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Alex Jhon

Private Sale Agreement - 0 views

www.netlawman.co.nz/...sale-agreement-goods.php

private sale agreement NZ of goods

shared by Alex Jhon on 10 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Alex Jhon on 10 Jan 12
     
    Net lawman offer best quality simple agreement for the sale of goods, private sale agreement and private sale NZ suitable for any goods in plain English.
Argos Media

Record numbers join anti-Sarkozy protests | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...icolas-sarkozy-france-protests

France Economy

shared by Argos Media on 20 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Record numbers took to the streets of France yesterday in the biggest demonstrations since Nicolas Sarkozy's election, to protest about his handling of the economic crisis. Unions estimated that more than three million people took part in demonstrations across the country, in the second general strike over the economic crisis in two months. Police put figures at about 1.2 million. With one in three people supporting the protest, it had the highest public backing for a strike in a decade.
  • Teachers and doctors protested against his long-standing reform plan, saying public-sector job cuts would kill schools and hospitals. University staff are continuing their seven-week strike against higher education reform with sit-ins and occupations. Private-sector employees, including supermarket cashiers, bank clerks and car workers, took to the street over poor pay, factory closures and the return of a traditional French scourge: unemployment, now rising at its fastest rate in 10 years.
  • The general strike disrupted transport, schools, airports, government offices and even state theatres. Unions demanded job protection, an increase in the minimum wage and a U-turn on Sarkozy's early move to cut taxes for the mega-rich. But the government has insisted there will be no concessions.
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  • Sarkozy has focused on a €27bn stimulus plan through public and private investment instead of boosting consumers' pockets with major tax-cuts or higher welfare spending. He argues that without investment leading to job creation, France, with an already weak private sector and stuttering economy, will not be able to recover as fast other countries.
  • After the last general strike in January, Sarkozy moved to defuse tension by introducing certain tax cuts and welfare payments for the poorest families. Unions said it was not enough, but the president's advisers this week said there would be no more immediate measures. "Sarkozy says there's no money for the public sector, that state coffers are dry, then he miraculously finds money to bail out the car industry," said Olivier Langillier, a nurse at the Paris march.
Argos Media

What would an "even-handed" U.S. Middle East policy look like? | Stephen M. Walt - 0 views

walt.foreignpolicy.com/...essure_on_israel_a_users_guide

Israel Stephen Walt US

shared by Argos Media on 22 Apr 09 - No Cached
  • the United States supports the creation of a viable Palestinian state in virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza. The new Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu opposes this goal, and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has already said that he does not think Israel is bound by its recent commitments on this issue.  
  • To advance its own interests, therefore, the United States will have to pursue a more even-handed policy than it has in the past, and put strong pressure on both sides to come to an agreement. Instead of the current "special relationship" -- where the U.S. gives Israel generous and nearly-unconditional support -- the United States and Israel would have a more normal relationship, akin to U.S. relations with other democracies (where public criticism and overt pressure sometimes occurs).  While still committed to Israel’s security, the United States would use the leverage at its disposal to make a two-state solution a reality.
  • This idea appears to be gaining ground. Several weeks ago, a bipartisan panel of distinguished foreign policy experts headed by Henry Siegman and Brent Scowcroft issued a thoughtful report calling for the Obama administration to “engage in prompt, sustained, and determined efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.” Success, they noted, "will require a careful blend of persuasion, inducement, reward, and pressure..."
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  • Last week, the Economist called for the United States to reduce its aid to Israel if the Netanyahu government continues to reject a two-state solution.  The Boston Globe offered a similar view earlier this week, advising Obama to tell Netanyahu "to take the steps necessary for peace or risk compromising Israel's special relationship with America." A few days ago, Ha’aretz reported that the Obama Administration was preparing Congressional leaders for a possible confrontation with the Netanyahu government.
  • We already know what it means for the United States to put pressure on the Palestinians, because Washington has done that repeatedly -- and sometimes effectively -- over the past several decades.  During the 1970s, for example, the United States supported King Hussein’s violent crackdown on the PLO cadres who were threatening his rule in Jordan. During the 1980s, the United States refused to recognize the PLO until it accepted Israel’s right to exist.  After the outbreak of the Second Intifada, the Bush administration refused to deal with Yasser Arafat and pushed hard for his replacement. After Arafat's death, we insisted on democratic elections for a new Palestinian assembly and then rejected the results when Hamas won. The United States has also gone after charitable organizations with ties to Hamas and backed Israel’s recent campaign in Gaza.
  • In short, the United States has rarely hesitated to use its leverage to try to shape Palestinian behavior, even if some of these efforts -- such as the inept attempt to foment a Fatah coup against Hamas in 2007 -- have backfired.
  • The United States has only rarely put (mild) pressure on Israel in recent decades (and never for very long), even when the Israeli government was engaged in actions (such as building settlements) that the U.S. government opposed.  The question is: if the Netanyahu/Lieberman government remains intransigent, what should Obama do?
  • 4. Downgrade existing arrangements for “strategic cooperation.”  There are now a number of institutionalized arrangements for security cooperation between the Pentagon and the Israel Defense Forces and between U.S. and Israeli intelligence. The Obama administration could postpone or suspend some of these meetings, or start sending lower-grade representatives to them.
  • 2. Change the Rhetoric. The Obama administration could begin by using different language to describe certain Israeli policies.  While reaffirming America’s commitment to Israel’s existence as a Jewish-majority state, it could stop referring to settlement construction as “unhelpful,” a word that makes U.S. diplomats sound timid and mealy-mouthed.  Instead, we could start describing the settlements as “illegal” or as “violations of international law.”
  • U.S. officials could even describe Israel’s occupation as “contrary to democracy,” “unwise,” “cruel,” or “unjust.”  Altering the rhetoric would send a clear signal to the Israeli government and its citizens that their government’s opposition to a two-state solution was jeopardizing the special relationship.
  • 3. Support a U.N. Resolution Condemning the Occupation.  Since 1972, the United States has vetoed forty-three U.N. Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel (a number greater than the sum of all vetoes cast by the other permanent members)
  • If the Obama administration wanted to send a clear signal that it was unhappy with Israel’s actions, it could sponsor a resolution condemning the occupation and calling for a two-state solution.
  • 1. Cut the aid package? If you add it all up, Israel gets over $3 billion in U.S. economic and military aid each year, which works out to about $500 per Israeli citizen. There’s a lot of potential leverage here, but it’s probably not the best stick to use, at least not at first. Trying to trim or cut the aid package will trigger an open and undoubtedly ugly confrontation in Congress (where the influence of AIPAC and other hard-line groups in the Israel lobby is greatest). So that’s not where I’d start.
  • There is in fact a precedent for this step: after negotiating the original agreements for a “strategic partnership,” the Reagan administration suspended them following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Today, such a step would surely get the attention of Israel’s security establishment.
  • 5. Reduce U.S. purchases of Israeli military equipment. In addition to providing Israel with military assistance (some of which is then used to purchase U.S. arms), the Pentagon also buys millions of dollars of weaponry and other services from Israel’s own defense industry. Obama could instruct Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to slow or decrease these purchases, which would send an unmistakable signal that it was no longer "business-as-usual." Given the battering Israel’s economy has taken in the current global recession, this step would get noticed too.
  • 6. Get tough with private organizations that support settlement activity. As David Ignatius recently noted in the Washington Post, many private donations to charitable organizations operating in Israel are tax-deductible in the United States, including private donations that support settlement activity. This makes no sense: it means the American taxpayer is indirectly subsidizing activities that are contrary to stated U.S. policy and that actually threaten Israel’s long-term future.  Just as the United States has gone after charitable contributions flowing to terrorist organizations, the U.S. Treasury could crack down on charitable organizations (including those of some prominent Christian Zionists) that are supporting these illegal activities. 
  • 7. Place more limits on U.S. loan guarantees. The United States has provided billions of dollars of loan guarantees to Israel on several occasions, which enabled Israel to borrow money from commercial banks at lower interest rates.  Back in 1992, the first Bush administration held up nearly $10 billion in guarantees until Israel agreed to halt settlement construction and attend the Madrid peace conference, and the dispute helped undermine the hard-line Likud government of Yitzhak Shamir and bring Yitzhak Rabin to power, which in turn made the historic Oslo Agreement possible.
  • 8. Encourage other U.S. allies to use their influence too. In the past, the United States has often pressed other states to upgrade their own ties with Israel.  If pressure is needed, however, the United States could try a different tack.  For example, we could quietly encourage the EU not to upgrade its relations with Israel until it had agreed to end the occupation.
  • most of these measures could be implemented by the Executive Branch alone, thereby outflanking die-hard defenders of the special relationship in Congress.  Indeed, even hinting that it was thinking about some of these measures would probably get Netanyahu to start reconsidering his position.
  • Most importantly, Obama and his aides will need to reach out to Israel’s supporters in the United States, and make it clear to them that pressing Israel to end the occupation is essential for Israel’s long-term survival.
  • He will have to work with the more far-sighted elements in the pro-Israel community -- including groups like J Street, the Israel Policy Forum, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom,  and others
  • In effect, the United States would be giving Israel a choice: it can end its self-defeating occupation of Palestinian lands, actively work for a two-state solution, and thereby remain a cherished American ally.  Or it can continue to expand the occupation and face a progressive loss of American support as well as the costly and corrupting burden of ruling millions of Palestinians by force.
  • Indeed, that is why many—though of course not all--Israelis would probably welcome a more active and evenhanded U.S. role. It was former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who said "if the two-state solution collapses, Israel will face a South-Africa style struggle for political rights." And once that happens, he warned, “the state of Israel is finished."
  • The editor of Ha’aretz, David Landau, conveyed much the same sentiment last September when he told former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the United States should "rape" Israel in order to force a solution. Landau's phrase was shocking and offensive, but it underscored the sense of urgency felt within some segments of the Israeli body politic.
Pedro Gonçalves

U.S. Is Still Using Private Spy Ring, Despite Doubts - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...16contractors.html

US Afghanistan Pakistan AfPak Army Intelligence

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 16 May 10 - Cached
  • Top military officials have continued to rely on a secret network of private spies who have produced hundreds of reports from deep inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to American officials and businessmen, despite concerns among some in the military about the legality of the operation.
  • Earlier this year, government officials admitted that the military had sent a group of former Central Intelligence Agency officers and retired Special Operations troops into the region to collect information — some of which was used to track and kill people suspected of being militants. Many portrayed it as a rogue operation that had been hastily shut down once an investigation began.
  • But interviews with more than a dozen current and former government officials and businessmen, and an examination of government documents, tell a different a story. Not only are the networks still operating, their detailed reports on subjects like the workings of the Taliban leadership in Pakistan and the movements of enemy fighters in southern Afghanistan are also submitted almost daily to top commanders and have become an important source of intelligence.
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  • The American military is largely prohibited from operating inside Pakistan. And under Pentagon rules, the army is not allowed to hire contractors for spying.
  • Military officials said that when Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in the region, signed off on the operation in January 2009, there were prohibitions against intelligence gathering, including hiring agents to provide information about enemy positions in Pakistan. The contractors were supposed to provide only broad information about the political and tribal dynamics in the region, and information that could be used for “force protection,” they said.
  • Some Pentagon officials said that over time the operation appeared to morph into traditional spying activities. And they pointed out that the supervisor who set up the contractor network, Michael D. Furlong, was now under investigation.
  • But a review of the program by The New York Times found that Mr. Furlong’s operatives were still providing information using the same intelligence gathering methods as before. The contractors were still being paid under a $22 million contract, the review shows, managed by Lockheed Martin and supervised by the Pentagon office in charge of special operations policy.
Pedro Gonçalves

A Contagion of Bad Ideas - Joseph E. Stiglitz - Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...English

Economy

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 06 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • A busted bubble led to a massive Keynesian stimulus that averted a much deeper recession, but that also fueled substantial budget deficits. The response – massive spending cuts – ensures that unacceptably high levels of unemployment (a vast waste of resources and an oversupply of suffering) will continue, possibly for years.
  • even as Europe’s leaders promised that help was on the way, they doubled down on the belief that non-crisis countries must cut spending. The resulting austerity will hinder Europe’s growth, and thus that of its most distressed economies: after all, nothing would help Greece more than robust growth in its trading partners. And low growth will hurt tax revenues, undermining the proclaimed goal of fiscal consolidation.
  • The ECB argued that taxpayers should pick up the entire tab for Greece’s bad sovereign debt, for fear that any private-sector involvement (PSI) would trigger a “credit event,” which would force large payouts on credit-default swaps (CDSs), possibly fueling further financial turmoil. But, if that is a real fear for the ECB – if it is not merely acting on behalf of private lenders – surely it should have demanded that the banks have more capital.
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  • the ECB should have barred banks from the risky CDS market, where they are held hostage to ratings agencies’ decisions about what constitutes a “credit event.”
  • the extreme right threatened to shut down the US government, confirming what game theory suggests: when those who are irrationally committed to destruction if they don’t get their way confront rational individuals, the former prevail.
  • with housing prices continuing to fall, GDP growth faltering, and unemployment remaining stubbornly high (one of six Americans who would like a full-time job still cannot get one), more stimulus, not austerity, is needed – for the sake of balancing the budget as well. The single most important driver of deficit growth is weak tax revenues, owing to poor economic performance; the single best remedy would be to put America back to work. The recent debt deal is a move in the wrong direction.
  • bad ideas move easily across borders, and misguided economic notions on both sides of the Atlantic have been reinforcing each other. The same will be true of the stagnation that those policies bring.
Argos Media

China looks to British experience for African expansion | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...se-companies-investment-africa

China UK Africa Amnesty International Irene Khan Dfid

shared by Argos Media on 22 May 09 - Cached
  • China has embarked on a series of joint projects with Britain in Africa, with the aim of avoiding the abuses and mistakes committed by former colonial powers as it rapidly increases its economic role on the continent.China invested $4.5bn in infrastructure in Africa in 2007, more than the G8 countries combined, and much of the investment has been private. The number of Chinese companies operating in Africa has more than doubled in just two years to 2,000, with about 400 operating in Nigeria alone, according to new research.
  • In contrast to the "one-dimensional" stereotype of state-owned enterprises extracting natural resources, most of the investment is from privately-owned firms and many are involved in manufacturing.However, many of the business practices followed by those companies, such as a preference for using Chinese workers, coupled with Beijing's belief that human rights are the preserve of host country governments, have led to claims that the rapid rise in Chinese influence in Africa has not helped its human rights.
  • "The Chinese firms that are moving are building infrastructure, they are building roads, they are providing jobs for people, but at the same time: what they are not doing, neither the Chinese government nor the companies, is raising any issues about how the population are being treated," Irene Khan, Amnesty International's secretary general, said today."Therefore we find that the Chinese presence is not helping the human rights situation. It might be aggravating it when revenues and resources are being paid into coffers of hugely corrupt and oppressive governments."
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  • In an apparent reflection of Chinese anxiety over its reputation in Africa, both embassies and companies have been urged by Beijing to forge closer links to local communities.China has also entered into a partnership with Britain's department for international development, (Dfid)intended to monitor and control the social and environmental impact of Chinese investment.
Pedro Gonçalves

Millionaire Mullahs - Forbes.com - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...056.html

Iran Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani Hezbollah Iranian Revolutionary Guards

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 25 Jun 09 - No Cached
  • t's rumble time in Tehran. At dozens of intersections in the capital of Iran thousands of students are protesting on a recent Friday around midnight, as they do nearly every night, chanting pro-democracy slogans and lighting bonfires on street corners. Residents of the surrounding middle-class neighborhoods converge in their cars, honking their horns in raucous support. Suddenly there's thunder in the air. A gang of 30 motorcyclists, brandishing iron bars and clubs as big as baseball bats, roars through the stalled traffic. They glare at the drivers, yell threats, thump cars. Burly and bearded, the bikers yank two men from their auto and pummel them. Most protesters scatter. Uniformed policemen watch impassively as the thugs beat the last stragglers.
  • These Hell's Angels are part of the Hezbollah militia, recruited mostly from the countryside. Iran's ruling mullahs roll them out whenever they need to intimidate their opponents. The Islamic Republic is a strange dictatorship. As it moves to repress growing opposition to clerical rule, the regime relies not on soldiers or uniformed police (many of whom sympathize with the protesters) but on the bullies of Hezbollah and the equally thuggish Revolutionary Guards. The powers that be claim to derive legitimacy from Allah but remain on top with gangsterlike methods of intimidation, violence and murder.
  • Who controls today's Iran? Certainly not Mohammad Khatami, the twice-elected moderate president, or the reformist parliament. Not even the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a stridently anti-American but unremarkable cleric plucked from the religious ranks 14 years ago to fill the shoes of his giant predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini, is fully in control. The real power is a handful of clerics and their associates who call the shots behind the curtain and have gotten very rich in the process.
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  • The 1979 revolution expropriated the assets of foreign investors and the nation's wealthiest families; oil had long been nationalized, but the mullahs seized virtually everything else of value--banks, hotels, car and chemical companies, makers of drugs and consumer goods. What distinguishes Iran is that many of these assets were given to Islamic charitable foundations, controlled by the clerics. According to businessmen and former foundation executives, the charities now serve as slush funds for the mullahs and their supporters.
  • Dozens of interviews with businessmen, merchants, economists and former ministers and other top government officials reveal a picture of a dictatorship run by a shadow government that--the U.S. State Department suspects--finances terrorist groups abroad through a shadow foreign policy. Its economy is dominated by shadow business empires and its power is protected by a shadow army of enforcers.
  • Ironically, the man most adept at manipulating this hidden power structure is one of Iran's best-known characters--Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has been named an ayatollah, or religious leader. He was the speaker of parliament and Khomeini's right-hand man in the 1980s, president of Iran from 1989 to 1997 and is now chairman of the powerful Expediency Council, which resolves disputes between the clerical establishment and parliament. Rafsanjani has more or less run the Islamic Republic for the past 24 years.
  • He played it smart, aligning himself in the 1960s with factions led by Ayatollah Khomeini, then becoming the go-to guy after the revolution. A hard-liner ideologically, Rafsanjani nonetheless has a pragmatic streak. He convinced Khomeini to end the Iran-Iraq war and broke Iran's international isolation by establishing trade relations with the Soviet Union, China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In the 1990s he restarted Iran's nuclear program. He is also the father of Iran's "privatization" program. During his presidency the stock market was revived, some government companies were sold to insiders, foreign trade was liberalized and the oil sector was opened up to private companies. Most of the good properties and contracts, say dissident members of Iran's Chamber of Commerce, ended up in the hands of mullahs, their associates and, not least, Rafsanjani's own family, who rose from modest origins as small-scale pistachio farmers.
Pedro Gonçalves

Clinton orders inquiry into alleged abuse at US embassy in Kabul | World news | guardia... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...afghanistan-embassy-guards

US Afghanistan Blackwater ArmorGroup

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Sep 09 - Cached
  • The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has ordered an investigation into allegations that private contractors employed to protect the American embassy in Afghanistan were engaged in "deviant and lewd" parties that have been compared to Lord of the Flies. The decision to launch the inquiry came after an independent group sent her a 10-page dossier yesterday claiming that the security guards at the embassy had been engaged in drunken parties involving prostitutes and the kind of ritual humiliation associated with gang initiation. Pictures and video footage were attached to the dossier.
  • The dossier, compiled by the independent investigative group Project on Government Insight, includes an email allegedly from a guard currently serving in Kabul describing scenes in which guards and supervisors are "peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks, vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks (there is video of that one), broken doors after drnken [sic] brawls, threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity".
  • Blackwater, now named Xe. The group at the centre of the new allegations are the ArmorGroup, part of the Florida-based Wackenhut group, one of the biggest private security organisations in the US. The organisation did not respond immediately today to the allegations.
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  • In the dossier, it said that guards were "engaging in near-weekly deviant hazing and humiliation of subordinates" . It claimed that some guards had barricaded themselves in their rooms out of fear that the alleged hazing might harm them physically.It further claims that guard force supervisors "made no secret that, to celebrate a birthday, they brought prostitutes into Camp Sullivan, which maintains a sign-in log."
Argos Media

Secret police intelligence was given to E.ON before planned demo | UK news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...police-intelligence-e-on-berr

UK Society Police E.ON BERR

shared by Argos Media on 20 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Government officials handed confidential police intelligence about environmental activists to the energy giant E.ON before a planned peaceful demonstration, according to private emails seen by the Guardian.
  • Correspondence between civil servants and security officials at the company reveals how intelligence was shared about the peaceful direct action group Climate Camp in the run-up to the demonstration at Kingsnorth, the proposed site of a new coal-fired power station in north Kent.
  • Intelligence passed to the energy firm by officials from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) included detailed information about the movements of protesters and their meetings. E.ON was also given a secret strategy document written by environmental campaigners and information from the Police National Information and Coordination Centre (PNICC), which gathers national and international intelligence for emergency planning.
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  • BERR officials passed a strategy document belonging to the "environmental protest community" to E.ON, saying: "If you haven't seen this then you will be interested in its contents."• Government officials forwarded a Metropolitan police intelligence document to E.ON, detailing the movements and whereabouts of climate protesters in the run-up to demonstration.• E.ON passed its planning strategy for the protest to the department's civil servants, adding: "Contact numbers will follow."• BERR and E.ON tried to share information about their media strategies before the protest, and civil servants asked the energy company for press contacts for EDF, BP and Kent police.
  • Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said the sharing of police intelligence between BERR and E.ON was a serious abuse of power. "The government is in danger of turning police constables into little more than bouncers and private security guards for big business. Police should be used to protect potential victims but also to facilitate people's right to protest," she said.
  • One email from E.ON to BERR on 24 July gave details of the company's security strategy. In another, sent on 28 July, BERR forwards intelligence from the PNICC, detailing activists' movements, listing times, dates and numbers involved.
Argos Media

Contracting Boom Could Fizzle Out - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2009040604049.html

Robert Gates Pentagon CACI Boeing Lockheed Martin F-22 Joint Strike Fighter TSAT Future Combat Systems SAIC F-35

shared by Argos Media on 07 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The recent surge in the Washington area's defense-contracting workforce would begin to ebb under Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates's latest budget proposal as the Pentagon moves to replace legions of private workers with full-time civil servants.
  • The budget would reverse a contracting boom, beginning after the 2001 terrorist attacks, in which the proportion of private contractors grew to 39 percent of the Pentagon's workforce. Gates said he wants to reduce that percentage to a pre-Sept. 11 level of 26 percent.
  • Roughly 7.5 percent of metropolitan Washington's labor force -- about 291,000 jobs -- is tied to Pentagon contracting. Defense analysts and government contracting experts said Gates's move could affect companies such as CACI and SAIC, which do large amounts of government contracting work, offering technical services, administrative support, database outsourcing and contract management.
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  • Local giants Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics also run substantial government-support operations and would see some weapons projects cut, while other programs would receive budget increases.
  • In particular, the proposed budget would sharply reduce the number of contractors who help the Pentagon oversee and manage its vast weapons-buying apparatus following a string of reports chronicling cost overruns and other problems.
  • A CACI executive said the company is waiting for further details before commenting. The Arlington company has 12,300 employees, half of whom are in the D.C. region. Ninety-five percent of its $2.4 billion in revenue last year came from federal contracts for technical services and information technology and contracting oversight for the Army and Navy, as well as such Pentagon offices as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Missile Defense Agency.
  • Overall, the budget Gates proposed calls for major cuts to the weapons programs of some of the largest contractors.
  • One of the hardest-hit defense firms was Boeing. The Chicago company's $150 billion Future Combat Systems, a family of Army vehicles linked by high-tech communications, came under criticism from Gates for being costly and plagued by development problems. He proposed canceling the $87 billion vehicle part of the system -- a move that would hurt Boeing, SAIC and their subcontractors, BAE and General Dynamics.
  • Gates also proposed canceling some of Boeing's missile defense programs, including one to equip a modified 747 aircraft with a laser that can shoot down missiles soon after they're launched, saying the program "has significant affordability and technology problems and the program's proposed operational role is highly questionable."
  • Boeing would also be hurt because it makes one-third of the F-22 fighter jet and the Pentagon plans to stop ordering additional aircraft. Gates would also cancel the Air Force's program to build a new search-and-rescue helicopter, which had been awarded to Boeing. And it would not order more of Boeing's C-17 cargo planes. Boeing could also see a military satellite program, known as TSAT, end.
  • Lockheed Martin, of Bethesda, the biggest defense contractor in the world, also took hits on several of its major programs.
  • Gates said he would kill the company's bid to build the presidential helicopter, known as the VH-71, citing the fact that the program is six years late and has gone from initial estimates of $6 billion to $13 billion.
  • Lockheed was also hit by the move to not order more F-22 fighter jets. Perhaps hoping for support in Congress, the company has taken out newspaper ads explaining how its F-22 supports roughly 25,000 jobs around the country.
  • But the Pentagon proposed ordering more of Lockheed's F-35 known as the Joint Strike Fighter, and it would increase from two to three the number of littoral combat ships being built by Lockheed and General Dynamics to patrol near enemy coastlines.
Pedro Gonçalves

New Cyberwar Rules Of Engagement: Will The U.S. Draft Companies To Fight? - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...s-draft-companies-to-fight.php

Cyber Security Cyber Warfare US

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 16 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • In a speech to business leaders in New York City Oct. 11, Panetta for the first time admitted the U.S. armed forces were prepared to take on an offensive role against any cyber attackers who seek to cause significant harm to the U.S. - or the loss of life to its citizens. Prior to this statement, the military has acknowledged only a defensive stance against such attacks.
  • The Washington Post reports that among those new rules of engagement, "for the first time, military cyber-specialists would be able to immediately block malware outside the Pentagon’s networks in an effort to defend the private sector against an imminent, significant physical attack, The Post has reported. At present, such action requires special permission from the President."
  • at least one academic paper has argued that companies be drafted to participate in cyberwarfare. "Cyberwarfare… will penetrate the territorial borders of the attacked state and target high-value civilian businesses," wrote University of Dayton Professor Susan Brenner in 2011. "Nation-states will therefore need to integrate the civilian employees of these (and perhaps other) companies into their cyberwarfare response structures if a state is able to respond effectively to cyberattacks. "While many companies may voluntarily elect to participate in such an effort, others may decline to do so, which creates a need, in effect, to conscript companies for this purpose," Brenner and her co-author, attorney Leo Clarke, added.
Pedro Gonçalves

Analysis: Cold War with Iran heats up across Mideast | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...-coldwar-idUKTRE7B41GC20111205

Iran

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 12 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • The Sunni-ruled states of the Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, say Iran stirs up unrest in their Shi'ite communities, although many Western analysts believe blaming Iran for protests this year in those countries is an overstatement or at least oversimplification.
  • "U.S. and Western power in the region is weakening, and that is leaving a vacuum - most notably in Iraq - and you can see the main stakeholders in the region reacting to Iran's readiness to fill that vacuum," says Reva Bhalla, head of analysis at US private intelligence company Stratfor.
  • This year's uprising in Syria - Iran's rare Arab friend - has created a new battlefield. Since the early days of the uprising, U.S. officials repeatedly and pointedly said they believed Assad's government was receiving support from Tehran.Assad has since been rapidly abandoned by the Arab League, in a diplomatic effort led by Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni Arab Gulf states. Analysts and officials say that could have as much to do with pushing back against Iran as in reining in killings and rights abuses in Syria itself.
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  • Saudi or other Arab backing for the increasingly armed opposition could escalate matters further, potentially producing a sectarian civil war lasting years and spilling across borders into neighboring states.
  • "A proxy Saudi-Iranian war in Iraq represents a very considerable threat to oil supplies," said Alastair Newton, chief political analyst at Japanese bank Nomura.
  • Some of the increased friction with its neighbors could be a symptom of a power struggle within Iran itself, Newton said."I think one of the reasons you're seeing temperature rising between Iran and others is because you're seeing temperature rising in Tehran itself."Recent events such as the embassy storming, in which Iran seemed willing to tear up the international rulebook, could be a sign of increasing clout of hardline clerics and Revolutionary Guard commanders.The attack on Britain's embassy prompted widespread international condemnation and looks to have ushered in a much tighter sanctions. That too may strengthen the hardliners.
  • Last year's Stuxnet computer worm, which damaged computers used in industrial machinery, was widely believed to have been a U.S.-Israeli attack to cripple Iranian nuclear centrifuges.Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed or disappeared, and Iran blames U.S. or Israeli intelligence services.
  • Two explosions last month in Iran, one of which killed a Revolutionary Guards gunnery general and around a dozen other officers, prompted widespread speculation in Israel that its intelligence services were involved.
  • The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq makes it possible for Israeli jets to pass through its airspace without needing U.S. permission.
Pedro Gonçalves

U.S. indirectly funding Afghan warlords: House report | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...idUSTRE65L0SK20100622

Afghanistan US

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 22 Jun 10 - Cached
  • The Pentagon's system of outsourcing to private companies the task of moving supplies in Afghanistan, and leaving it up to them to provide their own security, frees U.S. troops to focus on counterinsurgency.But its unintended consequences undermine U.S. efforts to curtail corruption and build an effective Afghan government, according to the report to be reviewed at a congressional hearing on Tuesday."This arrangement has fueled a vast protection racket run by a shadowy network of warlords, strongmen, commanders, corrupt Afghan officials, and perhaps others," Representative John Tierney, chairman of a House of Representatives national security subcommittee, said in a statement.
  • The report by the subcommittee's Democratic staff called protection payments "a significant potential source of funding for the Taliban," citing numerous documents, incidents reports and emails that refer to attempts at Taliban extortion along the road.
  • Many contractors have told U.S. military officials that warlords were demanding protection payments in exchange for safe passage and that these payments were funding the insurgency, the report said. But the contractors concerns were never appropriately addressed, it said.
Argos Media

Barak freezes move to raze settlement homes built on Palestinian land - Haaretz - Israe... - 0 views

haaretz.com/...1072968.html

Israel Israeli Settlements West Bank B'Tselem Ofra

shared by Argos Media on 25 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday issued an order against demolishing Israeli homes built on Palestinian land in the West Bank settlement of Ofra, saying that the matter must be investigated before such action is taken.
  • Barak's order was made in response to a petition submitted last June by five residents of the nearby Palestinian village of Ein Yabrud and the Israeli rights group Yesh Din and B'Tselem, demanding that the High Court of Justice instruct the state to evacuate the settlement.
  • The petition referred to nine settlement structures built in an area apparently been constructed on private Palestinian land. The houses were built without permits and in violation of the settlement's master plan. Work continued despite injunctions to halt it that were issued almost two years ago, and demolition orders that were issued subsequently were also ignored. Advertisement In a response submitted to the court on Sunday, Barak said he recently decided to refrain from demolishing the houses "at this time," for three reasons. First, the issues raised by these houses are also relevant to other houses in Ofra aside from the nine in question. Second, people have been living in these houses for many months. Third, the houses are located deep inside the settlement, not on its outskirts. Therefore, a comprehensive policy relating to the entire settlement is needed, and it would be wrong to set a special policy that applies to these houses only, said Barak.
Pedro Gonçalves

2 Chinese Schools Said to Be Linked to Online Attacks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...19china.html

China US Cyber Warfare

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 20 Feb 10 - Cached
  • A series of online attacks on Google and dozens of other American corporations have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military, say people involved in the investigation.
  • the attacks, aimed at stealing trade secrets and computer codes and capturing e-mail of Chinese human rights activists, may have begun as early as April, months earlier than previously believed.
  • Computer security experts, including investigators from the National Security Agency, have been working since then to pinpoint the source of the attacks. Until recently, the trail had led only to servers in Taiwan.
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  • The Chinese schools involved are Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School
  • Lanxiang, in east China’s Shandong Province, is a huge vocational school that was established with military support and trains some computer scientists for the military. The school’s computer network is operated by a company with close ties to Baidu, the dominant search engine in China and a competitor of Google.
  • Within the computer security industry and the Obama administration, analysts differ over how to interpret the finding that the intrusions appear to come from schools instead of Chinese military installations or government agencies. Some analysts have privately circulated a document asserting that the vocational school is being used as camouflage for government operations. But other computer industry executives and former government officials said it was possible that the schools were cover for a “false flag” intelligence operation being run by a third country. Some have also speculated that the hacking could be a giant example of criminal industrial espionage, aimed at stealing intellectual property from American technology firms.
  • Independent researchers who monitor Chinese information warfare caution that the Chinese have adopted a highly distributed approach to online espionage, making it almost impossible to prove where an attack originated. “We have to understand that they have a different model for computer network exploit operations,” said James C. Mulvenon, a Chinese military specialist and a director at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis in Washington. Rather than tightly compartmentalizing online espionage within agencies as the United States does, he said, the Chinese government often involves volunteer “patriotic hackers” to support its policies.
  • Google’s decision to step forward and challenge China over the intrusions has created a highly sensitive issue for the United States government. Shortly after the company went public with its accusations, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton challenged the Chinese in a speech on Internet censors, suggesting that the country’s efforts to control open access to the Internet were in effect an information-age Berlin Wall.
  • A report on Chinese online warfare prepared for the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission in October 2009 by Northrop Grumman identified six regions in China with military efforts to engage in such attacks. Jinan, site of the vocational school, was one of the regions.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC News - China anger at Dalai Lama-Obama meeting - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8523319.stm

China US Tibet

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 19 Feb 10 - Cached
  • A visit by the Dalai Lama to Washington has "seriously undermined" relations between the US and China, Beijing says.
  • China had earlier expressed "strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition" to the meeting with a man they see as a separatist. It said the US should "take effective steps to eradicate the malign effects".
  • China's Vice-Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai summoned ambassador Jon Huntsman to lodge a "solemn representation".
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  • "The behaviour of the US side seriously interferes in China's internal politics and seriously hurts the national feelings of the Chinese people," a ministry statement said.
  • The White House meeting was held amid recent tensions, mainly over a US arms sale to Taiwan and allegations of Chinese cyber-spying.
  • Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement that the meeting between President Obama and the exiled Tibetan leader "violated the US government's repeated acceptance that Tibet is a part of China and it does not support Tibetan independence".
  • The closed talks were held at the White House's Map Room instead of the more official Oval Office, in an attempt to signal to China that it was a private, not a political meeting.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC News - Newly unveiled East Jerusalem plan put on hold - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8546276.stm

Israel Palestine Jerusalem

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Mar 10 - Cached
  • The mayor of Jerusalem has announced a plan to demolish an area of Arab East Jerusalem to make way for an upmarket district of hotels and gardens.But hours before Mayor Nir Barkat was due to announce his scheme - called the King's Garden - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said work should be delayed. The Israelis say the Palestinian houses to be demolished have been built without permits and have become a slum.
  • Mr Barkat called the plan a "bold move" and said it would be beneficial for both Palestinians and Israelis. "The plan is a win-win plan for the future of the city, taking into consideration the public and private interests, taking an area that has been neglected and turning it into an area that we can all be proud of," he said.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC News - Karzai poll body power grab sparks Western concern - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8529693.stm

Afghanistan Hamid Karzai

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 23 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Western diplomats have expressed deep concern at a decree from Afghan President Hamid Karzai granting him total control over a key election body.The move gives him the power to appoint all five members of Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC). The watchdog helped expose massive fraud in last year's presidential poll, forcing Mr Karzai into a second vote.
  • The BBC has been told the outgoing UN representative to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, had struck a private deal that two of the five commission members would be foreigners.
  • Under that agreement, one of the appointees was expected to have veto power.
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  • But the deal does not feature in the new decree.
  • In a speech to parliament on the first day of its spring session on Saturday, President Karzai listed his priorities, which included reforming the ECC's structure. He reportedly said that in preparation for this year's parliamentary elections, he would limit "interference from others" by "Afghanising" the poll process.
Pedro Gonçalves

I could have vetoed UK military action in Iraq, Jack Straw tells inquiry | Politics | g... - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...straw-iraq-war-inquiry

Iraq War Jack Straw Tony Blair UK

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 21 Jan 10 - Cached
  • "My decision to support military action in respect of Iraq was the most difficult decision I have ever faced in my life," he wrote. "I was also fully aware that my support for military action was critical. If I had refused that, the UK's participation in the military action would not, in practice, have been possible. There almost certainly would have been no majority either in cabinet or in the Commons."He went on to say he had made a choice to support Blair, adding: "I have never backed away from it, and I do not intend to do so, and fully accept the responsibilities which flow from that. I believed at the time, and I still believe, that we made the best judgments we could have done in the circumstances."
  • During his oral evidence to the inquiry, Straw said the "psyche" of decision-makers had been influenced by past conflicts. "The lesson of Suez was to stay close to the Americans, and the lesson of the Falklands was to take note of the intelligence," he said
  • Straw said one of his aims before the invasion was to get the George Bush administration to "go down the UN route. A key part of our approach was to ... try to get to a point where the US objective was not regime change but the disarmament of Iraq," he added.
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  • There has been speculation that Straw had private doubts about military action to overthrow Saddam. In public, he was one of the most vigorous advocates of the need to disarm the Iraqi dictator of his supposed weapons of mass destruction. However, a series of leaked documents suggested that, behind the scenes, he was urging Blair to be cautious about committing British troops to joining the US-led action against Iraq.
  • In one letter to Blair before his talks with Bush at the US president's ranch at Crawford, Texas, in April 2002, Straw warned him that the rewards from his visit would be few and the risks high.He said in the letter that there was no majority among Labour MPs for military action and he highlighted potential legal "elephant traps", warning that regime change was not, in itself, a justification for war.He concluded: "We have also to answer the big question ‑ what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than on anything."
  • At a meeting with Blair and other key ministers and officials in July 2002, Straw described the case against Iraq as "thin" and said Saddam's WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.
  • Finally, on 16 March 2003 ‑ two days before the crucial Commons vote on military action ‑ he was reported to have written to Blair advising him to consider alternatives to joining the invasion.
Pedro Gonçalves

IDF Civil Administration pushing for land takeover in West Bank - Haaretz Daily Newspap... - 0 views

www.haaretz.com/...takeover-in-west-bank-1.374564

Israel Palestine West Bank Israeli Settlements

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 22 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • the scope of land in question thwarts the possibility of exchanging areas in a peace settlement, according to the formula presented by U.S. President Barack Obama on May 19. This is because on the western side of the Green Line there is not enough open land to compensate the Palestinians for such an extensive annexation, according to examinations carried out during previous talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
  • the work procedures of the administration's team, dubbed "Blue Line," for demarcating state lands in the West Bank. He writes that the team's major task is to examine the state's declarations of ownership on lands mainly in the 80s and 90s. But the team, which has been working since 1999, is also examining the possibility of declaring lands with undefined ownership as state lands.
  • The document says the team gives priority to territories whose ownership is subject to a court debate or to dispute between settlers and Palestinians and between Palestinians and the state. The team also gives priority to advancing building public institutions, schools, parks and "other matters classified as urgent by the authorized bodies."
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  • The document says the Blue Line team is not required to examine and ascertain land ownership where the ownership has already been determined de facto by illegal construction.
  • The document also says the government's decision of 1979, saying that extending West Bank settlements and building new ones would only be carried out on state-owned land, must be adhered to.
  • Despite the document, dozens of settlements and outposts have been built, with the authorities' knowledge and assistance, on private, Palestinian-owned lands. These include Ofra, Beit El and Eli and the outposts Amona, Givat Asaf and Migron, to name just a few.
  • Dror Etkes, a left-wing activist monitoring construction in the settlements, has found that the administration's team included at least 26 outposts in territories it defines as state lands. This means the state has started a process to legitimize these outposts.
  • In an overwhelming majority of cases the team recommended classifying the examined lands as state lands, but in some cases the team accepted Palestinians' appeals, after appelants produced documents proving their ownership of the land.
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