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Uprising’s guest expert Arun Gupta, Independent Journalist and regular contributor to the Guardian, In These Times, The Progressive, and Truthout, and co-founder of the Occupied Wall Street Journal and the Indypendent, analyzes today’s news headlines:

The world’s top technology and internet companies have joined forces to send a strong message to the NSA: Reform Government Surveillance. The CEOs of AOL, Facebook, Yahoo!, Google, and others, have signed onto an open letter saying, “it is time for the world’s governments to address the practices and laws regulating government surveillance.” They want, among other things, to “limit governments’ authority to collect users’ information,” “respect the free flow of information,” and have greater oversight, accountability, and transparency. The letter has been posted on a website called www.reformgovernmentsurveillance.com. Click here for a Guardian Newspaper article about the story.

Seymour Hersh, one of the best known investigative journalists, has just published an exposé on the US government’s handling of intelligence leading up to the near-strike on Syria. Hersh says that the Obama Administration “failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin.” Hersh says that Obama ignored the fact that the Al-Nusra group affiliated with Al Qaeda also had access to sarin, and ultimately, “the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.” Click here for Seymour Hersh’s article in the London Review of Books.

Even though Hugo Chavez is no longer alive, his legacy remains popular with Venezuelan voters, as evidenced by Nicholas Maduro’s win in local elections yesterday. While opposition leader Henrique Capriles claimed victory for his party in urban centers, poorer parts of the country still pledged their votes to the Socialist Party, led by Chavez’s successor, Maduro. Maduro gave a triumphant victory speech saying “The Venezuelan people have said to the world that the Bolivarian revolution continues stronger than ever.” Click here for a Guardian newspaper article about the story.