Sexwale, now a successful businessman and former South African government minister, was stopped for questioning at John F. Kennedy airport while attempting to enter the U.S. on a recent business trip. Security officials said they held Sexwale because his name appeared on the terrorism watch list, which wasn’t updated to reflect the fact that the ANC member ceased being a threat in his own country 20 years ago.   read more

First came the news that the NSA spied on millions of French phone calls and texts. Then it came out that the agency had tapped the cell phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel for more than ten years. Then it was been revealed that the NSA had monitored the phones of at least 35 world leaders. White House press secretary Jay Carney did little to calm the situation when he denied any present and future monitoring of the German leader’s phone, while avoiding any mention of past surveillance.   read more

“Drone strikes take out a few bad guys to be sure, but they also kill a large number of innocent civilians. Given Yemen’s tribal structure, the U.S. generates roughly forty to sixty new enemies for every AQAP [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] operative killed by drones,” Khoury wrote in an article for the Cairo Review.   read more

Iceland has once again demonstrated itself to be the best place on earth for women to live, having finished first for the fifth year in a row with the world’s smallest gender gap. The United States was ranked 23rd..The five countries with the biggest gender gap were all predominately Muslim: Yemen, Pakistan, Chad, Syria and Mauritania.   read more

The documents detailed at least 65 strikes that the Pakistani government was informed about, including dozens of drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal region. Pakistan even allowed the CIA to launch its Predator drones from local airstrips for a period time during the campaign. It also participated in the selection of drone targets. Pakistani officials were provided with maps, as well as before-and-after aerial photos of targeted compounds from late 2007 to late 2011   read more

The airship could even withstand hostile fire, thanks to a blend of unique fabrics, including bullet-proof Kevlar. But the humongous, floating surveillance center became 12,000 pounds overweight (cutting its endurance capability by 75%), fell eight months behind schedule and, after only one brief test flight over New Jersey, the Army decided to cancel it.   read more

During their phone call, Obama reportedly told Merkel that the U.S. was not listening in on her phone conversations. When reporters subsequently asked White House press secretary Jay Carney if the NSA had previously monitored Merkel’s calls, he responded that he wasn’t able to answer that question.   read more

Among the victims since early last year were a 68-year-old woman picking vegetables in a field with her grandchildren, and 18 laborers, including a 12-year-old boy, who were about to sit down together for a meal after a day’s work. Even when the drones don’t fire missiles, they are constantly hovering above, conducting round-the-clock surveillance with high-resolution cameras, according to the report.   read more

The agency “successfully exploited a key mail server in the Mexican Presidencia domain to gain first-ever access to President Felipe Calderon’s public email account,” according to an NSA document. The domain was also used by cabinet members, and contained “diplomatic, economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight into Mexico’s political system and internal stability.” The agency described the president’s office as “a lucrative source” of information.   read more

Drone warfare by the United States and other nations has come under attack from the United Nations, with a top official questioning the legality of using unmanned aircraft to kill foreign citizens. Christof Heyns, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, said in a new report that countries have relied on “wide and permissive interpretations” of international law to justify lethal drone attacks.   read more

Nearly two-thirds of this money (about $230 million) essentially got flushed because no one could account for how it was spent. The office in question blew another $138 million on spare parts to cover shortages—without first determining whether the parts were really needed. The U.S. expected the Afghans to keep records of its inventory, but they did a shoddy job.   read more

Long characterized as merely a collector of intelligence to protect the United States, the National Security Agency (NSA) has played a key role in the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) drone program to assassinate overseas targets.   read more

Baghdad was labeled the epicenter of violent deaths during the war. Coalition forces were blamed for 35% of the killings, followed by militias at 32%. However coalition forces were responsible for most of the deaths of women. According to the report, “Gunshots were reported to cause 63% of violent deaths; car bombs, 12%; and other explosions, 9%.”   read more

The government relied upon national security claims to suppress evidence and convict Basaaly Moalin in February, along with three other Somali immigrants, of funneling $8,500 to al-Shabaab in 2007 and 2008. That evidence, it turned out, was obtained via the type of mass phone surveillance of U.S. citizens that former NSA contractor Eric Snowden made known after the trial, and which the government acknowledged in July.   read more

An egregious example involved Stephen Hadley, who was often identified during his television appearances as George W. Bush’s national security advisor while calling for the Obama administration to hit Syria. What wasn’t mentioned was Hadley’s place on the board of directors of Raytheon Company, or that he owns stock in the firm. Why is this important? Raytheon manufactures the Tomahawk cruise missile, which likely would have been the weapon used to conduct strikes on Syria.   read more

In Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War, his memoir of the 2009 battle that made him famous, Meyer claimed insurgents swarmed his vehicle, leading to his fighting off the attackers with both a rifle and a machine gun. But a McClatchy investigation has uncovered videos from an Army medevac helicopter that showed no Taliban in the area where Meyer was at the time of the attack.   read more