Here we go again. According to a piece in Politico Magazine former Secretary of State and likely 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had some harsh words related to progressives in her $400,000 speeches for Goldman Sachs and friends. Clinton decided to use her speaking opportunity before the super rich to attack those criticizing Wall Street and its numerous criminal practices.

Ordinarily these masters of the universe might have groaned at the idea of a politician taking the microphone...

But Clinton offered a message that the collected plutocrats found reassuring, according to accounts offered by several attendees, declaring that the banker-bashing so popular within both political parties was unproductive and indeed foolish.

Foolish, as in you don't get paid $400,000 for saying it? Why criticize Goldman Sachs when you can get paid $400,000 for talking to them the way they like?

Striking a soothing note on the global financial crisis, she told the audience, in effect: We all got into this mess together, and we're all going to have to work together to get out of it. What the bankers heard her to say was just what they would hope for from a prospective presidential candidate: Beating up the finance industry isn't going to improve the economy - it needs to stop.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) voiced horror today at reports that as many as 28 Syrian children were killed in a bombing raid in Aleppo while the UN World Food Programme (WFP) announced plans to expand emergency food aid to over 7 million displaced Syrians in what it called "the worst humanitarian crisis ... in decades."

"Recent assessments show that almost half the population inside Syria is food insecure and close to 6.3 million people need urgent, life-saving, food aid, victims of the nearly three-year-old conflict that has pitched forces loyal to President Bashar al - Assad against groups seeking to oust him. So far more than 100,000 people have been killed and 8 million driven from their homes.
"This is the worst humanitarian crisis that we have seen in decades, with every day more vulnerable Syrians pushed into hunger," WFP's Syria Emergency Coordinator Muhannad Hadi said in announcing the plans for 2014 to feed 4.25 million displaced Syrians inside their country and around 2.9 million others who fled to neighbouring States.

In the nation's capital today, a federal judge has ruled that the National Security Agency's program of bulk phone record collection violates the reasonable expectation of privacy guaranteed to Americans by the Constitution. The judge ordered the federal government to stop gathering call data on two plaintiffs, and to destroy all previously-collected records of their call histories.

The ruling by Judge Richard Leon (PDF Link), a US district judge in the District of Columbia, is stayed pending a likely appeal--which may take months. In his 68-page memorandum, Leon wrote that the NSA's vast collection of Americans' phone metadata constitutes an unreasonable search or seizure under the Fourth Amendment.

"Father of the Constitution" James Madison would be "aghast" at the NSA's actions if he were alive today, wrote Leon. "The government does not cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA's bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack," the judge wrote.

"The more you approach infinity," the French novelist Gustave Flaubert wrote, "the deeper you penetrate terror."

So it is with Kim Jong Un, already the most dangerous man in the most precarious nuclear state in the world. After the swift execution this week of his uncle-cum-regent, Jang Song Taek, he has become even more dangerous. Kim has boxed himself into a corner where it is hard to fathom a peaceful future for either his family dynasty or the country he rules.

The full implications of this bloody purge will reveal themselves over time as additional disturbing revelations seep out. But Kim's murderous act leaves an indelible stain. Global risk is now heightened, as the slaughter at the top of Pyongyang's pyramid locks Kim into a reign of terror, with consequences that threaten the security of the entire region.

There is little doubting Uncle Jang's "acts of treachery." To be sure, some of the myriad charges against Jang, listed in a remarkable North Korean news release, belong in the theater of the absurd (underselling his nephew's stunning achievements, presumably a water park in East Pyongyang and a ski resort set to open at month's end). But there was indeed skullduggery afoot. Clearly Jang was guilty of building his personal power, a threat to the 30-year-old Kim, whose bloodline entitles him, not the man who married his aunt, to claim the mantle of his father, the late "Dear Leader."

Edward Snowden, the former security contractor who leaked a trove of National Security Agency documents, welcomed a court ruling on Monday that declared the bulk collection of Americans' telephone records to be a likely violation of the US constitution.

Snowden said the ruling, by a US district judge, justified his disclosures.

"I acted on my belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts," he said in comments released through Glenn Greenwald, the former Guardian journalist who received the documents from Snowden.

"Today, a secret program authorised by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights. It is the first of many," said Snowden, whose statement was first reported by the New York Times.

White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed the suggestion on Monday that the United States could grant amnesty to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden if he were to turn over the documents in his possession.

"Our position has not changed on that matter at all," Carney told reporters at a briefing in response to a question. "Mr. Snowden has been accused of leaking classified information and he faces felony charges here in the United States. He should be returned to the United States as soon as possible, where he will be accorded full due process in our system."

Documents leaked by Snowden have revealed details of widespread surveillance by the NSA and ignited a furor over the agency's spying.

POTUS, self-appointed voice of global democracy, is a sham; worse, delusional if he swallows his rhetoric, cruelly opportunistic if, as I believe, he doesn't. The analogy that comes to mind here, fortunately a hypothetical, would be J. Edgar Hoover, at a service for Dr. King. Blood on his hands, Obama the inversion of Mandela at every turn, yet ringing the changes of freedom, democracy, peace, while the Behemoth of global interventionism, like a massive steamroller, plows forward, the Middle East and China flashpoints in a comprehensive hegemonic framework. The world's ranking militarist, in point of "assets," expenditures, arsenals, geostrategic planning, preens before the world audience, speaking power to truth, rather than the reverse, even stooping to the deception of a handshake with Raul Castro knowing full well the contrived symbolism of standing in Mandela's shadow has no bearing whatever on the half-century embargo of Cuba, the sanctions representing a vain attempt at destroying an alternative form of social life which has brought only unnecessary suffering to a proud people.

Showmanship is cheap; if I were Raul I would have spit in his eye, and told him to move on. No, courtesy and protocol have no place where oppressors are involved.

I will quote only sparingly from Obama's address - what's the use, when honeyed words fly on serpent's wings? The striking point is how much he is in denial, his words applied to Mandela (meant really to justify his own actions) become razor-like indictments of his record. There is his use of the word "ubuntu," identified with Mandela, eliciting applause, which signifies that "we are all bound together in ways that are invisible to the eye; that there is a oneness to humanity; that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others, and caring for those around us." That by itself, the vulgarization of ubuntu - through the use of demonization of all who contest American rulership, worse still, whose sharing and caring by US forces translates as drone missiles on funerals and other "collateral damage" - sets the stage for self-congratulation as a caring leader solicitous of the welfare of all Americans.

A federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency program which collects information on nearly all telephone calls made to, from or within the United States is likely unconstitutional.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon found that the program appears to violate the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. He also said the Justice Department had failed to demonstrate that collecting the information had helped to head off terrorist attacks.

Acting on a lawsuit brought by conservative legal activist Larry Klayman, Leon issued a preliminary injunction barring the NSA from collecting so-called metadata pertaining to the Verizon accounts of Klayman and one of his clients. However, the judge stayed the order to allow for an appeal.

Lobbyists and members of Congress have been rated as the least honest and ethical professionals in the United States, according to a new survey.

A Gallup poll published on Monday showed that only 6 percent of Americans rate lobbyists as having "high" or "very high" honesty and ethical standards. In fact, lobbyists earned the lowest place out of the 22 professions on the poll.

The abysmal ranking for lobbyists is not much of a surprise since 7 out of every 10 Americans believe lobbyists have too much power in the US, according to another Gallup poll conducted in April.

US lawmakers were the next in the worst ratings with only 8 percent of people saying their representatives in Congress have high ethical standards.

Down from 9 percent in November, members of Congress continue to fail to impress the public.

José "Pepe" Mujica shot back on Friday at the president of the International Narcotics Control Board, a U.N. agency, for saying that his administration refused to meet with the agency's officials before legalizing marijuana this week.

Mujica batted down the criticism, insisting that his administration is open to discussing the law and accusing the INCB President Raymond Yans of applying a double standard by criticizing Uruguay, even as U.S. states pass laws to legalize recreational marijuana consumption.

"Tell this old guy not to lie," Mujica told reporters, according to Colombian daily El Espectador. "Any guy in the street can meet with me. Let him come to Uruguay and meet with me whenever he wants... He thinks that because he's in an international position, he can tell whatever lie he wants."