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And that doesn't even account for the three-quarters of people who think privacy, which this law almost entirely erodes, is a human right. There are some safeguards, however, such as a "double lock" system so that the secretary of state and an independent judicial commissioner must agree on a decision to carry out search warrants (though one member of the House of Lords disputed that claim). A new investigatory powers commissioner will also oversee the use of the powers. Despite the uproar, the government's opposition failed to scrutinize any significant amendments and abstained from the final vote. Killock said recently that the opposition Labour party spent its time "simply failing to hold the government to account". But the government has downplayed much of the controversy surrounding the bill. The government has consistently argued that the bill isn't drastically new, but instead reworks the old and outdated Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). This was brought into law in 2000, to "legitimize" new powers that were conducted or ruled on in secret, like collecting data in bulk and hacking into networks, which was revealed during the Edward Snowden affair. Much of those activities were only possible thanks to litigation by one advocacy group, Privacy International, which helped push these secret practices into the public domain while forcing the government to scramble to explain why these practices were legal. The law will be ratified by royal assent in the coming weeks.

The real question is this: if concern over suppression of political rights is not the real reason the U.S. is imposing new sanctions on Venezuela (perish the thought!), what is? Among the most insightful commentators on U.S. policy in Latin America is Mark Weisbrot of Just Foreign Policy. Read his excellent article for Al Jazeera on the recent Obama decree on Venezuela. In essence, Venezuela is one of the very few countries with significant oil reserves which does not submit to U.S. dictates, and this simply cannot be permitted (such countries are always at the top of the U.S. government and media list of Countries To Be Demonized). Beyond that, the popularity of Chavez and the relative improvement of Venezuela’s poor under his redistributionist policies petrifies neoliberal institutions for its ability to serve as an example; just as the Cuban economy was choked by decades of U.S. sanctions and then held up by the U.S. as a failure of Communism, subverting the Venezuelan economy is crucial to destroying this success. As Weisbrot notes, every country in the hemisphere except for the U.S. and Canada have united to oppose U.S. sanctions on Venezuela. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) issued a statement in February in response to the prior round of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela that “reiterates its strong repudiation of the application of unilateral coercive measures that are contrary to international law.” This week, the chief of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) issued a statement announcing that “UNASUR rejects any external or internal attempt at interference that seeks to disrupt the democratic process in Venezuela.” Weisbrot compares Obama’s decree this week on Venezuela to President Reagan’s quite similar 1985 decree that Nicaragua was a national security threat to the U.S., and notes: “The Obama administration is more isolated today in Latin America than even George W. Bush’s administration was.”

If Obama and supporters want the government of Venezuela to be punished and/or toppled because they refuse to comply with U.S. dictates, they should at least be honest about their beliefs so that their true character can be seen. Pretending that any of this has to do with the U.S. Government’s anger over suppression of political opponents — when their closest allies are the world champions at that — should be too insulting of everyone’s intelligence to even be an option.

The same pattern repeats itself in the European Union. Loonwatch.com also compiles data on terrorism in the European Union from the reports of the European Union’s European Police Office (Europol) from 2007, 2008, and 2009 in its annual EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Reports. [4] The data further distances Muslims from terrorist acts. 99.6% of the terrorist attacks in the European Union were committed by non-Muslims. [5] The number of failed, foiled, or successful terrorist attacks by Muslims in the EU from 2007 to 2009 was simply five attacks whereas the number of terrorist attacks by separatist groups was 1,352 attacks, which equates to approximately 85% of all terrorist incidents in the European Union. [6] According to Europol, the number of failed, foiled, or successful terrorist attacks by so-called left-wing groups was 104 while another 52 attacks were categorized as non-specific. [7] In the same period, two attacks were attributed to so-called right-wing groups by Europol. [8]

There is a huge disparity in who is causing and committing terrorism and who is being victimized and blamed for it. Despite the overwhelming facts, whenever Arabs or Muslims commit crimes and acts of terrorism, they are the individuals that are focused on whereas non-Arabs and non-Muslims are ignored. If it does acknowledge that Muslims are the biggest victims of terrorism, Orientalism still manages to assess some guilt to the victims of terrorism by tacitly portraying them as members of a savage community or society that are as much prone to facing a violent end as animals in a jungle.

Illusions are at work in the world. The truth has been turned on its head. The victims are being portrayed as the perpetrators. Whether stated candidly, implied, or unmentioned, the notion of Arabs and Muslims as savages and terrorists plays on the imagery that the so-called Western World embodies equality, freedom, choice, civilization, tolerance, progress, and modernity whereas the so-called Arab-Muslim World underneath its surface represents inequality, restrictions, tyranny, a lack of choices, savagery, intolerance, backwardness, and primitiveness. This imagery actually serves to de-politize the political nature of tensions. It sanitizes the actions of empire, from coercive diplomacy with Iran and support for regime change in Syria to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and US military intervention in Somalia, Yemen, and Libya. As mentioned earlier, in varying degrees, this imagery extends to other places that are seen by US Orientalists as non-Western places or entities, like Russia and China. At its roots, this imagery is really part of a discourse that sustains a system of power that allows power to be practiced by an empire over «outsiders» and against its own citizens. It is because of US foreign policy and economic interests that Arabs and Muslims are unempirically portrayed as terrorists while real world data that shows that US intervention is creating terrorism is ignored. This is why there is a fixation on the attack on Parliament Hill in Canada, the Martin Place hostage crisis in Sydney, and the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, but US, Canadian, Australian, and French governmental support for terrorism that has cost tens of thousands of lives in Syria is ignored.

It has been claimed that if all terrorists are not Arabs or Muslims, that most terrorists are Arabs or Muslims. Is this true or another myth? An empirical look at data compiled in the US and Europe will help answer this question.

"Irregularities" in government tenders is part of a much larger financial crisis brought on by Erdogan's policies. As noted in a an article earlier this week:"While the focus to date has been on charges of personal enrichment by Erdogan’s ministers and associates, the real problem for the current government is financial fraud in reporting its current account deficit and national income. These figures are the basis for access to international financing. Intentional, inaccurate reporting constitutes fraud that understates the risk to lenders and provides a more favorable interest rate for the borrower than is warranted." Michael Collins, Dec 29Mustafa Sonmez detailed the problems in Hurriyet Daily News, an important analysis overshadowed by the more spectacular charges of late. Turkey's secret gold-for-oil deal with Iran distorted financial reporting figure. Debt was understated and income overstated as a result. Turkey's economic success is based on foreign investments. When foreign investors look at the political instability combined with the financial reporting problems, they will vote with their feed. A survey of Middle East fund managers found that none planned to raise investments in Turkey in 2014 and 13% planned to reduce their investments.

n recent days, the United States circulated to its allies a confidential paper highlighting American objectives in the negotiations, "Right to Privacy in the Digital Age -- U.S. Redlines." It calls for changing the Brazilian and German text so "that references to privacy rights are referring explicitly to States' obligations under ICCPR and remove suggestion that such obligations apply extraterritorially." In other words: America wants to make sure it preserves the right to spy overseas. The U.S. paper also calls on governments to promote amendments that would weaken Brazil's and Germany's contention that some "highly intrusive" acts of online espionage may constitute a violation of freedom of expression. Instead, the United States wants to limit the focus to illegal surveillance -- which the American government claims it never, ever does. Collecting information on tens of millions of people around the world is perfectly acceptable, the Obama administration has repeatedly said. It's authorized by U.S. statute, overseen by Congress, and approved by American courts.

"Recall that the USG's [U.S. government's] collection activities that have been disclosed are lawful collections done in a manner protective of privacy rights," the paper states. "So a paragraph expressing concern about illegal surveillance is one with which we would agree." The privacy resolution, like most General Assembly decisions, is neither legally binding nor enforceable by any international court. But international lawyers say it is important because it creates the basis for an international consensus -- referred to as "soft law" -- that over time will make it harder and harder for the United States to argue that its mass collection of foreigners' data is lawful and in conformity with human rights norms. "They want to be able to say ‘we haven't broken the law, we're not breaking the law, and we won't break the law,'" said Dinah PoKempner, the general counsel for Human Rights Watch, who has been tracking the negotiations. The United States, she added, wants to be able to maintain that "we have the freedom to scoop up anything we want through the massive surveillance of foreigners because we have no legal obligations."

The United States negotiators have been pressing their case behind the scenes, raising concerns that the assertion of extraterritorial human rights could constrain America's effort to go after international terrorists. But Washington has remained relatively muted about their concerns in the U.N. negotiating sessions. According to one diplomat, "the United States has been very much in the backseat," leaving it to its allies, Australia, Britain, and Canada, to take the lead. There is no extraterritorial obligation on states "to comply with human rights," explained one diplomat who supports the U.S. position. "The obligation is on states to uphold the human rights of citizens within their territory and areas of their jurisdictions."

The position, according to Jamil Dakwar, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Human Rights Program, has little international backing. The International Court of Justice, the U.N. Human Rights Committee, and the European Court have all asserted that states do have an obligation to comply with human rights laws beyond their own borders, he noted. "Governments do have obligation beyond their territories," said Dakwar, particularly in situations, like the Guantanamo Bay detention center, where the United States exercises "effective control" over the lives of the detainees. Both PoKempner and Dakwar suggested that courts may also judge that the U.S. dominance of the Internet places special legal obligations on it to ensure the protection of users' human rights.

"It's clear that when the United States is conducting surveillance, these decisions and operations start in the United States, the servers are at NSA headquarters, and the capabilities are mainly in the United States," he said. "To argue that they have no human rights obligations overseas is dangerous because it sends a message that there is void in terms of human rights protection outside countries territory. It's going back to the idea that you can create a legal black hole where there is no applicable law." There were signs emerging on Wednesday that America may have been making ground in pressing the Brazilians and Germans to back on one of its toughest provisions. In an effort to address the concerns of the U.S. and its allies, Brazil and Germany agreed to soften the language suggesting that mass surveillance may constitute a violation of human rights. Instead, it simply deep "concern at the negative impact" that extraterritorial surveillance "may have on the exercise of and enjoyment of human rights." The U.S., however, has not yet indicated it would support the revised proposal.

The concession "is regrettable. But it’s not the end of the battle by any means," said Human Rights Watch’s PoKempner. She added that there will soon be another opportunity to corral America's spies: a U.N. discussion on possible human rights violations as a result of extraterritorial surveillance will soon be taken up by the U.N. High commissioner.

The key variable from now on is how the PBSR gang will maneuver – possibly illegally — to cling to power. The Public Ministry and the Federal police are totally politicized. Increasingly there are no mediation powers. The PBSR gang will take no prisoners. The Public Ministry will go after Lula while the attorney general will try to block any chance of Rousseff being reinstated. Meanwhile, the social democrats turned neoliberal enforcers – key associates of the PBSR — will keep advancing their own agenda; hardcore privatizations; handing over the exploration of the pre-salt oil deposits to US Big Oil; and dutifully prostrating as Washington vassals. One just needs to examine the extreme interest by the US Department of Justice on all things related to the Car Wash investigation to infer how Washington is deeply involved in smashing leading Brazilian corporations.   

Washington has not had the balls to do it directly – relying on minions such as the State Department spokesman and the interim ambassador to the OAS. But the message is unmistakable; golpeachment is legal, and Washington trusts Brazilian “democratic institutions”. Compare it to the Russian Foreign Ministry, which alerted to “foreign interference” in Brazilian affairs. The new Brazilian Foreign Minister – a sore loser (twice) in presidential elections won by the Workers’ Party – took no time to launch his glorious Vassal of Washington/US Big Capital policy. He already issued a veiled “threat” to Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador and El Salvador. Mercosur will be sidelined to the benefit of the Pacific Alliance – where Mexico, Peru and Colombia are under Washington’s wings. Unasur will be ditched.

And then there’s the stale ice cream in the scoundrel’s tart; the “B” in BRICS is now dormant. This means the role of Brazil in the BRICS bank will be seriously compromised. Granted, the BRICS were never a homogenous group and have been riddled with conflicting interests. For instance, India’s nuclear-sharing agreement with the US effectively ties it up with Washington. The next BRICS summit is in India, in October. Brazil risks the ignominy of being represented by the PBSR gang.  Meanwhile, make no mistake; as much as the Car Wash investigation was revealed to be a totally politicized drive – where fighting corruption was just a convenient cover – the PBSR gang and their allies will do everything to get rid of the 2018 direct presidential elections. So here’s the sorry Brazilian road map up to 2018; total political, economic, social and juridical chaos. 

Foreign Minister Sveinsson noted that any future decision about Island’s EU membership would have to be based on the outcome of a referendum. So far, Island is content with its EEA and EFFTA membership.

Among the programs said to have been operating were Turbine, which automates the injection of data and can infect millions of machines and Warrior Pride, which enables microphones on iPhones and Android devices to be remotely activated.

Laid bare is “Occupy Central’s” true agenda. It is not about having Hong Kong vote for who they desire to see in power, it is about getting the foreign-backed political cabal behind “Occupy Central” into power, and disarming Beijing of any means to prevent what is for all intents and purposes the “soft” recolonization of Hong Kong, and a further attempt to divide and destabilize China as a whole.

With the exception of Oman, members of the Gulf States joined Saudi Arabia with its aerial bombardment of the Houthis. The UAE contributed with 30 fighter jets, Bahrain 15, Kuwait 15, Qatar 10. Non-Gulf states have also showed their support to “Operation Decisive Storm.” Jordan deployed six fighter jets, Morocco, who expressed “complete solidarity” to Saudi Arabia provided six fighter jets while Sudan supplied three. On Thursday, an army media site confirmed that Sudan took part in the Saudi-led military operation. There were no further details but the site said the army spokesman would soon comment.

Al Arabiya News Channel said Egypt and Pakistan would dispatch jet fighters and warships to take part in the campaign. On Thursday, Egypt confirmed it will join the Saudi-led coalition. “Coordination is under way with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to prepare for participation by the Egyptian air force and Egyptian navy, and a ground force if the situation warrants, as part of the coalition action,” the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement. Another Egyptian military source said that Egypt participated in the military operation with both its naval and air forces. Later, Egyptian officials said four warships entered Suez en route to Gulf of Aden to give further support to Operation “Decisive Storm.”

In addition to the Arab states support, U.S. President Barack Obama authorized the provision of logistical and intelligence support to “Decisive Storm.”

Houthi politburo official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti told Reuters, that the Shiite group is prepared to confront the Saudi-led campaign without calling for help from their ally Iran. Asked if there had been any communications with Iran since the start of the attacks, or if the Houhtis would seek military help from Tehran, Bukhaiti said: “No. The Yemeni people are prepared to face this aggression without any foreign interference.”

On Thursday, the Saudi defense minister warned the son of toppled Yemeni leader, Ahmed Ali Saleh not to attack Aden. Many Adenis see former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, a fierce critic of Hadi, as the real instigator behind the expansion of the Shiite Muslim Houthi movement to their city. Saleh was the author of the city’s previous humiliation in 1994, when as president he crushed a southern secessionist uprising in a short but brutal war.

Despite seceding power in 2011 after mass protests against his rule, Saleh is still highly influential in the military. The Republican Guard troops are still loyal to him, and are believed to be backing the Houthi forces fighting Hadi. Before Saudi Arabia declared its military offensive, young men brandishing AK-47s patrolled the streets of Aden on Wednesday and government employees headed home as Houthi forces attempted their advance toward the city.

There is one huge difference between Prague in 1968 and Kiev 2014. The “Prague Spring” revolution led by Dubcek enjoyed such widespread spontaneous popular support that it was difficult for Russian leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksey Kosygin to argue plausibly that it was spurred by subversion from the West. Not so 45-plus years later. In early February, as violent protests raged in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev and the White House professed neutrality, U.S. State Department officials were, in the words of NYU professor emeritus of Russian studies Stephen Cohen, “plotting a coup d’état against the elected president of Ukraine.” We know that thanks to neocon prima donna Victoria Nuland, now Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, who seemed intent on giving new dimension to the “cookie-pushing” role of U.S. diplomats. Recall the photo showing Nuland in a metaphor of over-reach, as she reached deep into a large plastic bag to give each anti-government demonstrator on the square a cookie before the putsch. More important, recall her amateurish, boorish use of an open telephone to plot regime change in Ukraine with a fellow neocon, U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt. Crass U.S. interference in Ukrainian affairs can be seen (actually, better, heard) in an intercepted conversation posted on YouTube on Feb. 4.

There was a surreal quality to President Obama’s remarks, several hours after Russian (or pro-Russian) troops took control of key airports and other key installations in the Crimea, which is part of Ukraine, and home to a large Russian naval base and other key Russian military installations. Obama referred merely to “reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside of Ukraine” and warned piously that “any violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would be deeply destabilizing.” That Obama chose the subjunctive mood – when the indicative was, well, indicated – will not be lost on the Russians. Here was Obama, in his typically lawyerly way, trying to square the circle, giving a sop to his administration’s neocon holdovers and R2P courtiers, with a Milquetoasty expression of support for the new-Nuland-approved government (citing Biden’s assurances to old whatshisname/yatshisname). While Obama stuck to the subjunctive tense, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk appealed to Russia to recall its forces and “stop provoking civil and military resistance in Ukraine.” Obama’s comments seemed almost designed to sound condescending – paternalistic, even – to the Russians. Already into his second paragraph of his scripted remarks, the President took a line larded with words likely to be regarded as a gratuitous insult by Moscow, post-putsch.

“We’ve made clear that they [Russian officials] can be part of an international community’s effort to support the stability of a united Ukraine going forward, which is not only in the interest of the people of Ukraine and the international community, but also in Russia’s interest.” By now, Russian President Vladimir Putin is accustomed to Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, et al. telling the Kremlin where its interests lie, and I am sure he is appropriately grateful. Putin is likely to read more significance into these words of Obama: “The United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine … and we will continue to coordinate closely with our European allies.”

There are bound to be fissures in the international community and in the Western alliance on whether further provocation in Ukraine is advisable. Many countries have much to lose if Moscow uses its considerable economic leverage over natural gas supplies, for example. And, aspiring diplomat though she may be, Victoria Nuland presumably has not endeared herself to the EC by her expressed “Fuck the EC” attitude. Aside from the most servile allies of the U.S. there may be a growing caucus of Europeans who would like to return the compliment to Nuland. After all does anyone other than the most extreme neocon ideologue think that instigating a civil war on the border of nuclear-armed Russia is a good idea? Or that it makes sense to dump another economic basket case, which Ukraine surely is, on the EU’s doorstep while it’s still struggling to get its own economic house in order? Europe has other reasons to feel annoyed about the overreach of U.S. power and arrogance. The NSA spying revelations – that continue, just like the eavesdropping itself does – seem to have done some permanent damage to transatlantic relationships.

In any case, Obama presumably knows by now that he pleased no one on Friday by reading that flaccid statement on Ukraine. And, more generally, the sooner he realizes that – without doing dumb and costly things – he can placate neither the neocons nor the R2P folks (naively well meaning though the latter may be), the better for everyone. In sum, the Nulands of this world have bit off far more than they can chew; they need to be reined in before they cause even more dangerous harm. Broader issues than Ukraine are at stake. Like it or not, the United States can benefit from a cooperative relationship with Putin’s Russia – the kind of relationship that caused Putin to see merit last summer in pulling Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire on Syria, for example, and in helping address thorny issues with Iran.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His academic degrees are in Russian and he was an analyst of Russian foreign policy for the first decade of his 27-year career with the CIA.  He is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Under pressure from Congress, and in the wake of revelations that agency management influenced the IG’s final report, Obama appointed Linick as the State Department’s permanent IG in June 2013, less than a month after CBS broke the news about the IG cover-up. Congress confirmed him three months later. Linick launched a new investigation, and in October 2014 the IG confirmed that at least three DSS investigations were blocked by top State Department officials, including the probe involving the ambassador. While the new IG’s report was critical of management’s efforts to block the DSS investigations, it was silent on whether its own office bowed to the pressure.