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Paul Merrell

Exclusive: U.S. may use secrets act to stop suit against Iran sanctions group | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...ets-iran-idUSKBN0GS2DZ20140829

surveillance-state Restis UANI Mossad Germany-FIS state-secrets DoJ

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • (Reuters) - The U.S. government is considering using a powerful national security law to halt a private lawsuit against a non-profit group, United Against A Nuclear Iran, according to a source familiar with the case. Greek businessman and ship owner Victor Restis last year sued UANI for defamation after the New York-based group, whose advisors include former intelligence officials from the United States, Europe and Israel, accused him of violating sanctions on Iran by exporting oil from the country.Earlier this year, U.S. government lawyers declared their interest in the lawsuit, warning that information related to UANI could jeopardize law enforcement activities.An intervention by the government in a private civil lawsuit is rare, and its use of a privilege under state secrets statutes to clamp down on the case would be a highly unusual move. Other cases where the government has invoked the privilege include lawsuits filed against the National Security Agency in the wake of leaks to journalists by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
  • Restis' lawyer, Abbe Lowell, also declined to comment, but pointed to court filings in which he argued that the state secrets privilege could not be used without the government first explaining the true nature of its relationship to UANI.Restis denies doing illegal business with Iran. As part of the lawsuit, his lawyers have demanded that UANI produce whatever evidence it had that Restis was violating the sanctions and explain where it came from.Iran denies Western accusations that it has been seeking the capability to assemble nuclear weapons. Diplomatic talks between Iran and the United States, France, Russia, Britain, China and Germany are expected to resume in September, with the aim of reaching a settlement by Nov. 24 that would scale back Iran's nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions. An effort by government lawyers to mediate a settlement between UANI and Restis appears to have failed, the source said.
  • UANI advocates economic pressure on Iran to keep the country from building a nuclear arsenal. One of the group's tactics is to name and shame companies and people who do business in Iran.UANI has a small budget. It spent $1.5 million in 2013, according to its tax filings. The group, however, uses sources such as commercially sold satellite imagery for its campaigns.Among its advisory board members are Meir Dagan, the former director of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, and August Hanning, the former director of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service.Its chief executive, Mark Wallace, is also the CEO of Tigris Financial Group, an investment company backed by the billionaire American gold investor Thomas Kaplan. Restis did not originally name Kaplan in the defamation lawsuit, but his lawyer is seeking to depose Kaplan as part of the proceedings.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The government and lawyers for UANI have previously sought to delay evidence gathering in the case. UANI lawyers have told the court they could not produce certain documents requested by Restis because they would reveal U.S. government secrets.In March, a Justice Department lawyer wrote to U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos, who is presiding over the case in Manhattan, confirming the government's interest and requesting a temporary halt to proceedings while the government decided what to do. Ramos granted the stay, but ordered the government to explain why it wanted the material suppressed.In an April 9 letter, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Byars wrote that the material in question could be protected under a privilege designed to prevent the public release of law enforcement techniques, confidential sources, undercover operatives and active investigations. But if it invoked the powerful state secrets privilege, the government would be claiming the information would not only interfere with law enforcement efforts but also jeopardize national security.
  • The government has until Sept. 12 to decide whether to use the state secrets privilege.The privilege can be used to block the release of information in a lawsuit, but the government has also used it to force the dismissal of lawsuits. It is unclear whether the privilege would be applied only to certain information in the Restis case or whether it would cause the case to be closed completely.The case is Restis et al v. American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran Inc, (dba United Against A Nuclear Iran) et al, in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 13-05032.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14
     
    More detail on the very interesting Restis case against UANI. The normal rule is that a privilege, once the privileged information is disclosed to one who is not entitled to the privilege, is deemed waived. So Restis' lawyer is correct in stating that the state secrets privilege cannot be used without the government explaining the true nature of its relationship to UANI, assuming the information was not stolen by UANI. The disclosure is new of UANI having former directors of Israeli and German intelligence services on its advisory board. This case looks like a cyst on the verge of rupturing and spewing forth a whole bunch of Dark Government pus.   
Paul Merrell

Syria: US Success Would Only Be the End of the Beginning | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...ly-be-the-end-of-the-beginning

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iran Israel MEK

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • An October 7, 2015 hearing before the US Senate Committee on Armed Forces (SASC) titled, “Iranian Influence in Iraq and the Case of Camp Liberty,” served as a reaffirmation of America’s commitment to back the terrorist organization Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) and specifically 2,400 members of the organization being harbored on a former US military base in Iraq.
  • Providing testimony was former US Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, former US Marine Corps Commandant and former Supreme Allied Commander Europe General James Jones, USMC (Ret.), and Colonel Wesley Martin, US Army (Ret.). All three witnesses made passionate pleas before a room full of nodding senators for America to continue backing not only MEK terrorists currently harbored on a former US military base in Iraq, but to back groups like MEK inside of Iran itself to threaten the very survival of the government in Tehran. In the opening remarks by Lieberman, he stated: It was not only right and just that we took them off the foreign terrorist organization list, but the truth is now that we ought to be supportive of them and others in opposition to the government in Iran more than we have been.
  • MEK is described by Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Ray Takeyh as a “cult-like organization” with “totalitarian tendencies.” While Takeyh fails to expand on what he meant by “cult-like” and “totalitarian,” an interview with US State Department-run Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty reported that a MEK Camp Ashraf escapee claimed the terrorist organization bans marriage, using radios, the Internet, and holds many members against their will with the threat of death if ever they are caught attempting to escape. Not once is any of this backstory mentioned in the testimony of any of the witnesses before the senate hearing, defiling the memories of those who have been murdered and otherwise victimized by this terrorist organization. The de-listing of MEK in 2012 as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department is another indictment of the utter lack of principles the US clearly hides behind rather than in any way upholds as a matter of executing foreign policy.
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  • MEK has carried out decades of brutal terrorist attacks, assassinations, and espionage against the Iranian government and its people, as well as targeting Americans including the attempted kidnapping of US Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II, the attempted assassination of USAF Brigadier General Harold Price, the successful assassination of Lieutenant Colonel Louis Lee Hawkins, the double assassinations of Colonel Paul Shaffer and Lieutenant Colonel Jack Turner, and the successful ambush and killing of American Rockwell International employees William Cottrell, Donald Smith, and Robert Krongard. Admissions to the deaths of the Rockwell International employees can be found within a report written by former US State Department and Department of Defense official Lincoln Bloomfield Jr. on behalf of the lobbying firm Akin Gump in an attempt to dismiss concerns over MEK’s violent past and how it connects to its current campaign of armed terror – a testament to the depths of depravity from which Washington and London lobbyists operate. To this day MEK terrorists have been carrying out attacks inside of Iran killing political opponents, attacking civilian targets, as well as carrying out the US-Israeli program of targeting and assassinating Iranian scientists. MEK terrorists are also suspected of handling patsies in recent false flag operations carried out in India, Georgia, and Thailand, which have been ham-handedly blamed on the Iranian government.
  • Lieberman would also state (emphasis added): Here’s my point Mr. Chairman, we ought to compartmentalize that agreement also, that nuclear agreement. We ought to put it over there, and not let it stop us from confronting what they’re doing in Syria. Continuing the sanctions for human rights violations in Iran in support of terrorism. And here’s the point I want to make about the National Council of Resistance of Iran and other democratic opposition groups that are Iranian – we ought to be supporting them.  This regime in Tehran is hopeless. It’s not going to change. There’s no evidence … every piece of evidence says the contrary. So I hope we can find a way, we used to do this not so long ago, supporting opposition groups in Iran. They deserve our support, and actually they would constitute a form of pressure on the government in Tehran that would unsettle them as much as anything else we could do because it would threaten the survival of the regime which from every objective indicator I can see is a very unpopular regime in Iran.  The United States, unrepentant regarding the arc of chaos, mass murder, terrorism, civilizational destruction it has created stretching from Libya to Syria, now seeks openly to extend it further into Iran using precisely the same tactics – the use of terrorist proxies – to dismantle and destroy Iranian society.
  • MEK has already afforded the US the ability to wage a low-intensity conflict with Iran. MEK’s role in doing so was eagerly discussed in 2009, several years before it was even de-listed as a terrorist organization by the US State Department in the Brooking Institution’s policy paper “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran” (PDF). The report stated (emphasis added): Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.
  • In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.   Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread. Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks—often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.
  • Proof that Brookings’ policy paper was more than a mere theoretical exercise, in 2012 MEK would indeed be de-listed by the US State Department with support for the terrorist organization expanded. The fact that former senators and retired generals representing well-funded corporate think tanks even just this week are plotting to use MEK to overthrow the Iranian government should raise alarms that other criminality conspired within the pages of this policy paper may still well be in play. Lieberman himself suggests that proxy war and regime-change should proceed regardless of the so-called “nuclear deal” – with the 2009 Brookings report itself having stated that (emphasis added): …any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer—one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal.  Clearly, both Brookings in 2009, and Lieberman this week have conspired to use the so-called “Iranian Nuclear Deal” as cover for betrayal and regime change.
  • For those wondering why Russia has intervened in Syria in the matter that it has, it should be plainly obvious. The US has no intention to stop in Syria. With Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya behind it, and Syria within its clutches, it is clear that Iran is next, and inevitably this global blitzkrieg will not stop until it reaches Moscow and Beijing. Even as the US adamantly denies the obvious – that is has intentionally created and is currently perpetuating Al Qaeda, the so-called “Islamic State,” and other terrorist groups in Syria, it is openly conspiring to use another army of terrorists against neighboring Iran, live before a US Senate hearing. Should the US succeed in Syria, it would not be the end of the conflict, but only the end of the beginning of a much wider world war.
Paul Merrell

Netanyahu Ups the US Ante | Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...netanyahu-ups-the-us-ante

war & peace Israel Palestine U.S.-foreign-policy BDS Netanyahu Progressives

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu continues to play the tune to which U.S. politicians, including presidents and presidential candidates, dance. Now, his price for a future swirl around the dance floor is being raised to $4.5 billion a year, as retired Army Col. Ann Wright explains.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Nov 15
     
    Actually, the increase in U.S. aid to $4.5 billion annually was a done deal before Netanyahu's arrival. Netanyahu's trip to the U.S. was an unmitigated disaster for the Israeli Zionist right wing. He drew huge demonstrations in Washington, D.C., New York, and Chicago. And his appearance before the Democratic think tank Center for American Progress caused major news coverage of progressive Democrats' objections to Netanyahu being invited into the Democratic sanctum despite his mistreatment of the Palestinians, further cementing the Zionist cause into a Republican-only venue in Congress. All directly counter to Netanyahu's goal of patching up relations with Democratic Progressives. 
Paul Merrell

Saudis Said to Aid Israeli Plan to Bomb Iran | Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...-aid-israeli-plan-to-bomb-iran

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth negotiations Israel Saudis attack

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • According to an Israeli media report, Saudi Arabia has agreed to let Israeli warplanes fly over Saudi territory to save fuel while attacking Iranian nuclear sites, the latest indication of how the two former enemies have developed a behind-the-scenes alliance that is reshaping geopolitics in the Middle East.“The Saudi authorities are completely coordinated with Israel on all matters related to Iran,” a European official in Brussels told Israel’s Channel 2 in a report broadcast on Tuesday and described in other Israeli media outlets.
  • Riyadh’s only condition was that Israel make some progress in peace talks with the Palestinians, a stipulation that may be mostly cosmetic so the Saudis can save face with other Arab states without really interfering with an Israeli flyover to strike Iran.Disclosure of this Israeli-Saudi military cooperation also comes as the United States and five other world powers rush to finish an agreement with Iran to curtail but not eliminate its nuclear program, which Iran says is only for civilian purposes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to appear before the U.S. Congress on March 3 to undercut President Barack Obama’s negotiations.The reported Saudi permission for Israeli warplanes to take a shorter route to bomb Iran also suggests that Netanyahu may be laying the groundwork for his own plans to attack the Iranian nuclear sites if the international negotiations are successful. Netanyahu has denounced a possible deal as an “existential threat” to Israel.
Paul Merrell

Britain Detains the Partner of a Reporter Tied to Leaks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...of-reporter-tied-to-leaks.html

surveillance state Greenwald Miranda-detention border-search-&-seizure thumbdrive Snowden British-Terrorism-Act

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The partner of Glenn Greenwald, the journalist for The Guardian who has been publishing information leaked by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden, was detained for nine hours by the British authorities under a counterterrorism law while on a stop in London’s Heathrow Airport during a trip from Germany to Brazil, Mr. Greenwald said Sunday.
  • Mr. Greenwald’s partner, David Michael Miranda, 28, is a citizen of Brazil. He had spent the previous week in Berlin visiting Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker who has also been helping to disseminate Mr. Snowden’s leaks, to assist Mr. Greenwald. The Guardian had paid for the trip, Mr. Greenwald said, and Mr. Miranda was on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.
  • The Guardian published a report on Mr. Miranda’s detainment on Sunday afternoon. Mr. Greenwald said someone who identified himself as a security official from Heathrow Airport called him early on Sunday and informed him that Mr. Miranda had been detained, at that point for three hours. The British authorities, he said, told Mr. Miranda that they would obtain permission from a judge to arrest him for 48 hours, but he was released at the end of the nine hours, around 1 p.m. Eastern time. Mr. Miranda was in Berlin to deliver documents related to Mr. Greenwald’s investigation into government surveillance to Ms. Poitras, Mr. Greenwald said. Ms. Poitras, in turn, gave Mr. Miranda different documents to pass to Mr. Greenwald. Those documents, which were stored on encrypted thumb drives, were confiscated by airport security, Mr. Greenwald said. All of the documents came from the trove of materials provided to the two journalists by Mr. Snowden. The British authorities seized all of his electronic media — including video games, DVDs and data storage devices — and did not return them, Mr. Greenwald said.
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Aug 13
     
    My comments mighty be longer than Diigo allows from the client sidee so I will place them in in a comment following this post. However, do not miss the companion article in The Guardian, at  
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Aug 13
     
    Note that when detained, Mr. Miranda was acting in the role of a courier transporting documents on a thumb drive between two of the lead reporters working on the NSA scandal for The Guardian. The police kept the thumb drive and all other electronic devices Mr. Miranda carried, presumably to study their data stores.  Perhaps even more to the point, this was the seizure of leaked NSA documents and reporters' notes about them. I do not know about the UK law on the subject, but the shame of it is that it would be lawful accordng to the U.S. Supreme Court for U.S. Customs officials to do the same thing had Mr. Miranda arrived at an American international airport. Most Americans would be shocked to learn how many of their cherished Constitutional rights disappear at a port or entry or when crossing a border into the U.S. and when traveling within a 100-mile distance from a U.S. border on the U.S. side. But the particular detention of Mr. Miranda and seizure of the reporter's research and NSA document copies was sure from the outset to cause a major media stir. It has also provoked a strong diplomatic protest from Brazil This incident has already provoked not only a strong diplomatic protest from Brazil, but also in the UK, "Labour MP Tom Watson said he was shocked at the news and called for it to be made clear if any ministers were involved in authorising the detention." Also note in The Guardian article that the police were acting under authority of the draconian British Terrorism Act, which does not limit its application to those who are not suspected of being a terrorist. That UK government was willing to endure a public whipping by the media testifies loudly to the desperation of spy agencies - in the U.K., U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Israel intelligence alliance - to learn what documents Snowden leaked to Glenn Greenwald and the Washington Post so they have a clue about: [i] what hammer blows will hit them in the future so they can get out i
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Aug 13
     
    I see that I forgot to paste the link to the companion article in The Guardian. Here 'tis. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-greenwald-guardian-partner-detained-heathrow
Paul Merrell

White House threatens to veto 9/11 lawsuit bill - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

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

war & peace 9-11 Saudis legislation sovereign-immunity litigation

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • A bipartisan bill to let families victimized by the 9/11 terrorist attacks sue Saudi Arabia ran into sharp setbacks Monday, as the White House threatened a veto and a GOP senator privately sought to block the measure.The move comes as presidential candidates from both parties are seizing on the legislation to score points with New York voters ahead of Tuesday's critical primary there.And it has pit the likely next Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, squarely against the Obama administration.The White House and State Department are bluntly warning lawmakers not to proceed with the legislation over fears it could have dramatic ramifications for the United States and citizens living abroad to retaliatory lawsuits. The President lands in Riyadh Wednesday for talks with Saudi Arabia over ISIS and Iran at a time of strained relations between the countries, making the bill's timing that much more sensitive.
  • The stepped-up lobbying against the legislation comes as it is coming up against fresh roadblocks on Capitol Hill, with party leaders learning that a GOP senator is objecting to taking up the bill, according to a source familiar with the legislation. The senator's identity has not yet been revealed publicly.Proponents of the measure, for their part, are beginning to intensify their pressure campaign."If Saudi Arabia participated in terrorism, of course they should be able to be sued," Schumer said Monday. "This bill would allow a suit to go forward and victims of terrorism to go to court to determine if the Saudi government participated in terrorist acts. If the Saudis did, they should pay a price."Speaking to reporters Monday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest fired back, warning that it would jeopardize international sovereignty and put the U.S. at "significant risk" if other countries adopted a similar law."It's difficult to imagine a scenario where the President would sign it," Earnest said.
  • The bill, which Schumer and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas are pushing, would prevent Saudi Arabia and other countries alleged to have terrorist ties from invoking their sovereign immunity in federal court.Saudi Arabia has long denied any role in the 9/11 attacks, but victims' families have repeatedly sought to bring the matter to court, only to be rebuffed after the country has invoked legal immunity allowed under current law."It makes minor adjustments to our laws that would clarify the ability of Americans attacked on U.S. soil to get justice from those who have sponsored that terrorist attack," Cornyn said of the bill, which is entitled the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act.
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  • As pressure grows on Congress to let 9/11 victims' families pursue their claims against Saudi Arabia in federal court, Saudi officials are quickly pushing back.In a stark warning to members of Congress, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir warned lawmakers last month in Washington that his kingdom would sell $750 billion in U.S. assets, including treasury securities, if the measure became law, sources familiar with the matter told CNN. The development was first reported in The New York Times.Cornyn, however, dismissed the threat.
  • Presidential candidates were also unmoved. Ahead of the New York primary, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders quickly sought to align themselves with the Cornyn-Schumer bill.After Clinton said in a Sunday appearance on ABC that she had to study the bill and would not take a position, a spokesman later said she backs the bill.Sanders, in a statement Sunday night, announced that he supports the bill and called on the Obama administration to declassify the 28 pages of the 9/11 report that could implicate Saudi Arabia. Other presidential candidates jumped into the fray, including GOP front-runner Donald Trump.Appearing on the Joe Piscopo Show, a New York radio program, Trump evinced no concern about Saudi Arabia's threat to sell off U.S. assets."Let 'em sell 'em," Trump said. "No big deal."Trump added: "Hey, look, we protect Saudi Arabia. We protect them for peanuts. If we weren't protecting them, they wouldn't be there for a week."
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Apr 16
     
    Sounds like the bill would also open the doors to suing Israel for 9-11. Could be interesting because that's where much of the evidence points, incliding the all important answer to the question, qui bono (who benefits).  
Paul Merrell

The Power of War Propaganda on Iran, and How It Works « Antiwar.com Blog - 0 views

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wars of aggression Iranian nukes propaganda

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • A new poll finds 80% of Americans think Iran has a nuclear weapons program and that it is a threat to the US and its NATO allies. The poll, commissioned by The Israel Project, asked likely voters and found “72% of Democrats, 81% of independents and 89% of Republicans were convinced the Iranians were building nuclear weapons.” This is a monumental success of war propaganda. And these results are largely consistent with other recent polls: one produced back in February by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Program on International Policy Attitudes found “An overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens believe that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and poses a serious threat to U.S. national security.”
  • Contrast these beliefs with the facts: The consensus in the whole of the intelligence community in the US (and Israel) is that Iran has no nuclear weapons program and has yet to demonstrate any intention of starting one anytime soon. But false beliefs persist even when there has been ample reassurances from elite sources in politics, the military, and the news media that Iran has no weapons program. A matter of months ago, the Obama administration marched out their minions, from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, all of whom reiterated the fact that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, despite constant rhetoric to the contrary.
  • In February the New York Times ran a front page story entitled “U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb.” It reported: “Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.” Again in March, they reported “top administration officials have said that Iran still has not decided to pursue a weapon, reflecting the intelligence community’s secret analysis.” Another in the Los Angeles Times was similarly headlined, “U.S. does not believe Iran is trying to build nuclear bomb.”
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Aug 12
     
    Manufacturing consent for war with Iran 
Paul Merrell

Annals of National Security: The Redirection : The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...070305fa_fact_hersh

war & peace Syria Syrian war origins U.S. Hersh

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
  • Jumblatt said, “We told Cheney that the basic link between Iran and Lebanon is Syria—and to weaken Iran you need to open the door to effective Syrian opposition.” There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, “The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement.” He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front’s members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.
  • Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be “the ones to talk to,” Jumblatt said.
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  • Partition would leave Israel surrounded by “small tranquil states,” he said. “I can assure you that the Saudi kingdom will also be divided, and the issue will reach to North African states. There will be small ethnic and confessional states,” he said. “In other words, Israel will be the most important and the strongest state in a region that has been partitioned into ethnic and confessional states that are in agreement with each other. This is the new Middle East.”
  • Nasrallah said he believed that America also wanted to bring about the partition of Lebanon and of Syria. In Syria, he said, the result would be to push the country “into chaos and internal battles like in Iraq.” In Lebanon, “There will be a Sunni state, an Alawi state, a Christian state, and a Druze state.” But, he said, “I do not know if there will be a Shiite state.”
  • Fourth, the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations.
  • Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council official, told me that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic” about the new strategy with regard to Iraq. “The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the actual casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,” Leverett said. “This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.”
  • “It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,” Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and some in the Administration have been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.”
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 14
     
    Propaganda issued by the U.S. government has it that the war in Syria began with peaceful protesters seeking reform of the Syrian government. This Seymour Hersh article from 2007 gives us a better glimpse of the truth, that the Neocon-led Bush II Administration worked with Saudi Arabia to undermine the Syrian government using radical Sunnis as their vehicle. That is in line with the Israeli/Zionist long-term plan to Balkanize other nations in the Mideast while expanding Israeli territory and influence. 
Paul Merrell

Popular Security Software Came Under Relentless NSA and GCHQ Attacks - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...nsa-gchq-targeted-kaspersky

surveillance state NSA GCHQ anti-virus-software

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • The National Security Agency and its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, have worked to subvert anti-virus and other security software in order to track users and infiltrate networks, according to documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The spy agencies have reverse engineered software products, sometimes under questionable legal authority, and monitored web and email traffic in order to discreetly thwart anti-virus software and obtain intelligence from companies about security software and users of such software. One security software maker repeatedly singled out in the documents is Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, which has a holding registered in the U.K., claims more than 270,000 corporate clients, and says it protects more than 400 million people with its products. British spies aimed to thwart Kaspersky software in part through a technique known as software reverse engineering, or SRE, according to a top-secret warrant renewal request. The NSA has also studied Kaspersky Lab’s software for weaknesses, obtaining sensitive customer information by monitoring communications between the software and Kaspersky servers, according to a draft top-secret report. The U.S. spy agency also appears to have examined emails inbound to security software companies flagging new viruses and vulnerabilities.
  • The efforts to compromise security software were of particular importance because such software is relied upon to defend against an array of digital threats and is typically more trusted by the operating system than other applications, running with elevated privileges that allow more vectors for surveillance and attack. Spy agencies seem to be engaged in a digital game of cat and mouse with anti-virus software companies; the U.S. and U.K. have aggressively probed for weaknesses in software deployed by the companies, which have themselves exposed sophisticated state-sponsored malware.
  • The requested warrant, provided under Section 5 of the U.K.’s 1994 Intelligence Services Act, must be renewed by a government minister every six months. The document published today is a renewal request for a warrant valid from July 7, 2008 until January 7, 2009. The request seeks authorization for GCHQ activities that “involve modifying commercially available software to enable interception, decryption and other related tasks, or ‘reverse engineering’ software.”
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  • The NSA, like GCHQ, has studied Kaspersky Lab’s software for weaknesses. In 2008, an NSA research team discovered that Kaspersky software was transmitting sensitive user information back to the company’s servers, which could easily be intercepted and employed to track users, according to a draft of a top-secret report. The information was embedded in “User-Agent” strings included in the headers of Hypertext Transfer Protocol, or HTTP, requests. Such headers are typically sent at the beginning of a web request to identify the type of software and computer issuing the request.
  • According to the draft report, NSA researchers found that the strings could be used to uniquely identify the computing devices belonging to Kaspersky customers. They determined that “Kaspersky User-Agent strings contain encoded versions of the Kaspersky serial numbers and that part of the User-Agent string can be used as a machine identifier.” They also noted that the “User-Agent” strings may contain “information about services contracted for or configurations.” Such data could be used to passively track a computer to determine if a target is running Kaspersky software and thus potentially susceptible to a particular attack without risking detection.
  • Another way the NSA targets foreign anti-virus companies appears to be to monitor their email traffic for reports of new vulnerabilities and malware. A 2010 presentation on “Project CAMBERDADA” shows the content of an email flagging a malware file, which was sent to various anti-virus companies by François Picard of the Montréal-based consulting and web hosting company NewRoma. The presentation of the email suggests that the NSA is reading such messages to discover new flaws in anti-virus software. Picard, contacted by The Intercept, was unaware his email had fallen into the hands of the NSA. He said that he regularly sends out notification of new viruses and malware to anti-virus companies, and that he likely sent the email in question to at least two dozen such outfits. He also said he never sends such notifications to government agencies. “It is strange the NSA would show an email like mine in a presentation,” he added.
  • The NSA presentation goes on to state that its signals intelligence yields about 10 new “potentially malicious files per day for malware triage.” This is a tiny fraction of the hostile software that is processed. Kaspersky says it detects 325,000 new malicious files every day, and an internal GCHQ document indicates that its own system “collect[s] around 100,000,000 malware events per day.” After obtaining the files, the NSA analysts “[c]heck Kaspersky AV to see if they continue to let any of these virus files through their Anti-Virus product.” The NSA’s Tailored Access Operations unit “can repurpose the malware,” presumably before the anti-virus software has been updated to defend against the threat.
  • The Project CAMBERDADA presentation lists 23 additional AV companies from all over the world under “More Targets!” Those companies include Check Point software, a pioneering maker of corporate firewalls based Israel, whose government is a U.S. ally. Notably omitted are the American anti-virus brands McAfee and Symantec and the British company Sophos.
  • As government spies have sought to evade anti-virus software, the anti-virus firms themselves have exposed malware created by government spies. Among them, Kaspersky appears to be the sharpest thorn in the side of government hackers. In the past few years, the company has proven to be a prolific hunter of state-sponsored malware, playing a role in the discovery and/or analysis of various pieces of malware reportedly linked to government hackers, including the superviruses Flame, which Kaspersky flagged in 2012; Gauss, also detected in 2012; Stuxnet, discovered by another company in 2010; and Regin, revealed by Symantec. In February, the Russian firm announced its biggest find yet: the “Equation Group,” an organization that has deployed espionage tools widely believed to have been created by the NSA and hidden on hard drives from leading brands, according to Kaspersky. In a report, the company called it “the most advanced threat actor we have seen” and “probably one of the most sophisticated cyber attack groups in the world.”
  • Hacks deployed by the Equation Group operated undetected for as long as 14 to 19 years, burrowing into the hard drive firmware of sensitive computer systems around the world, according to Kaspersky. Governments, militaries, technology companies, nuclear research centers, media outlets and financial institutions in 30 countries were among those reportedly infected. Kaspersky estimates that the Equation Group could have implants in tens of thousands of computers, but documents published last year by The Intercept suggest the NSA was scaling up their implant capabilities to potentially infect millions of computers with malware. Kaspersky’s adversarial relationship with Western intelligence services is sometimes framed in more sinister terms; the firm has been accused of working too closely with the Russian intelligence service FSB. That accusation is partly due to the company’s apparent success in uncovering NSA malware, and partly due to the fact that its founder, Eugene Kaspersky, was educated by a KGB-backed school in the 1980s before working for the Russian military.
  • Kaspersky has repeatedly denied the insinuations and accusations. In a recent blog post, responding to a Bloomberg article, he complained that his company was being subjected to “sensationalist … conspiracy theories,” sarcastically noting that “for some reason they forgot our reports” on an array of malware that trace back to Russian developers. He continued, “It’s very hard for a company with Russian roots to become successful in the U.S., European and other markets. Nobody trusts us — by default.”
  • Documents published with this article: Kaspersky User-Agent Strings — NSA Project CAMBERDADA — NSA NDIST — GCHQ’s Developing Cyber Defence Mission GCHQ Application for Renewal of Warrant GPW/1160 Software Reverse Engineering — GCHQ Reverse Engineering — GCHQ Wiki Malware Analysis & Reverse Engineering — ACNO Skill Levels — GCHQ
Paul Merrell

What's the big deal between Russia and the Saudis? - RT Op-Edge - 0 views

www.rt.com/...-saudia-arabia-russia-politics

war & peace Russia Saudis Syria Yemen Iran Israel pipelinestan-wars must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Amidst the wilderness of mirrors surrounding the Syrian tragedy, a diamond-shaped fact persists: Despite so many degrees of separation, the Saudis are still talking to the Russians. Why? A key reason is because a perennially paranoid House of Saud feels betrayed by their American protectors who, under the Obama administration, seem to have given up on isolating Iran.
  • From the House of Saud’s point of view, three factors are paramount. 1) A general sense of ‘red alert’ as they have been deprived from an exclusive relationship with Washington, thus becoming incapable of shaping US foreign policy in the Middle East; 2) They have been mightily impressed by Moscow’s swift counter-terrorism operation in Syria; 3) They fear like the plague the current Russia-Iran alliance if they have no means of influencing it.
  • That explains why King Salman’s advisers have pressed the point that the House of Saud has a much better chance of checking Iran on all matters - from “Syraq” to Yemen - if it forges a closer relationship with Moscow. In fact, King Salman may be visiting Putin before the end of the year.
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  • One of the untold stories of the recent Syria-driven diplomatic flurry is how Moscow has been silently working on mollifying both Saudi Arabia and Turkey behind the scenes. That was already the case when the foreign ministers of US, Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia met before Vienna.Vienna was crucial not only because Iran was on the table for the first time but also because of the presence of Egypt – incidentally, fresh from recent discovery of new oil reserves, and engaging in a reinforced relationship with Russia.The absolute key point was this paragraph included in Vienna’s final declaration: “This political process will be Syrian-led and Syrian-owned, and the Syrian people will decide the future of Syria.”It’s not by accident that only Russian and Iranian media chose to give the paragraph the appropriate relevance. Because this meant the actual death of the regime change obsession, much to the distress of US neocons, Erdogan and the House of Saud.
  • The main point is the death of the regime change option, brought about by Moscow. And that leaves Putin free to further project his extremely elaborate strategy. He called Erdogan on Wednesday to congratulate him on his and the AKP’s election landslide. This means that now Moscow clearly has someone to talk to in Ankara. Not only about Syria. But also about gas.Putin and Erdogan will have a crucial energy-related meeting at the G20 summit on November 15 in Turkey; and there’s an upcoming visit by Erdogan to Moscow. Bets are on that the Turk Stream agreement will be – finally – reached before the end of the year. And on northern Syria, Erdogan has been forced to admit by Russian facts on the ground and skies that his no-fly zone scheme will never fly.
  • That leaves us with the much larger problem: the House of Saud.There’s a wall of silence surrounding the number one reason for Saudi Arabia to bomb and invade Yemen, and that is to exploit Yemen’s virgin oil lands, side by side with Israel – no less. Not to mention the strategic foolishness of picking a fight with redoubtable warriors such as the Houthis, which have sowed panic amidst the pathetic, mercenary-crammed Saudi army.Riyadh, following its American reflexes, even resorted to recruiting Academi – formerly Blackwater - to round up the usual mercenary suspects as far away as Colombia.It was also suspected from the beginning, but now it's a done deal that the responsible actor for the costly Yemen military disaster is none other than Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the King’s son who, crucially, was sent by his father to meet Putin face-to-face.
  • Meanwhile, Qatar will keep crying because it was counting on Syria as a destination point for its much-coveted gas pipeline to serve European customers, or at least as a key transit hub on the way to Turkey.Iran on the other hand needed both Iraq and Syria for the rival Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline because Tehran could not rely on Ankara while it was under US sanctions (this will now change, fast). The point is Iranian gas won’t replace Gazprom as a major source for the EU anytime soon. If it ever did, or course, that would be a savage blow to Russia.
  • In oil terms, Russia and the Saudis are natural allies. Saudi Arabia cannot export natural gas; Qatar can. To get their finances in order – after all even the IMF knows they are on a highway to hell - the Saudis would have to cut back around ten percent of production with OPEC, in concert with Russia; the oil price would more than double. A 10 percent cutback would make a fortune for the House of Saud.So for both Moscow and Riyadh, a deal on the oil price, to be eventually pushed towards $100 a barrel, would make total economic sense. Arguably, in both cases, it might even mean a matter of national security.But it won’t be easy. OPEC’s latest report assumes a basket of crude oil to be quoted at only $55 in 2015, and to rise by $5 a year reaching $80 only by 2020. This state of affairs does not suit either Moscow or Riyadh.
  • Meanwhile, fomenting all sorts of wild speculation, ISIS/ISIL/Daesh still manages to collect as much as $50 million a month from selling crude from oilfields it controls across “Syraq”, according to the best Iraq-based estimates.The fact that this mini-oil caliphate is able to bring in equipment and technical experts from “abroad” to keep its energy sector running beggars belief. “Abroad” in this context means essentially Turkey – engineers plus equipment for extraction, refinement, transport and energy production.One of the reasons this is happening is that the US-led Coalition of the Dodgy Opportunists (CDO) – which includes Saudi Arabia and Turkey - is actually bombing the Syrian state energy infrastructure, not the mini oil-Caliphate domains. So we have the proverbial “international actors” in the region de facto aiding ISIS/ISIL/Daesh to sell crude to smugglers for as low as $10 a barrel.Saudis – as much as Russian intel - have noted how ISIS/ISIL/Daesh is able to take over the most advanced US equipment that takes months to master, and instead integrate it into their ops at once. This implies they must have been extensively trained. The Pentagon, meanwhile, sent and will be sending top military across “Syraq” with an overarching message: if you choose Russia we won’t help you.ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, for their part, never talks about freeing Jerusalem. It’s always about Mecca and Medina.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Nov 15
     
    Pepe Escobar brings us up to speed on big changes in the Mideast, including the decline of U.S. influence. Not mentioned, but the Saudis' feelings of desertion by the Washington Beltway and its foreplay with Russia could bring about an end to the Saudis insistence on being paid for oil in U.S. dollars, and there goes the western economy. 
Paul Merrell

Senators To Override Obama's Iran Veto Eurasia Review - 1 views

www.eurasiareview.com/tors-override-obamas-iran-veto

war & peace Iran negotiations Iranian-nukes-myth Israel-lobby War-Party

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has indicated he would bring a new Iran sanctions bill for a vote. On Thursday, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) introduced a new sanctions bill against Iran which was co-sponsored by 24 other senators across the aisle. The White House was quick to condemn the new anti-Iran effort by the hawkish senators on Capitol Hill with Obama’s Press Secretary Jay Carney saying that the president would veto the bill “if it were to pass” Congress. However, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) told Fox News that he was seeking to secure a veto-proof majority of 67 senators for the bill. “If the president wants to veto [the bill], we’ll override his veto,” Graham said.
  • Iranian Foreign Minister and top nuclear negotiator Mohammad Javad Zarif have already warned that any new sanctions against Iran passed by US Congress would kill “the entire deal” reached between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the US, Britain, Russia, France and China — plus Germany on November 24.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Dec 13
     
    Israel Lobby efforts continue to blow up the negotiations with Iran over Iran's mythical nuclear weapons program, thereby proving once again that their goal never was ending the non-existent weapons program but is instead meneuvering the U.S. into launching a war against Iran. 
Paul Merrell

UN to Hold Emergency Session on Israeli Settlements | News | teleSUR - 0 views

www.telesurtv.net/...Settlements-20141029-0002.html

war & peace Israel Palestine UNSC

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The U.N. Security Council (UNSC) will hold an emergency meeting on the Israeli plans to construct new settlements in East Jerusalem  on Wednesday. The meeting is in response to a request made by Jordan to Argentina's U.N. Ambassador Maria Cristina Perceval, who holds the UNSC's presidency this month. Jordan, the sole Arab nation on the council, cited Palestinian complaints about "the dangerously escalating tensions in Occupied East Jerusalem". Palestinians have protested against the plan of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to build some 1,000 new settlement homes for Israelis in East Jerusalem. The region is mostly populated by Arabs, and Palestinians seek to make it the capital of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
  • Last week, U.N. General Secretary Ban Ki-moon said that the settlement activity was illegal. “It runs totally counter to the pursuit of a two-state solution," said Ban according to the AFP news agency. The international community has also rejected Netanyahu's plans. Earlier in October, the European Union said that the settlements plan "represents a further highly detrimental step that undermines prospects for a two-state solution." Even the U.S., a strong ally of Israel, has said that the settlements damages Israel’s relations with its Arab allies. However, Netanyahu has rejected the critics and has confirmed that he will expedite the plans to build the settlements. "We will continue to build in Jerusalem, our eternal capital," he said on Tuesday. The Security Council is rarely able to reach any agreement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the U.S. is a permanent veto-wielding member and usually prevents any measures critical of Israel. Even with the recent tensions between Netanyahu and the White House, a joint declaration from the council is not expected.
Paul Merrell

Former Terrorist Group To Enjoy Close Ties to Rumored Trump Cabinet « LobeLog - 0 views

lobelog.com/-ties-to-rumored-trump-cabinet

Trump-administration terrorist-ties Giuliani bolton

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • Donald Trump’s rumored picks for key foreign-policy positions have already set off alarm bells about the future administration’s embrace of war hawks and Islamophobes. Today, Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin pointed out that former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is currently reported to be under consideration for an appointment to secretary of state or attorney general, potentially violated the law when he made paid speaking appearances for the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), when the State Department listed the Iranian dissident group as a foreign terrorist organization. Giuliani isn’t the only likely member of the future administration to have maintained close ties and advocated on behalf of the former terrorist group, which assassinated six Americans in Iran between 1973 and 1976. John Bolton (another rumored choice for secretary of state), Clare Lopez (who is reportedly short-listed for deputy national security adviser), and Newt Gingrich (who allegedly turned down an offer of secretary of state but has shown interest in serving as a policy adviser in the Trump administration) have all advocated for the former terrorist group and praised its cultish leader, Maryam Rajavi. Shortly after the overthrow of the Shah, the group experienced a falling out with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and fled into exile. Over the following years, the group’s leaders, Maryam and Massoud Rajavi, aligned with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war (7,000 members fought alongside Saddam Hussein, against Iran) and shifted toward increasingly cultish behavior, mandating divorces and celibacy for their soldiers while cultivating a cult of personality around themselves.
  • Massoud Rajavi hasn’t been seen since overseeing the surrender of MEK forces to the U.S. following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This summer, the former head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency, Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud referred to Massoud Rajavi as “the late Massoud Rajavi,” suggesting that he may be deceased. Turki’s participation at an MEK event, meanwhile, was a tacit acknowledgement of Saudi Arabia’s support of the group. Indeed, forming opportunistic alliances has been a hallmark of the MEK. In 2012, U.S. officials told NBC News that Israel’s national intelligence agency, Mossad, was training and arming the MEK to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists. The group seeks to portray itself as a government-in-exile and the secular, democratic alternative to Iran’s theocratic government. But the MEK’s lack of influence inside Iran and skepticism about their allegations regarding Iran’s nuclear program—for example, photographic evidence the MEK provided last year allegedly showing evidence of “Lavizan-3,” a secret uranium enrichment facility in the suburbs of Tehran, turned out to be a stock photo from an Iranian safe company – haven’t prevented the group from gaining footholds in Washington through campaign contributions and lucrative speaking gigs for politicians who praise Rajavi and call for regime change in Iran at MEK rallies. The MEK is known for paying generous sums to former officials who speak at their events. Lee Hamilton, a former chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee who headed the Woodrow Wilson Center for 12 years, told InterPress Service that he was paid “a substantial amount” to appear on an MEK panel in 2011. Giuliani, Bolton, Lopez, and Gingrich have all sung the praises of Maryam Rajavi, called for the U.S. to work towards regime change in Tehran, and treated the MEK as a legitimate Iranian government in exile.
  • peaking at an MEK rally outside Paris last year, Giuliani, who had taken speaking fees from the group when it was on the foreign terrorist organization (FTO) list, told the audience: I will not support anyone for President of the United States who isn’t clear on that slogan behind me. What does it say? It says “Regime Change.” … I will not support a candidate who does not have the moral fiber and the courage to stand up to the Ayatollah and tell him “We are going to do everything we can to get you out and you are never going to become a nuclear power.” Bolton, who also advocated for the group when it was on the FTO list, told an MEK audience outside Paris last summer: There is only one answer here: To support legitimate opposition groups that favor overthrowing the military theocratic dictatorship in Tehran, and it should be the declared policy of the United States of America and all of its friends to do just that at the earliest opportunity. Gingrich, who also spoke for the group before it was delisted, told the 2016 gathering in Paris: There are no moderates in the dictatorship. The dictatorship cannot be trusted. The [nuclear] agreement made with it is insane.
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  • He concluded by praising the commitment of Rajavi’s followers, saying: I want you to know that the message I will take home to America is that there are thousands and thousands of Iranians who are prepared, who are ready, who are committed to and who believe that we can truly bring democracy to Iran. Lopez, who serves as a vice president at the Center for Security Policy, a far-right think tank headed by anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney, and as executive director of the long-time MEK advocacy group, the Iran Policy Committee, from 2005 to 2006, wrote that Prince Turki’s surprising appearance marked a watershed moment for the MEK. She wrote: …[T]he implications of official Riyadh government support for the largest, most dedicated, and best-organized Iranian opposition movement will reverberate through the Middle East. Although not openly stated by bin Faisal, the new NCRI-Riyadh alliance may be expected to involve funding, intelligence sharing, and possible collaboration in operations aimed at the shared goal of overthrowing the current Tehran regime. If Lopez, Giuliani, Bolton, or Gingrich serve in the Trump administrations, the MEK will have the highest level access its ever enjoyed in the U.S. government, a remarkable journey for a fringe Islamic-Marxist group that, until 2012, was on the State Department’s terrorism list for its role in assassinating Americans.
Paul Merrell

The West Wants Turkey Out - nsnbc international | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...the-west-wants-turkey-out

war & peace Turkey NATO-membership SU-24-shootdown

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • The downing of Russia’s Su-24 bomber by the Turkish Air Force is “one of the nightmare scenarios that military planners had envisaged as a result of Moscow’s decision to enter the conflict,” reports The Financial Times.
  • In turn, The Washington Post believes that “NATO faced being thrust into a new Middle Eastern crisis… The incident marked a serious escalation in the Syrian conflict that is likely to further strain relations between Russia and the NATO alliance.” The Guardian argues that we’ve witnessed “a nerve-jangling event, that raised the spectre of a direct confrontation between two large powers: one a Nato member, the other nuclear-armed”. While it’s clear that neither Russia nor NATO wants to go to war against each other, each side is trying to deal with the situation and identify the reasons that provoked the recent crisis and, what’s even more important, to establish who’s at fault.
  • However, to resolve the difficult crisis that followed the destruction of the Russian Su-24 quickly, the West is now searching for those “guilty” of this blatant attack, which is, without a doubt, the Turkish leader – Tayyip Erdogan. It seems that NATO states are not afraid to criticize Turkey for its actions against Russia. Vice-Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and the chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) Sigmar Gabriel expressed harsh criticism of Turkey after the downing of Russia’s Su-24 bombers by labeling it an “unpredictable player”, reports the German Die Welt. The members of NATO fear that the “impulsive actions” of Turkey’s President will force them into a new major conflict, and NATO is not prepared to fight it yet. These “impulsive actions” may trigger the response that is required by Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. No wonder Hollande, while declaring war against ISIL, made no reference of Article 5, by quoting the EU Lisbon Treaty instead.
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  • France is convinced that once the “Muslim Brotherhood” came to power in Turkey, headed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has become a major headache for Western politicians, says Le Figaro. According to its journalists, Turkey used to be an ally of the West, however, it is nothing of the kind anymore. Relations with Turkey took a U-turn once Erdogan started systematically “undermining” Turkey’s strategic relations with Israel which were stable since 1949. Anti-Turkish sentiments in the West were aggravated even further by the games Erdogan had been playing during the “Arab Spring”, when he first became a close friend of Bashar al-Assad, and then stabbed him in the back by allowing jihadists from around the world to swarm into Syria by crossing through Turkey’s territory. When the sworn enemies of Erdogan – local Kurds were dying in a heroic defense of the city of Kobani, Turkey did nothing to relieve their suffering, waiting for Western countries to save the population of the city instead. In this context it’s curious what the former NATO commander of Europe, Ret. General Wesley Clark, has been saying about Turkey : “Let’s be very clear: ISIL is not just a terrorist organization, it is a Sunni terrorist organization. It means it blocks and targets Shia, and that means it’s serving the interests of Turkey and Saudi Arabia even as it poses a threat to them All along there’s always been the idea that Turkey was supporting ISIS in some way… Someone’s buying that oil that ISIL is selling, it’s going through somewhere. It looks to me like it’s probably going through Turkey, but the Turks have never acknowledged it.” Here’s the reason why Russia was stabbed in the back by a NATO member country.
  • Once Russia began military operations against ISIL in Syria, Ankara’s relations with Washington started deteriorating rapidly. The situation we have on our hands now is further complicated by the fact that it was “defenseless” Turkomans who were shooting Russian pilots as they descended with parachutes, along with bringing down a Russian helicopter that was sent to rescue the pilots. All the recent NATO meetings have been stained by concerns that the Turkish agenda in Syria has little to do with the position of the West. Now that Erdogan’s arrogance has become apparent to everyone, even though he allowed the US Air Force to use a base in Turkey’s territory, he has also been launching attacks against Syrian Kurds that remain the most faithful allies of Washington in the fight against ISIL. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that a retired US Major General Paul Vallely accused the Turkish government of an attempt to create a new Ottoman Empire. According to him, due to all well-known facts of Ankara’s assistance to the Islamic State, Turkey should be expelled from NATO. The Washington Times is also questioning Turkey as a member state of NATO, while underlying that the attack on the Russian Su-24 makes this debate particularly relevant and timely. The newspaper notes that Ankara has been providing ISIL units with close air support when the latter was fighting Kurds in Syria and Iraq. Its journalists are convinced that Turkey has been turned into a theocratic Islamist dictatorship, where the freedom of the press is gradually been destroyed.
  • The conservative American Thinker goes even further by claiming it’s about time to replace Turkey with Russia in NATO, since the West has more in common with Russia than with the Islamist Turkey. To support this position, the magazine notes that when Turkey joined NATO back in February 1952, the advocates of this step argued that they need an Islamic state to prevent Soviet expansion in the region from happening. But it’s clear that this was a deal with the devil. After all, it was the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 that broke the alliance apart, forcing Greece to withdraw its troop from under NATO command. In 2012, Syria shot down a Turkish fighter since it was deliberately violating its airspace. Later that same year, Turkey bombarded government facilities in Syria. For decades, Turkey has used NATO membership, in order to achieve its own objectives, which, as a rule, do not coincide with the interests of the alliance. In the early 2000s, Turkey chose to demonstrate its support of Islamism, which has always been a more serious threat to the West than the Soviet Union. Therefore, it seems that the American Thinker has expressed the opinion of a larger part of the western public, by urging NATO to get in an alliance with Russia against Islamism, including the “Islamic state of Turkey.”
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Nov 15
     
    When considering Turkey being booted out of NATO, let's not forget its role in staging the false flag sarin gas attack in Syria that was aimed at provoking the U.S. into attacking Syria --- and almost succeeded.  But better still, let's dissolve NATO. Its reason for existence disappeared when the Soviet Union disintegrated. 
Paul Merrell

James Baker blasts Benjamin Netanyahu - Edward-Isaac Dovere - POLITICO - 0 views

www.politico.com/...benjamin-netanyahu-116338.html

war & peace Palestinian-Question Israel Netanyahu U.S.-foreign-policy Baker

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • It’s not just Democrats and White House officials who’ve got problems with Benjamin Netanyahu. Blasting “diplomatic missteps and political gamesmanship,” former Secretary of State James Baker laid in hard to the Israeli prime minister on Monday evening, criticizing him for an insufficient commitment to peace and an absolutist opposition to the Iran nuclear talks. Story Continued Below Baker told the gala dinner for the left-leaning Israeli advocacy group J Street that he supported efforts to get a deal with Tehran — but he called for President Barack Obama to bring any agreement before Congress, even though he may not legally be required to do so. Baker, who was the chief diplomat for President George H.W. Bush and is now advising Jeb Bush on his presidential campaign, cited mounting frustrations with Netanyahu over the past six years — but particularly with comments he made in the closing days of last week’s election disavowing his support for a two-state solution and support for settlements strategically placed to attempt to change the borders between Israel and the West Bank.
  • Baker said while Netanyahu has said he’s for peace, “his actions have not matched his rhetoric.”
  • As to Netanyahu’s opposition on Iran, Baker warned against seeking only a perfect deal. “If the only agreement is one in which there is no enrichment, then there will be no agreement,” Baker said.
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  • After all, Baker said, no military solution could work in his assessment: an American strike would only generate more support among Iranians for the fundamentalist government, and an Israeli strike would neither be as effective nor carry American support. This isn’t the only tough moment in U.S.-Israeli relations, Baker said, recounting some of his own head-butting in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In those days, the administration was dealing with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, a hard-liner who referred to Netanyahu as “too soft,” according to Baker. The danger now, Baker said, is the personalization and politicization of the disputes between the governments in Washington and Jerusalem. “This is of course a delicate moment in the Middle East, and will require clear thinking from leaders,” Baker said. “That clear thinking should not be muddled by partisan politics.”
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 15
     
    Better listen, Bibi. That's the head of the American oil industry lobby speaking. 
Paul Merrell

U.S. is even more implicated in Israeli settlement project than we thought - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...implicated-settlement-thought

war & peace Israel Palestine settlers American-Jews

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • The Israeli colonies are an American problem in a whole new way. Nearly one out of six settlers in the West Bank is an American. Haaretz broke the story. Oxford scholar Sara Yael Hirschhorn says Americans are starkly overrepresented among West Bank settlers: Roughly 60,000 American Jews live in West Bank settlements, where they account for 15 percent of the settler population, according to figures revealed Thursday by an Oxford University scholar and expert on this population. Newsweek’s Jack Moore reports the American policy angle: Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said that the new figures revealed that the settlement enterprise in the West Bank was not only an internal issue but “an international problem.” “Unfortunately, while the Obama administration has been persistently vocal against settlement developments, some 60,000 American citizens are taking an active part in an attempt to make the two state solution impossible,” says Anat Ben Nun, Peace Now’s director of development and external relations. The study leaves out all the settlers in East Jerusalem: 200,000 of them three years ago, per the United Nations. And remember that the settlement movement is funded not just by the Israeli government but tax-deductible donations from American Zionists. An issue the US media has refused to deal with.
Paul Merrell

Netanyahu vows to scuttle world powers' Iran deal | The Times of Israel - 0 views

www.timesofisrael.com/scuttle-world-powers-iran-deal

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth Netanyahu-speech boycott

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • A Channel 10 news report Saturday indicated that some 60 Democratic legislators were expected to stay away from the address.
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Feb 15
     
    The Democratic boycott of Netanyahu's speech is gaining strength. Republicans need to get on board too. 
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Feb 15
     
    The Democratic boycott of Netanyahu's speech is gaining strength. Republicans need to get on board too. 
Paul Merrell

99% of Americans Consider Iranian Nukes a Threat - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34047.htm

Iranian nukes myth propaganda presstitutes manufacturing consent for war US-Iran relations

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • A huge majority of Americans view Iran’s nuclear program as a “critical threat,” alongside the North Korean nuclear program and “international terrorism,” according to a poll released Monday. The Gallup poll  found that 99 percent of Americans believe the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program is a threat “to the vital interests of the United States in the next 10 years,” with 83% saying it was a “critical threat” and another 16% saying it was an “important, [but] not critical” one. Just 1% declined to say it was at least an important threat. The poll was conducted February 7-10 among 1,015 respondents aged 18 and older. It has a margin of error of 4%.
Paul Merrell

N.S.A. Spied on Allies, Aid Groups and Businesses - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...groups-and-business-elite.html

surveillance state NSA NSA-targets

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Secret documents reveal more than 1,000 targets of American and British surveillance in recent years, including the office of an Israeli prime minister, heads of international aid organizations, foreign energy companies and a European Union official involved in antitrust battles with American technology businesses.
  • While the names of some political and diplomatic leaders have previously emerged as targets, the newly disclosed intelligence documents provide a much fuller portrait of the spies’ sweeping interests in more than 60 countries. Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, working closely with the National Security Agency, monitored the communications of senior European Union officials, foreign leaders including African heads of state and sometimes their family members, directors of United Nations and other relief programs, and officials overseeing oil and finance ministries, according to the documents. In addition to Israel, some targets involved close allies like France and Germany, where tensions have already erupted over recent revelations about spying by the N.S.A.
  • Details of the surveillance are described in documents from the N.S.A. and Britain’s eavesdropping agency, known as GCHQ, dating from 2008 to 2011. The target lists appear in a set of GCHQ reports that sometimes identify which agency requested the surveillance, but more often do not. The documents were leaked by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden and shared by The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel. The reports are spare, technical bulletins produced as the spies, typically working out of British intelligence sites, systematically tapped one international communications link after another, focusing especially on satellite transmissions. The value of each link is gauged, in part, by the number of surveillance targets found to be using it for emails, text messages or phone calls. More than 1,000 targets, which also include people suspected of being terrorists or militants, are in the reports. It is unclear what the eavesdroppers gleaned. The documents include a few fragmentary transcripts of conversations and messages, but otherwise contain only hints that further information was available elsewhere, possibly in a larger database.
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  • Ms. Hansen, the spokeswoman for the European Commission, said that it was already engaged in talks with the United States that were “needed to restore trust and confidence in the trans-Atlantic relationship.” She added that “the commission will raise these new allegations with U.S. and U.K. authorities.”
  • Also appearing on the surveillance lists is Joaquín Almunia, vice president of the European Commission, which, among other powers, has oversight of antitrust issues in Europe. The commission has broad authority over local and foreign companies, and it has punished a number of American companies, including Microsoft and Intel, with heavy fines for hampering fair competition. The reports say that spies intercepted Mr. Almunia’s communications in 2008 and 2009. Mr. Almunia, a Spaniard, assumed direct authority over the commission’s antitrust office in 2010. He has been involved in a three-year standoff with Google over how the company runs its search engine. Competitors of the online giant had complained that it was prioritizing its own search results and using content like travel reviews and ratings from other websites without permission. While pushing for a settlement with Google, Mr. Almunia has warned that the company could face large fines if it does not cooperate.
  • Some condemned the surveillance on Friday as unjustified and improper. “This is not the type of behavior that we expect from strategic partners,” Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, said on the latest revelations of American and British spying in Europe. Some of the surveillance relates to issues that are being scrutinized by President Obama and a panel he appointed in Washington that on Wednesday recommended tighter limits on the N.S.A., particularly on spying of foreign leaders, especially allies.
  • “We do not use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of — or give intelligence we collect to — U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line,” said Vanee Vines, an N.S.A. spokeswoman. But she added that some economic spying was justified by national security needs. “The intelligence community’s efforts to understand economic systems and policies, and monitor anomalous economic activities, are critical to providing policy makers with the information they need to make informed decisions that are in the best interest of our national security,” Ms. Vines said.
  • The surveillance reports show American and British spies’ deep appetite for information. The French companies Total, the oil and gas giant, and Thales, an electronics, logistics and transportation outfit, appear as targets, as do a French ambassador, an “Estonian Skype security team” and the German Embassy in Rwanda.
  • Multiple United Nations Missions in Geneva are listed as targets, including Unicef and the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. So is Médecins du Monde, a medical relief organization that goes into war-ravaged areas. Leigh Daynes, an executive director of the organization in Britain, responded to news about the surveillance by saying: “There is absolutely no reason for our operations to be secretly monitored.” More obvious intelligence targets are also listed, though in smaller numbers, including people identified as “Israeli grey arms dealer,” “Taleban ministry of refugee affairs” and “various entities in Beijing.” Some of those included are described as possible members of Al Qaeda, and as suspected extremists or jihadists.
  • While few if any American citizens appear to be named in the documents, they make clear that some of the intercepted communications either began or ended in the United States and that N.S.A. facilities carried out interceptions around the world in collaboration with their British partners. Some of the interceptions appear to have been made at the Sugar Grove, W.Va., listening post run by the N.S.A. and code-named Timberline, and some are explicitly tied to N.S.A. target lists in the reports.
  • Strengthening the likelihood that full transcripts were taken during the intercepts is the case of Mohamed Ibn Chambas, an official of the Economic Community of West African States, known as Ecowas, a regional initiative of 15 countries that promotes economic and industrial activity. Whether intentionally or through some oversight, when Mr. Chambas’s communications were intercepted in August 2009, dozens of his complete text messages were copied into one of the reports.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Dec 13
     
    No mention of any "terrorist" targets. Could it be that Snowden and Greenwald are right, that the surveillance is not about terrorism at all? Surely our nation's leaders would not lie to us about that. Right. The Politics of Fear.
Paul Merrell

The Effort to Destroy the Iran Agreement: Chapter Two « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/the-iran-agreement-chapter-two

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth deal Israel-lobby Republicans Auction 2016

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • The voting and possible vetoing that will take place later this month thus will mark only the end of one chapter in a continuing political contest. Opponents of the agreement will continue to try to subvert it even after it enters into force. The partisan divide in sentiment on the issue, which, as Jim Lobe points out, has become increasingly sharp as reflected in opinion polls over the past year, will be one of the drivers of continued opposition. The issue has exhibited a familiar pattern in which members of the public who have little substantive knowledge of the matter of question take their cues from leaders of the party with which they most identify. A self-reinforcing cycle of adamant opposition by Republican politicians and consequent opposition by a cue-taking Republican base has put the Iranian nuclear issue on a similar trajectory as the Affordable Care Act—i.e., endless preoccupation by the Congressional portion of half the political spectrum with killing it rather than implementing it, no matter what experience may show is working or not working.
  • Efforts to kill the agreement, after the votes this month that will determine whether the agreement will go into effect, will center on getting the United States not to live up to its end of the agreement. Given that the United States has no obligations under the agreement other than to end some of the punishment it has been inflicting in the form of economic sanctions, the agreement-killing strategy will entail slapping new sanctions on Iran until Tehran is pressed passed the limits of its tolerance for such accord-circumventing behavior. The specific tactics may involve in effect restoring some of the nuclear-related sanctions that are due to be relaxed under the agreement, but under some new label such as terrorism or something having to do with other Iranian behavior. Ideas have already been advanced along these lines. Other creative ideas of opponents include having states rather than the federal government sanction Iran. All such maneuvers will make it difficult for Iranian leaders committed to observance of the agreement to deflect charges from their domestic opponents that the United States snookered Iran and that it is not in Iran’s interests to continue to live up to the agreement.
  • The U.S. presidential election calendar has given diehard opponents of the nuclear agreement added incentive to inflict lethal sabotage on the agreement within the next 16 months. The prospect of a Republican entering the White House in January 2017 may in this respect present more of a vulnerability than an opportunity for opponents. Republican presidential candidates have been competing with each other in telling the primary-voter party base how quickly and peremptorily they would renounce the agreement with Iran—with the only differences being whether it would be on the very first day in office, whether renunciation would take place before or after consulting with advisers, etc. It would be tough for any of these candidates, if elected, to back down from such an oft-repeated pledge. But such a presidential renunciation would be a more direct and blatant unilateral U.S. reneging on a multilateral accord than even some of the more aggressive sanctions-restoring tactics mentioned earlier. And such a renunciation would come after three years (counting from when the JPOA came into effect) of Iran living up to its commitments under the agreement and notmoving to make a nuclear weapon. The discomfort that the future president would be feeling in this situation would reflect what has been the underlying concern of confirmed opponents of the nuclear agreement all along: not that the accord will fail, but that it will succeed.
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