Der iranische Präsident Hassan Rohani trat in NBC News auf, wo er in einem Interview auf Diplomatie drängte, indem er sagte, er habe die totale Vollmacht bekommen, ein Abkommen zu verhandeln, und er wiederholte aufs Neue das schon lange bestehende Verbot des Iran, Atomwaffen herzustellen.

This doctrine of „realism“ was invented in the US following the second world war and sponsored by the Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations, the OSS (forerunner of the CIA) and the Council on Foreign relations. In the great universities, students were taught to regard people in terms of their usefulness or expendability: in other words, their threat to „us“.

The State Department said Kerry would make the statement at 3 p.m. Washington time (1900 GMT).

Ban met with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif earlier on Thursday and said he plans to meet with Rouhani on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York next week. Rouhani is due to address the United Nations on Tuesday.

Signs of greater freedom and democracy have given hope to a generation of Iranians who felt doomed to pariah status

Qatar had sent Egypt $3 billion in May, of which it converted $1 billion into three-year bonds.

Ramez told Reuters in a telephone interview that the Qatari authorities had agreed to convert the entire remaining $2 billion but then changed their minds.

Over at Cryptome today there‘s an absolutely incredible exchange between the Justice Department‘s Brian Fallon (from the Office of Public Affairs — basically a PR guy) and Brian Heath, an investigative reporter from USA Today.

The ACLU would like to remind Americans that, while the NSA has been truly awful, it hasn‘t completely cornered the market on overreaching surveillance programs and civil liberty trampling. As it points out, the initial leak from Ed Snowden dealt with a bulk phone records court order that was issued jointly for the NSA AND the FBI.

The request was delicate since the military force has accumulated great economic and political power in recent years and is omnipresent in the life of the nation.

I was chatting yesterday to an old Syrian friend, a journalist who used to be in the country’s special forces and he – quite by chance – said he was embedded with Syrian government troops on the night of 21 August. These were men of the Fourth Division – in which the President’s brother Maher commands a brigade – and my friend was in the suburb of Moadamiyeh – the site of one of the chemical attacks. He recalls the tremendous artillery bombardment but saw no evidence of gas being used.

Russlands Präsident Wladimir Putin nimmt am 19. September am Internationalen Diskussionsklub Valdai teil. In der Plenarsitzung am Donnerstag hält Putin eine Ansprache. Die Live-Übertragung ist am Donnerstag ab 16.30 Uhr auf de.rian.ru zu sehen.

„Nicht nur das Völkerrecht, sondern auch allgemein gültige Regeln des Anstands werden zuweilen missachtet.“

„Man muss militärisch, technologisch und wirtschaftlich stark sein. Aber das wichtigste, wodurch der Erfolg bestimmt wird, ist die Qualität der Menschen und der Gesellschaft – die geistige und die moralische“, fügte er an.

„There is still confusion about what is happening on the Syrian side. All humanitarian assistance that normally goes through the gate has ceased,“ said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Den ganzen Tag wurde in den Medien darüber spekuliert, ob Deutschland in der Herstellung von Syriens Chemiewaffen beteiligt war. Hier erschien bereits am 13. September ein Artikel, aus dem man schlussfolgern kann, dass Deutschland dabei eine aktive Rolle spielte. Gestern, am 18. September, wurde nach einer Anfrage der Partei „Die Linke“ vom Bundeswirtschaftsministerium bekanntgegeben, dass seit 2002 insgesamt 137 Tonnen chemiewaffentaugliche Stoffe nach Syrien geliefert wurden. Am Abend äußerte sich Kanzlerin Merkel dazu und ließ dabei mehr Frage offen als sie beantwortete.

Given everything that‘s been going on with the stories of NSA surveillance lately, it‘s more clear than ever that our electronic privacy laws are broken. For many years, we‘ve written about the drastic need for ECPA reform. ECPA is the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which was passed in 1986. As you can imagine, it‘s exceptionally outdated and convoluted (such as claiming that any emails on a server for more than 180 days should be considered „abandoned“ and available for law enforcement to read — a concept that makes no sense in an era of hosted email with tremendous storage).

Director Cullen Hoback‘s campaigning documentary Terms & Conditions May Apply is a call to digital arms. He explains why now is the time to reclaim control of our digital privacy.