Portside

On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, many are focused on the political atmosphere in the country and the world - specifically the role of the ultra-right in whipping up hysteria, and the machinations and secret plots of the "hidden government," the spy agencies, the FBI and CIA. Now we have previously unreleased material (from the National Archives) about secret negotiations between JFK and Fidel Castro,. Was this the reason to kill?

President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas fifty years ago. And, fifty years later, a complicit media still covers up for the security state. We need to reclaim our history, writes David Talbot, the founder of Salon.com.

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The Government is collecting phone records for millions and millions of Americans under the PATRIOT Act. It's an outrage: The Guardian has obtained long sought-after evidence of the extent of ongoing spying on Americans under the PATRIOT Act -- and it's as bad as we'd worried. The NSA is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

Verizon Communications has responded to an explosive report that outlines the telecommunications giant's role in an ongoing domestic spying program. The response, in a memo to employees, seems aimed at containing a public relations disaster. The wording, however, has to adhere to restrictions, imposed on Verizon by the secret court, not to disclose that the company was ordered to hand over phone logs to the FBI and the National Security Agency.

The civil liberties group said leaked details of the case could portray the suspect in a triple murder in Waltham in an unfair light.