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Uprising’s guest expert Rahul Mahajan, sociologist and news analyst and author of Full Spectrum Dominance: US Power in Iraq and Beyond, analyzes today’s news headlines:

The NSA has been using a covert radio channel to tap into offline computers. The New York Times this morning broke the damning story of how the National Security Agency has planted software into nearly 100,000 computers globally, even when those computers are not connected to the internet. They have done so using a channel of radio waves to target mostly the Chinese army, as well as the Russian military, Mexican police, and more. Click here for the New York Times story about the NSA.

The US Senate, dominated by Democrats, has failed to pass a bill extending unemployment benefits for more than a million Americans. The vote failed over a procedural issue. House Republicans had already said they would not pass the bill unless costs were offset elsewhere. The Senate is unlikely to revisit the benefits extension until after next week’s recess, sometime in late January. Click here for a Wall Street Journal article about the story.

A seventh grader in a New Mexico school used a shot gun to seriously injure two of his schoolmates before being talked into putting his gun down by a brave teacher. The suspect reportedly boasted about his impending attack on social media websites. It is not the first school shooting incident where a teacher has non-violently diffused the situation and prevented more injuries or deaths. Meanwhile, a retired police officer in Tampa, Florida shot and killed a man in a theater who was apparently texting his daughter’s day care center during a movie on Monday. Click here for an LA Times article about the story.

Mother Jones has just published a report by David Corn detailing a newly unearthed memo which found that US Secretary of State Henry Kissenger in 1976 “gave Argentina’s neo-fascist military junta the ‘green light’ for the dirty war it was conducting against civilian and militant leftists that resulted in the disappearance—that is, deaths—of an estimated 30,000 people.” Corn goes on to write how for years Kissenger has been “dodging responsibility for dirty deeds in Chile, Bangladesh, East Timor, Cambodia, and elsewhere.” Click here for Mother Jones’ article about the story.