from Antony Loewenstein …..

Earlier this month, as Americans celebrated our Independence Day holiday, the true scope of American independence became visible. The revelations of Edward Snowden, and the elite reaction to those revelations show that Americans are not a truly free and independent people, our major media are not free or independent, and neither are the supposedly sovereign nations of Europe free or independent states.

One of the state's smallest newspapers has found itself in the middle of a row over an anonymous anti-Muslim rant that it published.

The internet allows for greater public participation in government. But ours continues to show it is not ready to talk.

Telstra agreed more than a decade ago to store huge volumes of electronic communications it carried between Asia and America for potential surveillance by United States intelligence agencies.

It is hard to find a historical comparison for the stunning turnaround in federal politics of the past two weeks. We’re not talking just polls here, but the change in the debate, in the psychology, in the way whole political armies, and their massive caravans, have had to manoeuvre in hasty and sometimes messy fashion.

Research shows public opinion often deviates from facts on key social issues including crime, benefit fraud and immigration.

A new survey for the Royal Statistical Society and King's College London shows public opinion is repeatedly off the mark on issues including crime, benefit fraud and immigration.

The relationship between the United States and Latin America may have just plunged to its lowest level since the 1910s and 1920s, the height of US imperialism in the area, when United Fruit and the Marines imposed themselves on the region.

Tony Abbott and his party are being pursued by a private detective, an army of pensioners and a very determined man in a wheelchair.

Hundreds of online activists – at least a third of whom are pensioners and led by a quadriplegic IT expert – have raised more than $50,000 and hired a private detective to investigate the affair.

A tribunal has held a secret hearing to decide if details of a claim on the federal government by the former Treasury official behind the Utegate scandal should be made public.

from Crikey …

Bernard Keane: snapshots from an American dystopia

from the shovel ….