Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa's government has recently passed a law to raise taxes on the financial sector to help raise the standard of living for the poor. President Correa, an economist who is running for re-election, has reduced poverty and increased the overall standard of living in Ecuador during his term. Understandably, the big banks, some of whom were bailed out, oppose Correa. In fact, his p ...

The CIA offered Ivan two million U.S dollars cash, in early 1986, to murder Swedens prime minister Olof Palme. With Ivan’s background in the military and as a contractor in Lybia, South Rhodesia, they thought that Ivan was the perfect man for the job. But he said "thanks, but no thanks" and went to the Swedish secret police SÄPO (säkerhetspolisen) and told that Palme’s life was in danger. They didn’t listen ...

Following an outcry from lawmakers over the portrayal of torture in the new thriller Zero Dark Thirty and its role in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, a Senate panel has launched an investigation to determine whether CIA officials intentionally misled the filmmakers. The Senate Intelligence Committee will examine records detailing meetings and conversations between intelligence officials, director Kathryn Bige ...

Only one month into the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations last year, plans were formulated to identify key figures in the movement and execute them with a coordinated assault using sniper rifles, new documents reveal. The revelation — discussed in a heavily redacted FBI memo unearthed late last month through a Freedom of Information Act request — reveals that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was aware of ...

Many documents produced by the U.S. government are confidential and not released to the public for legitimate reasons of national security.  Others, however, are kept secret for more questionable reasons.  The fact that presidents and other government officials have the power to deem materials classified provides them with an opportunity to use national security as an excuse to suppress documents and report ...

During the Cold War, the U.S. Army pursued a research program that used soldiers as lab rats to test the effects of various chemical agents—ranging "from tear gas and LSD to highly lethal nerve agents, like VX." As a huge class action suit against the government by those who were experimented upon nears its trial date, the New Yorker has dropped a huge piece full of details on just how much crazy shit our m ...

The locals had two names for it: the Big House and Waziristan House. Big House because of its unusual size, three stories tall in this one- or two-story suburb of Abbottabad, Pakistan. The second name was a kind of inside joke: Waziristan is a notoriously violent and remote area in the country’s tribal regions, where the house’s seldom-seen occupants had supposedly come from. Rumor had it they had settled i ...

The National Security Agency’s Perfect Citizen program hunts for vulnerabilities in “large-scale” utilities, including power grid and gas pipeline controllers, new documents from EPIC show. Newly released files show a secret National Security Agency program is targeting the computerized systems that control utilities to discover security vulnerabilities, which can be used to defend the United States or disr ...

I just finished re-reading Tim Weiner’s magnum opus, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA ,which is perhaps the best book ever written on the Central Intelligence Agency, and its general history of dismal failures. On the eve of the LDP’s retaking of power, December 16th 2012, I thought it might be interesting to take a look back at the LDP and how they came into being in the first place. It’s like a sto ...

It's more than about oil, stupid. It's for vast African riches. Resource/mineral wars define America's agenda. On December 15, 2006, the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) was authorized. On February 6, 2007, it was announced. On October 1, 2007, it was established. On October 1, 2008, it became operational. It's mission is controlling Africa's riches. They're vast. They're some of the world's largest a ...