TheDailyBlog.nz Top 5 News Headlines Tuesday 20th October

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5: Maori Party Rule out MANA

The schism with Hone Harawira’s Mana Party continued to overshadow the Maori Party’s annual conference over the weekend, despite it being billed as a renewal hui.

President Naida Glavish says while the idea of a merger with Mana was again raised, it would not happen.

Waatea News

4:  Snowden lashes out at US government for keeping drone program secret

National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden and one of the top lawyers for the U.S. Intelligence Community, Robert Litt, gave back-to-back speeches at an academic gathering on Friday that addressed major controversies over government surveillance, basic privacy protections and the freedom of information.

But the most revealing exchanges during their talks centered on new leaks about the U.S. drone program, made possible by an unknown whistleblower.

The comments by Snowden and Litt were part of a conference on privacy and surveillance organized by Bard College’s Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities.

The statements by Snowden and Litt seemed to reflect the two highly polarized camps in the debate over national security and the freedom of information.

“Why can we not have these issues heard in an open court, until an individual, an ordinary citizen, risks their freedom or their life to share this information with the press, in a situation where we know they will be punished?” Snowden asked rhetorically, addressing the auditorium over a video link from Russia.

The newly published documents exposed previously secret details of the U.S. government’s secretive drone war, including new information that raises serious concerns about the accuracy and effectiveness of drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries.

Al Jazeera America News

3: They don’t care who gets killed’: Ex-drone pilot turned whistleblower to RT

Guilt-ridden American drone pilots continue to quit in unprecedented numbers. One former secret mission operator, Brandon Bryant, who’s received a whistleblower award, spoke to RT of the horrors of indiscriminate killing from a safe distance.
“The people that are giving the order to kill – they don’t care who gets killed as long as their target gets attacked… they’ll take out however many people they can in order to get their results,” Bryant says.

The former pilot received the German Whistleblower Award for revealing details of operations taking place at the Ramstein base, specifically, its role in transferring information between the US and its CIA missions in North Africa, Afghanistan and the Middle East. He was among the first to bring into question the role the base was playing.

RT

2:  Tony Blair made deal with George Bush over military action in Iraq a year before the war, leaked emails suggest

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

Tony Blair said he would support the US if military action was needed in Iraq, the then-US Secretary of State claimed in a memo written a year before the war began.

The dossier, written on 28 March 2002 by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell to President George W Bush, said: “On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary.

“He is convinced on two points: the threat is real; and success against Saddam will yield more regional success.”

The document was obtained by The Mail on Sunday as part of a batch of emails on the private server of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, which US courts forced her to reveal. It was written a week before Mr Blair’s meeting with Mr Bush at his Crawford ranch in Texas.

The Independent

1: Legalizing weed in the UK could save the criminal justice system more than $300 million a year

Legalizing cannabis would generate hundreds of millions of dollars each year for the UK government, a leaked report has revealed.

The BBC’s Newsnight program obtained a copy of a study by the UK Treasury which found legalizing and regulating the drug would “generate notable tax revenue” as well as save the criminal justice system more than $300 million a year in court and police costs.

The government said it had “no plans” to change the law, though British politicians did debate the issue on Monday following a petition demanding legalization that gained more than 220,000 signatures. 

The study was commissioned by the Liberal Democrat party, the then-partner of the Conservatives in a coalition government. Its goal was to examine the “potential fiscal impacts of introducing a regulated cannabis market in the UK.”

VICE