So apparently NSA has been listening to our conversations, and - oy vey! - Israeli companies are involved in this too. Am I surprised? Not one bit. I understand that many, who are still dangerously ignorant and believe that governments have our best interests at heart, find this "revelation" rather shocking and outrageous, but the truth is that this is far from being new. I remember how many years ago I first read about a project called Echelon.

ECHELON, according to information in the European Parliament document, "On the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system)" was created to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War in the early 1960s[...]

Bamford describes the system as the software controlling the collection and distribution of civilian telecommunications traffic conveyed using communication satellites, with the collection being undertaken by ground stations located in the footprint of the downlink leg.[...]

The UK/USA intelligence community was assessed by the European Parliament (EP) in 2000 to include the signals intelligence agencies of each of the member states: UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, The Netherlands.[...]

Echelon was created long before the War [of] Terror and prior to the arrival of the Internet, meaning that back then there was no need for thorough "shaping of the public opinion", no need for media to be an overt whore for the military or intelligence agencies. NSA, CIA, Mossad, MI5, etc. just did their bloody thing and didn't worry much about whistleblowers. Of course, there were always trouble-makers, but everything was manageable (various coup d'états, COINTELPRO projects, assassinations, etc... piece of cake!), not to mention using the wonderfully silver-tongued concept of "plausible deniability", which came in handy, oh so often. In any event, in the public's eyes, intelligence agencies still had an aura of mystique about them. Hey, who wouldn't want to be a secret agent or a spy?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has defended the right by Russian special services to wiretap but stressed that such practices should take place only when they are sanctioned by a court.

"If this [wiretapping] is made within the framework of the law, by which the special services' rules of conduct are guided, this is normal. If this is made illegally, this is bad," Putin said in an interview with Russia Today.

The president said it is common knowledge that electronic intelligence-gathering services monitor citizens and organizations in an effort to fight international terrorism. "I repeat once again, inside the country we proceed from the necessity to obtain a court's sanction for such operations. Why should this not apply to the work of special services?" he said.

Peter Dale Scott continues his analysis of the U.S. system of domination. In a conference held in Moscow, this former Canadian diplomat summed up the findings of his investigation into the funding of the system with money deriving from drug trafficking and hydrocarbon deals. Although widely known, such facts are nevertheless difficult to accept.

I delivered the following remarks at an anti-NATO conference held in Moscow on May 15, 2012. I was the only North American speaker at an all-day conference, having been invited in connection with the appearance into Russian of my book Drugs, Oil, and War. [1] As a former diplomat worried about peace I was happy to attend: as far as I can tell there may be less serious dialogue today between Russian and American intellectuals than there was at the height of the Cold War. Yet the danger of war involving the two leading nuclear powers has hardly disappeared.

Unlike other speakers, my paper urged Russians - despite the aggressive activities in Central Asia of the CIA, SOCOM (US Special Operations Command), and NATO - to cooperate under multilateral auspices with like-minded Americans, towards dealing with the related crises of Afghan drug production and drug-financed Salafi jihadism.

Every person is endowed with a certain denial mechanism they can use to avoid the shame, fear, guilt and pain involved in coping with their improper actions. Instead of facing their failure, accepting reality and dealing with it, they simply enter a state of denial.

But denial extracts a heavy price from the denier. The mental effort involved in self-deception causes serious mental harm. Someone who denies facts is declaring that he has a mental problem. He needs treatment.

For 46 years we have been in this situation. We are denying one of the most significant phenomenon of our national existence, if not the most central one: the occupation.

We can use the well-worn metaphor of the huge elephant in the room, whose presence we deny. Elephant? What elephant? Here? We tiptoe around the elephant and avert our gaze so we won't have to look at it. After all, it doesn't exist.

We are ruling completely over another people. This influences every sphere of our national life - our politics, our economy, our values, our military, our legal system, our culture and more. But we don't see - and don't want to see - what is going on only a few minutes' drive from our homes, over the black line known as the Green Line.

We have become so accustomed to this situation that we see it as normal. But the occupation is intrinsically an abnormal, temporary situation.

Abdullah Gul, the president of Turkey, has called for calm after days of violence clashes between police and protesters, promising that their message has been "received".

"Democracy does not only mean elections," Mr Gul was quoted by the Anatolia news agency as saying on the fourth day of nationwide anti-government protests. "The messages delivered with good intentions have been received."

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly said that protesters were manipulated by extremist groups and should show their discontent "at the ballot box", urging them to end their demonstrations immediately.

"I am calling on all my citizens to abide by the rules and state their objections and views in a peaceful way, as they have already done," Mr Gul added.

His comments came amid reports of a 20-year-old Turkish man dying when a taxi drove into a group of demonstrators on an Istanbul highway during an anti-government protest,

There are too many immigrants in France, former prime minister Francois Fillon has said, insisting that the country cannot cope with everyone who wants to come in.

Asked on the France 2 television channel whether there are already too many immigrants in France, Fillon replied "yes".

"France today is unable to accept, in decent conditions, everyone who wants to come and live here," he added.

"Therefore we must reduce the policy of immigration, " the right-wing UMP party figure declared.

Fillon said he was proposing "like in Canada" an annual parliamentary vote on the number of immigrants to be allowed in, the professions that would be given favourable consideration and "the regions of the world for which we want to fix quotas".

The current 200,000 arrivals per year "is too much in a country suffering unemployment and an economic crisis, which must reduce its public expenditure and which has problems of national cohesion," the former prime minister said.

Conspiracy theorists claim it is a shadow world government. Former leading members tell The Telegraph it was the most useful meeting they ever went to and it was crucial in forming the European Union. Today, the Bilderberg Group meets in Britain.

"The abuse is terrible," said Peter Mandelson, leading the walking party through the throng of protesters and carrying the group's uniform orange ski jacket under his arm.

Amid the din, Peer Steinbruck, the former German Finance Minister, pointedly refused to break off his conversation with Thomas Enders, the head of defence giant EADS. Behind him, Eric Schmidt, the Google chairman, picked up the pace along the narrow road and kept his eyes fixed on the Suvretta hotel ahead. Franco Bernabe, the vice chairman of Rothschild Europe, grinned through the chorus of booing and chanting in German down megaphones, before ducking under the police tape and into the safety of the hotel's grounds.

It was June 2011. Demonstrations were sweeping through the stricken eurozone, China and North Africa. And in tranquil St Moritz, high in the Swiss alps, half a dozen of the most powerful men in the West had taken a break from a weekend of intensive and strictly confidential debate to walk in the woods, when their paths crossed with the protesters who had come from around the world to keep an eye on them.

The gathering was entirely innocent, the walking party would insist. But what were they doing there?

No such encounters will take place in Watford this week, as the Bilderberg, the annual conference for 140 of the world's most powerful, meet for four days at The Grove, a £300-a-night golf hotel close to the M25. The entire hotel has been booked out, and a high fence erected around the exclusion zone. Armed checkpoints have been set up on local roads, and locals must show their passports to enter their own driveways. The Home Office may foot the bill. A US news site dedicated to uncovering conspiracies had booked a room for last week but were told by phone not to turn up.

Ten years ago this week, President George W. Bush announced that the United States and coalition forces had begun military action against Iraq.

Here's a look back at some of the people who made headlines during the war.

Jessica Lynch

Then: Lynch, a 20-year-old private first class in the U.S. Army, was a prisoner of war who became a celebrity after American troops filmed her rescue in April 2003. She returned home to a hero's welcome and was awarded the Bronze Star. A television movie, Saving Jessica Lynch," aired in November 2003.

Now: Lynch is out of the Army, and she recently earned a college degree in elementary education. In 2007, she told a House committee that the military lied about her capture. She said she had been billed as a "little girl Rambo" who went down fighting when her convoy was ambushed. "It was not true," she said. "The truth is always more heroic than the hype."

Lynch has a young daughter, Dakota Ann, who is named in honor of Lori Ann Piestewa, Lynch's best friend who was killed in the ambush. In a 2011 interview with CNN, Lynch said the injuries she suffered in Iraq still affect her and that she wears a leg brace. She had undergone 20 surgeries and expected more to come.

As the White House faces questions about secret internet and telephone surveillance programs, investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill says, "There's a chill that's been sent through the national security reporting community."

Scahill, who investigated the United States' covert operations in the war against terrorism in a new documentary, "Dirty Wars," told Top Line in an interview recorded prior to the most recent NSA leaks that sources inside the government have grown fearful of talking to the media.

"Many sources that I used to be able to talk to through encrypted e-mail or with chats using OTR, off the record software, they won't do it anymore," Scahill said. "It's either in person or nothing. ... There's a real fear on the part of whistleblowers and sources that the Espionage Act is going to come knocking on their door one day under the Noble Peace Prize-winning, Constitutional law professor, Democratic president."

In his documentary, Scahill makes the case that the Obama administration has overstepped its stated goals of "targeted killings" of terrorists in places like Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia.

Asked if he thinks the U.S. is creating more terrorists than it is killing, Scahill responded: "I think we're creating more enemies than we are killing terrorists. When I was in Yemen, people were saying, 'You consider al Qaeda terrorism. We consider the drones terrorism.'"

Psychopaths are drawn to and uniquely capable within politics. They are charismatic, show no remorse, crave power and rise to the top. Leading psychologists have built the literature on the corporate form, but statist psychopathy bears investigation.

Pathocracy - "A system of government where a small pathological minority takes over a society of normal people." - Andrew M. Lobaczewski in Political Ponerology

Kyriarchy - A social hierarchy based on domination rather than spontaneous, voluntary order. All states are necessarily kyriarchical because the government is a monopoly on violence. Psychopaths rise to the top of coercive hierarchies like helium balloons rise to the ceilings of rooms.

Psychopathy

"Psychopaths are social predators and like all predators they are looking for feeding grounds. Wherever you get power, prestige and money you will find them."

~ Robert Hare, Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, leading psychopathy researcher

It requires a certain mindset to want to rule others. This person believes they are qualified to and morally justified in making life-changing decisions for millions at the point of a gun (state law).

Desire to rule is one thing, but the qualities that enable one to rise in the political hierarchy are perhaps rarer and more pernicious. Psychopaths are manipulative, charming, narcissistic and excellent liars. Most importantly, they score low on the empathy scale - showing little or no remorse for inflicting suffering (and readily violate the non-aggression principle). As children, many psychopaths torture animals and bully peers. They learn to mimic the normal outward display of emotionality, but it is purely an act.