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Paul Merrell

Why Today's Landmark Court Victory Against Mass Surveillance Matters | American Civil Liberties Union - 0 views

www.aclu.org/...inst-mass-surveillance-matters

surveillance state NSA litigation Patriot-Act ACLU 2nd-Circuit

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 May 15 - No Cached
  • In a landmark victory for privacy, a federal appeals court ruled unanimously today that the mass phone-records program exposed two years ago by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is illegal because it goes far beyond what Congress ever intended to permit when it passed Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The ruling in ACLU v. Clapper is enormously significant, and not only because the program in question — the first to be revealed by Edward Snowden — is at the heart of a legislative reform effort playing out right now, or because it sparked the most significant debate about government surveillance in decades. The decision could also affect many other laws the government has stretched to the breaking point in order to justify dragnet collection of Americans’ sensitive information. Under the program, revealed in the Guardian on June 5, 2013, telecommunications companies hand over to the NSA, on a daily basis, records relating to the calls of all of their customers. Those records include information about who called whom, when, and for how long. The ACLU sued the NSA over the program just days after it was revealed, and we took the case to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals after it was dismissed by a district court.
  • A few points on what makes the decision so important. 1. It recognizes that Section 215 of the Patriot Act does not authorize the government to collect information on such a massive scale.
  • 2. The decision’s significance extends far beyond the phone records program alone. It implicates other mass spying programs that we have learned about in the past two years and — almost certainly ­— others that the government continues to conceal from the public. For example, we know that the Drug Enforcement Administration, for decades, employed a similar definition of “relevance” to amass logs of every call made from the United States to as many as 116 different countries. The same theory was also used to justify the collection of email metadata. Both those programs have been discontinued, but the legal reasoning hasn’t, and it could very well be the basis for programs the government has never acknowledged to the public, including the CIA’s bulk collection of Americans’ financial records.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • 4. The importance of adversarial review. The court recognized that public, adversarial litigation concerning the lawfulness of this spying program was vitally important to its decision — and it drew a direct contrast to the secret, one-sided proceedings that occur in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
  • 3. Metadata is incredibly sensitive and revealing. The government has long argued that the phone records program doesn’t reveal the contents of calls, and as such, it is not an invasion of privacy. But metadata, especially in aggregate, can be just as revealing as content, painting a detailed picture of a person’s life. 
  • 5. The congressional reforms under consideration just don’t cut it. Ahead of Section 215’s sunset on June 1, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is trying to push through a straight reauthorization of the provision, extending its life by another five years. After today’s decision came down, he took to the floor to defend the program — a position altogether at odds with the appeals court decision, with the conclusions of multiple executive-branch review groups who found the program hasn’t been effective in stopping terrorism, and with the clear consensus that supports far-reaching surveillance reform. Another bill in play (which the ACLU neither supports nor opposes), the USA Freedom Act of 2015, doesn’t go nearly far enough, most notably in ensuring that the government cannot engage in broad collection of innocent Americans’ private information.
Paul Merrell

Iran Deal Opens a Vitriolic Divide Among American Jews - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ivide-among-american-jews.html

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth deal American-Jews schism

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • This August recess has not produced the kind of fiery town hall-style meetings that greeted lawmakers in 2009 before their vote on the Affordable Care Act, but in one small but influential segment of the electorate, Jewish voters, it has been brutal. Differences of opinion among Jewish Americans may be nothing new, but the vitriol surrounding the accord between Iran and six world powers has become so intense that leaders now speak openly of long-term damage to Jewish organizations, and possibly to American-Israeli relations.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Aug 15
     
    The good news is that the Zionists' zeal to kill the Iran deal at all costs is contributing greatly to the alienation of American Jews from the Israel Lobby. Netanyahu's decision to align with the Republican Party and to attempt closing down the P5+1 deal with Iran may well go down as the greatest blunders leading to breaking the back of the Israel Lobby in the U.S.
Paul Merrell

Netanyahu seeks to snatch victory from jaws of defeat on Iran deal - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...a-899f-752581a9b49b_story.html

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth Netanyahu-loss Israel-lobby

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • No political leader fought longer or harder against the Iran nuclear deal than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who appears to have suffered the worst foreign policy ­defeat of his career following the announcement that President Obama has secured enough votes in the Senate to preserve the pact. Yet senior Israeli officials close to Netanyahu are saying that their prime minister has not failed — but won, in a way.
  • ith a looming defeat in Congress, Netanyahu’s aides and allies now say the prime minister and his closest adviser, Ron Dermer, Israel’s American-born ambassador to the United States, never really believed they could stop the deal in Congress — they only wanted to alert the world how dangerous Iran is.
  • may not matter much at home that the Israelis’ spin does not match previous assertions by Netanyahu, who said the deal could be defeated in Congress. It was the reason, the prime minister said, that he accepted an invitation by the Republican leadership to address Congress in March.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • solid majority in Congress and among the American people” agrees with Netanyahu’s assertion that the deal is a bad one, a top Israeli official close to Netanyahu said. Yet recent polling is not so definitive. According to a survey released this week by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation, Americans narrowly support the deal, with 52 percent wanting Congress to approve it and 47 percent wanting the pact rejected. Other polls have shown greater opposition.
  • he same aides and allies say that Netanyahu is playing a longer game, that the deal is so unpopular now that the next president will abandon, change or undermine it. Republican candidates for president, including Donald Trump and Jeb Bush, have vigorously opposed the deal. Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton announced support.
  • inally, officials here predict that when the dust settles, Israel will receive a windfall in new, advanced weaponry — including the most modern aircraft and missile technology — from members of Congress eager to show their pro-Israel bona fides and demonstrate that they remain steadfast enemies of Iran, even if some may have backed Obama on the nuclear pact. “Look at how they are spinning it. It’s not a defeat; it’s a success. And based on opposition in Congress and some polling in the United States, the spin is technically correct,” said Yossi Alpher, a political analyst and author of “Periphery: Israel’s Search for Middle East Allies.”
  • hen the news cycle shifts in coming weeks to arms packages, economic aid and proclamations of U.S. support, “Netanyahu will be able to say, ‘My opposition didn’t cost us a thing,’ ” Alpher said. “Netanyahu’s playing it cool,” he said. “If we pay attention, we would have noticed that for the last week or two, Netanyahu has lowered his rhetoric. He’s a little calmer, and the reason is that it became clear to him — if he ever thought he had a good chance — that an override of the veto was not going to happen,” said Yehuda Ben Meir, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
  • me Israeli analysts also wonder what Netanyahu’s opposition will cost Israel and American Jews. Robert Wexler, a former Democratic congressman from Florida who now heads the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, said that Netanyahu “compromised the efforts of his own allies” in Washington when he “thrust himself into American politics without understanding the consequences of his actions.” Wexler faulted Netanyahu for, in effect, “requesting that the American Jewish community rise up against an American president.” Domestically, the prime minister might not pay a price for his defeat, if it can be called that. Instead, he may be seen as Israel’s great defender. Public opinion about the loss in Congress is still evolving here; many ordinary Israelis seem to think that there’s still a chance of killing the deal. The front-page headline Thursday in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s largest paid newspaper, was “Achievement for Obama, Blow to Netanyahu.” The headline in Israel Hayom, a free paper with a huge circulation that is owned by the prime minister’s close friend, the billionaire U.S. casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, was, “Official: A Majority in U.S. Agrees With Us.”
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Sep 15
     
    All spin except the boost in Israel funding. But the BDS Movement is gaining ground so fast in the U.S. that Israel's U.S. funding won't last much longer.
Paul Merrell

AIPAC Spent $14.5 Million on TV Ads during Iran Deal Debate « LobeLog - 0 views

lobelog.com/tv-ads-during-iran-deal-debate

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth deal lobbying stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • In the aftermath of Senate Republicans’ failed efforts to derail the plan agreed on in July to limit Iran’s nuclear program, responsibility has fallen on AIPAC for its inability to persuade a meaningful number of Senate Democrats to join their GOP colleagues in opposing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). To put it bluntly, AIPAC, a group with historically stronger ties to the Democratic Party, failed miserably. Only four Senators—Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Joe Manchin (D-WV)—broke ranks with their colleagues and minority leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) to oppose the nuclear deal. But AIPAC didn’t fail on the cheap. They raised and spent a staggering sum of money in an effort to tilt public opinion against the White House’s signature second-term foreign policy initiative. This summer, AIPAC announced the formation of a new dark money group, “Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran,” dedicated exclusively to opposing the emerging nuclear deal with Iran. The Jewish Telegraph Agency’s Ron Kampeas reported that the group raised “nearly $30 million.” After a review of over 700 FCC disclosures, helpfully tagged by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation’s “political ad sleuth,” we can confirm that the AIPAC spin-off spent at least $14.5 million on television commercials airing on broadcast television networks (ABC, NBC, FOX, and CBS) from mid-July until mid-September. This period coincides with the intensive two-month lobbying period from the announcement of the JCPOA in Vienna to the failure of the Senate resolution of disapproval.
  • These numbers don’t take into account the cost of ad buys on cable networks and any lag in the Sunlight Foundation’s Political Ad Sleuth’s tagging of relevant FCC filings. But the broad outlines of AIPAC’s well-moneyed opposition to the Iran deal indicate that the pro-Israel group quickly raised a significant amount of money to blanket the airwaves with anti-deal television commercials, dwarfing any efforts by J Street or other pro-deal groups to air competing ads.
Paul Merrell

Mission Failure Admission: US Abandons Program To Train Syrian Rebels - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...210232

war & peace Syria DoD-arms-training

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The U.S. Pentagon is expected to announce Friday that it will end its oft-criticized $500 million program to train and equip Syrian rebels, offering further evidence of the Obama administration’s incoherent and failed strategy in Syria and beyond. According to the New York Times, which broke the news, Pentagon officials will officially announce the end of the program on Friday, as Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter leaves London after meetings with his British counterpart, Defense Minister Michael Fallon, about the continuing wars in Syria and Iraq. “A senior Defense Department official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that there would no longer be any more recruiting of so-called moderate Syrian rebels to go through training programs in Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates,” the Times reports. “Instead, a much smaller training center would be set up in Turkey, where a small group of ‘enablers’— mostly leaders of opposition groups—would be taught operational maneuvers like how to call in airstrikes.” The program had been criticized from the beginning, with many charging that the strategy would merely lead to deeper chaos and regional instability—all while being based on mistaken assumptions.
  • “The proposition that there is a moderate Syrian opposition with enough military potential and—even more importantly—popular support inside Syria to overthrow the Assad government is a myth,” foreign policy experts Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett wrote for Consortium News one year ago. “To claim in addition that these mythical moderate oppositionists can take on and defeat the Islamic State is either blatantly dishonest or dangerously delusional.” And just last month, journalist Robert Parry described the program as “an embarrassing failure, producing only about 50 fighters who then were quickly killed or captured by Al Qaeda’s Nusra and other jihadist groups, leaving only ‘four or five’ trainees from the program, according to Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, head of the U.S. Central Command which has responsibility for the Middle East.”
  • As Common Dreams reported at the time, Central Command admitted in September that the U.S.-trained and armed rebels at the center of the policy had turned over at least a quarter of their American-issued equipment to the al Nusra Front, which is linked with al Qaeda.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 15
     
    Congress, of course, just appropriated $600 million to expand the same program. 
Paul Merrell

Bail-In and the Financial Stability Board: The Global Bankers' Coup | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...lity-board-global-bankers-coup

banksters G20 Financial-Stability-Board must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • 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:
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  • For three centuries, private international banking interests have brought governments in line by blocking them from issuing their own currencies and requiring them to borrow banker-issued “banknotes” instead. Political colonialism is now a thing of the past, but under the new FSB guidelines, nations could still be held in feudalistic subservience to foreign masters. Consider this scenario: the new FSB rules precipitate a massive global depression due to contraction of the money supply. XYZ country wakes up to the fact that all of this is unnecessary – that it could be creating its own money, freeing itself from the debt trap, rather than borrowing from bankers who create money on computer screens and charge interest for the privilege of borrowing it. But this realization comes too late: the boot descends and XYZ is crushed into line. National sovereignty has been abdicated to a private committee, with no say by the voters. Marilyn Barnewall, dubbed by Forbes Magazine the “dean of American private banking,” wrote in an April 2009 article titled “What Happened to American Sovereignty at G-20?”: It seems the world’s bankers have executed a bloodless coup and now represent all of the people in the world. . . . President Obama agreed at the G20 meeting in London to create an international board with authority to intervene in U.S. corporations by dictating executive compensation and approving or disapproving business management decisions.  Under the new Financial Stability Board, the United States has only one vote. In other words, the group will be largely controlled by European central bankers. My guess is, they will represent themselves, not you and not me and certainly not America.
  • Are these commitments legally binding? Adoption of the FSB was never voted on by the public, either individually or through their legislators. The G20 Summit has been called “a New Bretton Woods,” referring to agreements entered into in 1944 establishing new rules for international trade. But Bretton Woods was put in place by Congressional Executive Agreement, requiring a majority vote of the legislature; and it more properly should have been done by treaty, requiring a two-thirds vote of the Senate, since it was an international agreement binding on the nation. “Bail-in” is not the law yet, but the G20 governments will be called upon to adopt the FSB’s resolution measures when the proposal is finalized after taking comments in 2015. The authority of the G20 has been challenged, but mainly over whether important countries were left out of the mix. The omitted countries may prove to be the lucky ones, having avoided the FSB’s net.
Paul Merrell

Recognizing Palestine, BDS and the survival of Israel | The Electronic Intifada - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...14123

war & peace Israel Palestine BDS EU-recognition

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • What is happening in European parliaments? In the last month and a half, the UK House of Commons, the Spanish, French, Portuguese and Irish parliaments have all recognized Israel’s eternal “right” to be a racist state via a much-touted recognition of an alleged Palestinian state within the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the areas of Palestine Israel occupied in 1967. These moves followed the lead of Sweden’s new center-left government which decided shortly after taking office to “recognize the State of Palestine” as part of the “two-state solution.” As there is no Palestinian state to recognize within the 1967, or any other, borders, these political moves are engineered to undo the death of the two-state solution, the illusion of which had guaranteed Israel’s survival as a Jewish racist state for decades. These parliamentary resolutions in fact aim to impose a de facto arrangement that prevents Israel’s collapse and replacement with a state that grants equal rights to all its citizens and is not based on colonial and racial privileges.
  • Unlike Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who believes he can force the world to recognize a greater racist Israel that annexes the territories Israel occupied in 1967 de jure, the European parliaments are insisting that they will only guarantee Israel’s survival as a racist state within Israel’s 1948 borders and on whatever extra lands within the 1967 territories the Palestinian Authority (PA) — collaborating with Israel — agrees to concede in the form of “land swaps.” Denmark’s parliament and the European Parliament itself are the latest bodies set to consider votes guaranteeing Israel’s survival in its present form within the 1948 boundaries only. Even neutral Switzerland agreed, upon a request from the PA, to host a meeting of signatories of the Fourth Geneva Convention to discuss the 1967 Israeli occupation only. Expectedly, in addition to the Jewish settler-colony, the world’s major settler colonies — the United States, Canada, and Australia — are opposed to the meeting and will not attend.
  • The context of these steps has to do with the recent conduct of the Netanyahu government whose impatience is exposing Israel’s liberal racist politicians — those who prefer a more patient approach to achieving the very same racist political goals — to embarrassment. The situation has become so untenable that ardent American liberal Zionists led by none other than Michael Walzer, emeritus professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, have felt compelled to act. Walzer, notorious for justifying all of Israel’s conquests as “just wars,” and a group of like-minded figures calling themselves “Scholars for Israel and Palestine,” recently called on the US government to impose a travel ban on right-wing Israeli politicians who support annexation of what remains of the West Bank. Whereas successive Israeli governments have shown an unyielding determination to strengthen Israel’s right to be a racist state over all of historic Palestine, they have done so through the ruse of the “peace process,” which they were committed to maintaining for decades to come without any resolution.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • This strategy has worked very well for the last two decades with hardly a peep from the Palestinian Authority, which owes its very existence to this unending “process.” More recently, Hamas’ political leadership, especially the branch in Qatar, where the group’s leader Khaled Meshal is based, has also been looking for the best way to join this project. But as the ongoing Netanyahu policies of visiting horrors on the Palestinian people across all of the territories Israel controls — policies that have exposed the “peace process” for the sham it always was as well as Israel’s claim to being “democratic” as a most fraudulent one — the international consensus that Israeli liberals have built over the decades to shield Israel’s ugly reality from the world has been weakened, if not threatened with collapse altogether. Israeli liberals realize that what Netanyahu is doing is threatening their entire project and the very survival of Israel as a racist Jewish state. It is in this context that European parliaments are rushing to rescue Israel’s liberals by guaranteeing for them Israel’s survival in its racist form through recognizing a nonexistent Palestinian state “within the 1967 borders.” It is also in this context that European governments in the last year or so have begun to speak of BDS as a possible weapon they could use to threaten the Netanyahu government if it continues in its refusal to “negotiate” with the Palestinians (the Europeans use of the threat of BDS is limited to a threat of boycotting only the products of Israeli colonial settlements in the occupied territories), that is, to maintain the illusion of an ongoing “peace process.” Herein lies the dilemma for those who support BDS.
Paul Merrell

Iran Takes Defiant Steps Over New Sanctions - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-steps-over-new-sanctions.html

war & peace Iran U.S.-foreign-policy EU sanctions Iranian-nukes-myth straits of hormuz

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Iran took defiant steps on Monday in response to the intensified Western sanctions aimed at stifling its oil exports, announcing legislation intended to disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital Persian Gulf shipping lane, and testing missiles in a desert drill clearly intended as a warning to Israel and the United States.
  • The legislation calls for Iran's military to block any oil tanker heading through the strait en route to countries no longer buying Iranian crude because of the European Union embargo, which took effect on Sunday. It was unclear whether the legislation would pass or precisely how Iran would enforce it, given that the United States Navy's Fifth Fleet patrols the strait. Pentagon officials have said Iran's military is capable of closing the strait temporarily, and the Obama administration has warned that any such move would constitute a "red line" that would provoke an American response. The strait, connecting the Gulf of Oman to the Persian Gulf, is the conduit for one fifth of the world's oil supply and has been called the world's most important "oil chokepoint" by the United States Department of Energy.
  • Iranian news services quoted Ibrahim Agha-Mohammadi, a member of Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, as saying the panel drafted the legislation "as an answer to the European Union's oil sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran." The European embargo, along with new American restrictions that took effect on Friday, are intended to penalize Iran for refusing to suspend all uranium enrichment. Western nations and Israel suspect the enrichment program is aimed at creating the ability to make nuclear weapons, which Iran denies. While high-level talks have faltered, a meeting of lower level negotiators is planned for Tuesday. In the second saber-rattling step, Iranian news agencies announced that the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps had begun three days of missile testing in the desert region of the central province of Semnan. Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a commander of the exercises, was quoted as saying they were intended as practice responses to attacks by "adventurous nations," a reference to Israel and its most important ally, the United States.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The Islamic Republic News Agency quoted General Hajizadeh as saying "if any form of incident happens, Iran's ground-to-ground missiles will rain like thunderbolts upon the aggressors."
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Dec 14
     
    More at these sites: http://www.businessinsider.com/iran-considers-closure-of-strait-of-hormuz-after-european-union-sanctions-2012-7 http://www.oil-price.net/en/articles/iran-oil-strait-or-hormuz.php http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/07/201272162622744173.html The U.S. Navy's claimed ability to reopen the straits within a few days is dubious, despite the announcement that another Navy minesweeper is on its way to the Persian Gulf. In tests about two years ago, a team of U.S. minesweepers found only 1 out of 20 practice mines over a period of several days. Niow add to the calculus Iran's thousands of below-radar cruise missiles, its ICBMs armed with conventiional warheads (the U.S. East Coast and the EU are both in range), torpedo boats, and its fleet of mini-submarines designed for stealth and operation in shallow waters. The U.S. has a single carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf. That's one carrier I would not want to be on if war erupts in the Straits of Hormuz. But at the same time, the Iranian Parliament has no power to declare war. That power resides with Ayatolla Khomeni and the Supreme Council of the Revolutionary Guards.  So the legislation is more symbolic than a similar bill in the U.S. would be. But still, it's a strong message that Parliament has Khomeni's back if he decides to retaliate against U.S. and E.U. economic warfare. 
Paul Merrell

Breakthrough hopes dented as Ukraine accuses Russia of new incursion | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...e-crisis-idUSKBN0GQ0RF20140827

war & peace Ukraine Russia OSCE

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Late-night talks in the Belarussian capital Minsk had appeared to yield some progress towards ending a war in which more than 2,200 people have been killed, according to the U.N. -- a toll that excludes the 298 who died when a Malaysian airliner was shot down over rebel-held territory in July.Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he would work on an urgent 'road map' towards a ceasefire with the rebels. Russia's Vladimir Putin said it would be for Ukrainians to work out ceasefire terms, but Moscow would "contribute to create a situation of trust".
  • The next step would be for a 'Contact Group', comprising representatives of Russia, Ukraine, the rebels and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, to meet in Minsk, he said without giving a time frame.But Ukrainian foreign policy adviser Valery Chaly told reporters in Kiev that Poroshenko's declaration on a ceasefire road map did not mean an immediate end to the government’s military offensive against the rebels."If there are attacks from the terrorists and mercenaries, then our army has the duty to defend the people," he said.A crowd of several hundred gathered outside the presidential administration building in Kiev to demand reinforcement for Ukrainian forces in Ilovaysk, a town in Donetsk region, where government troops have been encircled by rebel units.
  • A rebel leader, Oleg Tsaryov, wrote on Facebook that he welcomed the outcome of the Minsk talks, but the separatists would not stop short of full independence for the regions of eastern Ukraine they call Novorossiya (New Russia).He said he saw "a real breakthrough" in Putin's offer to contribute to the peace process.But he added: "It must be understood that a genuine settlement of the situation is only possible with the participation of representatives of Novorossiya. We will not allow our fate to be decided behind our back..."Now we are demanding independence. We don't trust the Ukrainian leadership and don't consider ourselves part of Ukraine. The guarantee of our security is our own armed forces. We will decide our own fate."Further underlining Kiev's distrust of Moscow, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said his country needed "practical help" and "momentous decisions" from NATO at an alliance summit next month.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Aug 14
     
    Highlighted statements are scattered and buried deep in an article mostly about new accusations against Russia. Coup government President Poroshenko's statement that he is working toward a peace roadmap represents an abrupt departure from that government's stance since it began its invasion of separatist-held territory in eastern Ukraine, that only the unconditional surrender of the separatists could halt the coup government's attack. Lying behind that statement (from other reports) is the fact that the tide of battle has turned sharply; the coup government's mostly-conscript army forces are variously surrounded or retreating as the separatists gain the upper hand. Moreover, nearly all of the coup government attack airplanes and helicopters have been destroyed by separatist MANPAD shoulder-fired ground-to-air missiles.  On coup government Prime Minister Yatseniuk's expressed need for "'practical help' and 'momentous decisions' from NATO at an alliance summit next month," I'd love to be a fly on wall during that meeting if the coup government's military situation continues to deteriorate. The U.S. is the only NATO member that wants further confrontation in Ukraine. Notwithstanding U.S. rhetoric threatening military action against Russia, it's doubtful that any military officers holding the rank needed to attend that NATO meeting would support NATO action against Russia so close to its own backyard. Russia has nukes aplenty, so it comes down to the ability to win a conventional war against Russia in Russia and the Ukraine. Far easier said than done, as both Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolph Hitler learned the hard way. Russia remains the nation with the second post powerful military in the world and would be playing on the home court with the ferocity of the Russian Bear. The U.S. would bring the most powerful force, both augmented and semi-crippled by taking the lead among reluctant NATO nation military forces. All to protect the U.S. dollar's dwindling purchasing powe
Paul Merrell

Israeli-US relations tested once again in Gaza war - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...4-8b10-7db129976abb_story.html

war & peace Israel U.S.-foreign-policy Israel-U.S.-relations

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • When Israel completes its damage assessment from its latest war with Hamas, it may conclude that one of the biggest casualties was its all-important relationship with the United States. A recent American decision to hold back on the delivery of advanced Hellfire missiles offered dramatic manifestation of a relationship that appears to be deteriorating in large part due to strained ties between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Since both came into power in early 2009, they have been unable to see eye-to-eye on a host of issues — most notably on how to handle Iran’s nuclear program and on peace talks with the Palestinians. There also seems to be little personal chemistry. Topping things off are mutual accusations of political meddling in each other’s countries.
  • “The problem is that Netanyahu has become a domestic political enemy of the president and his party,” leading Israeli commentator Nahum Barnea wrote Monday in Yediot Ahronot. “That is a blunder of historic proportions.”
  • U.S.-Israeli relations have seen their ups and downs, but what makes this time remarkable is the wide gap between how each leader sees the world, said Shmuel Rosner, an Israeli columnist who focuses on the relationship. “Six years of mutual suspicions have left deep scars and I don’t see it improving over the next two,” he said.
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  • Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel who was the chief U.S. negotiator between Israel and the Palestinians in the recent round of talks, said Israel could suffer if it undercuts the perception that the U.S. still wields strong influence. “If they undermine our ability to influence their adversaries, or (the) belief of their adversaries in our ability to influence them, then they’re going to face a much more difficult situation,” he said.
Paul Merrell

Russia and NATO square off over Ukraine - International - World - Ahram Online - 0 views

english.ahram.org.eg/...O-square-off-over-Ukraine.aspx

war & peace Russia NATO ColdWar2.0

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Moscow declared NATO a "threat" to its security Tuesday after the Western military alliance announced plans to reinforce defences in eastern Europe because of Russia's alleged stoking of war in Ukraine. Moscow's surprise declaration of a shift in its military doctrine came just ahead of a NATO summit in Wales on Thursday at which beleaguered Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will lobby US President Barack Obama for military help. The Russian national security council's deputy secretary Mikhail Popov said NATO's plan for new defence units in eastern Europe was "evidence of the desire of US and NATO leaders to continue their policy of aggravating tensions with Russia."
  • "I have no doubt that the question of the approach of NATO members' military infrastructure to our border" will be taken into consideration as "one of the foreign military threats to Russia" when the country's defence doctrine is updated later this year, he said. Popov added that Russia's 2010 military doctrine -- a document that already permits the use of nuclear weapons in case of grave national danger -- would focus more on overcoming NATO and its new European anti-missile defence system.
Paul Merrell

Despite Sanctions, Cash Keeps Flowing at Playground for Russia's Rich - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ayground-for-russias-rich.html

war & peace Russia U.S.-sanctions EU

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Russian money is so important that even as European leaders are taking a tougher line with Mr. Putin, none want to damage the broader economic ties with measures that go beyond targeted sanctions.Continue reading the main story Unlike the days when Russians were cloistered behind the Iron Curtain, today they are so ensconced in Europe that more punitive steps would be likely to inflict the greater damage on still-weak European economies.That is so especially, but not only, in Italy. Like Germany, Italy is a major consumer of Russian natural gas, but ties go far beyond energy. Once a favorite summer spot of Italian industrialists, Forte dei Marmi has survived the economic downturn since 2008 largely because of Russian money.Russian tourism has grown rapidly in Italy, increasing by 25 percent in 2013 alone. According to Italy’s Foreign Ministry, 747,000 Russians visited Italy in 2013, while 52,000 Italians visited Russia. Russians are also roughly tied with Japanese as the biggest spenders among tourists, averaging €150 to €175 a day, roughly $195 to $225, according to Italy’s Foreign Ministry.
Paul Merrell

Fox News joins chorus of Netanyahu critics - Israel News, Ynetnews - 0 views

www.ynetnews.com/...0,7340,L-4618729,00.html

war & peace Netanyahu Congress Republicans backlash FoxNews Iranian-nukes-myth must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • The criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, over his intention to address the US Congress two weeks before the Israeli elections, has not stopped at water's edge. And while the criticism from President Barack Obama's administration and the editorial board of the New York Times was expected, this weekend the Likud leader was targeted by a network he once counted among his supporters – Fox News.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Jan 15
     
    That's Rupert Murdoch's media empire telling the world that Netanyahu goofed big-time. A must-read.
Paul Merrell

Hackers Use Old Lure on Web to Help Syrian Government - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...old-web-lure-to-aid-assad.html

surveillance state cyberwarfare Syrian-War

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • To the young Syrian rebel fighter, the Skype message in early December 2013 appeared to come from a woman in Lebanon, named Iman Almasri, interested in his cause. Her picture, in a small icon alongside her name, showed a fair-skinned 20-something in a black head covering, wearing sunglasses.They chatted online for nearly two hours, seemingly united in their opposition to the rule of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian leader still in power after a civil war that has taken more than 200,000 lives. Eventually saying she worked “in a programing company in Beirut,” the woman asked the fighter whether he was talking from his computer or his smartphone. He sent her a photo of himself and asked for another of her in return. She sent one immediately, apologizing that it was a few years old.“Angel like,” he responded. “You drive me crazy.”
  • What the fighter did not know was that buried in the code of the second photo was a particularly potent piece of malware that copied files from his computer, including tactical battle plans and troves of information about him, his friends and fellow fighters. The woman was not a friendly chat partner, but a pro-Assad hacker — the photos all appear to have been plucked from the web.
  • The Syrian conflict has been marked by a very active, if only sporadically visible, cyberbattle that has engulfed all sides, one that is less dramatic than the barrel bombs, snipers and chemical weapons — but perhaps just as effective. The United States had deeply penetrated the web and phone systems in Syria a year before the Arab Spring uprisings spread throughout the country. And once it began, Mr. Assad’s digital warriors have been out in force, looking for any advantage that could keep him in power.In this case, the fighter had fallen for the oldest scam on the Internet, one that helped Mr. Assad’s allies. The chat is drawn from a new study by the intelligence-gathering division of FireEye, a computer security firm, which has delved into the hidden corners of the Syrian conflict — one in which even a low-tech fighting force has figured out a way to use cyberespionage to its advantage. FireEye researchers found a collection of chats and documents while researching malware hidden in PDF documents, which are commonly used to share letters, books or other images. That quickly took them to the servers where the stolen data was stored.
Paul Merrell

New Zealand spying on Pacific allies for 'Five Eyes' and NSA, Snowden files show | US news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...yes-and-nsa-snowden-files-show

surveillance state NSA 5-Eyes New-Zealand GCSB

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The regional surveillance conducted from the base covers Tuvalu, Nauru, Kiribati, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands. New Caledonia and French Polynesia, both French overseas territories, are also among the listed countries. Although Samoa, Fiji, Tonga and Vanuatu are named, much of their data is now transmitted via undersea cable links that are not susceptible to Waihopai’s intercept satellites. The revelations are particularly likely to test relations between New Zealand and Fiji, the island nation headed by Frank Bainimarama, the army chief-turned-prime minister. Following elections in Fiji in 2014, the countries have moved towards resuming full diplomatic links for the first time since the military coup led by Bainimarama in 2006. Andrew Little, the leader of the NZ opposition Labour party, said that while he accepted the need for security agencies to protect national interests, he was “stunned at the breadth of the information that’s been collected”.
Paul Merrell

Obama Declares Venezuela National Security Threat | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...-national-security-threat.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Venezuela sanctions security-threat Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Yesterday the White House took a new step toward the theater of the absurd by “declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela,” as President Barack Obama put it in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner. It remains to be seen whether anyone in the White House press corps will have the courage to ask what in the world the nation’s chief executive could mean by that. Is Venezuela financing a coming terrorist attack on U.S. territory? Planning an invasion? Building a nuclear weapon? Who do they think they are kidding? Some may say that the language is just there because it is necessary under U.S. law in order to impose the latest round of sanctions on Venezuela. That is not much of a defense, telling the whole world the rule of law in the United States is something the president can use lies to get around whenever he finds it inconvenient.
  • Didn’t read any of this in the English-language media? Well, you probably also didn’t see the immediate reaction to yesterday’s White House blunder from the head of the Union of South American Nations, which read, “UNASUR rejects any external or internal attempt at interference that seeks to disrupt the democratic process in Venezuela.”
  • Washington was involved in the short-lived 2002 military coup in Venezuela; it “provided training, institution building and other support to individuals and organizations understood to be actively involved in the brief ouster” of President Hugo Chávez and his government, according to the U.S. State Department. The U.S. has not changed its policy toward Venezuela since then and has continued funding opposition groups in the country. So it is only natural that everyone familiar with this recent history, with the conflict between the U.S. and the region over the 2009 Honduran military coup and with the current sanctions will assume that Washington is involved in the ongoing efforts to topple what has been its No. 1 or 2 target for regime change for more than a decade. The Venezuelan government has produced some credible evidence of a coup in the making: the recording of a former deputy minister of the interior reading what is obviously a communique to be issued after the military deposes the elected government, the confessions of some accused military officers and a recorded phone conversation between opposition leaders acknowledging that a coup is in the works.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Regardless of whether one thinks this evidence is sufficient (the U.S. press has not reported most of it), it is little wonder that the governments in the region are convinced. Efforts to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela have been underway for most of the past 15 years. Why would it be any different now, when the economy is in recession and there was an effort to force out the government just last year? And has anyone ever seen an attempted ouster of a leftist government in Latin America that Washington had nothing to do with?Because I haven’t.
  • The face of Washington in Latin America is one of extremism. Despite some changes in other areas of foreign policy (e.g., Obama’s engagement with Iran), this face has not changed very much since Reagan warned us that Nicaragua’s Sandinistas “were just two days’ driving time from Harlingen, Texas.” He was ridiculed by Garry Trudeau in “Doonesbury” and other satirists. The Obama White House’s Reagan redux should get the same treatment.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 15
     
    Wow. Criticism of Obama by a mainstream media organization that lays out the history of U.S. interference in the internal affairs of another nation.  By a U.S. foreign policy wonk, no less. 
Paul Merrell

Senator Corker Pushes Obama for Congressional Vote on Iran Deal - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-for-a-vote-on-iran-deal.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iranian-nukes-myth negotiations UNSC-Resolution

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urged President Obama on Thursday not to seek a United Nations endorsement of the emerging nuclear agreement with Iran without first giving Congress a chance to vote on it.The warning was the latest twist in an increasingly tense standoff between the White House and congressional Republicans over the potential deal, which would impose limits on Iran’s nuclear program in return for lifting economic sanctions.“There are now reports that your administration is contemplating taking an agreement, or aspects of it, to the United Nations Security Council for a vote,” Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, wrote in a letter to Mr. Obama, which was made public by his office.
  • “Enabling the United Nations to consider an agreement or portions of it” without allowing Congress to vote on the agreement would be “a direct affront to the American people and seeks to undermine Congress’s appropriate role,” Mr. Corker added.
  • The Obama administration does not plan to seek congressional approval for the potential accord, which is expected to last about 15 years.Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged in testimony to Mr. Corker’s committee on Wednesday that without a congressional vote, the deal would not be “legally binding” on the succession of United States presidents who would be charged with carrying it out. But he said he was confident that future presidents would uphold an agreement as long as Iran fulfilled its obligations under the accord.
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  • But the ongoing consultations in New York among Security Council members have added a new element to the debate between the White House and skeptical lawmakers.
  • Mr. Corker has drafted legislation that would require the White House to submit the Iran agreement to Congress for a vote. Mr. Corker has been trying to build enough bipartisan support for the measure that lawmakers could override a veto. But his efforts have been hampered by a recent open letter to the Iranian leadership signed by 47 Republican senators. The letter, which Mr. Corker did not sign, sharpened partisan divisions by warning that any Iran agreement that was not approved by Congress could be modified by lawmakers or even revoked by a future president.Asked for comment on Mr. Corker’s letter, Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said that Congress would not be excluded from considering the accord because it would eventually be asked to vote on lifting sanctions once it had become clear that Iran had been in compliance “for a considerable period of time.”
  • Such a vote, however, might not occur for years. In the meantime, Mr. Obama plans to use his executive authority to suspend punishing economic sanctions.
Paul Merrell

How Netanyahu provoked this war with Gaza | +972 Magazine - 0 views

972mag.com/...93200

war & peace Palestine Israel Hamas

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • On Monday of last week, June 30, Reuters ran a story that began:Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas on Monday of involvement, for the first time since a Gaza war in [November] 2012, in rocket attacks on Israel and threatened to step up military action to stop the strikes. So even by Israel’s own reckoning, Hamas had not fired any rockets in the year-and-a-half since “Operation Pillar of Defense” ended in a ceasefire. (Hamas denied firing even those mentioned by Netanyahu last week; it wasn’t until Monday of this week that it acknowledged launching any rockets at Israel since the 2012 ceasefire.) So how did we get from there to here, here being Operation Protective Edge, which officially began Tuesday with 20 Gazans dead, both militants and civilians, scores of others badly  wounded and much destruction, alongside about 150 rockets flying all over Israel (but no serious injuries or property damage by Wednesday afternoon)? We got here because Benjamin Netanyahu brought us here. He’s being credited in Israel for showing great restraint in the days leading up to the big op, answering Gaza’s rockets with nothing more than warning shots and offering “quiet for quiet.” But in fact it was his antagonism toward all Palestinians – toward Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority no less than toward Hamas – that started and steadily provoked the chain reaction that led to the current misery.
  • And nobody knows this, or should know it, better than the Obama administration, which is now standing up for Israel’s “right to defend itself.” It was Netanyahu and his government that killed the peace talks with Abbas that were shepherded by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry; the Americans won’t exactly spell this out on-the-record, but they will off-the record. So a week before those negotiations’ April 29 deadline, Abbas, seeing he wasn’t getting anywhere playing ball with Israel and the United States, decided to shore things up at home, to end the split between the West Bank and Gaza, and he signed the Fatah-Hamas unity deal – with himself as president and Fatah clearly the senior partner. The world – even Washington – welcomed the deal, if warily so, saying unity between the West Bank and Gaza was a good thing for the peace process, and holding out the hope that the deal would compel Hamas to moderate its political stance. Netanyahu, however, saw red. Warning that the unity government would “strengthen terror,” he broke off talks with Abbas and tried to convince the West to refuse to recognize the emerging new Palestinian government – but he failed. He didn’t stop trying, though. At a time when Hamas was seen to be weak, broke, throttled by the new-old Egyptian regime, unpopular with Gazans, and acting as Israel’s cop in the Strip by not only holding its own fire but curbing that of Islamic Jihad and others, Netanyahu became obsessed with Hamas – and obsessed with tying it around Abbas’ neck. Netanyahu’s purpose, clearly enough, was to shift the blame for the failure of the U.S.-sponsored peace talks from himself and his government to Abbas and the Palestinians.
  • But Netanyahu used the kidnappings to go after Hamas in the West Bank. The target, as one Israeli security official said, was “anything green.” The army raided, destroyed, confiscated and arrested anybody and anything having to do with Hamas, killed some Palestinian protesters and rearrested some 60 Hamasniks who had been freed in the Gilad Shalit deal, throwing them back in prison. Meanwhile, in Gaza, Israel had already escalated matters on June 11, the day before the kidnappings, by killing not only a wanted man riding on a bicycle, but a 10-year-old child riding with him. Between that, the kidnappings a day later and the crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank that immediately followed, Gaza and Israel started going at it pretty fierce – with all the casualties and destruction, once again, on Gaza’s side only.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • But it wasn’t working. Then on June 12 something fell into Netanyahu’s lap which he certainly would have prevented if he’d been able to, but which he also did not hesitate exploiting to the hilt politically: the kidnapping in the West Bank of Gilad Sha’ar and Naftali Fraenkel, both 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19. Netanyahu blamed Hamas for the kidnapping. He said he had proof. To this day, neither he nor any other Israeli official has come forward with a shred of proof. Meanwhile, it is now widely assumed that the Hamas leadership did not give the order for the kidnapping, that it was instead carried out at the behest of a renegade, Hamas-linked, Hebron clan with a long history of blowing up Hamas’ ceasefires with Israel by killing Israelis. Besides, it made no sense for Hamas leaders to order up such a spectacular crime – not after signing an agreement with Abbas, and not when they were so badly on the ropes.
  • And that was basically it. Netanyahu had given orders to smash up the West Bank and Gaza over the kidnapping of three Israeli boys that, as monstrous as it was, apparently had nothing to do with the Hamas leadership. Thus, he opened an account with Israel’s enemies, who would wish for an opportunity to close it. On June 30, the bodies of the three kidnapped Israeli boys were found in the West Bank. “Hamas is responsible, Hamas will pay,” Netanayhu intoned. That payment was delayed by the burning alive of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, 15, which set off riots in East Jerusalem and Israel’s “Arab Triangle,” and which put Israel on the defensive. It probably encouraged the armed groups in Gaza to step up their rocketing of Israel, while Netanyahu kept Israel’s in check. Then on Sunday, as many as nine Hamas men were killed in a Gazan tunnel that Israel bombed, saying it was going to be used for a terror attack. The next day nearly 100 rockets were fired at Israel. This time Hamas took responsibility for launching some of the rockets – a week after Netanyahu, for the first time since November 2012, accused it of breaking the ceasefire. And the day after that, “Operation Protective Edge” officially began. By Wednesday afternoon, there were 35 dead and many maimed in Gaza, Israelis were ducking rockets, and no one can say when or how it will end, or what further horrors lie in store.
  • Netanyahu could have avoided the whole thing. He could have chosen not to shoot up the West Bank and Gaza and arrest dozens of previously freed Hamasniks (along with hundreds of other Palestinians) over what was very likely a rogue kidnapping. Before that, he could have chosen not to stonewall Abbas for nine months of peace negotiations, and then there wouldn’t have even been a unity government with Hamas that freaked him out so badly – a reaction that was, of course, Netanyahu’s choice as well. But Israel’s prime minister is and always has been at war with the Palestinians – diplomatically, militarily and every other way; against Abbas, Hamas and all the rest – and this is what has guided his actions, and this is what provoked Hamas into going to war against Israel.
Paul Merrell

CIA admits to spying on Senate staffers | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-admits-spying-senate-staffers

surveillance state CIA torture Senate-Intelligence_Committee-Report Brennan

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, issued an extraordinary apology to leaders of the US Senate intelligence committee on Thursday, conceding that the agency employees spied on committee staff and reversing months of furious and public denials. Brennan acknowledged that an internal investigation had found agency security personnel transgressed a firewall set up on a CIA network, which allowed Senate committee investigators to review agency documents for their landmark inquiry into CIA torture. Among other things, it was revealed that agency officials conducted keyword searches and email searches on committee staff while they used the network.The admission brings Brennan’s already rocky tenure at the head of the CIA under renewed question. One senator on the panel said he had lost confidence in the director, although the White House indicated its support for a man who has been one of Barack Obama’s most trusted security aides.
  • CIA spokesman Dean Boyd acknowledged that agency staff had improperly monitored the computers of committee staff members, who were using a network the agency had set up, called RDINet. “Some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between [the committee] and the CIA in 2009 regarding access to the RDINet,” he said.Asked if Brennan had or would offer his resignation, a different CIA spokesman, Ryan Trapani, replied: “No.”
  • McClatchy first reported the apology on Thursday.
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Aug 14
     
    A bit more detail on what CIA admits to doing. 
Paul Merrell

Article: Arab Spring, Jihad Summer | OpEdNews - 0 views

www.opednews.com/...ab-Spring_Isil-140702-126.html

Mideast ISIL U.S.-foreign-policy Iraq Turkey Saudis Qatar

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Welcome to IS. No typo; the final goal may be (indiscriminate) regime change, but for the moment name change will do. With PR flair, at the start of Ramadan, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS, or ISIL -- the Islamic State of the Levant -- to some) solemnly declared, from now on, it will be known as Islamic State (IS). "To be or not to be" is so ... metaphysically outdated. IS is -- and here it is -- in full audio glory. And we're talking about the full package -- Caliph included: "the slave of Allah, Ibrahim Ibn 'Awwad Ibn Ibrahim Ibn 'Ali Ibn Muhammad al-Badrial-Hashimi al-Husayni al-Qurashi by lineage, as-Samurra'i by birth and upbringing, al-Baghdadi by residence and scholarship." Or, to put it more simply, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. IS has virtually ordered "historic" al-Qaeda -- yes, that 9/11-related (or not) plaything of one Osama bin Laden -- as well as every other jihadi outfit on the planet, to pledge allegiance to the new imam, in theological theory the new lord over every Muslim. There's no evidence Osama's former sidekick, Ayman "the doctor" al-Zawahiri will obey, not to mention 1.5 billion Muslims across the world. Most probably al-Qaeda will say "we are the real deal" and a major theological cat-fight will be on.
  • It's unclear how the new IS reality will play on the ground. The new Caliph has in fact declared a jihad on all that basket of corrupt and/or incompetent Middle East "leaders" -- so some fierce "battle for survival" reaction from the Houses of Saud and Thani, for instance, is expected. It's not far-fetched to picture al-Baghdadi dreaming of lording over Saudi oilfields -- after decapitating all Shi'ite workers, of course. And that's just a start; in one of their Tweeter accounts IS has published a map of all the domains they intend to conquer within the span of five years; Spain, Northern Africa, the Balkans, the whole Middle East and large swathes of Asia. Well, they are certainly more ambitious than NATO. Being such a courageous bunch, the House of Saud is now tempted to accept that imposing regime change on Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq is a bad idea. That puts them in direct conflict with the Obama administration, whose plan A, B and C is regime change.
  • Turkey -- the former seat of the Caliphate, by the way -- remains mute. No wonder; Ankara -- crucially --is the top logistical base of IS. Caliph Erdogan's got to be musing about his own future, now that he's facing competition. In theory, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan are all saying they're ready to fight what would be a "larger-scale war" than that gift that keeps on giving, the original, Cheney junta-coined GWOT (global war on terror). And then there's the future of the new $500 million Obama fund to "appropriately vetted" rebels in Syria, which in fact means the expansion of covert CIA "training facilities" in Jordan and Turkey heavily infiltrated/profited from by IS. Think of hordes of new IS recruits posing as "moderate rebels" getting ready for a piece of the action.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • It's easier for Brazil to win the World Cup with a team of crybabies with no tactical nous than having US Secretary of State John Kerry and his State Department ciphers understand that the Syrian "opposition" is controlled by jihadis. But then again, they do know -- and that perfectly fits into the Empire of Chaos's not so hidden Global War on Terror (GWOT) agenda of an ever-expanding proxy war in both Syria and Iraq fueled by terror financing. So 13 years ago, Washington crushed both al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Then the Taliban were reborn. Then came Shock and Awe. Then came "Mission Accomplished." Then al-Qaeda was introduced in Iraq. Then al-Qaeda was dead because Osama bin Laden was dead. Then came ISIL. And now there's IS. And we start all over again, not in the Hindu Kush, but in the Levant. With a new Osama. What's not to like? If anyone thinks this whole racket is part of a new live Monty Python sketch ahead of their reunion gig this month in London, that's because it is.
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Jul 14
     
    Hey, the U.S. War Party is now into comedic performances that put John Kerry center stage. Pepe Escobar caught the joke.
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