• Listen to this segment with Rahul Mahajan

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

NATO has issued a warning that Russia may be about to invade Ukraine, citing 20,000 troops at the border. Russian troops at the Ukraine border which had numbered at 40,000 some months ago, had been dramatically reduced but NATO officials claim they have been building up again. NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu warned against, “the pretext of a humanitarian or peace-keeping mission as an excuse to send troops into Eastern Ukraine.” The statement comes on the heels of Russian military exercises this week and a new round of crippling sanctions against Russia backed by the US and EU. Click here for a Chicago Tribune article about the story.

In the wake of revelations by the online news site The Intercept of the US’s rulebook for how people get placed on “terrorism watchlists,” the government has apparently concluded that the leaks are the handiwork of a new whistleblower. The documents that were reported on were apparently issued after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden gathered his trove of data. Meanwhile the Associated Press released a related report on the government’s Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment or TIDE list yesterday. TIDE is a database of “known or suspected terrorists,” and as of late 2013, there were 1.1 million people on it, double the number from 2010. Click here for an RT.com article and here for an AP article about the story.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has taken a tough stand against the CIA on the heels of an investigation that concluded the agency had indeed spied on her and her fellow Senators on the Intelligence committee during their investigations of Bush-era torture tactics. Feinstein has decided that the redactions by the CIA of the torture report, “eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions.” She added, “Until these redactions are addressed to the committee’s satisfaction, the report will not be made public.” Click here for a Guardian newspaper article about the story.