Of the 166 detainees currently being held at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility, less than twenty are likely to ever be tried and sent to trial, according to the war tribunals chief prosecutor.

(Photo: Aslan Media/ Flickr) Following a 2010 review, President Barack Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force said that 36 of the detainees could be prosecuted, though Army Brigadier General Mark Martins stated Monday that those numbers were “ambitious,” estimating the the number tried would be “20 at most.”

In essence, that means at least 15 additional detainees will now be added to the list of 48 who the administration plans to hold indefinitely without charges.

“With nearly 800 people having been sent to Guantanamo over the years, this represents a total of under 3 percent who will even make it to trial — let alone be found guilty,” said Cori Crider, a Guantanamo attorney with the human rights organization Reprieve. “This shockingly low figure demonstrates what a terrible mistake Guantanamo has been, and just how many lives have been ruined for no good reason.”

“Meanwhile, more than half the prisoners still held in Guantanamo have been cleared for release, yet are going nowhere,” she added. “It is high time President Obama got his act together and delivered on his promise to close this prison.”

According to Reuters, the “drastic scaling back” of prosecutions came after the US Court of Appeals threw out the conviction for Salim Hamdan, who in 2008 was found guilty of ‘material support for terrorism.’

The report continues:

The court agreed with defense arguments that material support was not internationally recognized as a war crime when Hamdan worked for bin Laden’s motor pool in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001.

Congress made material support a war crime in a 2006 law underpinning the Guantanamo tribunals, but the appeals court said the law could not be retroactively applied.

The statement was made as Guantanamo pretrials commenced Tuesday for the death penalty case against Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, a Saudi captive accused of directing suicide bombers to ram a boat full of explosives into the side of the USS Cole, allegedly killing 17 US sailors.

During the trial, defense attorney Rick Kammen questioned whether prosecutors should be allowed to use as evidence statements made by Fahd al Quso, another alleged al Qaeda operative, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen last year.

“Can the United States kill witnesses and then still use their hearsay evidence?” Kammen asked.

_____________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

Turkish lawyers hold demo in the capital Ankara on June 12, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The Obama administration has announced that it will drop its opposition to a federal court ruling that makes “morning after” contraceptive pills available over-the-counter without a prescription and with no age limitations. The ruling means that girls of any age will be able to purchase the contraceptive without parental consent. The “emergency” contraceptive, designed to be taken within 72 hours after a woman has sex, is known by pro-life activists as the “abortion pill” because of evidence that it can cause spontaneous abortion in women who take it by preventing a newly conceived embryo from implanting in the uterine wall.

The original decision making the oral contraceptive available to underage girls came in April from U.S. District Judge Edward Korman, who ruled that a decision, made in 2011 by Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius, to keep the pills out of the hands of girls under age 17 was “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.” Korman is the same judge who ordered that the “morning after” contraceptives be made available without a prescription to women 17 and older. Previously, they had been available over-the-counter only to girls 18 and older.

The Obama administration’s Justice Department had been making a show of fighting implementation of the ruling, but, as reported by the New York Times, announced June 10 “that it would accept its losses in recent court rulings and begin putting into effect a judge’s order to have the Food and Drug Administration certify the drug for nonprescription use. In a letter to Judge Edward R. Korman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the administration said it would comply with his demands.” According to the Times, the Justice Department “appears to have concluded that it might lose its case with the appeals court and would have to decide whether to appeal to the Supreme Court. That would drastically elevate the debate over the politically delicate issue for Mr. Obama.”

In 2011 President Obama postured as a concerned father when he agreed with Sebelius over the restriction on such “emergency” contraceptives as “Plan B,” telling reporters that “as the father of two young daughters, I think it is important for us to make sure that … we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine.” He added that “when it comes to 12-year-olds or 13-year-olds, the question is: Can we have confidence that they would potentially use Plan B properly?” The common-sense answer was no, as HHS continued to restrict the pills to only older teens. With the Department of Justice announcement, the White House has dropped all pretense of opposition to allowing teens – and even pre-teens – access to the contraceptives.

Cecile Richards, head of abortion giant Planned Parenthood and a close Obama ally, praised the administration’s decision. “This is a huge breakthrough for access to birth control and a historic moment for women’s health and equity,” declared Richards, noting with joy that the decision “will make emergency contraception available on store shelves, just like condoms, and women of all ages will be able to get it quickly in order to prevent unintended pregnancy.”

Similarly, Annie Tummino of a group called National Women’s Liberation insisted that women and girls should have “the absolute right to control our bodies without having to ask a doctor or a pharmacist for permission.” She said in a statement that it was high time “the administration stopped opposing women having access to safe and effective birth control.”

By contrast, pro-life and pro-family leaders noted the ease with which the administration caved in on what previously had appeared to be an important issue to the president. Anna Higgins, director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council, said that the administration’s decision to throw in the towel was a demonstration of Obama’s “willingness to put politics ahead of the health and safety of girls. We are disappointed that this administration has once again sided with its political allies and ignored the safety of girls and the rights of parents.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List said the Department of Justice decision amounted to a “dangerous about-face for the Obama administration, which previously seemed to agree that requiring a doctor’s prescription for potentially dangerous drugs was simply common sense. This decision endangers young girls by removing the protection that comes along with doctors and parents. Only abortion extremists rejoice at this news which has nothing to do with the health of children.”

And Dr. Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life noted that the decision would allow “the abortion industry to gamble with young girls’ health in distributing a life-ending drug, with no real understanding of the long-term implications on their bodies.” Yoest warned that dropping the common-sense restrictions on the “morning after” pill would also make it easy for “young girls pressured into sex or even abused by adults to be manipulated into taking pills that cover up what is a criminal act. Young girls need medical supervision in taking such a potent and potentially life-ending drug. The implications for informed consent – and the long-term health impact on women of all ages – are deeply troubling.”

^{Photo of Barack Obama: AP Images}

This article originally appeared on: The New American

Butler Shaffer
lewrockwell.com
June 12, 2013

“Doctor Murnau: A crowd is easier to control than an individual. A crowd has a common purpose. The purpose of the individual is always in question.”

— From the movie Kafka

My recent book, The Wizards of Ozymandias, was dedicated “To the memory and spirit of Sophie and Hans Scholl and the White Rose, who reminded us what it means to be civilized.” These young people — most in their teens or early twenties — lived in Nazi Germany and, fearing for the future of their country, took it upon themselves to write — and publicly distribute — leaflets critical of the government. They apparently operated from the premise that what transpired in their country was any of their business. They were soon found out, arrested on February 18, 1943, found guilty of “treason” on February 22, by the People’s Court, and summarily beheaded that same day.

Modern-day voices of fascism, American style, have been urging the same kind of “due process” for such individuals as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and now Edward Snowden, who have had the “arrogance” — in the words of a few of their critics — to do what members of the White Rose did in the early 1940s: to make public the wrongdoings of the American government including such intelligence agencies as the NSA. Political, legal, and media hacks have been stumbling over one another to get in front of network cameras to denounce these men, and to demand the same kind of swift punishment as was meted out to the Scholls and other White Rose members. This vicious reaction has been so void of intellectual reflection as to lead some of the babblers to insist that Assange be tried for “treason,” overlooking the technical detail that Assange is not even an American, but an Australian! But in an age of a presumed worldwide American empire, such a matter can be overlooked, along with all the other moral, legal, and constitutional niceties that have been dumped into the memory hole.

The bankruptcy that is driving this campaign against truth-telling is shown by some of the content of the attacks on the accused: “Mr. Snowden doesn’t even have a high-school diploma!” Well, what more needs to be said? The unstated presumption, here, is that this man hadn’t even completed his government-school conditioning in the unquestioned power of the state. Had he graduated from high-school and gone on to college and graduate school, his conditioning in the statist mindset might have been completed. He might even have received a PhD or JD degree that would have allowed him to ascend to the upper heights of the establishment pyramid, from whence — like his accusers — he would not risk his position amongst other elitists.

If his lack of a diploma is not enough to condemn this young man, consider this: he had contributed $500 to the Ron Paul political campaign! Now the entire libertarian movement can be smeared as “traitorous.” It is those who continue to ask questions about the legitimacy — or even the legality — of governmental behavior that undermine authority. If individuals are troubled by what the state is doing, they should confine their complaints to government officials! Speak truth to power, but never to the powerless! “Truth,” as Mark Twain reminded us, “is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.” If you object to the corruption of the Mafia, take the matter up with your godfather! If you are critical of the corruption, violence, looting, wars, and other actions of the government, write a letter to your congressman — who has helped to create these conditions — and ask him to do something about it. Had the Scholls and other White Rose members addressed their complaints to the Gestapo, all problems would have been corrected, right? Right?

Messrs. Manning, Assange, and Snowden apparently took literally the message that has been plastered on public buildings, subways, airports, and billboards: “if you see something, say something.” What the “something” is, and to whom your report is to be made, are never indicated, but the reaction of the hacks is clear: don’t have that “something” be critical of the state or its owners!

Perhaps the most lackwitted condemnation of Mr. Snowden is found in the last resort to which all statists eventually come: the public opinion poll. More Americans condemn this man than support him. The Barrabas factor; turning to the well-conditioned mob, whose members probably did graduate from high-school, for the final verdict, has long served the interests of state power. Even now, idolaters of state power are hoping that the rest of us will remain firm in our conditioning, and join in their lynch-mob frenzy.

My judgments of other people have always rested on the nature of their actions, their demonstrations of character, and never on pedigree (however certified). Those whose behavior is grounded in respect for the inviolability of the life and property of others, who live peaceably with their neighbors, and who do not presume to use force to accomplish their purposes; impress me more than do people who can, without a break in meter, recite all the socially-correct bromides about peace, love, respect for others; but then resort to governmental coercion to resolve problems before them.

Those establishment defenders who condemn the Bradley Mannings, Julian Assanges, and Edward Snowdens, have yet to present an indictment that extends beyond the fact that these courageous men have spoken truths that embarrass the institutional power structure. Such consequences may be disruptive of the special interests of the establishment, but how ordinary people are harmed in the process is never explained. Snowden has revealed how the government has insisted on having access to every private piece of information regarding every American. If this is true, and if it serves any valid purpose of the state to have such power, how can it be wrong for Americans to be made aware of this fact? If the state is entitled to know everything about us, why aren’t we entitled to know all the details of state action?

The hacks’ thoughtless reaction to these revelations is the familiar one: it will help our enemies. But who are the “enemies” who might benefit from knowing the details of the state’s surveillance, wiretapping, e-mail snooping, DNA and medical records, and other attributes of “Big Brother”? In this regard, the hacks have unwittingly confirmed the insights of that noted 1950’s social philosopher, Pogo Possum when he advised that “we have met the enemy, and they is us.” You and I are the foe most feared by those who keep their power over us through our state-induced fears, ignorance, and belief in their necessity.

As Western Civilization is swept into the dust-bin of history, it is crucial for us to ask: what will replace it? What values, moral principles, economic understanding, and social practices will prevail in the future? You will not hear these questions asked by any of the establishment hacks — who will confine themselves to refashioning statism in a “new and improved” package. The hacks are as bankrupt as the dying culture to whose withering tentacles of power they so desperately cling. They will continue to entertain us with trivia from the lives of the political sinners, but will not explore either the causes of, or the alternatives to, what brought down our freer and more prosperous culture. They will not engage in such depths of inquiry for one reason: their minds do not work in any transcendent, principled manner. It is power, and power alone, that both impresses and motivates them.

As more soldiers die from suicide than from combat; as other soldiers earn medals while killing hundreds or even thousands of Afghan and Pakistani civilians with drones they control from facilities outside Las Vegas; as the police-state continues to metastasize; as the looting of the citizenry continues to benefit corporate-state interests who pay little, if any, taxes; and as the general material, spiritual, and socially-supportive nature of a decent society continues its decline, it is evident that all of mankind — including Americans — will need to engage in some highly-focused, principled, long-term thinking if we (i.e., ourselves, children and grandchildren, and species) are to survive this collective madness.

Manning, Assange, and Snowden have challenged each of us: will we, as the hacks and their owners continue to insist, do as we have been trained to do, namely, mind our own business and do as we are told by those in authority? Or shall we, like these courageous men — and the White Rose members before them — have the individualized “arrogance” to believe that the fate of mankind is our business, and that we have a responsibility to act, with focused and peaceful energy, to help extricate ourselves from the collective arrogance of power that is destroying us?

WTSP
June 12, 2013

The Ohio Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals wants Humane Officer Barry Accorti fired for allegedly shooting five kittens in a home’s back yard on Monday.

OSPCA Executive Director Teresa Landon says Accorti should be fired and charged with five counts of animal cruelty.

Accorti retired as a sergeant with the North Ridgeville Police Department a few years ago and was hired as a part-time humane officer with the department.

Police tell WKYC that Accorti did not work Tuesday, but will be back on Wednesday.

Accorti responded to a home Monday afternoon where a feral mother cat and her five kittens were living in a woodpile.

He allegedly told the homeowner that shelters were full and that the cats would be going to kitty heaven. He then pulled out his gun and shot the five, 8- to 10-week-old kittens.

Accorti allegedly told the homeowner that he isn’t supposed to do this, but it was justifiable. The woman ran into the house to shield her children, who were screaming and crying.

City officials tell WKYC that they are looking into what the proper protocol is for such a situation.

Just before 5 p.m., the police chief released a statement regarding the incident:

“On 6-10-2013, a resident on Vista Lake Way contacted NRPD on Facebook regarding a “family of cats” that had made a home in their wood pile. The resident went on to ask if the humane officer would pick them up or would they have to deal with the issue themselves.”

“Within twenty minutes NRPD responded back to the resident on Facebook stating that Humane Officer (HO) Accorti would be there shortly. Upon arrival HO Accorti (who has thirty plus years of law enforcement experience) was shown the wood pile where the feral cats were located. The wood piles were located next to a concrete patio approximately ten feet from the residence. The homeowner advised that the feral cats were causing flea problems within the residence, a foul odor, and leaving deceased wildlife in her yard.”

“The homeowner was advised that, due to her safety concerns (proximity of wood pile to house, number of children at the residence, diseases feral cats can develop, fleas, unsanitary conditions), assistance could be rendered but the cats would be euthanized. The complainant agreed to accept assistance and the officer started to dismantle the wood pile.”

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Protective gear for FPS guards to protect government buildings

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
June 12, 2013

The Department of Homeland Security is purchasing hundreds of items of protective gear for its fleet of Federal Protective Service officers in order to prepare for “riot control situations,” increasing concerns that the federal agency is readying for domestic unrest.

A June 10 solicitation posted on the FedBizOpps website seeks to outfit officers working for the DHS’ Federal Protective Service, which is primarily used to guard government buildings but has also been used to spy on protesters.

As we reported last month, FPS officers were used to guard an IRS building in St. Louis during a Tea Party protest against the federal agency’s discrimination targeting conservative groups.

As GSN reports, the items the DHS is looking to acquire include the following;

– 111 Centurion CPX2500 Soft Shell Riot Control System upper body and shoulder protection, which must “effectively protect the torso and shoulders from blunt force trauma.”

– 123 Centurion TPX200 thigh/groin protection systems “designed for blunt trauma protection during riot control situations,” said the solicitation. The gear “protects the thigh area and has an adjustable and removable groin protector.”

– 110 Hatch TS70 Centurion hard shell shin guards, which must provide “substantial protection from flying debris. Non-ballistic weapons, and blows to the leg.”

– 189 MaxPro-Police riot helmets, which have a “high impact molded half shell helmet with integral visor and neck protector.”

The solicitation also includes a request for 116 pairs of tactical gloves and 128 forearm protectors. The contract includes four additional one year option periods. The equipment will be delivered to a Federal Protective Service facility in Alexandria, VA, within 45 days of the award.

The reference to “riot control situations” can be found in the “Statement of Work” file at the bottom of the solicitation.

Fears that the Department of Homeland Security is preparing for civil unrest have intensified ever since the agency began purchasing large quantities of ammunition. Having already committed to purchasing well over 1.6 billion rounds of bullets over the course of the last year, a DHS “request for information” issued last month quizzed bullet manufacturers on how fast they can supply large quantities of ammo.

The request asked ammo companies if they were capable of supplying, “large quantity orders of any training caliber specified with a short turnaround time of 30-60 days.”

Last year, the DHS hired hundreds of new FPS guards to protect government buildings across the country.

This followed a controversial drill in Florida dubbed “Operation Shield,” during which FPS agents armed with semiautomatic guns were posted outside a Social Security office in Florida. The unannounced exercise centered around “detecting the presence of unauthorized persons and potentially disruptive or dangerous activities.” Residents were forced to show identification papers to the guards during the drill.

Whether the DHS is preparing for riots targeting government buildings remains to be seen, but this will do little to dampen concerns that big government is arming itself to the teeth while Americans are being lectured about relinquishing their second amendment rights.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Leader of the racist British National Party, Nick Griffin.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

An aerial view of the flooded banks of the Danube River in Deggendorf, Germany, on June 7, 2013

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

This article originally appeared on: RT

Te-Ping Chen
Wall Street Journal
June 12, 2013

The 29-year-old former government contractor behind one of the biggest national-security leaks in U.S. history and currently believed hiding in Hong Kong has told a local newspaper he has no plans to leave the city and intends to challenge the U.S. government in Hong Kong courts.

“People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality,” said Edward Snowden in an interview published Wednesday by the South China Morning Post, the city’s most prominent English-language daily.

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This article was posted: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 at 11:39 am

Tags: big brother, constitution, domestic spying

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Members of Congress are suddenly finding themselves more informed than ever about a scandalous NSA surveillance program in the wake of an intelligence leak that has embarrassed the United States government.

Lawmakers in Washington, DC were briefed on the program late
Tuesday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and legal and
intelligence officials, according to the Associated Press, in
what marked the first time that Congress came face-to-face with
the players closest to the National Security Administration
scandal since The Guardian began publishing leaked NSA documents
last Thursday.

“People aren’t satisfied,” Rep. Tim Murphy
(R-Pennsylvania) told the AP after Tuesday night’s briefing
“More detail needs to come out.”

Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland), a defender of the
surveillance program, even told AP that Congress should take the
time to reassess the NSA’s policies.

“Congress needs to debate this issue and determine what tools
we give to our intelligence community to protect us from a
terrorist attack,” he said. “Really it’s a debate between
public safety, how far we go with public safety and protecting us
from terrorist attacks versus how far we go on the other
side.”

NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander will answer questions from the
Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee on Wednesday
afternoon, and the Senate and House intelligence committees will
be briefed on the programs again Thursday. So far, though,
shot-callers in Washington seem largely split on perhaps the
first example to surface so far of the Obama administration’s
attempt to weigh security with privacy in its war against terror.

“As you heard the president say on Friday, he believes that we
must strike a balance between our security interests and our
desire for privacy,” White House press secretary Jay Carney
said earlier this week when defending the program. “He made
clear that you cannot have 100 percent security and 100 percent
privacy, and thus we need to find that balance.”

The leaked documents, released by the Guardian last week and
attributed to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, showed that
the NSA has requested the phone records for the millions of
Verizon customers in the US regularly and also taps into the
servers of nine major Internet entities in order to intercept
communications when investigating alleged terrorism. The American
Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the Obama
administration on Tuesday over the mass call tracking program,
labeling the “unprecedented mass surveillance” of phone
calls as a violation of “Americans’ constitutional rights of
free speech, association and privacy.”

The ACLU is asking the government to cease the mass call tracking
program and purge its records immediately. Meanwhile, though,
members of Congress like Murphy and Ruppersberger are simply
asking for answers.

But other lawmakers have attempted to discuss the topic before,
which in it of itself is becoming a whole other issue erupting on
the Hill. On March 12, Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper testified during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing
that the NSA does not gather “any type of data at all on
millions of Americans.” That was question posed by Sen. Ron
Wyden (D-Oregon), at least, who in response was told by Clapper,
“No, sir.”

“Not wittingly,” Clapper continued. “There are cases
where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not
wittingly.”

Following leaked evidence showing otherwise, Sen. Wyden issued a
statement explaining his line of questioning:

“So that he would be prepared to answer, I sent the question
to Director Clapper’s office a day in advance. After the hearing
was over my staff and I gave his office a chance to amend his
answer,” Wyden wrote. “Now public hearings are needed to
address the recent disclosures and the American people have the
right to expect straight answers from the intelligence leadership
to the questions asked by their representatives.”

Sen. Wyden has long been critical of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, or FISA, a law that allows the government to
collect data on the communications of Americans if they are
reasonably thought to be communication with persons located
outside of the US.

“When the public finds out that these secret interpretations
are so dramatically different than what the public law says, I
think there’s going to be extraordinary anger in the
country,” Wyden told HuffPost Live earlier this year.
“Because it’s one thing to have debates about laws… but we
assume that the law itself is public.”

On Sunday, Clapper told NBC News that he responded to Wyden’s
question while on the stand with “what I thought was the most
truthful, or least untruthful, manner.” There have since been
calls for Clapper’s resignation or termination from the role of
DNI.

This article originally appeared on: RT

File photo shows people waving Palestinian flags during an anti-Israel protest near the al-Aqsa Mosque in East al-Quds (Jerusalem).

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

rt.com
June 12, 2013

After the latest NSA surveillance revelations a Russian MP has suggested to the government to immediately limit civil servants’ access to the popular US internet services and social networks.

Lower House deputy Ilya Kostunov sent letters to Deputy PM Dmitry Rogozin (who oversees the Russian defense industry sector), the heads of the Defense Ministry, Federal Security Service and the Communications Ministry with a request to make official recommendation on usage of the popular US internet services such as Gmail and Facebook and sometimes also hardware devices produced by US companies.

The politician told Izvestia daily that the instructions should be made part of the civil servants’ contracts “so that they understood that by sending information through US services they not only fill up the dossiers on themselves and their organizations but can provide aid to a foreign state or organization that are engaged in anti-Russian activities”. “This falls under article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code as this is high treason,” he added.

Persons convicted under this article face up to 20 years in prison.

The MP told reporters that in the letter he reminded ministers and state officials about the scandal involving the US National Security Agency and its classified program PRISM that collects and analyses data on the Internet. According to the newspapers that broke the story the US special services have direct access to the servers of such companies as Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Skype, AOL and others.

“Certainly, the heads of United States intelligence assured that they were strictly observing the law and protected US citizens’ right for privacy. But as far as foreign citizens such as Russians are concerned they and other intelligence services from NATO countries have no limitations at all” Kostunov explained. According to the MP, foreigners were not only studying the electronic correspondence but also remotely used microphones and video cameras to learn more about the civil servants’ movement, habits, contacts and behavior.

Besides, careless handling of classified information by using free and popular internet services can lead to it falling into the hands of independent hackers, Kostunov warned.

The politician suggested the introduction of obligatory encryption for all information transferred via the internet.

Experts and public figures agreed that proper regulation is necessary. Even the chairman of the unregistered Pirate Party of Russia said that using personal accounts of free services for official state correspondence was “totally unacceptable”.

An internet presence once became a fashion among Russian officials, especially during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev who presents himself as a keen supporter of hi-tech and the newest digital trends. At the same time, this tendency recently started to fade. For example Deputy PM Rogozin, whose tweets never failed to make headlines in conventional media, has announced that he would no longer tweet personally leaving this to his press service.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, on the contrary, said in a recent interview that all his posts and other movements in social networks were personal. Medvedev’s Facebook account has recently gained one million likes.

“Who needs the Cayman Islands?” That’s how a May 22 New York Timesarticle began as it described “Tax-Free NY,” a plan zealously promoted by New York State’s Democratic Governor, Andrew Cuomo.

Under the provisions of his Tax-Free NY scheme, most of the 64 campuses of the State University of New York (SUNY), some private colleges, and zones adjacent to SUNY campuses would be thrown open to private businesses – businesses that would be exempted from state taxes on sales, property, the income of their owners, and the income of their employees for a period of ten years. According to the governor, this creation of tax havens for private, profit-making companies is designed to create economic development and jobs, especially in upstate New York.

Accompanied by businessmen, politicians, and top SUNY administrators on a tour of the state, Cuomo has embarked on a full court press for his plan. “There are winners and there are losers,” he declared. “And the point of this is to be a winner.” Tax-Free NY, he announced, was “a game-changing initiative that will transform SUNY campuses and university communities across the state.” Conceding that these tax-free zones wouldn’t work without a dramatic “culture shift” in the SUNY system, Cuomo argued that faculty would have to “get interested and participate in entrepreneurial activities.” As he declared in mid-May, the situation was “delicate, because academics are academics. … But you can be a great academic and you can be entrepreneurial, and I would argue you’d be a better academic if you were actually entrepreneurial.”

Despite the obvious problems this commercial approach raises for intellectual and academic integrity, SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher is a strong supporter of the governor’s plan. Only a few years ago, New York State law prohibited businesses from operating on SUNY campuses, but Zimpher arranged for that barrier to be swept away. Also, even if she didn’t approve of a commercial invasion of the university, she – like individual campus administrators – would be unlikely to keep her job if she opposed the governor.

SUNY’s faculty and staff, on the other hand, have a greater stake in preserving the university’s traditional role of education and the advancement of knowledge. United University Professions (UUP), the union that represents 35,000 faculty and other professional staff on SUNY campuses, has been disturbed for years by the state government’s abandonment of its legal commitment to fund public higher education. Over a four-year period, SUNY lost nearly $700 million in state support through budget cuts, and state funding has remained flat over the past year. Today, nearly 75 percent of the university’s operating budget comes from ever-rising tuition and fees. A decade ago, the state covered 75 percent of SUNY’s budget.

Naturally, then, UUP has promised to fight against this latest assault on the university. Rejecting Tax-Free NY, it argues that nothing in the governor’s plan benefits SUNY, that any available space on SUNY’s campuses should be dedicated to improving education through smaller class size and improved student services, that there are no assurances that business entities would support the academic mission of campuses, and that the tax-cutting plan would diminish tax revenues that could be used for public education.

Also, there is considerable doubt that Tax-Free NY will spur economic growth. The Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed group, has reported that New York State already spends about $7 billion annually to foster economic development and that there is no evidence that this funding has produced anything. The Alliance for a Greater New York, a group with a liberal orientation, has noted that, in the past year, the state gave away $490 million to businesses for projects through its Industrial Development Agencies. Of these projects, half failed to create any jobs and another quarter lost a total of 17,000 jobs. Criticizing Tax-Free NY, Crain’s New York Business, a leading commercial publication, stated that “history tells us these kinds of strategies don’t work.” During the administration of Republican George Pataki, “the state created Empire Zones in supposedly depressed areas, with special tax breaks and incentives. … No area ever showed any real economic gains. They were eventually phased out when it became clear they had achieved virtually nothing.” In addition, past economic development programs were riddled with abuse and fraud by unscrupulous companies.

As a result, significant criticism of the governor’s plan has begun to emerge. The small Conservative Party – a key ally of the Republican Party – formally denounced Tax-Free NY, arguing that “government should not be deciding what businesses receive government handouts that give them advantages over other businesses.” Journalists asked the governor what would stop the favored businesses from simply packing up and leaving after their decade of tax breaks. And the Civil Service Employees Association has begun running ads against the program. According to CSEA President Danny Donahue: “The governor doesn’t get the fact that more corporate welfare is no answer to New York’s economic challenges.”

Why, then, despite the obvious limitations of Tax-Free NY, is the governor promoting it so vigorously? One reason, some observers contend, is that Cuomo is a very ambitious man, with his eyes on a run for the White House. Determined to win reelection by a huge margin, he needs to strengthen his sagging appeal in upstate New York to do so. In addition, Cuomo has been closely allied with the state’s corporate leaders, who have poured millions of dollars into promoting his pro-business agenda, which includes bludgeoning the state’s public sector unions. Championing tax cuts to business helps cement this alliance.

Ironically, it’s quite possible that the governor could spur economic growth and job creation if he just reversed his proposal. Instead of throwing more tax dollars at profit-making businesses while starving public education, he could channel that same money into the SUNY system. In this fashion, he would help build the kind of university that, through its intellectual excellence, would foster advanced scientific experimentation, economic innovation, and a highly-educated workforce. But that’s not at all his plan.

Dr. Lawrence Wittner  is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a satirical novel about university life, “What’s Going On at UAardvark?” (Solidarity Press).] He can be reached through his website.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

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This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

Of the 166 detainees currently being held at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility, less than twenty are likely to ever be tried and sent to trial, according to the war tribunals chief prosecutor.

(Photo: Aslan Media/ Flickr) Following a 2010 review, President Barack Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force said that 36 of the detainees could be prosecuted, though Army Brigadier General Mark Martins stated Monday that those numbers were “ambitious,” estimating the the number tried would be “20 at most.”

In essence, that means at least 15 additional detainees will now be added to the list of 48 who the administration plans to hold indefinitely without charges.

“With nearly 800 people having been sent to Guantanamo over the years, this represents a total of under 3 percent who will even make it to trial — let alone be found guilty,” said Cori Crider, a Guantanamo attorney with the human rights organization Reprieve. “This shockingly low figure demonstrates what a terrible mistake Guantanamo has been, and just how many lives have been ruined for no good reason.”

“Meanwhile, more than half the prisoners still held in Guantanamo have been cleared for release, yet are going nowhere,” she added. “It is high time President Obama got his act together and delivered on his promise to close this prison.”

According to Reuters, the “drastic scaling back” of prosecutions came after the US Court of Appeals threw out the conviction for Salim Hamdan, who in 2008 was found guilty of ‘material support for terrorism.’

The report continues:

The court agreed with defense arguments that material support was not internationally recognized as a war crime when Hamdan worked for bin Laden’s motor pool in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001.

Congress made material support a war crime in a 2006 law underpinning the Guantanamo tribunals, but the appeals court said the law could not be retroactively applied.

The statement was made as Guantanamo pretrials commenced Tuesday for the death penalty case against Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, a Saudi captive accused of directing suicide bombers to ram a boat full of explosives into the side of the USS Cole, allegedly killing 17 US sailors.

During the trial, defense attorney Rick Kammen questioned whether prosecutors should be allowed to use as evidence statements made by Fahd al Quso, another alleged al Qaeda operative, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen last year.

“Can the United States kill witnesses and then still use their hearsay evidence?” Kammen asked.

_____________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

British police have raided three sites in Ilford, east London and evicted rough sleepers from the area taking away the homeless menâ„¢s sleeping bags and food parcels, local media reported.

Metropolitan Police officers evicted 8 men who were sleeping rough at a former public swimming baths in one example, the local paper, the Ilford Recorder reported.

The police officers bundled the homeless menâ„¢s sleeping bags and other possessions including food parcels given them by local charities into a police car, one of the homeless men, Adam Jaskowiak, told the paper.

The following day, the evicted men went to a local charity, the Refugee and Migrant Forum of East London (Ramfel), for help.

The chief executive of Ramfel, Rita Chadha, told the Ilford Recorder that she contacted the local police and local council to discover what happened. It took two days before she received any response, which came in the form of a message from the police that they would get back to her.

Å“We informed them that we wanted the sleeping bags back and we were told the officer in charge was unavailable and nobody else knew what was going on”, said Chadha.

Homelessness in London is rising three times as fast as across the rest of the country, according to government statistics from the Department of Communities and Local Government.

In autumn 2012, before the housing benefit cap came into effect, government figures showed a 6 percent rise in rough sleeping nationally against the previous year. London accounts for around a quarter of this figure, but the actual figures cited (557 people sleeping rough in the capital on any night) are likely to under-report the problem.

MOL/HE

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

South African President Jacob Zuma says the iconic figure Nelson Mandela is responding better to treatment for a lung infection that put him in a critical condition earlier in the week.

President Zuma told a session of parliament on Wednesday that the 94-year-old anti-apartheid hero is making progress following his hospitalization on Saturday.

“We are very happy with the progress that he is now making following a difficult last few days,” Zuma said. “We appreciate the messages of support from all over the world.”

The president also applauded the political legacy of Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists who were sentenced to life in prison under the former apartheid regime.

“Our country is a much better place to live in now than it was before 1994, even though we still have so much work to do,” Zuma said.

South Africa’s government disbanded racial segregation and discrimination in 1994.

Mandela’s family and relatives released a statement saying they had “been deeply touched” by the concern shown for his health.

“The family have been heartened by the overwhelming messages of support from the public,” the statement read.

Mandela has been receiving treatment at a hospital in Pretoria for the past five days over a recurrent lung infection.

Mandelaâ„¢s lung problem dates back to his years of imprisonment in Cape Town, where he contracted tuberculosis.

This is the third time the international icon has been hospitalized since the beginning of the year.

Mandela underwent surgery in December last year to remove gallstones while he was recovering from pneumonia.

JR/KA

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

In March 2013 the events in Cyprus shock the world to hit the radar screen of world media.

The bank deposits were confiscated.

Some tried to make it look as an emergency measure, an exclusion from the rules that define banking activities and the functioning of market economy.

But there is a solid ground to believe the confiscations are to become a routine feature of everyday life.

Deposit confiscation: a well-planned impromptu

The events were normally painted as some kind of poorly planned ad libbed decision on the part of the European Union carried out by Cyprus government. It was a one-time action, a step taken under the pressure of circumstances. We view it differently, in our opinion it was a well prepared concerted action approved at top level including actors outside Europe. The very operation should be defined as a precedent, an experiment or a test. Or, to be exact, the test to launch a global trend and the confiscation spread around the world.

As far back as in 2009 — 2010, when the ways out of the global crisis were discussed at international summits (G7, G8, G20 and other structures), non-standard ways of banks rescue in contingency were part of the agenda, including the schemes of bailing them out at the expense of account holders. For instance, things like introducing cuts on deposits, full or partial, or freezing accounts (either till a bank has fully recovered or by compulsive conversion into shares (authorized capital stock).

Even after the first wave of the financial crisis died down, the ideas never stopped hitting the agenda of world financial agencies (the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Financial Stability Oversight Council — FSOC), central banks, banking and financial oversight agencies of the «gold billion» countries.

For instance in December 2012 the Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions, a joint paper by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England, saw light. The authors cede that the recent banking crisis was in great measure managed thanks to financial injections. As they see it, the measure is wrong because by violating the market economy laws it shifts the burden on taxpayers, aggravates budget deficits and boosts state debts. The report says the use of deposits for the purpose of rescuing creditors is a more just, effective and market oriented way to tackle the issue.

The prescription envisions the following ways to use the money of account holders: a) no return subsidies; b) credits; c) investments (acquisition of shares and stock). The paper admits the deposits converted into shares of the bank make a money owner lose the right for compensation of losses guaranteed by state insurance. Let me recall that the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) offered guarantees for the deposits below $250 thousand. It is also noted in the report that the state insurances of the United States, Great Britain and other states of «gold billion» will not be able to provide safety cushions to deposits. This way the use of deposits for banks rescue becomes inevitable.

Somehow the authors get around the question if the proposed measures are just, democratic or market like. They come to a rather under-substantiated conclusion that the state deposit insurance has obviously become an anachronism nowadays.

The idea of deposit cuts in Cyprus banks hung in the air a few months before the European Union and Cyprus announced their decision. On January 2013 the New York Times used the Russian word strizhka while describing the Cyprus happenings, «Russians, who hold about one-fifth of bank deposits in Cyprus, would take a big hit». No surprise the US journalists knew what would take place in Cyprus two months before the events. What is striking is the carelessness of many Russian clients who believed the offshore was a safe haven. According to European Commission estimates (evidently understated) the depositors of the two largest Cyprus banks — Laiki Bank and the Bank of Cyprus lost €8, 3 billion of depositors’ money because of cuts.

In April 2013 Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades said, «Regrettably, this fundamental EU principle was not respected. On the contrary, decisions reached beforehand by the interested parties were coercively imposed». He added, «I sincerely hope that this precedent in relation to Cyprus is not going to be applied elsewhere in Europe, although, as it is well known, the main raison d’etre of a precedent is that it can serve the purpose of establishing norms and guidelines to be repeatedly and universally applied». Indeed. Thus some countries started to discuss the Cyprus experience for practical purposes.

Some states individual initiatives

Right after what happened in Cyprus, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Greece; Slovenia came into the focus of public scrutiny. These are economically weak links; the banking bankruptcy risks are especially high. It was expected back in March the same bank rescue steps would be applied in one of these states. Significant deposit outflows went to the banks of states boasting more stable economies, especially Switzerland. Quite unexpectedly the Cyprus goings-on were echoed thousands of miles away — in New Zealand and Canada.

The government of New Zealand started activities to push through the same decision on tackling the financial institutions bail-out problem: the essence is that the deposits are to be subject to cuts in order to save the banks. The scheme is called the Open Bank Resolution (OBR) by Bill English, Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand and Minister of Finance. He had put it forward before what happened in Cyprus; the events just inspired him to shift the discussion into the parliament of the country. «Bill English is proposing a Cyprus-style solution for managing bank failure here in New Zealand — a solution that will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts». said Green Party Co-leader Dr. Russel Norman. «The Reserve Bank (central bank — author’s note) is in the final stages of implementing a system of managing bank failure called Open Bank Resolution. The scheme will put all bank depositors on the hook for bailing out their bank. «Depositors will overnight have their savings shaved by the amount needed to keep the bank afloat. While the details are still to be finalized, nearly all depositors will see their savings reduced by the same proportions».

The Open Bank Resolution is an instrument of confiscations planned in advance. Back then (March 2013) it was unprecedented. Normally the «gold billion» states practice $100-250 thousand level insurance. In the given case the money belonging to people is to be confiscated. Many experts view with bewilderment the New Zealand’s innovations thinking the implementation will bury the country’s banking system.

The government of Canada annually submits to the parliament Economic Action Plan prepared by the Department of Finance. On March 21 the 2013 Plan went to MPs. On page 155 it says, «The Government proposes to implement a — bail in regime for systemically important banks. This regime will be designed to ensure that, in the unlikely event that a systemically important bank depletes its capital, the bank can be recapitalized and returned to viability through the very rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital This will reduce risks for taxpayers. The Government will consult stakeholders on how best to implement a bail in regime in Canada Implementation timelines will allow for a smooth transition for affected institutions, investors and other market participants». In other words, the depositors’ money could be used to bail out banks.

The Cyprus events raised the issue of deposit cuts in the United States of America. Some lawmakers have tried to come up with initiatives aimed at introducing the right of using deposits to bail out US banks, but the efforts have failed lacking even minimum support. Here is the reason why. The Cyprus cuts decision is called a «tax for rich», and the commentators said the depositors got what they deserved because the bulk of money kept in Cyprus bank accounts was held by foreign oligarchs, tax evaders and money launders. Applying the same scheme in the United States will be tantamount to imposing a poor and middle class tax. Well to do Americans keep away from keeping the bulk of their savings in bank accounts, giving priority to stock exchange, equity, off exchange securities, gold, and silver and so on. The idea of imposing cuts on deposits has not resonated with general public in the United States of America. It contradicts the views spread around in American society calling for more equal distribution of wealth. By the way, in America they remember that it’s not deposits only that could be subject to cuts, but also the property kept in bank lockers (mainly by people of means). It has nothing to do with the Cyprus experience. It’s American know how. Back in 2010 the US Department of Home Security circulated a letter among banks with a warning that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement agencies had a legal access to bank clients’ vaults and lockers. Papers, gold, other precious metals and valuables could be confiscated in the interests of national security if need be. Of course, at the moment (2010) the information was related to fighting organized crime, drug trafficking, funding terrorists etc. The letter was to the effectiveness of complying with the Patriot Act in force after the 9/11events. The things have changed and in 2013 some experts read the letter as saying that a bank failure is a serious threat to national security. So they have come to unexpected conclusion: a revision of lockers is allowed and valuables kept there can be used to rescue failing banks. Here is the sanctity of private property! It smells of Bolshevism which in its time taught that the «end justifies the means».

Europe gets ready for big «haircut»

Europe is leaving others behind on the way to introducing the haircuts of deposits. Or the European Union, to be exact. The first step was made on April 24 this year when the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) of the European Parliament voted on its report on the proposal for a directive on bank recovery and resolution. This is a key pillar in the reform of EU banking legislation, following the agreement on the capital requirements and single supervisor package. Gunnar Hökmark, MEP, Sweden’s Conservative Party, was one of the new system’s architects. In the middle of May the deposit cuts issue was debated by Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) session chaired by Michel Barnier, European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services. On May 20 a group of lawmakers in the European Parliament’s economics committee overwhelmingly voted that, from 2016, large depositors in the EU might suffer losses if a bank gets into serious trouble. The plan was similar to a deal in Cyprus, where wealthy depositors at two banks took hits to save the country from bankruptcy. The European Parliament has joint say with the 27 countries in the EU on the law that would give regulators powers to impose losses on creditors and take other steps during a bank rescue. The legislation envisions creation of national resolution funds based on bank contributions. As of today the main provisions are:

1. Deposits under 100,000 euros would be spared.

2. A bank would dip into large deposits of over 100,000 euros once it had exhausted other avenues such as shareholders and bondholders.

3. The new banks bail out system will become effective in 2016.

4. The legislation envisions creation of national resolution funds based on bank contributions. Some lawmakers are calling for a Europe-wide resolution fund and the European Commission is due to propose such a fund in the coming months but that faces resistance from Germany.

5. Bank depositors are divided into reliable and risky. The confiscation measures are defined by what category a depositor belongs to.

The last provision is the most interesting one. There are no definite criteria for defining the depositors. But some analysts read the provision as follows.The reliable ones are «ours», that is those who belong to Eurozone. The risky ones come from outside. Evidently, the depositors from Russia will be considered to be risky account holders. This attitude towards the clients from Russia is not new. This spring the Russian Cyprus depositors started to look for «back-up airports» in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and some other states of Eastern Europe. A stern warning came from Brussels. The eurobeaurocrats said the bankers in Eastern Europe should keep away from dealing with Russian clients — the reason was that the Russian depositors’ sources of income did not meet the legitimacy requirements. So, there should be no surprise that the money of Russia’s citizens deposited in the European Union member countries will be constantly under the Damocles sword of confiscation.

Valentin Katasonov, D.Sc. (Economics), Economist and the chairman of the S.F. Sharapov Russian Economic Society

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

A series of severe storms are forecast to rip through the US on Wednesday, bringing tornadoes, lightning, hail and power outages to 20 percent of all Americans.

Meteorologists are warning that a massive derecho could bring
devastating weather conditions to 64 million people across 10
states. Cities including Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and
Columbus are expected to experience severe conditions 45 times
higher than a normal day in June.

The line of storms will span at least 240 miles, with winds of at
least 58 mph. The derecho is a rare weather phenomenon that
usually only occurs in the Midwest once a year. Meteorologists
say that predicting such a storm system is difficult, but that it
is highly likely to occur Wednesday.

“It’s like predicting a large tornado is going to happen,”
said MSNBC Meteorologist Bill Karins. “No one can do that. The
only thing we can do is say conditions are favorable for one to
happen.”

Nick Wiltgen, a meteorologist for The Weather Channel, said
conditions are favorable for a derecho, and “maybe more than
one”, in the US this week.

But if weather conditions are as severe as meteorologists
forecast, millions of Americans could experience large hail,
dangerous lightning, and destructive winds. Trees may be
uprooted, branches may litter the roads, utility poles and wires
could be brought down, and power outages could occur across the
country.

Bill Bunting, operations chief at the National Weather Service’s
Oklahoma-based Storm Prediction Center, told AP that although he
does not want Americans to panic, it is important for the to be
aware of the risks.

“It’s a pretty high threat,” he said. “We don’t want to
scare people, but we want them to be aware.”

Jeff Masters, meteorology director at Weather Underground, told
AP that Wednesday’s predicted derecho “might be the worst
severe weather outbreak for this part of the country for the
year.”

Although the worst of the storm is expected to occur in Midwest,
cities including Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, Milwaukee,
Pittsburgh and Louisville have a risk level of weather 15 times
more severe than normal.

And even if a derecho does not form on Wednesday,
the region will still experience powerful thunderstorms and
destructive weather conditions that could bring down trees.

In 2012, a derecho caused $1 billion in damages across 11 states
spanning from Chicago to Washington, D.C. The weather system came
with wind gusts as high as 100 mph, Thirteen people were killed,
4 million were left without power, and 34 people died from the
heat wave that followed the storm system, AP reports.

In the US, derechos are most likely to occur between May and
July. Wednesday’s storms will move quickly, and leave behind days
of oppressive heat.

“By the time you see the dark sky and distant thunder you may
have only minutes to get to safe shelter,” Bunting warned.

This article originally appeared on: RT

Infowars.com
June 12, 2013

Due to intrusive legislation imposed by the state of Colorado, residents of Weld County, Colorado, are moving to break away and form the 51 state. The proposal was recently floated by three country commissioners in response to rural residents angered over the state’s recent renewable-energy law, draconian gun control proposals and fracking, measures imposed by Democrats.

GiGi Erneta covered the story for Infowars Nightly News on Tuesday.

“Northern and Northeastern Colorado and our voices are being ignored in the legislative process this year, and our very way of life is under attack,” explained Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway.

“We’ve had citizens coming to our hearings for months asking us to please do something. This is for real,” Conway said earlier this week.

“The people of rural Colorado are mad, and they have every right to be,” Rep. Cory Gardner of Yuma told The Fort Collins Coloradoan last week. “The governor and his Democrat colleagues in the statehouse have assaulted our way of life, and I don’t blame people one bit for feeling attacked and unrepresented by the leaders in our state.”

Colorado governor John Hickenlooper insists the gun and environmental laws are popular with state residents, including rural residents.

Liberals have responded to the threat of secession by portraying the Weld Country commissioners are extremists. “It’s just going to be seen as a crackpot idea by a bunch of crackpot commissioners some of whom are term limited,” Steve Mazurana, a former political science professor at the University of Northern Colorado, told the Denver Post last week. “Some will just call it Crackpottopia.”

The last state to secede was Virginia when West Virginia was established in 1863. The secession measure, if passed by county ballots, will face approval by the state and Congress.

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This article was posted: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 at 10:59 am

Tags: constitution, domestic news

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Istanbul.

PAT!  PAT!  PAT!  PAT!  PAT!

The first sound of volleys of teargas cannisters being fired by police at the protestors in nearby Taksim Square came in through my open balcony door as I knelt on the floor at the start of my morning yoga routine on Tuesday.  It was just after 8 am.

“Cunts!” I cursed.  I had been visiting the protest camp in Gezi Park in since it started at the end of May, and watched in growing admiration as it rapidly transformed from a small group objecting to the proposed destruction of some trees to a huge fairground of free speech and democracy, brothers and sisters arm in arm against the  despotism of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip ErdoÄŸan and the fascist police, whom they had successfuly driven from the park and the square, and indeed Istanbul’s main pedestrian shopping street,  Istiklal Avenue.  The whole area had been delightfully cop-free for ten days, and it never felt safer.  But now, from the sound of things, they were back.

The sound of shots resounded intermittently throughout the morning.  Checking for news on the internet, I learned that the police had been sent in to remove the barricades blocking the roads into Taksim Square and clear away the tents and flags there, as well as to remove the revolutionary banners and posters decorating the front of Atatuk Cultural Centre building.  It was promised that the park was not to be touched.  Police were spraying crowds with water cannon and firing at small groups of people throwing stones and molotov cocktails at them.  Thanks to the cops, my plans for the morning would have to be shelved.

A couple of days before I had discovered a tented area in the park set up as an open school/university and had intended to give elementary  English oral tests there, and maybe teach some protest songs such as ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’ and ‘We Shall Overcome’.  Somehow, with all that shooting going on, it didn’t seem quite the right time for school.

At midday I went out for lunch at a cheap lokanta in town.  As I ate I occasionally glanced at the large tv screen on the wall where Prime Minister ErdoÄŸan was talking in Parliament about the situation in Taksim and Gezi Park.

“Our determinacy with regard to Taksim Square and the Gezi Park will continue.” he said.  “I am sorry, but Gezi Park is a park not a place to occupy.  I tell these youngsters to leave this place and to end this protest as I believe their sincerity and I kiss their eyes.  But I tell those who terrorize and continue these things — “This came to an end. There will be no tolerance afterwards. I call on you for restraint.”

He said that activists occupying Gezi Parkıwere part of an orchestrated plot against his AKP government by internal and external lobby groups that joined forces to stop the economic and political rise of Turkey, but said that he would show them on Friday when two rallies have been called for his supporters to show up in huge numbers.

“We are taking to the streets to show that the people are here and defending their popularly elected prime minister and his team. We are coming to take the squares to demonstrate the response of my people who have been watching all of these developments in their houses with gritted teeth.” He also called on his electorate not to feel like losers against what he called illegal groups as these would be obliterated.

“There is a very powerful government at work,” he said. “We have never pushed the 50 percent to take the streets. We do not let the people pour into streets.”

After lunch I decided to see if it would be possible to take my recently customary walk to Gezi Park.  Everything seemed normal as I joined the flow of tourists, locals, workers and shoppers heading up Istiklal Avenue towards Taksim Square.  The people walking away from it seemed calm enough, until suddenly PAT!  PAT! PAT! EVERYBODY was running away from it in panic as smoking gas cannisters bounced down the road, fired from Taksim.  I ducked into a shop doorway and they let down the shutter, but enough of the acrid vapour crept in to burn our nostrils and throats.  After a couple of minutes they pulled up the shutter and I continued towards Taksim, the air incensed lightly with the vile gas.  I came across a street seller flogging surgical masks for 3 tl each.  I bought one and put it on.  I notice that practically everybody had one around their necks, some with actual gas masks.

I got to the entrance of the square and stood with a crowd of onlookers and newsmen on the pavement in front of the Divan Hotel surveying the scene.  The statue of Ataturk in the centre had been stripped of the flags festooning it before and was surrounded by riot police in their black uniforms and white helmets with their riot shields, sturdy batons and tear gas guns.  Two big white tanks were wheeling around the square spraying playfully or very forcefully at groups of demonstrators.

“Everybody throw stones!  Everybody throw stones!” said a thuggish man who arrived with a red kerchief covering his lower face.

“No!  No violence!” cried a couple of young women onlookers, but the guy laughed and ignored them, picking up a couple of rocks from the road and pelting them in the direction of the cops.  I saw other stones flying, and then firework rockets flying out from the park and exploding in red flashes with loud cracking bangs.  Then PAT!  PAT!  A couple of smoke bombs were aimed at us and we were engulfed in a suffocating cloud.  We all fled as quickly as possible, literally blinded with burning tears, gasping for air, almost suffocating.

On my way down some back streets to try to find another way to get to the park, while passing a group sheltering in a doorway, I heard a woman say in English “Where are all the protestors?”

I stopped to speak to her.  She was a French journalist, Natalie, who had arrived only last night in order to cover the story, but she hadn’t found a way to the park in order to do any interviews.  I told her that I knew a way, and if she would like to come along with me I could show her.  We ran into another couple of gas attacks on the way and ended up weeping in the garden in front of a hotel, where we met a guest,an Englishman, Adrian, who had been in Istanbul for 3 days, there to see what was happening, with a ‘spiritual’ interest.  Together we made our way up the hill via the road leading into Taksim in front of the Atataturk Cultural Centre, which had been stripped of the colourful revolutionary posters and banners and replaced with a Turkish flag and a portrait of Kemal Ataturk, ‘Father of the Turks’.

There we found hundreds of riot police lying resting under the shade of some trees, or standing around chatting, having a break in their brutality.  Natalie found a Turkish girl in a crash helmet standing in front of a burnt-out car and began interviewing her.  We took her with us as we entered the park easily from this side.  It was still crowded with camped-out protestors, mostly calm, but there was an atmosphere of gloom which had not existed previously.  Adrian and I left Natalie taking notes and pictures, and walked along the paths under the trees, among the tents and sleepers and chatters on the carpets spread on the grass.  Among the revolutionary posters, banners and cartoons were those which ridiculed Erdogan and called for his resignation, to be replaced by a frer and more democratic country.

Back at the front of the park we watched one of the water cannons in the square spraying a small group of distant youths throwing stones and molotov cocktails at the police from behind a grilled barricade shield.  The police fired cannisters intermittently, but the confrontation seemed a staged diversion.  I passed betweed the cops and the rioters as I left the square on my way home to get ready for work, and a smoke bomb wizzed in front of me.  I saw one of the youths pick it up and throw it back, the smoke trailing up and falling in a semi-circle, a classic image.

I collected my runes and went back to Istiklal Avenue, the lower part near the old underground station, where I sat for a couple of hours in the doorway of an empty shop telling fortunes in order to earn my daily bread and wine.  The atmosphere there was completely different from the pandemonium in Taksim, people coming and going calmly about their business, shopping or strolling, but many had surgical masks hanging around their necks, just in case.

One jovial plump man approached with a group of friends and asked if I could do a reading for the Prime Minister.  I replied that usually permission was needed by the person whose fortune was being told, but I’d give it a try.

Michael Dickinson can be contacted at his website.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

An opinion poll shows most Americans disapprove of the United States governmentâ„¢s spying on phone records of ordinary citizens.

According to a CBS News poll released on Tuesday, almost six out of 10 Americans gave disapproval to the National Security Agency (NSA) controversial program that conducts massive surveillance of electronic communications on tens of millions of US citizens and foreigners.

The poll found that while 57 percent of the respondents said the public exposure of the secret bid by a former employee of the NSA spy agency would not harm the fight against terrorism, only 30 percent feel that the disclosure would weaken their country.

Meanwhile, about 75 percent said they accepted the US governmentâ„¢s surveillance of internet activities in foreign countries, the poll revealed.

Nearly 60 percent of Americans said they were concerned that the federal governmentâ„¢s fight against terrorism would cause them to lose their privacy, the poll showed.

Despite public outrage, US President Barack Obama and the Director of US National Intelligence Agency James Clapper defended the massive surveillance efforts as Å“legal,” longstanding and well-known to the Congress.

The scheme, a joint NSA-FBI initiative, gives the agencies access to emails, web chats and other communications directly from the servers of major US internet firms.

GMA/KA

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Elaine Blaisdell
Cumberland Times-News
June 12, 2013

Garrett County Sheriff Robert Corley provided a resolution he claims protects citizens’ Second Amendment rights in regard to the Maryland Firearms Safety Act of 2013 for the county commissioners’ support during the commission meeting on Tuesday.

Corley proclaimed his opposition to the MFSA and asked for support in allowing himself and deputies to use sound discretionary enforcement of the MFSA against any citizen unless they are engaged in commission of a crime of violence, a violent act, have been convicted of a prior felony, are adjudicated with a dangerous mental illness or under any other related compelling exigent circumstances.

“I’m asking you to join me in my commitment to the law-abiding citizens of Garrett County because such enforcement will greatly reduce the likelihood of criminalizing law-abiding citizens,” said Corley.

Read more

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This article was posted: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 at 10:36 am

Tags: constitution, domestic news, gun rights

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Human Rights Watch has accused Greek police of racial profiling, arbitrary detention and physical and verbal abuse of immigrants in a scathing new report. All are in violation European Union regulations, and disobey international human rights conventions.

The report by the international advocacy group, titled ‘Unwelcome Guests’, focuses on Operation
Xenios Zeus, a radical police initiative commenced in August last
year under which 85,000 suspected illegal immigrants have been
detained and taken to police stations to have their visas
checked.

It says the operation is not only illegal, but also ineffective,
with only 6 per cent of those detained found to be in breach of
immigration law.

“Police mistreatment of migrants and asylum seekers is a
longstanding, serious problem in Greece,” said Eva Cossé, the
author of the report.

“Official statistics and our research demonstrate that the
police are casting an extraordinarily wide net, and subjecting
individuals with a legal right to be in Greece, including
tourists, to treatment prohibited by international law.”

Due to its geographical location, Greece is the first country
through which two thirds of illegal immigrants enter the European
Union, according to its border agency Frontex.

As a result of the influx, which has been bolstered by conflicts
in Iraq, Afghanistan, and more recently in the Middle East, a
virtual immigrant ghetto has sprung up in an Athens district and
the port city of Patras.

The Greeks government estimates that there are up to a million
illegal immigrants in the country — nearly 10 per cent of the
population.

Operation Xenios Zeus aimed to re-seal the country’s borders, and
weed out the illegal aliens, while bringing order to troublesome
neighborhoods.

But HRW says police are simply using it as a pretext to terrorize
mostly innocent immigrants on the streets.

In a typical story from one of the 50 immigrants they
interviewed, police simply stopped a public bus at a central
Athens station, and said “All blacks out!” before marching
the suspects to the nearest station for document checks. Many say
they were strip searched and shouted at by the officers, even
before they were asked for any papers.

Most immigrants whose appearance varied from those of ethnic
Greeks said they had been stopped and asked to show their ID up
to several times a day, and many accused them of overt racism.

“Investing so many resources just to catch the wrong people
and release them afterward is a huge waste,” Cossé said.

“If the authorities are serious about improving security on
the streets of Athens and controlling irregular immigration, they
should focus on real criminals and base police operations on
evidence and intelligence, not stereotypes.”

When faced with the accusations of human rights violations from
HRW, Greek police has defended the effectiveness of Xenios Zeus,
and its procedural methods.

“When an operation is ordered in the center of Athens it is
reasonable for a police officer to bring to the station whoever
they can who has the characteristics of an immigrant,” said
an official at the Hellenic Police Guards Union of Attica.

A representative of the Police Association of Border Guards of
Attica, another police union, said ethnic profiling during spot
checks was also justified. He said it was acceptable to detain
and verify the documents of “all persons who don’t look Greek.
Many times we also check Greeks too who don’t look Greek.”

A report from another respected advocacy group Amnesty
International in December last year came to similar conclusions,
but elicited no response from the Greek authorities, which have
prolonged Operation Xenios Zeus indefinitely.

This article originally appeared on: RT

Sergey Lavrov says the US and Russia must do “everything possible” to stop violence in Syria, warning that people who fight the Syrian army are “very well armed,” among them “the terrorist organization created by the United States – Al-Nusra Front.”

“This is a tragedy. What must be done and that’s where the US
and Russia see eye to eye is to do everything to stop it. You
know that alongside with the opposition which is called Free
Syrian Army terrorist organizations fight. And one of them was
the terrorist organization created by the United States –
Al-Nusra Front. Immediately the political leaders of the
opposition said it was a mistake and betrayal because Al-Nusra
cannot be listed as terrorist organization as long as it fights
the regime,” the Russian foreign minister said in an
interview with CBS in Moscow.

He added that back in the 1970s and ’80s the US was supporting
Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviet troops. “Then
these Mujahideen gave rise to Al-Qaeda, and then Al-Qaeda struck
back,” Lavrov said.

Russia is hoping to try to resolve the Syria crisis at the peace
conference, due in July, which could gather all interested
parties, including the Syrian government, various Syrian
opposition groups, regional powers like Iran and others. But
doing it requires a genuine joint effort.

“We want Syria to stay united, one piece, sovereign
territorial integrity respected,” Lavrov stated.

US and Russia ‘need much more investment’

CBS: Mr. Lavrov, thank you so much for taking the time
to sit down with us. Let’s talk a little bit about the
relationship between the US and Russia. What do you see as
the greatest challenges to that relationship currently?

Sergey Lavrov: Well, I don’t see any challenges which are
not insurmountable. I believe that after some pause and some
irritations, which appeared rather officially in our relationship
some time ago, both presidents are keen to move forward. And that
was the message President Obama sent to President Putin earlier
this year. The President of the Russian Federation reciprocated
in the same way. We are prepared to go as far as the United
States is, of course, on the basis of mutual interests searching
for balance between the interest of the two countries and on the
basis of equality and respect to each other’s positions. Within
these parameters anything is possible. And the two presidents pay
special attention, which they agreed to do actually one year ago
in Los Cabos, to improve radically the economic part of our
cooperation. There are conditions for this.

There is interest on both sides – American and Russian business.
We need much more investment. The two presidents agreed, and I
think this should be materialized soon, to establish some kind of
flexible, informal mechanism to monitor the conditions for doing
business in Russia and in the United States. Because our
businesses encounter, sometimes a treatment which we don’t
believe, is really conducive to promoting mutually beneficial
economic cooperation. 

The hi-tech area is certainly something that we should want to
deepen. Outer space is a case in point. Last year we managed to
enter into force the “123 agreement”, which is about peaceful
uses of nuclear energy. This opens up the prospects for
respective companies to cooperate with each other including on
the markets of third countries.

The humanitarian area is very important to promote a mutual trust
and people-to-people contacts. Last year we marked the 200th
anniversary of the first Russian settlement in California – Fort
Ross. There are now plans to use this premise to establish a
permanent Russian-American center of cultural heritage. And we
also signed and ratified an agreement to facilitate the visa
regime for tourists and businessmen. President Putin suggested
considering doing away with business altogether for the
short-term travel of our citizens. This was again reiterated
during his last contact with President Obama. So I think, of
course, without closing eyes on what still irritates our
relations – missile defense is a case in point, some absolutely,
I would say, unprecedented arrogant steps like the Magnitsky law,
whereby the Congress took upon itself to be the judge of the
Russian system, basically. This doesn’t help at all. And we would
have to redirect. This is the rule of politics and diplomacy in
the international arena. But all this is taken into account, the
two presidents are keen to build upon the positive foundation
which we have managed to establish.

Syrian peace effort

CBS: It’s no secret that Russia and the US do not see
eye to eye on the conflict in Syria. Has that put a strain on the
relationship? 

SL: I thought we saw eye to eye when [US Secretary of
State] John Kerry was here. I don’t think we have any difference
in the strategic approach to the situation in Syria or the
situation in any other country. We want all countries to be
stable, prosperous, democratic with the systems which reflect
modern requirements of international law, but also reflect the
traditions of the society so that we promote cultural plurality
in the world. So we don’t differ on the goals of what all of us
want to achieve in helping the people in any country to realize
their dreams, if you wish.

CBS: But the US. Government has repeatedly spoken out
against what it perceives as being Russia’s support of the Assad
regime? 

SL: Well, that’s misperception. And misperceptions are
used in today’s diplomacy to build the public opinion the right
way for those who want to achieve some geopolitical goals.

CBS: How is that a misperception?

SL: Russia repeatedly stated that we do not support anyone
in Syria. We are not weathered to any personalities. President
Assad was a best friend of the French, the British and other
European capitals. And that’s a fact of life.

CBS: But you’ve supplied them with weapons?
  

SL: We supply weapons to all those who contracted legally.
And this is the universal rule.

CBS: Even if those weapons may be used to perpetrate
war crimes? 

SL: I don’t think you can perpetrate war crimes with
defensive weapons, with air defense systems. I hope you also know
about the volume and kind of weaponry sold by the United States
to the countries of the region. And in quite a number of cases,
those equipment and weaponry include things which you can use
against popular demonstrators.

CBS: May I just read you a few elements from this list?
This is a request from a Syrian army general to a Russian arms
supplier from March of this year. 

SL: Sure.

CBS: Twenty thousand AK-47s, 200,000 mortar rounds,
grenade launchers, millions of rounds of ammunition. These are
not defensive weapons. 

SL: Are we discussing Syrian army requests or the
substance of the contracts which we honor? I think those are two
different things. And you have to make a difference.

CBS: Were these weapons supplied to the Syrian
army? 

SL: I have not seen this request. And this is not a
contract to which we are committed. Those are two very different
things. As I said, international law does not prohibit legal
supplies, legitimate supply of arms to any sovereign state
without violating any international norms. Take a look at the
existing international legal basis, recently a conference
concluded which was initiated years ago by Britain and some other
Western countries to negotiate and international treaty on arms
trade. We have been very disappointed that the eventual text does
not contain very firm language on making sure that arms do not
get into the hands of those who were not authorized by the state,
in other words non-state actors. This treaty clearly says that
you can no longer sell arms to the international players like
countries, governments and you cannot sell arms to non-state
actors. While this treaty was negotiated, the arms will continue
to flow into the region, including into Syria through hundreds
and hundreds of kilometers of uncontrolled borders. And the
people who fight the Syrian army, they’re very well armed. The
situation in the city of Qusair was created by the fact that both
sides were fighting with heavy weapons. The opposition used
artillery and air defense systems. 

This is a tragedy. What must be done and that’s where the US and
Russia see eye to eye is to do everything to stop it. You know
that alongside with the opposition which is called Free Syrian
Army terrorist organizations fight. And one of them was the
terrorist organization created by the United States –
Al-Nusra Front. Immediately the political leaders of the
opposition said it was a mistake and betrayal because Al-Nusra
Front cannot be listed as terrorist organization as long as it
fights the regime.

I think that I don’t even need to qualify this kind of attitude
to what is going on. When John Kerry was in Moscow on May 7 we
were absolutely united that we all must concentrate on bringing
the parties to a negotiating table to implement during those
negotiations, what was agreed in Geneva on June 30 last
year. 

‘Our priority is to stop violence’

CBS: The peace conference that was slated for June now
looks it will take place in July. Why the delay? 

SL: I don’t know. You have to interview John Kerry and his
officials, because we promised to make sure that the government
participates in the conference and the government said so.

CBS: So it’s the opposition who are lagging? 

SL: Yes. Well, that’s, I believe, all over the media. And
the American officials recognize that the national coalition on
which some outside sponsors want to put all the money is not
ready not even to negotiate, but to decide who is in charge in
this coalition. And this is very unfortunate because there are
constructive groups including those who never left Syria and
spent all these years together with the Syrian people, who are in
harsher position to the Assad regime and who want to participate
in this conference and who, unlike the coalition, have a
constructive agenda. They have the vision as to what kind of
Syria they would like to see.

I met with the former chief of the coalition M. Khatib in
February in Munich on the margins of the security conference. I
liked the guy. I think he’s the patriot and a very responsible
politician. I suggested that instead of trying to get united only
around regime change slogan, they should also present some
positive agenda for their country.

CBS: And you’ve been successful in that endeavor?

SL: I don’t think so. I never saw anything coming from the
coalition which would say “this is Syria which we would like to
build with all ethnic minorities, with all religious groups
feeling comfortable, with all citizens being equal” and so on and
so forth.

This never came from the coalition which is busy, as I said,
trying to decide who is in charge. And we certainly believe that
the entire spectrum of the Syrian society must be present. The
supreme Kurdish council of Syria absolutely insists that it must
be there. 

I believe that it is in the interest of all of us to make sure
that this is the case. Because we want Syria to stay united, one
piece, sovereign territorial integrity respected. And for this
you need to have Kurds among other at the negotiating
table. 

CBS: Do you believe that President Assad should step
down? 

SL: This is not for me to decide, this is for the Syrian
people to decide.  

‘We condemn all use of force which makes civilians to suffer’

CBS: Do you believe this regime has perpetrated war
crimes? 

SL: I believe that there are signs that war crimes have
been perpetrated by so many people in Syria and that this must be
investigated. This is what we agreed in Geneva on June 30 last
year. But we have to understand our priorities. If our priority
is to punish people, then of course you can say that unless
President Assad steps down, unless international criminal court
considers this case we would not be ready for negotiation. That’s
what the coalition and some other opposition figures are saying.
But then revenge and punishment is the priority number one. Our
priority is to stop violence and to save more lives. And for
this, you have to put everything else on the back burner.
Everything can wait.

The immediate task is to make sure that they sit down and start
negotiations. The government said it is ready. It said it has a
delegation. The foreign minister would be the head of the
delegation. We believe that the opposition must do the same as
soon as possible. Those who sponsor the opposition must make all
efforts to use their influence for good purposes. You know,
because sometimes we hear statements like (actually some White
House representative said the other day) that the US will
continue to support the political and armed opposition because
what is needed is to restore the military balance on the ground.
If this is the logic of moving things forward, then I’m not very
optimistic.  

CBS: I’ve spent quite a bit of time on the ground
inside rebel held parts of Syria. And I’ve seen fighter jets
dropping bombs strapped to parachutes falling onto civilian
areas, civilian casualties, women and children. And I wanted to
ask you, have you ever even privately condemned the regime for
bombarding its own people? 

SL: Not only privately, we did it publicly. We condemn all
use of force which makes civilians suffer. We do this
irrespective of whether this is done by those whom we like or
dislike politically. We condemned what our Western friends call
‘collateral damage’ in Libya when civilians were dying. We
condemned the collateral damage in Iraq. And we condemned the use
of force by regimes when the civilians suffered, be it Libya, be
it Syria, be it any other country. But you have really to be
consistent and you have to understand that the opposition is not
just peaceful civilians.

CBS: But it started that way. I was there. I was at
those protests.

SL: It started the way it started. And if we now want to
get on to the business of who is to blame and not being able to
lift a finger to stop the violence before we decide who is to
blame, then I’m afraid we would be in for a very, very difficult
and long tragedy. 

If we are willing to do everything to stop this and to save
lives, then we have to really agree on our priorities. Justice
must be done. But justice can wait until we stop this. You cannot
really say we would not we would not help stop the bloodshed
until we have this guy in court.

‘We’re only country who works with all spectrum of Syrians,
including armed opposition’

CBS: Do you ever worry that you’ve backed the wrong
horse?

SL: No, we are not cynical enough, you know, to use this
type of analogy to describe a very tragic situation. We are not
whether to President Assad and people know this. And when we
discuss things privately with my colleagues including those who
publicly make statements which are catching the eye, you know, of
the viewers and creating a very simplistic picture of what is
going on, when we talk to them privately, they understand fully
what is going on. But they say, “You must understand that very
early in the conflict we said he must go. And now we cannot eat
our hat.” Okay, we have to choose. Either you think about your
reputation because you made the wrong statement two years ago or
you think about achieving real result, which would save lives.
And then you can use any eye-catchers like backing the horse or
something else.

CBS: Wrong side of history? 

SL: Wrong side of history, yes, we’ve heard of this. And
we were also told that we had lost the Arab world. Well, come to
put at mind that this is wrong, because we work – we’re probably
the only country which works – with the whole spectrum of
Syrians, including all groups of the opposition, including the
armed opposition. And we understand that those of them who think
about their country would be really brought together and a
compromise could be reached. So that not just the opposition who
says, “Well, negotiations are good, but the only purpose to go to
Geneva is for the government to deliver the full authority and to
give it to us”. This is not going to work because this not what
we agreed. Last year in Geneva we said that the government and
the opposition must decide the composition of this transitional
governing organ by mutual consent and because, apart from this
coalition, there are people who, as I said, never left Syria and
who suffered, they lived through all these difficulties together
with their people. They have the right to express their view of
what kind of future they want for their country.  

CBS: Some analysts have suggested that Russia’s stance
on Syria may be a knee-jerk reaction to what it perceives as US
meddling in other nation’s affairs. Do you think that’s fair?
  

SL: No, I think, this is again something which analysts
invent to have something which would sell on TV, the newspapers
and other media. We don’t build our foreign policy on the basis
of this kind of judgment. We try to be consistent. And as we were
condemning the way NATO used the Security Council mandate in
Libya, by the same token we condemn those people who made a
support to Libya when this people are trying to get to power in
Mali now. And our French colleagues who were supplying the Libyan
rebels with arms are now fighting them in Mali and countering the
French equipment which is used against them.

‘What is going on is radicalization of politics’

CBS: You see a hypocrisy in the West? 

SL: I see double standards, if you wish. You either deny
terrorists any acceptance in the international life or you make
your double standard policy work the way it has been working. “I
don’t like this guy in this country so we will call him a
dictator and topple him. This guy in another country is also
dictatorial. But he’s our dictator.” To put this a bit
differently than one famous American said about bad guys who were
“our bad guys”. We have to take a look at the comprehensive
picture of what is going on in the Middle East and North Africa
and down south the Sahel region. What is going on is
radicalization of politics, extremists being harbored from Libya,
arms and combatants are infiltrating into Mali and some other
countries in the region. And you either make your choice on the
basis of whom you like and whom you don’t. Or you agree that
there is a common enemy in the person of international terrorism.
I think you must be consistent.

CBS: Do you see President Assad in that sense as an
ally of Russia’s? 

SL: We see an ally in all those who want the Syrian war to
stop.

CBS: And do you believe President Assad wants that?

SL: For this you have to make sure that the opposition
expresses its readiness to go to this conference. Because he said
his delegation is ready and to call him bluff, you need to see
whether the opposition is coming or not.

CBS: But what do you believe?

SL: Well, I believe he would send a delegation.

CBS: And do you believe that he wants peace in
Syria? 

SL: I’m not in the business of believing. I’m in the
business of verifying. We won’t know whether this conference has
a chance until the time the delegation sit down at the table with
the outside circle pushing them into their bets and not allowing
them to leave this table until they agree.

CBS: You’re in a unique position, though. Russia has
great influence on the Syrian regime. Do you feel the weight of
that responsibility?

SL: Yes. No doubt about it.

‘We condemn any abuse of international humanitarian law’

CBS: And when you see the regime using ballistic
missiles against its own people, killing hundreds, taking out
entire city blocks… 

SL: We cannot have responsibility for what regime is
doing. And as I’ve said, we condemn any abuse of international
humanitarian law. We feel responsibility and bear this
responsibility as the Russian Federation, which is co-sponsoring
an important international meeting together with the United
States. We delivered what we promised. Namely, the government
consent to send the delegation to his conference. For all other
responsibilities, be it the regime, be it the opposition, be it
the outside sponsors of the opposition, you have to talk to those
who have influence on this on this groups of people.

CBS: Let me just talk about another issue. I just
wanted to talk to you quickly about the Boston bombings. Do you
see this as an opportunity for the US and Russia to cooperate
further on counter terrorism efforts?

SL: Well, I think we have always been in favor of this
cooperation to be deepened. We have a saying “You might not have
luck, but bad luck helped”. I think when President Putin just
immediately after 9/11tragedy called his American counterpart and
expressed his condolences and readiness to help, I believe the
two presidents had a very good conversation and agreed in the
context of what we just discussed about what is going on in the
Middle East and North Africa. They agreed that there should be no
double standards in fighting terrorism.

Normally people don’t draw lessons from past history. But I think
9/11 is still very fresh in the minds of the Americans and all
others to forget the fact that when the US back last century in
the 1970s and 1980s was supporting Mujahideen in Afghanistan
against the Soviet troops. Then these Mujahideen gave rise to
Al-Qaeda, and then Al-Qaeda struck back. We have to be
consistent. And I hope that this terrorist attack in Boston will
improve the cooperation of the coordination between our agencies.
Immediately after the Boston terrorist attack we arranged for the
FBI to visit Makhachkala [capital of Russia’s Republic of
Dagestan] to talk to the family of the Tsarnaev brothers. The
director of the FBI, Mr. Mueller, visited us last month and had
useful discussions with his colleagues and other special services
and intelligence communities, cooperated very closely on this
particular case, but is also trying to establish priorities for
future cooperation in other cases.

CBS: Some people have suggested the Boston bombers are an
American issue. That they have no relation to Russian’s own
difficulties in the Caucasus. Do you see it as purely American
incident?

SL: Well, some 15 years ago the Americans called those who
were trying to establish Sharia law in the Chechen Republic just
like they did the Mujahideen in Afghanistan — “freedom fighters”.
Quite a number of them were given political asylum in the United
States, including a gentleman called I. Ahmadov, a very close
associate of Basaev, who was recognized as a terrorist by the US
and by the United Nations. But Ahmadov still lives there and
enjoys the status of political refugee. By the way, he was given
political asylum by a Boston court decision. He writes books and
receives subsidies from national endowment for democracy in spite
of the fact that all necessary material on this particular person
is available with the United States respective agencies. 

So I think this will be changing. And the less we attempt it to
use terrorist situations, I would say, to achieve one or another
geopolitical goal different from fighting terrorism wherever it
pops up, I think we would be doing right thing.

CBS: Mr. Lavrov, thank you so much for your time. Do
you think that more could’ve been done on both sides (on the US
and the Russian side) to pin down these men before the attacks
happened?  

SL: Well, this was discussed broadly in the US media. And
it was not us who raised this issue in the public domain. But
there were contacts a couple of years ago. And there were some
warnings. But I don’t want to get into the substance of this. I
am not a professional on counter-terrorism in practical terms.
But the legal basis for counter-terrorism, the politics which we
promote on the basis of this legal understandings and legal norms
are very important.

CBS: But you’re looking very closely to see what
lessons have been learned. And I’m assuming it’s sort of
refocused Russian security forces on looking at Dagestan and
Ingushetia. 

SL: Well, the terrorist manifestations still take place
but in much lower numbers than it used to be. I can assure that
we have understanding with intelligence and special agencies of
other countries including the US to make certain that this would
not be treated in isolation. Because it’s all related –
Afghanistan, from Afghanistan and Pakistan, some no man’s land
Waziristan between these two countries, then Central Asia, the
Caucasus – it’s all part of what we call terrorist international.
And the sooner we stop calling terrorist good and bad and call
them just terrorists the better is for the world.

This article originally appeared on: RT

Last week a federal judge ordered Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to allow 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan, who suffers from cystic fibrosis, to be moved to the adult lung transplant list. That gives her a better chance of receiving a potentially lifesaving transplant. Sarah Murnaghan’s fate should force us to examine our organ transplant policy.

There are more than 88,000 Americans on the organ transplant waiting list. Roughly 10 percent of them will die before receiving an organ. These lost lives are not so much an act of God as they are an act of Congress because of its 1984 National Organ Transplant Act, as amended, which prohibits payment to organ donors.

Reliance on voluntary donations has been an abject policy failure. The mindless rhetoric used to support this policy is: “Organ transplantation is built upon altruism and public trust.” It’s noteworthy that everyone involved in the organ transplant business is compensated – that includes hospitals, surgeons, nurses, and organ procurement workers. Depending on the organ transplanted, the charges range from a low of $260,000 for a kidney to about a million dollars for a heart or intestines.

Many people are offended by the notion of human body parts becoming commodities for sale. There’s at least a tiny bit of inconsistency because people do sell human blood, semen, and hair. But let’s think through the prohibition on organ sales by asking the question: How many other vital things in our lives do we depend on donations to provide? Food is vital, water is vital; so are cars, clothing, housing, electricity, and oil. We don’t depend on donations to provide these goods. Just ask yourself whether having a car, clothing, or a house should be determined by the same principle governing organ transplants: “altruism and public trust.” If it were, there would be massive shortages.

Why should people have to depend on altruism and voluntary donations to provide something that one day they may need more urgently than food, water, cars, clothing, or housing? All objections to organ sales reduce to nonsense, ignorance, or arrogance. Let’s look at some of them.

One argument is that if organs are sold rather than donated, poor people couldn’t afford them. This argument ignores the difference between methods of attaining organs and methods of distributing them. For example, poor people might not be able to afford food, but Congress hasn’t mandated that food be donated instead of sold so that poor people can eat. If Congress did that, there’d be massive shortages, and poor people would probably starve. So instead of relying on “altruism and public trust” to feed poor people, we simply allow the market mechanism to supply food and then subsidize purchases through programs like food stamps. The same principle can be applied to organ transplants: Allow the market to supply organs, and if needed, subsidize or provide them through charity.

Another stated concern is that if there’s a market for organs, poor people will sell their organs and become ill. From an ethical point of view, if people own themselves, they should have a right to dispose of themselves any way they please so long as they do not violate the property rights of others. Of course, if people belong to the government, they have no such right. By the way, most proposals for organ sales are only for cadaver organs.

Some people have argued that an organ transplant market might lead to murder and the sale of the victim’s organs to unscrupulous organ brokers. There are many market transactions that can be abused, such as stock market fraud and product misrepresentation, but we haven’t chosen to outlaw the sale of stock and other products. Murder would remain illegal and punishable.

Finally, there’s the humane question. If you or a loved one were in dire need of a lifesaving kidney or lung transplant, which would you prefer: being placed on an organ transplant waiting list, or having the right to sell assets or take out a loan to purchase an organ?

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM

This article originally appeared on: The New American

“The natural resources we all depend upon must be protected for future generations….to bring us to a place where there is a quality of life, and where Indians and non-Indians are to understand one another and work together.”

— Billy Frank, Jr. (Nisqually)

In the 2010s, new “unlikely alliances” of Native peoples and their rural white neighbors are standing strong against fossil fuel and mining projects. In the Great Plains, grassroots coalitions of Native peoples and white ranchers and farmers (including the aptly named “Cowboy and Indian Alliance”) are blocking the Keystone XL oil pipeline and coal mining. In the Pacific Northwest, Native nations are using their treaties against plans for coal and oil terminals, partly because shipping and burning fossil fuels threatens their treaty fishery. In the Great Lakes, Bad River Ojibwe are leading the fight to stop metallic mining, drawing on past anti-mining alliances of Ojibwe and white fishers. In the Maritimes, Mi’kmaq and Maliseet are confronting shale gas fracking, joined by non-Native neighbors.

The Idle No More movement similarly connects First Nations’ sovereignty to the protection of the Earth for all people–Native and non-Native alike. Idle No More co-founder Sylvia McAdam states, “Indigenous sovereignty is all about protecting the land, the water, the animals, and all the environment we share.” Gyasi Ross observes that Idle No More “is about protecting the Earth for all people from the carnivorous and capitalistic spirit that wants to exploit and extract every last bit of resources from the land…. It’s not a Native thing or a white thing, it’s an Indigenous worldview thing. It’s a ‘protect the Earth’ thing.”

A debate around Idle No More discusses how the movement can reach the non-Native public. In any alliance, the same question always arises at the intersection of unity and autonomy. Should the so-called “minority” partners in the alliance set aside their own distinct issues in order to build bridges to the “majority” over common-ground concerns, such as protecting the Earth? Should Native leadership, for example, not as strongly assert treaty rights and tribal sovereignty to avoid alienating potential allies among their white neighbors? Conventional wisdom says that we should all “get along” for the greater good, and that different peoples should only talk about “universalist” similarities that unite them, not “particularist” differences that separate them.

In my both my activism and academic studies, I’ve often wrestled with this question, and spoken with many Native and non-Native activists and scholars who also deal with it. Based on their stories and experiences, I’ve concluded that the conventional wisdom is largely bullshit. Emphasizing unity over diversity can actually be harmful to building deep, lasting alliances between Native and non-Native communities. History shows the opposite to be true: the stronger that Native peoples assert their nationhood, the stronger their alliances with non-Indian neighbors.

Unlikely Alliances

Since the 1970s, unlikely alliances have joined Native communities with their rural white neighbors (some of whom had been their worst enemies) to protect their common lands and waters. These unique convergences have confronted mines, dams, logging, power lines, nuclear waste, military projects, and other threats. My main education has been as an activist in unlikely alliances in South Dakota and Wisconsin. As a geography grad student I later studied them in other states (such as Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington) where they took different paths from treaty conflict to environmental cooperation, and had varying degrees of success.

* In South Dakota in the late 1970s, Lakota communities and white ranchers were often at odds over water rights and the tribal claim to the sacred Black Hills. Yet despite the intense Indian-white conflicts, the two groups came together against coal and uranium mining, which would endanger the groundwater. The Native activists and conservative-looking ranchers formed the Black Hills Alliance (where I began my activism 35 years ago) to halt the mining plans, and later formed the Cowboy and Indian Alliance (or CIA), which has since worked to stop a bombing range, coal trains, and oil pipeline.

* In roughly the same era of the 1960s and ‘70s, a fishing rights conflict had torn apart Washington State. The federal courts recognized treaty rights in 1974, and by the 1980s the tribes began to use treaties as a legal tool to protect and restore fish habitat. The result was State-Tribal “co-management,” recognizing that the tribes have a seat at the table on natural resource issues outside the reservations. The Nisqually Tribe, for instance, is today recognized in its watershed as the lead entity in creating salmon habitat management plans for private farm owners, and state and federal agencies. The watershed is healing because the Tribe is beginning to decolonize its historic lands.

* Another treaty confrontation erupted in northern Wisconsin in the late 1980s, when crowds of white sportsmen gathered to protest Ojibwe treaty rights to spear fish. Even as the racist harassment and violence raged, tribes presented their sovereignty as a legal obstacles to mining plans, and formed alliances such as the Midwest Treaty Network. Instead of continuing to argue over the fish, some white fishing groups began to cooperate with tribes to protect the fish, and won victories against the world’s largest mining companies. After witnessing the fishing war, seeing the 2003 defeat of the Crandon mine gave us some real hope.

In each of these cases, Native peoples and their rural white neighbors found common cause to defend their mutual place, and unexpectedly came together to protect their environment and economy from an outside threat, and a common enemy. They knew that if they continued to fight over resources, there may not be any left to fight over. Some rural whites began to see Native treaties and sovereignty as better protectors of common ground than their own governments. Racial prejudice is still alive and well in these regions, but the organized racist groups are weaker because they have lost many of their followers to these alliances.

Cooperation growing from conflict

It would make logical sense that the greatest cooperation would develop in the areas with the least prior conflict. Yet a recurring irony is that cooperation more easily developed in areas where tribes had most strongly asserted their rights, and the white backlash had been the most intense. Treaty claims in the short run caused conflict, but in the long run educated whites about tribal cultures and legal powers, and strengthened the commitment of both communities to value the resources. A common “sense of place” extended beyond the immediate threat, and redefined their idea of “home” to include their neighbors. As Mole Lake Ojibwe elder Frances Van Zile said, “This is my home; when it’s your home you try to take as good care of it as how can, including all the people in it.”

These alliances challenge the idea that “particularism” (such as Native identity) is always in contradiction to “universalism” (such as environmental protection). The assertion of Indigenous political strength does not weaken the idea of joining with non-Natives to defend the land, and can even strengthen it. The stories of these alliances may identify ways to weave together the assertion of differences between cultures with the goal of finding common-ground similarities between them. (I’m perhaps drawn to this hope because of my own Hungarian background, with a Jewish father whose family was decimated by genocide, and a Catholic mother whose family valued its cultural identity, and my attempts to navigate between the fear and celebration of ethnic pride.)

Alliances based on “universalist” similarities tend to fail without respecting “particularist” differences. The idea of “why can’t we all just get along” (like “United We Stand”) is often used to suppress marginalized voices, asking them to sideline their demands. This overemphasis on unity makes alliances more vulnerable, since authorities may try to divide them by meeting the demands of the (relatively advantaged) white members. A few alliances (such as against low-level military flights) floundered because the white “allies” declared victory and went home, and did not keep up the fight to also win the demands of their Native neighbors. “Unity” is not enough when it is a unity of unequal partners; Native leadership needs to always be involved in the decision-making process.

But successful alliances can go beyond temporary “alliances of convenience” to building lasting connections. In Washington State, local tribal/non-tribal cooperation to restore salmon habitat provides a template for collaboration in response to climate change. The Tulalip Tribes, for example, are cooperating with dairy farmers to keep cattle waste out of the Snohomish watershed’s salmon streams, by converting it into biogas energy. Farmers who had battled tribes now benefit from tribal sustainable practices. The anthology we recently edited at The Evergreen State College, Asserting Native Resilience, tells some of these stories of local and regional collaboration for resilience.

Idle No More and “Occupy”

With the rise of the Idle No More and Occupy movements, we have an unprecedented opportunity to grow this cooperation beyond local and regional levels, to national and global scales. Whether Occupy or Idle No More still draw huge crowds is beside the point, because they both have popularized powerful ideas that were not widely discussed even three years ago. The Occupy movement (despite its unfortunately inappropriate name) questions the concentration of wealth under capitalism, the economic system that has also occupied and exploited Native nations. Although a few protest camps (like in Albuquerque), changed their name to “(un)Occupy” to make this point, other camps rarely extended the discussion beyond class inequalities.

Idle No More deals with the flip side of the coin: how to make an understanding of colonization relevant to the majority struggling to live day-to-day under capitalism. Leanne Simpson sees Idle No More as “an opportunity for the environmental movement, for social-justice groups, and for mainstream Canadians to stand with us…. We have a lot of ideas about how to live gently within our territory in a way where we have separate jurisdictions and separate nations but over a shared territory. I think there’s a responsibility on the part of mainstream community and society to figure out a way of living more sustainably and extracting themselves from extractivist thinking.”

While the Occupy movement has questioned the unequal distribution of wealth in Western capitalism, Idle No More confronts the colonization of land and extraction of the resources that are the basis of that wealth. While thinking about fairly distributing the stuff, think about where the stuff comes from in the first place–as the spoils of empire. Idle No More’s seemingly “particularist” message actually advances the universalist goals of the global anti-capitalist movement. Our solutions should not aim for a more egalitarian society that continues to exploit the Earth, nor a more sustainable society that continues to exploit human beings–the world needs both social equality and ecological resilience. And both movements have common historical roots, because the class system and large-scale natural resources extraction both originated in Europe at roughly the same time.

Colonizing Europe

To witness the decolonization of Native lands is to see a small reversal in the process of European colonization that began centuries ago, within Europe itself. In her classic study The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, Carolyn Merchant documents how Western European elites suppressed the remnants of European indigenous knowledge, as a key element of colonizing villagers’ lands and resources in the 17^th century. Merchant saw links between the mass executions of women healers (who used ancient herbal knowledge), the draining of wetlands, metallic mining, the restriction of villagers’ hunting, fishing, and gathering rights on lands they had held in common, and the division of the Commons into private plots.

This “enclosure of the Commons” sparked peasant rebellions and Robin Hood-style rebel movements. The Irish resisted English settler colonization, which was a testing ground for methods of control later used in Native America, against clan structures, collective lands, knowledge systems, and spiritual beliefs. In the meantime, the European encounter with more egalitarian Indigenous societies convinced some scholars (such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Lewis Henry Morgan) that class hierarchy was not the natural order, and they in turn influenced many of the social philosophers and rebels of the 19^th century.

The elites’ promise of settling stolen Native land became a “safety valve” to defuse working-class unrest in Europe and the East Coast. But even at the height of the Indian Wars, a small minority of settlers sympathized with Native resistance, or opposed the forced removal of their Indigenous neighbors. Some Europeans and Africans attracted to freer Native societies even became kin to Native families. We never read these stories of Native/non-Native cooperation in history books, because they undercut the myth of colonization as an inevitable “Manifest Destiny.” But there were always better paths not followed.

Non-Native Responsibilities

The continued existence of Native nationhood today, as Audra Simpson points out, undermines the claims of settler colonial states to the land. Unlikely alliances can help chip away at the legitimacy of colonial structures, even among the settlers themselves. To stand in solidarity with Indigenous nations is not just to “support Native rights,” but to strike at the very underpinnings of the Western social order, and begin to free Native and non-Native peoples. As Harsha Walia writes, “I have been encouraged to think of human interconnectedness and kinship in building alliances with Indigenous communities… striving toward decolonization and walking together toward transformation requires us to challenge a dehumanizing social organization that perpetuates our isolation from each other and normalizes a lack of responsibility to one another and the Earth.”

By asserting their treaty rights and sovereignty, Indigenous nations are benefiting not only themselves, but also their treaty partners. Since Europeans in North America are more separated in time and place from their indigenous origins, they need to respectfully ally with Native nations to help find their own path to what it means to be a human being living on the Earth—without appropriating Native cultures. It is not the role of non-Natives to dissect Native cultures, but to study Native/non-Native relations, and white attitudes and policies. The responsibility of non-Natives is to help remove the barriers and obstacles to Native sovereignty in their own governments and communities.

Non-Native neighbors can begin to look to Native nations for models to make their own communities more socially just, more ecologically resilient, and more hopeful. As Red Cliff Ojibwe organizer Walt Bresette once told Wisconsin non-Natives fighting a proposed mine, “You can all love this land as much as we do.”

Zoltan Grossman is a Professor of Geography and Native Studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington (http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz). He is a longtime community organizer, and was a co-founder of the Midwest Treaty Network in Wisconsin. His dissertation explored Unlikely Alliances: Treaty Conflicts and Environmental Cooperation Between Rural Native and White Communities (University of Wisconsin Department of Geography, 2002). He is co-editor (with Alan Parker) of Asserting Native Resilience: Pacific Rim Indigenous Nations Face the Climate Crisis (Oregon State University Press, 2012).

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

“I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality,” NSA leaker Edward Snowden told the the South China Morning Post Wednesday morning, referring to the ongoing speculation over his move to Hong Kong from Hawaii after leaking extensive documents from his former employer, the NSA, revealing the extent of the top-secret and extensive phone and internet surveillance programs.

The Post published portions of its interview Wednesday morning, but said it would publish the entire interview “soon,” promising “more explosive details on US surveillance targets,” Snowden’s next plans, and the steps Snowden claims the US has taken since landing in Hong Kong.

“People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality,” Snowden stated.

He also said he will fight any extradition attempt by the US government, saying: “My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate. I have been given no reason to doubt your system.’’

Snowden added: “I’m neither traitor nor hero. I’m an American.”

More to come very shortly.

_______________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

Iranian deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs says the Islamic Republic is willing to offer any assistance to post-revolution Egypt with open arms.

During a Wednesday meeting with an Egyptian media delegation in Tehran, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said because the [former Egyptian dictator] Hosni Mobarak’s regime was sponsored by the US and Israel, Iran only began aiding Egypt after the revolution in the country.

The Iranian diplomat stated that the Islamic Republic welcomes Egypt ties and increasing relations to an ambassadorial level.

Amir-Abdollahian further underlined the important status of the North African country in the Arab and Muslim world.

Iran severed diplomatic ties with Egypt after the 1979 Islamic Revolution because Egypt had signed the Camp David Accord with the Israeli regime and offered asylum to Iran’s deposed monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Egyptians launched a revolution against the Mubarak regime in 2011, putting an end to over three decades of dictatorship in February of the same year. Bilateral relations between Tehran and Cairo have been improving following the Egyptian revolution.

Amir-Abdollahian also touched upon the Syrian crisis and said, Å“Although our stances on Syria are different from Egyptâ„¢s stances, we agree on some issues including defending the axis of resistance, [opposing] foreign interference in Syria and the need for an immediate end to the violence in the country,” the Iranian official noted.

Foreign-sponsored militancy in Syria, which broke out in March 2011, has claimed the lives of many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel.

The West and its regional allies including the Israeli regime, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are partners in supporting Takfiri extremists in Syria.

MKA/HGH/SS

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Recently, I wrote an article explaining why US Treasury Bonds are junk bonds and why rating agencies cannot be trusted at all, because they have been up to their eyeballs in fraudulent activities.
I wrote that what I am stating may seem outlandish but it reflected reality — that the US as well as its ally in crime, the United Kingdom (UK) are bankrupt. Very few economists dare assert such a conclusion because it would be a death sentence for their careers.

So, who can you trust anymore?

But, does it require so much courage to expose the ugly truth when there are so much evidence to support what I have stated in my articles which can be gathered even from the mainstream media?
It was taboo to suggest before the Global Financial Tsunami that America was a bankrupt state and does not deserve an AAA rating. Yet, it took a rating agency from China in early 2011 to break the taboo,

China’s Dagong credit rating agency says the U.S has already defaulted. As AFP reports:

“‘In our opinion, the United States has already been defaulting… Washington had already defaulted on its loans by allowing the dollar to weaken against other currencies — eroding the wealth of creditors including China, Mr Guan said.”

This follows on the heels of German credit rating agency Feri’s downgrade of U.S. bonds a full notch — from AAA to AA — saying:

“The U.S. government has fought the effects of the financial market crisis primarily by an increase in government debt. We do not see that there is sufficient attention being paid to other measures,” said Dr. Tobias Schmidt, CEO of Feri Rating & Research AG. “Our rating system shows a deterioration in economic health, so the downgrading of the credit ratings of U.S. is warranted.”

I would suggest that Dagong and Feri were rather generous in their rating for obvious reasons (China being one of the largest creditor cannot afford to trigger an immediate collapse of US bonds). If a country has defaulted, its credit standing cannot be rated as AAA. It is a junk debtor, no two ways about it!

If Joe Six-Packs defaults on a loan, no banks, credit-card companies etc. would extend further credit facilities. Period!

In November, 2011, the Guardian reported as follows:

Dagong, which has maintained a pessimistic outlook on US fiscal policy, has been leading the charge to downgrade US debt over the last 12 months, lowering the US rating from AA to A+ a year ago.

In August it downgraded US debt again, to A. Days later, Standard & Poor’s followed in its wake, becoming the first western agency to downgrade US debt after the threat of a default was narrowly avoided following weeks of political squabbling in Washington over whether President Obama should be allowed to raise the US debt ceiling.

So, why are the so-called economists so reluctant to tell the simple truth? Why are these economists not writing articles to expose the ugly truth and save Joe Six-Packs from having their hard-earned money from being wiped out by inflation and confiscations etc.?

The reason is simple. They have sold their souls.

And this cowardice is unforgivable because the taboo has already been broken — two agencies have exposed the reality. So, is my article stating that US Treasury Bonds are junk bonds really that outlandish?? Even the S&P down- graded the US albeit not to junk status!

The above downgradings were made even before the massive QEs by Bernanke. The financial status has not changed for the better since the down- grades, in fact it has gotten worse and have caused panics and dissension within the ranks of the financial elites.

Bloomberg reported that,

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher, one of the most vocal critics of quantitative easing by the central bank, called for a reduction in the $85 billion in monthly asset purchases while saying he sees an end to a three-decade bull market in bonds.

In an interview with Forbes, Alan Greenspan, former FED Governor said,

We have at this particular stage a fiat money which is essentially money printed by a government and it’s usually a central bank which is authorized to do so. Some mechanism has got to be in place that restricts the amount of money which is produced, either a gold standard or a currency board, because unless you do that all of history suggest that inflation will take hold with very deleterious effects on economic activity… There are numbers of us, myself included, who strongly believe that we did very well in the 1870 to 1914 period with an international gold standard.”

Given the fact that US cannot mathematically repay its debts at all in the next fifty years, how can any reasonable man and or economist not conclude that the US Treasury Bonds are indeed junk bonds?

If anyone still believes in the fancy economic fairytale dished out by presstitudes, financial harlots etc. they deserve to be wiped out.

The situation gets more absurd as only a few days ago, the S&P rating agency upgraded US from negative to stable because:

Under our criteria, the credit strengths of the U.S. include its resilient economy, its monetary credibility, and the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s key reserve currency. ï‚· Similarly, in our view, the U.S.’s credit weaknesses, compared with higher rated sovereigns, include its fiscal performance, its debt burden, and the effectiveness of its fiscal policymaking. ï‚· We are affirming our ‘AA+/A-1+’ sovereign credit ratings on the U.S. ï‚· We are revising the rating outlook to stable to indicate our current view that the likelihood of a near-term downgrade of the rating is less than one in three.

By what measure is S&P saying that the US economy is resilient?

By what measure is S&P saying that there is monetary credibility when even Alan Greenspan is calling for a scale back of QE?

How can there be any credibility when the US is paying for its imports with digitally printed money, which in turn is recycled back into US treasury bonds and other US$ assets and repays the outstanding debts with more digitally printed money? In crude terms, its pays for imports with US$ toilet paper money and repays its debts with more US$ toilet paper money. It still remains as the world largest debtor!

On the other hand, China being the largest creditor to the US has been downgraded by Moody’s. Reuters reported that,

Moody’s Investors Service affirmed China’s government’s bond rating of Aa3 but cut the outlook to stable from positive, the second pessimistic revision by a foreign ratings agency this month.

Yet, these US rating agencies have been involved up to their eye-balls in fraudulent activities which was one of the major factors that contributed to the Global Financial Tsunami.
So, why are people still relying on such rating agencies for their investment decisions especially when they have been charged for fraudulent activities as in the case of S&P?
In February, 2013, the Economist reported,

A complaint filed in a Los Angeles federal court charged S&P with intentionally making “limited, adjusted and delayed updates” to its rating criteria and analytical models during a key period stretching from 2004 and 2007. This footdragging, the complaint alleges, led to overly favourable ratings for structured debt securities, which in turn produced massive losses for those investors who bought the highest-rated securities, and in particular for the Western Federal Corporate Credit Union (WesCorp), which ultimately failed.

Huffington Post elaborated,

According to the lawsuit, S&P recognized that home prices were sinking and that borrowers were having trouble repaying loans. Yet these facts weren’t reflected in the safe ratings S&P gave to complex real-estate investments known as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations, the lawsuit alleges.

But, if proof is further needed that such US rating agencies are criminal enterprises, look no further than the illuminating article by Marshall Auerback, “Ban the Credit Rating Agencies”. He wrote,
Ban the credit ratings agencies!

Firms like Standard & Poor, charged with fraud by the DOJ, are criminally incompetent and serve no public purpose

Is Eric Holder’s “See No Evil, Hear No Evil” Department of Justice finally getting serious about investigating fraud on Wall Street? At first glance, it would seem so, given the news that the Department of Justice has filed civil fraud charges against the nation’s largest credit-ratings agency, Standard & Poor’s, accusing the firm of inflating the ratings of mortgage investments and setting them up for a crash when the financial crisis struck.

On the one hand, there is no question that without the credit rating agencies the Wall Street guys would not have been able to pull off this colossal heist against the American people, and the ratings agencies cannot be excused. In fact, Standard & Poor’s employees openly joked about the company’s willingness to rate deals “structured by cows” and sang and danced to a mock song inspired by“Burning Down the House” before the 2008 global financial collapse, according to the DOJ lawsuit.

On the other, the ratings agencies are simply the gift wrappers. DOJ has yet to go after the banksters who created these packages in the first place and who seem to be in the clear as a result of a series of unconscionably low settlements recently reached with the Justice Department.

I suppose we ought to be grateful for these baby steps in the right direction. The ratings agencies themselves have admitted to US government inquiries recently that they took money in return for ratings that were not based on any fundamental assessments other than the cash they were being paid. They have lied about the risk of default in many corporate cases and then marked down debt when the game was up further destabilizing the financial system. Hence, to say that their behavior was at the heart of the great crisis is absolutely correct.

Of course, that inevitably begets the obvious question: what took you so long and why leave it at S&P? As early as September 2004, the FBI warned that there was an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud and predicted that it would cause a financial crisis if it were not stopped. It was not contained. Everyone agrees that the mortgage fraud epidemic expanded massively after the FBI warning and still not one Wall Street figure of any note has gone to jail.

Under Treasury Secretary Geithner, and the Keystone Cops of the Department of Justice, led by Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, we established a doctrine of “too big to jail” for the very institutions which perpetrated massive frauds on millions of Americans.

Those who called for regulations that would take even that most minimal of steps necessary to re-establish the rule of law and restore our nation’s democracy and financial stability were essentially ignored. Geithner’s express rationale was that the financial system’s extreme fragility made vigorous investigations of the elite frauds too dangerous, in effect giving the banksters a get-out-of-jail-free card and in effect enshrining crony capitalism and imperiling our economy, our democracy, and our national integrity.

So what’s changed? Well, obviously one has to ask if the departure from Treasury of Mr. Geithner, along with the ignominious resignation of the odious Lanny Breuer at the DOJ heralds a new approach, or are there are other motives in mind?

There is a school of thought which suggests that this lawsuit is an attempt by the US government to intimidate the ratings agencies against any further US debt downgrades. If so, it’s a pretty stupid shakedown. The truth is that sovereign governments like the US empower these agencies simply by listening to them, in the same way they listen to the IMF, and put the interests of these undemocratic and crooked agencies ahead of their own national interests.

In our economy, the Federal Reserve sets interest rates, not the bond markets, although the latter may impact on the prices and yields of longer-term investment assets.
But in general, the Bank of Japan showed in the period from the mid-1990s onward that they can keep interest rates very low (zero) and issue as much government debt as they wanted even in the face of consistent credit rating agency downgrades, by organizations of dubious ethics.

So when a government stands up to the agencies, the impact is likely to be minimal. Here’s another idea: they can just outlaw them. This may seem draconian, but consider that the FDIC puts criminally run banks out of business all of the time. It’s hard to see why the ratings agencies, as their enablers, should be treated any differently. The reality is that the so-called Big Three — S&P, Fitch and Moody’s – were all criminally incompetent. They prostituted themselves in a pay-to-play scheme in which they would give to garbage securities any rating sellers desired, so long as the assessed fees were sufficiently high.

At a very minimum one would have thought we could introduce reforms that would align incentives, with buyers of rated securities paying for assessment of risk. The ratings agencies like S&P never actually looked at any of the mortgages that collateralized the securities they rated (it was all too pedestrian for them). As we now know from internal emails, they neither checked the loan tapes (the data provided by borrowers), nor the expertise in rating mortgages (all of their experience was in rating corporate and government debt), nor took the time to assess credit risk …

Sadly, Congress and the Obama administration, in their deliberations to “reform” our financial system via Dodd-Frank, did nothing then to reform the ratings agencies. They worried that somehow, by introducing widespread reforms to the ratings agencies, they would reduce business for the monopolies. Hence, the bill contains no significant changes required of ratings agencies, which are encouraged to continue pimping their ratings.

Perhaps this lawsuit signals a chance. In any case, it is time to wean the private financial markets off these agencies by eliminating their role as gatekeepers to the thousands of financial products on which they provide in their Papal-like declarations. It’s time to leave it to individual institutions themselves to do their own credit analysis. We should go further and simply make them illegal, and mandate that all financial institutions with access to the Fed’s lending as well as any financial institution with Treasury guarantees on liabilities (such as FDIC insurance) would be prohibited from selling or buying any derivatives. All assets would be carried on bank books through maturity – with full exposure to interest rate, currency and default risk. That provides the correct incentives to protected lending institutions as opposed to relying on some flimsy rationale provided by a highly conflicted rating agency.

If our pension funds, and financial fiduciaries truly think they need an objective third-party agency to rate Wall Street paper, then at a minimum Congress and the President should be required to purchase ratings services from arms-length professionals, with the top three monopolists specifically excluded because they have demonstrated their inability to provide unbiased ratings.

Furthermore, make ratings agencies liable for improper ratings, imposing a fiduciary responsibility to actually evaluate any instruments that are rated.

Better yet, prohibit banks and other government-protected institutions from buying this crap in the first place or prosecute them to the full extent of the law for using them to rip off millions of American consumers. If we’re going to go after the gift wrappers, we might as well go after the original source of the fraud in the first place as well. In that regard, one can hope that yesterday’s lawsuit signals a fresh approach by the Holder Department of Justice, but don’t hold your breath waiting for it.

There you have it!

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!

Still having doubts that US Treasury Bonds are junk bonds? If so, you are beyond redemption for you insist on burying your head in the sand.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

In recent months, demonstrations have erupted in different parts of Haiti demanding electricity, river dredging, road and bridge construction, support for farmers, and the building of schools and hospitals.

The people of Rivière Grise, a neighborhood located in the capital’s vast slum of Cité Soleil, demonstrated last week to demand that the river be cleaned of garbage and debris as the danger of flooding approaches with the summer hurricane season.

On Jun. 5, residents of the lower Artibonite Valley blocked National Highway # 1 (which runs between Port-au-Prince and Haiti’s North) at Pierre-Payen, Périsse, Carrefour-Peille, Bois-neuf, Liancourt, and Pont-Sondé to demand electricity, among other things. Demonstrators used trucks to barricade the road at various points, turning back vehicles travelling along it.

Meanwhile, one of the five E’s of President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe is supposed to be energy. Nevertheless, various parts of the capital are mostly plunged into darkness. Only five or six hours of electricity are provided in some places. Lamothe announced at the beginning of 2013 that within six months, Port-au-Prince would have electricity 24 hours a day. The government has clearly not fulfilled this promise, among many others.   As the hurricane season begins, some 320,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) remain homeless after the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake three and a half years ago. This figure includes, according to the latest count, 166,158 women and 153,893 men still living in tents in 385 camps scattered around the capital and its vicinity. Some 22% of IDPs live in 86 camps that are very vulnerable to natural disasters including floods and landslides. This also puts them at greater risk for the spread of diseases such as cholera and H1N1 avian flu. More than three years after the earthquake, some 73,000 Haitians are threatened with forced evictions, while some 1.5 million Haitians are living in food insecurity.

In Parliament’s last two Finance Laws for Fiscal Years 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, lawmakers budgeted 10 million gourdes ($231,414) for each of the country’s communes (counties). But with only four months remaining until the end of fiscal year 2012-2013, these laws have not been implemented in several municipalities. The executive instead has used these funds to bargain with and corrupt some unscrupulous parliamentarians.

When summoned to testify before the Senate on Jun. 4, Prime Minister Lamothe said that his government had released about 15 billion gourdes ($347.12 million) after Hurricane Sandy last autumn to solve urgent problems, almost 13 billion gourdes of it from funds provided by Venezuela’s PetroCaribe deal.

So although 15 billion gourdes have been released during the first half of 2013, most peoples’ needs are still not met, and demonstrations are increasing. Prime Minister Lamothe was unable to present a clear report on how these disbursed funds have been administered. Senate President Simon Dieusel Desras stopped a no-confidence vote against Lamothe’s government on Jun. 4, but, if popular ire continues to rise, the Senate can be expected to organize another no-confidence vote soon that will determine the future of Lamothe’s government.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

In recent months, demonstrations have erupted in different parts of Haiti demanding electricity, river dredging, road and bridge construction, support for farmers, and the building of schools and hospitals.

The people of Rivière Grise, a neighborhood located in the capital’s vast slum of Cité Soleil, demonstrated last week to demand that the river be cleaned of garbage and debris as the danger of flooding approaches with the summer hurricane season.

On Jun. 5, residents of the lower Artibonite Valley blocked National Highway # 1 (which runs between Port-au-Prince and Haiti’s North) at Pierre-Payen, Périsse, Carrefour-Peille, Bois-neuf, Liancourt, and Pont-Sondé to demand electricity, among other things. Demonstrators used trucks to barricade the road at various points, turning back vehicles travelling along it.

Meanwhile, one of the five E’s of President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe is supposed to be energy. Nevertheless, various parts of the capital are mostly plunged into darkness. Only five or six hours of electricity are provided in some places. Lamothe announced at the beginning of 2013 that within six months, Port-au-Prince would have electricity 24 hours a day. The government has clearly not fulfilled this promise, among many others.   As the hurricane season begins, some 320,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) remain homeless after the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake three and a half years ago. This figure includes, according to the latest count, 166,158 women and 153,893 men still living in tents in 385 camps scattered around the capital and its vicinity. Some 22% of IDPs live in 86 camps that are very vulnerable to natural disasters including floods and landslides. This also puts them at greater risk for the spread of diseases such as cholera and H1N1 avian flu. More than three years after the earthquake, some 73,000 Haitians are threatened with forced evictions, while some 1.5 million Haitians are living in food insecurity.

In Parliament’s last two Finance Laws for Fiscal Years 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, lawmakers budgeted 10 million gourdes ($231,414) for each of the country’s communes (counties). But with only four months remaining until the end of fiscal year 2012-2013, these laws have not been implemented in several municipalities. The executive instead has used these funds to bargain with and corrupt some unscrupulous parliamentarians.

When summoned to testify before the Senate on Jun. 4, Prime Minister Lamothe said that his government had released about 15 billion gourdes ($347.12 million) after Hurricane Sandy last autumn to solve urgent problems, almost 13 billion gourdes of it from funds provided by Venezuela’s PetroCaribe deal.

So although 15 billion gourdes have been released during the first half of 2013, most peoples’ needs are still not met, and demonstrations are increasing. Prime Minister Lamothe was unable to present a clear report on how these disbursed funds have been administered. Senate President Simon Dieusel Desras stopped a no-confidence vote against Lamothe’s government on Jun. 4, but, if popular ire continues to rise, the Senate can be expected to organize another no-confidence vote soon that will determine the future of Lamothe’s government.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

In an apparent policy u-turn, New Delhi has deferred the official notification that will pave the way for the implementation of the long-awaited commodity transaction tax (CTT) in India. The official notification was expected on June 1, 2013 so as to enable commodity futures exchanges to undertake necessary changes in the trading system before its due implementation from July 1.

Till now, the Finance Ministry has not communicated the reasons for undue delay in issuing of notification. Meanwhile, media reports suggest that the CTT could only come in effect from October 2013 while some market participants are confident that this tax may not see the light of the day. Amid widespread confusion, the CTT’s future hangs in the balance.

The Commodity Transaction Tax

In February 2013, Finance Minister P Chidambaram had proposed a transaction tax on the commodity futures trading as part of the Finance Bill 2013-14. As per the proposal, the CTT would be levied at 0.01 percent (Rs.10 for transaction worth Rs.100000) and only on non-agricultural commodities futures contracts (e.g., gold, copper and oil) traded in the Indian markets. While the agricultural futures contracts would be exempted from CTT. The tax will be payable by the seller of futures contract.

Despite strong opposition by traders, the Finance Minister did not withdraw the CTT proposal or reduced the tax rates in the Finance Bill. The CTT proposal was passed by Parliament and the Presidential assent was received on May 10. It was expected that the government will issue a notification to make CTT operational by July 1.

The Finance Minister’s rationale for introducing a CTT was to bring commodity market on par with the securities market where a securities transaction tax (STT) is levied. In his Budget speech, Mr. Chidambaram stated, “There is no distinction between derivative trading in the securities market and derivative trading in the commodities market, only the underlying asset is different. It is time to introduce CTT in a limited way.”

It is difficult to accept that the delay is caused by purely procedural issues because the revised rates of STT — listed in the Finance Bill — have been implemented with immediate effect. The National Stock Exchange is levying a lower STT of 0.01% on equity futures from June 1, 2013.

Twice Thwarted

It is not the first time that the UPA government has abandoned plans to implement a commodity transaction tax. In the Budget 2008-09 too, a CTT of 0.017 percent (much higher than the current tax proposal) was proposed by Mr. Chidambaram. However, due to strong apprehensions expressed by the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council coupled with intense corporate lobbying by commodity traders, the CTT was not implemented and subsequently withdrawn in the next Budget.

In the current scenario, it is highly unlikely that the CTT proposal duly passed by the Parliament would be implemented at all given the intense lobbying by commodity exchanges, traders and their lobby groups against the tax. Just weeks before the Budget, a multi-million rupee advertisement campaign against the CTT was launched by lobby groups to ward off any attempt to introduce such a tax. The lobby groups issued full page advertisements in national dailies and conferences to influence policymakers and public at large against the CTT.

There is enough evidence to believe that the government is apparently backing away from the implementation of CTT due to tremendous pressures exerted by commodity traders. This episode offers an interesting case study to learn how special interest groups disproportionately influence the implementation of legislative decisions in India.

The Potential Revenue Loss

By delaying the implementation of CTT, the government is losing a reliable source of new tax revenue. Based on the current trading value of non-agricultural commodities in the Indian commodity exchanges, a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the CTT could fetch Rs.15950 million ($290 million) to cash-starved exchequer every year. In other words, the government is suffering a revenue loss of Rs.50 million per day due to delay in the rollout of CTT. This is a substantial amount in the present times when our tax revenues are under severe pressure and the government’s attempts to reduce fiscal deficit through other measures are not yielding positive results. How the government will compensate this potential revenue loss is a moot question.

New Delhi could use a part of this tax revenue to reduce the fiscal deficit. A portion of proceeds of CTT could be potentially utilized to enhance the regulatory and supervisory capacities of the Forward Markets Commission (regulatory authority for commodity futures market) which is grossly understaffed and underfunded. A part of proceeds could also be deployed to install ticker boards at local markets across the country displaying commodity futures prices. This would help farmers and producers to access information on a real-time basis in their local languages and benefit from the futures price movement.

The Myriad Benefits of CTT

With the implementation of CTT, the government can track the flow of illicit money which is finding its way into the commodity futures markets. Currently, large information gaps exist and a centralized database of money flows into commodity markets is almost nonexistent. To a large extent, market participants have opposed the CTT because audit trail could reveal sources of funds.

Besides, the CTT would be a more efficient revenue source than other taxes as it would be collected by the commodity futures exchanges from the brokers and passed on to the exchequer, thereby enabling the tax authorities to raise revenue in a neat, transparent and efficient manner. Furthermore, the CTT should be viewed in the broader context of innovative financing for development, a concept introduced at the UN conference in Monterrey in 2002.

Market Fears are Exaggerated

The fears expressed by commodity traders that the CTT would lead to a drastic fall in the futures trading volumes are grossly exaggerated. Given the huge profit opportunities and risk appetite among the trading community, a small levy of 0.01 percent would be quickly absorbed.

In large part, the CTT would affect speculators and day traders who often use high-frequency trading to transact a large number of futures contracts at very fast speeds. For such market participants, commodity futures markets are purely profit-maximizing platforms. However, the CTT is unlikely to hit genuine hedgers — consisting of producers, processors and consumers of the underlying commodity — due to their limited participation in the Indian markets. A small increase in the transaction costs due to CTT would not lead hedgers to flee since they primarily use commodity futures markets for price risk management purposes. On the contrary, such market participants may welcome a CTT if it enhances market stability and integrity.

Further, it would be erroneous to assume that a tax of 0.01 percent would alone shift commodity futures trading (worth $3000 billion) to illegal platform (“Dabba” trading). The opponents need to recognize that Dabba trading in commodity futures has mushroomed across the country over the past ten years in the absence of any commodity transaction tax.

Another widespread fear that the CTT would lead to migration of futures markets to offshore markets is grossly exaggerated. No international exchange can trade in Indian commodity futures contracts without a license from domestic commodity exchanges and approval from FMC.

Undeniably, a levy of 0.01% alone cannot fix the myriad problems plaguing the Indian commodity futures markets. Therefore, the CTT should be used in conjunction with other measures (such as strengthening the regulatory capacity of FMC, segregating hedgers and speculators, and encouraging greater participation of farmers and hedgers).

Nonetheless, the unexplainable delay in the rollout of CTT has further strengthened the widespread impression that the government buckles under pressure from speculators and high-frequency traders.

Kavaljit Singh is Director of Madhyam, a policy research institute based in New Delhi (www.madhyam.org.in). 

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

A broad-based alliance of public interest and other groups is warning that years of attacks by business interests has made the U.S. regulatory so inefficient that public safety is being put at risk.

(Photo: Steve Rhodes/ Flickr) The groups, under the umbrella of the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards (CSS), are urging the White House and U.S. Congress to institute reforms to increase transparency, reduce special interests’ ability to block public protections, and improve the enforcement of legislated rules.

“[The U.S.] regulatory system is frequently subject to undue influence from regulated industries during the development and review of standards and rules,” a new CSS report, released Tuesday, states.

That system “is not as responsive in the face of new knowledge and new risks as the … public has a right to expect. Instead, it is plagued by a number of problems that make it difficult for federal regulatory agencies to react to identifiable hazards in a timely, proactive fashion.”

CSS is an umbrella of nearly 150 state and national business, labour, science, health, advocacy and environment groups.

Nearly four decades after U.S. public interest regulation began in earnest — covering issues such as public health, safety and the environment — the report points to a slew of regulations that have already been approved by legislators but currently remain mired in judicial or executive approval processes.

According to CSS analysts, many of these languish for months or even years past legally imposed deadlines for implementation, disappearing down what the report calls the “regulatory rabbit hole”.

“Today there are more than 120 rules under review by an office within the White House that have been stuck there far beyond the standard review deadline — that’s very problematic,” Rachel Weintraub, legislative director at the Consumer Federation of America and a co-author of the new report, told IPS.

“There is a broad range of important social goods — health, environment, worker protections, product safety, food safety — that is being directly impacted by this delay. Some of these rules are controversial but some aren’t, so it’s hard to figure out what they have in common. Is it that there’s strong industry opposition?”

Inordinate delay

Weintraub and her co-authors point to three facets of today’s U.S. regulatory system as particularly worrying. Together, they say these issues are dangerously slowing the rulemaking process, to the detriment of the public.

First and foremost is the outsized influence by industry. This includes both being offered opportunities to provide extensive and imbalanced input in shaping rules, as well as the potential for bias from what has been referred to as the “revolving door” between industry and government regulators.

Second, courts over recent decades have imposed greater and greater documentation and review requirements for setting regulation rules. The report cites “overuse and abuse” of judicial review processes for adding years on to certain regulatory processes.

Finally, since the early 1980s the White House has had the opportunity to impose politics directly on regulation through the little-known Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Currently, of the more than 120 rules pending before OIRA, Weintraub says that 70 have been in approvals limbo for longer than the 30-day review deadline — some have remained there for years, often with little or no explanation for the delay.

These include rules on safety of imported foods, energy efficiency standards, tamping down on energy speculation, and the installation of backward-looking cameras on cars. The latter requirement has already been signed into law but has been stuck at OIRA since 2011, despite widespread backing and analysis suggesting that it would save hundreds of lives and thousands of injuries each year.

“It’s important to note that this was a very concerted effort by the business community as well as their allies in the conservative media and think tanks, aimed at constraining federal regulation” -Thomas McGarity, professor in administrative law

The country’s main worker safety agency, meanwhile, has not issued a single protective rule since the beginning of George W. Bush administration, more than a decade ago.

“Protections are stalled or blocked as major industries and their allies use their considerable resources to influence the process at every stage, including during OIRA’s rule reviews,” the report states.

“A regulatory system plagued by delay and stymied by the special interests of regulated industries cannot effectively protect the [public].”

Concerted campaign

According to some researchers, the overall weakening of the U.S. regulatory infrastructure is the result of decades’ worth of combined effort.

“This is no accident, the business community specifically wanted to slow down this apparatus,” Thomas McGarity, a professor in administrative law, told IPS.

“Further, it’s important to note that this was a very concerted effort by the business community as well as their allies in the conservative media and think tanks, aimed at constraining federal regulation. And, of course, that effort has been enormously successful.”

McGarity is the author of “Freedom to Harm”, a new academic history of the last three and a half decades of U.S. regulation.

During the late 1960s, he says, regulation in the United States was quite efficient. But the roots of today’s system began to take hold following new legislation passed in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

“There used to be an attitude in the United States that was much more accepting and supportive of government service,” he says, “similar to the attitude in Europe today.”
Those new analysis and paperwork requirements have massively slowed down the process, McGarity continues. He suggests that trend has been abutted by a growing conservative movement that has tried to convince the public that the government is part of the country’s problems rather than a solution.

“It’s clear that attitude will have to change before we can really have any real progress, but at the same time there have been few attempts to actually repeal major regulation,” McGarity says.

“In fact, the public has repeatedly shown that it won’t stand for those kinds of roll-backs. But the public doesn’t see the defunding of [regulatory] agencies that has taken place, or the adding of all of these requirements for the rule-making process.”

Indeed, for years polls have found that, when U.S. consumers are asked about particular regulatory safeguards, they are generally supportive, regardless of broader political implications.
“The bottom line is that many of these are important rules that have broad impacts that help the public generally,” the Consumer Federation of America’s Weintraub says.

“Industry supports certain regulations at certain times, and regulations can very much give the public faith in a particular sector. But ultimately, as a society, these are protection issues that only government can solve.”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

File photo of Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

 Just as Bradley Manning’s court-martial was getting underway, another brave whistleblower dropped a bombshell into the media: The Obama administration is collecting data on every telephone call we make. Nearly 64 years to the day after George Orwell published his prescient book 1984, we have learned that the “Thought Police” are indeed watching every one of us. “They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” Edward Snowden told the Washington Post.

 A former undercover CIA employee who has worked at the National Security Agency (NSA) for four years, Snowden provided a secret order of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to the Guardian. The order requires Verizon on an “ongoing daily basis” to provide the NSA information about all phone calls in its system both in the United States and other countries. Glenn Greenwald wrote that it “shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of U.S. citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk — regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.” That secret order is scheduled for declassification on April 12, 2038.

The order, issued under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, mandates that Verizon provide daily phone records for all “communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.” The government is collecting “metadata” on our phone communications. That is, the identities of the sender and recipient, and the date, time, duration, place, and unique identifiers of the communication. Administration officials defending the program claim they are not reading the content of our calls.

But, as ACLU’s Ben Wizner and Jay Stanley note, “Even without intercepting the content of communications, the government can use metadata to learn our most intimate secrets — anything from whether we have a drinking problem to whether we’re gay or straight … The ‘who,’ ‘when’ and ‘how frequently’ of communications are often more revealing than what is said or written.” For example, “Repeated calls to Alcoholics Anonymous, hotlines for gay teens, abortion clinics or a gambling bookie may tell you all you need to know about a person’s problem.” And, they add, “URLs often contain content — such as search terms embedded within them,” so that “the very fact that we’ve visited a page with a URL such as ‘www.webmd.com/depression‘ can be every bit as revealing as the content of an email message.”

 “Under the Bush administration, officials in security agencies had disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call records data by the NSA,” Greenwald wrote, “but this is the first time significant and top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice on a massive scale under President Obama.” He added, “The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual. FISA court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target who is suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets.”

 Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, members of the Senate select committee on intelligence, have been reviewing secret intelligence collections operations for a long time. “We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted Section 215 of the Patriot Act,” they wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder last year.

“After years of review,” Wyden and Udall wrote after Snowden’s revelations, “we believe statements that this very broad Patriot Act collection has been ‘a critical tool in protecting the nation’ do not appear to hold up under close scrutiny. We remain unconvinced that the secret Patriot Act collection has actually provided any uniquely valuable intelligence.” They added, “As far as we can see, all of the useful information that it has provided appears to have also been available through other collection methods that do not violate the privacy of law-abiding Americans in the way that the Patriot Act collection does.”

According to Wyden and Udall, “When Americans call their friends and family, whom they call, when they call, and where they call from is private information. We believe the large-scale collection of this information by the government has a very significant impact on Americans’ privacy, whether senior government officials recognize that fact or not.”

In addition, Greenwald, and the Washington Post, reported on the existence of PRISM, the NSA’s Internet surveillance system that collects data from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple. Established pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, PRISM allows national security officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, if targeted at foreigners “reasonably believed” to be abroad, even if the surveillance takes place on US soil. The law forbids intentionally targeting data collection at American citizens or anyone in the United States. But, according to Greenwald,

“The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US.”

According to materials obtained by the Post, “NSA reporting increasingly relies on PRISM” as its primary source of raw material, and accounts for one in seven intelligence reports.

 After the surveillance became public, a senior intelligence official who spoke anonymously to the New York Times claimed that PRISM thwarted a 2009 plot by Najibullah Zazi to bomb the New York City subway system. But public legal documents reveal that “old-fashioned police work, not data mining, was the tool that led counterterrorism agents to arrest Zazi,” according to Ben Smith at BuzzFeed.

 Snowden revealed the secret information because, he said, “What they’re doing” poses “an existential threat to democracy.” He leaked the documents at great risk to himself. “I’m willing to sacrifice [his home and family] because I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”

 Snowden said,

“Everyone, everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten — and they’re talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state.”

The contrast between liberty and security is not a new one. Benjamin Franklin warned, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor security.” Throughout our history, we have grappled with this apparent tension. Unfortunately, all too often, we have lost our liberties — with no tangible benefit.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, defended the massive intelligence-gathering program, while admitting she did not know how the collected data was being used. The New York Times called her defense “absurd.” Greenwald tweeted, “The reason there are leakers is precisely because the govt is filled with people like Dianne Feinstein who do horrendous things in secret.”

When Obama ran for president in 2008, he promised change — change from the policies of the Bush administration. The only change he has made in the Bush surveillance policy is to increase it to dragnet-like proportions.

Both Congress — by dutifully rubber-stamping the executive’s requests for almost unlimited snooping powers — and the courts — by affirming those policies — have acquiesced in the unprecedented surveillance of us all. It thus remains for We the People to pressure the government to heed Benjamin Franklin’s chilling admonition. As Snowden said, “It’s important to send a message to government that people will not be intimidated.” If we don’t, we will live in nothing less than a police state.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her most recent book is The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse. She is working on a book about drones and targeted killing.

Originally published by Truthout. Reprinted with permission

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

A CH-47 Chinook helicopter, operated by the US-led International Security Assistance Force, flies over Khost Province in eastern Afghanistan. (file photo)

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

It’s bad enough the federal government spies on us. Must it insult our intelligence too?

The government’s response to Edward Snowden’s leaks about the National Security Agency’s secret monitoring of the Internet and collection of our telephone logs is a mass of contradictions. Officials have said the disclosures are (1) old news, (2) grossly inaccurate, and (3) a blow to national security. It’s hard to see how any two of these can be true, much less all three.

Can’t they at least get their story straight? If they can’t do better than that, why should we have confidence in anything else that they do?

Snowden exposed the government’s indiscriminate snooping because, among other things, it violates the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and he had no other recourse.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says Snowden should have used established channels to raise his concerns, but there are no effective channels. Members of the congressional intelligence committees are prohibited from telling the public what they learn from their briefings. Two members of the Senate committee, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, for years have warned – without disclosing secrets – that the Obama administration is interpreting the Patriot Act and related laws far more broadly than was ever intended by those who voted for those pieces of legislation. Their warnings have made no difference.

A court challenge wasn’t open to Snowden either. Glenn Greenwald, who published Snowden’s leaks in the Guardian, notes that for years the ACLU has tried to challenge the surveillance programs in court on Fourth Amendment grounds, but the Obama administration has blocked the effort by arguing that the ACLU has no standing to bring the suit. It’s a classic Catch-22. Since the surveillance is secret, no one can know if he has been spied on. But if no one knows, no one can go into court claiming to be a victim, and the government will argue that therefore the plaintiff has no standing to challenge the surveillance. Well played, Obama administration.

The administration should not be allowed to get away with the specious claim that telling its secrets to a few privileged members of Congress is equivalent to informing the people. It is not. It’s merely one branch of government telling some people in another branch. Calling those politicians “our representatives” is highly misleading. In what sense do they actually represent us?

Equally specious is the assertion that the NSA can’t monitor particular people without court authorization. The secret FISA court is a rubber stamp.

When Obama ran for president in 2008, he said Americans shouldn’t have to choose between privacy and security. Now he says that “one of the things that we’re going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy? Because there are some tradeoffs involved.”

What do you take us for, Mr. President? Do you say whatever serves your momentary interest?

It’s outrageous for Obama to say he welcomes this debate – when his regime is plotting to capture and prosecute the heroic whistleblower who made it possible.

The debate would be bogus anyway. No one has a right to make a security/privacy tradeoff for you. Our rights should not be subject to vote, particularly when a ruling elite ultimately will make the decision – out of public view!

Americans have learned nothing from the last 40 years if they have not learned that the executive branch – regardless of party – will interpret any power as broadly as it wishes. Congressional oversight is worse than useless; it’s a myth, especially when one chamber is controlled by the president’s party and the other chamber’s majority embraces big government as long as it carries a “national security” label.

Obama says, “If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.”

That’s wrong. If the politicians’ only response to revelations that they’re violating our privacy is to ask for trust, then we already have problems.

Sheldon Richman is vice president and editor at The Future of Freedom Foundation (www.fff.org) in Fairfax, Va. He can be reached through his blog, Free Association.

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed concern over the outbreak of deadly violence in Iraq, calling for dialogue among all Iraqi political groups to address the current critical situation in the country.

In a statement on Wednesday, Ban voiced concern over Å“the escalating political tensions and the appalling upsurge of violence that has killed a high number of civilians over the last two months.”

Ban also urged Å“all parties to redouble their efforts to ensure that the momentum of national reconciliation is not lost to those groups that strive to reignite sectarian violence in Iraq.”

Banâ„¢s statement come after a wave of attacks killed seventy people and injured dozens across Iraq on Monday.

Iraq has been hit by a wave of violence since April 23, when security forces clashed with anti-government gunmen in the northern town of Hawija, near the city of Kirkuk. The incident in Hawija sparked widespread turmoil, which has killed hundreds of people ever since.

On June 1, the United Nations said that a total of 1,045 people were killed and nearly 2,400 others were injured in the incidents of violence across Iraq in May.

Iraqâ„¢s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said that militant groups and the remnants of the former Baâ„¢athist regime are responsible for the latest wave of violence.

MAM/KA

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

A passenger checks a board which shows departing flights at Roissy Charles de Gaulle international airport on June 11, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The people didn’t see Syria as perfect before the civil war, but it was a secular, tolerant state, which will be lost if Islamist rebels prevail, European MP Nick Griffin, who in Damascus with a fact-finding delegation, told RT.

Two suicide blasts rocked the Syrian capital Damascus this
Tuesday, killing at least 14 people and wounding 31 more. The
attacks come after the Syrian army retook the strategic town of
Qusair from the rebels last week in what some see as a turning
point in the war.

There are now jitters in Washington over the recent gains by
Assad troops, which, according to AP, could approve sending
weapons to the rebels as early as this week, with a no-fly zone
also among the options.

British National Party leader and European MP Nick Griffin has
called the involvement in Syria “a criminal action” on the part
of the US.

He also warned that by arming the Islamists, the Obama
administration will provide arms to the same people, who launched
the 9/11 attack on America.  


RT: Damascus has been rocked by blasts today, but you’ve
been describing life there ‘normal’. Why is that?

Nick Griffin: Well, ‘normal’ in terms of when you walk
around the streets there’s ordinary people, there’s families,
there’s people, who are strict Muslims and others, who are
secular. Getting on with their lives and trying to ignore the
bomb blasts, which go off occasionally. I’ve seen the same thing
in Northern Ireland. People get used to this. Life continues.
Certainly, in Damascus this is a state under attack, it’s not a
state in crisis.  

RT: You say you want to highlight the risk of the
British government supporting the Syrian opposition. What are
those risks, as you see it?

NG: Fundamentally, it’s a question of blowback. You
remember what happened in Afghanistan when the West, the CIA, the
British state armed AL-Qaeda to fight the Soviet Union. And then
of course, once the Soviet Union was finished the jihadis didn’t
go away, they turned their attention elsewhere. And what we’ve
got now, they’re managing to turn huge parts — fortunately
shrinking parts of presence in Syria — into a giant terrorist
training camp. The majority of people fighting in Syria against
the Syrian government are foreign terrorists, tens of thousands
of them, including hundreds from the EU, some of them even in
Britain. When the war is over here they’re going to come back to
Britain, come back to Western Europe and continue their jihad,
but this time we’ll be the targets.  

RT: Do you expect the US to go ahead with weapons
supplies to the opposition, given the army gains we’ve seen?


NG: I fear that the US will go ahead with weapon supplies.
There are a number of people a number of organizations and
countries involved in this criminal drive to destroy secular
Syria. One of them is the US government, not ordinary American
people. They’re working out a plan which was produced at the
start of the century by a group calling itself the Project for
New American Century and they wanted to secure energy supplies
for the US and also to contain Russia. That’s what this attack on
Syria is the latest of this criminal action by the US. They’re
not the only ones to blame, but they’re a significant part of it.
So I fear they’ll probably want to go ahead and arm these rebels,
even though in doing so they’re arming the same people as
attacked the US on 9/11.  

RT: You’re there with other pan-European politicians.
What’s their assessment of Syria right now? Are they hopeful
diplomacy can succeed at this stage?

NG: In particular, the most important others are members
of the Flemish Belgian parliament. I think we’re all pretty much
in agreement, with what we’ve seen. We’ve also been able to talk
with ordinary Syrians at all sorts of different levels. Something
that comes out from all those people who we speak to is that
Syria wasn’t perfect, but it was a secular and tolerant state
where no one even cared if someone was Sunni or Shia or Christian
or Jewish. They go on with it and that’s the thing, which is
going to be destroyed if this carries on. And everyone I was
there with, I think, gets this point and agrees with me and the
vast majority of people in Britain, that we shouldn’t be involved
in other peoples’ quarrels.

The Syrians have problems to sort out. Those are problems of a
question for Syria to sort out through ballot box, not through
foreign terrorists and foreign military intervention.

This article originally appeared on: RT

“[T]he Anti-Defamation League for many years has maintained a very important, confidential investigative coverage of Arab activities and propaganda….Our information, in addition to being essential for our own operations, has been of great value and service to both the United States State Department and the Israeli government. All data have been made available to both countries with full knowledge to each that we were the source.”

—  Letter from Benjamin R. Epstein, National Director, Anti-Defamation League to Saul Joftes, Executive Secretary, B’nai B’rith, July 7, 1961.

Those were the days when snooping usually meant digging through garbage cans, checking other people’s mailboxes, and primitive phone tapping. How the Anti-Defamation League is doing it today one can only imagine.

Over the last three days of April, the ADL celebrated its 100^th anniversary in Washington DC in high style with Vice President Joe Biden the featured speaker at its Centennial Gala dinner on April 30 and Attorney General Eric Holder doing the obligatory genuflecting the day before.

Standing next to the ADL’s ubiquitous current national director, Abe Foxman, Biden told the one thousand paying guests, “You have become the conscience of this country, no matter what the issue. You have been a pillar of the Jewish community, but you reach out and you have reached out your embrace for all communities.”

For hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals the ADL’s embrace has been too close for comfort and “unconscionable” would be a term more befitting the organization’s activities. What is definitely in order is a reminder that this year also marks the 20^th anniversary of the exposure of a nation-wide spying operation run by the ADL that went back at least five decades.

In January, 1993, San Francisco newspapers reported that the city’s police department had raided the ADL’s Northern California office and discovered it was keeping files on more than 600 largely liberal civic organizations and over 10,000 individuals whose interests and activities included but also went far beyond those of the Arab-American community.

After examining the sequestered files, San Francisco police inspector Ron Roth, estimated that 75% of the information had been illegally obtained and by November, District Attorney Arlo Smith appeared to be on the verge of indicting the ADL for numerous violations of state and city codes.

The appearance was deceiving. With an eye on being elected California’s attorney general the following year, Smith realized, too late as it turned out, that he would need the financial and political clout of San Francisco’s influential Jewish community that had helped to propel him to his job as the city’s DA. So he threw in the towel mere hours before ADL officials would be called to testify before a grand jury.

In an agreement reached a week earlier but issued Nov. 15, 1993, just before the filing deadline, Smith’s office released a statement explaining his reasoning: “The SFDA and Defendants agree that litigation concerning Defendant’s activities would involve disputed issues of fact and law and that such litigation would be expensive and time-consuming both to the SFDA and Defendants.”

That all litigation involves “disputed issues of fact and law” apparently did not occur to Smith. His dropping of the case, however, made little impression on his erstwhile Jewish backers.

They made it known that they would not forgive him for not only opening the investigation into the ADL’s spying operations but making available to whoever in the public would pay the copying fees, 704 pages of documents that revealed in considerable detail the extent of the ADL’s nation-wide spying operations. (See the Israel Lobby Archive, www.irmep.org/ila)

In exchange for being let off the hook and while admitting no wrong-doing, the ADL agreed that it would no longer do, at least in California, what it was shown to have been doing, i.e., soliciting and/or obtaining non-public information on individuals and organizations from government sources.

In addition, it would “create a Hate Crimes Reward Fund,” in the amount of $25,000, which would “provide monetary rewards for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of the perpetrators of hate crimes.” (The latter seems to be a fetish of the ADL which, incredibly, has just been allowed to trademark the statement, “Imagine a world without hate.”)

What was an important concession by the city, from the ADL’s standpoint, was that its files seized by the SFPD would remain closed to the public and would not be opened without the ADL being given an opportunity to voice its objections.

In California, the ADL’s secret spying and file keeping was mainly the provenance of Roy Bullock, a beefy San Francisco weight-lifter, who went by the code name, “Cal,” and reported to the ADL’s chief spymaster in New York, the now deceased Irwin Suall.

To keep the relationship out of public as well as government eyes, Bullock was paid through a cut-out in Beverly Hills, Bruce Hochman, a lawyer and member of the ADL’s board, also now deceased.

As late as July 19, 1992, Suall had described Bullock as “our Number One fact finder” whose assignments included, in addition to his duties in California, attending and monitoring conferences and conventions of Arab-Americans across the country.

He was, in fact, doing the kind of work that former ADL director Ben Epstein described in the quote at the beginning of this article. At the time, Bullock was receiving close to $25,000 a year for monitoring what he and the ADL considered “antidemocratic” organizations and individuals and he had been doing it for 40 years.

It wasn’t Bullock’s only income, to be sure. He was also an “art dealer” and this provided an explanation for his turning up at Arab-American conferences across the country as I later learned. He “just happened” to be in this or that city at the same time, buying art.

A month after the SFPD had confiscated Bullock’s files, the ADL was still trying to avoid being linked with him, even within the organization.  On February 25, 1993, a cover letter for “talking points” to its regional directors referred to Bullock as “an individual who is alleged to have a relationship with the ADL.”

To the public, when its ties to Bullock could no longer be denied, he was described simply as a private contractor and that the files he kept were for his own use. When this attempted cover-up quickly fell apart, he was put directly on the ADL payroll and provided with an attorney.

Bullock had divided the organizations and individuals on which he was keeping tabs into two categories to which he assigned the names, Pinko and Right, the latter made up largely of neo-Nazis and skinheads, the groups usually associated by the public as ADL’s main targets. When questioned by Inspector Roth, Bullock defined “Pinko” as “left wing.”

Among the 647 organizations he so designated  were the NAACP, ACLU, Asian Law Caucus, Centro Legal de la Raza, Irish Northern Aid, Japanese-American Citizens League, the National Indian Treaty Council, Earth Island Institute and 20 trade union locals plus the San Francisco Labor Council. Jewish organizations that had taken positions critical of Israeli policies also found their way into his “Pinko” section.

On finding its name on the list, the Asian-Law Caucus quickly notified the ADL that it was withdrawing from a joint event previously planned with the Jewish defense organization. Rather than apologizing, the ADL was defiant, responding with a letter that placed the onus on the Asian Law Caucus for the cancellation.

In a letter addressed to the director of the Asian Law Caucus, dated April 29. 1953, the ADL’s regional director, Elliot Bien, wrote that he was “dismayed on a number of levels when I learned that the Asian Law Caucus felt it necessary to pull out of this program on short notice as a protest of some sort against the ADL…. [T]hat the pullout was completely unjustified and unfair….”

The ADL was and remains more sensitive to Black-Jewish relations. Jews have been heavily involved with the NAACP since its inception in 1909. That they have also been the major source of its funding has been viewed by many observers in the post civil rights era as designed to keep the organization from taking political positions that would offend the Jewish establishment, such as expressing sympathy with the Palestinian cause or criticizing Israel’s arms sales to South Africa.

This was typified by the attitude of long-time NAACP Director Roy Wilkins, widely characterized as an “Uncle Tom” by black activists, who withdrew the NAACP from the National Black Political Convention in 1972, taking exception to a resolution that condemned Israel for “expansionist policies and forceful occupation of the sovereign territories of another state.”

On May 5, 1993, the ADL’s New York headquarters sent a letter to its regional offices, noting that “Abe Foxman wrote newly installed NAACP Director Benjamin Chavis, assuring him that the ADL had never targeted the NAACP for investigation” and recommended that if they had not already done so, the directors should reach out to “local branches of the NAACP” and “do so now.”

“You may note,” the letter went on, “that the news story in which the NAACP was named, cited names in Bullock’s files as ours. [T]he ADL has never targeted nor would it ever target for investigation any individual or organization on the basis of race, religion, ethnic origin, or sexual orientation.” The letter ignored the fact that a year earlier, the ADL had issued a 50-page “ADL Research Report, entitled “The Anti-Semitism of Black Demagogues and Extremists.”

Heading the list were Min. Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, Illinois Congressman Gus Savage, Rev. Al Sharpton, Kwame Ture (the former Stokely Carmichael), poet Amiri Baraka, and rappers Ice Cube and Professor Griff and Public Enemy. Certain black newspapers and radio stations that didn’t feel beholden to the Jewish community also came in for their lumps.

Chavis, with a long history of civil rights activity, was no Roy Wilkins. In an effort to revive what had become a moribund organization and make it more representative of the black community, he sought to involve some of those condemned in the ADL’s booklet, but it was his reaching out to Farrakhan that set off the alarm bells at ADL headquarters and put him at odds with Foxman.

It also caused the NAACP’s major Jewish funders to put away their check books until Chavis, who became caught up in an unrelated personnel matter, tendered his resignation.

Given Foxman and the ADL’s obsession with what it considers to be “black anti-Semitism,” which includes, for example, speaking about the prominent role of Jews in the African slave trade or comparisons of Israel with apartheid South Africa, it was logical that Bullock would an eye on the NAACP and other African-American as well as black African organizations. He was nothing if not thorough, keeping multiple files on the African National Congress and 47 other anti-apartheid organizations.

Bullock also was found to have 77 files on 58 Arab-American organizations besides the thousands of individuals who belonged to those organizations. His modus operandi in infiltrating Arab-American and anti-apartheid organizations, was to pretend he was sympathetic to their respective causes. He succeeded in not only becoming a member of the local chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee but, because of his size and weight, he would be in charge of “security” at all its events.

Bullock was assisted in his endeavors by a San Francisco policeman and former CIA contractor in El Salvador, Tom Gerard, who would take down the license plate numbers of people attending Palestinian and Arab-American events and provide Bullock with their names, addresses, and personal information, all of which was illegal. What made this easy for Gerard was that he was the SFPD’s “official liaison” to the Arab community.

What was particularly embarrassing for the ADL was the release of  information that Bullock and Gerard, who had also provided information directly to ADL officials, were also being paid by South African intelligence agents to supply  information on the activities of the Bay Area’s anti-Apartheid organizations and South African exiles affiliated with the ANC and other black African organizations.

In one of his depositions, Bullock acknowledged that doing this required no additional work since he was already spying on the anti-apartheid movement for the ADL. Foxman, on his part, had openly condemned the African National Congress as a “terrorist” organization that supported the PLO.

One individual the South African agents were particularly interested in was Chris Hani, the man who was expected to succeed Nelson Mandela as the country’s president. Hani was assassinated in South Africa shortly after a speaking tour in California during which he was trailed by Bullock who prepared a lengthy report on it for the South African government, a copy of which was found in his files.

Foxman, though unapologetic, was anxious to neutralize public discussion of the close ties that existed between Israel and South Africa, particularly the Jewish state’s arms sales to the apartheid regime. Thanks, however, to the willingness of the anti-apartheid movement and the Congressional Black Caucus to bury the issue, he ended up having little to worry about.

While Bullock had, at times, infiltrated neo-Nazi and skinhead groups, none of which posed tangible threats to the American Jews, their images in the organization’s mailings were useful in frightening Jewish donors into contributing to the ADL’s $60 million dollar budget and paying Foxman’s salary which in 2009 amounted to $563,024. The main focus of the ADL was on Palestinians and Arab-Americans and their solidarity groups.

One of the targets Bullock “befriended” was Palestinian-American Alex Odeh, the head of the Orange County chapter of the ADC who would be killed by a terrorist bomb when he opened the door to his Santa Ana office on October 11, 1985.

In Bullock’s files, police found a key to Odeh’s office as well as the floor plan. Although Bullock has not been linked to the unresolved murder, the fact that an ADL spy was in possession of such items is something that Foxman obviously would not want advertised.

There were two law suits filed against the ADL over the 1993 revelations but only one proved to be headache from the ADL’s perspective. This was a class action suit filed on April 14, 1993, by former congressman, Paul “Pete” McCloskey, himself a victim of pro-Israel witch hunters, on behalf of 17 individuals who believed they had been spied upon because of their work on behalf of justice for the Palestinians and/or their active opposition to South African apartheid.

A second suit was filed by a group of targeted organizations, among them the Labor Committee on the Middle East (LCOME) which Labor activist Steve Zeltzer and I co-founded in 1987. That suit, over which the organizations seemed to have little say, was settled by their lawyer in 1999 after the ADL, admitting no wrong doing, agreed to destroy its files, to get out of the spying business, and contribute $50,000 to police departments for racial sensitivity training. Steve and I did not think that an adequate response to the seriousness of the ADL’s transgressions and LCOME refused to be a party to that settlement.

By February, 2002, when the ADL elected to settle McCloskey’s suit out of court, there would be only three individuals remaining in the class: Zeltzer, Anne Poirer, and myself. In addition to our involvement in anti-apartheid activities, Steve and I had launched the Labor Committee on the Middle East in 1987, whose founding meetings at Zeltzer’s home, Bullock had attended. Anne had been a long time anti-apartheid activist.

Our suit charged the ADL with violating a narrow privacy provision of California state law,1798.53, which holds that “Any person, other than an employee of the state or of a local government agency…..who intentionally discloses information, not otherwise public, which they know or should reasonably know was obtained from personal information maintained by a state agency or from ‘records’

… maintained by a federal government agency, shall be subject to a civil action, for invasion of privacy, by the individual to whom the information pertains.”

In this instance, the 9^th District Court of California had determined that information on Zeltzer and me had been provided to the governments of Israel and South Africa and that information on Annie Poirier had been given to South Africa.

Over nearly a decade of court appearances and status conferences, what we insisted upon, above all else, and what prevented an earlier settlement, was that under no circumstances would we sign a confidentiality agreement that would forbid us speaking or writing about the suit.

We felt we needed to be free to talk about what we had learned along the way about the ADL’s spying activities, information that the ADL, understandably, preferred to be kept secret.

Until the very last moment, the Friday afternoon before the Monday when the case would have gone to trial, the ADL had balked at making that concession. In the end they gave in. In addition, they agreed to pay a modest cash settlement to the three of us plus McCloskey’s legal expenses. He had taken our case pro bono.

What was, perhaps, the most revealing moment in the legal battle took place in McCloskey’s Redwood City office during the ADL’s questioning of former Mossad agent, Victor Ostrovsky.  McCloskey had brought Ostrovsky down from Canada to provide whatever information he might have that would link the ADL to Israel and assist us in our case.

When Ostrovsky left the Mossad, he took with him a number of documents, some of which were the source his “By Way of Deception,” a record of his time with the Israeli spy agency.

As Ostrovsky took his seat next to McCloskey, he faced the usual battery of attorneys representing the ADL and Bullock. The atmosphere, however, was very different. Throughout the many court appearances and the taking of depositions, the ADL’s lawyers had been cordial, if not friendly, to us, even though we were on opposite sides.

This would not be the case with Ostrovsky. It is not an exaggeration to say that their eyes were gleaming with hatred. They made no effort to conceal their hostility to a person they obviously viewed as a traitor to Israel which, at that moment, they clearly viewed as their client as much as was the ADL.

That this was more than conjecture on my part was soon revealed when David Goldstein, the lead attorney, demanded that Ostrovsky turn over to him, in the name of the ADL, all the documents he had taken from the Mossad. Ostrovsky, quite naturally, refused. Later the ADL’s lawyers inveighed upon a judge, without success, to force him to comply with their demand.

Thanks to our refusal to sign the confidentiality agreement, you can read about that  on CounterPunch.

===============================================================

When the reports of the ADL spying first appeared in the media, there were those who thought the respected Jewish defense organization had simply made a mistake in its zeal to protect Israel and that the spying operation was an anomaly.

Nothing can be further from the truth. But let’s begin at the beginning.

The ADL was formed by B’nai B’rith in 1913 to serve as the leading Jewish defense agency in the wake of the conviction of Leo Frank, an officer of the National Pencil Co. in Atlanta, Georgia for the murder of 13 year old Mary Phagan, a shop floor worker at the pencil factory. It was a verdict that many believed to be a miscarriage of justice, which was compounded by Frank being kidnapped from a prison hospital two years later and lynched. He is the only American Jew known to have suffered that fate.

By 1937, the Anti-Defamation League had embarked on another occupation, keeping files and spying on what it considered to be communist or pro-communist organizations and individuals.

In that year, a 1947 Congressional hearing revealed, it had begun providing information on the recently formed National Lawyers Guild and on individuals applying for federal civil service jobs and some who had not applied for jobs, to the original House Committee on Un-American Activities, chaired by the notorious racist Rep. Martin Dies, which came to be referred to simply as the Dies Committee.

Newly declassified FBI files obtained by IRmep’s Grant Smith reveal that on August 8, 1940, the ADL offered a confidential list of hundreds of undercover ADL investigators to FBI Director J Edgar Hoover. ADL offered the contact list as a resource for FBI informants and additional undercover agents.

Some members of the list, such as Abraham Feinberg, would later be investigated by the FBI as agents of a foreign government and for quashing investigations targeting illegal arms-smuggling from the US to Israel.

Feinberg would become later well known in as the man who delivered an envelope filled with a large amount of cash to Harry Truman—$ 2 million JFK told Gore Vidal— that enabled him to launch the whistle stop campaign that led to his victory in the 1948 presidential elections. Truman had earned Feinberg’s largesse by recognizing Israel minutes after David Ben-Gurion declared the state into existence.

During the anti-communist witch hunts that marked the beginning of the Cold War, the ADL assisted and acted as a go-between for both the Congressional committees and members or former members of the Communist Party who chose to inform on their one-time comrades, friends, and family members.

With the arrival of Israel, the ADL began to redirect its tasks. Arab delegations to the United Nations and Arab-American organizations became its targets. In the letter cited at the beginning of this article, the ADL’s Ben Epstein wrote B’nai B’rith’s Saul Joftes that “we have maintained an information-gathering operation since 1948 relating to activities emanating from the Arab Consular Offices, Arab United Nations Delegations, Arab Information Center, Arab Refugee Office and the Organization of Arab Students.”

In 1969 the ADL infiltrated the 18th annual National Convention the Organization of Arab Students. ADL operatives posed as reporters while strategizing on how to gain control of the OAS’s national headquarters and neutralize its chapters.

After receiving its report, the FBI briefly considered investigating the ADL as an Israeli foreign agent. The ADL effort was ultimately successful to the degree that OAS chapters became less political in the ensuing decades and began serving more as campus clubs with a cultural focus.

In November, 1983, in response to widespread criticism of Israel over its invasion and occupation of Lebanon the previous year, the ADL’s New England office put out a 49 page mimeographed booklet containing the names of individuals and organizations that the league classified as “pro-Arab propagandists.”

It was not intended for the general public, but for Jewish students on college campuses to help them counter these “propagandists” who were trying “to sway Americans from their historically strong support for Israel.” Moreover, the booklet claimed, “many of these propagandists use their anti-Zionism as a guise for their deeply felt anti-Semitism.”

The booklet, with each page stamped “CONFIDENTIAL,” was prepared by Jordan Millstein, the ADL’s local campus coordinator and was sent out with a cover letter from Leonard Zakim, the Executive Director of its New England Office.

“Should you need more information on these individual groups or any others,” wrote Zakim, “please call us. Also, if you have any knowledge of any individuals or groups not listed in the booklet, please pass the information on to us so that we can have a more complete and useful listing.”

One can imagine the outrage had a Palestinian or Arab-American group put out a similar publication containing a list of individuals and organizations that they accused of putting Israel’s interests before those of the United States.

Among the individuals on the ADL list were Professors Edward Said of Columbia, Michael Hudson of Georgetown, Lawrence Michalak of UC Berkeley, Wahlid Khaladi of Harvard, Naseer Aruri of Southeastern U., Israel Shahak of Hebrew University who “contends that Israel practices ‘apartheid’ against Palestinian Arabs,” former Senator James Abourezk of South Dakota, and our lawyer, Pete McCloskey, who served 16 years in Congress, from 1967 to 1983, the year the booklet was published.

The publication came to the attention of the 1400 member Middle East Studies Association the following November which passed a resolution calling on the league to disown the document

When that story was finally reported In the NY Times on Jan.25, two months later, Jeffrey Ross, the ADL’s director of campus affairs, claimed it had been an “unfortunate incident” and would not be repeated.

He said that Millstein, the author, was an “overly zealous student volunteer” who no longer worked for the league. Zakim acknowledged “the document had been careless” as the Times characterized it and that “he would not have written a cover letter for it if he had considered the matter thoroughly.”

Despite the ADL having promised to get out of the business of illegally obtaining information on its enemies in exchange for not being prosecuted back in 1993, there is no evidence, twenty years later that it has.

What it has done is strengthen its ties with police across the country through its LEARN program (Law Enforcement Agency Resource Network) in which it trains police in dealing with “extremist groups” and “hate crimes.”

As for Bullock, I have heard of no recent citing but I have a hunch that somewhere in the country the aging agent is still going through other people’s garbage cans, peeking in their mailboxes and infiltrating a new generation of “Pinko” organizations for the ADL. If you look for his image on Google you will find three of them, all right next to photos of Abe Foxman.

Jeffrey Blankfort is a journalist and radio host and can be reached at jblankfort@earthlink.net

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

This article originally appeared on: RT

Lucy Madison
CBS News
June 12, 2013

As the hunt continues for Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee who outed himself last weekend as the source of top-secret leaks about U.S. surveillance program, some people have concerns about his fate.

“I’m worried about, somebody in our government might kill him with a cruise missile or a drone missile,” said Ron Paul a former Texas congressman who twice ran for the Republican presidential nomination, in an interview Tuesday with Fox News. “I mean, we live in a bad time where American citizens don’t even have rights and that they can be killed, but the gentlemen is trying to tell the truth about what’s going on.”

Read more

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This article was posted: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 at 9:01 am

Tags: big brother, constitution, domestic news, domestic spying, drones, government corruption, ron paul

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

The UK justice system is losing the fight against modern slavery by prosecuting victims of human trafficking rather than the criminal chieftains, a major new study will warn,

The findings of the study commissioned by the Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group (ATMG) and seen by The Independent suggest that a unified law on the crime is required to make it easier to prosecute. And it comes at a time when the number of trafficking victims indentified is soaring and criminal convictions for the offence have plummeted.

The ATMG is a coalition of bodies established to scrutinise the governmentâ„¢s progress in tackling modern slavery.

Under the current regime, many trafficked people are prosecuted for crimes they are forced to commit as Å“widespread” evidence shows, while the criminal bosses who enslave them go unpunished.

The ATMG believes the practice of unlawfully punishing victims is common, despite existence of legal protection for them, according to the report.

One woman was imprisoned for 12 months for possession of a false passport and having documents used for fraud, despite Judge Guy Kearl QC stating, Å“I accept that you have been a victim of trafficking and you were exploited.”

In another case of trafficking from Vietnam for cannabis farming, the defendant was sentenced to 24 months, despite the judge acknowledging he had been coerced.

Å“Until the government makes tackling trafficking a priority it wonâ„¢t be effective in prosecuting traffickers and protecting the victims. Our evidence suggests that many trafficked persons are prosecuted for crimes they were compelled to commit while their traffickers enjoy impunity. This is unacceptable. The UK is obliged by the law to investigate traffickers and protect victims from criminalisation”, said Klara Skrivankova, trafficking programme co-ordinator at Anti-Slavery International.

The report says Å“countless” examples where the police Å“did not recognise the crime at all” were highlighted to ATMG charities. It says human trafficking is Å“not a policing priority,” despite the governmentâ„¢s commitment to make Britain a hostile environment for traffickers.

Cases where trafficked children were re-trafficked on release from Young Offender Institutions were also identified by the group, which said it was concerned about a Å“revolving door” effect, leading to vulnerable children becoming victims twice.

Å“We consistently see child victims of trafficking not being given adequate protection and support. There continues to be a gap in the understanding of frontline practitioners who just arenâ„¢t well-enough informed about how to recognise and deal with cases of trafficking”, said Chloe Setter, head of advocacy at ECPAT UK.

Å“Prosecutions of child traffickers are rare, leaving children without justice and their perpetrators free to re-offend. This sends out a dangerous message that the UK is not tough enough on child trafficking.”

The number of trafficking victims identified in Britain continues to rise. In September 2011, 36 victims were identified, while by February 2013, 83 were found in a month. At the same time, the number of traffickers successfully prosecuted is plummeting, with just 8 convictions in 2011, half as many as in 2010 and a third of those in 2008.

MOL/HE

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Spokesman of Iran’s highest electoral supervisory body, the Guardian Council, says the primary results of the June 14 presidential election will be announced by the Iranian Interior Ministry.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Staff continued to defy the government’s closure of ERT’s television and radio stations. This is a screen shot from one of the livestreams last night.The Greek government announced late Tuesday that it is shutting down its only public television broadcaster–the latest in the country’s drastic austerity measures–spawning both widespread anger and a guerrilla TV station organized by the European Broadcasting Union.

The move, which has left 2,700 people without jobs and a country without its public broadcasting station, ERT, is being criticized as the “most dramatic in a series of attacks on free speech and public space by the Greek government.”

Over 3,000 people including the now former ERT employees gathered outside the broadcaster’s headquarters north of Athens on Tuesday night following the announcement, vowing to stage a sit-in until the government rescinded the order.

And that is just what they did.

“A number of ERT staff have defied the government order, staying overnight in the broadcaster’s headquarters and managing to continue broadcasting a makeshift schedule of news and talk shows,” the Guardian is reporting.

As tensions rose, reporter Maria Margaronis described the scene as it happened:

One by one, the transmitters around the country are being turned off. Journalists and production staff are occupying the broadcaster’s Athens headquarters; the network’s musicians are playing protest songs in the courtyard. Many thousands of protesters are gathering outside; so are busloads of riot police. @amaenad tweets, “Everyone in #Greece has been watching #Occupygezi. And PM Samaras just gave them a spark. He was always as stupid as he was arrogant. #ERT”

ERT’s TV and radio services did go off air overnight, but employees were able to maintain broadcasting over the internet.

However, members of the The European Broadcasting Union also managed to set up a satellite news outpost in the parking lot outside of the ERT building, and continued to broadcast the news from there.

Through the satellite, the news was broadcast around Greece and Europe–albeit on selective stations.

However, fear countinued to mount Wednesday over a police crackdown, in which they would empty the building, cut off power and seize all ERT equipment.

Meanwhile Greek labor unions have scheduled a 24-hour national work stoppage for Thursday and journalists on privately owned television and newspapers have initiated an open-ended strike.

“The strike will only end when the government takes back this coup d’etat which gags information,” the journalists’ union said.

The abrupt closure was announced directly after one of Greece’s lenders, the International Monetary Fund “chastised the government as having failed to take ‘politically difficult measures’ to shrink the public sector since it received its first bailout in 2010,” the New York Times reports.

“This is a blow to democracy,” said ERT newsreader Antonis Alafogiorgos at the end of the main station’s final TV broadcast.

The founder of Shedia, a Greek news magazine, Chris Alefantis said: “The overnight closure of the state broadcaster is a sad day for Greek democracy, and not only for the Greek media landscape. The Greek people are just about to lose their voice.”

Leftwing opposition leader Alexis Tsipras criticised the closure as “illegal” during an interview on ERT’s online broadcast. “Many times the word ‘coup’ is used as an exaggeration,” he said. “In this case, it is not an exaggeration.”

As Margaronis explains at the Nation, ERT was one of the only remaining stations that wasing “pushing the agendas of the oligarchs”:

So, in the name of transparency and cutting costs, the government has closed, by fiat and at great expense, the country’s only public broadcaster–the only broadcaster (for all its flaws) that isn’t pushing the agendas of the oligarchs. It has laid off some 2,700 people in one fell swoop–exceeding the Troika’s demand for 2,000 more public-sector job cuts. And it has opened the way for the distribution of lucrative franchises–for sports broadcasts, for instance–to the private TV channels which feed the Greek people the relentless diet of pap, hysteria, conspiracy theories and xenophobic propaganda that has helped sink the country into its current mess. Last week, Turkish TV notoriously showed movies about penguins instead of the police repression in Taksim Square. Greek TV has been poisoning people’s minds for decades; penguins would be an improvement.

A Greek independent news service is providing a live blog of the unfolding events.

_______________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

In an unprecedented move, Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) has added insult to injury to debt-ridden eurozone member Greece by downgrading its status to “emerging market,” the first such shift since the index was created.

The birthplace of democracy, the Olympic Games and political
science, among a number of other stunning achievements, was
informed on Tuesday that it no longer ranks among the developed
nations of the world.

The MSCI statement said that Greece failed to qualify for the
developed market index criterion for size for the last two years,
and pointed to investors’ concerns about the restrictive nature
of the “in‐kind transfer” and “off‐exchange
transaction‐like facilities” that were introduced in 2008 by
Greek officials.

“The minimum standards that currently prevail in Developed
Markets reflect continuous market improvements introduced by
authorities in other countries over the years,” the statement
continued. “However, very few of these improved market
practices have been reflected in the Greek market.”

“Multiple bailouts by the European Union and the International
Monetary Fund, a sharp contraction in gross domestic product and
a still-large debt burden mean Greece now has more in common with
Hungary than France,” summed up The Wall Street Journal.

The decision marks the first time the MSCI demoted a country from
its “developed” to its “emerging-market” category
since it began the emerging-markets index in 1987.

Greece is still struggling with its debt payments and investors
are staying away, despite the fact that Athens accepted harsh
austerity measures in return for international loans that kept
the country inside the eurozone.

Greece is grappling with its sixth consecutive year of recession
with unemployment at 27 per cent and youth unemployment at 62.5
per cent.

MSCI tracks 79 markets and classifies them according to size and
liquidity, market accessibility, ease of capital flows and
firmness of institutional structures. Markets with large stock
markets and fewer restrictions on foreign fund movement are
classified as developed markets.

An estimated $7 trillion of investments follow MSCI’s indexes.

Greece has been an emerging market before. MSCI had Greece
categorized as an emerging market until May 2001, when it was
reclassified as a developed market after adopting the euro.

This article originally appeared on: RT

This file photo shows South Korean soldiers setting up barricades across the road to the Kaesong joint industrial zone.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Infowars.com
June 12, 2013

To the millions of Americans who go through their day blindly trusting that Obama is out there defending their Constitutional rights, Eric Snowden looks like Public Enemy #1, a traitor who just made it a lot easier for terrorists to invade our country. To the millions of Americans who don’t wear blinders or rose colored glasses, Snowden looks like a hero. But to Obama, Snowden looks like the perfect Straw Man.

If you truly believe that Eric Snowden revealed some deep, dark State secret when he told the world that the NSA was spying on our phone and Internet communications then you’re not paying attention. Law enforcement officials have been tapping phone lines since telephones were first invented.

In 1928 the Supreme Court finally set a precedent when it ruled that telephone eavesdropping for law enforcement purposes was legal because there was no physical invasion of privacy. In 1963, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy authorized the FBI to tap the phone lines of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1969 President Richard Nixon approved dozens of legal wiretaps, including the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.

In 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which prescribes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of “foreign intelligence information” between “foreign powers” and “agents of foreign powers” (which may include American citizens and permanent residents suspected of espionage or terrorism).

With the introduction of the Internet, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act was passed in 1994. CALEA’s purpose was to enhance the ability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to conduct electronic surveillance by requiring telecommunications carriers and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment modify and design their equipment, facilities, and services to ensure that they have built-in surveillance capabilities, allowing federal agencies to monitor all telephone, broadband internet, and VoIP traffic in real-time.

But in 2008, Congress amended FISA and four key provisions that were added opened the doors to unlimited abuses of power:

— Prohibits the individual states from investigating, sanctioning of, or requiring disclosure by complicit telecoms or other persons.

— Permits the government not to keep records of searches, and destroy existing records.

— Protects telecommunications companies from lawsuits for “‘past or future cooperation’ with federal law enforcement authorities.

— Allows eavesdropping in emergencies without court approval.

None of these laws or amendments are “Top Secret Information” known only to a handful of high-ranking officials. They’re all common knowledge, available to anyone interested enough to conduct a search. And FYI — then-Senator Barack Obama voted for this bill.

It should be obvious to everyone: If the government is going to go through the trouble of passing these laws, they intend to implement them. They’ve been tapping our phone lines since the 1890′s and they’ve been tapping into any and all online networks since the dawn of the Internet.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

So Eric Snowden didn’t really reveal any “Top Secret” information that’s going to put our country at risk. Every single bit of information in this article so far is pulled from an online resource available to the public. You just need to be able to connect the dots.

But leading the public to believe that Snowden did commit an unforgivable act of treason has certain benefits for King Obama and his loyal administration.

In 2010, F.B.I. Director, Robert S. Mueller III, argued that the “bureau’s ability to carry out court-approved eavesdropping on suspects is “going dark” as communications technology evolves.” Pushing for stricter mandates, the Obama administration wanted to require online companies like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, and dozens of others, to build a capacity to comply with wiretap orders into their systems.

Obama’s proposal didn’t pass, though, because the Commerce Department felt it would stifle innovation.

Up to this point, federal judges must still grant approval for warrants but networks are merely “asked” to comply. They can still say, “We’re sorry, we’re unable to access that information.”

But just last month, during all the IRS and AP uproar, the proposal was revised and it’s on its way to the White House. Under the new proposal, online networks and cell phone service providers will be required to build in a wiretapping capacity that makes it possible for law enforcement agencies to just immediately hook-up and start downloading data. They will not be “asked” to comply — they’ll be ordered. And if they don’t, they’ll face fines starting at $25,000 per day.

As pointed out by Gregory T. Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology, if anything, these new mandates will make our Internet even less secure.

“I think the F.B.I.’s proposal would render Internet communications less secure and more vulnerable to hackers and identity thieves,” he said. “It would also mean that innovators who want to avoid new and expensive mandates will take their innovations abroad and develop them there, where there aren’t the same mandates.”

By criminalizing Eric Snowden for revealing information that was already available to the public, Obama has managed to distract Americans while he moves forward with his nefarious plot to eliminate the Constitution.

The only threat to national security is the threat that comes from Obama. Once all service providers and online networks have built in the wiretapping capabilities Obama is demanding it’s easy enough for anyone to tap into our private conversations — even Al Qeada. (And let’s face it — if they aren’t already tapping into our lines then they’re not paying attention, either.)

And if it also moves a few more jobs offshore and further damages the U.S. economy and job market, so much the better.

Eric Snowden is not a traitor, he simply revealed information that’s already out there. The problem is, a lot more people are paying attention now — including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft. The big networks are now calling for greater NSA transparency. Fearing a backlash from their users, they want to be able to reveal how many national security requests they receive, why they’re being forced to comply, and what they’re being forced to turn over.

According to a June 12 article in the Guardian, “In a letter from Google to the US attorney general, Eric Holder, also published on its corporate blog, the company once again said allegations that the US government had “unfettered access to our users’ data are simply untrue”. But, the letter added, the fact that Google was not allowed to disclose requests made for information under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) “fuel[s] that speculation”.

So Obama has to use some slight-of-hand to distract the public while he signs off on this new legislation. And what better distraction than to turn Eric Snowden into a traitorous, dancing Straw Man?

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This article was posted: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 at 8:52 am

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Branding of Tea Party as violent extremists accelerates

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
June 12, 2013

A Homeland Security-funded training exercise in Boston dubbed “Operation Urban Shield” that was delayed due to April’s marathon bombing revolved around a terrorist cell dubbed “Free America Citizens,” another indication of how the DHS is characterizing liberty-loving Americans as domestic extremists.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

“Months of painstaking planning had gone into the exercise, dubbed “Operation Urban Shield,” meant to train dozens of detectives in the Greater Boston area to work together to thwart a terrorist threat. The hypothetical terrorist group was even given a name: Free America Citizens, a home-grown cadre of militiamen whose logo would be a metal skull wearing an Uncle Sam hat and a furious expression,” reports the Boston Globe.

The drill, which was funded with the aid of a $200,000 Department of Homeland Security grant and was set to involve DHS officials along with other federal authorities, centered on the scenario of domestic terrorists leaving explosive-filled backpacks at locations around the city. The exercise was due to take place this weekend but was postponed in response to the Boston bombings and is now expected to go ahead early next year.

The exercise, many details of which remain confidential, has been crafted to test the investigative skills of detectives involved who will be tasked with finding out the motivation behind the “Free America” terrorists.

The drill was planned before the Boston bombings and officials from a dozen agencies have been meeting for months to plan the scenario. The exercise bore “eerie similarities” to the real attack in that police were tasked with identifying terrorists from street surveillance camera footage.

Over the course of the last five years, the DHS has been criticized for its involvement in numerous training exercises and the production of material which demonizes conservatives and libertarians as domestic extremists, putting them in the same league as violent terrorists.

In March, Arkansas State Fusion Center Director Richard Davis admitted that the federal agency spies on Americans deemed to be “anti-government,” noting that the DHS concentrates on, “domestic terrorism and certain groups that are anti-government. We want to kind of take a look at that and receive that information,” so-called threats which included people, “putting political stickers in public bathrooms or participating in movements against the death penalty.”

Last year, a DHS-funded study produced by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland characterized Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.

The DHS also stoked controversy in 2011 when it released a series of videos to promote the See Something, Say Something campaign in which almost all of the terrorists portrayed in the PSAs were white Americans.

A mock DHS news report which emerged last month depicted gun owning Americans as dangerous terrorists.

A DHS-funded exercise in Seattle last month portrayed “angry” parents who homeschooled their children as terrorists.

The 2009 MIAC report, published by the Missouri Information Analysis Center and first revealed by Infowars, also framed Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, people who display bumper stickers, people who own gold, or even people who fly a U.S. flag, as potential terrorists.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Taliban militants claim their fighters have shot down a helicopter belonging to the US-led forces in Oruzgan Province of Afghanistan.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A school in the US state of Rhode Island has been found guilty of operating a sweatshop for kids with disabilities, a report says.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

The Senate voted 82-15 Tuesday to send the immigration bill to the floor for deliberation.

Clearing this “key legislative hurdle” opens the way for members on both sides of the aisle to voice not only their support for wholesale immigration reform, but their opposition, as well.

One Republican senator finds himself straddling the line between wanting to overhaul the current immigration system and preventing changes that would open the border wider to an influx of illegal immigrants and infringe upon civil liberties through the creation of a national ID card.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky., shown) announced late last week that he would propose an amendment to the immigration bill offered by the bipartisan group of senators known as the Gang of Eight.

The Paul amendment makes immigration reform conditional on Congress voting on whether the border is secure, requiring completion of a border fence in five years and a protection against the federal government establishing a national identification card system for citizens.

On May 24 Paul penned an op-ed in the Washington Times advocating an end to calls for a national ID, such as that proposed by the REAL ID Act. Paul wrote:

The controversial immigration-reform bill that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee this week is expected to be considered by the Senate in June. Many see measures contained in this bill, such as a strong E-Verify and a “photo tool,” as a means to control unlawful immigrants’ access to unlawful employment. I worry that they go too far.

I think there are better ideas that err on the side of individual privacy while still strengthening our borders. We should scrap a national identification database and pass immigration reform that secures the border, expands existing work-visa programs and prevents noncitizens from access to welfare. These simple ideas will eliminate the perceived need for an invasive worker-verification system and a government citizenship database.

I am against the idea that American citizens should be forced to carry around a National Identification Card as a condition of citizenship. I worry that the Senate is working to consider a series of little-noticed provisions in comprehensive immigration reform that may provide a pathway to a national ID card for all individuals present in the United States – citizens and noncitizens. These draconian ideas would simply give government too much power.

Beyond blocking the institution of a REAL ID program, Senator Paul’s “Trust but Verify” amendment requires Congress to write and enforce a border security blueprint rather than relying on bureaucracies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, to come up with a plan. The amendment also would provide new national security safeguards to track the holders of student visas and those provided asylum and refugee status. The Paul amendment demands that the Department of Homeland Security “finally follow through on the broken promise” of securing the southern border and improving the visa tracking system.

As Paul told The New American in a phone interview, the “Trust but Verify” amendment would require Congress to vote every year on whether the border is sufficiently secure. If Congress determines that border security is lax, the immigration reforms will be put on hold and visa programs will be stifled until security returns to an acceptable level.

In addition to the “Trust but Verify” amendment, Senator Paul plans to offer three additional amendments to the immigration bill.

First, he will propose the “No New Pathway to Citizenship” amendment. As described by Senator Paul, this addition to the larger immigration legislation

removes the new and exclusive visa category and pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. The amendment expands existing work visa categories instead of creating a new Registered Provisional Immigrant status. This updated work visa will not give any individual a new pathway to citizenship; rather they will be treated as if they are in line in their home country. No preference will be given to those on a work visa over individuals who are in line and outside the borders of the United States.

The second amendment Paul promises to offer – the “Secure the Vote” amendment – “ensures that individuals on work visas or given status under the bill are not allowed to vote in federal elections until they become citizens. The amendment will provide new procedures to encourage states to check that individuals gaining status or a work visa are not registered to vote.”

Finally, when the Gang of Eight’s bill begins debate later this week, Senator Paul plans to offer the “Secure the Treasury” Taxpayer Protection Amendment. This change to the immigration legislation provides “further protections for taxpayers against individuals in a new immigration status from becoming dependent on the welfare state. This amendment will prevent individuals in Registered Provisional Immigrant status from getting access to Obamacare and welfare.”

This last measure is a crucial part of demagnetizing the United States, reducing the attraction of innumerable illegals that cross the border with Mexico with the sole purpose of seeking to add their names to the lengthy dole roll, increasing the already crushing tax burden that is obliterating the prosperity of the American middle class.

In addition to the amendments to be offered by Senator Rand Paul, the New York Times reports that “senators from both parties are readying dozens more amendments” to the Gang of Eight’s immigration package.

Debate on the 1,076-page Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill (S. 744) will resume Wednesday morning at 9:30 EST.

^{Photo of Sen. Rand Paul: AP Images}

Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He can be reached at
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

On a “daily, ongoing basis,” the National Security Agency unconstitutionally collects the phone log data of millions of Americans. Additionally, through an operation known as PRISM, the federal government’s surveillance apparatus is reportedly directly tapping into the servers of some of the nation’s biggest computer companies: Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, and others.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) believes that the Supreme Court should be called upon to rule on the constitutionality of these surveillance programs.

During an appearance on Fox News Sunday on June 9, Paul said that he plans to file a class action lawsuit against the Obama administration, demanding it provide legal justification for the recently revealed wholesale watching of millions of citizens not suspected of any crime.

“I’m going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level,” Paul said, according to the show transcript.

“I’m going to be asking all the Internet providers and all of the phone companies, ask your customers to join me in a class action lawsuit. If we get 10 million Americans saying ‘We don’t want our phone records looked at,’ then somebody will wake up and say things will change in Washington.”

When asked by host Chris Wallace why he considered the NSA’s surveillance unconstitutional, Paul responded:

Well, you know, they’re looking at a billion phone calls a day is what I read in the press and that doesn’t sound to me like a modest invasion of privacy. It sounds like an extraordinary invasion of privacy. The Fourth Amendment says you can look at and ask for a warrant specific to a person, place and the items.

This is a general warrant. This is what we objected to and what our Founding Fathers partly fought the revolution over is they did not want generalized warrants where you could go from house to house with soldiers looking for things or now from computer to computer, to phone to phone, without specifying who you’re targeting.

Specifically, the Fourth Amendment states that the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

While unapologetically spying on millions of Americans, the federal government makes no attempt to demonstrate that any of those whose phone records have been seized are suspected of committing some crime. It is a plain and simple violation of the Fourth Amendment in the hope of discovering something that one day might be found to qualify as suspicious. That is putting the cart of culpability before the horse of the Constitution and the American people are right to insist that the president be held accountable.

As Senator Paul explained to Chris Wallace, “What I do in my private life is my private life. If you suspect me of a crime, have probable cause.”

How far are the citizens of this Republic willing to let the federal surveillance apparatus go toward constructing a Panopticon? At this accelerated rate of construction, how long until every call, every text, every e-mail, every online message, and every movement will fall under the all-seeing eye of federal overlords?

Senator Paul thinks now is the time to derail this “long train of abuses” and he believes that the American people have the will and the way to do so. Citing the successful defeat of a pair of recent legislative attempts to pierce the veil of Internet privacy, Paul thinks that those events prove that popular resistance can provide a pathway toward ending the NSA’s snooping, as well.

The bills referred to by Paul are the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Both acts were defeated in Congress, although many of their provisions were enacted as part of other bills or through executive orders.

Speaking of the popular uprising that led to the defeat of these measures, Paul told Wallace, “If we can have that again – people by the millions coming out and saying, ‘Look, I want to be part of a class action suit that says to the government, let’s hear this at the Supreme Court level. Are you allowed to look at phone records even though there’s no probable cause that I’m related to a crime?’ – I think we’ll put an end to this.”

In addition to the lawsuit proposed by Senator Paul, another organization has already filed a complaint in federal court challenging the surveillance program.

On Tuesday, June 11, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its New York branch filed a suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against James Clapper, General Keith Alexander, and other Obama administration security officials for the program which the group claims “vacuums up information about every phone call placed within, from, or to the United States.”

According to a press release announcing the suit, the ACLU believes that the rights of free speech and association protected by the First Amendment, as well as the “probable cause” requirement protected by the Fourth Amendment, are infringed by the NSA’s activity.

“This dragnet program is surely one of the largest surveillance efforts ever launched by a democratic government against its own citizens,” said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director. “It is the equivalent of requiring every American to file a daily report with the government of every location they visited, every person they talked to on the phone, the time of each call, and the length of every conversation. The program goes far beyond even the permissive limits set by the Patriot Act and represents a gross infringement of the freedom of association and the right to privacy.”

As a customer of Verizon, the ACLU asserts standing to bring the lawsuit in its own name.

The ACLU’s complaint alleges that the government’s wholesale seizure of and ability to search the organization’s phone records gives the government access to sensitive information about its work and thereby damages the ACLU’s ability to effectively communicate with clients, journalists, advocacy partners, and others.

“The crux of the government’s justification for the program is the chilling logic that it can collect everyone’s data now and ask questions later,” said Alex Abdo, a staff attorney for the ACLU’s National Security Project. “The Constitution does not permit the suspicionless surveillance of every person in the country.”

When asked by The New American when he plans to get the ball rolling on the class action suit challenging the NSA’s surveillance of the record of phone calls, Senator Paul’s office said that a press conference on the subject is scheduled for Thursday.

Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He can be reached at
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

Principlist presidential candidate Saeed Jalili addresses a group of his supporters in the northern city of Gorgan on June 11, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Donna Anderson
Infowars.com
June 12, 2013

In response to media concerns over reports that the NSA has been spying on communications between millions of law-abiding American citizens, President Obama said, “You can’t have 100-percent security and also have 100-percent privacy and zero inconvenience. We’re going to have to make some choices as a society.” But is the promise of security really worth sacrificing our freedoms?

During an appearance on the Alex Jones show, Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) said the NSA (National Security Agency) spying scandal was par for the course. “It follows with Obama’s intent to focus on the citizens as the criminal and the terrorists are not to be investigated. The Tea Party and average citizens have become the target. It’s alarming that we do live in an Orwellian world where good is bad and bad is good, and it’s now targeting American citizens over the terrorists.”

Stockman also said he didn’t understand why more Americans weren’t outraged. “What I don’t understand is, people outside of your listeners, you interview them or talk to them, it’s puzzling to me at what degree they’re willing to give up their individual freedoms for the perception of security, and we both know that when you give up your individual liberties you soon have neither.”

In a series of Tweets sent after the announcement of the NSA spy scandal, Stockman reminded followers, “The Democrats defending IRS abuses and illegal spying programs are the same ones who insist they would never abuse a gun registry data base.”

But he also gave folks on Twitter a chuckle: “No. Honest to God. I really did call, just ask Obama!”

Obama isn’t the first president to spy on American citizens. The Bush administration ordered the NSA to engage in warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizen’s phone calls and emails in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In 2008, legislation was passed that permitted the NSA to seek a generalized warrant from the court to allow surveillance on anyone the agency “reasonably” believed to be involved in terrorism, whether they were a U.S. citizen or not.

In 2009, the NSA admitted they’d reached well beyond the boundaries set forth in 2008 and engaged in “overcollection” of communications belonging to U.S. citizens without any connection to terrorism at all.

So Obama isn’t the first, he’s merely the president who plans to put the icing on the cake.

In 2010, under Obama, the F.B.I. proposed expanding the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, a law that requires phone and network carriers to build interception capabilities into their systems. Under the existing law, the F.B.I. must have a search warrant and currently, judges simply ask the service providers to comply with law enforcement. The provider can always use the excuse that he doesn’t have the capability to comply.

Just last month, buried under the news of the AP and IRS scandals, Obama moved closer to endorsing legislation that will make it even easier to put a tap on anyone he wants. Under the new law, judges will no longer request, they’ll order providers to comply, and if they don’t they’ll face fines starting at $25,000 per day.

The new plan will also require Internet giants like Facebook and Google to build backdoors into their systems that will enable government surveillance at-will.

By criminalizing those Americans who disagree with him and classifying anyone who speaks against his plans for takeover as an “extremist,” Obama and his administration have convinced Americans that he’s only looking out for their best interests and the safety of our country.

But Stockman reminds us that we need to look beyond the smoke and mirrors. “The NSA can keep tabs on anyone including federal judges, senators and average citizens. This is massive abuse. These are the same guys who want you to register your guns. They can’t keep this data private so how can they keep gun registrations private?”

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This article was posted: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 at 8:26 am

Tags: domestic news, domestic spying

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Afghan soldiers are seen at the site of a bomb attack in Afghanistan. (File photo)

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei addresses a crowd of people in Tehran on June 12, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Russian opposition groups have marched through Moscow’s city center in support of ‘political prisoners’. Demonstrators timed the rally to the start of Bolotnaya Square case suspects’ trials in early June and Russia Day celebrations.

Around 6,000 protesters marched to Bolotnaya Square, in support
of the activists facing charges in the case stemming from the May
6, 2012 protests, which ended in violence, according to Moscow
authorities.

Demonstrators carried placards and called the action a ‘March
against executioners’.

The rally began at 1pm local time (09:00 GMT) and included
individuals from People’s Freedom Party, RPR-PARNAS, Solidarity
movement, Left Front, Moscow’s Communist Youth Organization and
anarchists, Itar-Tass reported.

Nine people were detained for carrying flags and emblems of the
Left Front movement, whose activities were suspended by the
Prosecutor’s office until July 19 because the party has not
published its earnings reports since 2008.

The opposition said the choice of the date as June 12 for the
march is connected to the start of the trial for 12 suspects of
the Bolotnaya Square case early in June.

The 12 activists are facing criminal charges for “calling to
disorders and taking active part in them” during the protest.
According to Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, 82 police
officers were injured as a result of the violent clashes on May
6, and the total damage has been estimated at over 28 million
rubles (about US$900,000).

Meanwhile, the investigation into the case is ongoing, with 27
people involved in total, and 15 of them kept in pretrial
detention centers, according to RosUznik. The police have
recently searched the homes of several opposition
activists as part of an investigation.

So far, two of the Bolotnaya Square protesters have been
sentenced to jail terms. Leftist opposition activist Konstantin
Lebedev was convicted and sentenced to 2.5 years in a medium-security
prison for preparing mass disorder.

Maksim Luzyanin pleaded guilty to all charges of mass unrest
during his participation in a protest and received a 4.5-year prison sentence.

This article originally appeared on: RT

Journalists from Greece’s national broadcaster refuse to leave the office and continue to stream over the internet in defiance of Tuesday’s dramatic axing. Amid sharp criticism, the Greek government said it will create a new “modern broadcasting service.”

The decision to shut down the Hellenic Broadcasting Corp (ERT)
and fire its 2,500 staff caused uproar in the country and brought
criticism from abroad. Athens said the broadcaster had to be
scrapped as part of the major spending cuts, which is the
requirement for receiving bailout money from international
creditors.

The planned new broadcaster will be called NERIT, the government
announced on Wednesday. It will be a state-owned,
independently-managed public company funded through a special
fee. While no official date for the new broadcaster’s launch was
officially stated, sources indicated that it may happen sometime
in August. NERIT is to have 1,200 employees when it opens,
according to the German magazine Focus.

Athens cited lack of transparency, overstaffing and waste of
public money as its justification for their condemning ERT. 

“The Greek people are paying for ERT, which has three times,
even eight times, as much staff as it needs,” government
spokesman Simos Kedikoglou said. “It has ample assets,
which have remained unused.” He also criticized ERT
over “benefits for its workers and spending huge amounts
on external productions.”

The sudden closure of ERT on Tuesday, which was the first-ever
shut-down of a national broadcaster by its government in Europe
since World War II, caused uproar in the country and criticism
from foreign organizations.

In a gesture of solidarity two major Greek labor unions — GSEE
and ADEDY announced a 24-hour strike for Thursday.

“We want to show our solidarity to the state TV workers and
protest against these unacceptable public sector reforms that the
lenders have demanded,” the general secretary of public
sector union ADEDY, Ilias Iliopoulos told Reuters on Wednesday.

The journalists’ union ESIEA earlier announced a strike too to
support colleagues from the closed channel. ERT staff members
refused to leave the broadcaster’s building north of Athens and
have continued TV broadcasting over the internet,
long after the radio signal was shut down.

Meanwhile the European Commission, which is part of the “troika”
of investors overseeing Greek austerity measures, distanced
itself from the controversy. 

“The Commission has not sought the closure of ERT, but nor
does the Commission question the Greek government’s mandate to
manage the public sector,” European Economic and Monetary
Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told the European Parliament on
Wednesday.

“The decision of the Greek authorities should be seen in the
context of the major and necessary efforts that the authorities
are taking to modernize the Greek economy. Those include
improving its efficiency and effectiveness of the public
sector,” Rehn said in a statement to deputies.

Greece is undergoing its sixth year of economic recession,
suffering from high unemployment, shrinking public spending and
regular mass protest of the disgruntled citizens.

The International Monetary Fund, also part of the ‘troika’,
acknowledged in a report this month that it made ‘notable
failures’ in its handling of the Greek bailout. The international
body said it had underestimated how deeply austerity measures
imposed on Greece would hurt the country.

This article originally appeared on: RT

Journalists watch the live news broadcast in the Greek state television ERT 3 headquarters after the government’s announcement that it will shut down the broadcaster in Thessaloniki, on June 11, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

A man sleeps at Taksim’s Gezi Park in Istanbul, hours after Turkish riot police invaded the square early on June 12, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

In the name of ‘humanitarian intervention’, a ‘war on terror’, fighting for ‘democratic freedoms’ or whatever the script happens to be this week, British Foreign Secretary William Hague can be relied on to sell US-British militarism to a public fed up with constant wars and (increasingly less) ignorant of their underlying reasons (1).    

In Syria, Hague has worked to try to replace Assad with a regime that could be controlled by the US and Israel. He has also campaigned for the EU to lift its arms embargo from the anti-Assad militants. Hague is a staunch supporter of Israel. His attitude towards Israel has been well documented: his dislike of the Syrian regime is backed up by a tangible strategy of aggression and destabilization, while mere lip service is paid to the protecting Palestinians or their treatment and plight (2). This is the same William Hague who declared that the intention was not regime change in Libya, but to protect civilians. The US and its allies, including Britain, helped instigate and fuel the war in Libya (3), and NATO bombs and western supported regime change have subsequently left over 100,000 Libyans dead, thousands more injured and much civilian infrastructure destroyed.

During the Libyan conflict, 200 prominent African figures accused western nations of “subverting international law” in Libya. The UN had been misused to militarise policy, legalise military action and effect regime change, according to University of Johannesburg professor Chris Landsberg. He stated that it was unprecedented for the UN to have outsourced military action to NATO in this way and challenged the International Criminal Court to investigate NATO for “violating international law.” 

Rather than being held to account for the death and destruction in Libya, Hague has carried on where he left off with strong rhetoric directed towards Iran and a call for sanctions (4) and a concerted commitment to topple the Syrian government by force (5) (6) (7). For public consumption, this is all spuriously carried out under the banner of humanitarianism or in the name of global security.

As a client state of the US (mainstream British media often portray this as a ‘special relationship), Britain can be relied on to do Washington’s bidding. When Hague beats the drum over Libya, Afghanistan, Syria or Iran, the drum is provided courtesy of Washington and Tel Aviv. Foreign Secretary Hague beats it on cue.

It all begs the question, how much trust can we place in someone like Hague, especially when they try to reassure the British public that British intelligence services do not illegally snoop on the British population? 

Documents leaked by former US intelligence worker Edward Snowden suggest GCHQ, the British Government’s ‘listening post’ in Cheltenham, England (equivalent to the US National Security Agency), may have had access to the US spy programme PRISM since at least June 2010.

Hague has told the British parliament that British spies have not used US surveillance programmes to get around laws restricting their ability to eavesdrop on the public in Britain. He has said that there is no indiscriminate trawling for information through the contents of people’s communications and GCHQ operates within a strict legal framework.

Hague has stated: “It has been suggested that GCHQ uses our partnership with the United States to get around UK law, obtaining information that they cannot legally obtain in the United Kingdom… I wish to be absolutely clear that this accusation is baseless.”

Every time GCHQ wants to intercept an individual’s communications, Hague asserts that the agency must seek a warrant signed by him, the interior minister or another secretary of state. He asserts that every decision is based on extensive legal and policy advice and warrants are legally required to be necessary, proportionate and carefully targeted.

The UK‘s 2001 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) permits international agreements that allow “mutual assistance in connection with, or in the form of, interception of communication,” providing the foreign secretary has given his authority. It also allows for the interception of the content of both domestic communications and communications between the UK and elsewhere, provided a warrant has been signed, usually by a minister.

The 1994 Intelligence Services Act gives senior ministers the power to “disapply” UK law when granting written permission. This legislation ensures that no UK intelligence agency or officer is likely to be sued or prosecuted in Britain as a result of any mass surveillance operation.

In the US, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillence Act (FISA) gives US intelligence agencies wide-ranging powers to conduct surveillance of data that is held by or passes through the US: it provides for the gathering of information that may not only protect the US against hostile acts but which “is necessary to … the conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States.”

The US government can therefore basically do what it deems necessary to maintain its global hegemony. It has access to huge amounts of global data thanks to the numerous sophisticated ‘listening posts’ the US has on foreign soil. The NSA’s largest eavesdropping centre outside the US is based in North Yorkshire. It is a satellite receiving station that monitors foreign military traffic, but can also access Britain‘s telecommunications network. The US military refer to the ‘golf ball’ encased satellite systems there as helping to secure full spectrum dominance of land, sea, air, space and information. Writer Garbrielle Pickard believes its presence entails the US having full spectrum control over the UK (8).

Given that the US thus has access to so much data beyond its national borders, it is easy to see just why the issue of the British government circumventing British law to access information held by the US on British citizens is of vital concern to the public. Even more so given Hague argues that the growing and diffuse nature of threats from terrorists, criminals or espionage has only increased the importance of Britain’s intelligence relationship with the United States.

In a more general sense, the underlying message being put forward by officialdom is that ‘no one has anything to fear as long as you are not terrorists or some other threat to national interest.’ In an age of perceived terror threats and subsequent clampdowns on civil liberties as a result of the illegal wars and covert and overt interventions abroad that politicians Hague attempt to justify on fallacious grounds, just who does that rule out? The ‘terror threat’ and vague notions of the ‘national interest’ are highly convenient reasons for including anyone or everyone in the surveillance net.

What about Muslims, dissidents, civil-liberties types, ‘trouble-makers’, environmental campaigners, ‘occupy’ individuals, ‘lefties’, trade unionists, human rights activists or particular writers, bloggers and journalists? Surveillance and the infiltration of groups deemed ‘subversive’ (but working well within the law and an integral part of plural democracy) have been carried out by the intelligence services for many decades (9). In pointing out some of these types of activities, Annie Machon in The Guardian notes that real democracies don’t infiltrate legitimate protest groups. But, as she notes, in Britain they do (10).

A key element here is that of trust. Do we trust what politicians like Hague say or do? Do we trust our governments? Should we trust Google, Facebook and any other company that stores our personal details (11)?

NSA whitleblower Edward Snowden apparently thinks we should not. He wanted to expose the “omniscient state powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents.” Dennis Mitchell, a senior GCHQ officer, who retired in 1984 in protest at the Thatcher government’s ban on trade unions there, referred to “actions which I believe would be considered unacceptable by the general public were it aware of them”. He described GCHQ as a powerful, unaccountable arm of government. According to him, the only real watchdog at that time was the workforce, not the law.

Perhaps Snowden or Mitchell might agree to some extent with Michael Foucault’s premise that society now resembles a bright modern prison. Foucault warned that the bright visibility is a trap (12). Increasing visibility (on Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc) leads to power being located on an individualised level throughout a person’s entire life. Foucault suggested that a ‘carceral continuum’ runs through modern society, from the maximum security prison, through secure accommodation, probation, social workers, police and teachers, to our everyday working and domestic lives. In this digital age, now more than ever before.

“Under the guise of fighting the so-called ‘war on terror’, combating weapons proliferation and gathering economic intelligence, institutions such as GCHQ and the NSA are, in reality, operating a highly intrusive Big Brother Police State Surveillance Empire that is being used to specifically monitor the activities of genuine political opposition and dissent, as well as undermine the privacy, freedom and constitutional civil liberties of targeted peoples and nations throughout the world… Identification technologies such as video surveillance, biometrics and national ID cards will undoubtedly find their way into the sprawling informational GCHQ/NSA vortex, eventually rendering all personal, communal, commercial, economic, and political control to the State — a system of absolute tyranny that can only be labeled as ‘global slavery’.” Steve Jones (13).

Notes

1) http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1665.htm

2) http://www.presstv.ir/detail/306953.html

3) http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cia-is-behind-the-rebellion-the-euro-american-attack-on-libya-has-nothing-to-do-with-protecting-civilians/24225

4) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9608617/William-Hague-pushes-new-Iran-sanctions.html

5) http://www.globalresearch.ca/under-the-disguise-of-the-battle-against-terrorism-the-u-s-britain-and-france-support-al-qaeda-in-syria/5336683

6) http://www.globalresearch.ca/mi6-sas-cia-western-troops-in-syria/5302879

7) http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/11-06-2013/124802-syria_west_terrorists-0/

8) http://www.topsecretwriters.com/2011/06/how-does-nsa-get-away-with-running-top-secret-menwith-hill-in-the-uk/

9) http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/rrtalk.htm

10) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2011/oct/21/police-infiltrate-protest-groups

11) http://www.globalresearch.ca/google-facebook-discussed-secret-systems-for-u-s-to-spy-on-users/5338609

12) https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/abstractdb/AbstractDBDetails.aspx?id=46780

13) http://www.globalresearch.ca/gchq-government-communications-headquarters/1053

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

Foreign-sponsored insurgents are seen in the northern city of Aleppo on May 27, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

A man sleeps at Taksim’s Gezi Park in Istanbul, hours after Turkish riot police invaded the square early on June 12, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

In the name of ‘humanitarian intervention’, a ‘war on terror’, fighting for ‘democratic freedoms’ or whatever the script happens to be this week, British Foreign Secretary William Hague can be relied on to sell US-British militarism to a public fed up with constant wars and (increasingly less) ignorant of their underlying reasons (1).    

In Syria, Hague has worked to try to replace Assad with a regime that could be controlled by the US and Israel. He has also campaigned for the EU to lift its arms embargo from the anti-Assad militants. Hague is a staunch supporter of Israel. His attitude towards Israel has been well documented: his dislike of the Syrian regime is backed up by a tangible strategy of aggression and destabilization, while mere lip service is paid to the protecting Palestinians or their treatment and plight (2). This is the same William Hague who declared that the intention was not regime change in Libya, but to protect civilians. The US and its allies, including Britain, helped instigate and fuel the war in Libya (3), and NATO bombs and western supported regime change have subsequently left over 100,000 Libyans dead, thousands more injured and much civilian infrastructure destroyed.

During the Libyan conflict, 200 prominent African figures accused western nations of “subverting international law” in Libya. The UN had been misused to militarise policy, legalise military action and effect regime change, according to University of Johannesburg professor Chris Landsberg. He stated that it was unprecedented for the UN to have outsourced military action to NATO in this way and challenged the International Criminal Court to investigate NATO for “violating international law.” 

Rather than being held to account for the death and destruction in Libya, Hague has carried on where he left off with strong rhetoric directed towards Iran and a call for sanctions (4) and a concerted commitment to topple the Syrian government by force (5) (6) (7). For public consumption, this is all spuriously carried out under the banner of humanitarianism or in the name of global security.

As a client state of the US (mainstream British media often portray this as a ‘special relationship), Britain can be relied on to do Washington’s bidding. When Hague beats the drum over Libya, Afghanistan, Syria or Iran, the drum is provided courtesy of Washington and Tel Aviv. Foreign Secretary Hague beats it on cue.

It all begs the question, how much trust can we place in someone like Hague, especially when they try to reassure the British public that British intelligence services do not illegally snoop on the British population? 

Documents leaked by former US intelligence worker Edward Snowden suggest GCHQ, the British Government’s ‘listening post’ in Cheltenham, England (equivalent to the US National Security Agency), may have had access to the US spy programme PRISM since at least June 2010.

Hague has told the British parliament that British spies have not used US surveillance programmes to get around laws restricting their ability to eavesdrop on the public in Britain. He has said that there is no indiscriminate trawling for information through the contents of people’s communications and GCHQ operates within a strict legal framework.

Hague has stated: “It has been suggested that GCHQ uses our partnership with the United States to get around UK law, obtaining information that they cannot legally obtain in the United Kingdom… I wish to be absolutely clear that this accusation is baseless.”

Every time GCHQ wants to intercept an individual’s communications, Hague asserts that the agency must seek a warrant signed by him, the interior minister or another secretary of state. He asserts that every decision is based on extensive legal and policy advice and warrants are legally required to be necessary, proportionate and carefully targeted.

The UK‘s 2001 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) permits international agreements that allow “mutual assistance in connection with, or in the form of, interception of communication,” providing the foreign secretary has given his authority. It also allows for the interception of the content of both domestic communications and communications between the UK and elsewhere, provided a warrant has been signed, usually by a minister.

The 1994 Intelligence Services Act gives senior ministers the power to “disapply” UK law when granting written permission. This legislation ensures that no UK intelligence agency or officer is likely to be sued or prosecuted in Britain as a result of any mass surveillance operation.

In the US, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillence Act (FISA) gives US intelligence agencies wide-ranging powers to conduct surveillance of data that is held by or passes through the US: it provides for the gathering of information that may not only protect the US against hostile acts but which “is necessary to … the conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States.”

The US government can therefore basically do what it deems necessary to maintain its global hegemony. It has access to huge amounts of global data thanks to the numerous sophisticated ‘listening posts’ the US has on foreign soil. The NSA’s largest eavesdropping centre outside the US is based in North Yorkshire. It is a satellite receiving station that monitors foreign military traffic, but can also access Britain‘s telecommunications network. The US military refer to the ‘golf ball’ encased satellite systems there as helping to secure full spectrum dominance of land, sea, air, space and information. Writer Garbrielle Pickard believes its presence entails the US having full spectrum control over the UK (8).

Given that the US thus has access to so much data beyond its national borders, it is easy to see just why the issue of the British government circumventing British law to access information held by the US on British citizens is of vital concern to the public. Even more so given Hague argues that the growing and diffuse nature of threats from terrorists, criminals or espionage has only increased the importance of Britain’s intelligence relationship with the United States.

In a more general sense, the underlying message being put forward by officialdom is that ‘no one has anything to fear as long as you are not terrorists or some other threat to national interest.’ In an age of perceived terror threats and subsequent clampdowns on civil liberties as a result of the illegal wars and covert and overt interventions abroad that politicians Hague attempt to justify on fallacious grounds, just who does that rule out? The ‘terror threat’ and vague notions of the ‘national interest’ are highly convenient reasons for including anyone or everyone in the surveillance net.

What about Muslims, dissidents, civil-liberties types, ‘trouble-makers’, environmental campaigners, ‘occupy’ individuals, ‘lefties’, trade unionists, human rights activists or particular writers, bloggers and journalists? Surveillance and the infiltration of groups deemed ‘subversive’ (but working well within the law and an integral part of plural democracy) have been carried out by the intelligence services for many decades (9). In pointing out some of these types of activities, Annie Machon in The Guardian notes that real democracies don’t infiltrate legitimate protest groups. But, as she notes, in Britain they do (10).

A key element here is that of trust. Do we trust what politicians like Hague say or do? Do we trust our governments? Should we trust Google, Facebook and any other company that stores our personal details (11)?

NSA whitleblower Edward Snowden apparently thinks we should not. He wanted to expose the “omniscient state powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents.” Dennis Mitchell, a senior GCHQ officer, who retired in 1984 in protest at the Thatcher government’s ban on trade unions there, referred to “actions which I believe would be considered unacceptable by the general public were it aware of them”. He described GCHQ as a powerful, unaccountable arm of government. According to him, the only real watchdog at that time was the workforce, not the law.

Perhaps Snowden or Mitchell might agree to some extent with Michael Foucault’s premise that society now resembles a bright modern prison. Foucault warned that the bright visibility is a trap (12). Increasing visibility (on Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc) leads to power being located on an individualised level throughout a person’s entire life. Foucault suggested that a ‘carceral continuum’ runs through modern society, from the maximum security prison, through secure accommodation, probation, social workers, police and teachers, to our everyday working and domestic lives. In this digital age, now more than ever before.

“Under the guise of fighting the so-called ‘war on terror’, combating weapons proliferation and gathering economic intelligence, institutions such as GCHQ and the NSA are, in reality, operating a highly intrusive Big Brother Police State Surveillance Empire that is being used to specifically monitor the activities of genuine political opposition and dissent, as well as undermine the privacy, freedom and constitutional civil liberties of targeted peoples and nations throughout the world… Identification technologies such as video surveillance, biometrics and national ID cards will undoubtedly find their way into the sprawling informational GCHQ/NSA vortex, eventually rendering all personal, communal, commercial, economic, and political control to the State — a system of absolute tyranny that can only be labeled as ‘global slavery’.” Steve Jones (13).

Notes

1) http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1665.htm

2) http://www.presstv.ir/detail/306953.html

3) http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cia-is-behind-the-rebellion-the-euro-american-attack-on-libya-has-nothing-to-do-with-protecting-civilians/24225

4) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9608617/William-Hague-pushes-new-Iran-sanctions.html

5) http://www.globalresearch.ca/under-the-disguise-of-the-battle-against-terrorism-the-u-s-britain-and-france-support-al-qaeda-in-syria/5336683

6) http://www.globalresearch.ca/mi6-sas-cia-western-troops-in-syria/5302879

7) http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/11-06-2013/124802-syria_west_terrorists-0/

8) http://www.topsecretwriters.com/2011/06/how-does-nsa-get-away-with-running-top-secret-menwith-hill-in-the-uk/

9) http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/rrtalk.htm

10) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2011/oct/21/police-infiltrate-protest-groups

11) http://www.globalresearch.ca/google-facebook-discussed-secret-systems-for-u-s-to-spy-on-users/5338609

12) https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/abstractdb/AbstractDBDetails.aspx?id=46780

13) http://www.globalresearch.ca/gchq-government-communications-headquarters/1053

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

Foreign-sponsored insurgents are seen in the northern city of Aleppo on May 27, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Like the mercenaries for hire used by the U.S. in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and New Orleans–contractors like Blackwater that have come under scrutiny for their extreme lack of oversight–the U.S. government has been outsourcing intelligence services to private companies who have access to the general population’s most sensitive information.

Booz Allen’s cyber facility on September 25, 2012 in Annapolis Junction, Maryland. (Jeffrey MacMillan/The Washington Post via Getty) This revelation, which has arisen out of the recent Edward Snowden NSA leaks among the trove of alarming civil rights violations, has rights advocates very concerned.

According to the offices of James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, of the 4.9 million people with clearance to access “confidential and secret” government information, 1.1 million, or 21 per cent, work for outside contractors–these intelligence corporations.

Of the 1.4 million who have the higher “top secret” access, 483,000, or 34 percent, work for contractors–meaning that, as Edward Snowden recently revealed in his interview with the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, contractors sitting anywhere, in a home office for example, have vast access to the personal communications of ordinary citizens.

Snowden, who worked for intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp, states:

Any analyst at any time can target anyone, any selector anywhere. Where those communications will be picked up depends on the range of the sensor networks and the authorities that that analyst is empowered with. Not all analysts have the ability to target everything. But I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge, to even the president, if I had a personal email.

“It’s very difficult to know what contractors are doing and what they are billing for the work — or even whether they should be performing the work at all,” said Scott Amey, an expert in contractor oversight and government transparency at Project on Government Oversight, a non-partisan government accountability organization based in Washington. “It has muddied the waters.”

Speaking on Democracy Now! Glenn Greenwald explained on Monday, “the systems at NSA allow full and unfettered access at any time to any one of these analysts to go and listen to whatever it is they want, to read whatever emails they want, to monitor in real time whatever online chats are taking place.”

“And because there’s no oversight, because there’s really no accountability or transparency, there is no check on this abuse.”

He continues, “…when human beings are able to spy on other human beings in the dark, abuse, rampant abuse, is inevitable. That was supposed to be why we don’t have spying abilities without accountability any longer.”

“The largest concentration of cyber power on the planet is the intersection of the Baltimore Parkway and Maryland Route 32,” former NSA director Michael V. Hayden, who oversaw the NSA’s privatization efforts between 1999 to 2005, told Salon.

“He was referring not to the NSA itself but to the business park about a mile down the road from the giant black edifice that houses NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Md. There, all of NSA’s major contractors, from Booz to SAIC to Northrop Grumman, carry out their surveillance and intelligence work for the agency,” Salon reports.

And it was Hayden who coined the term “Digital Blackwater.”

“I use that for the concept of the private sector in cyber,” he told a recent conference in Washington.

“I saw this in government and saw it a lot over the last four years. The private sector has really moved forward in terms of providing security,” said Hayden, who now works for one of those very corporations, Chertoff Group.

The Associated Press has more:

Booz Allen, based in McLean, Va., provides consulting services, technology support and analysis to U.S. government agencies and departments. Last year, 98 percent of the company’s $5.9 billion in revenue came from U.S. government contracts. Three-fourths of its 25,000 employees hold government security clearances. Half the employees have top secret clearances.

The company has established deep ties with the government — the kinds of ties that contractors pursue and covet.

Contractors stand to gain an edge on competitors by hiring people with the most closely held knowledge of the thinking inside agencies they want to serve and the best access to officials inside. That typically means former government officials.

The relationship often runs both ways: Clapper himself is a former Booz Allen executive. The firm’s vice chairman, John “Mike” McConnell, held Clapper’s position under George W. Bush.

“That really illustrates the ingrown nature of the relationship of NSA and its contractors,” said Steven Aftergood, head of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. […]

Booz Allen earned $240 million in profit on its $5.9 billion in revenue last year. That’s up from $85 million in profit in 2011 and $25 million in 2010.

_______________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

The headquarters of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland.Last week saw revelations that the FBI and the National Security Agency have been collecting Americans’ phone records en masse and that the agencies have access to data from nine tech companies. 

But secrecy around the programs has meant even basic questions are still unanswered. Here’s what we still don’t know:

Has the NSA been collecting all Americans’ phone records, and for how long?

It’s not entirely clear.

The Guardian published a court order that directed a Verizon subsidiary to turn over phone metadata — the time and duration of calls, as well as phone numbers and location data — to the NSA “on an ongoing daily basis” for a three-month period. Citing unnamed sources, the Wall Street Journal reported the program also covers AT&T and Sprint and that it covers the majority of Americans. And Director of National Intelligence James Clapper himself acknowledged that the “collection” is “broad in scope.”

How long has the dragnet has existed? At least seven years, and maybe going back to 2001.  

Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and vice chair Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said last week that the NSA has been collecting the records going back to 2006. That’s the same year that USA Today revealed a similar-sounding mass collection of metadata, which the paper said had been taking place since 2001. The relationship between the program we got a glimpse of in the Verizon order and the one revealed by USA Today in 2006 is still not clear: USA Today described a program not authorized by warrants. The program detailed last week does have court approval.

What surveillance powers does the government believe it has under the Patriot Act?

That’s classified.

The Verizon court order relies on Section 215 of the Patriot Act. That provision allows the FBI to ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a secret order requiring companies, like Verizon, to produce records — “any tangible things” — as part of a “foreign intelligence” or terrorism investigation. As with any law, exactly what the wording means is a matter for courts to decide. But the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s interpretation of Section 215 is secret.

As Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman recently wrote, the details of that interpretation matter a lot: “Read narrowly, this language might require that information requested be shown to be important or necessary to the investigation. Read widely, it would include essentially anything even slightly relevant – which is to say, everything.”

In the case of the Verizon order — signed by a judge who sits on the secret court and requiring the company to hand over “all call detail records” — it appears that the court is allowing a broad interpretation of the Patriot Act. But we still don’t know the specifics.

Has the NSA’s massive collection of metadata thwarted any terrorist attacks?

It depends which senator you ask. And evidence that would help settle the matter is, yes, classified.

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., told CNN on Sunday, “It’s unclear to me that we’ve developed any intelligence through the metadata program that’s led to the disruption of plots that we could [not] have developed through other data and other intelligence.”

He said he could not elaborate on his case “without further declassification.”

Sen. Feinstein told ABC that the collection of phone records described in the Verizon order had been “used” in the case of would-be New York subway bomber Najibullah Zazi. Later in the interview, Feinstein said she couldn’t disclose more because the information is classified. (It’s worth noting that there’s also evidence that old-fashioned police work helped solve the Zazi case – and that other reports suggest the Prism program, not the phone records, helped solve the case.)

How much information, and from whom, is the government sweeping up through Prism?

It’s not clear.

Intelligence director Clapper said in his declassified description that the government can’t get information using Prism unless there is an “appropriate, and documented, foreign intelligence purpose for the acquisition (such as for the prevention of terrorism, hostile cyber activities, or nuclear proliferation) and the foreign target is reasonably believed to be outside the United States.”

One thing we don’t know is how the government determines who is a “foreign target.” The Washington Post reported that NSA analysts use “search terms” to try to achieve “51 percent confidence” in a target’s “foreignness.” How do they do that? Unclear.

We’ve also never seen a court order related to Prism — they are secret — so we don’t know how broad they are. The Post reported that the court orders can be sweeping, and apply for up to a year. Though Google has maintained it has not “received blanket orders of the kind being discussed in the media.”

So, how does Prism work?

In his statement Saturday, Clapper described Prism as a computer system that allows the government to collect “foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision.”

That much seems clear. But the exact role of the tech companies is still murky.

Relying on a leaked PowerPoint presentation, the Washington Post originally described Prism as an FBI and NSA program to tap “directly into the central servers” of nine tech companies including Google and Facebook. Some of the companies denied giving the government “direct access” to their servers. In a later story, published Saturday, the newspaper cited unnamed intelligence sources saying that the description from the PowerPoint was technically inaccurate.

The Post quotes a classified NSA report saying that Prism allows “collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,” not the company servers themselves. So what does any of that mean? We don’t know.

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This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams

In a “huge breakthrough” for women and girls across the country, the Obama administration will lift the age-restrictive ban on emergency contraception, allowing slightly-limited access to the birth control method known as the morning-after pill.

(Photo: Getty Images) Women’s groups who have been working against the age-restrictive ban are excited but hesitant to celebrate due to the FDA’s request that the maker of Plan B One-Step must submit a new request for over-the-counter approval. President of Planned Parenthood Cecile Richards did comment that “this is a huge breakthrough for access to birth control and a historic moment for women’s health and equity.”

Annie Tummino of the National Women’s Liberation noted “it’s about time that the administration stopped opposing women having access to safe and effective birth control.”

“It’s about time that the administration stopped opposing women having access to safe and effective birth control” –Annie Tummino, National Women’s LiberationAccording to CNN, in April U.S. District Judge Edward Korman of New York ruled that the government could not maintain their previously established ban requiring prescriptions. Last week a federal appeals court denied the administration’s challenge to Korman’s ruling. President Obama has yet to comment on why he has stopped trying to block the measure, but various news outlets speculate that the Justice Department is aware they would most likely have to appeal to the Supreme Court, substantially elevating the debate.

As MSNBC reports, the administration prohibited over-the-counter access to anyone age 16 and younger in late 2011. The rationale for this decision was unclear but critics suggest the ban was a reelection tactic.

National Organization for Women President Terry O’Neill applauded the announcement on Tuesday:

The National Organization for Women is encouraged by the Obama administration’s promise to federal district court Judge Edward R. Korman that it will withdraw its appeal of his ruling, in which the FDA was ordered to make all forms of emergency contraception available over the counter without age restrictions. With access to this safe and effective product, women of all ages will be able to take immediate action to prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex.

Study after study has demonstrated that emergency contraception is an effective and safe way of preventing unwanted pregnancies. After a decade of wrangling over access to this medication, it is time for common sense and science-based medicine to win the day. NOW calls on the Obama administration to comply with Judge Korman’s order without delay and without qualification.

Lucia Brown is a summer editorial intern at Common Dreams.

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Evan Vokes stands on the site of the Guadalajara Pipeline in Mexico, a project for a TransCanada subsidiary, in 2010. (Photo: Raul Rodriguez)A “culture of noncompliance” and “coercion” dictate building practices at TransCanada Corporation–the company behind the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline–carrying “significant public safety risks,” declared former employee Evan Vokes

Vokes who was testifying before a Canadian Senate committee last week warned, “It’s organized crime, in my opinion.”

Vokes, an expert in pipeline welding and now whistleblower against his former employer, told The Huffington Post after the hearing, “The source of revenue is legal, but how they go about it isn’t legal.”

Vokes, a five year employee of TransCanada, was fired without cause in 2012 after repeatedly raising concerns about the company’s safety practices. In particular, he provided the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources with a number of documented violations of welding and pressure testing codes.

“What I have documented is a mix of politics and commercial interests that has resulted in the false public claims of exceptional industry practice when the reality is that industry struggles to comply with code and regulation,” Vokes told the Senate committee.

Reporting on Voke’s testimony for Canada’s The Tyee, energy industry report Andrew Nikiforuk writes:

During the construction of a natural gas line feeding one oil sands project, Vokes alleged shoddy workmanship resulting in “a 100 per cent repair rate.” When the engineer identified the code violations to the company, his superiors forced him to “retract” his statement, Vokes told the committee.

“Coercion were the TransCanada management tools I experienced in my first months at TransCanada, as the written communications were very different from the oral instructions.”

In addition, engineering shortcuts associated with the first phase of the Keystone XL project “resulted in substandard material being used in Keystone pump stations,” he alleged.

Lynne Peeples of the Huffington Post added: 

Today, Vokes said, he sees the same “breaches of construction quality” in portions of TransCanada’s Keystone XL already laid in Texas. The advocacy group Public Citizen Texas posted a video highlighting what it says are dents, faulty welds and other anomalies that have been unearthed in recent weeks.

“What else are they cutting corners on? No one knows,” said Vokes 

“I’ve been on several projects that were very nearly disasters. I’m surprised there aren’t more accidents,” Vokes said, referring to the company’s claim that “99.9996% of oil going through U.S. pipelines is delivered safely.”

He added that most pipeline problems aren’t discovered until decades later, “long after designers and those that constructed them have retired.”

Following his testimony, Sen. Betty Unger said Vokes painted “a very, very bleak picture of the pipeline industry in Canada, and probably by extension, the States.”

The anti-Keystone XL protest group Bold Nebraska posted the below video of Vokes’ testimony:

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The UN’s Richard Falk demanded an international investigation into torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons in an address to the UN Human Rights Council Monday.

The Princeton professor and UN Special Rapporteur gave a chilling report on “massive scale” mistreatment of Palestinians, highlighting:

Abusive night time arrest procedures; arbitrary detention; torture and other forms of ill, inhumane and humiliating treatment; coerced confessions; solitary confinement; denial of family visits; denial of access to legal representation; unacceptable conditions in prisons; lack of access to adequate health care; and denial of access to education; unlawful transfer of Palestinians to prisons located within Israel. These issues have persisted without significant correction throughout 46 years of occupation.

Falk declared that this torture flows from an Israeli state that “continuously intrudes upon Palestinian rights” to enforce occupation and land annexation. He went on to condemn the Israeli-led blockade of Gaza, which he termed collective punishment of this densely populated area.

Days before Falk delivered the report, the US representative to the UNHRC called for his resignation, and Falk faced a deluge of similar attacks earlier this week. Falk denounced smear tactics as an attempt distract public attention to avoid accountability for provable human rights abuses and insisted he will not resign.

Israel walked away from the UNHRC last year after criticism of its human rights abuses.

Falk’s findings come at a time when Palestinians and their global supporters are mobilizing for the rights of the over 4,500 Palestinians currently in Israeli prisons, and the 700,000 Palestinians that have been incarcerated since 1967 according to UN estimates. Massive Palestinian hunger strikes have swept Israeli prisons since 2012, and April 17 saw a global day of action to support Palestinian prisoners, launched by Palestinian human rights organization Addameer.

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Any minute now journalist Glenn Greenwald could release the next installment of the historic NSA leaks that infamous whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg referred to as the most important in history.

Glenn Greenwald (AP Photo/Vincent Yu) There will be plenty more to come, journalist Glenn Greenwald insisted in an interview with the Associated Press on Tuesday referring to a trove of information yet to be revealed.

Greenwald, the journalist who first reported on the vast extent of a NSA surveillance program through documents leaked by the American defense contractor Edward Snowden, told AP, “We are going to have a lot more significant revelations that have not yet been heard over the next several weeks and months.”

“There are dozens of stories generated by the documents he provided, and we intend to pursue every last one of them,” Greenwald said.

Greenwald told AP the decision is currently being made on when to release the next story based on the information provided by Snowden.

In anticipation of what is to come, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should save his “melodrama and rhetoric,” Greenwald tweeted earlier–referring to Clapper’s anti-leak media campaign in recent days.

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In a landslide 141-4 vote, the Maine House of Representatives voted Tuesday to advance bill LD 718, which would require special labeling for seeds and foods made with genetically modified (GMO) ingredients.

(Image via Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association) The Bangor Daily News reports that during debate there was “little disagreement” about the importance of GMO labeling. 

“The consumers have a right to know,” said Rep. Craig Hickman, D-Winthrop. “The people want to know what’s in their food, and they want to be able to make a choice that’s right.”

As supporters of the bill celebrate, they are also braced for what they say is an inevitable battle between the wishes of the people and Ag Giant Monsanto, who has already threatened to sue states that pass similar labeling laws.

“You’re challenging a biotech industry that’s operated on the basis of throwing their weight around,” said Rep. Lance Harvell (R-Farmington), who sponsored the bill. “Somebody once said that Monsanto isn’t a seed company, it’s a law firm that makes seeds.”

Jim Gerritsen, president of the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA), believes the state is in “excellent position” to combat any legal challenges. What they are promoting is “factual, uncontroversial information which is valid for state interest.”

He added that Mainers will “not be bullied” by out-of-state biotech firms, saying, “It’s an outrageous abuse of the democratic process. For out-of-state trade groups to threaten a state acting in the best interest of its people, that is abuse.”

The measure now advances to the state Senate, however, should it become law, the regulations will not take effect until five other contiguous states (or one state with a population of over 20 million people) enact similar labeling laws.

The New England state is one of a coalition of thirty-seven states currently mobilizing for GMO labeling. Of these, twenty now have legislation slated for introduction this year. Last week, Connecticut became the first state to require GMO labeling.

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Following this past week’s groundbreaking NSA leaks, the ACLU has now filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the agency’s vast phone spying practices–a move that could pose an eventual Supreme Court challenge to the NSA’s now exposed “dragnet” surveillance network.

(ACLU) As a Verizon customer, the ACLU–who is known as an active critic and opponent of U.S. government secrecy and overreach–was targeted by the NSA, and has thus had their ability to “engage in legitimate communications with clients, journalists, advocacy partners, and others,” undermined, the ACLU argues. 

The ACLU says the unprecedented ‘metadata’ now known to be collected by the NSA, “gives the government a comprehensive record of our associations and public movements, revealing a wealth of detail about our familial, political, professional, religious and intimate associations,” adding that it “is likely to have a chilling effect on whistle-blowers and others who would otherwise contact” the ACLU.

ACLU’s Brett Kaufman writes Tuesday:

As an organization that advocates for and litigates to defend the civil liberties of society’s most vulnerable, the staff at the ACLU naturally use the phone–a lot–to talk about sensitive and confidential topics with clients, legislators, whistleblowers, and ACLU members. And since the ACLU is a VBNS customer, we were immediately confronted with the harmful impact that such broad surveillance would have on our legal and advocacy work. So we’re acting quickly to get into court to challenge the government’s abuse of [the Patriot Act’s] Section 215.

The lawsuit maintains that given recent revelations, the NSA has violated the First Amendment rights of free speech and association as well as the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment, and that the NSA has surpassed even the vast authority awarded to them by Congress through the Patriot Act.

“This dragnet program is surely one of the largest surveillance efforts ever launched by a democratic government against its own citizens,” said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director. “It is the equivalent of requiring every American to file a daily report with the government of every location they visited, every person they talked to on the phone, the time of each call, and the length of every conversation.”

“The program,” Jaffer adds, “goes far beyond even the permissive limits set by the Patriot Act and represents a gross infringement of the freedom of association and the right to privacy.”

The lawsuit comes a day after the ACLU and Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic filed a motion with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), requesting that it publish its secret court opinions on the “meaning, scope, and constitutionality of Patriot Act Section 215″–the section of the Patriot Act that authorized the NSA to collect cell data at will (via the FISA court) from phone companies such as Verizon.

“There needs to be a bright line on where intelligence gathering stops,” said NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman, in light of the revelations leaked by former NSA employee turned whistleblower Edward Snowden and published by the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald. “If we don’t say this is too far, when is too far?”

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The Obama Administration is quietly firing Commodity Futures Trading Commission head Gary Gensler, who ran afoul of big banks by pushing for greater government oversight.

Photo via Flickr/Diane Miller/Creative Commons License The ouster comes in the midst of controversy over a proposed CFTF rule, strongly supported by Gensler, that would extend U.S. regulation to swaps–a kind of derivative exhange–involving firms founded or doing business in the United States. This means that foreign banks and hedge funds would face the same regulations as U.S. ones when trading in swaps with U.S. parties.

Wall Street fiercely opposes this regulation on the grounds that it discourages trade. Yet, supporters insist the regulation is necessary to give a modicum of oversight to vast swaths of the derivatives market marred by the same lack of regulation that paved the way for the 2008 economic collapse.

Gensler was set to meet with European regulators June 20, and his dismissal could seriously jeopardize this proposal, the Huffington Post reports.

This is not the first time Gensler has clashed openly with bankers. The Huffington Post describes his tenure:

A former Goldman Sachs executive who was viewed skeptically by some liberal lawmakers when he was first nominated in 2009, Gensler has become perhaps Wall Street’s leading foe as he has sought to curb risk and expand transparency and competition in the previously opaque market for a type of derivatives known as swaps.

Gensler has transformed a once-unknown agency to one at the forefront of financial regulation as CFTC rules are shaking up a marketplace unaccustomed to government supervision. His rules threaten to decrease profits at the nation’s largest banks as formerly unregulated activities are forced to comply with provisions that help buyers compare prices and compel banks to stump up more cash to back their trades.

Gensler will be replaced by former senate staffer Amanda Renteria, who worked briefly for Goldman Sachs and has little financial oversight experience.

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TransCanada and the provincial government of Alberta are paying former advisors to the Obama administration — as well as former staff of the Hillary Clinton and John Kerry presidential campaigns — to help them lobby for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to transport tar sands fuel to the U.S.

The pipeline from Alberta — which is to be built by TransCanada — has been delayed for over four years pending approval from the U.S. State Department which has final say because it crosses the international border. President Barack Obama is expected to announce a decision this fall in consultation with John Kerry, who took over the State Department earlier this year from Hilary Clinton.

Potential conflicts of interest for these three top Democratic party officials have been uncovered by Friends of the Earth U.S. This came soon after Mother Jones magazine uncovered evidence that TransCanada has had strong contractual relationships with the firm that provided a positive environmental review of the pipeline for the State department.

“No one can deny that this kind of influence trading is not in the national interest when it could sway a decision that is bad for the planet and bad for the country,” Ross Hammond, a senior campaigner for Friends of the Earth told the Financial Times.

Tar sands are thick, sticky, oil-bearing clay-like deposits (the industry term is oil sands) that are laboriously extracted from locations like Alberta’s pristine boreal forests and then processed into crude oil for gasoline. Canada is already the U.S.’s largest petroleum importer, shipping roughly 2.2 million barrels a day — much of which is from tar sands. The Keystone XL pipeline will carry an additional 1.1 million barrels of crude oil 1,700 miles south to refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast, where it can be processed for export overseas.

Between two and four tons of tar sand and two to four barrels of water are needed to produce a single barrel of oil, which ultimately releases three times more carbon dioxide than typical oil production.

Activists like 350.org and the Sierra Club have campaigned heavily against the pipeline because of the global warming consequences as well as the potential pollution impact. “Tar sands is not traditional oil,” writes Van Jones, founder of Rebuild the Dream. “It is a pipe-eating, planet-cooking, water-fouling goo that nobody knows how to get out of our water.”

In order the resolve the matter, the State Department commissioned an environmental impact assessment. In March 2013, a 2,000 page draft was published that suggested that the impact of the pipeline was not as bad as environmental activists claimed. Environmental groups, as well as the administration’s own Environmental Protection Agency, strongly disagree.

Recently is has come to light that for the last two years the State Department has been lobbied by the individuals who had previously worked for Clinton, Kerry and Obama.

For example:

* TransCanada has paid at least $1.1 million to Paul Elliott, a former member of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign team in 2008. Eliott worked on setting up meetings between State department officials and TransCanada executives in 2011.

* A public relations agency run by Anita Dunn, Barack Obama’s former communications director at the White House, was hired by TransCanada to direct advertisements to support Keystone in 2011.

* Bryan Cave, another Washington lobbying firm, was paid just over a third of a million dollars by TransCanada. The firm’s team included Brandon Pollak, a former member of John Kerry’s presidential campaign team. Major lobbyists like McKenna, Long and Aldridge, who have deep connections to the Clintons were also paid almost $100,000

* Graham Shalgian of Rasky Baerlein and David Castagnetti of Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti — both of whom worked on John Kerry’s presidential campaign team -were paid by the government of Alberta to “educate” US government officials about the province and Keystone XL.

“We look for good, strong, experienced, capable and ethical people who can give us the advice we need so we have a chance to present the truth about our company, our operations or a new project,” Shawn Howard, a TransCanada spokesman, told the Financial Times. “Some of the principals might know John Kerry, but there’s no end of people who know him,” Cal Dallas, Alberta’s minister of international and intergovernmental relations, added.

But TransCanada has other conflicts of interest also — it has also employed staff at Environmental Resources Management (ERM), the international consulting firm that conducted the impact assessment for the State department that came out in March.

Activists were very critical of the draft. “The number of problems identified was so numerous that you’d think the oil industry itself had written State’s report for them,” wrote Steve Kretzmann of Oil Change International. “Well, unfortunately it appears that may not be all that far from the truth.”

Days later Mother Jones magazine obtained a copy of the original documentation for the assessment that showed some significant conflicts of interest. “ERM’s second-in-command on the Keystone report, Andrew Bielakowski, had worked on three previous pipeline projects for TransCanada over seven years as an outside consultant. He also consulted on projects for ExxonMobil, BP, and ConocoPhillips, three of the Big Five oil companies that could benefit from the Keystone XL project,” wrote Andy Kroll.

“Another ERM employee who contributed to State’s Keystone report-and whose prior work history was also redacted-previously worked for Shell Oil; a third worked as a consultant for Koch Gateway Pipeline Company, a subsidiary of Koch Industries. Shell and Koch have a significant financial interest in the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.” ERM is also a paid member of the American Petroleum Institute which has been vociferous in its support for the pipeline.

Activists have also noted that in the documentation shows that ERM replied in the negative to a question over whether it had any relationship with TransCanada when applying for the contract.

“Hiring an oil company contractor to review an oil pipeline that its clients have a financial interest in should be illegal — and it is,” wrote Gabe Elsner on a website called Checks and Balances. “Instead…a fossil fuel contractor, hid its ties from the State Department so they could green light the project on behalf of its oil company clients.

In the meantime groups are calling for Kerry to halt the review process and have the State Department conduct an Inspector General investigation to look at ERM’s ties to TransCanada and the State Department’s attempt to cover-up those ties.

Elsner submitted a complaint to the State Department inspector general which may be looking into the matter now although they have refused to confirm or deny that an investigation is taking place.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

For some years an international campaign has been gradually building — ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. The goal is a treaty banning nuclear weapons, a Convention such as the Landmine Convention and the Cluster Munitions Convention. It will follow the same process, and requires enough nations, supported by their citizens, to sign up to it, bring it into being and then to ratify it. Once ratified, the development, possession and use of nuclear weapons becomes illegal. The beauty of this approach is that it sidesteps the bogged-down Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in which states that have undertaken to get rid of their remaining nuclear weapons endlessly argue about ‘process’ with the aim of hanging on to their horrifically destructive toys.

Three in four states support negotiations for such a Treaty. So, overwhelmingly, does the public. In March this year Oslo hosted an intergovernmental conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons with ICAN acting as the civil society partner, engaging with delegates and helping to inform their thinking. While there, ICAN also held a Civil Society Forum. A total of 127 states took part. Such are the humanitarian dangers of nuclear weapons that it became clear that no nation has the resources to cope with the effects of even one of these weapons being used. By the end of the conference attending states wanted a follow-up conference which Mexico has agreed to host next year.

Unsurprisingly, the big 5 — US, UK, Russia, China and France — refused to take part, making some ill-judged statements about how the conference would upset NPT negotiations. There was, of course, a lot of behind-the-scenes pressure on governments not to take part.

Article 36 , following a Freedom of Information request, finally received copies of documents showing the process of the British Government’s thinking about this important conference. As expected, the Government doesn’t look good. This is the report from Article 36. 

Documents suggest UK boycott of key nuclear weapons meeting was driven by P5 partners

by Article 36

Internal documents on the UK Government’s decision making around whether or not to attend a major meeting on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons make it clear that the UK followed others into an ill-judged position.

 Earlier this year, the UK Government decided to boycott a conference in Oslo on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons (4-5 March 2013). Their boycott was undertaken together with the other four nuclear-armed states that sit as the permanent five (P5) members of the UN Security Council.

The Humanitarian Conference was a distinct success that saw 127 governments, along with international organisations, UN agencies and a focused and well organised NGO community under the umbrella of ICAN come together for a fact-based discussion on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapon use. The Chair’s summary highlighted the key points of agreement, and noted that follow up meetings would be held.

Internal documents on the UK’s decision making around attendance are revealing. They show no engagement with the actual subject matter of the meeting and express anxiety on behalf of officials that the UK might not be able to make itself look like a leader in that context. However, they do suggest that the UK was willing to attend and only decided not to after following the lead provided by the rest of the P5.  Having been led into that decision, the UK then adopted a line of strong rejection of the conference. This in turn will make it difficult for the UK to participate in any subsequent meetings of the humanitarian impact track without engaging in a major climb down.

Failure to engage with the content

The Humanitarian Conference was structured around scientific and technical discussions of the different types of impact a nuclear weapon detonation would have, and the challenges such effects would have for any kind of humanitarian response. Whilst UK ministers claim to “fully understand the consequences of any use of nuclear weapons”, by boycotting the conference they effectively chose not to share this understanding with the wider international community.

Unfortunately, whilst the UK’s National Security Risk Assessment includes a projection “of harm to people; the economy and infrastructure and territory as well as restrictions on our freedom to act in UK national interests and psychological impacts” from the use of nuclear weapons by both state and non-state groups, “the precise details of the assessment, and the evidence it draws upon, remain classified for national security reasons.” In reply to a question asking what assessment the government has made “of the effect on the distribution and availability of blood services in the event of a nuclear weapons being exploded in or near a UK city with a population of more than 500,000” the answer was complacent reassurance: “as with any type of major incident, the Department and the national health service have plans in place to be able to respond effectively to minimise harm to the UK population arising from accidental or malicious use of radiological material.”

 Yet tellingly, when asked in Parliament what assessment the UK had made of the conference’s conclusion that “it is unlikely that any state or international body could address the immediate humanitarian emergency caused by a nuclear weapon detonation in an adequate manner and provide sufficient assistance to this affected”, the government spokesperson avoided the question. Clearly the UK is unwilling to explicitly admit that it agrees with this statement — but is also unwilling to start claiming it could provide an adequate response.

 Worried about looking good

Overall, the UK’s responses to questions in parliament on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, and their internal discussions about participation in the conference, suggest virtually no consideration being given to the actual subject matter of the meeting.

It would be disingenuous to assert that the Humanitarian Conference was only about technical content. There were of course political discussions in Oslo about what might be done in response to the humanitarian challenges being assessed — yet these were generally conversations for the margins, or engaged with in open or general terms.

 Yet the UK’s internal and public explanations for its eventual decision not to attend are focused on concern that the UK would not be able to pass itself off as a leader in nuclear disarmament and anxieties about international political processes.

Internally, in planning communications between London and Oslo on 22 January 2013, a UK official wrote that “we feel that the focus and format of the conference will not lend itself to the UK setting out our narrative and key messages around our forward leaning approach to multilateral disarmament.”   So the concern here is really about whether or not the UK will look good in the meeting.

However, at this point the UK is still considering participation. Whilst any kind of substantive engagement with the content of the meeting seems to be off the table, officials are making arrangements with the embassy in Oslo to provide a level of attendance if required. Although the redactions in the document make it difficult to be clear, it is very significant that the UK was itself open to participation. The sections redacted in the emails of 14 and 15 January are explained as relating to ‘international relations’ — which may be linked to a persistent rumour that the French were particularly desperate for a collective P5 boycott of the meeting.

Yet a few weeks later, after a collective decision has been made by the P5 not to attend, the UK produces its more public facing explanations for that decision. These are not of course fear that the UK will not be able to make itself look good but rather a list of ways in which the meeting threatens the whole apparatus of international disarmament discussions. Most notably:

“The UK is concerned that the Oslo Conference will be an unhelpful diversion from the pursuit of progress on multilateral nuclear disarmament through [the] existing fora and that it represents a potential challenge to the current consensus-based step-by-step approach to multilateral nuclear disarmament. The UK is concerned too that some states and NGOs may seek to use the Conference as a vehicle to push for ambitious disarmament measures that the UK does not support, that cannot succeed, and that may risk undermining the consensus-based step-by-step approach.”

 This broad line then provided the basis for the explanation of the UK boycott given by UK government ministers to Parliament. However, in a statement to the Conference on Disarmament given whilst the Oslo meeting was taking place, the UK adopted an even more aggressive tone:

“We are concerned that the Oslo event will divert attention and discussion away from what has been proven to be the most effective means of reducing nuclear dangers — a practical, step-by-step approach that includes all those who hold nuclear weapons. Only in this way could we realistically achieve a world without nuclear weapons. … We are half way through the [Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT)]’s five-year cycle but some appear already to have abandoned the Action Plan, convening alternative processes which will divide the international community.”

 Asserting that the Humanitarian Conference was a “diversion” whilst the meeting was in progress and looking in detail at the horrific humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapon effects was a bad mistake of tone and appeared callous and disconnected.  Notwithstanding the logical challenge of claiming something to have been “proven to be the most effective” when a) it has not been effective and b) little else has been tried, this statement also positively accused the Humanitarian Conference of being contradictory to the NPT and representing an “alternative process” — both of which were wide of the mark for anyone actually participating.  It is noticeable that the UK’s concerns are all based on determination to keep debate on nuclear weapons within frameworks over which the UK and certain other nuclear armed states can effectively exert a veto — thereby ensuring against outcomes that would highlight too explicitly the obvious contradiction between their determination to keep and indeed modernise their nuclear weapons whilst claiming to be working for a world without them.

Failure of political strategy

By refusing to engage at all with the content of the Humanitarian Conference, by boycotting the meeting, and then by being so strident in expressing opposition to the meeting, the UK actually contributed to building up a sense of the Oslo conference as a significant political moment.  Whilst the P5 like to think that nothing significant can be done on nuclear weapons without their participation, there is growing consideration of how non-nuclear armed states can come together to change the rules regarding these weapons — the absence of the P5, en bloc, from the Humanitarian Conference served greatly to strengthen that dynamic.

Due to pressure to take a collective position with the P5 the UK seems to have shifted from grudging openness towards participation to aggressive dismissal. As a result the UK has chosen a course of action that will effectively alienate it from what is likely to be the most important stream of discussions in nuclear disarmament in recent times. Whilst the UK Government has expressed in parliament its willingness to consider attendance at the meeting in Mexico in early 2014 that will be the next step from Oslo, in reality this will be politically painful. Having spoken out so aggressively against the initial meeting, coming to Mexico would clearly represent a major climb down by the UK. Yet staying away will allow the partnership of empowered non-nuclear armed states to grow stronger, the goal of a treaty banning nuclear weapons to become still more distinct, and the emergence of a process towards that goal still more likely.

So there you have it. Basically put, nuclear weapons are good for P5 egos. And they are both angry and scared that the rest of the world might find a way of emptying their box of toys. Whatever nationality you are, spread the news about ICAN.  Sign the petition. The more people sign up, the more their governments will know they have civil society’s mandate to create a Convention Against Nuclear Weapons.

http://www.article36.org/cat2-nuclear-weapons/documents-suggest-uk-boycott-of-key-nuclear-weapons-meeting-was-driven-by-p5-partners/

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

[unable to retrieve full-text content]At least 120 gunmen have been killed in clashes near the Syrian city of Aleppo as the country’s army makes fresh advances in the strategic city.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Female protesters hold placards calling for the release of political prisoners in Saudi Arabiaâ„¢s city of Buraidah. (File photo)

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Pakistan has categorically dismissed a report by the British Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) alleging that Islamabad imported weapons from Israel, local media reported.

The report published by the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz claimed that Israel had sold arms to Pakistan and a number of Arab countries including Egypt, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco.

BIS publishes a list of export licences that it has approved for arms sales, including where it is intended that the arms, or weapons components, will be passed on to a third country as in this case.

The UK has on occasion stepped in to block arms sales to some regimes, but has also come under fire in recent years after allowing various devices to be exported where they could have been used by oppressive regimes.

The government came under fire two years ago when it was discovered that the UK had exported Ëœcrowd control measuresâ„¢ to Bahrain, just as the Saudi-backed Bahraini regimeâ„¢s troops were suppressing popular protests with similar devices.

However, the Pakistani Inter Services Public Relations department issued a statement in response to the report by Haaretz saying that it, Å“categorically denied a news report which appeared in a section of media stating that Pakistan purchased any defence equipment from Israel. The report is misleading and not based on facts”, it added.

The BIS licence claimed that British components used in radar systems and parts for fighter jets were sent to Israel and eventually passed on to Pakistan.

MOL/HE

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

“I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.” – Edward Snowden

Intelligence services have been feeding false information to known enemy informants in their own ranks for a long time, and they are very good at it.

Today, the potential whistleblower is one of the most dangerous informants an intelligence service can confront.

Was Edward Snowden spotted before he decided to leak documents, and set up by the NSA?

Substantial evidence supports the possibility that he was. Numerous questions cast doubt on the authenticity of the Power Point slide show describing PRISM, but the UK Guardian has not seen fit to release it to the public. Perhaps Glenn Greenwald should anonymously leak this file: In the words of Snowden himself, “The public needs to decide.”

Was Edward Snowden under surveillance at intelligence contractor Booz Allen in advance of releasing the PRISM document?

In the wake of the Wikileaks scandals, the U.S. intelligence community has answered “Who shall watch the watchmen?” by introducing active surveillance and detailed profiling of their own analysts and contractors, looking for potential whistleblowers.[1] By his own account, Snowden often discussed perceived Agency wrongdoing with his co-workers, which suggests that he should have been profiled and flagged as a potential leaker by the NSA’s internal surveillance process.

Interviewd by Glenn Greenwald, Snowden described his workplace behavior in the time leading up to his decision to leak documents:

“When you see everything, you see them on a more frequent basis and you recognize that some of these things are actually abuses, and when you talk about them in a place like this, were this is the normal state of business, people tend not to take them very seriously and move on from them. But over time that awareness of wrongdoing sort of builds up and you feel compelled to talk about it, and the more you talk about it, the more you’re ignored, the more you’re told it’s not a problem, until eventually you realize that these things need to be determined by the public, not by somebody who is simply hired by the government.”[2]

Questioning The Document

Classified DoD briefing files are created to meet formal style specifications and are subject to stringent internal reviews. After the publication of pages from the PRISM presentation, independent analysts were quick to notice and report substantial deficiencies in the document.[3] Others have expressed serious doubts about the PRISM slide show’s pedigree, including the NSA’s former top attorney:

“Stewart Baker, the NSA’s general counsel in the 1990s and now an attorney at Steptoe and Johnson, said he was not familiar with PRISM or similar government activity, but the leaked Powerpoint presentation sounds “flaky,” as do the initial reports.

“The Powerpoint is suffused with a kind of hype that makes it sound more like a marketing pitch than a briefing – we don’t know what its provenance is and we don’t know the full context,” Baker said. He added, referring to the Post’s coverage: “It looks rushed and it looks wrong.” — Declan McCullagh, Wired, June 7, 2013[4]

The logos of major U.S. IT and communication service providers are splashed across the top of PRISM power point slides like sponsor patches on a NASCAR driver’s jacket. Vendor logos often do appear next to product illustrations in DoD briefing documents, and are sometimes used to indicate a vendor’s position in process or procurement flow charts. But the “ad banner” format present in the leaked PRISM slides is very unusual and apparently unique to the PRISM document. All of the vendors named have vehemently denied knowledge of the PRISM program described in the slides.[5] Some of these denials, such as those by Twitter and Google, are from companies which have previously fought court battles against arbitrary disclosure of their users’ data to Federal agencies.[6]

A second PRISM?

Unclassified documents available on the Internet identify a completely different PRISM program, a powerful integrated network communications tool for Department of Homeland Security counter-terrorism crisis management. This PRISM integrates incident reporting, GPS tracking of emergency service and law enforcement vehicles, “outbound 911″ public alert networks, CBN and other technical sensor data, etc. A detailed, unclassified 2004 description of the “DHS PRISM” is available at Cryptome.[7] A 2007 report from the RAND Corporation defines PRISM as a “Planning Tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization, and Management”[8]. It seems unlikely that two network-centric programs as large and different as the DHS and NSA PRISMs, both operating inside the United States, would bear the same name. Only Monty Python calls everyone Bruce “to avoid confusion.”

Would the NSA lie to us?

The National Security Administration is one of the country’s most officially secretive agencies. In the Washington press corps, its popular nicknames have included “No Such Agency” and the “Never Say Anything” agency.

It is against long standing Agency policy to comment directly on any classified matter, and its Directors have consistently refused to confirm or deny any Agency activity when questioned by the press. But when the UK Guardian broke the story of the PRISM leak, the Director of National Intelligence promptly confirmed the document as authentic, calling the leak “reprehensible”:

“The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans.” — James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence[9]

This very unusual confirmation raises more questions about the PRISM document than it answers.

Is it possible that the PRISM leak was set up by the NSA as a deception operation in support of the Obama Administration’s ongoing wars against whistleblowers and the 4th Amendment? Documents from Federal intelligence contractor HBGary, published in 2011 by anonymous hackers, include a Power Point presentation proposing methods for attacking Wikileaks, and this document names Glenn Greenwald, who broke the PRISM story, as a specific target:

“The presentation, which has been seen by The Independent, recommends a multi-pronged assault on WikiLeaks including deliberately submitting false documents to the website to undermine its credibility, pioneering cyber attacks to expose who the leakers to WikiLeaks are and going after sympathetic journalists.

“One of those mentioned is Glenn Greenwald, a pro-WikiLeaks reporter in the US. Writing on Salon.com. Greenwald stated that his initial reaction was “to scoff at its absurdity.” — Jerome Taylor, The Independent[10]

The UK Guardian released the PRISM story on the opening day of PFC Bradley Manning’s court martial. The leaked PRISM document will certainly influence public debate on both whistleblower protections and State surveillance — and influence is one of our intelligence community’s regular daily chores. Some commentators have been very quick to present forceful talking points in favor of free and unrestrained State surveillance[11], and there is growing consensus that reports depicting PRISM as a mass domestic surveillance dragnet were a false alarm. The Washington Post, which broke the story at the same time as the UK Guardian, has walked back its position on the civil rights implications of the PRISM materials.[12] Meanwhile, it seems that everyone has forgotten about Romas/COIN.

Universal Surveillance: Romas/COIN, Odyssey and beyond

The same security breach at HBGary that revealed formal proposals to plant false leaks and target reporter Glenn Greenwald personally, also disclosed the existence of a real surveillance program with dramatically more dangerous civil liberty implications than PRISM: Romas/COIN, and its planned successor, Odyssey. Barrett Brown summarizes what is known about this program in an article on the Project PM website:

“A successful bid for the relevant contract was seen to require the combined capabilities of perhaps a dozen firms – capabilities whereby millions of conversations can be monitored and automatically analyzed, whereby a wide range of personal data can be obtained and stored in secret, and whereby some unknown degree of information can be released to a given population through a variety of means and without any hint that the actual source is U.S. military intelligence. All this is merely in addition to whichever additional capabilities are not evident from the limited description available, with the program as a whole presumably being operated in conjunction with other surveillance and propaganda assets controlled by the U.S. and its partners.”[13]

According to its internal e-mail from 2010 and 2011, HBGary was a prime contractor coordinating bids from Google, Apple, AT&T and others to build an expanded, upgraded version of the Romas/COIN information warfare system. Minor publicity attending the naming of these high profile vendors in the HBGary documents may have inspired the NASCAR-style sponsor logos decorating the dubious PRISM slides.

When HBGary’s e-mails were disclosed, the Odyssey bid was on hold with HBGary and its partners waiting for a revision in program requirements from the DoD. Two years have passed since HBGary was preparing to bid against Northrop Grumman for the prime contractor position on the Odyssey program. Odyssey should now be completed or nearing completion.

Is it possible that the PRISM leak was intended to mislead the American people into dramatically under-estimating the real domestic surveillance capabilities of our National Security Agency? You might well think so, but this reporter could not possibly comment.

Notes

1) Eric Schmitt, White House Orders New Computer Security Rules, New York Times, October 6, 2011
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/us/politics/white-house-orders-new-computer-security-rules.html

2) Glenn Greenwald interviews Edward Snowden, Guardian US, Sunday 9 June 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-interview-video

3) Are the NSA’s PRISM slides photoshopped?, Top Level Telecommunications, June 7, 2013
http://electrospaces.blogspot.nl/2013/06/are-nsas-prism-slides-photoshopped.html

4) Declan McCullagh, “No evidence of NSA’s ‘direct access’ to tech companies”, Wired, June 7, 2013 at
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57588337-38/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-to-tech-companies/

5) Joanna Stern, NSA PRISM: Dissecting the Tech Companies’ Adamant Denials of Involvement in Government Spying Program, ABC News, June 7, 2013
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/nsa-prism-dissecting-technology-companies-adamant-denial-involvement/story?id=19350095

6) Declan McCullagh, Justice Department tries to force Google to hand over user data, CNET News, May 31, 2013
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57587005-38/justice-department-tries-to-force-google-to-hand-over-user-data/

Declan McCullagh, DOJ sends order to Twitter for WikiLeaks-related account info, CNET News, January 7, 2011
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20027893-281.html

7) MAJ Gregg Powell and COL Charles Dunn III, Homeland Security: Requirements for Installation Security Decision Support Systems, Battle Command Battle Lab (Gordon), March 21, 2004
http://cryptome.org/2013/06/dhs-prism.pdf

8) Carl Rhodes, Jeff Hagen, Mark Westergren, A Strategies-to-Tasks Framework for Planning and Executing Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Operations, RAND Corporation, 2007
http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR434.html

9) James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, DNI Statement on Activities Authorized Under Section 702 of FISA, June 06, 2013
http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-press-releases-2013/869-dni-statement-on-activities-authorized-under-section-702-of-fisa

10) Jerome Taylor, The US bank and the secret plan to destroy WikiLeaks, The Independent February 13, 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-us-bank-and-the-secret-plan-to-destroy-wikileaks-2215059.html

11) Tim Worstall, NSA’s PRISM Sounds Like A Darn Good Idea To Me: This Is What Governments Are For, Forbes, June 7, 2011
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/07/nsas-prism-sounds-like-a-darn-good-idea-to-me-this-is-what-governments-are-for/

12) Peter Weber, Is the NSA PRISM leak much less than it seems?, Yahoo! News, Jun 10, 2013
http://news.yahoo.com/nsa-prism-leak-much-less-seems-141000562.html?.tsrc=rtlde/

13) Barrett Brown, Romas/COIN, Project PM, http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Romas/COIN,
See also Barrett Brown, A sinister cyber-surveillance scheme exposed, UK Guardian, June 22, 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/22/hacking-anonymous

Steve Kinney is an independent researcher and writer on computer and network security topics, with a long standing interest in the civil and human rights implications of Internet censorship and surveillance by State and corporate actors.

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

The UK has been going through its deepest recession since World War II, a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies claims. Workers experienced unprecedented pay cuts of 6 per cent over the last five years since the Global Financial Crisis began in 2008.

Between 2010 and 2011, 70 per cent of employees who stayed in the
same job fronted real wage cuts, while a third of those workers
faced nominal wage freezes or cuts (12 per cent experienced
freezes and 21 per cent experienced cuts).

The last time that such a high proportion of workers faced real
wage cuts was between 1976 and 1977, when inflation exceeded 15
per cent. The proportions of nominal wage freezes and cuts are
said to be the highest since the series of wage cuts began in the
mid-1970s, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies latest
report. 

The period since the recession began in 2008 has seen the longest
and deepest loss of output in a century. Real wages have fallen
by more than in any comparable five-year period; productivity
levels have dropped to an unprecedented degree, the British think
tank revealed.

Average real hourly wages amongst workers who stayed in the same
job have fallen faster in the private sector than in the public
sector over the last few years, such that the public-private
sector wage gap has increased substantially over this period.

Among the main reasons why workers have experienced nominal wage
freezes or cuts during this recession compared to previous ones
is because the labor market is more flexible than it was in the
1980s or 1990s. There has been a dramatic decline in trade union
membership over the last 30 years, from a peak of some 13 million
members (37 per cent of the working age population) in the early
1980s to around 7.5 million (19 per cent) in 2008. This decline
has been accompanied by a reduction in the proportion of
employees covered by collective bargaining, which appears to have
made it easier for employers to hold constant, or reduce,
insiders’ wages.

“The falls in nominal wages that workers have experienced
during this recession are unprecedented, and seem to provide at
least a partial explanation for why unemployment has risen less —
and productivity has fallen more — than might otherwise have been
expected. To the extent that it is better for individuals to stay
in work, albeit with lower wages, than to become unemployed, the
long-term consequences of this recession in terms of labor market
performance may be less severe than following the high
unemployment recessions of the 1980s and 1990s,” Program
Director at IFS and Managing Editor of Fiscal Studies Claire
Crawford explained.

Meanwhile, half a million people in the UK have been resorting to
food banks because of squeezes on benefits, wage cuts and the
continuing economic downturn, with numbers trebling over the past
year, a joint report by Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty
revealed last month.

With wages and productivity falling down, poorer households are
the hardest hit by the benefit cuts being implemented in the
years to 2015—16, according to the IFS experts. 

This article originally appeared on: RT

RINO’s line up to support big government

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
June 12, 2013

During an appearance on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown, former Congressman Ron Paul questioned why Republicans are coming to the defense of big government and the Obama administration by calling for NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden to be arrested.

Challenging the demonization of Snowden by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have accused the whistleblower of committing treason, Paul lambasted Republicans such as John Boehner for siding with Obama.

“The political foolishness of Republicans running to rescue Obama — the American people are sick and tired of all this snooping, prying and surveillance, so the Republicans run to the rescue of Obama and say ‘we passed those laws, they’re good laws, we want to preserve those laws’ — so it doesn’t even make political sense,” said Paul.

In the aftermath of the scandal, numerous Republicans have called for Snowden to be arrested rather than defending him as a patriot who gave up his life to warn that Constitutional rights are being eviscerated by the National Security Agency.

– New York Republican Peter King called for “extradition proceedings at the earliest date” and for Snowden to be prosecuted.

– The Republican head of the House intelligence committee, Mike Rogers, said Snowden had “released just enough information to literally be dangerous.”

– South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham described Snowden’s actions as, “not as one of patriotism but potentially a felony.”

– House Speaker John Boehner went further, labeling Snowden a “traitor” who should be dealt with as an enemy of the state.

Ron Paul acknowledged that what Snowden did was technically illegal, but warned that the far bigger threat came from big government. “It is probably illegal, there are laws against this, but what about people who are breaking the law, violating the Constitution….which one has the higher order — the Constitution, the written law, or the authority of the executive branch who controls the enforcement of laws?” asked Paul, adding that the bigger the government grew, the greater the threat.

Paul labeled Snowden a “hero” for taking a risk in telling the truth and said that people in authority should be questioned for breaking the law.

The former Congressman noted that Snowden was forced to go public because going to the FBI and other government agencies “doesn’t seem to pan out very well.”

Paul questioned why the NSA needed to vacuum up all telephone data in order to catch a minority of bad guys, remarking, “If they’re looking for ten people why do they have to look at 300 million people’s activities — it makes no sense whatsoever — it’s such a blatant violation of the language of the Constitution, the 4th amendment.”

Ron Paul echoed the sentiments of his son Rand in advocating that the Supreme Court be used to decide the constitutionality of NSA spying, but added that educating people about their liberties and the threat posed by big government was equally important.

“When you have big government, you have this kind of abuse….abuse comes from big government and the natural tendency of individuals who hold this power to abuse it….if we expect the government to be the nanny state it’ll be big, it’ll be abusive,” said Paul.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

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This article was posted: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 at 6:12 am

Tags: big brother, constitution, domestic spying

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Gordon Rupe
Infowars.com
June 12, 2013

Former NSA spy turned whistleblower Edward Snowden may soon ‘disappear’ following his mega leak regarding the NSA tracking operation known as PRISM, and new information reveals it may already be in the works.

Four Senior US intelligence officials were coming from a conference held by the NSA in Washington DC, when afterwards at the UAL (United Airlines Lounge) the four men were supposedly being “loud” and sounded as if they were “almost bragging” when discussing the now well-known whistleblower, Edward Snowden.

According to Foreign policy analyst and editor of The Atlantic Steve Clemons, he is in possession of several poor quality photos and a muffled recording of the four supposed officials discussing and joking about how people like that ‘disappear’. The four people in question are not identified as of yet, and Steve Clemons has an open invite for them to come forward to ‘clarify their remarks’.

We have yet to determine whether or not the voices reportedly recorded by Clemons line up to any officials, of course, as neither the audio nor the visuals have been released. Clemons also claims that there was a second as of yet unnamed person with him who shares not only his concerns about the conversation, but also his interpretation.

Steve Snowden, the whistleblower and former CIA contractor and NSA consultant gave The Guardian permission to reveal his identity last week, he has since fled to Hong Kong and is trying to avoid any international entanglements.

Mr. Snowden told Glenn Greenwald, the reporter for The Guardian who helped with breaking this story, “Whenever we had a debate in the office on how to handle crimes, they do not defend due process — they defend decisive action.” He went on to state that his $200,000 a year job was not worth the giving up of liberties, and that someone had to “Send a message to government that people will not be intimidated.” .

Mr. Snowden leaked proof of the NSA program PRISM (Planning Tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization, and Management) which was launched around late 2007 early 2008. According to James R. Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, its purpose is “to obtain foreign intelligence information, including information necessary to thwart terrorist and cyber attacks against the United States and its allies.”

PRISM gathered most of it’s information from the nine major U.S. Internet firms: Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and PalTalk.

The intelligence PRISM gathered includes, but is not exclusive to: email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice over IP conversations, file transfers, login notifications and social networking details. In a newer document published by The Guardian, it is estimated that the NSA has collected almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March 2013.

In a recent statement, intelligence head Clapper claimed that “Disclosing information about the specific methods the (US) government uses to collect communications can obviously give our enemies a ‘playbook’ of how to avoid detection.”

The story that started it all had to do with Verizon supplying the NSA with call data. A story that ultimately evolved to include Sprint and AT&T, who are also supplying the NSA with similar data that they have gathered on their customers and their call patterns.

Originally appeared at Story Leak.

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This article was posted: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 at 6:08 am

Tags: big brother, domestic spying, police state

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

One of the most common arguments for allowing more immigration is that there is a “need” for foreign workers to do “jobs that Americans won’t do,” especially in agriculture.

One of my most vivid memories of the late Armen Alchian, an internationally renowned economist at UCLA, involved a lunch at which one of the younger members of the economics department got up to go get some more coffee. Being a considerate sort, the young man asked, “Does anyone else need more coffee?”

“Need?” Alchian said loudly, in a cutting tone that clearly conveyed his dismay and disgust at hearing an economist using such a word.

A recent editorial on immigration in the Wall Street Journal brought back the memory of Alchian’s response, when I read the editorial’s statement about “the needs of an industry in which labor shortages can run as high as 20 percent” – namely agriculture.

Although “need” is a word often used in politics and in the media, from an economic standpoint there is no such thing as an objective and quantifiable “need.”

You might think that we all obviously need food to live. But however urgent it may be to have some food, nevertheless beyond some point food becomes not only unnecessary but even counterproductive and dangerous. Widespread obesity among Americans shows that many have already gone too far with food.

This is not just a matter of semantics, but of economics. In the real world, employers compete for workers, just as they compete for customers for their output. And workers go where there is more demand for them, as expressed by what employers offer to pay.

Farmers may wish for more farm workers, just as any of us may wish for anything we would like to have. But that is wholly different from thinking that some third party should define what we desire as a “need,” much less expect government policy to meet that “need.”

In a market economy, when farmers are seeking more farm workers, the most obvious way to get them is to raise the wage rate until they attract enough people away from alternative occupations – or from unemployment.

With the higher labor costs that this would entail, the number of workers that farmers “need” would undoubtedly be less than what it would have been if there were more workers available at lower wage rates, such as immigrants from Mexico.

It is no doubt more convenient and profitable to the farmers to import workers at lower pay than to pay American workers more. But bringing in more immigrants is not without costs to other Americans, including both financial costs in a welfare state and social costs, of which increased crime rates are just one.

Some advocates of increased immigration have raised the specter of higher food prices without foreign farm workers. But the price that farmers receive for their produce is usually a fraction of what the consumers pay at the supermarket. And what the farmers pay the farm workers is a fraction of what the farmer gets for the produce.

In other words, even if labor costs doubled, the rise in prices at the supermarket might be barely noticeable.

What are called “jobs that Americans will not do” are in fact jobs at which not enough Americans will work at the current wage rate that some employers are offering. This is not an uncommon situation. That is why labor “shortages” lead to higher wage rates. A “shortage” is no more quantifiable than a “need,” when you ignore prices, which are crucial in a market economy. To discuss “need” and “shortage” while ignoring prices – in this case, wages – is especially remarkable in a usually market-savvy publication like the Wall Street Journal.

Often shortages have been predicted in various occupations – and yet never materialized. Why? Because the pay in those occupations rose, causing more people to go into those occupations and causing employers to reduce how many people they “need” at the higher pay rates.

Virtually every kind of “work that Americans will not do” is in fact work that Americans have done for generations. In many cases, most of the people doing that work today are Americans. And there are certainly many unemployed Americans available today, without bringing in more foreign workers to meet farmers’ “needs.”

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM

This article originally appeared on: The New American

Regardless of how it is constituted, whether it is “democratic” or otherwise, no government poses a larger threat to liberty than a government that is at war.  

War is the mother of all crises and, as Rahm Emmanuel memorably – and rightly – said, crises are pregnant with opportunities for politicians and activists that they otherwise wouldn’t have. It is in moments of crisis, real or imagined, that government has its best opportunity to accumulate ever greater concentrations of power, for it is during crises that the people expect their government to assert itself in ways that wouldn’t ordinarily be tolerated.

Yet today’s self-avowed “conservatives” advocate on behalf of not just war, but war without end, for “Islamic terror” is an amorphous container into which any number of contents can be inserted.

Interminable war means, necessarily, the interminable growth of government.

And where the expansion of government is interminable, so too is the diminution of liberty.

Matters can’t be otherwise, which is why it is at once exasperating and laughable that the very same people who indefatigably defended the so-called “Patriot Act” now act shocked that it has been abused by the Obama administration. If they had an iota of wisdom, they would have recognized way back when that the Patriot Act itself is a standing abuse.

Instead, one of its authors, Republican Jim Sensenbrenner, maintains that he is “extremely disturbed by what appears to be an overbroad interpretation” of the law he crafted. In a letter to Eric Holder, Sensenbrenner asserts that while he is confident that the Patriot Act “appropriately balanced national security concerns and civil rights,” he nevertheless “always worried about potential abuses.” 

There are four things of which to take note here.

First, whether “what appears to be an overbroad interpretation” coincides with reality is left to be seen. The fact of the matter is that, overbroad or not, at issue is an interpretation of the Patriot Act. The latter lends itself to precisely this kind of interpretation – as its critics noted back at the time of its birth.

Second, Sensenbrenner actually admits, albeit inadvertently, that in drafting the Patriot Act, he felt the need to achieve a “balance” or compromise between “civil rights” – i.e. constitutional liberties – and “national security concerns” – i.e. greater government power. To put it more bluntly, he concedes that the Patriot Act required trading off some of the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution in exchange for granting the government an even greater scope than it already possessed. 

Third, although he says now that he “always” had concerns about “potential abuses,” Sensenbrenner was quite dismissive of critics who have expressed these same concerns.

In 2006, he said that not only did the Patriot Act have a “stellar record” of being abuse-free, but “congressional negotiators added more than 30 civil liberty safeguards not included in current law to ensure that [its] authorities would not be abused in the future.” Sensenbrenner was indignant as he concluded that this is “still not enough for some.”

As even he now recognizes, it was for good reason that his assurances were “not enough for some.”   

Finally, legislation is just that. It is no more potent than the ink and paper of which it consists. Real conservatives, and real statesmen, have always known that the true laws and “constitution” of a people are embodied in their habits and traditions. Legislation should distill this shared experience – and vindicate it.   

Furthermore, paper laws, like paper constitutions, are all too susceptible to the predations of the power-hungry.   

But Republican Sensenbrenner continues – along with several of his fellow partisans – to defend the Patriot Act and the entire NSA surveillance program. Take George W. Bush’s former speech writer and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen. “Signal intelligence,” Thiessen says, is the only feasible and effective way to “protect the country.” Upon reminding us that “the programs exposed in these leaks did not begin on Barack Obama’s watch,” Thiessen declares that the current president’s continuation of “Bush-era counterterrorism policy… is not an outrage – it is a victory.”

That Obama is building upon Bush’s already massive surveillance program may very well be a “victory.”

But it is a victory for the champions of Gargantuan Government – not the lovers of liberty.

This article originally appeared on: The New American

Michael T. Snyder
The Economic Collapse
June 12, 2013

The rest of the world has found out that the U.S. government has been listening to their phone calls and watching what they do on the Internet and they do not like it one bit. Outrage has been pouring in from all over the planet, and one member of the European Parliament is even comparing the NSA to the Stasi. But instead of stepping back and reevaluating our Big Brother spying methods now that they have been revealed, Barack Obama and other leading members of Congress are defiantly declaring that there is nothing wrong with these methods and that no changes will be made. The U.S. government is going to continue to invade the privacy of the citizens of the rest of the world as much as it possibly can, and our leaders don’t seem to really care what the international response is. And make no mistake — the goal of the U.S. intelligence community is to literally know everything about everyone.

The chief technology officer of the CIA, Gus Hunt, made the following shocking admission back in March: “We fundamentally try to collect everything and hang onto it forever.” He followed that statement up with this gem: “It is really very nearly within our grasp to be able to compute on all human-generated information.” In other words, they want it all, and they nearly have the capacity to gather it all already. So where does this end? Will the U.S. intelligence community ever be happy until they have every piece of data on every single person on the entire planet? Do we really want a government that collects “everything” and hangs on to it “forever”?

Thanks to Edward Snowden, the rest of the globe is starting to understand the extent to which the U.S. government has been spying on them. Needless to say, a lot of people are extremely upset about this.

In Germany (a country that knows a thing or two about Big Brother tactics), some prominent politicians are publicly denouncing the surveillance that the U.S. government has been doing on their citizens. In fact, one German politician has accused the U.S. of employing“American-style Stasi methods”…

In a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on Tuesday, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said reports that the United States could access and track virtually all forms of Internet communication were “deeply disconcerting” and potentially dangerous.

“The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is,” she said.

“The suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored. For that reason, openness and clarification by the U.S. administration itself is paramount at this point. All facts must be put on the table.”

Markus Ferber, a member of Merkel’s Bavarian sister party who sits in the European Parliament, went further, accusing Washington of using “American-style Stasi methods”.

In Italy, the government official in charge of data protection, Antonello Soro, said that the surveillance that the NSA is doing “would not be legal in Italy” and would be “contrary to the principles of our legislation and would represent a very serious violation”.

In Russia (another country with a long history of using Big Brother tactics), President Vladimir Putin has expressed significant concern about the NSA spying program and there are even rumors that Russia will be offering asylum to Edward Snowden…

Alexey Pushkov, head of the Duma’s international affairs committee and a vocal US critic, said on Twitter: “By promising asylum to Snowden, Moscow has taken upon itself the protection of those persecuted for political reasons. There will be hysterics in the US. They only recognise this right for themselves.”

He continued: “Listening to telephones and tracking the internet, the US special services broke the laws of their country. In this case, Snowden, like Assange, is a human rights activist.”

But even more important than what foreign politicians think about the NSA spying scandal is what average people all over the globe think. This scandal is causing millions of average people all over the planet to look at the United States with disgust and disdain. How can we hold ourselves out as the “defenders of freedom” to the rest of the globe when we are openly telling them that we are going to spy on them as much as we possibly can? How do we expect the rest of the world to look at us as “the good guys” when we are selfishly grabbing and recording all of their emails, phone calls and Internet searches without any concern for their privacy whatsoever?

What makes all of this even worse is that our top intelligence officials are making jokes about this scandal. For example, just check out the wisecracks that the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, was making at an awards ceremony on Friday…

With the current and past directors of national intelligence at the Omni Shoreham to honor former CIA and National Security Agency chief Michael Hayden, the result in speeches and interviews with intel professionals was a gumbo of outrage, worry and humor.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the black-tie crowd of more than 700 he would “address the elephant in the room” and proceeded, to applause, to denounce “the unauthorized leaks as reprehensible and egregious.” Clapper characterized the program as completely legal, debated and reauthorized by Congress under strict oversight and by court order “to make our nation safe and secure.”

He then cracked a few jokes. “Some of you expressed surprise that I showed up–so many emails to read!” Clapper said. Greeting fellow banqueter John Pistole, the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration who recently reversed a planned policy to permit air travelers to carry certain knives on planes, Clapper said, “John, can I borrow your pocket knife?”

How in the world can he make a joke about reading our emails at a time like this?

This is how arrogant the U.S. intelligence community has become. They feel like they can do whatever they want and get away with it.

For example, back in March Clapper flat out lied to the U.S. Congress about the surveillance that the NSA is doing. When he was asked by Senator Ron Wyden if the NSA was collecting any information on the American people, Clapper completely denied it.

The following is from a transcript of that exchange…

“Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Oregon Republican Sen. Ron Wyden asked Clapper at the March 12 hearing.

“No, sir,” Clapper responded.

“It does not?” Wyden pressed.

Clapper recanted and said: “Not wittingly. There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect – but not wittingly.”

Apparently Clapper must have “forgotten” that the government is forcing all of the big telephone companies to turn over all of their call records to the NSA every single month.

And you know what? The truth is that the government is not just collecting “metadata” about our phone calls. The content of our calls is being recorded and stored as well. Just check out this story from the Blaze…

Hollywood actor Shia LaBeouf in 2008 during an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno detailed how he learned phone calls were allegedly being recorded.

Promoting the film “Eagle Eye,” which according to IMDb shows how “technology of everyday life[is used] to track and control,” LaBeouf told Leno that an FBI consultant for the movie said one in five phone calls made are recorded and logged.

“And I laughed at him,” LaBeouf said.

“And then he played back a phone conversation I’d had two years prior to joining the picture,” LaBouf continued.

Both Leno and LaBeouf concluded it was “extremely creepy.”

The American people, along with the people of the entire planet, deserve the truth about this.

Unfortunately, Barack Obama is certainly not going to tell us the truth, and there will probably only be a half-hearted effort by some members of Congress to get to the bottom of things.

That is why it is going to be important to take this to court, and thankfully a couple of lawsuits are already in the works.

According to U.S. News & World Report, one of these lawsuits is being filed by a former Justice Department prosecutor…

Former Justice Department prosecutor Larry Klaymanamended an existing lawsuit against Verizon and a slew of Obama administration officials Monday to make it the first class-action lawsuit in response to the publication of a secret court order instructingVerizon to hand over all phone records of millions of American customers on an “ongoing, daily basis.”

Klayman told U.S. News he will file a second class-action lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia targeting government officials and each of the nine companies listed in a leaked National Security Agency slideshow as participants in the government’s PRISM program.

And according to USA Today, the ACLU has also filed a lawsuit…

National Security Agency surveillance programs came under more scrutiny Tuesday as the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit and a prominent senator and Internet giant Google called on the Obama administration to disclose more information.

In its lawsuit, the ACLU said an NSA program that harvests phone calls violates the rights of all Americans.

“The program goes far beyond even the permissive limits set by the Patriot Act and represents a gross infringement of the freedom of association and the right to privacy,” said Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU’s deputy legal director.

Hopefully these lawsuits will reveal more details about the spying that has been taking place.

There is also a “bipartisan coalition” of 86 Internet companies and civil liberties organizations that have sent a letter to Congress demanding action on these issues. You can read the full letter right here. Some of the organizations involved include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reddit, Mozilla, FreedomWorks, and the Center for Digital Democracy.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Will Congress listen to them?

Probably not.

But at least they are trying to do something about this.

The key will be to get the American people outraged enough about all of this that they won’t forget about it in a week or two. And that is not an easy thing to do.

There have been a couple of public opinion polls taken over the past few days that show some very curious results. A Rasmussen survey found that 59 percent of Americans are against the government secretly collecting our phone records and only 26 percent are in favor. But a Washington Post survey found that 56 percent of Americans consider the collecting of our phone records to be “acceptable” and only 41 percent consider the practice to be “unacceptable”.

How could those two surveys get such wildly different results?

A lot of it is in the way that they ask the questions.

In the end, our politicians don’t really care too much about what the general public thinks anyway. They are just going to continue to do what they have been doing and the rest of the world will continue to become even more disgusted with us.

We are recklessly destroying our global reputation and our leaders do not even seem to care. But someday America will need some friends, and when that day arrives we may find that we don’t have too many left.

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This article was posted: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 at 5:55 am

Tags: domestic news, domestic spying, government corruption, police state, technology

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Dan Roberts and Spencer Ackerman and Alan Travis
Guardian.co.uk
June 12, 2013

Anger was mounting in Congress on Tuesday night as politicians, briefed for the first time after revelations about the government’s surveillance dragnet, vowed to rein in a system that one said amounted to “spying on Americans”.

Intelligence chiefs and FBI officials had hoped that the closed-door briefing with a full meeting of the House of Representatives would help reassure members about the widespread collection of US phone records revealed by the Guardian.

But senior figures from both parties emerged from the meeting alarmed at the extent of a surveillance program that many claimed never to have heard of until whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked a series of top-secret documents.

The congressional fury came at the end of a day of fast-moving developments.

Full story here.

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This article was posted: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 at 5:54 am

Tags: domestic news, domestic spying, government corruption, police state, technology

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This article originally appeared on: Infowars

Germans are expressing outrage as details of a US internet spy program – revealed by a former CIA employee-turned-whistleblower — are prompting comparisons with that of former communist East Germany’s Ministry for State Security.

Unfortunately for Obama’s upcoming trip to Berlin, it was
revealed that Germany ranks as the most-spied-on EU country by the
US, a map of secret surveillance activities by the National
Security Agency (NSA) shows.

German ministers are expressing their outrage over America’s
sweeping intelligence-gathering leviathan, with one
parliamentarian comparing US spying methods to that of the
communist East Germany’s much-dreaded Ministry for State Security
(Stasi).

Washington is using “American-style Stasi methods,” said
Markus Ferber, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Bavarian
sister party and member of the European Parliament.

“I thought this era had ended when the DDR fell,” he said,
using the German acronym for the disposed German Democratic
Republic.

Clearly, enthusiasm for the American leader’s upcoming visit will
be much more tempered than it was in 2008 when 200,000 people
packed around the Victory Column in central Berlin to hear Obama
speak of a world that would be dramatically different from that
of his hawkish Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.

Merkel will question Obama about the NSA program when he visits
in Berlin on June 18, government spokesman Steffen Seibert told
reporters on Monday. Some political analysts fear the issue will
dampen a visit that was intended to commemorate US-German
relations on the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s famous
“Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.

One year into his second term, Barack Obama seems powerless to
roll back the military and security apparatus bolted down by the
Bush administration in the ‘War on Terror.’

One consequence of this failure of the Obama administration to
reign in Bush-era excesses emerged last week when former National
Security Agency employee Edward Snowden, 29, blew the whistle on
a top-secret intelligence system named Prism, which collects data
on individuals directly from the servers of the largest US
telecommunications companies.  

According to documents leaked to the Washington Post and Guardian
newspapers, PRISM gave US intelligence agencies access to emails, internet chats and photographs
from companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Verizon and Skype.

Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said leaked
reports that US intelligence services are able to track virtually
all forms of Internet communication demanded an explanation.

“The more a society monitors, controls and observes its
citizens, the less free it is,” she wrote in a guest
editorial for Spiegel Online on Tuesday. “The suspicion of
excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it
cannot be ignored. For that reason, openness and clarification by
the US administration itself is paramount at this point.”



All of the facts must be put on the table, the minister added.

Obama has defended the intelligence-gathering system as a
“modest encroachment” that Americans should be willing to
accept on behalf of security.

“You can’t have 100 per cent security and also then have 100
per cent privacy and zero inconvenience,” he said. “We’re
going to have to make some choices as a society. There are
trade-offs involved.”



The United States, however, is not legally restricted from
eavesdropping on the communications of foreigners, meaning in
theory that Washington could be listening to and collecting the
private communications of individuals anywhere in the world.

Peter Schaar, Germany’s federal data protection commissioner,
said the leaked intelligence was grounds for “massive
concern” in Europe.

“The problem is that we Europeans are not protected from what
appears to be a very comprehensive surveillance program,” he
told the Handelsblatt newspaper. “Neither European nor German
rules apply here, and American laws only protect Americans.”



Meanwhile, German opposition parties hope to gain from the
scandal, especially with parliamentary elections approaching in
September, and Merkel looking to win a third term.

“This looks to me like it could become one of the biggest data
privacy scandals ever,” Greens leader Renate Kuenast told
Reuters.

Obama is scheduled to hold talks and a news conference with
Merkel on Wednesday followed by a speech in front of the
Brandenburg Gate, the 18th triumphal arch that is one of
Germany’s most recognizable landmarks.

This article originally appeared on: RT

The FBI greatly expanded data sharing requests under the controversial Section 215 of the Patriot Act when tech firms tried to resist the bureau’s better-known National Security Letters. The requests may have blanketed millions of records.

Section 215 allows the FBI to require business records and any
‘tangible things’ for an authorized terrorism or clandestine
foreign intelligence investigation. A subject of hot debate since
the issuing of the act in the wake of the September 2001
terrorist attack, the provision was criticized for the possible
broad interpretation of its wording and the possible impact on
privacy.

The provision came into spotlight recently, after it was revealed
that the US government is involved in a massive domestic
surveillance program. The disclosure to FBI of millions of customer
metadata records by Verizon, which was reported last week, was
done under a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
(FISC) order issued in response to a Section 215 request.

Such requests are similar to another controversial practice by
the FBI, the so-called national security letters (NSLs), which
was greatly expanded after the Patriot Act. Both types of
requests go with a ‘gag order’, which bars the targeted business
from disclosing to the public the fact that it was ordered to
share client data with the government.

The FBI dramatically increased the use of Section 215 requests
between 2009 and 2010, reports NBC. In 2009, the Justice
Department told Congress that there had been 21 applications for
business record under the provision, all of which were granted.
In 2010, the number of requests jumped to 205. The latest report
showed that in 2012, there had been 212 Section 215 requests —
again all of them approved.

The tenfold increase drew little public attention because the
number of NSLs issued by the bureau was much higher — 15,229 in
2012. But as the example of Verizon showed, a Section 215 request
may be used to obtain a broad array of records involving millions
of people. The order was later revealed to be part of a broad practice of collecting communication
information stretching back at least seven years.

The expansion of Section 215 requests happened in response to
tech companies’ resistance to the use of NSLs by the bureau, FBI
Director Mueller wrote to the Congress back in 2009.

“Beginning in late 2009, certain electronic communications
service providers no longer honored NSLs to obtain” records
because of what their lawyers cited as “an ambiguity” in
the law. The FBI move to seek the same data under Section 215.
“This change accounts for a significant increase in the volume
of business records requests,” Mueller explained.

The NSLs themselves, which are issued by the FBI without any
court warrant, were ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge in
March. The practice was deemed illegal because of the gag order,
which the judge said violates freedom of speech.

The issue of surveillance in the US was further fuelled by the
revelation of a program called PRISM, under
which the FBI and the NSA obtain access to data stored on central
servers of major communication companies. The data includes
photos, videos, emails, documents, audio files, and connection
logs, according to reports. PRISM was exposed by Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and private
contractor for the NSA, who leaked classified documents on the
surveillance to the press.

Amid the unfolding scandal, some of the tech companies are
seeking more transparency over their
cooperation with the government agencies. The companies including
Microsoft, Facebook and Google want to mitigate the damage to
their public image by proving that the privacy of their clients
was not compromised as much as the media allege.

This article originally appeared on: RT

A new study conducted in George Washington University has revealed that short walking after each meal can reduce developing type 2 diabetes in old people.

Researchers say while blood sugar after eating can increase the risk of type-2 diabetes, post-meal walk even for 15 minutes helps regulate blood sugar levels, according to the study published in Diabetes Care.

Å“High blood sugar after meals is a key risk factor in the progression from impaired glucose tolerance – what the study called Ëœpre-diabetesâ„¢ to type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease,” said the Lead author Loretta DiPietro from George Washington University School of Public Health in the US.

The findings unraveled that three 15-minute stroll programs were as effective at lowering blood sugar over a 24-hour period as one 45-minute walk of the same “easy-to-moderate” pace.

A very small group including 10 men and women, mainly in their late 60s was carried out for the research.

The selected participants were healthy and non-smokers but moderately obese who were at the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes due to higher-than-normal levels of fasting blood sugar and to insufficient physical activity.

Å“The findings are good news for people in their 70s and 80s who may feel more capable of engaging in intermittent physical activity on a daily basis, especially if the short walks can be combined with running errands or walking the dog,” DiPietro stated.

FGP/FGP

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

South Carolina may give authorities direct access to anyone’s vehicle license plate as it considers switching to new electronic plates called e-tags. New technology allows the DMV to post messages across the license plates anywhere, anytime.

The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) will have complete access
to all e-tags to flag vehicles with expired insurance or
suspended license plates and write messages such as
“Suspended”, “Uninsured”, “Amber Alert”, or
“Stolen” across license plates.

Authorities say the switch would improve highway safety by
enabling the DMV to attract attention to cars violating road
rules. 

“We put that wording on the license plate across the top and,
depending on how the state wants it, it could be in bright red,
and we can actually flash the plate, have it flashing as it goes
down the road,” co-founder of Compliance Innovations, which
created the e-tags, Brian Bannister told WSPA 7.

This kind of technology is the first of its kind added the other
co-founder of the company David Findlay.

“It’s not an LCD or an LED. What it’s made of is electronic
paper. It’s a new technology that allows you to hold the image
with no power whatsoever for over 10 years. The only time it
needs power is when you’re changing the status or the image on
the plate.”

The plates will get their power from car vibrations and solar
power collected through a transparent film placed over the e-tag.

A majority of Americans (50.9 per cent) are against the
implementation of electronic license plates, according to a US
auto blog poll.

Compliance Innovations assures that the DMV will not be able
track vehicles’ locations and will need three different court
orders (to the DMV, cellular carrier and the company itself) to
locate a vehicle.

At this point the project is at an early stage. Compliance
Innovations still needs to reduce the size of the e-tag to make
it fit into the license plate slot, and to lower production
costs. Currently it costs over $100 to produce an e-tag, in
comparison to $3 and $7 price tag to make a metal license plate.

Bannister and Findlay are proposing a pilot project, where the
e-tags will be installed on all state-owned vehicles. Their
argument is that the state will save $150 million a year once
they have the ability to identify all cars that go unnoticed with
expired tags or insurance.

California considered a similar project, but with pop-up
advertisements in 2010, while Arizona conducted a 2008
cost-benefit study in 2008 comparing electronic license plates to
standard ones. It did not go ahead with the project.

This article originally appeared on: RT

Russians are about half as active in financial markets as Europeans. While some experts argue that’s about lack of trust in the Russian financial system, others say low average income leaves little room for investment.

More than 60% Russians prefer to stay away from the country’s
banks and credit organizations, says research by the Russian
Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public
Administration. Russians are about 1.5 — 2 times less active in
financial markets than people in Western Europe, as they don’t
trust the country’s financial system, the research explained.

However, in the ongoing economic crisis a great part of the
problem has not been “about the lack or inconsistency of
action by Russian banking, but about the low level of Russians’
knowledge about the existing guarantees of saving in banks,”
Nikolay Chitov, Housing Finance Bank Chairman, told Business RT.

“Fundamentally the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) has done
pretty well unlike most of the central banks across Europe, he
said. Increasing the level of financial literacy among Russians
through education or advertising could really help push people in
the country to deposit a bigger portion of their saving in
banks,” Chitov added.

However, financial activity by Russians remains lower than in
Europe. In 2000 — 2007 the ratio of household financial assets to
GDP in Europe varied between 375% in
Switzerland and 39% in Romania, according to Europe’s key
statistical bureau Eurostat. In Russia the portion of financial
assets — that include mainly deposits, cash and a handful of
shares — stood at the average of 19% during the period from 2000
to 2012.

Deposits now comprise up to 70% of Russian households savings
portfolio, with the remaining 30% being cash and a small portion
of shares. While the Academy research thinks that having 30% in
cash savings reflects a problem of disbelief in the Russian
financial system, Andrey Melnikov, deputy head at the Agency for
Deposit Insurance, says low incomes simply leaves not much scope
for a saving in some form other than cash.

“Given the average salary in Russia of 28,000 roubles, that
can satisfy just basic consumer needs, there’s really little
scope for opening a regular deposit in a bank. On top of that,
the interest on a tiny deposit won’t do much for an
individual,” Andrey Melnikov told Business RT.

Institutional limitations also put pressure on developing greater
financial activity of Russians, Melnikov added.

“Russia’s financial system is all about banking at the moment.
All other forms of financial institutions – that includes
insurance companies and pension funds – are at a development
stage,” the expert concluded.

Business RT: Kostomarova Anastasiya

This article originally appeared on: RT

The Obama administration has indicated no signs of scaling back its massive domestic surveillance operations despite the public exposure of the secret bid by a former employee of the NSA spy agency.

Citing a top US intelligence official that spoke on condition of anonymity, the Associated Press reported Tuesday that the American authorities have no plans to scrap the spying efforts despite a growing outrage by US citizens as well as people abroad, since the secret surveillance extends to Europe and the Middle East, among other regions.

The official, according to the AP report, has emphasized that the secret operations by the National Security Agency (NSA), the worldâ„¢s largest spy agency, are likely to Å“continue to receive widespread if cautious support within [the US] Congress.”

The Obama administrationâ„¢s defense of the programs is reportedly gaining support from some key Washington figures. Backing the secret operations, supporters of NSA spying tactics describe the collection of personal data of ordinary citizens as an essential measure in the Å“war against terror.”

This is while White House Press Secretary Jay Carney also defended the NSA spying bids on Monday and censured the leakage of their details to the press.

“Leaks about sensitive information that cause harm to our national security interests are a problem,” Carney stated on Monday.

Other administration officials have called for the prosecution of 29-year-old Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who has admitted sharing the NSA data with the press. Snowden is reportedly in Hong Kong and is expected to seek asylum in face of intense American efforts to get him extradited to the US.

Even though the NSA spying programs will continue for the time being, some US lawmakers are asking for the details to be disclosed to a degree that will shed some light on an operation otherwise cloaked in secrecy.

Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon reportedly plans to propose a draft bill on Tuesday that will compel the federal government to disclose the opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court that approves legal orders to track communications coming into or exiting the US.

Last week, Snowden leaked documents exposing the widespread surveillance of US communications under FISA, as well as a separate NSA program named PRISM that allows the government to access private conversations conducted over Facebook, Google, Skype and other services.

“I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things,” Snowden told The Guardian over the weekend. Å“I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.”

Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah), Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), Dean Heller (R-Nevada), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Al Franken (D-Minnesota), Jon Tester (D-Montana) and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) all plan to support Senator Merkleyâ„¢s proposal. That isnâ„¢t to say they disapprove of the program, though.

Å“I think there should be enough transparency that the American people understand what is happening…But I can assure you that this isnâ„¢t about spying on the American people,” Sen. Franken told the Star Tribune this week.

MFB/MFB

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

File photo shows Taliban militants in Afghanistan.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Iranian presidential candidate Saeed Jalili says he will practically deal with the problems of inflation, unemployment, and housing, if he wins the June 14 election.

Addressing a gathering of his supporters in the northern Iranian province of Golestan, the Principlist candidate referred to high prices, unemployment and housing as major problems of the country, saying all previous administrations in Iran faced the same problems, but failed to eliminate them.

Å“Then why was that [goal] not achieved? Because many of these issues must be tackled practically inside state institutions,” Jalili said.

Jalili, who is serving as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), said despite all the differences of opinion that the previous governments had, they do not have any differences over the need to confront these issues.

Å“[They all agree that] high prices should decrease, unemployment should drop,” the presidential candidate added.

Jalili is facing five rivals, namely, President of the Expediency Councilâ„¢s Center for Strategic Research Hassan Rohani, Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, Secretary of the Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaei, former Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Velayati and former Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Gharazi.

The president of Iran is elected for a four-year term in a national election. Nearly 50.5 million Iranians are eligible to vote in the upcoming presidential poll.

YH/NN/HMV

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Iranian presidential contender Mohsen Rezaei says he is ready to hold debates with the representatives of the countryâ„¢s outgoing administration over issues raised in the live debates between the candidates.

Rezaei said on Wednesday that the absence of a representative from the administration of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represented a Å“void” in the televised debates of presidential candidates.

The incumbent administration should be given the opportunity to defend itself because one-sided criticism does not bring about clarity, said Rezaei.

The secretary of the Expediency Council said he had also requested President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) Ezzatollah Zarghami to hold a fourth round of debate among candidates.

Presidential candidates held their third live television debate on Friday, a week before Iranians would go the polls on June 14th to pick the next president. Issues such as foreign policy, national security and resistance, developments in the Middle East and Iranâ„¢s nuclear energy program were discussed in the program.

The candidates had earlier discussed their economic and socio-cultural policies in two other debates.

The six candidates competing in Iranâ„¢s presidential election include President of the Expediency Councilâ„¢s Center for Strategic Research Hassan Rohani, Supreme National Security Council Secretary Saeed Jalili, Expediency Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei, Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, and former Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Gharazi.

Two presidential candidates, former First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Aref and former Majlis Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, withdrew their candidacies on Monday.

The president of Iran is elected for a four-year term in a national election. Nearly 50.5 million Iranians are eligible to vote in the upcoming presidential poll.

On June 14, Iranians will cast their ballots at over 66,000 polling stations across the country in the nationâ„¢s 11th presidential election. Iranian nationals abroad will also be able to vote at 285 polling stations overseas.

MYA/NN/HMV

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

London fin. hub earmarked for anti-austerity protests

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Hezbollah forces march in a rally (file photo).

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

You’ve heard that the government spies on all Americans.

But you might not know that the government shares some of that information with big corporations.

In addition, Reuters reported in 2011 that the NSA shares intelligence with Wall Street banks in the name of “battling hackers.”

The National Security Agency, a secretive arm of the U.S. military, has begun providing Wall Street banks with intelligence on foreign hackers, a sign of growing U.S. fears of financial sabotage.The assistance from the agency that conducts electronic spying overseas is part of an effort by American banks and other financial firms to get help from the U.S. military and private defense contractors to fend off cyber attacks, according to interviews with U.S. officials, security experts and defense industry executives.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has also warned banks of particular threats amid concerns that hackers could potentially exploit security vulnerabilities to wreak havoc across global markets and cause economic mayhem.

***

NSA Director Keith Alexander, who runs the U.S. military’s cyber operations, told Reuters the agency is currently talking to financial firms about sharing electronic information on malicious software, possibly by expanding a pilot program through which it offers similar data to the defense industry.

***

NSA, which has long been charged with protecting classified government networks from attack, is already working with Nasdaq to beef up its defenses after hackers infiltrated its computer systems last year and installed malicious software that allowed them to spy on the directors of publicly held companies.

***

The NSA’s work with Wall Street marks a milestone in the agency’s efforts to make its cyber intelligence available more broadly to the private sector.

***

Greater cooperation with industry became possible after a deal reached a year ago between the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, allowing NSA to provide cyber expertise to other government agencies and certain private companies.

In March, PC Magazine noted:

“Right now, the ability to share real-time information is complicated and there are legal barriers. We have to overcome that,” Gen Keith B. Alexander, director of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, said during a Thursday appearance at Georgia Tech’s Cyber Security Symposium.

[Alexander has been pushing for the anti-privacy Internet bill known as “CISPA” to be passed.] “It allows the government to start working with industry and … discuss with each of these sector about the best approach,” he said.

CISPA would allow the NSA to more openly share data with corporations in the name of protecting against “cyber threats.” But that phrase is too squisy. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes:

A “cybersecurity purpose” only means that a company has to think that a user is trying to harm its network. What does that mean, exactly? The definition is broad and vague. The definition allows purposes such as guarding against “improper” information modification, ensuring “timely” access to information or “preserving authorized restrictions on access…protecting…proprietary information” (i.e. DRM).

Moreover, as the ACLU notes, “Fusion Centers” — a hybrid of military, intelligence agency, police and private corporations set up in centers throughout the country, and run by the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security — allow big businesses like Boeing to get access to classified information which gives them an unfair advantage over smaller competitors:

Participation in fusion centers might give Boeing access to the trade secrets or security vulnerabilities of competing companies, or might give it an advantage in competing for government contracts. Expecting a Boeing analyst to distinguish between information that represents a security risk to Boeing and information that represents a business risk may be too much to ask.

A 2008 Department of Homeland Security Privacy Office review of fusion centers concluded that they presented risks to privacy because of ambiguous lines of authority, rules and oversight, the participation of the military and private sector, data mining, excessive secrecy, inaccurate or incomplete information and the dangers of mission creep.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found in 2012 that fusion centers spy on citizens, produce ‘shoddy’ work unrelated to terrorism or real threats:

Under the FBI’s Infraguard program, businesses sometimes receive intel even before elected officials.

Law enforcement agencies spy on protesters and then share the info — at taxpayer expense — with the giant Wall Street banks

And a security expert says that all Occupy Wall Street protesters had their cellphone information logged by the government.

Alternet notes:

Ironically, records indicate that corporate entities engaged in such public-private intelligence sharing partnerships were often the very same corporate entities criticized, and protested against, by the Occupy Wall Street movement as having undue influence in the functions of public government.

In essence, big banks and giant corporations are seen as being part of “critical infrastructure” and “key resources” … so the government protects them. That creates a dynamic where the government will do quite a bit to protect the big boys against any real or imagined threats … whether from activists or even smaller competitors. (Remember that the government has completely propped up the big banks, even though they went bankrupt due to stupid gambles.)

And given that some millions of private contractors have clearance to view information gathered by spy agencies, and that information gained by the NSA by spying on Americans is being shared with agencies in other countries, at least some of the confidential information is undoubtedly leaking into private hands even without the government’s knowledge or consent.

As the ACLU noted in 2004:

There is a long and unfortunate history of cooperation between government security agencies and powerful corporations to deprive individuals of their privacy and other civil liberties, and any program that institutionalizes close, secretive ties between such organizations raises serious questions about the scope of its activities, now and in the future.

Indeed, the government has been affirmatively helping the big banks, giant oil companies and other large corporations cover up fraud and to go after critics. For example, Business Week reported on May 23, 2006:

President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations.

Reuters noted in 2010:

U.S. securities regulators originally treated the New York Federal Reserve’s bid to keep secret many of the details of the American International Group bailout like a request to protect matters of national security, according to emails obtained by Reuters.

Wired reported the same year:

The DHS issued a directive to employees in July 2009 requiring a wide range of public records requests to pass through political appointees for vetting. These included any requests dealing with a “controversial or sensitive subject” or pertaining to meetings involving prominent business leaders and elected officials. Requests from lawmakers, journalists, and activist and watchdog groups were also placed under this scrutiny.

In an effort to protect Bank of America from the threatened Wikileaks expose of wrongdoing — the Department of Justice told Bank of America to a hire a specific hardball-playing law firm to assemble a team to take down WikiLeaks (and see this)

The government and big banks actually coordinated on the violent crackdown of the anti-big bank Occupy protest.

The government is also using anti-terrorism laws to keep people from learning what pollutants are in their own community, in order to protect the fracking, coal and other polluting industries. See this, this, this, this and this.

Investigating factory farming can get one labeled a terrorist.

Infringing the copyright of a big corporation may also get labeled as a terrorist … and a swat team may be deployed to your house. See this, this, this and this. As the executive director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School notes:

This administration … publishes a newsletter about its efforts with language that compares copyright infringement to terrorism.

In short, the “national security” apparatus has been hijacked to serve the needs of big business

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

Firemen work in the old town of Lauenburg, northern Germany, flooded by the river Elbe on June 11, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Local Afghan officials say at least 10 people have been killed in eastern Afghanistan’s Paktika Province in a US airstrike targeting Taliban militants Press TV reports.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

US Republican Senator John McCain (center) breifly slips into Syria to meet with leaders of foreign-sponsored militants.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/guilty_until_proven_innocent_20130612/

Posted on Jun 12, 2013

This article originally appeared on: TruthDig

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/guilty_until_proven_innocent_20130612/

Posted on Jun 12, 2013

This article originally appeared on: TruthDig

British media reports say that India is among the top five countries in the world monitored by the US National Security Agency (NSA), Press TV reports.

A report published by UKâ„¢s Guardian said in March, the NSA gathered some 6.3 billion pieces of computer network data in India.

According to the report, Egypt came in fourth with 7.6 billion pieces of its computer data being gathered by the US. Jordan was third with 12.7 billion, Pakistan second with 14 billion, and Iran first with 14 billion pieces of its intelligence being recorded by the NSA.

Meanwhile, the Indian government has itself introduced a Central Monitoring Service and intelligence agency capable of recording and monitoring internet data and telephone conversations.

Many analysts are concerned over the recent developments.

Å“It would really help to have laws that are horizontal protection. That is to say not just protection against unnecessary and unwarranted state intrusion, but also protections on rules as to how a large private company can ask you for data and ways in which it can use that data,” cyber security analyst Chinmayi Arun said.

The report comes as Washington is under fire over recent revelations showing that the NSA has ordered Verizon Phone Company to collect and submit phone records of tens of millions of its American customers.

The NSA also has access to internet servers and is capable of gathering electronic communication data from companies like Face book and Google.

SZH/PR

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Iranian filmmaker Panah Bar Khoda Rezaeiâ„¢s latest production A Cradle for Mother is set to represent Iranâ„¢s cinema at the 35th Moscow International Film Festival.

A Cradle for Mother is scheduled to be presented at the non-competitive section of this yearâ„¢s festival.

The movie is in the screening list of Out of Competition Programs, Russian Trace category. The film will experience its first international screening.

The movie screens the life of a seminary girl student who is headed to Moscow to promote religion but her mother’s illness placed her in a dilemma.

The world of God, Daughter, Father, Daughter, In Remembrance of Passed Times are Rezaeiâ„¢s better known works.

The 35th Moscow International Film Festival is programmed to take place from June 20 to 29, 2013.

FGP/FGP

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Iranian filmmaker Panah Bar Khoda Rezaeiâ„¢s latest production A Cradle for Mother is set to represent Iranâ„¢s cinema at the 35th Moscow International Film Festival.

A Cradle for Mother is scheduled to be presented at the non-competitive section of this yearâ„¢s festival.

The movie is in the screening list of Out of Competition Programs, Russian Trace category. The film will experience its first international screening.

The movie screens the life of a seminary girl student who is headed to Moscow to promote religion but her mother’s illness placed her in a dilemma.

The world of God, Daughter, Father, Daughter, In Remembrance of Passed Times are Rezaeiâ„¢s better known works.

The 35th Moscow International Film Festival is programmed to take place from June 20 to 29, 2013.

FGP/FGP

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Iranâ„¢s Foreign Ministry spokesman says the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is monitoring operations at Iranâ„¢s Arak nuclear reactor.

Å“The 40-megawatt Arak heavy-water reactor is not a confidential and secret issue, and is under the constant supervision of the IAEA,” Abbas Araqchi said in his weekly press conference on Tuesday.

The Iranian official also said that Tehran has provided the IAEA with necessary information on the nuclear reactor, which is located in the Iranian city of Arak.

He said the Arak nuclear reactor will gradually replace Tehranâ„¢s research reactor and will produce medical radioisotopes for about one million cancer patients.

Earlier on June 9, Iran installed the main container of the reactor, which uses natural uranium to produce radio medicines.

During a meeting on Iranâ„¢s nuclear energy program in Vienna on June 6, the IAEA accused Tehran of building Arak reactor with a design not previously approved by the Agency.

Iranâ„¢s IAEA Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh, however, rejected the accusation, arguing that the Arak reactor is visited by international inspectors every three months and that the facility produces radioactive isotopes for medical purposes.

Iran has repeatedly voiced its willingness to cooperate with the IAEA under a clear framework.

YH/NN/HMV

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/catastrophic_oil_spill_threat_to_canadian_river_basin_20130612/

Posted on Jun 12, 2013

This article originally appeared on: TruthDig

Russian President Vladimir Putin pictured during a televised interview with Russia Today on June 11, 2013.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Iran’s deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs says Tehran has received a verbal invitation to attend the upcoming international conference on Syria in Geneva, Press TV reports.

Ulan Bator: When you get out of the plane and enter the Chinngis Khan Airport just outside of Ulan Bator, you quickly realize that Mongolia is a former Soviet Republic. An incredibly drab and oddly out of date international airport, the walls of the customs area have peeling paint and general disorganization as you struggle to figure out where any line up for customs begins and ends. You can see the stone faced bureaucrats and soldiers in seemingly dated uniforms standing around while you’re getting ready to show off the required prearranged visa. After you stumble your way through that mess, you get to the conveyor belt that jams with luggage bags that are apparently much larger now on average than when it was first constructed. The feeling of being in a time warp lasts— right up until you step outside for the first time.

Immediately upon getting outside, in the dark and on a chilly night reminiscent of northern Canada despite the date being in the middle of May, I was confronted by a man from my home province of British Columbia, Canada. Skipping the usual opening conversation about the ongoing hockey playoffs I normally attempt with ex-pats carrying the same passport as I, he told me immediately that he was working for one of the large mining companies.

“Eight weeks on, two weeks off,” he explained. I thought I was talking to a tar sands employee from Newfoundland in a weird shock to my senses. “I don’t care much about being here, it’s all about the money.” This would essentially set the tone of how I would interact with Canadians and Australians who cover the city of UB, many but certainly not all working at the simply giant Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine. In the days since I returned from Mongolia, the mine has been given the go-ahead for full operations— on a mine site roughly the size of Manhattan.

What isn’t the size of Manhattan is Ulan Bator, the capital city and home to over half the population of the vast territory of Mongolia. It’s population is officially slightly more than 1.7 million, out of less than 3 million in the entire country. An average sized city, the capital shows the signs of shock brought on by the influx of the mining on the skyline alone. Construction of modern office towers, often next to block concrete cookie cutters from the Soviet era, ring the horizon in a truly imposing fashion. Cranes are everywhere. In all directions one can see the gold rush atmosphere, that— and I cannot believe I’m writing this— makes Fort McMurray, Canada, the home city of the tar sands rush, seem tame by comparison.

The numbers bear it out. With over 2 dozen major mining operations led by Canadian companies, Canada is the second largest trading partner of Mongolia, behind China and ahead of Russia, Australia, Japan and everyone else. This is definitely not because of the tourism sector, nor shared values from winter, hockey and democracy— it’s about the fact Canada hosts more mine headquarters than anyone in the world, and no country is accepting them in faster to operate than Mongolia.

What is dangerous to all mining operations in terms of impacts on the land and life apply more strongly to Mongolia than most locations. Mongolia has a severe problem with water; most traditional herders, despite being nomadic throughout the year, have relied historically on very small surface water levels and heavily off wells to very deep underground aquifers.

In all areas where there is some level of mining activity, which is to say the entire country, water levels have dropped, dramatically. The question becomes one of degree.

If one assumes that mining companies from foreign locations now call the shots in Mongolia, I’d say that was a very safe assumption. If one realizes that Oyu Tolgoi itself commences commercial production basically now, and that the total of GDP for the entire country coming from OT will become a little more than a third of the entire economy, then we can safely posit that Rio Tinto and Ivanhoe are to Mongolia as Saudi Aramco is to Saudi Arabia (If Saudi Aramco was not owned by Saudis). This is the size of OT in a country with over 25 Canadian mining companies, several oil companies and multiple dozen Chinese mining companies, a country where every powerline one sees outside of UB is heading for a mine— hovering over small towns (sums) but not connecting to them.

I did not head to Mongolia on an investigation of mining, however, though it happens to anyone by default by simply being in a city where English is rapidly becoming more common than Russian, despite 70 years in the Soviet orbit.

I headed to Mongolia in order to see what was up with the recently publicized oil shale industry. This is oil shale such as kerogen shale, the stuff that isn’t fracked, but would be mined or extracted in the ground (in-situ) in a manner much like the famous Canadian tar sands. Mongolia apparently has a lot of the kerogen-bearing rock, in the two main types, and in April, 2013 Genie Energy announced a deal they struck with the Petroleum Authority of Mongolia [PAM].

The flashers went off in my mind upon hearing that the proposed experimental, non-commercially operating technology developed in the United States and almost under way in an area some 12 kilometres from Jerusalem on pastoral vineyard lands that religious folks will tell you was where David slew Goliath. Why would Genie— upon whose board sit Rupert Murdoch, Howard Jonas, Dick Cheney, Michael Steinhardt, Lord Jacobs Rothschild and others— want to come to Mongolia? These open Zionists and militarists have made clear their goal is to make Israel an oil superpower— They even hired Israel “Relik” Shafir, a pilot who flew the sorties attacking the Osirak Nuclear Reactor in Iraq back in 1981— to be their CEO. He publicly likes to reference his time in the Israeli air force as having taught him the importance of energy self-sufficiency.

Well, not all Israelis and others have gone along with the plan, and the chief concern has been the destruction of water and land via an unproven process. With local groups and some environmental NGO’s together, legal challenges have not stopped the development of this oil shale deposit, but the costs— economic and political— have gone up, and the process has been slowed down.

In the meantime, head researcher for the project, Harold Vinegar, is retired from a career as a researcher for Shell in the United States. He has taken the job, despite retirement, with Genie in Israel (through Israel Energy Initiatives originally) after making Aliyah, and connects his decades of work mostly in Colorado on oil shale production that has never been allowed beyond experimental by the American Department of the Interior. He has stated (as have almost all the board members) he believes that doing so is the guarantor of Israeli national security.

The technology, if applied, has been promoted as safe to water tables. But you can be the judge; the essential component to this idea that is even more deadly to the climate than tar sands operations of any type, is the extension of long, heating coils that would be inserted into the deposit hundreds of meters into the ground. This would then use a local power source (and in Mongolia, that would be coal) to basically cook the ground at 650 degrees F. This would last many months, some estimates are of 15 of them. Then kerogen, which is not oil, starts to “bleed” out of the rock, like condensation on a cold glass of water on a hot day.

Then all of the other extremes of tar sands and other oil shale facilities are needed— the plant and upgraders, transport to a refinery that can handle the product (if no such place exists in Mongolia now or in the future, then the kerogen pre-crude product must be exported— so any talk of reducing imports is a farce). However, the Genie facility— with unproven technology, let us repeat— would operate only 60km’s or so from UB. With that being the case, one wonders if Genie has come to Mongolia as a round about way to demonstrate the viability of their Israeli project, which in turn could help their hand in opening up the largest single oil deposit in the world?

The Green River Formation is the most well known of the oil shale basins in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming. Conservative estimates are that if it were given the go-ahead for development then that would be a deposit with over 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Almost five times that of Canada’s tar sands. And at a higher environmental and climate cost as well.

When one considers who is leading the company it seems highly probable that Genie’s very existence is ideological, given the public positions of many on the board regarding oil, climate change, Zionism and militarism, never mind American revelationist Christianity tied to tales of Armageddon and Israel.

Mongolia is clearly under the domination of resource extraction on a level few countries have ever suffered through. Even with all the money flowing in, the bottom half of the country sees only the rise in prices with a rising currency, and have a harder time with the land and securing basic goods than ever.

So is Genie trying to use Mongolia as a laboratory for the worst form of the worst form of extreme oil extraction left on the planet? Would that be to hand off the shaleball to Genie in Israel, to destroy the climate while trying to make a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement irrelevant? If Israel commercially can produce their estimated over 200 billion barrels of oil shale, that would be economically the single greatest apartheid wall for the BDS movement to scale. And even then, God’s work is not done. At this point it is time to take this tech developed in Colorado in the first place, back home. Some of the driest parts of the American west, where water is already at threat from climate change that hasn’t been fed oil shale carbon on a large scale yet.

Macdonald Stainsby is an anti-tar sands and social justice activist, freelance writer and professional hitchhiker looking for a ride to the better world, currently based in Vancouver, Canada. He can be reached at mstainsby@resist.ca

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

A lot of people in the US media are asking why America’s most famous whistleblower, 29-year old Edward Snowden, hied himself off to the city state of Hong Kong, a wholly owned subsidiary of the People’s Republic of China, to seek at least temporary refuge.

Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the US, they say. And as for China, which controls the international affairs of its Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, while granting it local autonomy to govern its domestic affairs, its leaders “may not want to irritate the US” at a time when the Chinese economy is stumbling.

These people don’t have much understanding of either Hong Kong or of China.

As someone who has spent almost seven years in China and Hong Kong, let me offer my thoughts about why Snowden, obviously a very savvy guy despite his lack of a college education, went where he did.

First of all, forget about Hong Kong’s extradition treaty. When it comes to deciding whether someone will be extradited, particularly for a political crime, as opposed to a simple murder or bank heist, the decision will be made in Beijing, not in a Hong Kong courtroom. Second, Hong Kong has a long history of providing a haven to dissidents – even to dissidents wanted by the Chinese government. Consider, for example, the Chinese labor movement activist Han Dongfang, who was the subject of a massive dragnet after the Tiananmen protests, but who successfully fled to Hong Kong before the handover of the place from Britain to China, and is continuing to monitor Chinese labor strife and protest from his home on Hong Kong’s Lamma Island. Hong Kong also has a public that is very supportive of democratic values – certainly more so than the majority of American citizens. Hong Kong people may not be paying too much attention to Snowden’s situation right now, but if the US were to actively seek to extradite him, I am confident that the place would erupt in support for him, including the local media.

As for China, while the issue that has Snowden on the run – exposing an Orwellian spying program targeting the American people and run by the super-secret National Security Agency – is certainly not one that the Chinese government likes to discuss in terms of their own locked-down society, you can bet that the folks in the Propaganda Bureau in Beijing, and in the inner circle of the government, are rubbing their hands with glee both at the incredible embarrassment their harboring of Snowden causes the hypocritical US, and at the trove of intelligence information he has, which they may be able ultimately to lure him into disclosing if they treat him well.

Then too, there is the matter of the Confucian concept of gift-giving and mutual obligations. It was, I am sure, no accident that Snowden chose the weekend that President Obama was hosting a summit in California with China’s new president Xi Jinping to disclose his identity as the NSA whistleblower who exposed the national spying program to the Guardian and the Washington Post. In doing that, he gave President Xi an incredible gift – the chance to hold the upper hand in his negotiations with a hugely embarrassed and compromised Obama over issues like Chinese computer hacking of US corporate and government secrets, and theft of intellectual property. For of course it is clear that the NSA is at least as active in hacking Chinese computers and spying on Chinese communications.

Such a gift as that is not easily ignored or forgotten in Chinese culture. President Xi owes Snowden a lot, and I believe he will honor that debt by seeing that Snowden is protected from any threat that might be posed to him by a vindictive or frightened US government.

But Snowden isn’t relying solely on Chinese cultural values to protect himself.

He was also careful to send a powerful message of warning to the US officials in the videoed public interview he gave [1] outing himself. As he told interviewer Glenn Greenwald, “I had access to the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all over the world. The locations of every station, we have what their missions are and so forth. If I had just wanted to harm the US? You could shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon.”

That one line at the end had to make the folks in Langley and at NSA headquarters sit up straight or to head to the bar for a stiff one! And indeed he could. And I will guarantee you, Snowden being as smart as he is, that he has already taken that information and dispersed it to a number of trusted people, perhaps including Greenwald, with instructions that they should put it all out on the Web if anything happens to him, such as his being kidnapped or disappeared or terminated. It’s a wonderful insurance policy and one that would not have escaped him. Nor would he have bothered to discover that he had all that information available to him if he hadn’t thought that he might need it.

It would be a relatively easy matter for the high-tech spooks at the NSA to retrace Snowden’s electronic trail to see if he really did download all that super-secret information and really could blow up the entire US spy machine. If they find out that he really has that information, he’s basically untouchable.

The real question is not what they are going to do to Snowden. It’s what we Americans are going to do now that we know how truly insane and totalitarian our government has become.

Will we go back to watching our sports teams and our reality TV programming, and forget about the fact that we no longer have any privacy in our lives, that our elected leaders and our judges are operating on the assumption that if they get out of line the fascist machine at the NSA that works in service of the corporate elite will blackmail or destroy them with its access to all their communications. Or will we rise up and demand an end to this high-tech tyranny in the name of a fraudulent “War” on Terror?

Snowden exiled himself and gave up a great job in Hawaii in the hope that we would rise up when we learned that our democracy has been hijacked.

Let’s hope he’s right.

DAVE LINDORFF is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has called for strong voter turnout in the June 14 presidential election, saying a maximum turnout will disappoint the enemy and reduce pressures on the country.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Hezbollah forces march in a rally (file photo).

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Syrian Army has gained full control over Aleppo’s Tal Kafar Hamra suburb following fresh advances in the strategic city.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Many international representatives have invited the ancient epic adapted Iranian play Rain Bird directed by Pari Saberi to be staged at their countries.

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

June 11, 2013
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The following article first appeared on the Nation.com. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for their email newsletters here. 

To get a sense of just how foolish and shortsighted the $85 billion across-the-board sequester cuts are, you don’t have to look any further than Head Start. The federal government’s only pre-K program, Head Start provides comprehensive, high-quality early education and support services to children and their families living in poverty.

“The results speak for themselves,” said Joel Ryan, executive director of the Washington State Association of Head Start & ECEAP (WSA). “The research shows that kids who go through Head Start are more likely to be ready for kindergarten, less likely to need special education services and more likely to graduate from high school.”

All of that adds up to saving money over the long haul. But even before the sequester Head Start was reaching less than half of eligible children in the United States–and only 38 percent in Washington. Now, even fewer children will benefit from the program.

Estimates put the number of slots lost this year alone at 70,000. According to a recent survey by WSA, 68 percent of Washington State’s Head Start providers will be forced to drop children from their classrooms over the next few months as a direct result of sequestration.

“These cuts are happening now,” said Ryan. “A lot of directors have issued lay-off notices to teaching staff and kids are already getting dropped from programs. That’s going to get worse come September. Most of the impact right now is that they are closing programs earlier in the day, or closing earlier in the school year altogether, so families are needing to scramble to find some other place for child care.”

One place that has sliced a half-hour from its four-hour Head Start program is Snohomish County, where Robert Wheeler’s 4-year-old daughter started attending class last October.

“When she started she could only identify the letters ‘i’ and ‘s’ but she couldn’t spell the word ‘is,’” said Wheeler. “Just over seven months later, she’s reading at the kindergarten-first grade cusp–reading books and sight words to me. Her whole vocabulary has changed.”

Wheeler emphasized that it’s not just about the classroom and “learning your ABCs.”

“It’s about understanding the whole emotional, mental and cognitive support needed–and helping families understand it too–because the parents are with the kids more than the teachers are,” he said.

Wheeler said that while he has family members he can lean on to provide childcare, he’s seeing how the shortened Head Start day is affecting the wellbeing of other parents and children.

“There are parents that work part-time who have had to cut their hours back,” he said. “And some full-time workers who were eligible for child care programs before and after school, and they’ve had to cut back to part-time. Some have even lost jobs and it’s just a downward spiral.”

Ryan also noted that you can’t isolate Head Start cuts from cuts in other programs–it all adds up to making life far more difficult for low-income families.

“It’s WIC programs, or fuel programs, or they are trying to go to school and their work-study is cut–the families we serve are being affected in a host of ways,” said Ryan.

But the biggest hit for Wheeler and his daughter might come in September when their Head Start program is closed for good. He said it’s a real loss for the entire community–the facility was built exclusively for Head Start in the 1970s.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

The Syrian government forces have made fresh advances in fighting with foreign-backed Takfiri insurgents in the flash point city of Aleppo, press TV reports.

The army campaign against foreign backed militants in the strategic city of Aleppo is considered one of the largest operations carried out by the Syrian government. The operation is conducted in the southern and northern countryside of the city with two different objectives.

While the operation in southern parts of the city aims at securing the Syrian Armyâ„¢s supply routes to Aleppo and northern Syria, the campaign in northern parts zeros in on cutting off insurgentsâ„¢ supply lines.

Å“We are working in these operations to clear the northern part of Aleppoâ„¢s countryside in follow up to our operations in southern Aleppo. The foreign-back groups are fleeing from one place to another, leaving their weapons behind in addition to their dead bodies. We are working on more than one act at the same time, but we are facing difficulties related to landmines that terrorists have planted everywhere,” an unnamed Syrian army official told press TV.

According to the analysts, the fighting is the beginning of an end to the war between government forces and foreign-backed Takfiri insurgents. They believe if the Syrian army manages to clear the countryside of Aleppo, the whole situation in Syria will change drastically.

The Syria crisis began in March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of government forces, have been killed.

Damascus says the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.

The Syrian government says the West and its regional allies, such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, are supporting the militants.

In addition, several international human rights organizations say the militants operating in Syria have committed war crimes.

IA/PR

This article originally appeared on: Press TV

Every year at this time, thousands of walkers and runners in the Chicago area assemble for the Ricky Byrdsong Memorial Race Against Hate, honoring the legacy of the former Northwestern University Men’s Basketball Coach, murdered in 1999.

Byrdsong was shot and killed while walking with two of his three children at his Chicago area residence by white supremacist Benjamin Nathaniel Smith. Like this week’s Santa Monica killer, Smith carjacked a vehicle to launch a multi-location shooting rampage that terrorized surrounding communities. Smith was a member of the World Church of the Creator, a hate group whose leader, Matthew Hale, is serving a 40-year prison term for soliciting an undercover FBI informant to kill Chicago federal judge Joan Lefkow.

Also shot and killed in the spree, which occurred two months after the Columbine massacre, was Won-Joon Yoon, a 26-year-old Korean doctoral student in computer science at Indiana University who was on his way to church. Smith targeted African-American, Jewish and Asian people in his spree and also wounded nine Orthodox Jews and an African-American minister. After his three-day, two-state shooting rampage, Smith killed himself as police approached.

According to Illinois police, the state issued Smith a gun owner’s ID card two weeks before the shootings because a background check did not reveal an order of protection filed by an ex-girlfriend. Let’s enforce existing laws! The problem was confusion over middle initial problems, said officials. Smith also disseminated hate literature at Indiana University where he studied criminal justice . And officials say he was known for peeping into women’s windows and drug use.

Smith’s order of protection did appear when a gun dealer ran a background check on him, so he instead obtained his weapons from Donald R. Fiessinger, of Pekin, Illinois. Fiessinger was already under investigation for funneling “dozens of guns” into the illegal market said Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives officials. He was charged with selling guns to Smith without a license.

“This unfortunately hits home the point that we have to start regulating the secondary market as well,” including gun shows, unlicensed gun dealers and sales over the Internet, said Lisa Morel Las, who was director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence at the time. It is a refrain the families of the Smith’s 12 victims–and thousands of others–have head in the ensuing 14 years.

Six years later, another suspect in a high profile Chicago gun murder case killed himself when police closed in. In an eerie coincidence, Bart A. Ross, an electrician from Poland, also targeted Chicago federal judge Joan Lefkow, though he was not linked to the World Church of the Creator, Matthew Hale or Benjamin Nathaniel Smith. In a suicide note, Ross confessed to killing the husband and mother of Judge Lefkow after breaking into their residence. Ross, despite issuing a series of gun threats to his enemies in the medical and legal professions, passed a background check and bought at least one of his weapons legally in the Chicago suburb of Bensenville, said police. Suburban Chicago gun shops, like Chuck’s, linked to 1,300 crime guns since 2008, are blamed for many of the criminal guns flooding the Chicago market.

Finally, Chicago just commemorated 25 years since another legal gun owner issued death threats, killed people and then killed herself. Laurie Dann was investigated by authorities in three states for repeated threats to kill people and even stabbed her ex-husband with an ice pick. Yet Dann had no trouble purchasing Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum, telling the salesman that she needed it for self-defense. Thank you, NRA. Let’s enforce existing laws.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet

June 10, 2013
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Conservative Republicans in our nation’s capital have managed to accomplish something they only dreamed of when Tea Partiers streamed into Congress at the start of 2011: They’ve basically shut Congress down. Their refusal to compromise is working just as they hoped: No jobs agenda. No budget. No grand bargain on the deficit. No background checks on guns. Nothing on climate change. No tax reform. No hike in the minimum wage. Nothing so far on immigration reform.

It’s as if an entire branch of the federal government–the branch that’s supposed to deal directly with the nation’s problems, not just execute the law or interpret the law but make the law–has gone out of business, leaving behind only a so-called “sequester” that’s cutting deeper and deeper into education, infrastructure, programs for the nation’s poor, and national defense.

The window of opportunity for the president to get anything done is closing rapidly. Even in less partisan times, new initiatives rarely occur after the first year of a second term, when a president inexorably slides toward lame duck status.

But the nation’s work doesn’t stop even if Washington does. By default, more and more of it is shifting to the states, which are far less gridlocked than Washington. Last November’s elections resulted in one-party control of both the legislatures and governor’s offices in all but 13 states — the most single-party dominance in decades.

This means many blue states are moving further left, while red states are heading rightward. In effect, America is splitting apart without going through all the trouble of a civil war.

Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, for example, now controls both legislative chambers and the governor’s office for the first time in more than two decades. The legislative session that ended a few weeks ago resulted in a hike in the top income tax rate to 9.85 percent, an increased cigarette tax, and the elimination of several corporate tax loopholes. The added revenues will be used to expand early-childhood education, freeze tuitions at state universities, fund jobs and economic development, and reduce the state budget deficit. Along the way, Minnesota also legalized same-sex marriage and expanded the power of trade unions to organize.

California and Maryland passed similar tax hikes on top earners last year. The governor of Colorado has just signed legislation boosting taxes by $925 million for early-childhood education and K-12 (the tax hike will go into effect only if residents agree, in a vote that is likely in November).

On the other hand, the biggest controversy in Kansas is between Gov. Sam Brownback, who wants to shift taxes away from the wealthy and onto the middle class and poor by repealing the state’s income tax and substituting an increase in the sales tax, and Kansas legislators who want to cut the sales tax as well, thereby reducing the state’s already paltry spending for basic services. Kansas recently cut its budget for higher education by almost five percent.

Other rightward-moving states are heading in the same direction. North Carolina millionaires are on the verge of saving $12,500 a year, on average, from a pending income-tax cut even as sales taxes are raised on the electricity and services that lower-income depend residents depend on. Missouri’s transportation budget is half what it was five years ago, but lawmakers refuse to raise taxes to pay for improvements.

The states are splitting as dramatically on social issues. Gay marriages are now recognized in 12 states and the District of Columbia. Colorado and Washington state permit the sale of marijuana, even for non-medical uses. California is expanding a pilot program to allow nurse practitioners to perform abortions.

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet