Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on waterboarding and exposed how CIA torture was policy, was convicted of a classified leak for sharing the name of an officer involved in the rendition program with a reporter. He is set to be sentenced to jail for thirty months on Friday.

Kiriakou appeared on an episode of "Citizen Radio" this morning. Interviewed by the show's co-host Allison Kilkenny, he revealed that his attorneys have a document showing that he clearly was the victim of a selective prosecution.

"While I confirmed the name of one CIA officer involved in the torture regime," Kiriakou stated, "There was a second CIA officer who provided the same reporter the names of ten undercover officers as well as information about counterterrorist operations and flight plans for the black flights going to CIA prisons but that CIA officer was not investigated and was not prosecuted."

The reporter is Matthew Cole, who at the time claimed to be writing a book on a CIA rendition operation in Italy.

San Francisco, California is the second-most densely populated urban area in the US, but those nearly one million residents of the City by the Bay are about to lose what little amount of privacy they have.

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has started work on a program that will update a number of the city's 18,000 streetlights during the next few years. Those new installations might do a whole lot more than just illuminate sidewalks and keep streets lit for cars, though. Through part of a pilot program, city officials can send data wirelessly between more than a dozen of those streetlights.

What kind of data can a lamppost collect, though? In San Francisco, the answer is a lot. According to a report in the SF Bay Guardian, Paradox Engineering of Switzerland has already started testing streetlamps in the city that have the ability to wirelessly transmit data from traffic signals and surveillance cameras from one device to another. Soon, though, there will be more than just 14 cameras with that kind of capability. Additionally, the city is currently searching five vendors to test even more advanced lampposts across the city.

During last year's Living Labs Global Award in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the LLGA gave Paradox the go-ahead to start testing lights in San Francisco. In a just-issued Request for Proposals, the city calls on others to pitch similar products. In the request, the City writes that as they begin replacing the 18,000 streetlights, the SFPUC "also plans to install an integrated wireless communication monitoring and control system" in order to manage the devices."

Police used a device intended to monitor terror suspects, which gathers phone data from nearby non-suspects too.

The LAPD used a cell phone monitoring device designed for counterterror purposes in routine criminal investigations 21 times in just four months last year, LA Weekly reported.

Using federal funds the police department obtained the Stingray technology, which allows police to track mobile phones in real time, with the purported intention of using the devise to monitor terror suspects. However, notes LA Weekly, the device was used in "13 percent of the 155 'cellular phone investigation cases' that Los Angeles police conducted between June and September last year" - including for burglary, drug and murder investigations.

Trying to quit smoking? You might want to move to Oregon. A new bill would classify cigarettes as a Schedule III controlled substance, making them illegal to purchase without a doctor's prescription.

Portland Rep. Mitch Greenlick introduced the bill in the Oregon State Legislature in an attempt to reduce the number of addicted people, but has received criticism from smokers and non-smokers alike who believe the initiative is not feasible.

Under Greenlick's proposal, smokers would be charged with a misdemeanor and face up to one year's imprisonment and a $6,250 fine for being caught with a cigarette or any of the other Schedule III controlled substances, including ketamine, lysergic acid and anabolic steroids.

The bill also prohibits the State Board of Pharmacy from adopting rules that exempt any nicotine products from the legislation, which would include chewing tobacco, nicotine patches and gums, among others. Law enforcement agencies would have the right to inspect all products that they believe might contain nicotine.

"A person commits the crime of unlawful possession of nicotine if the person knowingly possesses more than 0.1 milligram of nicotine," the legislation states. The law would not apply to anyone who was prescribed nicotine by a doctor in the course of professional practice.

Vice President Joe Biden is trying to assure survivalists and those preparing for doomsday that they will still be able to protect themselves in case of disaster even if assault weapons are banned because shotguns are more effective weapons for defense.

During a Google Hangout discussion about gun control, YouTube video blogger Philip DeFranco asked the vice president why an assault weapons ban was necessary if the number of murders had gone down since the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act temporarily banning some military-style rifles expired in 2004.

"So what would you say to the people who say, yes, you are infringing on our rights, not for sporting or for hunting, but in California, everyone talks about the big earthquake or some terrible natural disaster as a last line of defense," DeFranco wondered. "What would you say to those people?"

"A shotgun will keep you a lot safer - a double-barreled shotgun - than the assault weapons in somebody's hands that doesn't know how to use it, even one that does know how to use it," Biden advised. "You know, it's hard to use an assault weapon and hit something than it is a shotgun."

Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro said unidentified groups had entered the country with the aim of assassinating him and the head of the National Assembly as President Hugo Chavez recovers from cancer in Cuba.

Maduro provided no proof of the claim, made at a rally on Wednesday to mark the end of a dictatorship in the OPEC nation 55 years ago, but he said action would be taken shortly.

"For several weeks we've been following groups that have infiltrated the country with the aim of making attempts on the life of (Assembly head) Diosdado Cabello and my own," Maduro told a crowd of red-shirted "Chavista" supporters. "They will not manage it against either of us."

Chavez named Maduro as his preferred successor before he went to Cuba in early December for surgery, his fourth operation in 18 months for an undisclosed form of cancer in his pelvis that was first diagnosed in mid-2011.

Chavez has not been seen in public nor heard from since then. Venezuela's government says his condition is improving after he suffered multiple complications caused by the December 11 surgery.

Officials say he is in "good spirits" but no date has been set for his return home. Maduro said he and the energy minister would travel to Havana on Wednesday to see Chavez.

The Russian Defense Ministry is attempting to clampdown on homosexuality with a new handbook that recommends recruits and contractors be checked for genital tattoos, like a the image of a "face" on the recruit's penis.

The Russian newspaper Izvestia on Thursday published details about how recruits would be given a thorough examination and face questioning about their sexual history.

Signs of "promiscuity" could indicate mental instability, addictive personality and suicidal tendencies, according to the documents.

"The reasons for tattooing may indicate a low cultural and educational level," according a machine translation of the handbook provided by Google. "If set to the impact of external incentives, such as persuasion, direct coercion, it will be evidence of compliance of young men, his tendency to obey the will of another."

There is a clear consensus among the global elite that overpopulation is the primary cause of the most important problems that the world is facing and that something desperately needs to be done about it. They truly believe that humans are a plague upon the earth and that we will literally destroy the planet if we are left to our own devices. To the elite, everything from global warming to our growing economic problems can be directly traced back to the lack of population control. They warn that if nothing is done about the exploding population, we will be facing a future full of poverty, war and suffering on a filthy, desolate planet.

They complain that it "costs too much" to keep elderly patients that are terminally ill alive, and they eagerly promote abortion for babies that are "not wanted" because they would be "too much of a burden" on society. Anything that reduces the human population in any way is a good thing for those that believe in this philosophy. This twisted philosophy is being promoted in our movies, in our television shows, in our music, in countless books, on many of the most prominent websites in the world, and it is being taught at nearly all of the most important colleges and universities on the planet.

The people promoting this philosophy have very, very deep pockets, and they are actually convinced that they are helping to "save the world" by trying to reduce the size of the human population. In fact, many of them are entirely convinced that we are in a "life or death" struggle for the fate of the planet, and that if humanity does not willingly choose to embrace population control soon, then a solution will have to be "forced" upon them.

Yes, I know that all of this may sound like something out of a science fiction novel. But there are a whole lot of people out there that are absolutely obsessed with this stuff, and many of them are in very prominent positions around the globe.

The following are 30 population control quotes which show that the elite truly believe that humans are a plague upon the earth and that a great culling is necessary...

In a 155-page report, four US nuclear experts have called upon the Obama administration to impose tougher economic sanctions against Iran and resort to overt operations through using warplanes and missiles on Iranian nuclear sites.

Apart from the fact that morbid mindset of this nature only helps fan up chaos and serves as an impetus to widespread pandemonium in the region, any mention of any such policy let alone an adoption of it will gradually terminate in an endless array of military legitimizations.

Co-authored by Mark Dubowitz, who runs Zionist-controlled Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) and David Albright, a physicist who heads the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and who is responsible for concocting lies and myths about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and drawing the country into an abysmal vortex of destruction and devastation, the report can be but seen in the light of yet another overtly brash attempt by the US to push ahead with further militarism in the Middle East.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified Wednesday in a lengthy set of hearings on the Benghazi attacks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She spoke repeatedly of a growing jihadist threat in the region, deficiencies in the lead-up to and aftermath of the attack at the U.S. mission, and the administration's role in addressing both. Here are six key takeaways from the testimony:

1. Clinton acknowledged the 'spreading jihadist threat'

The secretary of state emphasized the "global movement" at work in a post-Arab Spring Middle East and North Africa in her remarks to the Senate:

"We now face a spreading jihadist threat," Clinton said. "We have driven a lot of the operatives out of Afghanistan, Pakistan, killed a lot of them, including [Osama] Bin Laden."

"But this is a global movement," Clinton said. "We can kill leaders, but until we help establish strong democratic institutions, until we do a better job with values and relationships, we will be faced with this level of instability." [...]

"This is a great opportunity as well as a serious threat to our country," Clinton said, referring to the Arab Spring. "It's not going to be easy. They [these new governments] have no experience with democracy, they don't have any real experience among the leaders in running countries and doing security."