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Chelsea E Manning: Fisa courts stifle the due process they were supposed to protect. End them

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

Intelligence agencies will always seek to collect more data. But the courts that oversee them must be as concerned about due process as they are with secrets

The US intelligence community is in a very poor position to be trusted with protecting civil liberties while engaging in intelligence work. When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail; when you’re a skilled intelligence professional, everything looks like a vital source for collection.

Members of the intelligence community are, it’s true, under immense stress to prevent a devastating national catastrophe. I understand a little of how that feels: while working as an analyst in Iraq, thousands of military personnel, contractors and local civilians were dependent on our ability to effectively understand the threats we were facing, and to explain them to US military commanders, the commanders of Iraqi forces and the civilian leadership of both nations. read more

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Mexican Farmers Accuse Mining Companies of Shady Tactics in Chiapas

Source: Truthout

Alberto Villatoro, a farmer in the fertile region of Los Cacaos in Chiapas, Mexico, recalls, with a mixture of sadness and anger, how innocently he used to walk over the area’s silvery blue rocks.

“I can remember those metals in the river ever since I was a child,” he told Truthout. “We would kick them around on the paths, unaware that it was titanium.”

Now those same rocks have become highly sought after, and the Chinese mining company Honour Up Trading is seeking to gain control of large swaths of land in Villatoro’s community to exploit one of the biggest seams of titanium in Mexico. “We’ve already had open-pit titanium mining here [in 2009]. Now they want to build the tunnel and leave us living on land resembling an eggshell,” he said. “That would be the end of our shared land.” read more