text mit Musik beträgt der politische Anteil allein durch die Musik immer mindestens 50 Prozent." - "Immer" und "mindestens" - schon für diese Offenbarung sollte die Musikwelt Schmitt dankbar sein. Schmitt also will der Linken das Singen der Internationalen verbie... nein, das wäre zu profan. Lesen wir Schmitt besser wieder im Original: Aussetzung der akustischen oder gesanglich musikalischen Intonierung des Liedes 'Die Internationale' innerhalb der Partei DIE LINKE, bis ein Ergebnis über die zukünftige Anwendung und Verwendung vorliegt, da die gesangliche musikalische Intonierung des Liedes 'Die Internationale' zwar kämpferisch, aber auch militaristisch, gewalt- und kriegsverherrlichend ist, ein Symbol des Kapitalismus darstellt und Militarismus ein Element des rechten politischen Spektrums ist, genauso wie die deutsche Nationalhymne." Schmitt sieht auch die Musikrichtung Techno in gleicher Traditionslinie, "da dort die monotone technologische Zählweise 01 01 01 01 ... ist, woraus sich ein monotoner Musikrhythmus ergibt, der somit auch eine moderne Interpretationsform des Militarismus ist." Daraus erklärten sich, sagt Schmitt, "auch die Besucher von sogenannten Techno-Loveparades, die vorwiegend aus dem konservativen bis rechtspolitischen Spektrum kommen".

In this talk, artist Trevor Paglen discusses his work attempting to “see” the various aspects of the secret state. In examples ranging from tracking spy satellites to foraging through the bureaucratic refuse of CIA front companies, Paglen will discuss methods used to identify and exploit structural contradictions in classified programs which render them visible, and comment on the aesthetics and politics of attempting to “see” secrecy.

Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill travels to Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other countries where the United States has taken military action. In Afghanistan, he investigates a night raid conducted by the Joint Special Operations Command. He also investigates the U.S. assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki. The documentary also shares testimonies from CIA agents, Special Forces operators, military generals, and warlords backed by the United States. Dirty Wars premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2013. The film competed in the U.S. documentary section, and it won the Cinematography award.

As the machinery for a U.S.-led military intervention in Syria gathers pace following last week’s chemical weapons attack, the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit. Interviews with people in Damascus and Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital, where the humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders said at least 355 people had died last week from what it believed to be a neurotoxic agent, appear to indicate as much. However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack. “My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta. Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father described the weapons as having a “tube-like structure” while others were like a “huge gas bottle.” Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels. “They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K.’ “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”

An undercover police officer posing for years as an environmental activist co-wrote a libellous leaflet that was highly critical of McDonald's, and which led to the longest civil trial in English history, costing the fast-food chain millions of pounds in fees. Lambert was deployed by the special demonstration squad (SDS) – a top-secret Metropolitan police unit that targeted political activists between 1968 until 2008, when it was disbanded. He co-wrote the defamatory six-page leaflet in 1986 – and his role in its production has been the subject of an internal Scotland Yard investigation for several months. At no stage during the civil legal proceedings brought by McDonald's in the 1990s was it disclosed that a police infiltrator helped author the leaflet.

Im März 2010 hat das Bundesverfassungsgericht die Pläne der Bundesregierung zur Vorratsdatenspeicherung kassiert. Bemängelt wurde nicht die Speicherung als solches, vielmehr die gesetzliche Grundlage dazu. Die Karlsruher Richter setzten der Regierung eine Frist bis Juni 2013, ein neues Gesetz musste her. Das ist auch geschehen, still und heimlich ausgehandelt, nahezu unbemerkt von der deutschen Öffentlichkeit. Am Abend des 21. März hat der Deutsche Bundestag mit den Stimmen von CDU, CSU, FDP und SPD die Änderung des Telekommunikationsgesetzes sowie die Neuregelung der Bestandsdatenauskunft beschlossen. Herausgekommen ist nicht etwa eine Einschränkung der staatlichen Schnüffelei – sondern das genaue Gegenteil.

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

The real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast and invasive these surveillance activities are.

Speaking before a crowd of tech geeks at GigaOM's Structure:Data conference in New York City, CTO Ira "Gus" Hunt said that the world is increasingly awash in information from text messages, tweets, and videos -- and that the agency wants all of it."The value of any piece of information is only known when you can connect it with something else that arrives at a future point in time," Hunt said. "Since you can't connect dots you don't have, it drives us into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it forever." Hunt's comments come two days after Federal Computer Week reported that the CIA has committed to a massive, $600 million, 10-year deal with Amazon for cloud computing services.

Die Bombe, die am 10. Dezember auf einem Bahngleis des Bonner Hauptbahnhofs abgestellt worden war, besaß, anders als bisher behauptet, doch keinen Zünder. „Die Bombe war nicht sprengfähig, weil ein Zünder fehlte“, sagte ein hoher Sicherheitsbeamter der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung (F.A.S). Zuvor hatte es geheißen, dass die Bombe gezündet worden, aber wegen eines Baufehlers nicht detoniert sei. Darauf hätten ein niedriger Ladestand der Batterien und Schmauchspuren an der Tasche hingewiesen, in der die Bombe transportiert worden war.

Die mutmaßliche Rechtsterroristin Beate Zschäpe ist unmittelbar nach ihrer Flucht aus Zwickau von einem Handy angerufen worden, das auf das sächsische Innenministerium zugelassen ist. Das geht aus einem Vermerk des Bundeskriminalamtes hervor, der dieser Zeitung vorliegt. Die Dresdner Landtagsabgeordnete der Linken, Kerstin Köditz, will nun von der Staatsregierung die Hintergründe der Anrufe erfahren. „Die katastrophale Informationspolitik des Innenministers schürt das Misstrauen gegen die Sicherheitsbehörden in diesem Fall“, sagte sie dieser Zeitung.

You know what else has changed? You and I – to our shame. Entraptment is illegal  – but the question of whether law enforcement set up a legal sting or illegal entrapment is for a jury to decide. Entrapment was why juries acquitted the defendants in the Camden, VVAW, and Harrisburg cases. "How stupid did those people in Washington think we were?" a Harrisburg juror told a reporter. The feds don’t have to worry about folks like that any more. Not a single "terrorism" indictment has been thrown out for entrapment since 9/11 – not the Liberty City goofballs supposedly planning to blow up the Sears Tower who had no weapons and refused them with offered; not the Newburgh, New York outfit whose numbers included a schizophrenic who saved his own urine in bottles. (Even the judge who sentenced them said "the government made them terrorists.")

Iran over its nuclear program have come and gone for years. In recent weeks such talk has intensified, though it's still anybody's guess as to whether Israel or the United States might openly carry out military action any time soon. But most experts agree on one thing: A covert war with Iran has already been raging for years. Details are often murky, but the conflict has been punctuated with brazen assassinations, exploding missile sites, crippling cyberattacks, and a litany of arrests and spying allegations on all sides. Below is a timeline of major developments in the war—or at least the ones that are publicly known.

Here's a crash course on the "democratic" machinations of the Arab League - rather the GCC League, as real power in this pan-Arab organization is wielded by two of the six Persian Gulf monarchies composing the Gulf Cooperation Council, also known as Gulf Counter-revolution Club; Qatar and the House of Saud. Essentially, the GCC created an Arab League group to monitor what's going on in Syria. The Syrian National Council - based in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries Turkey and France - enthusiastically supported it. It's telling that Syria's neighbor Lebanon did not. When the over 160 monitors, after one month of enquiries, issued their report ... surprise! The report did not follow the official GCC line - which is that the "evil" Bashar al-Assad government is indiscriminately, and unilaterally, killing its own people, and so regime change is in order. ... The report is adamant. There was no organized, lethal repression by the Syrian government against peaceful protesters. Instead, the report points to shady armed gangs as responsible for hundreds of deaths among Syrian civilians, and over one thousand among the Syrian army, using lethal tactics such as bombing of civilian buses, bombing of trains carrying diesel oil, bombing of police buses and bombing of bridges and pipelines.

Der am Ort des Geschehens im Innenhof eines Hauses der Berliner Krumme Straße verantwortliche Einsatzleiter, der Staatsschutzbeamte Helmut Starke, hatte als Kurras' Vorgesetzter erklärt, er habe den Schützen erst erheblich später gesehen. Nun zeigen Fotos den leitenden Beamten der Berliner Polizei wenige Meter von der Stelle entfernt, an der Kurras aus kurzer Distanz den Schuss abgefeuert hat. Den Aussagen Starkes widerspricht insbesondere ein weiteres Foto, das jetzt im SPIEGEL erstmals vollständig veröffentlicht wird: Es zeigt nicht nur Starke und den verwundet am Boden liegenden Ohnesorg, sondern in unmittelbarer Nähe auch den Todesschützen Kurras. Auf einem weiteren bislang unbekannten Bild ist die Situation der Schussabgabe zu sehen. Dabei stützt sich Kurras mit der linken Hand auf einen Kollegen der Polizei, während er mit der rechten Hand schießt. Der Name des Kollegen ist offenbar gezielt aus den Akten herausgehalten worden, er wurde nie vernommen. Ebenfalls nicht vernommen wurden drei Schutzpolizisten, die wahrscheinlich noch nach dem tödlichen Treffer auf den bereits am Boden liegenden Ohnesorg eingeprügelt hatten. Ihre Namen sind bis heute nicht ermittelt.  

A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran. ... A spate of stories in 2007 and 2008, including a report by ABC News and a New Yorker article, suggested that the United States was offering covert support to Jundallah. The issue has now returned to the spotlight with the string of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and has outraged serving and retired intelligence officers who fear that Israeli operations are endangering American lives.

Eigentlich soll sich Oberst Przybyl zu Vorwürfen betreffend der Ermittlungen zum tragischen Flugzeugunglück vor zwei Jahren äussern, bei dem der polnische Präsident und ein Grossteil der polnischen Elite starb. Nach einer Erklärung bittet er die Journalisten den Raum zu verlassen, er brauche eine Pause. Einer der Journalisten lässt seine Kamera laufen. Man sieht wie Przybyl die Tür hinter den Journalisten verschliesst und dann aus dem Bild läuft. Sekunden später hört man wie eine Pistole entsichert und abgefeuert wird. Przybyl überlebt den Selbstmordversuch und liegt nun mit einer Kopfverletzung im Krankenhaus.

An Open Letter to Terry Allen, Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, David Corn, Chris Hayes, George Monbiot, Matthew Rothschild, and Matt Taibbi: According to several left-leaning critics of the 9/11 Truth Movement, some of its central claims, especially about the destruction of the World Trade Center, show its members to be scientifically challenged. In the opinion of some of these critics, moreover, claims made by members of this movement are sometimes unscientific in the strongest possible sense, implying an acceptance of magic and miracles. After documenting this charge in Part I of this essay, I show in Part II that the exact opposite is the case: that the official account of the destruction of the World Trade Center implies miracles (I give nine examples), and that the 9/11 Truth Movement, in developing an alternative hypothesis, has done so in line with the assumption that the laws of nature did not take a holiday on 9/11. In Part III, I ask these left-leaning critics some questions evoked by the fact that it is they, not members of the 9/11 Truth Movement, who have endorsed a conspiracy theory replete with miracle stories as well as other absurdities.

Belegen soll das nun eine Reihe von Dokumenten aus einer privaten Klage (King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association et al v. J. Kenneth Blackwell et al), die letzte Woche veröffentlicht wurden und es IT-Experten ermöglichen sollten, die Plausibilität des Verdachts selbst zu prüfen. Denn darunter befinden sich eine detaillierte grafische System-Konfiguration des elektronischen Wahlsystems, die Verträge zwischen den Behörden Ohios und der EDV-Firma sowie das Protokoll von Connells' Befragung, der sechs Wochen nach seiner Aussage bei einem bis heute ungeklärten Flugzeugabsturz starb und zuvor massiv bedroht und zum Schweigen verpflichtet worden sein soll.