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Argos Media

Obama offers Iran 'a new beginning' - Middle East, World - The Independent - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...n-a-new-beginning-1649988.html

Iran Obama Ali Akbar Javanfekr

shared by Argos Media on 20 Mar 09 - Cached
  • "The Iranian nation has shown that it can forget hasty behaviour but we are awaiting practical steps by the United States," Aliakbar Javanfekr, an aide to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told Reuters.
  • "The Iranian nation has shown that it can forget hasty behaviour but we are awaiting practical steps by the United States," Aliakbar Javanfekr, an aide to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told Reuters. "The Obama administation so far has just talked," he added, calling for Obama to make "fundamental changes in his policy towards Iran".
  • In an unusually swift reaction to Obama's overture, presidential aide Javanfekr said Iran welcomed "the interest of the American government to settle differences". But he said the Obama administration "should realise its previous mistakes and make an effort to amend them." "By fundamentally changing its behaviour America can offer us a friendly hand," he told Reuters."Unlimited sanctions which still continue and have been renewed by the United States are wrong and need to be reviewed." Javanfekr singled out US backing for Israel, Iran's main enemy in the region, saying that: "Supporting Israel is not a friendly gesture."
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  • Obama has already expressed a readiness to have face-to-face diplomatic contacts with Tehran, a major shift from former President George W. Bush's policy of trying to isolate a country he once branded part of an "axis of evil".
  • Mohammad Hassan Khani, assistant professor of international relations at Tehran's Imam Sadiq University, described Obama's appeal as a positive gesture but noted it came only a week after the extension of US economic sanctions. "This is somehow conflicting and making people here confused," he said. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has demanded Washington say sorry for decades of "crimes" against the Islamic Republic. Tehran also says it cannot let down its guard as long as US troops are posted on its borders in Iraq and Afghanistan. Analysts have said that Iran is setting tough conditions for dialogue with the United States to buy time for its ponderous and opaque decision-making process, which is facing a dilemma on whether or not to open up.
  • European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he hoped Iran would pay close attention to Obama's appeal. "I hope that that will open a new chapter in relations with Iran," he told reporters before going into an EU summit. To stress the seriousness of Obama's overture, the White House distributed the videotape with Farsi subtitles and posted it on its website to coincide with Iranian observance of the ancient festival of Nowruz, celebrating the arrival of spring. But his appeal was not shown nor mentioned on Iran's main 2pm state television news, although it was reported by Iranian news agencies including the official agency IRNA.
Argos Media

Journalist's Release Shows Divide Among Iran's Leaders - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...13iran.html

Iran US Roxana Saberi Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

shared by Argos Media on 12 May 09 - Cached
  • The journalist, Roxana Saberi, had been in jail since January, yet an appeals court on Monday rejected her eight-year sentence, a month after Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wrote a letter urging the court to be fair in its review.
  • American officials said Iran’s handling of the Saberi case underlined a deepening divide within its leadership about how to respond to President Obama’s recent overtures. It also reflects domestic politics a month before Mr. Ahmadinejad faces a critical election, according to analysts.
  • “Those who are trying to engage the U.S. won out,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “There wasn’t going to be any major new administration initiative toward Iran without this case resolved.”
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  • Mr. Ahmadinejad is seeking re-election on June 12. The letter he sent to the court was the first time he had intervened in a judicial case in his four years in office. Analysts said it would help his prospects if he could advance negotiations with the United States before the election.“Mr. Ahmadinejad wants to take serious steps towards improving ties with the United States before the elections,” said Ibrahim Yazdi, a political analyst in Tehran. “If he succeeds, it would be to his interest.”
  • If the United States were to establish an interest section in Tehran, for example, that would allow Iranians to obtain visas to the United States, without traveling to a third country, as they have to do now.
Pedro Gonçalves

Cuba Agrees to U.S. Talks in New Sign of a Thaw - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...01cuba.html

US Cuba Organizaion of American States Hillary Clinton El Salvador

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 01 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Cuba notified the Obama administration it was ready to resume talks on migration issues and to negotiate direct postal service between the countries for the first time in decades. It also agreed to cooperate with the United States on counterterrorism, drug interdiction and hurricane relief efforts.
  • The decisions, conveyed to the State Department on Saturday in diplomatic notes, represent another step in the gradual unlocking of relations under the Obama administration, after nearly 50 years of a trade embargo that many in the hemisphere say has outlived its usefulness.“Greater connections,” Mrs. Clinton said, “can lead to a better, freer future for the Cuban people. These talks are in the interest of the United States, and they are also in the interest of the Cuban people.”
  • Mrs. Clinton is in El Salvador for the presidential inauguration on Monday of the leftist leader Mauricio Funes. As one of his first acts, Mr. Funes has said he will restore diplomatic relations with Cuba, leaving the United States as the only country in the Americas without such ties.
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  • On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton plans to attend a meeting in Honduras of the Organization of American States. Members of the group want to make an even clearer break with the past by moving to readmit Cuba, which the organization expelled in 1962, citing its alliance with the Communist bloc. Mrs. Clinton has fended off calls for Cuba to be offered membership until Havana moves to accept the group’s democratic principles. On Sunday, she reiterated that the United States would oppose the efforts of several Latin American countries to immediately reinstate Cuba.“We believe that membership in the O.A.S. comes with responsibility, and that we must all hold each other accountable,” she said. Cuba, for its part, has said it has no interest in returning to an organization that the official newspaper Granma referred to recently as “that decrepit old house of Washington.”
Pedro Gonçalves

Cyber Blitz Hits U.S., Korea - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...SB124701806176209691.html

US South Korea North Korea Cyber Security Cyber Warfare

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 09 Jul 09 - Cached
  • U.S. and South Korean computer networks were besieged for days by a series of relatively unsophisticated attacks, possibly from North Korea, that were among the broadest and longest-lasting assaults perpetrated on government and commercial Web sites in both countries.
  • South Korean officials are investigating whether the attacks originated in North Korea, and a senior U.S. official said the U.S. also is probing North Korea's possible role. U.S. officials noted that the attacks, which appear to have started primarily in South Korea on July 4, coincided with North Korea's latest missile launches and followed a United Nations decision to impose new sanctions.
  • The senior U.S. official said the attacks seemed to have come from South Korea, but it was possible Pyongyang was using sympathizers there. "We're trying to assess whether this is some random attack or the North Koreans might be working through a proxy," said the official.
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  • If a North Korea link is found, it would mark a new turn in Pyongyang's attempts to lash out at the U.S. North Korea has been building up its capability for cyberattacks in the past couple of years, computer security specialists said. North Korea recently increased the number of people in a cyber-warfare unit, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported last month.
  • U.S. government Web sites attacked included those of the Defense Department, National Security Agency, Treasury Department, Secret Service, State Department, Federal Trade Commission and Federal Aviation Administration, according to the cyber-security unit of VeriSign Inc., a computer-security company, and others familiar with the attacks. The attacks appear to have occurred roughly from Saturday to Tuesday.
  • Private sites attacked, according to a cyber-security specialist who has been tracking the incidents, included those run by the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, the Washington Post, Amazon.com and MarketWatch.
  • Most U.S. federal Web sites appeared to be running properly Wednesday. In South Korea, several government sites were down late Tuesday and early Wednesday but many were back to normal by Wednesday afternoon. "There is a connection between what is going on here in the states and what is going on in [South] Korea," said Richard Howard, director of intelligence at VeriSign's iDefense cyber-security unit.
  • Those responsible used a method similar to attacks in recent years on the governments of Estonia and Georgia, called a "distributed denial of service" attack. It is a maneuver in which many computers act in concert to overwhelm Web sites.
  • At the White House, spokesman Nicholas Shapiro said the attacks over the weekend "had absolutely no effect on the White House's day-to-day operations." The only effect, he said, was that some Internet users in Asia may not have been able to access the White House's Web site for a time.
  • President Barack Obama has made bolstering cyber-security a priority. He said in May he would create a new White House cyber-security post, though it hasn't yet been staffed. People familiar with the process say the White House has had difficulty finding someone to take the job.
  • Defense officials confirmed Pentagon networks were struck but said the intrusions were detected quickly and did no real damage. Adm. Mike Mullen, the nation's top military officer, said Pentagon networks are under near-constant attack. "I grow increasingly concerned about the cyber-world and the attacks," he said.
  • James Lewis, a cyber-security specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of the attack, "It's really a test of which U.S. agencies are ready and which aren't."
  • The New York Stock Exchange's parent company, NYSE Euronext, announced at 12:35 p.m. Wednesday that its Web site, but not its trading systems, had been targeted. Exchange officials weren't aware of the attack until notified by the government on Tuesday, said a person familiar with the events. An NYSE spokesman said the exchange's systems detected zero impact either on the Web site or on the separate trading operations. An official of Nasdaq said there wasn't any impact on its business.
  • North Korea turned more antagonistic after the illness of dictator Kim Jong Il last August and September. The country had done little to prepare for a successor, and Mr. Kim's illness triggered an internal shuffle that apparently raised the influence of hard-line military figures.
  • The cyberattacks came as Washington's point man on North Korea sanctions, Ambassador Philip Goldberg, concluded a weeklong trip to China and Malaysia aimed at tightening the financial screws on Pyongyang. Last week, the Obama administration announced sanctions on two North Korea-linked arms companies. The U.S. Treasury last month listed 17 North Korean banks and businesses that it is seeking to constrict financially.
Argos Media

N. Korea seen as using bargaining chips - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

North Korea Nuclear Proliferation Siegfried Hecker Selig Harrison

shared by Argos Media on 28 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Selig Harrison, the director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy, said the North Korean announcement about restarting its nuclear facilities should come as "no surprise" to the United States. "The North Koreans had said that they were going to do this. The United States leadership made a mistake by going to the U.N. because the North Koreans said on March 26 that if we went to the U.N., they would resume their nuclear program," he said, referring to North Korea's recent decision to launch a rocket despite international opposition.
  • Harrison visited Pyongyang in January and doesn't expect North Korea to reprocess plutonium for at least a year. Nuclearization may not even be their primary goal with this latest announcement, he said. "You have to put it all into context of the North Korean situation, they want to negotiate to get economic help. All of this is a re-bargaining chip," he said. "The North Koreans are not hell-bent on nuclear weapons, this is just their opportunity, and they want to negotiate in bilateral talks with the US."
  • "The North Koreans have shut down the six-party talks, but they haven't ruled out bilateral negotiations," he said, referring to talks aimed at persuading North Korea to scrap its nuclear program. The talks involved China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
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  • An additional part of North Korea's re-bargaining chip may be two detained U.S. journalists, he added.
  • Harrison said the North Koreans "are hoping the United States will agree to bilateral talks in part because of the journalists they are holding, and the U.S. knows North Korea will ask something of them for the release of those journalists."
  • One of the main reasons North Korea broke off the six-party talks was because it hasn't received the energy and aid promised by other countries, Harrison said. "Japan had promised energy to North Korea that they haven't yet delivered, and this is energy that North Korea desperately needs," Harrison said. "In all, we have delivered about one-third percent of the amount of energy we had promised the North Korea."
  • Siegfried Hecker, the co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, said he believes North Korea can make bombs. "All they have to do is to extract the plutonium from the fuel rods which already exist in the cooling pool. They can now bring some of those fuel rods out and begin to take them through the reprocessing facility. It will take four to six months to reprocess all of the fuel rods. And they will be able to extract about a bomb and a half's worth of plutonium from them," Hecker explained.
  • Hecker explained that the fuel rods with the plutonium couldn't be shipped easily during the first steps of disablement of the Yongbyon plant and therefore were still intact when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors left earlier this month. "The idea was the pool holding the fuel rods would be kept under close IAEA inspection," Hecker said, "In essence, it was a pretty good hedge for the North Koreans all along...the fuel rods and the reprocessing plant were the easiest part of the Yongbyon plant to get going again," he said.
  • Hecker said restarting the reactor is a different story. Since the water cooling tower was destroyed in June 2008, Hecker said the North Koreans will likely rebuild the structure, which will take an estimated six months. He said they also need to process fresh fuel for the reactor, which will take about six months as well. "So in six months from now, they can reload the reactor. Then the reactor would have to run for about two to three years to get another two bombs worth of plutonium," he said.
Argos Media

Deal by Deal, China Expands Its Influence in Latin America - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...16chinaloan.html

Argentina Brazil China Economy Ecuador Inter-American Bank Latin America US Venezuela

shared by Argos Media on 16 Apr 09 - Cached
  • As Washington tries to rebuild its strained relationships in Latin America, China is stepping in vigorously, offering countries across the region large amounts of money while they struggle with sharply slowing economies, a plunge in commodity prices and restricted access to credit.
  • In recent weeks, China has been negotiating deals to double a development fund in Venezuela to $12 billion, lend Ecuador at least $1 billion to build a hydroelectric plant, provide Argentina with access to more than $10 billion in Chinese currency and lend Brazil’s national oil company $10 billion. The deals largely focus on China locking in natural resources like oil for years to come.
  • China’s trade with Latin America has grown quickly this decade, making it the region’s second largest trading partner after the United States. But the size and scope of these loans point to a deeper engagement with Latin America at a time when the Obama administration is starting to address the erosion of Washington’s influence in the hemisphere.
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  • Mr. Obama will meet with leaders from the region this weekend. They will discuss the economic crisis, including a plan to replenish the Inter-American Development Bank, a Washington-based pillar of clout that has suffered losses from the financial crisis.
  • Meanwhile, China is rapidly increasing its lending in Latin America as it pursues not only long-term access to commodities like soybeans and iron ore, but also an alternative to investing in United States Treasury notes.
  • One of China’s new deals in Latin America, the $10 billion arrangement with Argentina, would allow Argentina reliable access to Chinese currency to help pay for imports from China. It may also help lead the way to China’s currency to eventually be used as an alternate reserve currency. The deal follows similar ones China has struck with countries like South Korea, Indonesia and Belarus.
  • As the financial crisis began to whipsaw international markets last year, the Federal Reserve made its own currency arrangements with central banks around the world, allocating $30 billion each to Brazil and Mexico. (Brazil has opted not to tap it for now.) But smaller economies in the region, including Argentina, which has been trying to dispel doubts about its ability to meet its international debt payments, were left out of those agreements.
  • Details of the Chinese deal with Argentina are still being ironed out, but an official at Argentina’s central bank said it would allow Argentina to avoid using scarce dollars for all its international transactions. The takeover of billions of dollars in private pension funds, among other moves, led Argentines to pull the equivalent of nearly $23 billion, much of it in dollars, out of the country last year.
  • China is also seizing opportunities in Latin America when traditional lenders over which the United States holds some sway, like the Inter-American Development Bank, are pushing up against their limits.
  • Just one of China’s planned loans, the $10 billion for Brazil’s national oil company, is almost as much as the $11.2 billion in all approved financing by the Inter-American Bank in 2008. Brazil is expected to use the loan for offshore exploration, while agreeing to export as much as 100,000 barrels of oil a day to China, according to the oil company.
  • The Inter-American bank, in which the United States has de facto veto power in some matters, is trying to triple its capital and increase lending to $18 billion this year. But the replenishment involves delicate negotiations among member nations, made all the more difficult after the bank lost almost $1 billion last year. China will also have a role in these talks, having become a member of the bank this year.
  • In February, China’s vice president, Xi Jinping, traveled to Caracas to meet with President Hugo Chávez. The two men announced that a Chinese-backed development fund based here would grow to $12 billion from $6 billion, giving Venezuela access to hard currency while agreeing to increase oil shipments to China to one million barrels a day from a level of about 380,000 barrels
  • Mr. Chávez’s government contends the Chinese aid differs from other multilateral loans because it comes without strings attached, like scrutiny of internal finances. But the Chinese fund has generated criticism among his opponents, who view it as an affront to Venezuela’s sovereignty. “The fund is a swindle to the nation,” said Luis Díaz, a lawmaker who claims that China locked in low prices for the oil Venezuela is using as repayment.
  • “This is China playing the long game,” said Gregory Chin, a political scientist at York University in Toronto. “If this ultimately translates into political influence, then that is how the game is played.”
Argos Media

Foreign Policy: Turkish Delight - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...cms.php

Turkey US Obama

shared by Argos Media on 12 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The last eight years have been brutal on the U.S.-Turkey relationship. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 exposed a deep rift between the two countries, with Ankara opposing the war and Turkey's parliament refusing to pass a motion that would have allowed U.S. troops to use the country as a launching pad for attacking the Saddam regime. Things have been even more dismal on the public opinion front. In a 2007 Pew Research Center public opinion survey, only 9 percent of Turks surveyed held favorable views of the United States, meaning that Turkey was the country with the least favorable view of the United States among the 47 countries and territories surveyed. (If it's any consolation for the United States, other surveys found that Turks seem to be a grumpy lot, holding generally unfavorable views of many other countries.)
  • America's fall from grace was reflected in Turkish popular culture. A 2005 Turkish bestseller, Metal Firtina (Metal Storm), envisioned Turks and Americans engaging in all-out war, the story ending with a nuclear device detonating in Washington. Kurtlar Vadisi -- Irak (Valley of the Wolves -- Iraq), a crassly anti-American and anti-Semitic 2006 film that became one of Turkey's best-grossing movies ever, saw a team of Turkish agents battling evil Americans in northern Iraq and a devious doctor (played by Gary Busey) who runs an organ-harvesting operation that relies on Iraqi corpses.
  • Yet Turkish public opinion might now be turning a corner. Obama's election and visit seemed to bring out a healthy dose of goodwill and excitement in Turkey.
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  • in a speech he gave in late March at Princeton University, Ahmet Davutoglu, the chief foreign-policy advisor to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, suggested that we might soon witness the dawning of a "golden age" in U.S.-Turkey relations. "Our approach and principles are almost the same, very similar [to the United States'] on issues such as the Middle East, Caucasus, the Balkans, and energy security," he said.
Argos Media

The Waiting Game: How Will Iran Respond to Obama's Overtures? - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News -... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,618764,00.html

Iran US Nuclear Proliferation

shared by Argos Media on 14 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Ahmadinejad's program includes a visit to Isfahan's nuclear facilities on the outskirts of the city, where scientists are working on uranium enrichment. This is one of the mysterious factories the world fears, because it believes that the Iranians are building a nuclear bomb there.
  • This is the Iranian theocracy that sends shivers down the world's collective spine. For many, Iran is a nightmarish country, a combination of high-tech weapons and a religious ideology based on 1,400-year-old martyr legends that focuses on suffering. It is an isolated and unpredictable country, a wounded civilization whose leaders are taking their revenge on the West by striving to develop nuclear weapons and financing radical Islamists from Hamas to Hezbollah.
  • The Iranian president is currently under more pressure than usual. He is being asked to venture into new territory and respond to America's offer to relax tensions. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, threatened Tehran with "regime change" of the sort he announced and implemented in neighboring Iraq. Bush refused to so much as negotiate over the Iranian nuclear program and, with the arrogance of a superpower, helped unify the Iranian public against the "USA, the Great Satan." It was Bush who ensured that the relatively unpopular regime of mullahs, despite its mishandling of the economy, could stabilize itself.
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  • Since the election of the new American president, who promised a change in foreign policy, it is no longer as easy for Ahmadinejad to demonize the United States, especially now that Obama has lived up to his promise of a new beginning -- with a practically revolutionary gesture.
  • The initial reaction from the Iranian leadership was muted. In a televised address, the powerful religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 69, said he was disappointed that Obama had not at least released Iran's frozen assets in the United States.
  • As hysterical as the Iranian leadership's anti-Americanism seems to be at times, it has valid historical reasons. In 1953, Washington's intelligence service brought down democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and then massively supported the Shah dictatorship for a quarter century. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was only able to launch his war against Iran with the help of American weapons and logistical guidance from Washington. The war lasted eight bloody years and ended in stalemate.
  • Hostility to the United States has become one of the key pillars of the theocracy. Will it collapse under Obama's friendliness and potentially substantial American good will? Can an American "grand bargain," a mixture of comprehensive political and economic concessions, stop the Iranians from building the nuclear weapons many believe they are seeking to develop? The United States, at any rate, will participate in all nuclear talks in the future, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Wednesday. The previous members of the negotiating group promptly invited Iran to enter a new round.
  • The US president is also under pressure to achieve progress on the nuclear issue. Time is running out for Obama, because the Iranians, according to a report released in February by the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, may already have reached "breakout capability." This means that with their centrifuges and more than 1,000 kilograms of low enriched uranium hexafluoride, the Iranians could soon be able to flip the switch in the direction of having their own bomb.
  • Tehran installed and placed into service about 6,000 centrifuges needed for uranium enrichment in its nuclear facilities.
  • Now the existing, low enriched uranium hexafluoride can be refined to make weapons-grade uranium, either in the country's known enrichment facilities or, as many experts assume, in a location that remains unknown. If one thing is clear, it is that once it becomes known that Iran has embarked on this next enrichment step -- which, until now, has apparently been held up by a political decision -- a military strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities will be all but unavoidable. Experts believe that once this decision is reached, it could take less than six months for the Iranians to build their first bomb.
Argos Media

New Israeli Foreign Minister Dismisses U.S. Peace Efforts - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...02mideast.html

Israel Avigdor Lieberman Palestine Annapolis Process

shared by Argos Media on 02 Apr 09 - Cached
  • In a blunt and belligerent speech on his first day as Israel’s new foreign minister, the hawkish nationalist Avigdor Lieberman declared Wednesday that “those who wish for peace should prepare for war” and that Israel was not obligated by understandings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reached at an American-sponsored peace conference in late 2007.
  • “Those who think that through concessions they will gain respect and peace are wrong,” Mr. Lieberman said during a transfer ceremony at the Foreign Ministry. “It is the other way around; it will lead to more wars.”
  • The aim of the Annapolis process, as it became known, was to agree on the framework for a Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2008, a goal that was not achieved. Mr. Lieberman said that the Israeli government “never ratified Annapolis, nor did Parliament,” and that it therefore “has no validity.”
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  • As the new prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu has tried to strike a more conciliatory tone, promising to hold negotiations with the Palestinian Authority toward a permanent accord. But he has also stopped short of endorsing the two-state solution, putting the new government at odds with the United States and the European Union.
  • Tony Blair, the special envoy of the so-called quartet of Middle East peacemakers, which consists of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, said Wednesday that the peace process was in “very great jeopardy.”
  • He once advocated bombing the Aswan dam in the event of a war with Egypt, and last year he suggested that Egypt’s president should “go to hell” if he did not want to visit Israel.
  • Often contradictory and contrary in his positions, Mr. Lieberman, a resident of a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, has said that he advocates the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Yet in January 2008 he pulled his party out of the last governing coalition, led by Ehud Olmert and the centrist Kadima Party, in protest against the Annapolis-inspired talks.
  • Mr. Lieberman said on Wednesday that instead of Annapolis, Israel was committed to the “road map,” a 2003 American-backed performance-based peace plan that made the creation of a Palestinian state contingent on the Palestinians ending all violence and dismantling terrorist networks.Mr. Erekat, the Palestinian negotiator, noted that the plan also called for Israel to freeze all settlement construction. “I’d really like to know, are we going to see a settlement freeze?” Mr. Erekat said.
Pedro Gonçalves

NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily | World news | The ... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ne-records-verizon-court-order

US Privacy NSA FISA

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 07 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.
  • 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.
  • The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compels Verizon to produce to the NSA electronic copies of "all call detail records or 'telephony metadata' created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad" or "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls".
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  • The court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI's request for its customers' records, or the court order itself.
  • The information is classed as "metadata", or transactional information, rather than communications, and so does not require individual warrants to access. The document also specifies that such "metadata" is not limited to the aforementioned items. A 2005 court ruling judged that cell site location data – the nearest cell tower a phone was connected to – was also transactional data, and so could potentially fall under the scope of the order.
  • The court order appears to explain the numerous cryptic public warnings by two US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, about the scope of the Obama administration's surveillance activities.For roughly two years, the two Democrats have been stridently advising the public that the US government is relying on "secret legal interpretations" to claim surveillance powers so broad that the American public would be "stunned" to learn of the kind of domestic spying being conducted.
  • In a letter to attorney general Eric Holder last year, they argued that "there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows.""We believe," they wrote, "that most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted" the "business records" provision of the Patriot Act.
  • The NSA, as part of a program secretly authorized by President Bush on 4 October 2001, implemented a bulk collection program of domestic telephone, internet and email records. A furore erupted in 2006 when USA Today reported that the NSA had "been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth" and was "using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity." Until now, there has been no indication that the Obama administration implemented a similar program.These recent events reflect how profoundly the NSA's mission has transformed from an agency exclusively devoted to foreign intelligence gathering, into one that focuses increasingly on domestic communications.
Argos Media

After the Fall of Wall: A Report Card on Post-Cold War European Integration - SPIEGEL O... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,613866-2,00.html

EU Economy Germany Middle East Fritz Scharpf CFSP Peter Glotz Thomas Risse

shared by Argos Media on 19 Mar 09 - Cached
  • When it comes to a common foreign policy, Europe's most tragic failure was its long hesitation to intervene in the former Yugoslavia, where the continent's first genocide since the Holocaust took place during the 1990s. It was only in 1995 that the European Union decided to intervene militarily in Bosnia and Herzegovina -- and then only under the leadership of the United States. The Europeans finally became more active in Kosovo in 1998-1999.
  • the deficiencies of European foreign policy have also been exposed in the European Union's handling of the genocides in Africa, both in Rwanda in 1994 and in present-day Darfur. The European Union and its member states were very active in expanding the protection of international human rights; they have also given their support to the international principle of the "responsibility to protect," which offers protection from genocide and massive human rights violations to the populations of all countries. But, in the past 20 years, whenever these words had to be backed up with actions, Europe has been content to let other countries, especially the United States, take the lead.
  • the era of "permissive consensus" has come to an end: In other words, most Europeans are no longer willing to passively and silently accept European unification. Underscoring that point are the French and Dutch rejections of the 2005 constitutional treaty and the Irish"no" to the Lisbon Treaty in 2008.
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  • The political elites in Europe have not yet responded to these problems. There have been no significant public debates; neither about the euro, EU expansion, a proposed constitution, nor the European Union's responsibilities in the Balkans and Afghanistan. Instead, Europe's political elites have remained silent. EU policies are determined, following the pre-1989 Western European tradition, by a cartel of political elites that is insulated from the democratic public. The more that Europe lacks the acceptance of its citizens, the harder it will befor the Union to meet the coming geopolitical challenges.
  • The assumption that the European Union lacks competence in foreign and security policy is misguided. For nearly a decade, the European Union has had access to the entire spectrum of institutional capacities -- including military capability -- that is necessary for active participation in global politics. It is an equally unconvincing argument that the 27 member states are simply too difficult to coordinate to actively engage in international politics. On the contrary: the foreign and security strategy of the European Union is remarkably consistent and coherent, from effective multilateralism, to peaceful conflict resolution, to addressing the problem of fragile statehood. Europe only needs to match its words with action. Member states need to abandon their vain attachment to national prerogatives and speak with one foreign policy voice. Here the largest member states -- Great Britain, France, and Germany -- have often been the biggest hindrance.
  • The era of the G-7 or G-8, in which the western industrial states (and Russia) could keep to themselves, is over. There is no alternative to a G-20 that systematically includes developing nations from all regions of the world into the process of global governance.
  • Until now, the European Union -- despite its inclusion in the Middle East Quartet -- has always been reluctant to propose solutions to the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Instead, Europe has essentially hidden behind the United States. Now, after eight years of the Bush administration, America has lost nearly all of its credibility, and it is going to be a while before President Obama can do anything to significantly reestablish it. There is a need, in other words, for the European Union and its member states to play a larger role -- not least, because the European Union has pro-Arab as well as pro-Israeli positions represented in its institutions and among its member states. The European Union could credibly serve as an honest broker in the region -- if it only wanted to.
  • Unfortunately, the countries of the European Union allow themselves to be played against one another yet again -- especially along the economic fault line between old and new member states. Europe's answer to the economic and financial crisis is not encouraging. Instead of a coordinated reaction of the EU member states, national measures have taken priority. Even Germany -- despite all its pro-European rhetoric -- has shown little appetite for cooperation.This failure is particularly frustrating in light of the fact that Europe has the world's best institutional capacity to develop integrated answers to crossborder economic challenges.
  • In addition, there is still a clear asymmetry between negative and positive integration, as political scientist Fritz Scharpf diagnosed in the mid-1990s. The creation of an internal market continues to trump the development of economic and social policies that can steer and correct that very market. It is no accident that the call for a "social Europe" is getting ever louder. The inability for European governments to coordinate their responses to the financial crisis has contributed to the legitimation crisis of European integration.
  • The post-Cold War era is over. Europe has no choice but to orient itself to the challenges of the future. Before anything else, the European Union needs to gain the approval and trust of its own citizens. The failed referenda pose less of a threat to Europe than does the continent's growing Euro-skepticism and the silence of European elites in the face of criticism "from below." Those who are believers in Europe and European unification must actively take on the challenge of convincing others.
  • The deceased politician and scholar Peter Glotz, just several weeks after the end of the fateful year 1989, wrote in this very publication that "the decisive question of the next decade will be whether the European elites manage to overcome the narrow categories of the nation state. ... In Europe, the nations are too weak to engage in global politics; at the same time, they are strong enough to prevent the development of an effective supranational European politics." Twenty years later, those observations have unfortunately lost none of their truth.
Argos Media

After Gaza, Israel Grapples With Crisis of Isolation - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...19israel.html

Israel Branding Avigdor Lieberman Hosni Mubarak

shared by Argos Media on 19 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Israel, whose founding idea was branded as racism by the United Nations General Assembly in 1975 and which faced an Arab boycott for decades, is no stranger to isolation. But in the weeks since its Gaza war, and as it prepares to inaugurate a hawkish right-wing government, it is facing its worst diplomatic crisis in two decades.
  • The issue has not gone unnoticed here, but it has generated two distinct and somewhat contradictory reactions. On one hand, there is real concern. Global opinion surveys are being closely examined and the Foreign Ministry has been granted an extra $2 million to improve Israel’s image through cultural and information diplomacy.
  • But there is also a growing sense that outsiders do not understand Israel’s predicament, so criticism is dismissed.“People here feel that no matter what you do you are going to be blamed for all the problems in the Middle East,” said Eytan Gilboa, a professor of politics and international communication at Bar Ilan University. “Even suicide bombings by Palestinians are seen as our fault for not establishing a Palestinian state.”
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  • Javier Solana, foreign policy chief for the European Union, said in Brussels on Monday that the group would reconsider its relationship with Israel if it did not remain committed to establishing a Palestinian state.
  • Mr. Lieberman also has few fans in Egypt, which has acted as an intermediary for Israel in several matters. Some months ago Mr. Lieberman complained that President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt had not agreed to come to Israel. “If he doesn’t want to, he can go to hell,” he added.“Imagine that Hossein Mousavi wins the Iranian presidency this spring and he names Mohammad Khatami as his foreign minister,” said Meir Javedanfar, an Iran analyst in Israel, referring to two Iranian leaders widely viewed as in the pragmatist camp. “With Lieberman as foreign minister here, Israel will have a much harder time demonstrating to the world that Iran is the destabilizing factor in the region.”
  • Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has already criticized Israeli plans to demolish Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, and her department has criticized Israel’s banning of certain goods from Gaza.This represents a distinct shift in tone from the Bush era. An internal Israeli Foreign Ministry report during the Gaza war noted that compared with others in the United States, “liberals and Democrats show far less enthusiasm for Israel and its leadership.”
  • Some Israeli officials say they believe that what the country needs is to “rebrand” itself. They say Israel spends far too much time defending actions against its enemies. By doing so, they say, the narrative is always about conflict.“When we show Sderot, others also see Gaza,” said Ido Aharoni, manager of a rebranding team at the Foreign Ministry. “Everything is twinned when seen through the conflict. The country needs to position itself as an attractive personality, to make outsiders see it in all its reality. Instead, we are focusing on crisis management. And that is never going to get us where we need to go over the long term.” Mr. Gilboa, the political scientist, said branding was not enough. “We need to do much more to educate the world about our situation,” he said. Regarding the extra $2 million budgeted for this, he said: “We need 50 million. We need 100 million.”
Argos Media

Gaza war crime claims gather pace as more troops speak out | World news | The Observer - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...stinian-territories-war-crimes

Israel War Crimes Palestine Gaza Break the Silence

shared by Argos Media on 22 Mar 09 - Cached
  • An investigation by a group of former Israeli soldiers has uncovered new evidence of the military's conduct during the assault on Gaza two months ago. According to the group Breaking the Silence, the witness statements of the 15 soldiers who have come forward to describe their concerns over Operation Cast Lead appear to corroborate claims of random killings and vandalism carried out during the operation made by a separate group of anonymous servicemen during a seminar at a military college.
  • "This is not a military that we recognise," said Mikhael Manekin, one of the former soldiers involved with the group. "This is in a different category to things we have seen before. We have spoken to a lot of different people who served in different places in Gaza, including officers. We are not talking about some units being more aggressive than others, but underlying policy. So much so that we are talking to soldiers who said that they were having to restrain the orders given."
  • Manekin described how soldiers had reported their units being specifically warned by officers not to discuss what they had seen and done in Gaza.
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  • The outlines of the evidence gathered comes hard on the heels of the disclosure by the Oranim Academy's pre-military course last week of devastating witness accounts supplied by soldiers involved in the fighting, including the "unjustified" shooting of civilians.
  • With Israeli newspapers threatening new disclosures, the New York Times has weighed in with an interview with a reservist describing the rules of engagement for the Gaza operation. Amir Marmor, a 33-year-old military reservist, told the newspaper that he was stunned to discover the way civilian casualties were discussed in training talks before his tank unit entered Gaza in January. "Shoot and don't worry about the consequences" was the message from commanders, said Marmor. Describing the behaviour of a lieutenant-colonel who briefed the troops, Marmor added: "His whole demeanour was extremely gung-ho. This is very, very different from my usual experience. I have been doing reserve duty for 12 years, and it was always an issue how to avoid causing civilian injuries. He said that in this operation, we are not taking any chances. Morality aside, we have to do our job. We will cry about it later."
  • Last Thursday, the special rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council, Richard Falk, said that the assault on Gaza appeared to be a "war crime of the greatest magnitude" and called on the UN to establish an experts' group to investigate potential violations.
  • Attempts by the Israeli media to publish the rules of engagement for the Gaza campaign have been blocked by the military censor, but in the past couple of weeks the contents of those rules have begun to to emerge in anecdotal evidence - suggesting strongly that soldiers were told to avoid Israeli casualties at all costs by means of the massive use of firepower in a densely populated urban environment.
  • An investigation by reporter Uri Blau, published on Friday in Haaretz, disclosed how Israeli soldiers were ordering T-shirts to mark the end of operations, featuring grotesque images including dead babies, mothers weeping by their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques. Another T-shirt designed for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex" next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A shirt designed for the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion depicts a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills".
Argos Media

Russia's Medvedev Vows to Press On With Military Overhaul Despite Economic Woes - washi... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2009031700871.html

Russia Military Dmitry Medvedev Anatoly Serdyukov

shared by Argos Media on 18 Mar 09 - Cached
  • President Dmitry Medvedev vowed Tuesday to press ahead with an ambitious overhaul of Russia's armed forces despite the nation's economic problems and vocal opposition from within the military. Medvedev promised weapons upgrades but also endorsed organizational changes that will cut the officer corps by more than half, or as many as 200,000 positions.
  • The plan, first disclosed in October, envisions the most dramatic transformation of the Russian military since World War II, abandoning a structure designed to mobilize large numbers of new troops to fight a major war and replacing it with a leaner, standing army that can respond more quickly to local conflicts. Thousands of combat units staffed now only with officers would be eliminated, and the military's four-level command structure would be trimmed to a three-tier hierarchy.
  • The plan has run into stiff resistance from officers worried about cuts as well as retired generals and opposition politicians who say it will leave Russia too weak to prevail in a war against a strong opponent such as NATO or China. Russia's most severe economic crisis in a decade has also exacerbated concerns about the welfare of demobilized officers and the government's ability to equip the smaller military with new weapons as promised.
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  • in a meeting with the Defense Ministry's top staff, Medvedev said Russia needed to push ahead with the changes because "serious potential for conflict remains in many regions." He cited the threat of terrorism and local crises such as the war with Georgia in August, as well as "attempts to expand the military infrastructure of NATO near Russia's borders."
  • government's plan to drastically reduce the number of officers, who now account for nearly one of three Russian soldiers. By eliminating hollow units that are supposed to call up conscripts in the event of war, the government plans to cut the officer corps from about 355,000 to 150,000, shedding more than 200 generals, 15,000 colonels and 70,000 majors. Meanwhile, the number of ground force units would be slashed from nearly 2,000 to less than 200.
  • Dozens of military academies, research institutes and hospitals would also be shut, and the overall size of the military would fall from about 1.13 million to 1 million.
  • Medvedev said the changes would address serious flaws in the military exposed by the Georgian war, the first time Russia has sent its forces to fight abroad since the fall of the Soviet Union. Though Russia easily triumphed in the five-day conflict, analysts say the Kremlin was alarmed by problems with aging weapons, communications and equipment, as well as the command structure.
  • Medvedev said arms procurement would be "almost entirely preserved" this year despite a budget shortfall but added that "large-scale rearming" would have to wait until 2011. Serdyukov said up to 90 percent of the weapons and equipment used by the military are outdated, and he pledged to bring that figure down to 70 percent by 2015.
Argos Media

Freeman speaks out on his exit | The Cable - 0 views

thecable.foreignpolicy.com/...freeman_speaks_out_on_his_exit

Charles Freeman Israel Israel Lobby US National Intelligence Council

shared by Argos Media on 12 Mar 09 - No Cached
  • I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office.  The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue.  I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country.
  • The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful  lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East.  The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth.  The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.
  • There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel.
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  • I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel.  It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so.  This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.
  • The outrageous agitation that followed the leak of my pending appointment will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues.  I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government. 
Argos Media

Haass: Why Obama Should Lift the Cuba Embargo | Newsweek International | Newsweek.com - 0 views

www.newsweek.com/...188147

Cuba US Richard Haas Cuban Embargo

shared by Argos Media on 12 Mar 09 - Cached
  • There are signs that change may finally be coming to Cuba, 50 years after the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. In a major shakeup, Raúl Castro, Fidel's brother, fired several high-level officials last week
  • Some American conservatives maintain that all this is reason enough for the United States to persist in its policy of ignoring Cuba diplomatically and sanctioning it economically. At least in principle, one could argue that the revolution is running out of steam and that regime change from within may finally be at hand. The problem is that this argument ignores Cuban reality. The country is not near the precipice of collapse. To the contrary, the intertwined party, government and military have matters well in hand. The population, ensured basic necessities along with access to education and health care, is neither inclined to radical change nor in a position to bring it about.
  • The American policy of isolating Cuba has failed. Officials boast that Havana now hosts more diplomatic missions than any other country in the region save Brazil. Nor is the economic embargo working. Or worse: it is working, but for countries like Canada, South Korea and dozens of others that are only too happy to help supply Cuba with food, generators and building materials.
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  • The policy of trying to isolate Cuba also works—perversely enough—to bolster the Cuban regime. The U.S. embargo provides Cuba's leaders a convenient excuse—the country's economic travails are due to U.S. sanctions, they can claim, not their own failed policies. The lack of American visitors and investment also helps the government maintain political control.
  • There is one more reason to doubt the wisdom of continuing to isolate Cuba. However slowly, the country is changing. The question is whether the United States will be in a position to influence the direction and pace of this change. We do not want to see a Cuba that fails, in which the existing regime gives way to a repressive regime of a different stripe or to disorder marked by drugs, criminality, terror or a humanitarian crisis that prompts hundreds of thousands of Cubans to flee their country for the United States.
Pedro Gonçalves

Institute for Science and International Security › ISIS Reports › Non Prolife... - 0 views

isis-online.org/...liferation-and-nuclear-outlier

US NPR

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 12 Apr 10 - Cached
  • the NPR makes clear that the United States reserves the right to “hold fully accountable” any state or group “that supports or enables terrorist efforts to obtain or use weapons of mass destruction, whether by facilitating, financing, or providing expertise or safe haven for such efforts.”  (p. 12)  The implication is that the United States reserves the right to retaliate with nuclear weapons against a state whose nuclear explosive material is used in an attack, whether by a state or terrorist group.  While the NPR makes clear that the United States would only consider the use of such weapons under “extreme” circumstances, it is important to be aware that in the event of a terror attack, the use of nuclear weapons is not explicitly proscribed.  This leaves a potentially dangerous opening for the use of a nuclear weapon when demands for retaliation will be especially acute and intelligence and forensic information vulnerable to misinterpretation.
  • the NPR leaves open the possibility of using nuclear weapons if only under “extreme” conditions against states that are not in compliance with their nonproliferation obligations.  The document does not make an attempt to define noncompliance, however, emphasizing instead the “narrow range of contingencies” under which nuclear weapons might play a role in deterring conventional or WMD attacks.
Argos Media

U.S., Russian Scientists Say Missile Shield Wouldn't Protect Europe From Iran - washing... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2009051803055.html

US Iran Russia Missile Defense Shield

shared by Argos Media on 20 May 09 - Cached
  • A planned U.S. missile shield to protect Europe from a possible Iranian attack would be ineffective against the kinds of missiles Iran is likely to deploy, according to a joint analysis by top U.S. and Russian scientists.
  • The U.S.-Russian team also judged that it would be more than five years before Iran is capable of building both a nuclear warhead and a missile capable of carrying it over long distances. And if Iran attempted such an attack, the experts say, it would ensure its own destruction.
  • "The missile threat from Iran to Europe is thus not imminent," the 12-member technical panel concludes in a report produced by the EastWest Institute, an independent think tank based in Moscow, New York and Belgium.
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  • The year-long study brought together six senior technical experts from both the United States and Russia to assess the military threat to Europe from Iran's nuclear and missile programs. The report's conclusions were reviewed by former defense secretary William J. Perry, among others, before being presented to national security adviser James L. Jones and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
  • The report acknowledges dramatic technological gains by Iran, and it predicts that the country could probably build a simple nuclear device in one to three years, if it kicked out U.N. inspectors and retooled its uranium-processing plants to make weapons-grade enriched uranium. Another five years would be needed to build a warhead that would fit on one of Iran's missiles, the panel says. U.S. intelligence agencies have made similar predictions; Israel maintains that Iran could build a bomb in as little as eight months.
  • The U.S.-Russian experts say Iran faces limits in developing ballistic missiles that could someday carry nuclear warheads. Its current arsenal is derived from relatively unsophisticated North Korean missiles, which in turn are modified versions of a Russian submarine-launched missile that dates from the 1950s. "We believe that these components were likely transferred to North Korea illegally in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Russia was experiencing major political and economic chaos," one of the U.S. team members said in a separate commentary.
  • the country lacks "the infrastructure of research institutions, industrial plants, or the scientists and engineers that are needed to make substantial improvements."
  • They conclude that it would take Iran at least another six to eight years to produce a missile with enough range to reach Southern Europe and that only illicit foreign assistance or a concerted and highly visible, decade-long effort might produce the breakthroughs needed for a nuclear-tipped missile to threaten the United States.
  • Moreover, if Iran were to build a nuclear-capable missile that could strike Europe, the defense shield proposed by the United States "could not engage that missile," the report says. The missile interceptors could also be easily fooled by decoys and other simple countermeasures, the report concludes.
Argos Media

Opinion: Torturing for America - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,622382,00.html

US Torture Germany Wolfgang Schauble

shared by Argos Media on 02 May 09 - Cached
  • The torture virus eventually infected the rest of the world, including Europe and even Germany. The double standard employed by German counterterrorism personnel when confronted with the torture practices of their US allies becomes clear in a remark Ernst Uhrlau, the head of the BND, Germany's foreign intelligence agency, made in a 2007 interview with SPIEGEL: "US officials have (…) explained to us that the information they gained from various interrogations worldwide has been instrumental in preventing further attacks and uncovering terrorist structures. So we have benefited from all this in the sense of preventing attacks and understanding the structures of the network."
  • German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble also found it difficult to distance himself from the use of dirty information, saying that it was perfectly legitimate for German officials to use information foreign intelligence agencies had obtained through torture -- after all, that helped prevent terror attacks. At the same time, Schäuble was apparently unwilling to consider the possibility that this might also apply to American intelligence agencies: "The president has made it clear that there is no torture. I have no reason to question that."
  • The entire world looked the other way when the United States committed a crime that the world had previously committed itself to outlaw and punish.
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  • Under the 1984 United Nations Convention against Torture, ratified by most countries in the world, each state pledges to impose drastic penalties for the cruel treatment of prisoners -- and to ensure that not only those issuing the orders, but also the torturers themselves, are brought to justice.
  • The cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners is also banned under the Geneva Conventions. Today even US legal experts no longer question that the Geneva Conventions also apply in the war against al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. The Geneva Conventions obligate all nations to try torturers and those who issue their orders, if apprehended, or to extradite them to a country willing to do so.
  • The Bushies knew perfectly well why they withdrew the US signature from the International Criminal Court (ICC) statute. If the United States had subjected itself to the ICC statute, the court's unflinching prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, would undoubtedly have petitioned for the issuance of arrest warrants against Bush and his cohorts long ago.
Pedro Gonçalves

Russia's Neighbors Resist Wooing and Bullying - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...03russia.html

Russia Belarus Uzbekistan Turkmenistan Armenia Georgia Kyrgyzstan Manas Airbase

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Jul 09 - Cached
  • All year, despite its own economic spasms, Moscow has earmarked great chunks of cash for its impoverished post-Soviet neighbors, seeking to lock in their loyalty over the long term and curtail Western influence in the region.
  • But the neighbors seem to have other ideas. Belarus — which was promised $2 billion in Russian aid — is in open rebellion against the Kremlin, flaunting its preference for Europe while also collecting money from the International Monetary Fund. Uzbekistan joined Belarus in refusing to sign an agreement on the Collective Rapid Reaction Forces, an idea Moscow sees as an eventual counterweight to NATO.
  • Belarus — which was promised $2 billion in Russian aid — is in open rebellion against the Kremlin, flaunting its preference for Europe while also collecting money from the International Monetary Fund. Uzbekistan joined Belarus in refusing to sign an agreement on the Collective Rapid Reaction Forces, an idea Moscow sees as an eventual counterweight to NATO.
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  • There are other examples, like Turkmenistan’s May signing of a gas exploration deal with a German company, and Armenia’s awarding of a major national honor to Moscow’s nemesis, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia. But the biggest came last week when Kyrgyzstan — set to receive $2.15 billion in Russian aid — reversed a decision that had been seen as a coup for Moscow, last winter’s order terminating the American military’s use of the Manas Air Base there.
  • There are few projects that matter more to Russia than restoring its influence in the former Soviet republics, whose loss to many in Moscow is still as painful as a phantom limb. Competition over Georgia and Ukraine has brought relations between Moscow and Washington to a post-cold-war low, and the matter is bound to be central to the talks that begin on Monday between Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, and President Obama.
  • Kyrgyzstan’s reversal on Manas is a case study in canny horse trading. Russian officials, including Mr. Medvedev, have said they blessed the decision, and that may be true, but President Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev is the one who walked away with what he wanted. Moscow wanted the base, a key transit hub for the United States’ war in Afghanistan, shut down; Kyrgyzstan wanted more money. In February, Moscow seemed to have achieved a master stroke — at a news conference announcing the pledge of $2.15 billion in Russian aid, Mr. Bakiyev said the United States would have to leave Manas in six months.
  • Russia’s ability to attract its neighbors to its side and keep them there is unimpressive. The Kremlin’s methods have been reactive and often bullying, combining incentives like cheap energy or cash disbursement with threats of trade sanctions and gas cutoffs.The war in Georgia seems to have hurt Moscow in that regard. Rather than being cowed into obedience, as most Western observers feared, the former republics seem to have grown even more protective of their sovereignty. Moreover, the leaders themselves have thrived by playing Russia and the West and, in some cases, China off against one another, although that has not brought stability or prosperity to their countries. In Moscow’s so-called zone of privileged interests, in other words, Russia is just another competitor.
  • The first Russian payments — a $150 million emergency grant and a $300 million low-interest loan — arrived in April, allowing Mr. Bakiyev to pay wages and pensions as he began his re-election campaign. Then Kyrgyzstan shocked the region by announcing a new agreement with the United States. Washington will pay more than triple the rent for the base — now called a “transit center” — increasing its annual payment to $60 million from $17.4 million, while kicking in upwards of $50 million in grants to the government. No one knows if the Kremlin will make good on the rest of its pledge.
  • Moldova, which has just received a Russian pledge of $500 million four weeks before voters go to the polls to elect a new Parliament.
  • Belarus’s president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, who is avidly pursuing Western partners, has been barraged with carrots and sticks from Moscow — first promised $2 billion in Russian aid, then bitterly chastised for his economic policy, then punished with a crippling ban on the import of milk products, then rewarded by a reversal of the import ban. Russia regards Mr. Lukashenko’s truculence as a bluff.
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