Portside

The plot begins in the bad years after 9/11 when the CIA embraced global torture in the war against terrorism. Official Washington was traumatized by the attack and looked the other way, pretending not to know what the spooks were doing. The men in black plucked various "terrorists" off the Arab Street shipping them to less squeamish countries around the world where the US agents used medieval methods for pain and punishment, techniques officially prohibited by US law.

A new Senate select committee is needed to investigate CIA-NSA-FBI wrong-doing - at home and abroad. Former chief counsel to the Church Committee calls for such a new committee and new investigation. As Senator Feinstein has revealed, the CIA will not only stall but even spy on Congress to impede its investigation of wrongdoing. The Church Committee found abuses and illegal acts going back to FDR's administration.

It's easy to praise people who challenge governments of the distant past, and much harder to do so for those who challenge those who wield actual power today.

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?

If unions are not speaking out against PRISM, it is because they have short memories.

Walmart just Fired 10 Strikers; Reader Comments - Rosenberg Case; North Carolina 'Moral Monday' Protests; NSA Spying; FBI's License to Kill; Syria; James Gandolfini; Summer Reading - what we missed; Population Decline and Climate Change; Message from Berlin Demonstration for Bradley Manning; March on Washington 50th Anniversary - Unfinished March Symposium - Washington DC - July 22; 60th Anniversary of Rosenberg's Execution - Carry it Forward - event report

New documents reveal the FBI has cleared its agents in every single shooting incident dating back two decades. Out of 289 shootings that were found to be deliberate, no agent was disciplined except for letters of censure in five cases. Even in a case where the bureau paid a shooting victim more than a million dollars to settle a lawsuit, the internal review did not find the agent who shot the man culpable.

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.