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Over the last seven months, we have learned an incredible amount about the government's post-9/11 surveillance efforts. But there is a crucial gap in our basic understanding. We now know, for example, a good deal about how the government conducts surveillance that targets Americans, and about surveillance of foreigners that sweeps up Americans' international communications when the actual surveillance takes place on U.S. soil (for example, from a Google facility in the United States). But we still know very little about Executive Order 12,333, which governs the NSA's surveillance abroad — even when that surveillance sweeps up Americans' communications. To fill that gap, the ACLU, along with the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School, today filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit demanding that the government release basic information about its use of Executive Order 12,333 to conduct surveillance of Americans' international communications. Why is Executive Order 12,333 so important? Here is how we explained it in our complaint (filed today in federal court in New York):

Although EO 12,333 permits the government to target foreigners abroad for surveillance, recent revelations have confirmed that the government interprets that authority to permit sweeping monitoring of Americans' international communications. How the government conducts this surveillance, and whether it appropriately accommodates the constitutional rights of American citizens and residents whose communications are intercepted in the course of that surveillance, are matters of great public significance and concern. While the government has released several documents describing the rules that govern its collection and use of Americans' international communications under statutory authorities regulating surveillance on U.S. soil, little information is publicly available regarding the rules that apply to surveillance of Americans' international calls and emails under EO 12,333. That gap in public knowledge is particularly troubling in light of recent revelations, which make clear that the NSA is collecting vast quantities of data worldwide pursuant to EO 12,333. For instance, recent news reports indicate that, relying on the executive order, the NSA is collecting: nearly 5 billion records per day on the location of cell phones, including Americans' cell phones; hundreds of millions of contact lists or address books from personal email and instant messaging accounts; and information from Google and Yahoo user accounts as that information travels between those companies' data centers located abroad.

The core of the problem is that the NSA has, for years, relied upon its authority to gather foreign intelligence as permission to conduct sweeping surveillance of Americans' international communications. We know that this happens under the laws that govern surveillance on U.S. soil, and recent revelations confirm that it happens — perhaps to an even greater extent — in the surveillance that takes place abroad under Executive Order 12,333. Moreover, the rules that govern surveillance under the executive order are of particular concern because that surveillance is not meaningfully overseen by Congress, and it is not overseen at all by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In other words, the executive is conducting surveillance under its own executive order without any real oversight. We now know too well that unchecked surveillance authority can lead to dangerous overreach. That's why we are fighting for the release of documents that would shed light on the internal rules that the executive has set for itself when it monitors international communications abroad — including Americans' international communications.

At West Point Obama told us, to the applause of West Point cadets, that “American exceptionalism” is a doctrine that justifies whatever Washington does. If Washington violates domestic and international law by torturing “detainees” or violates the Nuremberg standard by invading countries that have undertaken no hostile action against the US or its allies, “exceptionalism” is the priest’s blessing that absolves Washington’s sins against law and international norms. Washington’s crimes are transformed into Washington’s affirmation of the rule of law. Here is Obama in his own words: “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being. But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it is our willingness to affirm them through our actions.” Actions indeed. In the 21st century “American exceptionalism” has destroyed seven countries in whole or in part. Millions of people are dead, maimed, and displaced, and all of this criminal destruction is evidence of Washington’s reaffirmation of international norms and the rule of law. Destruction and murder are merely collateral damage from Washington’s affirmation of international norms.

“American exceptionalism” also means that US presidents can lie through their teeth and misrepresent those they choose to demonize. Listen to Obama’s misrepresentations of the Putin and Assad governments: “Russia’s aggression towards former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe . . . In Ukraine, Russia’s recent actions recall the days when Soviet tanks rolled into Eastern Europe .” Obama misrepresents Assad as “a dictator who bombs and starves his own people.” Did any of the cadets in Obama’s West Point audience wonder why, if Assad is a brutal dictator who bombs and starves his own people, the Syrian people are supporting Assad instead of the American-backed “liberation forces,” the combination of imported jihadists and al Qaeda fighters who object to Assad’s government because it is secular? The US military is taught to respect its civilian commander-in-chief, but if West Point cadets actually do obtain an education, it is remarkable that Obama’s audience did not break out in laughter.

Obama’s speech is probably the most disingenuous ever given by a Western politician. We could have fun for hours with all the crimes that Washington commits but buries in rhetoric directed at others. Perhaps my favorite is Obama evoking a world in which “individuals aren’t slaughtered because of political belief.” I am sure Obama was thinking of this just world when he murdered without due process of law four American citizens “outside of areas of active hostilities.” Another favorite is the way Obama flushed the US Constitution of its meaning. Obama said, with reference to bringing the Guantanamo prisoners to the US, that “American values and legal traditions don’t permit the indefinite detention of people beyond our borders.” No, Obama, the US Constitution prevents the indefinite detention of US citizens by the US government anywhere on earth, especially within our borders. By detaining and by murdering US citizens without due process of law, Obama has violated his oath of office and should be impeached. It was only a short time ago that President Bill Clinton was impeached by the US House of Representatives (the Senate saved him from conviction) for lying about his sexual affair with a White House intern. How times change. Today a president who violates his oath of office to protect the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic gets a free ride. The Constitution has lost its power to protect citizens from the arbitrary power of government. The US is the Constitution. Without the Constitution the US ceases to exist, and the country becomes a tyranny, both at home and abroad.Today the US is a tyranny cloaked in the garb of “freedom and democracy.”

Ellen H. Brown (WoD) : On December 11, 2014, the US House passed a bill repealing the Dodd-Frank requirement that risky derivatives be pushed into big-bank subsidiaries, leaving our deposits and pensions exposed to massive derivatives losses. The bill was vigorously challenged by Senator Elizabeth Warren; but the tide turned when Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase, stepped into the ring. Perhaps what prompted his intervention was the unanticipated $40 drop in the price of oil. As financial blogger Michael Snyder points out, that drop could trigger a derivatives payout that could bankrupt the biggest banks. And if the G20’s new “bail-in” rules are formalized, depositors and pensioners could be on the hook. The new bail-in rules were discussed in my last last article entitled “New G20 Rules: Cyprus-style Bail-ins to Hit Depositors AND Pensioners.” They are edicts of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), an unelected body of central bankers and finance ministers headquartered in the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. Where did the FSB get these sweeping powers, and is its mandate legally enforceable?

Those questions were addressed in an article I wrote in June 2009, two months after the FSB was formed, titled “Big Brother in Basel: BIS Financial Stability Board Undermines National Sovereignty.” It linked the strange boot shape of the BIS to a line from Orwell’s 1984: “a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” The concerns raised there seem to be materializing, so I’m republishing the bulk of that article here. We need to be paying attention, lest the bail-in juggernaut steamroll over us unchallenged. The Shadowy Financial Stability Board Alarm bells went off in April 2009, when the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) was linked to the new Financial Stability Board (FSB) signed onto by the G20 leaders in London. The FSB was an expansion of the older Financial Stability Forum (FSF) set up in 1999 to serve in a merely advisory capacity by the G7 (a group of finance ministers formed from the seven major industrialized nations). The chair of the FSF was the General Manager of the BIS. The new FSB was expanded to include all G20 members (19 nations plus the EU).

Formally called the “Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors,” the G20 was, like the G7, originally set up as a forum merely for cooperation and consultation on matters pertaining to the international financial system. What set off alarms was that the new Financial Stability Board had real teeth, imposing “obligations” and “commitments” on its members; and this feat was pulled off without legislative formalities, skirting the usual exacting requirements for treaties. It was all done in hasty response to an “emergency.” Problem-reaction-solution was the slippery slope of coups. Buried on page 83 of an 89-page Report on Financial Regulatory Reform issued by the US Obama administration was a recommendation that the FSB strengthen and institutionalize its mandate to promote global financial stability. It sounded like a worthy goal, but there was a disturbing lack of detail. What was the FSB’s mandate, what were its expanded powers, and who was in charge? An article in The London Guardian addressed those issues in question and answer format:

“The civilian population in the Gaza Strip is under direct attack,” dozens of international law experts have warned in a statement laying out numerous Israeli violations of the laws of war, some amounting to war crimes.

“Most of the recent heavy bombings in Gaza lack an acceptable military justification and, instead, appear to be designed to terrorize the civilian population,” says the statement, signed by more than 140 international and criminal law scholars, human rights defenders, legal and other experts. Among them are John Dugard and Richard Falk, both former UN special rapporteurs on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories.

“Gaza’s civilian population has been victimized in the name of a falsely construed right to self-defense,” the statement adds. Israel’s illegal attacks include its assault on the Gaza City neighborhood of [Shujaiya], which the statement says “was one of the bloodiest and most aggressive operations ever conducted by Israel in the Gaza Strip, a form of urban violence constituting a total disrespect of civilian innocence.”

he Palestinian Authority moved to join the International Criminal Court in The Hague on Wednesday, accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians amid Israel’s military campaign to stem rocket fire from the Gaza Strip

“It’s genocide — the killing of entire families is genocide by Israel against our Palestinian people,” he told the meeting of Palestinian leadership at his Ramallah bureau. “What’s happening now is a war against the Palestinian people as a whole and not against the [terrorist] factions.” “Shall we recall Auschwitz?” he added.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas called a crisis meeting of the Palestinian leadership in the afternoon with the intention of signing paperwork to apply to join the ICC in The Hague and other international organizations. Abbas charged Israel with committing “genocide” in Gaza during its Operation Protective Edge — launched to stem Hamas rocket fire on civilians across Israel — which has so far killed 43 Palestinians.

12 August 1988  Cover, pages 10-12   Somebody's  listening  . . . and they don't give a damn about personal privacy or commercial confidence. Project 415 is a top-secret new global surveillance system. It can tap into a billion calls a year in the UK alone. Inside Duncan Campbell on how spying entered the 21st century . . .  They've got it taped In the booming surveillance industry they spy on whom they wish, when they wish, protected by barriers of secrecy, fortified by billions of pounds worth of high, high technology. Duncan Campbell reports from the United States on the secret Anglo-American plan for a global electronic spy system for the 21st century capable of listening in to most of us most of the time   American, British and Allied intelligence agencies are soon to embark on a massive, billion-dollar expansion of their global electronic surveillance system. According to information given recently in secret to the US Congress, the surveillance system will enable the agencies to monitor and analyse civilian communications into the 21st century. Identified for the moment as Project P415, the system will be run by the US National Security Agency (NSA). But the intelligence agencies of many other countries will be closely involved with the new network, including those from Britain, Australia, Germany and Japan--and, surprisingly, the People's Republic of China. New satellite stations and monitoring centres are to be built around the world, and a chain of new satellites launched, so that NSA and its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) at Cheltenham, may keep abreast of the burgeoning international telecommunications traffic.

Both the new and existing surveillance systems are highly computerised. They rely on near total interception of international commercial and satellite communications in order to locate the telephone or other messages of target individuals. Last month, a US newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, revealed that the system had been used to target the telephone calls of a US Senator, Strom Thurmond. The fact that Thurmond, a southern Republican and usually a staunch supporter of the Reagan administration, is said to have been a target has raised fears that the NSA has restored domestic, electronic, surveillance programmes. These were originally exposed and criticised during the Watergate investigations, and their closure ordered by President Carter. After talking to the NSA, Thurmond later told the Plain Dealer that he did not believe the allegation. But Thurmond, a right-wing Republican, may have been unwilling to rock the boat. Staff members of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said that staff were "digging into it" despite the "stratospheric security classification" of all the systems involved. The Congressional officials were first told of the Thurmond interception by a former employee of the Lockheed Space and Missiles Corporation, Margaret Newsham, who now lives in Sunnyvale, California. Newsham had originally given separate testimony and filed a lawsuit concerning corruption and mis-spending on other US government "black" projects. She has worked in the US and Britain for two corporations which manufacture signal intelligence computers, satellites and interception equipment for NSA, Ford Aerospace and Lockheed. Citing a special Executive Order signed by President Reagan. she told me last month that she could not and would not discuss classified information with journalists. But according to Washington sources (and the report in the Plain Dealer, she informed a US Congressman that the Thurmond interception took place at Menwith Hill, and that she p

A secret listening agreement, called UKUSA (UK-USA), assigns parts of the globe to each participating agency. GCHQ at Cheltenham is the co-ordinating centre for Europe, Africa and the Soviet Union (west of the Ural Mountains). The NSA covers the rest of the Soviet Union and most of the Americas. Australia--where another station in the NSA listening network is located in the outback--co-ordinates the electronic monitoring of the South Pacific, and South East Asia.

Most Americans, their minds focused at the moment on the tragic slaughter of 20 young children aged 5 and 6, along with five teachers and a school principal in Connecticut by a heavily-armed psychotic 21-year-old, are blissfully unaware that their previous president, George W. Bush, along with five key members of his administration, were recently convicted in absentia of war crimes at a tribunal in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They are unaware because the US corporate media have ignored the story, just as that same corporate media have failed to note that the crimes of which Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and five White House lawyers, were convicted all could apply equally well to current President Barack Obama and his administration. Bush, Cheney, White House counsel (and later Attorney General) Alberto Gonzalez and others were found guilty earlier this month of war crimes and crimes against humanity relating to the executive orders that launched the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as of authorizing and failing to punish torture and other war crimes by US forces, including the military and the CIA.

But as international law expert Francis Boyle, a professor of law at the University of Illinois, notes, under the Geneva Convention, failing to take action to prosecute those guilty of war crimes such as the “Crime against Peace” (invading a country that does not pose an imminent threat to the attacker), and torture, are war crimes in and of themselves. Speaking last week at a Summit Conference on Human Rights held at the University of the Sacred Heart in the US island colony of Puerto Rico, Boyle said US authorities, including President Obama, are engaged in an “ongoing criminal conspiracy under international law” both to cover up and protect criminals like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, and to continue the commission of war crimes by the US government.

Obama, when initially campaigning in 2008 for the presidency, vowed that he wanted to restore the respect for the law and the Constitution, once elected President, he and his attorney general Eric Holder quickly made it clear that they were “looking forward, not backward,” and that there would be no prosecutions or indictments for war crimes of any Bush administration people.   The thing is, at that moment, both President Obama and AG Holder became war criminals themselves under the UN Charter and the Nuremberg Principles, which declare that covering up war crimes by prior government and military leaders, and failure to prosecute such war crimes, are in themselves war crimes.

A federal court took a critically important step late yesterday towards placing a check on the government's secretive No-Fly List. In a 38-page ruling in Latif v. Holder, the ACLU's challenge to the No-Fly List, U.S. District Court Judge Anna Brown recognized that the Constitution applies when the government bans Americans from the skies. She also asked for more information about the current process for getting off the list, to inform her decision on whether that procedure violates the Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process. We represent 13 Americans, including four military veterans, who are blacklisted from flying. At oral argument in June on motions for partial summary judgment, we asked the court to find that the government violated our clients' Fifth Amendment right to due process by barring them from flying over U.S. airspace – and smearing them as suspected terrorists – without giving them any after-the-fact explanation or a hearing at which to clear their names. The court's opinion recognizes – for the first time – that inclusion on the No-Fly List is a draconian sanction that severely impacts peoples' constitutionally-protected liberties. It rejected the government's argument that No-Fly list placement was merely a restriction on the most "convenient" means of international travel.

Such an argument ignores the numerous reasons an individual may have for wanting or needing to travel overseas quickly such as for the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, a business opportunity, or a religious obligation. According to the court, placement on the No-Fly List is like the revocation of a passport because both actions severely burden the right to international travel and give rise to a constitutional right to procedural due process: Here it is undisputed that inclusion on the No-Fly List completely bans listed persons from boarding commercial flights to or from the United States or over United States air space.  Thus, Plaintiffs have shown their placement on the No-Fly List has in the past and will in the future severely restrict Plaintiffs' ability to travel internationally. Moreover, the realistic implications of being on the No-Fly List are potentially far-reaching. For example, TSC [the Terrorist Screening Center] shares watchlist information with 22 foreign governments and United States Customs and Boarder [sic] Protection makes recommendations to ship captains as to whether a passenger poses a risk to transportation security, which can result in further interference with an individual's ability to travel as evidenced by some Plaintiffs' experiences as they attempted to travel abroad by boat and land and were either turned away or completed their journey only after an extraordinary amount of time, expense, and difficulty. Accordingly, the Court concludes on this record that Plaintiffs have a constitutionally-protected liberty interest in traveling internationally by air, which is affected by being placed on the list. The court also found that the government's inclusion of our clients on the No-Fly List smeared them as suspected terrorists and altered their ability to lawfully board planes, resulting in injury to another constitutionally-protected right: freedom from reputational harm.

The importance of these rulings is clear. Because inclusion on the No-Fly List harms our clients' liberty interests in travel and reputation, due process requires the government to provide them an explanation and a hearing to correct the mistakes that led to their inclusion. But under the government's "Glomar" policy, it refuses to provide any information confirming or denying that our clients are on the list, let alone an after-the-fact explanation and hearing. The court has asked the ACLU and the government for more information about the No-Fly List redress procedure to help it decide the ultimate question of whether that system violates the Fifth Amendment right to due process. We are confident the court will recognize that the government's "Glomar" policy of refusing even to confirm or deny our clients' No-Fly List status (much less actually providing the reasons for their inclusion in the list) is fundamentally unfair and unconstitutional.

The National Security Agency (NSA) widely monitors international payments, banking and credit card transactions, according to documents seen by SPIEGEL. The information from the American foreign intelligence agency, acquired by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, show that the spying is conducted by a branch called "Follow the Money" (FTM). The collected information then flows into the NSA's own financial databank, called "Tracfin," which in 2011 contained 180 million records. Some 84 percent of the data is from credit card transactions. Further NSA documents from 2010 show that the NSA also targets the transactions of customers of large credit card companies like VISA for surveillance. NSA analysts at an internal conference that year described in detail how they had apparently successfully searched through the US company's complex transaction network for tapping possibilities.

Their aim was to gain access to transactions by VISA customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, according to one presentation. The goal was to "collect, parse and ingest transactional data for priority credit card associations, focusing on priority geographic regions." In response to a SPIEGEL inquiry, however, VISA issued a statement in which it said, "We are not aware of any unauthorized access to our network. Visa takes data security seriously and, in response to any attempted intrusion, we would pursue all available remedies to the fullest extent of the law. Further, its Visa's policy to only provide transaction information in response to a subpoena or other valid legal process." The NSA's Tracfin data bank also contained data from the Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a network used by thousands of banks to send transaction information securely. SWIFT was named as a "target," according to the documents, which also show that the NSA spied on the organization on several levels, involving, among others, the agency's "tailored access operations" division. One of the ways the agency accessed the data included reading "SWIFT printer traffic from numerous banks," the documents show.

But even intelligence agency employees are somewhat concerned about spying on the world finance system, according to one document from the UK's intelligence agency GCHQ concerning the legal perspectives on "financial data" and the agency's own cooperations with the NSA in this area. The collection, storage and sharing of politically sensitive data is a deep invasion of privacy, and involved "bulk data" full of "rich personal information," much of which "is not about our targets," the document says.

OTTAWA — Canada’s foremost jurist on national security law has slammed CSIS for deliberately keeping the Federal Court of Canada “in the dark” about outsourcing its spying on Canadians abroad to foreign agencies, according to a redacted version of a classified court decision made public Friday.In a thundering rebuke, Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley said the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) purposely misled him when he granted it numerous warrants beginning in 2009 to intercept the electronic communications of unidentified Canadians abroad suspected as domestic security threats.“This was a breach of the duty of candour owed by the service and their legal advisers to the court,” Mosley said in his Further Reasons for Order.CSIS also mistakenly assigned powers to the warrants that the court never authorized and which do not exist in law, he said.“It is clear that the exercise of the court’s warrant issuing authority has been used as protective cover for activities that it has not authorized,” Mosley wrote.Furthermore, tasking foreign security intelligence services to spy on Canadians overseas “carries the risk of the detention of or other harm to a Canadian person based on that information.“Given the unfortunate history of information sharing with foreign agencies over the past decade and the reviews conducted by several royal commissions, there can be no question that the Canadian agencies are aware of those hazards. It appears to me that they are using the warrants as authorization to assume those risks.”

Legal observers say this case and Mosley’s scolding will harm CSIS’s credibility and raise questions about whether the service has broken Criminal Code provisions dealing with the invasion of privacy.“When a judge says the government breached its duty of candour that is a very big ‘ouch’ moment,” Craig Forcese, a national security law scholar at the University of Ottawa, wrote in a recent blog posting.At the time the first warrants were issued, CSIS told the court “on clearly stated grounds” that the electronic intercepts would be carried out from within Canada by the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), the country’s foreign signals intelligence spy service.CSIS is largely restricted to domestic spying operations. If an investigation involves the use of intrusive techniques, such as electronic intercepts, Section 21 of the CSIS Act requires it to obtain a warrant approved by a Federal Court judge to guard the Charter right to a reasonable expectation of privacy.CSEC, meanwhile, is not allowed to spy on Canadians anywhere unless it is to provide technical and operational assistance to federal law enforcement and security agencies such as CSIS.And the federal court only has jurisdiction to authorize warrants under the CSIS Act as long as the communications in question are intercepted within Canada.

Yet once the so-called 30-08 warrants were approved by the court, CSEC, on behalf of CSIS, turned around and handed the jobs to one or more of its partners in the “Five Eyes” intelligence-gathering alliance between Canada, the United States, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.Mosley found out about the situation late this summer and summoned CSIS, CSEC and government officials and lawyers to court to explain themselves. The public version of his reasons for order was released Friday.

On Tuesday, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced, in the most explicit and detailed terms to date, that the U.S. treatment of detainees captured in the Afghanistan conflict is under examination by her office. The statement is included in the Office of the Prosecutor’s (OTP) annual “Report on Preliminary Examination Activities,” released on the eve of the Assembly of States Parties this month.

In particular, the OTP is assessing the degree to which national proceedings are underway with respect to the allegations underlying the examination.  Furthermore, an affirmative determination that there is a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation is far from a finding of strong evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the appearance of the latter is surely one issue on the minds of administration officials. David Bosco, for instance, reported that “the U.S. delegation urged the court not to publish the allegations, even in preliminary form. They warned that the world would see any ICC mention of possible American war crimes as evidence of guilt, even if the court never brought a formal case.”

Here are the key graphs: “94. The Office has been assessing available information relating to the alleged abuse of detainees by international forces within the temporal jurisdiction of the Court. In particular, the alleged torture or ill-treatment of conflict-related detainees by US armed forces in Afghanistan in the period 2003-2008 forms another potential case identified by the Office. In accordance with the Presidential Directive of 7 February 2002, Taliban detainees were denied the status of prisoner of war under article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention but were required to be treated humanely. In this context, the information available suggests that between May 2003 and June 2004, members of the US military in Afghanistan used so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” against conflict-related detainees in an effort to improve the level of actionable intelligence obtained from interrogations. The development and implementation of such techniques is documented inter alia in declassified US Government documents released to the public, including Department of Defense reports as well as the US Senate Armed Services Committee’s inquiry. These reports describe interrogation techniques approved for use as including food deprivation, deprivation of clothing, environmental manipulation, sleep adjustment, use of individual fears, use of stress positions, sensory deprivation (deprivation of light and sound), and sensory overstimulation.

After a document obtained by Al Jazeera revealed the Palestinian Authority (PA) has stalled the launch of a formal investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza, Palestinian legal and human rights experts remain dubious that the PA ever truly intended to join the International Criminal Court (ICC). In a confidential letter obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit, the ICC's top prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said she "did not receive a positive confirmation" from PA Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki that the request submitted for an international investigation had the Palestinian government's approval. Palestinian officials have, on numerous occasions, threatened to head to the ICC to hold Israel accountable for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity. But their efforts so far, have proved fruitless. In July, a French lawyer filed a complaint with the court on behalf of the Palestinian minister of justice, accusing Israel of carrying out war crimes in the Gaza Strip. This came after a 2009 call for an ICC investigation into Israel's three-week military offensive in Gaza that was later dropped when the prosecutor said Palestine was not a court member. In August, Malki met with ICC officials to discuss the implications of ratifying the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the criminal court. "Everything that has happened...is clear evidence of war crimes committed by Israel, amounting to crimes against humanity," he told reporters in The Hague, referring to the recent 51-day Israeli military offensive on Gaza, which left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead. Six Israeli civilians were killed, along with 66 Israeli soldiers.

Two years ago, Palestine became recognised as a non-member observer state at the UN General Assembly. This made it eligible to join the ICC; however, to date, Palestinian officials have not signed the Rome Statute, even though almost 80 percent of Palestinians support going to the court. Senior Fatah official Mohammad Shtayyeh didn't say when the Palestinians would apply to the ICC, but said it would probably happen in another few months. "The indictment against Israel at the ICC and all the accompanying documents are ready," Shtayyeh told Al Jazeera. One of the remaining hurdles, Shtayyeh said, is getting one remaining Palestinian faction - Islamic Jihad - to sign an accession document before the Palestinians can present it. Hamas signed onto the proposal at the behest of the PA in August. "We're not in a situation of setting a deadline or making an ultimatum," he said. "We're following developments in the region and the world, and therefore, we'll wait for answers from the international community. But I believe that by November-December, the picture should be clearer."

In response to Al Jazeera's claims, the Palestinian Justice Minister Salim al-Saqqa said that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was serious about going to the ICC and was "awaiting national dialogue" to pursue it. "This issue is our number-one priority," he said. "It is still on the table awaiting a few legal and technical procedures. We have not missed our opportunity to head to the court." So far, the Palestinians have struggled to use the court to pursue their claims, with some attributing this to the PA's use of an ICC investigation as a political bargaining chip. "The PA can go to the ICC in one day," said Shawan Jabarin, the director of Ramallah-based human rights group al-Haq. "Abbas, who has been turned this into a political issue, is balking." Many factors are working against setting off a war crimes investigation at the ICC, not least the international community's apparent opposition to the move. "It is the PA's trump card because the Israelis and the Americans have said it is a red line," said Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

Russia has invited all NATO member States and the NATO leadership to attend a security conference in mid-April, said the Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov. The invitation comes against the backdrop of deteriorating relations between members of the Atlantic Alliance and Russia. Meanwhile, during a recent symposium, experts warned about the risk of a military escalation that includes the use of nuclear weapons, whether it be wanted or unwanted.  Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said on Thursday that NATO cannot be the sole guarantor of freedom and security in a modern world, reports the Russian Tass news agency, Antonov added that some countries now are trying to impose their policy and position on others and that latest developments show how imperfect the world is.

In 2008 NATO and the UN signed a Secretariat Coordination Treaty that implies that NATO has become the de facto military enforcement instrument of the international body, even though NATO is not representative of UN members or their individual rights or policies. The signing of this treaty was largely omitted by most media. Russia has since the reunification of Germany repeatedly complained that it perceives NATO’s eastwards expansion and the deployment of anti-missile systems directed against Russia along its borders as a potential threat and as a violation of the agreements which led to the reunification of Germany. This position has, among others, been stressed by the last Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev. It was confirmed by the former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas who stressed that the understanding that NATO would not expand eastwards was by all sides understood as “the essence of peace”.

The dispute was to some degree mitigated by the Russian – NATO cooperation within the NATO’s “Partnership for Peace” program which has largely been suspended since the eruption of the conflict in and about Ukraine in 2014. The Tass news agency quotes Antonov as saying that: “Some countries and even associations, such as the European Union, venture to define who and how should behave themselves on the international arena. If anyone voices another stance, which is different from that of Washington, Brussels and Ottawa, then they try to punish this country. … This is what is happening in regard to Russia today.” Antonov stressed that there today is a lack of confidence between the countries and that it would be difficult to mend the international security system which has been seriously undermined by the actions of the United States and its allies in the international arena. He added, however, that the potential of Russian – U.S.’ relations has not yet been exhausted although he never, in his entire diplomatic career that relations had been has difficult as they were today. Antonov stressed that the Ukrainian crisis affects security throughout Europe.

I want to speak with you today about the Middle East. This is the region where Africa, Asia, and Europe come together. It is also the part of the world where we have been most compellingly reminded that some struggles cannot be won, but there are no struggles that cannot be lost. It is often said that human beings learn little useful from success but can learn a great deal from defeat. If so, the Middle East now offers a remarkably rich menu of foreign-policy failures for Americans to study. • Our four-decade-long diplomatic effort to bring peace to the Holy Land sputtered to an ignominious conclusion a year ago. • Our unconditional political, economic, and military backing of Israel has earned us the enmity of Israel’s enemies even as it has enabled egregiously contemptuous expressions of ingratitude and disrespect for us from Israel itself.

• Our attempts to contain the Iranian revolution have instead empowered it. • Our military campaigns to pacify the region have destabilized it, dismantled its states, and ignited ferocious wars of religion among its peoples. • Our efforts to democratize Arab societies have helped to produce anarchy, terrorism, dictatorship, or an indecisive juxtaposition of all three. • In Iraq, Libya, and Syria we have shown that war does not decide who’s right so much as determine who’s left. • Our campaign against terrorism with global reach has multiplied our enemies and continuously expanded their areas of operation. • Our opposition to nuclear proliferation did not prevent Israel from clandestinely developing nuclear weapons and related delivery systems and may not preclude Iran and others from following suit.

• At the global level, our policies in the Middle East have damaged our prestige, weakened our alliances, and gained us a reputation for militaristic fecklessness in the conduct of our foreign affairs. They have also distracted us from challenges elsewhere of equal or greater importance to our national interests. That’s quite a record.

Tulsi Gabbard - a Democrat from Hawaii and member of the Armed Services Committee - demonstrates great knowledge and courage to go against the grain in the US and explain the Syria situation along with Russian and US roles the way it is. Speaking with Wolf Blitzer on CNN, Tulsi explains why the US allying with Islamist extremists to overthrow Syrian President Assad is an illegal, counterproductive war that will cause even more human misery in the region and help ISIS and other Islamist extremists take over all of Syria. Instead of once again being distracted by trying to get rid of a secular dictator, Tulsi explains, the US must stay out of counter productive wars and focus on defeating the Islamist extremists who have declared war on America.

Former U.S. President George W. Bush recently dedicated his Presidential Library in Dallas. The ceremony included speeches by President Obama, ex-President Bush, and every other living ex-president. But none of the speeches so much as mentioned to Iraq war — the undertaking that dominated George W. Bush’s presidency, and will define his historic legacy. This omission might be due, at least in part, to the fact that Mr. Bush is now a convicted war criminal who dares not travel abroad out of fear of being arrested. In February 2011, Bush was forced to cancel a scheduled appearance in Geneva, Switzerland after human rights groups filed a criminal complaint charging him with violating international treaties against torture. His trouble increased dramatically a year ago when Bush — along with former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and several other top Bush administration officials — were convicted of war crimes in absentia by a special war crimes tribunal in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission was convened and conducted according to internationally recognized procedures and rules of evidence, and the week-long hearing ended with the five-member panel unanimously delivering guilty verdicts. What is the significance of that tribunal? Is its verdict legally binding? Are there troublesome aspects to the idea that a foreign tribunal can sit in judgment of a U.S. President — whatever we may think of his actions? We will discuss these vitally important questions with Dr. Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He served as a prosecutor at the tribunal.