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Paul Merrell

Asia Times Online :: The new Great (Threat) Game in Eurasia - 0 views

www.atimes.com/...CEN-01-120314.html

war & peace Ukraine Russia EU U.S.-foreign-policy NATO

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • In Ukraine, the West supported an unconstitutional putsch against an elected government perpetrated, among others, by fascist/neo-nazi storm troopers (Svoboda, Right Sector) instrumentalized by US intelligence. After a Russian counterpunch, US President Barack Obama proclaimed that any referendum in Crimea would "violate the Ukrainian constitution and violate international law." This is just the latest instance in the serial rape of "international law". The rap sheet is humongous, including; NATO bombing Serbia for 78 days in 1999 to allow Kosovo to secede; the 2003 US invasion and subsequent trillion-dollar occupation and civil war creation in Iraq; NATO/AFRICOM bombing Libya in 2011 invoking <a href='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a9473bc7&cb=%n' target='_blank'><img src='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=36&cb=%n&n=a9473bc7&ct0=%c' border='0' alt='' ></a> R2P ("responsibility to protect") as a cover to provoking regime change; US investment in the secession of oil-wealthy South Sudan, so China has to deal with an extra geopolitical headache; and US investment in perennial civil war in Syria.
  • Yet Moscow still (foolishly?) believes international law should be respected - presenting to the UN Security Council classified information on all Western intel/psy-ops moves leading to the coup in Kiev, including "training" provided by Poland and Lithuania, not to mention Turkish intelligence involvement in setting up a second coup in Crimea. Russian diplomats called for an unbiased international investigation. That will never happen; Washington's narrative would be completely debunked. Thus a US veto at the UN. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also called for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to objectively investigate those snipers shooting everyone on sight in Kiev, as revealed by Estonia's foreign minister to EU foreign policy supremo Catherine "I love Yats" Ashton. According to Russia's ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin, "a completely different picture would be drawn compared to what is being depicted by American media and, unfortunately, by some American and European politicians." Needless to say, there will be no investigation.
  • Everyone remembers the "good Taliban", with which the US could negotiate in Afghanistan. Then came the "good al-Qaeda", jihadis the US could support in Syria. Now come the "good neo-nazis", with which the West can do business in Kiev. Soon there will be "the good jihadis supporting neo-nazis", who may be deployed to advance US/NATO and anti-Russian designs in Crimea and beyond. After all, Obama mentor Dr Zbigniew "The Grand Chessboard" Brzezinski is the godfather of good jihadis, fully weaponized to fight the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan. As facts on the ground go, neo-nazis are definitely back as good guys. For the first time since the end of World War II, fascists and neo-nazis are at the helm of a European nation (although Ukraine most of all should be characterized as the key swing nation in Eurasia). Few in the West seem to have noticed it.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The cast of characters include Ukrainian interim defense minister and former student at the Pentagon Ihor Tenyukh; deputy prime minister for economic affairs and Svoboda ideologue Oleksandr Sych; agro-oligarch minister of agriculture Ihor Svaika (Monsanto, after all, needs a chief enforcer); National Security Council chief and Maidan commander of Right Sector neo-nazis Andry Parubiy; and deputy National Security Council chief Dmytro Yarosh, the founder Right Sector. Not to mention Svoboda leader Oleh Tyanhybok, a close pal of John McCain and Victoria "F**k the EU" Nuland, and active proponent of an Ukraine free from the "Muscovite-Jewish mafia." As the Kremlin refuses to deal with this bunch and the upcoming March 16 referendum in Crimea is practically a done deal, Team "Yats" is fully legitimized, with honors, by Team Obama, leader included, in Washington. To quote Lenin, what is to be done? A close reading of President Putin's moves would suggest an answer: nothing. As in just waiting, while outsourcing the immediate future of a spectacularly bankrupt Ukraine to the EU. The EU is impotent to rescue even the Club Med countries. Inevitably, sooner or later, threat of sanctions or not, it will come crawling back to Moscow seeking "concessions", so Russia may also foot the bill.
  • Meanwhile, the New Great (Threat) Game in Eurasia advances unabated. Moscow would willingly compromise on a neutral Ukraine - even with neo-nazis in power in Kiev. But an Ukraine attached to NATO is an absolute red line. By the way, NATO is "monitoring" Ukraine with AWACS deployed in Polish and Romanian airspace. So as the much lauded "reset" between the Kremlin and the Obama administration is for all practical purposes six feet under (with no Hollywood-style second coming in the cards), what's left is the dangerous threat game. Deployed not only by the Empire, but also by the minions. That monster collection of Magritte-style faceless bureaucrats at the European Commission (EU), following on the non-stop threat of EU sanctions, has decided to delay a decision on whether Gazprom may sell more gas through the OPAL pipeline in Germany, and also delay negotiations on the legal status of South Stream, the pipeline under the Black Sea which should become operational in 2015.
  • As if the EU had any feasible Plan B to escape its dependency on Russian gas (not to mention eschew the very profitable financial game played between key European capitals and Moscow). What are they do, import gas on Qatar Airways flights? Buy LNG from the US - something that will not be feasible in years to come? The fact is the minute a gas war is on, if it ever comes down to it, the EU will be under immense pressure by a host of member-nations to keep (and even extend) its Russian gas fix - with or without "our (neo-nazi) bastards" in power in Kiev. Brussels knows it. And most of all, Vlad the Hammer knows it.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 14
     
    Pepe Escobar, again.
Gary Edwards

Obama Losing It Over Über Patriot Edwards Snowden - 2 views

news.google.com/?ar=1375909353

NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA NSA-Whistleblower Edward-Snowden Glen-Greenwald

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Aug 13
     
    This blog was bookmarked by Marbux a few days ago, and i finally had some time to catch up. It's really extraordinary. The information is an analysis of the ongoing battle between Obama and his illegal NSA spying activities and uber patriot, Edward Snowden; and his media connection Glen Greenwald of the UK Guardian. So far the patriots are winning. So often we hear the facts about an issue; the date, time and places stuff. But rarely do we find insightful analysis where the dots are connected. Naked Capitalism provides exactly that kind of insight. Awesome covergage! Covers Congressman Alan Grayson's unsuccessful attempts to hold a hearing on NSA activities. Grayson has scheduled Greenwald to appear and testify before Congress. excerpt: "Shortly after the vote, Alan Grayson invited members to a session scheduled for the morning of Wednesday, July 31, in which Greenwald would testify via video link. Richard Clarke, the chairman of the Counter-terrorism Security Group and a member of the National Security Group, was also scheduled to participate. Within 24 hours of Grayson announcing the meeting, which got the expected considerable interest from members, Clarke withdrew. He initially claimed to have developed a scheduling conflict, but it became clear he'd gotten the Elizabeth Warren treatment from the Administration, of being offered an undisclosed goodie (not of monetary value, but of participation in an insider process) and he was told that participating in this session would preclude his involvement in the other initiative. But that monkey wrench apparently wasn't sufficient. The prospect of having Greenwald and other whistleblowers develop a direct relationship with members of Congress, who had just barely been kept on the reservation, was too threatening to Obama. Jane Hamsher tells us the denouement: President Obama has historically considered the Hill some lower bardo of hell. One of the major complaints of congressional Democrats has always
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Aug 13
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Aug 13
     
    Thanks Paul. Not sure how Google News does that. Especially since the link I followed was from your Diigo bookmark! It had nothing to do with Google News! Also, Diigo does not provide a way to edit the URL???? No editing options???? Must be a new crippleware feature.
Paul Merrell

Top-Secret Document Reveals NSA Spied On Porn Habits As Part Of Plan To Discredit 'Radi... - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...sa-porn-muslims_n_4346128.html

surveillance state NSA NSA-porn COINTELPRO FBI must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • WASHINGTON -- The National Security Agency has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches, according to a top-secret NSA document. The document, provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, identifies six targets, all Muslims, as “exemplars” of how “personal vulnerabilities” can be learned through electronic surveillance, and then exploited to undermine a target's credibility, reputation and authority. The NSA document, dated Oct. 3, 2012, repeatedly refers to the power of charges of hypocrisy to undermine such a messenger. “A previous SIGINT" -- or signals intelligence, the interception of communications -- "assessment report on radicalization indicated that radicalizers appear to be particularly vulnerable in the area of authority when their private and public behaviors are not consistent,” the document argues. Among the vulnerabilities listed by the NSA that can be effectively exploited are “viewing sexually explicit material online” and “using sexually explicit persuasive language when communicating with inexperienced young girls.”
  • The Director of the National Security Agency -- described as "DIRNSA" -- is listed as the "originator" of the document. Beyond the NSA itself, the listed recipients include officials with the Departments of Justice and Commerce and the Drug Enforcement Administration. "Without discussing specific individuals, it should not be surprising that the US Government uses all of the lawful tools at our disposal to impede the efforts of valid terrorist targets who seek to harm the nation and radicalize others to violence," Shawn Turner, director of public affairs for National Intelligence, told The Huffington Post in an email Tuesday. Yet Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said these revelations give rise to serious concerns about abuse. "It's important to remember that the NSA’s surveillance activities are anything but narrowly focused -- the agency is collecting massive amounts of sensitive information about virtually everyone," he said. "Wherever you are, the NSA's databases store information about your political views, your medical history, your intimate relationships and your activities online," he added. "The NSA says this personal information won't be abused, but these documents show that the NSA probably defines 'abuse' very narrowly."
  • None of the six individuals targeted by the NSA is accused in the document of being involved in terror plots. The agency believes they all currently reside outside the United States. It identifies one of them, however, as a "U.S. person," which means he is either a U.S. citizen or a permanent resident. A U.S. person is entitled to greater legal protections against NSA surveillance than foreigners are. Stewart Baker, a one-time general counsel for the NSA and a top Homeland Security official in the Bush administration, said that the idea of using potentially embarrassing information to undermine targets is a sound one. "If people are engaged in trying to recruit folks to kill Americans and we can discredit them, we ought to," said Baker. "On the whole, it's fairer and maybe more humane" than bombing a target, he said, describing the tactic as "dropping the truth on them." Any system can be abused, Baker allowed, but he said fears of the policy drifting to domestic political opponents don't justify rejecting it. "On that ground you could question almost any tactic we use in a war, and at some point you have to say we're counting on our officials to know the difference," he said.
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  • In addition to analyzing the content of their internet activities, the NSA also examined the targets' contact lists. The NSA accuses two of the targets of promoting al Qaeda propaganda, but states that surveillance of the three English-speakers’ communications revealed that they have "minimal terrorist contacts." In particular, “only seven (1 percent) of the contacts in the study of the three English-speaking radicalizers were characterized in SIGINT as affiliated with an extremist group or a Pakistani militant group. An earlier communications profile of [one of the targets] reveals that 3 of the 213 distinct individuals he was in contact with between 4 August and 2 November 2010 were known or suspected of being associated with terrorism," the document reads. The document contends that the three Arabic-speaking targets have more contacts with affiliates of extremist groups, but does not suggest they themselves are involved in any terror plots. Instead, the NSA believes the targeted individuals radicalize people through the expression of controversial ideas via YouTube, Facebook and other social media websites. Their audience, both English and Arabic speakers, "includes individuals who do not yet hold extremist views but who are susceptible to the extremist message,” the document states. The NSA says the speeches and writings of the six individuals resonate most in countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Kenya, Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia.
  • The NSA possesses embarrassing sexually explicit information about at least two of the targets by virtue of electronic surveillance of their online activity. The report states that some of the data was gleaned through FBI surveillance programs carried out under the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act. The document adds, "Information herein is based largely on Sunni extremist communications." It further states that "the SIGINT information is from primary sources with direct access and is generally considered reliable." According to the document, the NSA believes that exploiting electronic surveillance to publicly reveal online sexual activities can make it harder for these “radicalizers” to maintain their credibility. "Focusing on access reveals potential vulnerabilities that could be even more effectively exploited when used in combination with vulnerabilities of character or credibility, or both, of the message in order to shape the perception of the messenger as well as that of his followers," the document argues. An attached appendix lists the "argument" each surveillance target has made that the NSA says constitutes radicalism, as well the personal "vulnerabilities" the agency believes would leave the targets "open to credibility challenges" if exposed.
  • One target's offending argument is that "Non-Muslims are a threat to Islam," and a vulnerability listed against him is "online promiscuity." Another target, a foreign citizen the NSA describes as a "respected academic," holds the offending view that "offensive jihad is justified," and his vulnerabilities are listed as "online promiscuity" and "publishes articles without checking facts." A third targeted radical is described as a "well-known media celebrity" based in the Middle East who argues that "the U.S perpetrated the 9/11 attack." Under vulnerabilities, he is said to lead "a glamorous lifestyle." A fourth target, who argues that "the U.S. brought the 9/11 attacks on itself" is said to be vulnerable to accusations of “deceitful use of funds." The document expresses the hope that revealing damaging information about the individuals could undermine their perceived "devotion to the jihadist cause." The Huffington Post is withholding the names and locations of the six targeted individuals; the allegations made by the NSA about their online activities in this document cannot be verified. The document does not indicate whether the NSA carried out its plan to discredit these six individuals, either by communicating with them privately about the acquired information or leaking it publicly. There is also no discussion in the document of any legal or ethical constraints on exploiting electronic surveillance in this manner.
  • While Baker and others support using surveillance to tarnish the reputation of people the NSA considers "radicalizers," U.S. officials have in the past used similar tactics against civil rights leaders, labor movement activists and others. Under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI harassed activists and compiled secret files on political leaders, most notably Martin Luther King, Jr. The extent of the FBI's surveillance of political figures is still being revealed to this day, as the bureau releases the long dossiers it compiled on certain people in response to Freedom of Information Act requests following their deaths. The information collected by the FBI often centered on sex -- homosexuality was an ongoing obsession on Hoover's watch -- and information about extramarital affairs was reportedly used to blackmail politicians into fulfilling the bureau's needs. Current FBI Director James Comey recently ordered new FBI agents to visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington to understand "the dangers in becoming untethered to oversight and accountability."
  • James Bamford, a journalist who has been covering the NSA since the early 1980s, said the use of surveillance to exploit embarrassing private behavior is precisely what led to past U.S. surveillance scandals. "The NSA's operation is eerily similar to the FBI's operations under J. Edgar Hoover in the 1960s where the bureau used wiretapping to discover vulnerabilities, such as sexual activity, to 'neutralize' their targets," he said. "Back then, the idea was developed by the longest serving FBI chief in U.S. history, today it was suggested by the longest serving NSA chief in U.S. history." That controversy, Bamford said, also involved the NSA. "And back then, the NSA was also used to do the eavesdropping on King and others through its Operation Minaret. A later review declared the NSA’s program 'disreputable if not outright illegal,'" he said. Baker said that until there is evidence the tactic is being abused, the NSA should be trusted to use its discretion. "The abuses that involved Martin Luther King occurred before Edward Snowden was born," he said. "I think we can describe them as historical rather than current scandals. Before I say, 'Yeah, we've gotta worry about that,' I'd like to see evidence of that happening, or is even contemplated today, and I don't see it."
  • Jaffer, however, warned that the lessons of history ought to compel serious concern that a "president will ask the NSA to use the fruits of surveillance to discredit a political opponent, journalist or human rights activist." "The NSA has used its power that way in the past and it would be naïve to think it couldn't use its power that way in the future," he said.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Nov 13
     
    By Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher, and Ryan Grim, 26 November 2013. I will annotate later. But this is by far the most important NSA disclosure from Edward Snowden's leaked documents thus far. A report originated by Gen. Alexander himself revealing COINTELPRO like activities aimed at destroying the reputations of non-terrorist "radicalizers," including one "U.S. person." This is exactly the kind of repressive activity that the civil libertarians among us warn about. 
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Nov 13
     
    By Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher, and Ryan Grim, 26 November 2013. I will annotate later. But this is by far the most important NSA disclosure from Edward Snowden's leaked documents thus far. A report originated by Gen. Alexander himself revealing COINTELPRO like activities aimed at destroying the reputations of non-terrorist "radicalizers," including one "U.S. person." This is exactly the kind of repressive activity that the civil libertarians among us warn about. 
Paul Merrell

N.S.A. Report Outlined Goals for More Power - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ined-goals-for-more-power.html

surveillance state NSA NSA-ambitions

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Officials at the National Security Agency, intent on maintaining its dominance in intelligence collection, pledged last year to push to expand its surveillance powers, according to a top-secret strategy document.
  • In a February 2012 paper laying out the four-year strategy for the N.S.A.’s signals intelligence operations, which include the agency’s eavesdropping and communications data collection around the world, agency officials set an objective to “aggressively pursue legal authorities and a policy framework mapped more fully to the information age.” Written as an agency mission statement with broad goals, the five-page document said that existing American laws were not adequate to meet the needs of the N.S.A. to conduct broad surveillance in what it cited as “the golden age of Sigint,” or signals intelligence. “The interpretation and guidelines for applying our authorities, and in some cases the authorities themselves, have not kept pace with the complexity of the technology and target environments, or the operational expectations levied on N.S.A.’s mission,” the document concluded. Using sweeping language, the paper also outlined some of the agency’s other ambitions. They included defeating the cybersecurity practices of adversaries in order to acquire the data the agency needs from “anyone, anytime, anywhere.” The agency also said it would try to decrypt or bypass codes that keep communications secret by influencing “the global commercial encryption market through commercial relationships,” human spies and intelligence partners in other countries. It also talked of the need to “revolutionize” analysis of its vast collections of data to “radically increase operational impact.”
  • The N.S.A. document, titled “Sigint Strategy 2012-2016,” does not make clear what legal or policy changes the agency might seek. The N.S.A.’s powers are determined variously by Congress, executive orders and the nation’s secret intelligence court, and its operations are governed by layers of regulations. While asserting that the agency’s “culture of compliance” would not be compromised, N.S.A. officials argued that they needed more flexibility, according to the paper. Senior intelligence officials, responding to questions about the document, said that the N.S.A. believed that legal impediments limited its ability to conduct surveillance of terrorism suspects inside the United States. Despite an overhaul of national security law in 2008, the officials said, if a terrorism suspect who is under surveillance overseas enters the United States, the agency has to stop monitoring him until it obtains a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. “N.S.A.’s Sigint strategy is designed to guide investments in future capabilities and close gaps in current capabilities,” the agency said in a statement. “In an ever-changing technology and telecommunications environment, N.S.A. tries to get in front of issues to better fulfill the foreign-intelligence requirements of the U.S. government.”
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  • Critics, including some congressional leaders, say that the role of N.S.A. surveillance in thwarting terrorist attacks — often cited by the agency to justify expanded powers — has been exaggerated. In response to the controversy about its activities after Mr. Snowden’s disclosures, agency officials claimed that the N.S.A.’s sweeping domestic surveillance programs had helped in 54 “terrorist-related activities.” But under growing scrutiny, congressional staff members and other critics say that the use of such figures by defenders of the agency has drastically overstated the value of the domestic surveillance programs in counterterrorism. Agency leaders believe that the N.S.A. has never enjoyed such a target-rich environment as it does now because of the global explosion of digital information — and they want to make certain that they can dominate “the Sigint battle space” in the future, the document said. To be “optimally effective,” the paper said, “legal, policy and process authorities must be as adaptive and dynamic as the technological and operational advances we seek to exploit.” Intent on unlocking the secrets of adversaries, the paper underscores the agency’s long-term goal of being able to collect virtually everything available in the digital world. To achieve that objective, the paper suggests that the N.S.A. plans to gain greater access, in a variety of ways, to the infrastructure of the world’s telecommunications networks.
  • Yet the paper also shows how the agency believes it can influence and shape trends in high-tech industries in other ways to suit its needs. One of the agency’s goals is to “continue to invest in the industrial base and drive the state of the art for high performance computing to maintain pre-eminent cryptanalytic capability for the nation.” The paper added that the N.S.A. must seek to “identify new access, collection and exploitation methods by leveraging global business trends in data and communications services.” And it wants to find ways to combine all of its technical tools to enhance its surveillance powers. The N.S.A. will seek to integrate its “capabilities to reach previously inaccessible targets in support of exploitation, cyberdefense and cyberoperations,” the paper stated. The agency also intends to improve its access to encrypted communications used by individuals, businesses and foreign governments, the strategy document said. The N.S.A. has already had some success in defeating encryption, The New York Times has reported, but the document makes it clear that countering “ubiquitous, strong, commercial network encryption” is a top priority. The agency plans to fight back against the rise of encryption through relationships with companies that develop encryption tools and through espionage operations. In other countries, the document said, the N.S.A. must also “counter indigenous cryptographic programs by targeting their industrial bases with all available Sigint and Humint” — human intelligence, meaning spies.
  • Above all, the strategy paper suggests the N.S.A.’s vast view of its mission: nothing less than to “dramatically increase mastery of the global network.” Other N.S.A. documents offer hints of how the agency is trying to do just that. One program, code-named Treasure Map, provides what a secret N.S.A. PowerPoint presentation describes as “a near real-time, interactive map of the global Internet.” According to the undated PowerPoint presentation, disclosed by Mr. Snowden, Treasure Map gives the N.S.A. “a 300,000 foot view of the Internet.”  Relying on Internet routing data, commercial and Sigint information, Treasure Map is a sophisticated tool, one that the PowerPoint presentation describes as a “massive Internet mapping, analysis and exploration engine.” It collects Wi-Fi network and geolocation data, and between 30 million and 50 million unique Internet provider addresses — code that can reveal the location and owner of a computer, mobile device or router — are represented each day on Treasure Map, according to the document. It boasts that the program can map “any device, anywhere, all the time.”  The documents include addresses labeled as based in the “U.S.,” and because so much Internet traffic flows through the United States, it would be difficult to map much of the world without capturing such addresses.
  • The program takes advantage of the capabilities of other secret N.S.A. programs. To support Treasure Map, for example, the document states that another program, called Packaged Goods, tracks the “traceroutes” through which data flows around the Internet. Through Packaged Goods, the N.S.A. has gained access to “13 covered servers in unwitting data centers around the globe,” according to the PowerPoint. The document identifies a list of countries where the data centers are located, including Germany, Poland, Denmark, South Africa and Taiwan as well as Russia, China and Singapore.
Paul Merrell

Committee to Protect Journalists issues scathing report on Obama administration | Glenn... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...pi-report-press-freedoms-obama

surveillance state Obama transparency freedom-of-the-press

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • It's hardly news that the Obama administration is intensely and, in many respects, unprecedentedly hostile toward the news-gathering process. Even the most Obama-friendly journals have warned of what they call "Obama's war on whistleblowers". James Goodale, the former general counsel of the New York Times during its epic fights with the Nixon administration, recently observed that "President Obama wants to criminalize the reporting of national security information" and added: "President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom."Still, a new report released today by the highly respected Committee to Protect Journalists - its first-ever on press freedoms in the US - powerfully underscores just how extreme is the threat to press freedom posed by this administration. Written by former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie, Jr., the report offers a comprehensive survey of the multiple ways that the Obama presidency has ushered in a paralyzing climate of fear for journalists and sources alike, one that severely threatens the news-gathering process.The first sentence: "In the Obama administration's Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press."
  • It quotes New York Times national security reporter Scott Shane as saying that sources are "scared to death." It quotes New York Times reporter David Sanger as saying that "this is the most closed, control freak administration I've ever covered." And it notes that New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan previously wrote that "it's turning out to be the administration of unprecedented secrecy and unprecedented attacks on a free press."Based on all this, Downie himself concludes:The administration's war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post's investigation of Watergate. The 30 experienced Washington journalists at a variety of news organizations whom I interviewed for this report could not remember any precedent."And this pernicious dynamic extends far beyond national security: "Ellen Weiss, Washington bureau chief for E.W. Scripps newspapers and stations, said 'the Obama administration is far worse than the Bush administration' in trying to thwart accountability reporting about government agencies." It identifies at least a dozen other long-time journalists making similar observations.
  • The report ends by noting the glaring irony that Obama aggressively campaigned on a pledge to usher in The Most Transparent Administration Ever™. Instead, as the New Yorker's investigative reporter Jane Mayer recently said about the Obama administration's attacks: "It's a huge impediment to reporting, and so chilling isn't quite strong enough, it's more like freezing the whole process into a standstill."
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Oct 13
     
    Note how Obama is not winning over the press with his legislation to give reporters for mainstream media a special privilege from some types of surveillance. When last I checked, that effort had bogged down in the effort to define "journalist" in a way that did not include every blogger on the planet. Small wonder: the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that there is no constitutional basis for a special protection for journalists *because the lone, anonymous pamphleteer has the same Freedom of the Press that mainstream journalists have.* I rarely make absolute predictions about what courts will do in the future, but this is black-letter First Amendment law. The legislation is doomed to be voided by the courts even if passed. Big, big denial of equal protection by the First Amendment. There is no alternative to ending the government surveillance except forfeiture of our freedoms.   
Paul Merrell

The "Cuban Twitter" Scam Is a Drop in the Internet Propaganda Bucket - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...minating-government-propaganda

surveillance state propaganda psywar USAID State-Dept. Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • This week, the Associated Press exposed a secret program run by the U.S. Agency for International Development to create “a Twitter-like Cuban communications network” run through “secret shell companies” in order to create the false appearance of being a privately owned operation. Unbeknownst to the service’s Cuban users was the fact that “American contractors were gathering their private data in the hope that it might be used for political purposes”–specifically, to manipulate those users in order to foment dissent in Cuba and subvert its government. According to top-secret documents published today by The Intercept, this sort of operation is frequently discussed at western intelligence agencies, which have plotted ways to covertly use social media for ”propaganda,” “deception,” “mass messaging,” and “pushing stories.” These ideas–discussions of how to exploit the internet, specifically social media, to surreptitiously disseminate viewpoints friendly to western interests and spread false or damaging information about targets–appear repeatedly throughout the archive of materials provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Documents prepared by NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ–and previously published by The Intercept as well as some by NBC News–detailed several of those programs, including a unit devoted in part to “discrediting” the agency’s enemies with false information spread online.
  • he documents in the archive show that the British are particularly aggressive and eager in this regard, and formally shared their methods with their U.S. counterparts. One previously undisclosed top-secret document–prepared by GCHQ for the 2010 annual “SIGDEV” gathering of the “Five Eyes” surveillance alliance comprising the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the U.S.–explicitly discusses ways to exploit Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media as secret platforms for propaganda.
  • The document was presented by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG). The unit’s self-described purpose is “using online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world,” including “information ops (influence or disruption).” The British agency describes its JTRIG and Computer Network Exploitation operations as a “major part of business” at GCHQ, conducting “5% of Operations.” The annual SIGDEV conference, according to one NSA document published today by The Intercept, “enables unprecedented visibility of SIGINT Development activities from across the Extended Enterprise, Second Party and US Intelligence communities.” The 2009 Conference, held at Fort Meade, included “eighty-six representatives from the wider US Intelligence Community, covering agencies as diverse as CIA (a record 50 participants), the Air Force Research Laboratory and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center.” Defenders of surveillance agencies have often insinuated that such proposals are nothing more than pipe dreams and wishful thinking on the part of intelligence agents. But these documents are not merely proposals or hypothetical scenarios. As described by the NSA document published today, the purpose of SIGDEV presentations is “to synchronize discovery efforts, share breakthroughs, and swap knowledge on the art of analysis.”
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  • (The GCHQ document also describes a practice called “credential harvesting,” which NBC described as an effort to “select journalists who could be used to spread information” that the government wants distributed. According to the NBC report, GCHQ agents would employ “electronic snooping to identify non-British journalists who would then be manipulated to feed information to the target of a covert campaign.” Then, “the journalist’s job would provide access to the targeted individual, perhaps for an interview.” Anonymous sources that NBC didn’t characterize claimed at the time that GCHQ had not employed the technique.) Whether governments should be in the business of publicly disseminating political propaganda at all is itself a controversial question. Such activities are restricted by law in many countries, including the U.S. In 2008, The New York Times’ David Barstow won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing a domestic effort coordinated by the Pentagon whereby retired U.S. generals posed as “independent analysts” employed by American television networks and cable news outlets as they secretly coordinated their messaging with the Pentagon.
  • The GCHQ document we are publishing today expressly contemplates exploiting social media venues such as Twitter, as well as other communications venues including email, to seed state propaganda–GHCQ’s word, not mine–across the internet:
  • For instance: One of the programs described by the newly released GCHQ document is dubbed “Royal Concierge,” under which the British agency intercepts email confirmations of hotel reservations to enable it to subject hotel guests to electronic monitoring. It also contemplates how to “influence the hotel choice” of travelers and to determine whether they stay at “SIGINT friendly” hotels. The document asks: “Can we influence the hotel choice? Can we cancel their visit?” Previously, der Spiegel and NBC News both independently confirmed that the “Royal Concierge” program has been implemented and extensively used. The German magazine reported that “for more than three years, GCHQ has had a system to automatically monitor hotel bookings of at least 350 upscale hotels around the world in order to target, search, and analyze reservations to detect diplomats and government officials.” NBC reported that “the intelligence agency uses the information to spy on human targets through ‘close access technical operations,’ which can include listening in on telephone calls and tapping hotel computers as well as sending intelligence officers to observe the targets in person at the hotels.”
  • Because American law bars the government from employing political propaganda domestically, that program was likely illegal, though no legal accountability was ever brought to bear (despite all sorts of calls for formal investigations). Barack Obama, a presidential candidate at the time, pronounced himself in a campaign press release “deeply disturbed” by the Pentagon program, which he said “sought to manipulate the public’s trust.” Propagandizing foreign populations has generally been more legally acceptable. But it is difficult to see how government propaganda can be segregated from domestic consumption in the digital age. If American intelligence agencies are adopting the GCHQ’s tactics of “crafting messaging campaigns to go ‘viral’,” the legal issue is clear: A “viral” online propaganda campaign, by definition, is almost certain to influence its own citizens as well as those of other countries.
  • But these documents, along with the AP’s exposure of the sham “Cuban Twitter” program, underscore how aggressively western governments are seeking to exploit the internet as a means to manipulate political activity and shape political discourse. Those programs, carried out in secrecy and with little accountability (it seems nobody in Congress knew of the “Cuban Twitter” program in any detail) threaten the integrity of the internet itself, as state-disseminated propaganda masquerades as free online speech and organizing. There is thus little or no ability for an internet user to know when they are being covertly propagandized by their government, which is precisely what makes it so appealing to intelligence agencies, so powerful, and so dangerous.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 14
     
    Glenn Greenwald drops a choice few new documents. Well worth viewing. 
Paul Merrell

Russia Holds "De-Dollarization Meeting": China, Iran Willing To Drop USD From Bilateral... - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...lling-drop-usd-bilateral-trade

war & peace economic-warfare dollar Russia China Iran

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 May 14 - No Cached
  • That Russia has been pushing for trade arrangements that minimize the participation (and influence) of the US dollar ever since the onset of the Ukraine crisis (and before) is no secret: this has been covered extensively on these pages before (see Gazprom Prepares "Symbolic" Bond Issue In Chinese Yuan; Petrodollar Alert: Putin Prepares To Announce "Holy Grail" Gas Deal With China; Russia And China About To Sign "Holy Grail" Gas Deal; 40 Central Banks Are Betting This Will Be The Next Reserve Currency; From the Petrodollar to the Gas-o-yuan and so on). But until now much of this was in the realm of hearsay and general wishful thinking. After all, surely it is "ridiculous" that a country can seriously contemplate to exist outside the ideological and religious confines of the Petrodollar... because if one can do it, all can do it, and next thing you know the US has hyperinflation, social collapse, civil war and all those other features prominently featured in other socialist banana republics like Venezuela which alas do not have a global reserve currency to kick around. Or so the Keynesian economists, aka tenured priests of said Petrodollar religion, would demand that the world believe. However, as much as it may trouble the statists to read, Russia is actively pushing on with plans to put the US dollar in the rearview mirror and replace it with a dollar-free system. Or, as it is called in Russia, a "de-dollarized" world.
  • Voice of Russia reports citing Russian press sources that the country's Ministry of Finance is ready to greenlight a plan to radically increase the role of the Russian ruble in export operations while reducing the share of dollar-denominated transactions. Governmental sources believe that the Russian banking sector is "ready to handle the increased number of ruble-denominated transactions". According to the Prime news agency, on April 24th the government organized a special meeting dedicated to finding a solution for getting rid of the US dollar in Russian export operations. Top level experts from the energy sector, banks and governmental agencies were summoned and a number of measures were proposed as a response for American sanctions against Russia. Well, if the west wanted Russia's response to ever escalating sanctions against the country, it is about to get it. The "de-dollarization meeting” was chaired by First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Igor Shuvalov, proving that Moscow is very serious in its intention to stop using the dollar. A subsequent meeting was chaired by Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseev who later told the Rossia 24 channel that "the amount of ruble-denominated contracts will be increased”, adding that none of the polled experts and bank representatives found any problems with the government's plan to increase the share of ruble payments.
  • Further, if you thought that only Obama can reign supreme by executive order alone, you were wrong - the Russians can do it just as effectively. Enter the "currency switch executive order": It is interesting that in his interview, Moiseev mentioned a legal mechanism that can be described as "currency switch executive order”, telling that the government has the legal power to force Russian companies to trade a percentage of certain goods in rubles. Referring to the case when this level may be set to 100%, the Russian official said that "it's an extreme option and it is hard for me to tell right now how the government will use these powers". Well, as long as the options exists. But more importantly, none of what Russia is contemplating would have any practical chance of implementation if it weren't for other nations who would engage in USD-free bilateral trade relations. Such countries, however, do exist and it should come as a surprise to nobody that the two which have already stepped up are none other than China and Iran.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Of course, the success of Moscow's campaign to switch its trading to rubles or other regional currencies will depend on the willingness of its trading partners to get rid of the dollar. Sources cited by Politonline.ru mentioned two countries who would be willing to support Russia: Iran and China. Given that Vladimir Putin will visit Beijing on May 20, it can be speculated that the gas and oil contracts that are going to be signed between Russia and China will be denominated in rubles and yuan, not dollars. In other words, in one week's time look for not only the announcement of the Russia-China "holy grail" gas agreement described previously here, but its financial terms, which now appears virtually certain will be settled exclusively in RUB and CNY. Not USD. And as we have explained repeatedly in the past, the further the west antagonizes Russia, and the more economic sanctions it lobs at it, the more Russia will be forced away from a USD-denominated trading system and into one which faces China and India. Which is why next week's announcement, as groundbreaking as it most certainly will be, is just the beginning.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 May 14
     
    Soon to be joined by the other two BRICS?
Paul Merrell

Transcript: Comey Says Authors of Encryption Letter Are Uninformed or Not Fair-Minded |... - 0 views

justsecurity.org/...-letter-uninformed-fair-minded

surveillance state FBI Comey encryption backdoors

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 May 15 - No Cached
  • Earlier today, FBI Director James Comey implied that a broad coalition of technology companies, trade associations, civil society groups, and security experts were either uninformed or were not “fair-minded” in a letter they sent to the President yesterday urging him to reject any legislative proposals that would undermine the adoption of strong encryption by US companies. The letter was signed by dozens of organizations and companies in the latest part of the debate over whether the government should be given built-in access to encrypted data (see, for example, here, here, here, and here for previous iterations). The comments were made at the Third Annual Cybersecurity Law Institute held at Georgetown University Law Center. The transcript of his encryption-related discussion is below (emphasis added).
  • Increasingly, communications at rest sitting on a device or in motion are encrypted. The device is encrypted or the communication is encrypted and therefore unavailable to us even with a court order. So I make a showing of probable cause to a judge in a criminal case or in an intelligence case to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that the content of a particular defense or a particular communication stream should be collected to our statutory authority, and the judge approves, increasingly we are finding ourselves unable to read what we find or we’re unable to open a device. And that is a serious concern. I am actually — I think encryption is a good thing. I think there are tremendous societal benefits to encryption. That’s one of the reasons the FBI tells people not only lock your cars, but you should encrypt things that are important to you to make it harder for thieves to take them.
  • A group of tech companies and some prominent folks wrote a letter to the President yesterday that I frankly found depressing. Because their letter contains no acknowledgment that there are societal costs to universal encryption. Look, I recognize the challenges facing our tech companies. Competitive challenges, regulatory challenges overseas, all kinds of challenges. I recognize the benefits of encryption, but I think fair-minded people also have to recognize the costs associated with that. And I read this letter and I think, “Either these folks don’t see what I see or they’re not fair-minded.” And either one of those things is depressing to me. So I’ve just got to continue to have the conversation. I don’t know the answer, but I don’t think a democracy should drift to a place where suddenly law enforcement people say, “Well, actually we — the Fourth Amendment is an awesome thing, but we actually can’t access any information.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • But we have a collision going on in this country that’s getting closer and closer to an actual head-on, which is our important interest in privacy — which I am passionate about — and our important interest in public safety. The logic of universal encryption is inexorable that our authority under the Fourth Amendment — an amendment that I think is critical to ordered liberty — with the right predication and the right oversight to obtain information is going to become increasingly irrelevant. As all of our lives become digital, the logic of encryption is that all of our lives will be covered by strong encryption, therefore all of our lives — I know there are no criminals here, but including the lives of criminals and terrorists and spies — will be in a place that is utterly unavailable to court ordered process. And that, I think, to a democracy should be very, very concerning. I think we need to have a conversation about it. Again, how do we strike the right balance? Privacy matters tremendously. Public safety, I think, matters tremendously to everybody. I think fair-minded people have to recognize that there are tremendous benefits to a society from encryption. There are tremendous costs to a society from universal strong encryption. And how do we think about that?
  • We’ve got to have a conversation long before the logic of strong encryption takes us to that place. And smart people, reasonable people will disagree mightily. Technical people will say it’s too hard. My reaction to that is: Really? Too hard? Too hard for the people we have in this country to figure something out? I’m not that pessimistic. I think we ought to have a conversation.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 May 15
     
    Considering that I'm over 10 times as likely to die from a police shoooting as I am from a terrorist attack, how about we begin this conversation, Mr. Comey, by you providing formal notice to everyone who's had the telephone metadata gathered or searched all dates on which such gatherings and searches were conducted so citizens can file suit for violation of their privacy rights? Note that the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held last week that the FBI exceeded statutory authority in gathering and searching that information. Because the gathering and searching was not authorized, that would bring the gathering and searching under the protections of the Privacy Act, including the FBI duty to account for the disclosures  and to pay at least the statutory minimum $1,500 in damges per incident.  Then I would like to have an itemization of all of the commercial software and hardware products that your agency and or your buddies at NSA built backdoors into.  Then your resignation for millions of violations of the Privacy Act would be deeply appreciated. Please feel free to delegate the above mentioned tasks to your successor. 
Paul Merrell

Exclusive: at ICC Palestine seeks 23 counts against Israel, 7 war crimes - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...exclusive-palestine-apartheid

war & peace Israel ICC charges Palestine war crimes apartheid

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Palestinian leaders seek to charge Israel at the International Criminal Court in The Hague with the crime of “Apartheid” and 22 other criminal counts, including seven war crimes. A thick set of documents containing evidence and arguments was ceremoniously handed over to the ICC today at its headquarters, according to Shawan Jabarin, the director of the Palestinian human rights group Al Haq. Jabarin said he had seen the documents in Ramallah and that the case file covers three areas of Israeli violations under international law: the summer war in Gaza in 2014, settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and issues relating to Palestinian prisoners. Most of the pages are of “legal analysis and legal arguments” he said, in which Palestinians gave technical explanations to the court for how Israel broke specific regulations.
  • The dossier is organized into sections, one for each of the 23 counts against Israel. Aside from asserting that Israel has violated the United Nations definition of “Apartheid,” Jabarin said the report also names specific crimes such as the “targeting of civilians” in Gaza, and violations of rights to due process for Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons who are then prosecuted under Israeli military code. Military courts boast a 99.9% conviction rate and trials last an average of five minutes. Palestinians rights groups say these courts violate their fundamental rights to a fair trial. Additionally, Israel transfers Palestinians from the occupied territory to a number of prisons inside Israel in what the Palestinian brief argues is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.   The evidence used to support each of the Palestinian claims is sourced from field investigations by the Palestinian government, and reports published by the human rights groups Al Haq, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Surprisingly Jabarin indicated the United Nations Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC) report published Sunday outlining “possible war crimes” committed by Israel and Hamas was not included, despite Palestinian leaders stating repeatedly over the past few months that they would courier a copy to the ICC. Even so, the court has the ability to solicit their own research materials including ordering the UN report.
  • Last winter after Palestine joined the ICC, its leaders sought to compel the ICC to look into war crimes committed by Israel. However, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was barred at that time from calling for a criminal investigation. His hands were tied by a four-month waiting period for new members to the court. All the same, Palestinian officials exploited a loophole in the ICC rules to initiate a “preliminary inquiry” against Israel within their first months of joining the ICC. Now that freeze against filing charges against Israel has elapsed, Palestinian officials hope that their documents turned over to the court today will upgrade the inquiry into a full investigation, giving the court the power to summons Israeli officials for a trial. Yet there is no guarantee that the court will charge Israel, and Israel can still take actions that would immobilize The Hague. 
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  • The ICC can only move to charge Israel once its internal war crimes investigations closes. The ICC does not prosecute countries or leaders who are sanctioned by their own legal systems. Right now, Israel still has a handful of cases open that could lead to indictments. On the other hand, prosecution in the ICC could be nearing for Hamas for the alleged war crimes it committed during the war, including the targeting of civilians by rocket fire and the killings of so-called collaborators. The UN Human Rights Council report revealed the Islamic movement that rules Gaza does not have any system of internal review, which is the only mechanism that could outright block the ICC from opening charges. As a result, Hamas is currently more exposed to the long arm of the ICC than Israel.
Paul Merrell

The Politics of Betrayal: Obama Backstabs Kurds to Appease Turkey - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...kstabs-kurds-to-appease-turkey

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Turkey Kurds Incerlik-AFB must-read MSM lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • The Kurdish militias (YPG, PKK) have been Washington’s most effective weapon in the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. But the Obama administration has sold out the Kurds in order to strengthen ties with Turkey and gain access to Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base. The agreement to switch sides was made in phone call between President Obama and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan less than 48 hours after a terrorist incident in the Turkish town of Suruc killed 32 people and wounded more than 100 others. The bombing provided Obama with the cover he needed to throw the Kurds under the bus, cave in to Turkey’s demands, and look the other way while Turkish bombers and tanks pounded Kurdish positions in Syria and Iraq. The media has characterized this shocking reversal of US policy as a “game-changer” that will improve US prospects for victory over ISIS. But what the about-face really shows is Washington’s inability to conduct a principled foreign policy as well as Obama’s eagerness to betray a trusted friend and ally if he sees some advantage in doing so.
  • Turkish President Erdogan has launched a war against the Kurds; that is what’s really happening in Syria at present. The media’s view of events–that Turkey has joined the fight against ISIS–is mostly spin and propaganda. The fact that the Kurds had been gaining ground against ISIS in areas along the Turkish border, worried political leaders in Ankara that an independent Kurdish state could be emerging. Determined to stop that possibility,  they decided to use the bombing in Suruc as an excuse to round up more than 1,000 of Erdogans political enemies (only a small percentage of who are connected to ISIS) while bombing the holy hell out of Kurdish positions in Syria and Iraq. All the while, the media has been portraying this ruthless assault on a de facto US ally, as a war on ISIS. It is not a war on ISIS. It is the manipulation of a terrorist attack to advance the belligerent geopolitical agenda of Turkish and US elites.
  • The Turks know who they’re bombing. They are bombing their 30-year long enemy, the Kurds.  Here’s more on the topic from Telesur: “A decades-old conflict between Turkey and the Kurdish PKK has been reignited. Turkey vowed Saturday to continue attacks against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), along with strikes against the Islamic State group. “The operations will continue for as long as threats against Turkey continue,” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, according to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency. Ankara also confirmed it carried out airstrikes against PKK sites in Iraq. While Davutoglu said any organizations that “threaten” Turkey would be targeted in a crackdown on militants, on Friday President Tayyip Erdogan said the PKK would be the main focus of attacks.”  (“Turkey Says More Anti-PKK Strikes to Come“, Telesur) Repeat: “Erdogan said the PKK would be the main focus of attacks.”
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Aug 15
     
    A must-read from Mike Whitney.
Joseph Skues

America: No Vacation Time For You | NEWS JUNKIE POST - 0 views

newsjunkiepost.com/...erica-no-vacation-time-for-you

vacation america labor congrss

shared by Joseph Skues on 20 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • In the richest country in the world, there is no right to any vacation time
  • In most other wealthy nations, there are between 20-35 vacation days per year (4-7 weeks).
  • 1 in 4 private-sector workers in the US do not receive any paid vacation or paid holidays
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • *The average paid vacation + paid holidays provided to U.S. workers in the private sector (15) is less than the minimum required by law in nearly every other rich country
  • 69% of low wage workers have vacation
  • 36% of part time workers have any paid vacation
  • The United States is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation.
  • but most of the rest of the world’s rich countries offer between five and 13 paid holidays per year.
  • For example, the average lower-wage worker (less than $15 per hour) with a vacation benefit received only 10 days of paid vacation per year in 2005, compared to 14 days of paid vacation for higher-wage workers with paid vacations. If we look at all workers ? those who receive paid vacations and those who don’t ? the vacation gap between lower-wage and higher-wage workers is even larger: only 7 days for lower-wage workers, compared to 13 days for higher-wage workers.
  • we also note that several foreign countries offer additional time off for younger and older workers, shift workers, and those engaged in community service including jury duty.
  • Three countries even mandate that employers pay vacationing workers a small premium above their standard pay in order to help with vacation-related expenses
  • Our analysis does not cover paid leave for other reasons such as sick leave, parental leave, or leave to care for sick relatives.
  • A 2007 report by the World Tourism Organization cataloged a sampling of nations to compare and contrast figures of the average number of vacation days offered: Italy 42 days France 37 days Germany 35 days Brazil 34 days United Kingdom 28 days Canada 26 days Korea 25 days Japan 25 days U.S. 13 days
  • Even Koreans who work hundreds of more hours per year than Americans average nearly twice the number of paid vacation days
  • On the other side of the scale, people in The Netherlands work hundreds of hours less per year than Americans,  and averaged 45 paid days off at one time (recent data not available).
  • One in six workers in the US are unable to take any vacation days for various reasons (usually due to workload), with some people going for years without taking their offered time off.
  • They calculate this to be worth $19.3 billion a year to their employers.
  • And 53% of respondents did not know that US employees receive considerably less annual vacation time than their counterparts in other industrialized countries.
  • The research firm Ipsos
  • lists the percentage of people in the following countries that used the full amount of their offered paid vacation time: France: 89 percent Argentina: 80 percent Hungary: 78 percent Britain: 77 percent Spain: 77 percent Saudi Arabia: 76 percent Germany: 75 percent Belgium: 74 percent Turkey: 74 percent Indonesia: 70 percent Mexico: 67 percent Russia: 67 percent Italy 66 percent Poland: 66 percent China: 65 percent Sweden: 63 percent Brazil: 59 percent India: 59 percent Canada: 58 percent United States: 57 percent South Korea: 53 percent Australia: 47 percent South Africa: 47 percent Japan: 33 percent Why the discrepancy?  Kathleen E. Christensen, the founder of the Workplace, Work Force and Working Families program at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and author of the book Workplace Flexibility: Realigning 20th-Century Jobs for a 21st-Century Workforce, states
  • Many of these countries have strong labor unions and the workers are more protected than in the U.S.”
  • Ironic that the country with the largest economy and greatest wealth in the world does not require any vacation time for the workers who create the wealth with their labor.  When paid annual and holiday leave is offered, it is less than half of what most other countries receive, and of that almost half of Americans do not use all of their days.
  • addition to our finding that the United States is the only country in the group that does not require employers to provide paid vacation time, we also note that several foreign countries offer additional time off for younger and older workers, shift workers, and those engaged in community service including jury duty
  • addition to our finding that the United States is the only country in the group that does not require employers to provide paid vacation time, we also note that several foreign countries offer additional time off for younger and older workers, shift workers, and those engaged in community service including jury duty
  • n addition to our finding that the United States is the only country in the group that does not require employers to provide paid vacation time, we also note that several foreign countries offer additional time off for younger and older workers, shift workers, and those engaged in community service including jury duty.
Paul Merrell

Land Destroyer: NATO's War on Syria Just Got Dirtier - 0 views

landdestroyer.blogspot.com/...on-syria-just-got-dirtier.html

war & peace Syria WMD false-flag Brown-Moses emails Syrian-Electronic-Army

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • But even with the West's capitulation in Syria, and months passing without a shred of credible evidence produced, hacks among Western media continue to perpetuate the original narrative. Among these are of course corporate-financier funded think-tanks and propaganda fronts like the Brookings Institution, Foreign Policy Magazine, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), and establishment papers like the Guardian. In the middle of it all is couch-potato self-proclaimed weapons expert, Eliot Higgins, a representation of the West's propaganda 2.0 campaign.  UK-based Higgins lost his job and now spends his days combing social media sites for "evidence" he then analyzes and reports on. The Western media, with its propagandists expelled from Syria and many of its "sources" in Syria exposed in humiliating attempts to fabricate and manipulate evidence, quickly picked Higgins up and elevated his armchair blogging to "expert analysis." Since then, Higgins has joined the already discredited "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" another UK-based individual, as the basis upon which the West's Syrian narrative spins. 
  • Whitaker is desperately attempting to keep the wheels on the establishment's new propaganda 2.0 vehicle - manipulating social media, much the way Hersh describes intelligence being manipulated, to create any outcome necessary to bolster a predetermined narrative.  What he doesn't address is the fact that Higgins' work almost entirely depends on videos posted online by people he does not know, who may be misrepresenting who they are, what they are posting, and their motivations for doing so - such is the nature of anonymity on the web and why this evidence alone is useless outside of a larger geopolitical context.  Both Whitaker and Higgins, who maintain that the Syrian government was behind the attacks, fail to address another glaring reality. A false flag attack is designed to look like the work of one's enemy. In other words, terrorists in Syria would use equipment, uniforms, weapons, and tactics that would pin the crime on the Syrian government. All Higgins has proved, thus far, is that the superficial details of the operation made for a convincing false flag attack. 
  • Toward the end of Higgin's piece, he, like his friends at the Guardian, attempt to claim Al Nusra, contrary to Hersh's report, are most likely not capable of producing sarin.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The e-mails illustrate prior knowledge of chemical weapons falling into the hands of terrorists who fully planned on using them in a false flag operation. Higgins and others had this information, and now, have Seymour Hersh's report as well, yet they still pose the argument that the militants had neither the ability nor the means to carry out the attacks. In fact, it appears that the Western media and underlings like Higgins went out of their way specifically to discredit the notion from even being considered.  In other words, a concerted cover-up.  The e-mails above, and others in the large cache also reveal the possible motivation for these lies. So-called journalists and researchers peddling the West's narrative appear to have a wide range of lucrative offers presented to them, as well as funding for them to continue doing the work they are already involved in. This of course is only the case so long as their narratives mesh with the institutions, corporations, and individuals cutting the checks. 
  • The e-mails reveal multiple correspondences regarding chemical weapons falling into the hands of terrorists aimed at using them in a false flag operation, Higgins' and Van Dyke's mutual "benefactor" located in Virginia, "near DC" (Langley, Virginia?), and job offers for Higgins from NGOs and a defense contractor involving "open source intelligence," the new buzzword used by Higgins and Whitaker in regards to the new form of propaganda they both participate in. 
  • While perhaps Higgins and company missed that CNN report, it is now revealed that at least Higgins, and several other journalists were told by an American contractor on the ground inside of Syria, that militants had gained access to chemical weapons and more importantly, were planning to use them in a false flag attack - this months before the August 21 attack in Damascus.   The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has released e-mails this week between American contractor Matthew Van Dyke and members of the Western media, including Higgins. The e-mails indicated that militants had chemical weapons and were planning to use them in an attack to frame the Syrian government - serving as impetus for wider foreign intervention. SEA's emails have been confirmed by Higgins himself in a series of self-incriminating tweets where he goes, point-by-point, attempting to provide explanations for the damning revelations. 
  • Why would Higgins even mention the possibility of a false flag attack, when all that would do is alienate him from the establishment he is so eagerly trying to be a part of? His recent piece in Foreign Policy and the Guardian's ceaseless promotion of his work are favors that demand reciprocation - in the form of toeing the line and selling a narrative Higgins and others know is deceitful.  That Higgins, the Guardian, and Foreign Policy are prepared to throw veteran journalist Seymour Hersh under the bus to protect their interests, gives us a look into the depths of depravity within which this "new" media Whitaker celebrates, operate.  Worst of all for the West, is that the transparency and accountability they claim to uphold, had to be kept in check by the SEA - an organization wanted by the FBI as "terrorists." We would be led to believe by the likes of Whitaker, Higgins, and Van Dyke that the Syrian government and their supporters are the villains, but in their own words and actions we see the truth. 
  • Note: The full extent of SEA's leaked e-mails exposes Van Dyke and the journalists he associates with as utterly depraved, deceitful, unprincipled individuals each driven by untethered greed and narcissism. The e-mails also reveal that "aid ships" are used to bring in weapons and foreign fighters, that the Syrians are almost entirely behind the government and that the so-called revolution was "fake." Van Dyke is exposed as having conspired to kill a man and his entire family over a trivial personal dispute and much, much more. Readers are encouraged to comb through the archives, and to follow SEA on Twitter  @Official_SEA16.
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 14
     
    "Brown Moses" (Eliot Higgins) has been the principle source of "evidence" that the Assad government used chemical weapons, arguing strenuously that the "rebels" had no such capability. But the Syrian Electronic Army obtained a large number of emails between Higgins and an American mercenary working in Syria showing beyond doubt that Higgins had been put on notice in May 2013 -- months before the sarin gas attack near Damascus in late August -- that the "rebels" had sarin.   Oopsies!
Paul Merrell

Justice for the MH17 victims is what we all need | Oriental Review - 0 views

orientalreview.org/...17-victims-is-what-we-all-need

war & peace Ukraine MH17 oxygen-mask

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • After keeping a meaningful two-month pause in covering the course of investigation of the MH17 tragedy, the international press has suddenly broke into another wave of baseless accusations against “pro-Russia separatists”, triggered by a “secret report” made by the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst, German foreign intelligence) for the Bundestag Control Committee on October 8, 2014. Ten days later the Spiegel alleged that at the meeting the BND president Gerhard Schindler had provided “satellite images and diverse photo evidence” to back up his case “proving that pro-Russian separatists captured a BUK air defense missile system at a Ukrainian military base and fired a missile on July 17 that exploded in direct proximity to the Malaysian aircraft”. The allegation was immediately caught up by a number of other top international media. On October 20 Alexander Nerad’ko, the director of Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency, invited the German intelligence to publish documentation demonstrating the involvement of the insurgents or the Ukrainian army in the disaster. Unfortunately, his request is not met till now. Ironically, one day before BND presented its report to Bundestag, the former Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister Frans Timmermans has casually let out that “the body of one passenger was found wearing an oxygen mask”.
  • This piece of information trashes the theory (which we used to hold too) of a shoot down by a surface-to-air missile as in this case the instantaneous depressurization of the MH17 passenger cabin would cause immediate death of all passengers. Both Western and Russian experts understand that serious conclusions on the causes of MH17 tragedy should be based on professional forensic study of the wreckage and damaging elements. All available technical data from Ukrainian dispatch lines, surveillance by Russia and USA, information of the Ukrainian Air Defense and Boeing Corporation should be made available for the International MH17 investigation commission. All other “leakages” are pointless talks and deceitful manipulation of the public opinion. E.g. the British barrister Alexander Mercouris has provided a detailed analysis depicting numerous controversies in the German report (as least in its clauses leaked to the press).
  • The Russian experts has already gathered all available data and released the Incident Report on MH17 tragedy back in mid-August this year. Its full text in English is available here.
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  • Of course, there are plenty of parties interested in concealing the real facts about flight MH17. Symptomatically, on August 8, 2014 the Ukraine, the Netherlands, Belgium and Australia signed a non-disclosure agreement on the crash investigation. Procrastination and delaying of an objective investigation by these sides and international organizations raises doubts whether the concerned parties will make public the findings and true circumstances of the crash of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777. Are the relatives of those who died in the flight MH17 the only interested people in bringing the real perpetrators of this horrible criminal act to justice?
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Nov 14
     
    The point using the body found wearing an oxygen mark ruling out a surface to air missile because of instant cabin depressurization is a very strong point. Another sign pointing to the Ukraine fighter jet shooting out the cockpit, instantly killing the cockpit crew through depressurization, but the plane continuing to fly on autopilot for a period of time before the passenger cabin depressurized. 
Paul Merrell

Obama Knew Arming Rebels Was Useless, But Did It Anyway - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...w-arming-rebels-useless-anyway

war & peace ISIL Obama political-cowardice

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • What’s worse: Launching a disastrous military campaign under false pretenses to achieve goals you wrongly believe are attainable? Or launching a disastrous military campaign you know is doomed in order to help your party win an election? I ask in light of today’s New York Times story about how President Obama asked the CIA a while back whether arming rebel forces – pretty much the agency’s signature strategy — had ever worked in the past. He was told that it almost never has. But then in June, once the political pressure for intervention in Syria got too great, he did just that — sending weapons to rebels fighting the Syrian military. Yes: He knew better, but he did it anyway.
  • Obama’s biggest such decision killed a lot of American servicemembers who he sent to fight and die in Afghanistan. During his 2008 presidential campaign, which was marked by his opposition to the war in Iraq, then-Senator Obama’s vow to re-engage in Afghanistan was seen by many as a ploy to avoid being cast as a dove, first by Hillary Clinton and then by John McCain. What’s not clear to this day is precisely when Obama knew better; when he realized that the war in Afghanistan was hopeless. By inauguration time, that conclusion seemed fairly obvious to many foreign-policy watchers. So why not him?
  • But one month into his presidency, Obama announced he was sending more troops there – 30,000, as it would turn out. Despite the obvious lack of what he himself had frequently described as a must — an exit strategy – he increased the number of troops in Afghanistan by 50 percent. And the monthly death tolls shot up. Over 1,600 American servicemembers  have died in Afghanistan since the summer of 2009 — well over half of all the dead during the entire war – along with countless Afghans. There were public signs in November 2009 that Obama was “rethinking” his plan. David Sanger, in his book Confront and Conceal, wrote that Obama actually began a “reassessment of whether the war was as necessary as he first believed” even earlier, in the summer of 2009. (At an off-the-record June 2009 dinner with historians the “main point” his guests tried to make was “that pursuit of war in Afghanistan would be for him what Vietnam was to Lyndon Johnson,” Garry Wills wrote  later.)
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  • And according to Sanger’s murky sources, the recognition that things were hopeless came at the latest by June 2011. But it wasn’t for three more long years —  until this May — that Obama finally announced U.S. troops would be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2016. Which brings us to the question I raised at the top. George W. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq sent vastly more people to their deaths than anything Obama did – nearly 5,000 U.S. servicemembers, plus over 100,000 Iraqi civilians – and left as many as half a million U.S. servicemembers wounded or otherwise permanently damaged
  • (Obama’s latest doomed-to-fail show of force explicitly keeps U.S. servicemembers out of harm’s way. ) But Bush at least thought the war in Iraq would do some good. He was incredibly wrong, mind you. He was both delusional — and actively manipulated by neocons like Dick Cheney (who believe the application of American power is always and inherently a good thing). He intentionally misled the public about his real reasons for going to war (the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were an excuse, not a reason; there were no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction). His eventual goal was both unachievable (a sudden flowering of pro-Western democracy in the Middle East) and perverse (American control of Iraqi oil fields). His methods (firing all the Baathists; trying to install a corrupt puppet) were spectacularly misguided. Much of the rest of his presidency was consumed with sectarian warfare in Iraq and new lies to  cover up the old ones at home. And the end result was a massive human rights catastrophe, including torture of U.S. detainees, a refugee crisis, mass casualties, social disorder and – finally – the Islamic State.
  • Bush also certainly saw – and exploited — the political upside of being a war president. But he didn’t let loose the dogs of war simply because his political operatives told him it would poll well.
Paul Merrell

And the Winner of the 'War On Terror' Financed Dream Home 2014 Giveaway Is… -... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...anced-dream-home-2014-giveaway

corruption Freeh Kazeminy

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Oceanfront views, 24-hour doorman, heated pool, and perhaps best of all, a “private tunnel to the beach.” This $3 million Palm Beach, Florida penthouse could be yours, but unfortunately it isn’t because this prize has already been claimed by a former high-level U.S. official who helped pave the way for the over decade-long “war on terror,” which has been a near complete catastrophe. Iraq is aflame, the Islamic State is on the rampage, the situation in Afghanistan worsens by the day, and thousands of Americans—and many more Iraqis and Afghans—have died during the post-9/11 conflicts. Meanwhile, the combined cost of the “war on terror” comes to an estimated $1.6 trillion. But if the American people got screwed on the deal, a lot of former senior government officials who played important roles in this debacle have done quite well for themselves. It’s New Year’s Eve and I need to write a final sendoff to 2014, so I thought I’d take a look at the fortunes (literally) of some of these figures: Former CIA director George Tenet and former FBI director Louis Freeh (I’ll cover former Department of Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge in a New Year’s post).
  • Freeh resigned from the FBI two months before 9/11. When he worked there he was making an annual salary of $145,000 and lived “in a heavily mortgaged house in Great Falls, a Virginia suburb,” according to an old and admiring New Yorker profile. He and his wife now own at least four lavish estates worth many millions of dollars, including a residence in Wilmington, Delaware, a six-bedroom summerhouse worth more than $3 million in Vermont, and a beachfront penthouse at 100 Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, Florida, which was bought for $1.4 million and now has an estimated value of $3 million. How’d that happen? Well, Freeh is one of many former U.S. officials who got paid big speaking fees (reportedly up to $50,000 a pop) by a creepy Iranian group called the People’s Mujahedin, also known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq, or MEK, to successfully advocate for its removal from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. He also opened up a consulting firm whose clients have included Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar, who the U.S. Department of Justice accused of taking massive bribes from a British defense contractor. That’s right, Freeh represented a prince from America’s old pal Saudi Arabia, home to fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers, and whose export of Wahhabism is credited with giving rising to the Islamic State.
  • Freeh is also hired to conduct investigations, like the controversial report he produced about Penn State’s football program. Nasser Kazeminy, a Minnesota businessman who in 2008 was accused of bribing former Senator Norm Coleman, also hired Freeh to conduct a “thorough investigation” of the allegations against him in the hopes of clearing his name.
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  • In 2011, Freeh issued a public statement saying that his investigation had “completely vindicated” both Kazeminy and Coleman. Sure, Kazeminy had bought Coleman $100,000 worth of presents, but, Freeh said at a press conference, “There was no quid pro quo in the gifts. There was no wrongdoing.” Freeh also met with the Justice Department – which was investigating the bribery charges but declined to bring a case—on Kazeminy’s behalf. Oh yeah, about Freeh’s Palm Beach penthouse. As I discovered through Florida property records, Freeh’s wife co-owns it with Kazeminy, which kind of makes you wonder about just how thorough and impartial his investigation was. The quit claim deed giving Freeh’s wife one-half ownership of the penthouse was signed nine days after Freeh’s vindication of Kazeminy.
Paul Merrell

Land Destroyer: USAID Exposed in Cuba - What it Tells Us About US Subversion Worldwide - 0 views

landdestroyer.blogspot.com/...-in-cuba-what-it-tells-us.html

war & peace war by proxy USAID NED Soros U.S.-foreign-policy must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Revealed in an Associated Press (AP) investigation, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) had for two years attempted to create and exploit a social network within Cuba for the purpose of sparking unrest and overthrowing the Cuban government. The program was an abject failure, primarily because the Cuban government took the necessary measures to investigate, interrogate, and otherwise disrupt what was foreign-backed sedition. AP would reveal in its report titled, "US co-opted Cuba's hip-hop scene to spark change," that:
  • Regarding USAID's denial, AP would report: "Any assertions that our work is secret or covert are simply false," USAID said in a statement Wednesday. Its programs were aimed at strengthening civil society "often in places where civic engagement is suppressed and where people are harassed, arrested, subjected to physical harm or worse."
  • What other nations have suffered recent political unrest? Which of these nations featured opposition movements heavily involved with USAID and other US organizations including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)? Knowing what we now know regarding Cuba and considering attempts by USAID to first cover up their program of concerted political subversion, then denying it, what parallels can we draw elsewhere?
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  • USAID Exposed in Cuba - What it Tells Us About US Subversion Worldwide
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Dec 14
     
    This article includes a tight country-by-country summary of recent U.S. efforts to overthrow governments around the globe, with supporting links. The roles of George Soros, NED, and USAID figure largely. I've highlighted a particularly comic quote from a USAID spokesman.
Paul Merrell

U.S. War Against Russia Is Now Against Hungary Too Washington's Blog - 0 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...-s-war-russia-now-hungary.html

war & peace U.S. Russia Hungary NATO

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Hungary has decided to align itself with Russia against the United States. The Western Alliance is starting to fray, over the insistence by Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress to go to war against Russia.
  • But, within the European Union, and especially among its former member-states of the Soviet Union, this is, as of yet, still only a cold war, which is in the process of heating up toward perhaps the super-hot temperature of a nuclear conflict between Russia and NATO (the latter organization consisting of the United States and its vassal nations against Russia). And America is already investing heavily in it. According to German Economic News (GEN), on December 25th, “Hungary Will Not Take Part in the Cold War Against Russia.” They report that, “Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban takes his distance from the EU, and accuses the US government of trying to instigate a new Cold War against Russia. Hungary will not participate.” GEN also links to an earlier, October 19th, GEN article, which had reported that, “After Russia, Hungary is now apparently also being targeted by Americans: the United States is hitting senior Hungarian government officials and businessmen with entry bans. The Americans throw corruption-charges against the Hungarians.”
  • On Tuesday, December 23rd, Reuters headlined, “Hungary PM Orban: U.S. uses corruption charges to gain influence,” and reported that, “The United States is using corruption allegations against some Hungarian public officials as a ‘cover story’ to boost its influence in central Europe amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Tuesday. Orban’s comments come amid a wider souring of relations between Hungary, a NATO ally, and the United States over what America perceives as Orban’s increasingly authoritarian rule and Budapest’s warm relations with Russia.”
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  • America’s pervasive NSA snooping, militarizing of local police-forces, and invasions of Iraq, Syria, Libya, and other countries that never threatened the United States, are not considered (by the British Reuters) ‘authoritarian,’ but somehow Hungary now is ‘authoritarian.’ Suddenly (though the U.S. didn’t say this when Hungary was trying to meet the demands of the American aristocracy), Hungary is ‘authoritarian,’ and is ‘too’ corrupt to do business with.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Dec 14
     
    A NATO member, Hungary, just bowed out of U.S. sanctions on Russia. Turkey looks to be doing the same. Is this the beginning of NATO coming undone? 
Paul Merrell

Press Release | Press Releases | Newsroom | Tim Kaine | U.S. Senator for Virginia - 0 views

www.kaine.senate.gov/...litary-operations-against-isil

war & peace ISIL war-powers Congress Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern, South and Central Asian Affairs, released the following statement today on expanded U.S. military operations against ISIL: "Actions by ISIL over the past several months, including the gruesome murder of an American journalist and threats against others, are barbaric and the work of a callous terrorist organization. I agree that ISIL poses a significant terrorist threat to U.S. interests and partners in the region, which is why the Administration has initiated military action against the group. But I do not believe that our expanded military operations against ISIL are covered under existing authorizations from Congress.  The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force does not apply, and the Administration has testified that the 2002 Iraq war authorization is obsolete and should be repealed.  Under Article II, the President has authority to defend against imminent threats to U.S. national security interests and personnel, but I have reservations regarding whether our military actions against ISIL all meet this test. “I’m encouraged by reports that indicate Administration officials have signaled that seeking Congressional authorization for U.S. military action against ISIL is being considered. This fight, and the threat posed by ISIL, is serious enough that Congress and the Administration must be united on U.S. policy going forward. I urge the Administration to use the next two weeks to clearly define the strategy and objectives of its mission against ISIL, then bring it to Congress for a debate and authorization vote. 
  • “I have long stressed that Congress must formally approve the initiation of significant military action – it is what the framers of the Constitution intended, and Congress and the Executive have a responsibility to do the hard work to build a political consensus in support of our military missions. ?? "No one doubts the inhumane nature of ISIL. The Secretary of Defense has described ISIL as ‘beyond anything that we’ve seen.’  I applaud the setbacks ISIL has suffered at the hands of the U.S. military.  And I will always support the President when he takes action to protect American servicemembers and diplomats.  But I am calling for the mission and objectives for this current significant military action against ISIL to be made clear to Congress, the American people, and our men and women in uniform.  And Congress should vote up or down on it.”? ?
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 14
     
    At least one Senator is calling for the Constitution be complied with before Obama launches another war. But too late; he already did.
Paul Merrell

Secret US cybersecurity report: encryption vital to protect private data | US news | Th... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ect-data-cameron-paris-attacks

surveillance-state NSA GCHQ encryption hypocrisy

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • A secret US cybersecurity report warned that government and private computers were being left vulnerable to online attacks from Russia, China and criminal gangs because encryption technologies were not being implemented fast enough. The advice, in a newly uncovered five-year forecast written in 2009, contrasts with the pledge made by David Cameron this week to crack down on encryption use by technology companies.
  • In the wake of the Paris terror attacks, the prime minister said there should be no “safe spaces for terrorists to communicate” or that British authorites could not access. Cameron, who landed in the US on Thursday night, is expected to urge Barack Obama to apply more pressure to tech giants, such as Apple, Google and Facebook, which have been expanding encrypted messaging for their millions of users since the revelations of mass NSA surveillance by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.
  • Cameron said the companies “need to work with us. They need also to demonstrate, which they do, that they have a social responsibility to fight the battle against terrorism. We shouldn’t allow safe spaces for terrorists to communicate. That’s a huge challenge but that’s certainly the right principle”. But the document from the US National Intelligence Council, which reports directly to the US director of national intelligence, made clear that encryption was the “best defence” for computer users to protect private data. Part of the cache given to the Guardian by Snowden was published in 2009 and gives a five-year forecast on the “global cyber threat to the US information infrastructure”. It covers communications, commercial and financial networks, and government and critical infrastructure systems. It was shared with GCHQ and made available to the agency’s staff through its intranet.
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  • An unclassified table accompanying the report states that encryption is the “[b]est defense to protect data”, especially if made particularly strong through “multi-factor authentication” – similar to two-step verification used by Google and others for email – or biometrics. These measures remain all but impossible to crack, even for GCHQ and the NSA. The report warned: “Almost all current and potential adversaries – nations, criminal groups, terrorists, and individual hackers – now have the capability to exploit, and in some cases attack, unclassified access-controlled US and allied information systems.” It further noted that the “scale of detected compromises indicates organisations should assume that any controlled but unclassified networks of intelligence, operational or commercial value directly accessible from the internet are already potentially compromised by foreign adversaries”.
  • The report had some cause for optimism, especially in the light of Google and other US tech giants having in the months prior greatly increased their use of encryption efforts. “We assess with high confidence that security best practices applied to target networks would prevent the vast majority of intrusions,” it concluded. Official UK government security advice still recommends encryption among a range of other tools for effective network and information defence. However, end-to-end encryption – which means only the two people communicating with each other, and not the company carrying the message, can decode it – is problematic for intelligence agencies as it makes even warranted collection much more difficult.
  • The previous week, a day after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris, the MI5 chief, Andrew Parker, called for new powers and warned that new technologies were making it harder to track extremists. In November, the head of GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, said US social media giants had become the “networks of choice” for terrorists. Chris Soghoian, principal senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, said attempts by the British government to force US companies to weaken encryption faced many hurdles.
  • The Guardian, New York Times and ProPublica have previously reported the intelligence agencies’ broad efforts to undermine encryption and exploit rather than reveal vulnerabilities. This prompted Obama’s NSA review panel to warn that the agency’s conflicting missions caused problems, and so recommend that its cyber-security responsibilities be removed to prevent future issues.
  • The memo requested a renewal of the legal warrant allowing GCHQ to “modify” commercial software in violation of licensing agreements. The document cites examples of software the agency had hacked, including commonly used software to run web forums, and website administration tools. Such software are widely used by companies and individuals around the world. The document also said the agency had developed “capability against Cisco routers”, which would “allow us to re-route selected traffic across international links towards GCHQ’s passive collection systems”. GCHQ had also been working to “exploit” the anti-virus software Kaspersky, the document said. The report contained no information on the nature of the vulnerabilities found by the agency.
  • Michael Beckerman, president and CEO of the Internet Association, a lobby group that represents Facebook, Google, Reddit, Twitter, Yahoo and other tech companies, said: “Just as governments have a duty to protect to the public from threats, internet services have a duty to our users to ensure the security and privacy of their data. That’s why internet services have been increasing encryption security.”
Paul Merrell

Israel wants to "Settle Israeli Sovereignty over Syrian Golan Heights" | nsnbc internat... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...gnty-over-syrian-golan-heights

war & peace Israel U.S.-foreign-policy Golan-Heights Syria

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Israel’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has publicly called for “settling the Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights within the framework of the Israeli – Palestinian negotiations” adding that “part of this comprehensive bargain has to cover an understanding between Israel, the international community and the USA” and adding that “the Golan is part and parcel with Israel”.
  • The statement prompted a response by the Syrian government to the UN Secretary General and the President of the Security Council. The statement confirms information nsnbc received from a Palestinian intelligence expert in 2011 and 2012, who warned that Israel plans to permanently annex the Golan, parts of southern Lebanon and most of the West Bank, while planning to recognize a Palestinian State in the Gaza Strip plus micro enclaves in the West Bank. The statement also substantiates Christof Lehmann’s warnings about joint Israeli – US plans to that effect, issued in 2011, after the 66th Session of the UN General Assembly. During the 66th Session, US President Obama refused to recognize Palestine as a State, saying that “a solution for Palestine only could be found within the framework of a comprehensive solution for the Middle East“.
  • On Wednesday, the Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Ministry responded by sending two identical letters to the offices of the UN Secretary General and the President of the US Security Council, reports the Syrian news agency SANA. The letters inform the UN Secretary General and the UNSC President, that Lieberman made the statement on 31 January 2014, while visiting the occupied Syrian Golan. In the letters, the Syrian Foreign Ministry stressed that the Israeli Foreign Minister’s statements embody an insolent approach to the events in Syria and recklessness with regard to relevant UN resolutions, such as UNSC resolution 497 (1981) and others, which call on Israel to end the occupation of the Syrian Golan and all Arab lands which Israel has occupied since 1967. The Syrian government quotes Lieberman as claiming that: ” The dangers to security, linked to our capability to defend the North of the country, require a recognition of Isrel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights by the international community”. The Syrian Foreign Ministry stressed that Israel is sponsoring terrorism in Syria and that Israel seems as if it mistakenly believes that it can exploit its sponsorship of the terrorist war on Syria to achieve its expansionist ambitions. The Syrian Foreign Ministry also stressed that 47 years have passed since Israel’s occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights and that Israel has defied hundreds of resolutions and calls on ending the occupation and to stop its inhuman racial policies and its killing of civilians in the Israeli occupied territories.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The ministry added that Lieberman’s statements indicate an escalation of Israel’s recklessness and disregard for the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly and stressed, that Israel must not be allowed to escape from compliance with international law, resolutions, and if necessary punishment. Syria requests that the UN Secretary General and the President of the UN Security Council guarantee that Israel respects the UN resolutions, to oblige Israel to end its occupation of the Syrian Golan, and to withdraw from the Golan according to the red line on 4 June 1967. The Foreign Ministry asserted, that the UN continuously deals with the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan “on a routine basis without any serious move to enforce the Security Council’s resolutions” and that this nonchalant posture encourages the illegal situation to continue” thus “undermining the credibility of the UN organization”.
  • It is worth reiterating, that Lehmann, already in 2011, warned that US President Obama’s statement pertaining the recognition of Palestine, and his article based on information from a Palestinian intelligence expert explicitly stated, that the US administration of Barak Obama and Israel are complicit in planning Israel’s permanent annexation of the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan Heights, parts of southern Lebanon and some 97 percent of the Palestinian West Bank, while establishing Palestinian small enclaves, dependent on Jordan, in the remaining 3 percent of the West Bank and a recognized Palestinian State in the Gaza Strip.
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Mar 15
     
    The return of the occupied Golan Heights is absolutely required by the U.N. Charter, Geneva Conventions, and numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions.  Israel's purported security concerns do not create a lawful exception. What is really at stake in the Golan Heights and the occupied territories of Palestine is whether the U.N. Charter did in fact put an end to the right of Conquest. 
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