All older articles that appeared in this section through December 31, 2012 can be found in our archives. Starting in 2013 we will no longer be archiving articles in this section.

George W. Bush's '4th term'?
by GLENN THRUSH
"For all his campaign-trail talk of running the “most transparent administration” in U.S history, Obama never promised to reverse the 43rd president’s policies on domestic anti-terrorism surveillance — and he’s been good on his word."

Obama’s “Dirty Wars” — and a soiled presidency
Reporter Jeremy Scahill's riveting film helps explain how the "transformational presidency" turned to nightmare
by ANDREW O'HEHIR

The Momentous Confrontation in Turkey
by Bernard Weiner
"The current political situation in Turkey is explosive and how it plays out will alter that region of the world and beyond for many years."

Who are the real criminals in NSA case?
Whistleblower Edward Snowden was simply doing what the government said: "If you see something, say something"
by DAVID SIROTA
"Namely, who are the true criminals – those who violate the law, or those like 29-year-old Edward Snowden who blow the whistle on the violations?"

Edward Snowden: saving us from the United Stasi of America
Snowden's whistleblowing gives us a chance to roll back what is tantamount to an 'executive coup' against the US constitution
by Daniel Ellsberg

Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data
Revealed: The NSA's powerful tool for cataloguing global surveillance data – including figures on US collection
by Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill

Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations
The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows
by Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras in Hong Kong

THE DRONE RANGER: OBAMA’S DIRTY WARS
by Greg Palast
"Every Tuesday, President Obama personally checks off the names of people he wants killed."

Big Money and the NSA Scandal ... How Dangerous is the "Security/Digital Complex"?
by Richard Eskow
"It should be self-evident that recent NSA revelations bring up some grave concerns about civil liberties. But they also raise other profound and troubling questions - about the privatization of our military, our culture's inflated expectations for digital technology, and the increasingly cozy relationship between Big Corporations (including Wall Street) and Big Defense."

This is how you talk about military sex abuse
A blistering message from a general gets everything right VIDEO
by MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS

How to navigate the Internet around PRISM
Google and YouTube may be under NSA surveillance, but you can still surf the web without Big Brother watching
by KRIS HOLT

What spying apologists don’t tell you about “thwarted plots”
Defenders of the government's spying programs claim they're stopping massive attacks. Here's the real story
by Marcy Wheeler

Edward Snowden: A libertarian hero
An epic showdown, inspired by the Internet's core values: "Information wants to be free" challenges the NSA
by Andrew Leonard

Greenwald’s long battle against the surveillance state
While at Salon, the former litigator wrote regularly of the danger of ever-expanding dragnets VIDEO
by Natasha Lennard
"Throughout his career and time at Salon, he argued against the expanding surveillance dragnet, the government agencies, private contractors and political ideologies upholding it."

Mad about NSA’s overreach? Blame Congress
There’s plenty of fault to go around, from Bush to Obama to NSA itself. But the legislative branch truly failed us
by JONATHAN BERNSTEIN

How powerful elites divide the rest of us
The split between political junkies and everyone else stifles meaningful activism. Here's how to break out of it
by DAVID SIROTA

Thomas Drake: The NSA will come after him with everything they’ve got
The former whistle-blower explains surveillance algorithms and Edward Snowden's future job prospects
by Dina Fine Maron

“When Americans understand, they become outraged”
The StopWatching.Us campaign aims to turn grass-roots anger at secret surveillance into political action
by Andrew Leonard

Stop blaming technology for high unemployment!
If our government invested more in education and raised the minimum wage, we wouldn't be having this inane debate
by Robert Reich

Put the NSA on trial
With potential perjury by top officials, and new questions about spying, let's stop assuming everything is legal
by David Sirota

Surveillance: A Threat to Democracy
by THE NYT EDITORIAL BOARD
"But Americans should not be fooled by political leaders putting forward a false choice. The issue is not whether the government should vigorously pursue terrorists. The question is whether the security goals can be achieved by less-intrusive or sweeping means, without trampling on democratic freedoms and basic rights."

5 things we still don’t know about the NSA “black hole”
Secrecy around its surveillance program means even basic questions have gone unanswered
by JUSTIN ELLIOTT AND THEODORIC MEYER

James Clapper must go
His attempts to mislead the nation -- and absurd claims afterward -- should get him fired and prosecuted
by DAVID SIROTA

No one understands what treason is
Has anyone accusing Snowden of treason actually read the Constitution?
by ALEX SEITZ-WALD

Why Obama Cannot Undo The Surveillance Society—But We Can
by Russ Baker

US to Supply Syrian Rebels with Heavy Weapons
by Timothy Gatto
"Americans are being railroaded into another lose/lose situation in the Middle-east to stop the political hemorrhaging here in America."

NSA surveillance didn’t lead to capture of deadly terrorist
Investigation reveals the US tracked down key plotter in Mumbai attacks after being tipped by British intelligence
by SEBASTIAN ROTELLA

Making Alberto Gonzales Look Good
by ANDREW ROSENTHAL
"You have to wonder about giving a position of vast responsibility to someone who can beat Mr. Gonzales in dishonesty."

Snowden deserves our sympathy
Government has too many of us convinced that the whistle-blower is somehow worse than the crimes he reports
by DAVID SIROTA
"First and foremost, the backlash reveals that Permanent Washington doesn’t work for We the People — it works to protect itself. We know this because whereas Snowden is vilified for disclosing information that’s inconvenient to Permanent Washington, those who leak classified information that is advantageous to Permanent Washington are left alone."

How NSA’s just like Wall Street
Neither is held accountable for its misdeeds, and both are destroying American democracy
by ROBERT REICH

What you should know about developing Syria situation
The conventional wisdom is over-hyping recent events, and gets U.S. strategy wrong. Here's what's really happening
by BRIAN KATULIS

It's High Time We Abolished the Department of Homeland Security
by Thom Hartmann
" Returning to dozens of independent agencies will return internal checks-and-balances to within the Executive branch, and actually make us both safer and less likely to be the victims of government snooping overreach."

Obama's Dangerous Dilemma
by Robert Parry
"His dangerous dilemma is this: the planet is facing a rising tide of existential threats -- from widening income inequality to life-threatening global warming -- that require coordinated and aggressive responses from nation states and particularly the United States. But, simultaneously, his support for expanded government surveillance and national security secrecy are undermining trust in government."

Truth Over Truthiness Is Job One for Watchdog Journalists
by Dan Froomkin
"But there's another, maybe even more crucial form of watchdog reporting, especially in this age of relentless public relations and spin. It involves reporting what may well be in plain sight, contrasting that with what officials in government and other positions of power say, rebuffing and rebutting misinformation, and sometimes even taking a position on what the facts suggest is the right solution."

Dark Money Politics
by THOMAS B. EDSALL
"The flow of cash through organizations asserting tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(4) of the federal tax code has been rising exponentially, from just $5.2 million in 2006 to $310.8 million in 2012."

Clarity from Edward Snowden and Murky Response from Progressive Leaders in Congress
by Norman Solomon

Meet the New George Soros
The aging, mostly hands-off Soros is still the right's biggest bogeyman. Conservatives should pay more attention to Jeffrey Katzenberg.
by Andy Kroll

How liberals saved California
It wasn’t Jerry Brown’s austerity that led the fiscal comeback. It was the state’s smart, bold progressive movement
by DAVID DAYEN

Worse Than Watergate? The Ultimate White House Scandal Matrix
by Dave Gilson
"But if you're interested in making a more subtle and perhaps accurate comparison, you need only refer to the United States' long history of White House scandals, starting in the first days of the republic."

Viewpoints: Justice and the court martial of Pte Manning
Accused Wikileaks leaker Pte First Class Bradley Manning has already pleaded guilty to 10 of 22 charges against him and faces up to 20 years in prison. So why is the US government still pursuing its prosecution, including on a charge of aiding the enemy, a capital crime?
A BBC interview of national security analysts and their views

Drone attacks continue, the FBI killed an unarmed witness, and Obama aides cash in
A video informally titled "the care and feeding of a young imperial bureaucrat" viscerally conveys the rot that is Washington
by Glenn Greenwald

Imprisoned CIA Torture Whistleblower John Kiriakou Pens “Letter from Loretto”
by Brian Sonenstein
"Former CIA agent John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on the US government’s use of torture under the Bush administration, is currently serving a 30 month sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pennsylvania."

Why are we here? Evolution’s dirty secrets
The dirty secret of evolution is that it's a lot more like the game of Mousetrap than you might think
by DORION SAGAN

Manning trial begins: Here’s what you need to know
As the court martial begins, government attempts to charge him with espionage, aiding the enemy will be revealing
by NATASHA LENNARD

Democrats’ deal-making fetish will backfire
Chuck Schumer really wants the Senate immigration bill to be bipartisan -- which will ensure that the bill is awful
by JOAN WALSH

Don’t Trust the Pentagon to End Rape
by KIRBY DICK
"The military has a problem with embedded, serial sexual predators. According to a 2011 report from the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault and Prevention Office, 90 percent of military rapes are committed by men with previous histories of assault."

The question libertarians just can’t answer
If your approach is so great, why hasn’t any country anywhere in the world ever tried it?
by Michael Lind

President Obama’s Dragnet
by THE NYT EDITORIAL BOARD
"The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it."

Bradley Manning and Our Real Secrecy Problem
by Denver Nicks
"By leaking three quarters of a million classified documents to WikiLeaks, Manning didn’t reveal all or even most of the United States’ secrets."

On whistleblowers and government threats of investigation
No healthy democracy can endure when the most consequential acts of those in power remain secret and unaccountable
by Glenn Greenwald
"They did not act with any self-interest in mind. The opposite is true: they undertook great personal risk and sacrifice for one overarching reason: to make their fellow citizens aware of what their government is doing in the dark. Their objective is to educate, to democratize, to create accountability for those in power."

NSA PRISM program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others
Top secret PRISM program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Skype and Yahoo
Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007
by Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill
"The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian."

Bradley Manning Is Guilty of "Aiding the Enemy" -- If the Enemy Is Democracy
by Norman Solomon
"But the prosecution of Manning is about carefully limiting the information that reaches the governed. Officials who run U.S. foreign policy choose exactly what classified info to dole out to the public."

"Ridiculous Manning Trial Proves Demand For Whistleblowers"
by RT TV

There Is A War On Ordinary People And Feminists Are Needed At The Front
by John Pilger
"The problem with media-run 'conversations' on gender is not merely the almost total absence of male participants, but the suppression of class.

General deals major blow to military’s superiority myth
America honors soldiers -- but often bashes other public servants. Now, a general questions that double standard
by DAVID SIROTA

NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily
Exclusive: Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama
by Glenn Greenwald
"The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing."

“Now we are all persons of interest”
NSA whistle-blower Thomas Drake tells Salon why the Verizon surveillance is the new normal, and may never be undone
by NATASHA LENNARD

Is the government spying on environmental groups?
Corporations are teaming up with government agencies to put law-abiding anti-fracking activists under surveillance
by ADAM FEDERMAN

Yet Another Explanation for the Killing of Ibragim Todashev
The latest law enforcement account has him charging an FBI agent with a pole -- or was it a broomstick? -- even after being shot.
by CONOR FRIEDERSDORF
"Why was Ibragim Todashev, 27, killed as he was being questioned by the FBI in his Orlando apartment?"

Voting is not a right
Iraq's new constitution has something America's doesn't: The right to vote. Republicans want to keep it that way
by MICHAEL LIND

There’s no substitute for government disaster relief
The Oklahoma tornado is just the latest reminder that we rely on the state to provide for us in our time of need
by DAVID SIROTA
"It all suggests that the anti-government zeitgeist in America has become so powerful that public officials now feel compelled to downplay the public sector for fear of being tarred and feathered as a socialist, a Marxist or an opportunist unduly 'politicizing' a tragedy."

Closing Gitmo is not enough
Obama admits "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare” -- but fails to offer way out
by MARCY WHEELER

Guantanamo, Drone Strikes and the Non-War Terror War: Obama Speaks
by Marjorie Cohn

Jeremy Scahill Recounts How the US Dirty Wars Killed Women and Children in a Yemeni Village
by Jeremy Scahill

Andrew Sullivan, terrorism, and the art of distortion
Challenging the conventional western narrative on terrorism produces unique amounts of rage and bile. It's worth examining why
by Glenn Greenwald

Americans and Their Military, Drifting Apart
by KARL W. EIKENBERRY and DAVID M. KENNEDY
"AFTER fighting two wars in nearly 12 years, the United States military is at a turning point. So are the American people."

The End of the Beginning of the End
by William Rivers Pitt
"A report released early this year by the organization Oxfam International revealed that the combined income of the richest 100 people in the world is enough to end global poverty four times over, and that the gap between rich and poor has exploded by some 60% in the last 20 years."

Silencing the Whistle-Blowers
by EYAL PRESS
"If the new rules are put in place, national security could soon be invoked to deny civil servants like Franz Gayl the right to defend themselves when subjected to retaliation."

Obama's terrorism speech: seeing what you want to see
Some eager-to-believe progressives heralded the speech as a momentous change, but Obama's actions are often quite different than his rhetoric
by Glenn Greenwald

Scahill: Dirty Wars Institutionalized Despite Obama Promises
by Sarah Jaffe, an interview with Scahill

Obama's new FBI chief approved Bush's NSA warrantless wiretapping scheme
James Comey becomes just the latest symbol of the Obama legacy: normalizing what was very recently viewed as radical
by Glenn Greenwald
"How are Obama's most devoted media loyalists reacting to the news that he is about to put in charge of the FBI the Bush lawyer who authorized the illegal NSA warrantless eavesdropping program based on warped right-wing legal theories? Exactly as you would expect."

The Cold War Redux? 
Are Washington, Moscow, and Beijing Using the Global Arms Trade to Create a New Cold War? 
by Michael T. Klare
"Is it possible that we're witnessing the beginnings of a new Cold War in two key regions of the planet -- and that the harbingers of this unnerving development are arms deals?"

Widening inequality is killing the economy
The problem isn't that we've been living too well for our means, but that all our gains have been going to the top VIDEO
by Robert Reich

Will journalists take any steps to defend against attacks on press freedom?
Media outlets have awakened to the serious threats posed to journalism, but show little sign of doing anything about it
by Glenn Greenwald
"Media outlets and journalists have finally awakened to the serious threat posed by the Obama administration to press freedoms, whistle blowing and transparency."

3-D-printed guns could doom the NRA
Silver lining to the rise of printable guns: They threaten the profitability of traditional weapons manufacturers
by Josh Sager
"Will it back the new technology and promote the rights of everyone to have unlimited guns? Or, in an effort to protect its generous contributors, chart a different path?"

Lifting the Fake EU Arms Embargo: Weapons for Al Qaeda in Syria
by Stephen Lendman

Naming a Nameless War
by Andrew Bacevich
"Names bestow meaning. When it comes to war, a name attached to a date can shape our understanding of what the conflict was all about. To specify when a war began and when it ended is to privilege certain explanations of its significance while discrediting others."

Bridges Shouldn't Have to Collapse for Congress to Get Serious About Infrastructure
by John Nichols

"42" and 44
by Robert Parry
"But one has to wonder if there will be "44," a movie recognizing how racism has surrounded Barack Obama's breaking of an even bigger color barrier as the 44th president of the United States."

All older articles that appeared in this section through December 31, 2012 can be found in our archives. Starting in 2013 we will no longer be archiving articles in this section.