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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.
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New regs say passengers cannot fly without biometric ID card - Police State USA - 0 views

www.policestateusa.com/...tsa-to-require-real-id surveillance state national-id-cards biomettric-ID flying trains politics of fear
shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • The ability to travel in the United States is about to become more restrictive as the TSA announces it will soon be enforcing new identification standards in American airports. Beginning in 2016, passengers attempting to pass through a federal TSA checkpoint will be subject to the requirements of the REAL ID Act. To that end, the TSA will put higher scrutiny on travelers’ identities, and will only accept a federal passport or a “REAL-ID” card, which is issued by the states to meet federal requirements. Passengers will not be allowed to fly through an American airport without submitting to the advanced federal specifications. Both federal passports and REAL-ID cards require a number of unique personal identifiers to be stored together in government databases, including his or her full name, date of birth, Social Security Number, scanned signature, and other identifiers. Both cards require biometric data: a front-facing digital photograph of the passenger’s face, which is ultimately used with a facial recognition database.
  • The enhanced security measures stem from the passage of the REAL ID Act of 2005, a U.S. law enacted by President Bush that states that a Federal agency may not accept state-issued identification cards without complying with a number of enhanced standards of the REAL ID Act. The states were given a number of years to comply, and many moved to pass their own laws to meet the benchmarks of the REAL ID Act. Due to some sluggish response, DHS extended the compliance deadline several times. Unfortunately, most states were all too willing to bend to the requirements of the federal government in order to obtain “state certifications” of compliance. To signify their compliance with the federal standards, many states are now issuing identity cards emblazoned with gold stars in the corner.
  • According to the Department of Homeland Security, only Arizona, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, and American Samoa have not met REAL ID standards as of January 2015. By DHS estimates, 70%-80% of all U.S. drivers are already carrying around REAL ID cards or live in states that have received extensions for compliance. Some states have even gone as far as to require the applicant to present birth certificates, W-2 tax forms, bank statements, and/or pay stubs to verify one’s identity before handing out the new REAL-ID cards. Some cards have RFID chips embedded in them. Among the 39 benchmarks of the REAL ID Act, state ID cards have to be scannable with a bar code reader, and the states are required to share access to an electronic database with all other states.
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  • Once DHS begins enforcing the REAL ID standards, Americans without a compliant state ID will be effectively prohibited from flying at a commercial airport. Passengers would need to obtain passports even to fly on planes that never leave the United States.
  • a few rose in opposition to REAL ID, including Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), who was perhaps its most outspoken critic. Dr. Paul, a former presidential candidate, called REAL ID a “Trojan horse” which “transform[s] state drivers licenses into de facto national ID cards.” In an impassioned speech on the House floor on February 9, 2005, Paul laid out a number of specific objections to H.R. 418: The REAL ID Act establishes a national ID card by mandating that states include certain minimum identification standards on driver’s licenses. It contains no limits on the government’s power to impose additional standards. Indeed, it gives authority to the Secretary of Homeland Security to unilaterally add requirements as he sees fit.
  • Supporters claim it is not a national ID because it is voluntary. However, any state that opts out will automatically make non-persons out of its citizens. The citizens of that state will be unable to have any dealings with the federal government because their ID will not be accepted. They will not be able to fly or to take a train. In essence, in the eyes of the federal government they will cease to exist. It is absurd to call this voluntary. Republican Party talking points on this bill, which claim that this is not a national ID card, nevertheless endorse the idea that “the federal government should set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification such as driver’s licenses.” So they admit that they want a national ID but at the same time pretend that this is not a national ID. This bill establishes a massive, centrally-coordinated database of highly personal information about American citizens: at a minimum their name, date of birth, place of residence, Social Security number, and physical and possibly other characteristics. What is even more disturbing is that, by mandating that states participate in the “Drivers License Agreement,” this bill creates a massive database of sensitive information on American citizens that will be shared with Canada and Mexico!
  • This bill could have a chilling effect on the exercise of our constitutionally guaranteed rights. It re-defines “terrorism” in broad new terms that could well include members of firearms rights and anti-abortion groups, or other such groups as determined by whoever is in power at the time. There are no prohibitions against including such information in the database as information about a person’s exercise of First Amendment rights or about a person’s appearance on a registry of firearms owners. REAL ID cards streamline the process for the centralization and federalization of our private biometric data, while offering very little true benefit. In the words of Congressman Ron Paul, the program “offers us a false sense of greater security at the cost of taking a gigantic step toward making America a police state.” Its difficult to argue otherwise when passports may soon be necessary to travel domestically.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Feb 15
     
    This is among the reasons I no longer fly. I refuse to be treated in that distrustful way by my government. Atthough I used to fly several hundred thousands of miles annually, if the airlines want my business, they need to actively and effectively oppose the emergence of the surveillance state. I reject the politics of fear that attempts to justify suppression of liberties. Where I travel is none of the government's business.
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Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS Are Such Grave... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...s-terrorism-isis-grave-threats war on terror™ politics-of-fear budget-justification FBI entrapment
shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • The FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the agency’s latest counterterrorism triumph: the arrest of three Brooklyn men, ages 19 to 30, on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS (photo of joint FBI/NYPD press conference, above). As my colleague Murtaza Hussain ably documents, “it appears that none of the three men was in any condition to travel or support the Islamic State, without help from the FBI informant.” One of the frightening terrorist villains told the FBI informant that, beyond having no money, he had encountered a significant problem in following through on the FBI’s plot: his mom had taken away his passport. Noting the bizarre and unhinged ranting of one of the suspects, Hussain noted on Twitter that this case “sounds like another victory for the FBI over the mentally ill.” In this regard, this latest arrest appears to be quite similar to the overwhelming majority of terrorism arrests the FBI has proudly touted over the last decade. As my colleague Andrew Fishman and I wrote last month — after the FBI manipulated a 20-year-old loner who lived with his parents into allegedly agreeing to join an FBI-created plot to attack the Capitol — these cases follow a very clear pattern
  • Once again, we should all pause for a moment to thank the brave men and women of the FBI for saving us from their own terror plots.
  • We’re constantly bombarded with dire warnings about the grave threat of home-grown terrorists, “lone wolf” extremists and ISIS. So intensified are these official warnings that The New York Times earlier this month cited anonymous U.S. intelligence officials to warn of the growing ISIS threat and announce “the prospect of a new global war on terror.” But how serious of a threat can all of this be, at least domestically, if the FBI continually has to resort to manufacturing its own plots by trolling the Internet in search of young drifters and/or the mentally ill whom they target, recruit and then manipulate into joining? Does that not, by itself, demonstrate how over-hyped and insubstantial this “threat” actually is? Shouldn’t there be actual plots, ones that are created and fueled without the help of the FBI, that the agency should devote its massive resources to stopping? This FBI tactic would be akin to having the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) constantly warn of the severe threat posed by drug addiction while it simultaneously uses pushers on its payroll to deliberately get people hooked on drugs so that they can arrest the addicts they’ve created and thus justify their own warnings and budgets (and that kind of threat-creation, just by the way, is not all that far off from what the other federal law enforcement agencies, like the FBI, are actually doing). As we noted the last time we wrote about this, the Justice Department is aggressively pressuring U.S. allies to employ these same entrapment tactics in order to create their own terrorists, who can then be paraded around as proof of the grave threat.
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  • UPDATE: The ACLU of Massachusetts’s Kade Crockford notes this extraordinarily revealing quote from former FBI assistant director Thomas Fuentes, as he defends one of the worst FBI terror “sting” operations of all (the Cromitie prosecution we describe at length here): If you’re submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an intelligence agency, you’re not going to submit the proposal that “We won the war on terror and everything’s great,” cuz the first thing that’s gonna happen is your budget’s gonna be cut in half. You know, it’s my opposite of Jesse Jackson’s ‘Keep Hope Alive’—it’s ‘Keep Fear Alive.’ Keep it alive. That is the FBI’s terrorism strategy — keep fear alive — and it drives everything they do.
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Colombia: Ex-President Uribe could land himself behind bars | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...could-land-himself-behind-bars war & peace Colombia U.S.-foreign-policy CIA Operation-Condor Uribe
shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Investigations into the DAS wiretapping scandal and other crimes committed during the administration of former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe are getting closer to Uribe himself, prompting analysts to say that Uribe’s house of cards is coming down and that Uribe could end up serving time behind bars.
  • The DAS wiretapping scandal broke in 2008 after members of the opposition discovered that Colombia’s now discontinued intelligence agency DAS had been spying on journalists, human rights advocates, politicians, as well as against the Supreme Court. Uribe’s, at that time Chief of Staff, Bernardo Moreno, was charged with the illegal wiretaps while there, at that time, was no direct evidence about DAS’ involvement. Moreno, as well as former DAS Director Maria del Pilar have since been convicted of the illegal wiretapping and spying. That is, there is only one more link in the chain of command that may be missing, which is Uribe himself. Almost all executives of the now defunct DAS have since stated that the orders came straight from number one, that is from Uribe himself. Uribe has repeatedly contradicted himself by stating that “The DAS reports to no one but to the President”.
  • Uribe’s and Colombia’s “troubled past” includes his involvement with the Medellin drug cartel and U.S. intelligence services throughout the 1980s. It has continued since with multiple allegations about State crimes, human rights abuse, murder, cooperation with foreign intelligence services against Colombia’s neighbors, and more. Over 45 Colombian Congressmen, the majority of whom were part of the majority coalition that supported the 2002 – 2010 Uribe administration have been sentenced for ties to paramilitary groups and for crimes which have been committed by these groups. One of those who were convicted was Uribe’s cousin, Congressman Mario Uribe. Alvaro Uribe’s brother, Santiago Uribe, is under investigation for allegedly founding and leading a paramilitary group that has been held responsible for the murder of numerous leftist Colombian activists and politicians.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Mar 15
     
    Colombia was one of the participants in the CIA's notorious Operation Condor coordinated intelligence activities, which resulted in the deaths and disappearances of tens of thousands of left-leaning citizens in a host of South American nations. See generally, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
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European Lawmakers Demand Answers on Phone Key Theft - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...gemalto-heist-shocks-europe surveillance state Gemalto SIM-card-keys
shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • European officials are demanding answers and investigations into a joint U.S. and U.K. hack of the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile SIM cards, following a report published by The Intercept Thursday. The report, based on leaked documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, revealed the U.S. spy agency and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, hacked the Franco-Dutch digital security giant Gemalto in a sophisticated heist of encrypted cell-phone keys. The European Parliament’s chief negotiator on the European Union’s data protection law, Jan Philipp Albrecht, said the hack was “obviously based on some illegal activities.” “Member states like the U.K. are frankly not respecting the [law of the] Netherlands and partner states,” Albrecht told the Wall Street Journal. Sophie in ’t Veld, an EU parliamentarian with D66, the Netherlands’ largest opposition party, added, “Year after year we have heard about cowboy practices of secret services, but governments did nothing and kept quiet […] In fact, those very same governments push for ever-more surveillance capabilities, while it remains unclear how effective these practices are.”
  • “If the average IT whizzkid breaks into a company system, he’ll end up behind bars,” In ’t Veld added in a tweet Friday. The EU itself is barred from undertaking such investigations, leaving individual countries responsible for looking into cases that impact their national security matters. “We even get letters from the U.K. government saying we shouldn’t deal with these issues because it’s their own issue of national security,” Albrecht said. Still, lawmakers in the Netherlands are seeking investigations. Gerard Schouw, a Dutch member of parliament, also with the D66 party, has called on Ronald Plasterk, the Dutch minister of the interior, to answer questions before parliament. On Tuesday, the Dutch parliament will debate Schouw’s request. Additionally, European legal experts tell The Intercept, public prosecutors in EU member states that are both party to the Cybercrime Convention, which prohibits computer hacking, and home to Gemalto subsidiaries could pursue investigations into the breach of the company’s systems.
  • According to secret documents from 2010 and 2011, a joint NSA-GCHQ unit penetrated Gemalto’s internal networks and infiltrated the private communications of its employees in order to steal encryption keys, embedded on tiny SIM cards, which are used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the world. Gemalto produces some 2 billion SIM cards a year. The company’s clients include AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers. “[We] believe we have their entire network,” GCHQ boasted in a leaked slide, referring to the Gemalto heist.
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  • While Gemalto was indeed another casualty in Western governments’ sweeping effort to gather as much global intelligence advantage as possible, the leaked documents make clear that the company was specifically targeted. According to the materials published Thursday, GCHQ used a specific codename — DAPINO GAMMA — to refer to the operations against Gemalto. The spies also actively penetrated the email and social media accounts of Gemalto employees across the world in an effort to steal the company’s encryption keys. Evidence of the Gemalto breach rattled the digital security community. “Almost everyone in the world carries cell phones and this is an unprecedented mass attack on the privacy of citizens worldwide,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a non-profit that advocates for digital privacy and free online expression. “While there is certainly value in targeted surveillance of cell phone communications, this coordinated subversion of the trusted technical security infrastructure of cell phones means the US and British governments now have easy access to our mobile communications.”
  • For Gemalto, evidence that their vaunted security systems and the privacy of customers had been compromised by the world’s top spy agencies made an immediate financial impact. The company’s shares took a dive on the Paris bourse Friday, falling $500 million. In the U.S., Gemalto’s shares fell as much 10 percent Friday morning. They had recovered somewhat — down 4 percent — by the close of trading on the Euronext stock exchange. Analysts at Dutch financial services company Rabobank speculated in a research note that Gemalto could be forced to recall “a large number” of SIM cards. The French daily L’Express noted today that Gemalto board member Alex Mandl was a founding trustee of the CIA-funded venture capital firm In-Q-Tel. Mandl resigned from In-Q-Tel’s board in 2002, when he was appointed CEO of Gemplus, which later merged with another company to become Gemalto. But the CIA connection still dogged Mandl, with the French press regularly insinuating that American spies could infiltrate the company. In 2003, a group of French lawmakers tried unsuccessfully to create a commission to investigate Gemplus’s ties to the CIA and its implications for the security of SIM cards. Mandl, an Austrian-American businessman who was once a top executive at AT&T, has denied that he had any relationship with the CIA beyond In-Q-Tel. In 2002, he said he did not even have a security clearance.
  • AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon could not be reached for comment Friday. Sprint declined to comment. Vodafone, the world’s second largest telecom provider by subscribers and a customer of Gemalto, said in a statement, “[W]e have no further details of these allegations which are industrywide in nature and are not focused on any one mobile operator. We will support industry bodies and Gemalto in their investigations.” Deutsche Telekom AG, a German company, said it has changed encryption algorithms in its Gemalto SIM cards. “We currently have no knowledge that this additional protection mechanism has been compromised,” the company said in a statement. “However, we cannot rule out this completely.”
  • Update: Asked about the SIM card heist, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said he did not expect the news would hurt relations with the tech industry: “It’s hard for me to imagine that there are a lot of technology executives that are out there that are in a position of saying that they hope that people who wish harm to this country will be able to use their technology to do so. So, I do think in fact that there are opportunities for the private sector and the federal government to coordinate and to cooperate on these efforts, both to keep the country safe, but also to protect our civil liberties.”
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Feb 15
     
    Watch for massive class action product defect litigation to be filed against the phone companies.and mobile device manufacturers.  In most U.S. jurisdictions, proof that the vendors/manufacturers  knew of the product defect is not required, only proof of the defect. Also, this is a golden opportunity for anyone who wants to get out of a pricey cellphone contract, since providing a compromised cellphone is a material breach of warranty, whether explicit or implied..   
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Former FBI assistant director: to keep budgets high, we must 'Keep Fear Alive' | Privac... - 0 views

www.privacysos.org/1660 war on terror™ politics-of-fear budget-justification FBI entrapment
shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • I'm watching The Newburgh Sting, a fabulous documentary about the FBI's operation to ensnare four impoverished, naive New York men into an informant-driven fake terror plot. In the film, former FBI assistant director Thomas Fuentes defends the FBI's conduct in the Newburgh Four case. He also says this: If you’re submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an intelligence agency, you’re not going to submit the proposal that ‘We won the war on terror and everything’s great,’ cuz the first thing that’s gonna happen is your budget’s gonna be cut in half. You know, it’s my opposite of Jesse Jackson’s ‘Keep Hope Alive’—it’s ‘Keep Fear Alive.’ Keep it alive.
  • In the context of an interview about a case in which a paid FBI informant is alleged to have offered destitute men a quarter of a million dollars to execute an attack, a former assistant director of the FBI admits it's in the bureau's best interest to inflate the supposed terror threat. That's remarkably candid, and profoundly disturbing. Fuentes' comments come at 1:06:22 in the video above. But do find a better version of the film somewhere and watch it in its entirety. The new COINTELPRO is alive and well.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15
     
    One facet of the politics of fear.
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Jobs Depend on Obamacare Defeat | Cato Institute - 0 views

www.cato.org/...jobs-depend-obamacare-defeat ObamaCare King-v-Burwell
shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The Affordable Care Act authorizes the disputed “employer mandate” penalties and the health insurance subsidies that trigger them, only through insurance exchanges that are “established by the State.” Due to public opposition to Obamacare, at least 34 states, including Virginia, Utah and Indiana, failed to establish exchanges. Those states are being served — if that’s the word — by HealthCare.Gov, an exchange established by the federal government, which is clearly not a “State.” Ignoring the clear and unambiguous language of the statute, the IRS somehow decided to deploy the disputed taxes and spending in HealthCare.Gov states. Two lower courts found that Obamacare itself “unambiguously forecloses” the IRS’ “invalid” misinterpretation of the law. The plaintiffs in King v. Burwell represent Kevin Pace and tens of millions of other Americans who are injured by this breathtaking power grab.
  • If the King plaintiffs prevail before the Supreme Court, it will mean more jobs, more hours and higher incomes for millions of Americans — particularly part-time and minimum-wage workers. Employers will have more flexibility to structure their health benefits. States will be able to attract new businesses by shielding employers from Obamacare’s employer mandate. Critics complain such a ruling would eliminate subsidies in HealthCare.gov states, making the cost of Obamacare coverage transparent to enrollees. But those enrollees will be able to switch to lower-cost “catastrophic” plans — if the Obama administration allows it. To date, the administration has adamantly refused to say whether it would take even this small step to help affected HealthCare.gov enrollees.
  • More important, transparency is a good thing. If enrollees don’t want to pay the full cost of Obamacare coverage, that tells us something very important about Obamacare. It means nobody likes the way Obamacare actually works. Forcing the IRS to implement the law as written will thus create an opportunity for real health care reforms that actually reduce the cost of care. Reining in the IRS would affirm the rule of law, and lead to real health care reform. We should all hope for such an outcome.
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Mar 15
     
    "By Michael F. Cannon This article appeared on USA Today on March 4, 2015. As if Obamacare weren't problematic enough, two federal courts have found that the IRS unlawfully expanded the health care law's individual and employer mandates, by imposing them on tens of millions of Americans whom Congress exempted. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear King v. Burwell, a case challenging that illegal and ongoing attempt to expand Obamacare outside the legislative process. The victims of this illegal Obamacare expansion include Kevin Pace, a jazz musician and adjunct professor of music in Northern Virginia. Anticipating the Obamacare mandate that employers cover all workers who put in at least 30 hours a week, Pace's employer was forced to cut hours for part-time professors like him in order to avoid massive penalties. In 2013, The Washington Post reported that Pace was left with "an $8,000 pay cut." "Thousands of other workers in Virginia" also had their hours cut. Even though the Obama administration has delayed the employer mandate, many employers have left the cuts in place for when the rules are enforced. " King v. Burwell is about more than IRS rules; it could kill the employer mandate, too." This unlawful expansion of Obamacare's employer mandate is causing workers across the country to lose more income with every passing day. It forced Utah's Granite School District to cut hours for 1,200 part-timers. According to the state of Indiana, which filed a similar legal challenge, this IRS power grab pushed "many Indiana public school corporations (to) reduc(e) the working hours of instructional aides, substitute teachers, non-certified employees, cafeteria staff, bus drivers, coaches and leaders of extracurricular activities." Employers and consumers are also suffering. Pace's employer, for example, has less flexibility to structure its health benefits and less ability to offer attractive educational options to its stude
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Netanyahu to be probed over public cash abuses | Middle East Eye - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...-public-cash-abuses-1643439339 Israel elections Netanyahu criminal-probe cleaning-expenses
shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • A damning report by the State Comptroller said that Netanyahu spent up to $230,000 on cleaning fees in 2011 alone
  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to be probed over allegations of fiscal misconduct at his private and official residence. Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein on Thursday ordered a preliminary investigation, which will determine whether or not a criminal investigation will eventually be launched to deal with the misdemeanours. However, the attorney general has stressed that at this stage the investigations are not focusing in on the prime minister personally and noted that the probe will not begin before the election on 17 March where Netanyahu is vying for re-election.  
  • The announcement follows a scathing report by the State Comptroller, which queried huge sums spent on cleaning, makeup and clothing between 2009 and 2013. The long-awaited report by Yosef Shapira, who reviews how the Israeli government operates, unearthed that at their highest point in 2011, cleaning expenses for one of Netanyahu’s homes cost the Israeli taxpayer almost $285,000. Netanyahu and the First Lady only spend the occasional weekend there, but monthly cleaning costs for the house averaged more than $2,100 over the four-year period, the report found. The document also queried a large amount of electrical work carried out at the private residence by a personal friend of the Netanyahu's. “In light of the large cleaning costs, the [Prime Minister’s Office] should examine...their prudence and act to avoid unnecessary expenditures," Shapiro wrote in the report.
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  • Netanyahu, his wife Sara, and their allegedly lavish lifestyles have taken centre stage in the elections so far with the opposition Zionist Union camp largely taking aim at the couple and their various misdemeanours. Claims that Sara pocket profits from a bottle recycling scheme, nicknamed bottlegate, and old allegations that she abuses her staff have all been making the rounds in the press. However, Netanyahu’s upcoming speech to US Congress has attracted growing furore.
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Guess who credits the Mossad with producing the 'laptop documents?' | Middle East Eye - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...ng-laptop-documents-1536671309 war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth Mossad MEK false-flag
shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • In the United States and Europe, it is unchallenged in political and media circles that intelligence documents purporting to be from a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program for which the IAEA long demanded an Iranian explanation are genuine.   But evidence has continued to accumulate that the documents - sometimes called the “laptop documents” because they were said to have been on a laptop computer belonging to one of the participants in the program - were fabricated by Israel’s foreign intelligence agency (Mossad).  We now know that the documents did not come from an Iranian participant in the alleged project, as the media were led to believe for years; they were turned over to German intelligence by the anti-regime Iranian terrorist organisation, Mujahedeen E Khalq, (MEK). I first reported this in 2008 and have now confirmed from an authoritative German source in my book on the Iran nuclear issue. The MEK was well known to have been a client of the Mossad, serving to launder Israeli intelligence claims that the Israelis did not want attributed to themselves.
  • Although it has never been mentioned in news media, former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General, Mohamed El Baradei recalled in his memoirs that he was doubtful of the authenticity of the documents. “No one knew if any of this was real,” he wrote in reference to the laptop documents. Another former senior IAEA official told me, “It just really didn’t add up.  It made more sense that this information originated in another country.”  And as I have detailed in articles and in my book, key documents in the collection bear clear indications of fabrication. Support for that virtually unknown part of the Iran nuclear story has come from a surprising source: a popular Israeli account, celebrating the successes of the Mossad’s covert operations. “Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service,” first published in Hebrew in 2010, and then published in English in 2012, was Israel’s best-selling book for months in 2010. But not only does it acknowledge that it was indeed the MEK that delivered the documents, it also suggests that at least some of the documents came from the Mossad.  
  • The co-authors of the book are far from critics of Israel’s policy toward Iran; One of the co-authors, Michael Bar-Zohar, is a well-connected former member of the Israeli Knesset and former paratrooper, who had previously written an authorised biography of Shimon Peres, as well as the biography of Isser Harel, the Mossad chief who presided over the kidnapping of Adolph Eichmann in Argentina. Much of what Bar-Zohar chronicled in the book had already been reported earlier by Israeli journalists - especially Ronen Bergman of the daily Yedioth Ahronoth.  In fact, Bergman accused Bar-Zohar of plagiarising his articles for much of the book, while changing only a few words.  But one thing that Bar-Zohar and co-author Nisham Mishal did not get from other Israeli journalists, was the role of the Mossad in regard to the laptop documents. 
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  • Although they do not flatly state that the Mossad was the source of the documents, they certainly lead the reader to that conclusion. They begin by establishing the fact that the MEK was fronting for the Mossad in its revelation in August 2002 of Iran’s first enrichment facility at Natanz. The CIA, they write, “appeared to believe that the Mossad and the British MI6 were feeding MEK intelligence they had obtained, using the Iranian opposition as a hopefully credible source”.  And they explicitly confirm CIA’s suspicions. “According to Israeli sources,” they write, “It was, in fact, a watchful Mossad officer who had discovered the mammoth centrifuge installation at Natanz.”  Other sources, including Seymour Hersh and Connie Bruck have reported that the MEK got the intelligence on Natanz from the Israelis, but theirs is the first explicit acknowledgement attributed to an Israeli source that the MEK had revealed Natanz on the basis of Mossad intelligence.  What the Israeli co-authors do not say is that the Mossad was simply guessing at the purpose of Natanz, which the MEK mistakenly called a “fuel fabrication” facility, rather than a centrifuge enrichment facility.
  • Bar-Zohar and Mishal are little concerned with whether the Mossad’s laptop caper involved fraud or not. They obviously view the Israeli intelligence agency’s use of an Iranian exile group to get out documents that had been central to the international sanctions regime against Iran as a great triumph. But whatever their reasons, their book adds another layer to the growing body of evidence showing that the Bush administration and its allies hoodwinked the rest of the world with those documents.
  • The authors further suggest that the Mossad was behind information later released by the MEK on Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the Iranian physics professor said to be shown in the laptop documents as the man in charge of that purported Iranian nuclear weapons research program. The MEK disclosed such personal details as Fakhrizadeh’s passport number and his home telephone number. But the Mossad chroniclers write: “This abundance of detail and means of transmission leads one to believe that, again, “a certain secret service” ever suspected by the West of pursuing its own agenda, painstakingly collected these facts and figures about the Iranian scientists and passed them to the Iranian resistance.” I asked Bar-Zohar’s research assistant, Nilly Ovnat, whether he had Israeli sources for those statements relating to the MEK and the laptop documents. She responded by          e-mail: “Professor Bar Zohar had other sources for most of the material concerning MEK and Natanz [and the] laptop, yet they could not be mentioned and cannot be discussed.”
  • Turning to the laptop documents, they make it clear that western intelligence had indeed obtained the documents from the MEK and suggest that the MEK got them from somewhere else. “The dissidents wouldn’t say how they had gotten hold of the laptop,” they write. They again frame the question of the origins of those documents in terms of CIA suspicions. “[T]he skeptical Americans suspected that the documents had been only recently scanned into the computer,” they write. “They accused the Mossad of having slipped in some information obtained from our own sources - and passing it to the MEK leaders for delivery to the West." Bar-Zohar and Mishal steer clear of any suggestion that the Mossad fabricated any documents, but their account leaves little doubt that they are convinced that the Mossad should be credited for the appearance of the documents. Their approach of referring to US suspicions, rather than stating it directly, appears to be a way of avoiding problems with Israeli military censors, who often clamp down on local reporting on sensitive issues while allowing references to foreign reports.
  • In the United States and Europe, it is unchallenged in political and media circles that intelligence documents purporting to be from a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program for which the IAEA long demanded an Iranian explanation are genuine.   But evidence has continued to accumulate that the documents - sometimes called the “laptop documents” because they were said to have been on a laptop computer belonging to one of the participants in the program - were fabricated by Israel’s foreign intelligence agency (Mossad).  We now know that the documents did not come from an Iranian participant in the alleged project, as the media were led to believe for years; they were turned over to German intelligence by the anti-regime Iranian terrorist organisation, Mujahedeen E Khalq, (MEK). I first reported this in 2008 and have now confirmed from an authoritative German source in my book on the Iran nuclear issue. The MEK was well known to have been a client of the Mossad, serving to launder Israeli intelligence claims that the Israelis did not want attributed to themselves.
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Israelis are more concerned about the economy than Iran | GlobalPost - 0 views

www.globalpost.com/...yahus-speech-congress-playing- war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth U.S.-foreign-policy Netanyahu-speech Israel-election polls
shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • After six weeks of hype, the morning after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress feels a bit anticlimactic.
  • Here in Israel —well, how much is left to say? Every aspect of the speech has been discussed for weeks, except for its substance, and it was fairly light on that. With an early election looming on March 17, politicians have already staked out their positions. Hundreds of retired generals and security officials came out this week in sharp opposition to Netanyahu. The key question in Israel now is not what Netanyahu said, but how long everyone keeps talking about it. Despite the controversy, the prime minister wants to keep the story in the headlines. Recent polls have not been encouraging for his Likud party. A Knesset Channel survey released hours before the speech showed him winning just 21 seats; his main center-left competitor, the Zionist Camp, was polling at 24.
  • Two weeks before the election, voters are defecting for centrist parties focused on the economy, which remains their top priority: 56 percent of Israelis told the Knesset Channel they will vote on socioeconomic issues, compared with 30 percent on Iran’s nuclear program. Likud is keen to avoid these issues; indeed, it hasn’t even bothered to release an economic platform. After six years in office, Netanyahu is widely seen as responsible for the skyrocketing cost of living. The party believes that it can win an extra seat, perhaps two, by keeping the focus on Iran. It sounds trivial—but in a 120-seat legislature divided amongst eleven parties, that small boost could give Netanyahu the margin he needs to form the next government. Isaac Herzog, the main challenger for the premiership, delivered a brief rebuttal last night from a town near the Gaza border. “The painful truth is that, behind the applause, Netanyahu remains alone. And the negotiations with Iran will continue without any Israeli involvement,” he said.
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Russian Authorities detain two more Suspects in Nemtsov slaying | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...re-suspects-in-nemtsov-slaying war & peace Russia Nemtsov-asassination CIA NED State-Dept.
shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Russian investigative authorities detained two more suspects for their alleged involvement in the murder of Russian politician Boris Nemtsov. The arrests came one day after FSB Chief Alexander Bortnikov announced the arrest of two persons, the discovery of the escape car and the securing of DNA evidence and other evidence. The head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation’s Republic Ingushetia, Albert Barakhayev, informed the press about the arrest of two additional suspects for their alleged involvement in the murder of the Russian politician Boris Nemtsov in Moscow.
  • The head of the North Caucasian republic’s Security Council identified one of the two detainees as Anzor Gubashev who was detained while he was driving from the village of Voznesenovskaya towards the city of Magas. Gubashev had reportedly visited his mother in Voznesenovskaya. Albert Barakhayev did not identify the other detainee by name but said that he is one of Gubashev’s brothers. On Saturday the Chief of the Russian security service FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, announced the arrest of two suspects who were detained for suspicions of having been involved in the murder of Boris Nemtsov. Bortnikov noted that the investigation is ongoing and that the FSB, the Interior Ministry and the Federal Investigative Committee are investigating the possible involvement of other, additional persons. The FSB Chief identified the two suspects as Anzor Gubachev and Zaur Dadayev. The head of the Security Council of Ingushetia noted that members of the suspects’ families originated from Chechnya but moved to the village of Voznesenovskaya in Ingushetia during the 1960s. Albert Barakhayev added that both Gubashev and Dadayev had housing in the Chechen capital Grozny and were living there. Dadayev had served in the North Chechen police for ten years. The spokesman of Russia’s Federal Investigative Committee, Vladimir Mirkhin was earlier quoted by the Russian Tass news agency as saying that the investigation continues to focus on the identification of additional suspects.
  • Investigative authorities secured images from a rooftop camera which had captured the murder of Boris Nemtsov during the night from February 27 to 28. A detailed analysis of the video, reportedly, enabled the investigative authorities to identify the license plate number of the vehicle. The murder took place within a 500 meter radius of the Kremlin, and area which is under heavy camera surveillance. The escape car was reportedly secured along with DNA evidence. Additional information was reportedly attained by analyzing mobile phone traffic near the crime scene.
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  • Russia’s Troubled 90s and the Wild East. Boris Nemtsov rose to political fame during the 1990s, which many Russian are looking back upon as “The Wild East”, with oligarchs and criminal gangs filling the void left by a crumbling Soviet Union and a Russia in disarray under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin. Boris Nemtsov was generally liked, even by most of his political opponents. That, even though he was often criticized for his ties to U.S. State Department and CIA Fronts such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Nemtsov was the Co-Chairman of the RPR-Parnas party. His murderer gunned him down with a handgun, firing six shots at Nemtsov at close range. Nemtsov was struck in the back by four of the six projectiles.
  • Considering that all four suspects are considered innocent until a court of law proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they have committed or have been involved in the crime; Thus far, the four arrests suggest that the murder could be tied to Chechen and Ingushetian Islamist terrorist networks which are known for having been supported by U.S.’ other Western, as well as Saudi Arabian intelligence networks. U.S. media, including “the fair and balanced FOX” would host so-called “experts” who would pin the murder of Nemtsov directly on Russian President Vladimir Putin without providing a shred of evidence. Similar allegations have been implied by members of the U.S. State Department and the UK administration of PM David Cameron. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for his part, echoed President Putin’s words, demanding a full and transparent investigation while he was warning against “rushing to any conclusions”. President Putin’s first response upon being informed about the assassination was to describe the crime as a provocation. Putin conveyed his condolences to all those who were near to Nemtsov and assured that he would personally assure that there would be a full and transparent investigation to solve the crime.
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Mar 15
     
    So the dead man worked for CIA, NED, and the U.S. State Dept. That puts a different spin on the situation. As in creating a "martyr" to provoke protests. 
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Confession of Former Russian Officer in Nemtsov Slaying could prompt Mole-Hunt | nsnbc ... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...slaying-could-prompt-mole-hunt war & peace Russia Nemtsov-asassination U.S.-foreign-policy NED Soros
shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The Moscow Basmanny Court, on Sunday, sanctioned the detention of three additional suspects in the case of the murder of Russian politician Boris Nemtsov. Meanwhile, Daur Dadayev , a former Chechen officer pleaded guilty for his involvement. The developments prompt the President of the Russian Federation’s Republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, to launch a probe into the republics security services and a probe to identify what may have motivated Dadayev, whom he knew as a loyal officer, to get involved in the crime. The three additional suspects whose arrest was sanctioned by Moscow’s Basmanny Court are Khamzad Bakhayev, Tamerlan Eskerkhanov and Shagid Gubashev, reported the Russian Tass news agency.
  • The Court stated that it reached the conclusion to support the investigators’ request after having reviewed the materials presented to the court. Gubachev was arrested on March 7 while Eskerkhanov and Bakhayev were arrested on March 8. The three were charged under Articles 105 and 222 of the Russian Federation’s Criminal Code, involving the murder committed by a group of persons, in collusion, and for reasons of money, as well as with robbery, extortion and banditry and the illegal possession or transfer of weapons. The Court justifies their detention on the grounds that the suspects could flee and possibly attempt to destroy evidence.
  • Judge Natalya Mushnikova was quoted by Tass as saying that “Zaur Dadayev’s involvement has been confirmed by his confession”. The Court would not provide details about Dadayev’s alleged or confessed role in the murder of RPR-Psarnas party Co-Chair Boris Nemtsov during the night from February 27 to 28. Dadayev’s arrest and confession prompted the President of the Russian Federation’s Republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, to order an investigation into the Dadayev’s past. President Kadyrov stressed that he remembered Dadayev as a true Russian patriot. The Tass news agency quoted the Chechen Republic’s President as stating: “I have known Zaur as a true patriot of Russia. … Zaur was one of the bravest men in the regiment. … He displayed particular courage in an operation against a large group of terrorists near Benoi. He was awarded the Order of Courage, and medals For Bravery and For Services to the Chechen Republic. I am certain that he was sincerely dedicated to Russia and prepared to give his life for the Motherland. The real reasons and motives behind Dadayev’s dismissal from the Russian Interior Ministry troops are unclear to me.
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  • … I have instructed Chechnya’s Security Council Secretary Vakhit Usmayev to conduct a thorough investigation of Zaur Dadayev’s resignation and to scrutinize his behavior and morale on the eve of leaving the service. … In any case, if Dadayev’s guilt is established in court, it will have to be admitted that by taking a human life he committed a grave crime. But I must say once again that he would have never taken a single step against Russia, for the sake of which he had risked his own life for many years. Beslan Shavanov, the man killed during an attempt to detain him, was a brave soldier, too. We hope that a thorough investigation will follow to show if Dadayev is really guilty, and if yes, what was the real reason behind his actions.”.
  • Western and Arab Support of Terrorists could justify a Mole-Hunt in the Russian Federation’s Security Services. Chechen and Ingushetian Islamist terrorist organizations are known for their close ties to foreign intelligence services. In 2013 the then Chief of Saudi Arabia’s Intelligence, Prince Bandar admitted that Saudi Arabia uses and controls Chechen and other Caucasian terrorists promising President Putin “a safe Winter Olympic Games in Sochi” in exchange for Russian willingness to have a Saudi-friendly regime installed in Syria. The released minutes of the meeting between Putin and Bandar quote Bandar as saying: “I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us, and they will not move in the direction of the Syrian territory without coordinating with us. These groups don´t scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role or influence in Syria´s political future”.
  • Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, for his part, has previously accused U.S. intelligence officials, including David Petraeus, for involvement in “flipping” detainees at Camp Bucca and at black CIA sites, including Caliph Ibrahim of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS / ISIL) Al-Baghdadi, a.k.a. Al-Badri or Caliph Ibrahim. In Helsinki, the capital of Finland the Kavkaz Center is maintaining a “pro-Caucasus Emirate” website. The Center provided PR support to the now deceased terrorist leader Doku Umarov and his terrorist network. Umarov would threaten to disrupt the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games before he was killed in an explosion. U.S. Civil Society organizations as well as CIA and JSOC fronts like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) are known for their support of “Caucasian Rebels or Freedom Fighters”.
  • A shortlist of the civil society organizations which have been implicated in supporting Russian terrorist organizations includes the Jamestown Foundation, the United States-Chechen Republic Alliance Inc., the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus (ACPC), Freedom House, the Open Society Foundation, funded by George Soros, among many others.
  • he former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniev Brzezinski is generally known as one of the main enablers and sponsors of the “Chechen Representation in the United States” led by Alisher Usmanov. Brzezinsky, for his part, is strongly supported by Rockefeller Foundation money. Brzezinski is according to several analysts pathologically obsessed with dividing Russia into at least six separate States” to reign in Moscow under the umbrella of a U.S. hegemony. It is noteworthy that Boris Nemtsov and the RPR-Psarnas party had close ties to the National Endowment of Democracy (NED). In 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin would state that “he knows as a meter of fact” that especially foreign-backed organizations, over the last ten years, have used the strategy to sacrifice one of their own to create a martyr”. (see video)
  • The alleged involvement of Chechen and Ingushetian nationals in the murder of Boris Nemtsov and the confession of the former Interior Ministry officer Dadayev is not unlikely to prompt in-depth “mole-hunt” operations in the federal and national Russian, Chechen, Ingushetian and other security forces as well as mole-hunts in foreign-backed NGO’s.
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UNASUR Rejects US Destabilization Efforts in Venezuela | News | teleSUR - 0 views

www.telesurtv.net/...n-Venezuela-20150306-0026.html Venezuela UNASUR coup-attempts U.S.-foreign-policy
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  • The secretary-general of the Union of South American Nations, Ernesto Samper, declared Friday that, “Every member state of UNASUR, without exception, rejects any destabilization efforts in Venezuela.” The secretary-general of the regional integration body is visiting Venezuela in the wake of a thwarted coup attempt, which has been proven to have had links to the United States. Venezuela also revealed that its North American neighbor has issued more than 50 interventionalist actions in Venezuela this year alone.
  • Visiting President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Samper said that the delegation of foreign ministers had examined the documents proving the coup attempt against the Venezuelan government. The coup allegedly involved dissident officials of the Venezuelan airfoce, with backing from Washington. Samper then met with representatives of the opposition in order to inform them of UNASUR’s concerns, especially reguarding up-coming elections, and asked them to deal with political disagreements in a democratic and peaceful way. The secretary-general also met with the country’s electoral authorities to discuss potential measures that could be implemented during the national assembly elections later this year.  
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U.S. Syria strategy falters with collapse of rebel group | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...ia-hazzm-idUSKBN0M10GV20150305 war & peace Syria moderate-rebels Hazzm Al-Nusrah U.S.-foreign-policy
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  • (Reuters) - The Hazzm movement was once central to a covert CIA operation to arm Syrian rebels, but the group's collapse last week underlines the failure of efforts to unify Arab and Western support for mainstream insurgents fighting the Syrian military. A blow to U.S. moves to aid rebels, the dissolution of Hazzm also highlights the risks that a new Department of Defense program could face in training and equipping fighters in Jordan, Turkey and Qatar.U.S. officials plan to train thousands of Syrian rebels over three years. The program is expected to begin this month in Jordan and focuses on battling the hardline Islamic State group rather than President Bashar al-Assad.Hazzm's collapse has shown how such efforts will prove difficult in a country where insurgents often battle each other and arms have fallen into the hands of hardline groups.
  • (Reuters) - The Hazzm movement was once central to a covert CIA operation to arm Syrian rebels, but the group's collapse last week underlines the failure of efforts to unify Arab and Western support for mainstream insurgents fighting the Syrian military. A blow to U.S. moves to aid rebels, the dissolution of Hazzm also highlights the risks that a new Department of Defense program could face in training and equipping fighters in Jordan, Turkey and Qatar.U.S. officials plan to train thousands of Syrian rebels over three years. The program is expected to begin this month in Jordan and focuses on battling the hardline Islamic State group rather than President Bashar al-Assad.Hazzm's collapse has shown how such efforts will prove difficult in a country where insurgents often battle each other and arms have fallen into the hands of hardline groups.
  • Reuters could not authenticate the photographs but the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdulrahman, said many arms had been seized, including 60 to 90 TOW anti-tank missiles.Hazzm members did not respond to requests for comment or were not reachable. The group once claimed to be the main recipient of the secret U.S.-led operation supporting rebels in the north. It numbered 1,200-1,500 last year, Abdulrahman said.It was set up in January 2014 and came under a body known as MOM, which was used to funnel resources to rebels in an attempt to coordinate funding. Money has poured into northern Syria from Gulf Arab states including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, much of it going to Islamist fighters, including hardliners. "The United States was never particularly serious in its support for the MOM, and coordination among the United States and other state backers broke down," said Noah Bonsey, a senior Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group. "The defeat of Hazzm is the latest indication of the MOM's failure in the north," he said.
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  • An onslaught by al Qaeda's Syria wing, the Nusra Front, last week forced Hazzm into dissolution, its members swallowed by Jabhat al-Shamiyya, a mainly Islamist alliance. It was the second time in four months that Nusra had crushed a Western-backed rebel group.Nusra is now considering cutting its ties with al Qaeda in a rebranding exercise backed by Qatar and some other Gulf states that will bring in more funds, sources say.On Tuesday, Nusra followers published photographs on Twitter of what they said were U.S. weapons, including anti-tank missiles, seized in battles with opposition brigades.
  • State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Hazzm had received non-lethal U.S. assistance. Washington has never acknowledged the CIA program.The group's demise "will have an impact on the moderate opposition's capabilities in the north," Harf said.The group had shrunk to about 400 fighters last month after killings, desertions and arrests, the Observatory's Abdulrahman said. "They are now finished, like sugar in tea."
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New Zealand spying on Pacific allies for 'Five Eyes' and NSA, Snowden files show | US n... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...yes-and-nsa-snowden-files-show surveillance state NSA 5-Eyes New-Zealand GCSB
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  • 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”.
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Breaking the Silence about Colombia and Ourselves | Opinion | teleSUR - 0 views

www.telesurtv.net/...d-Ourselves-20150306-0030.html war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Colombia
shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The USA’s human rights record at home is terrible in some important (and quickly worsening) ways, but if one includes its victims beyond its borders then it is indisputably the most dangerous rogue state in the world. According to the UNHCR’s latest figures, there are about 200,000 Colombians living in Venezuela as refugees – but less than 237 Venezuelans living in Colombia as refugees.[1] It you rely on the international media, you can be forgiven for assuming it was the other way around – that Colombia must be hosting hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have fled their country.[2] Ever since the early 1990s, if one considers only crimes perpetrated within its own borders, Colombia has consistently had, by far, the worst human rights record in the Western Hemisphere (contrary to Ken Roth’s lunatic assertion that Venezuela and other ALBA bloc countries are the “most abusive”).  The Colombian military, and right wing paramilitaries with whom it is closely allied, have perpetrated the vast majority of atrocities in a civil war that has raged for decades.  In private, US officials have estimated hundreds of thousands of people killed by them. These killings have reached truly genocidal levels in the case of numerous indigenous groups who have been nearly wiped out. Colombia’s population of internally displaced people is almost 6 million, the highest in the world as of 2012.
  • If you follow Daniel Kovalik’s diligent work, you’ll understand why Colombia’s human rights record is so horrific and, at the same time, so widely ignored. Colombia has been lavishly funded and supported by the US government – and therefore depicted as one of the “good guys” by the international media. In September of last year, the New York Times editors singled out Colombia as a country that should “lead an effort to prevent Caracas from representing the region when it is fast becoming an embarrassment”. The NYT editors registered zero “embarrassment” when US General John Kelly recently told Congress “The beauty of having a Colombia – they’re such good partners, particularly in the military realm, they’re such good partners with us. When we ask them to go somewhere else and train the Mexicans, the Hondurans, the Guatemalans, the Panamanians, they will do it almost without asking. And they’ll do it on their own. They’re so appreciative of what we did for them. And what we did for them was, really, to encourage them for 20 years and they’ve done such a magnificent job.” General Kelly should add the international corporate media to his list of “magnificent partners”. It has kept most people ignorant of the mass murderers that US (and UK and Canadian) governments have been supporting for many years.
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Venezuela Sounds Alarm after Obama Invokes International Emergency Act | nsnbc internat... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...es-international-emergency-act war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Venezuela sanctions coup-attempts
shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Venezuelan foreign minister Delcy Rodriguez sent an alert to international solidarity groups this afternoon, indicating that recent actions taken by the US government are meant to justify “intervention,” and do not correspond with international law. The warning came within 24 hours of an address made by US president Barack Obama, in which Venezuela was labeled an “unusual and extraordinary threat to [US] national security”.
  • While slapping a new set of sanctions on the South American nation, Obama declared a national emergency, invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) against Venezuela. Other states which currently have the IEEPA invoked against them include; Iran, Myanmar, Sudan, Russia, Zimbabwe, Syria, Belarus and North Korea. Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro responded to the move yesterday evening by describing it as the most aggressive step the US has taken against Venezuela to date. The Venezuelan leader branded the declarations as “hypocritical,” asserting that the United States poses a much bigger threat to the world. “You are the real threat, who trained and created Osama Bin Laden… “ said Maduro, referring to Bin Laden’s CIA training during the late 1970s to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan. He also remarked upon “double standards” in the White House’s accusations that Venezuela has violated human rights in its treatment of anti-government protestors.
  • “Defend the human rights of the black U.S. citizens being killed in U.S. cities every day, Mr. Obama,” he said. “I’ve told Mr. Obama, how do you want to be remembered? Like Richard Nixon, who ousted Salvador Allende in Chile? Like President Bush, responsible for ousting President Chavez? … Well President Obama, you already made your choice … you will be remembered like President Nixon,” Maduro declared during a live television broadcast. The South American president went on to outline ways in which the United States has already interfered in Venezuelan affairs, pointing to 105 official statements made by that government in the past year- over half of which demonstrate explicit support for Venezuelan opposition leaders. The Venezuelan government previously accused the United States of playing a direct role in a thwarted coup attempt last month. The president today reminded viewers that the man believed to have financed the coup, Carlos Osuna, is currently “in New York, under the protection of the US government.” Maduro also requested this morning the use of the Enabling Act to pass “a special law to preserve peace in the country” in the face of US threats.
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  • If the powers are granted by the National Assembly, Maduro plans to draft next Tuesday an “anti-imperialist law to prepare us for all scenarios and to win,” he said today.
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Most Agencies Falling Short on Mandate for Online Records - 0 views

www2.gwu.edu/...NSAEBB505 eFOIA FOIA audit National-Security-Archives agency-compliance
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  • Nearly 20 years after Congress passed the Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments (E-FOIA), only 40 percent of agencies have followed the law's instruction for systematic posting of records released through FOIA in their electronic reading rooms, according to a new FOIA Audit released today by the National Security Archive at www.nsarchive.org to mark Sunshine Week. The Archive team audited all federal agencies with Chief FOIA Officers as well as agency components that handle more than 500 FOIA requests a year — 165 federal offices in all — and found only 67 with online libraries populated with significant numbers of released FOIA documents and regularly updated.
  • Congress called on agencies to embrace disclosure and the digital era nearly two decades ago, with the passage of the 1996 "E-FOIA" amendments. The law mandated that agencies post key sets of records online, provide citizens with detailed guidance on making FOIA requests, and use new information technology to post online proactively records of significant public interest, including those already processed in response to FOIA requests and "likely to become the subject of subsequent requests." Congress believed then, and openness advocates know now, that this kind of proactive disclosure, publishing online the results of FOIA requests as well as agency records that might be requested in the future, is the only tenable solution to FOIA backlogs and delays. Thus the National Security Archive chose to focus on the e-reading rooms of agencies in its latest audit. Even though the majority of federal agencies have not yet embraced proactive disclosure of their FOIA releases, the Archive E-FOIA Audit did find that some real "E-Stars" exist within the federal government, serving as examples to lagging agencies that technology can be harnessed to create state-of-the art FOIA platforms. Unfortunately, our audit also found "E-Delinquents" whose abysmal web performance recalls the teletype era.
  • E-Delinquents include the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, which, despite being mandated to advise the President on technology policy, does not embrace 21st century practices by posting any frequently requested records online. Another E-Delinquent, the Drug Enforcement Administration, insults its website's viewers by claiming that it "does not maintain records appropriate for FOIA Library at this time."
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  • "The presumption of openness requires the presumption of posting," said Archive director Tom Blanton. "For the new generation, if it's not online, it does not exist." The National Security Archive has conducted fourteen FOIA Audits since 2002. Modeled after the California Sunshine Survey and subsequent state "FOI Audits," the Archive's FOIA Audits use open-government laws to test whether or not agencies are obeying those same laws. Recommendations from previous Archive FOIA Audits have led directly to laws and executive orders which have: set explicit customer service guidelines, mandated FOIA backlog reduction, assigned individualized FOIA tracking numbers, forced agencies to report the average number of days needed to process requests, and revealed the (often embarrassing) ages of the oldest pending FOIA requests. The surveys include:
  • The federal government has made some progress moving into the digital era. The National Security Archive's last E-FOIA Audit in 2007, " File Not Found," reported that only one in five federal agencies had put online all of the specific requirements mentioned in the E-FOIA amendments, such as guidance on making requests, contact information, and processing regulations. The new E-FOIA Audit finds the number of agencies that have checked those boxes is now much higher — 100 out of 165 — though many (66 in 165) have posted just the bare minimum, especially when posting FOIA responses. An additional 33 agencies even now do not post these types of records at all, clearly thwarting the law's intent.
  • The FOIAonline Members (Department of Commerce, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Labor Relations Authority, Merit Systems Protection Board, National Archives and Records Administration, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, Department of the Navy, General Services Administration, Small Business Administration, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Federal Communications Commission) won their "E-Star" by making past requests and releases searchable via FOIAonline. FOIAonline also allows users to submit their FOIA requests digitally.
  • THE E-DELINQUENTS: WORST OVERALL AGENCIES In alphabetical order
  • Key Findings
  • Excuses Agencies Give for Poor E-Performance
  • Justice Department guidance undermines the statute. Currently, the FOIA stipulates that documents "likely to become the subject of subsequent requests" must be posted by agencies somewhere in their electronic reading rooms. The Department of Justice's Office of Information Policy defines these records as "frequently requested records… or those which have been released three or more times to FOIA requesters." Of course, it is time-consuming for agencies to develop a system that keeps track of how often a record has been released, which is in part why agencies rarely do so and are often in breach of the law. Troublingly, both the current House and Senate FOIA bills include language that codifies the instructions from the Department of Justice. The National Security Archive believes the addition of this "three or more times" language actually harms the intent of the Freedom of Information Act as it will give agencies an easy excuse ("not requested three times yet!") not to proactively post documents that agency FOIA offices have already spent time, money, and energy processing. We have formally suggested alternate language requiring that agencies generally post "all records, regardless of form or format that have been released in response to a FOIA request."
  • Disabilities Compliance. Despite the E-FOIA Act, many government agencies do not embrace the idea of posting their FOIA responses online. The most common reason agencies give is that it is difficult to post documents in a format that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act, also referred to as being "508 compliant," and the 1998 Amendments to the Rehabilitation Act that require federal agencies "to make their electronic and information technology (EIT) accessible to people with disabilities." E-Star agencies, however, have proven that 508 compliance is no barrier when the agency has a will to post. All documents posted on FOIAonline are 508 compliant, as are the documents posted by the Department of Defense and the Department of State. In fact, every document created electronically by the US government after 1998 should already be 508 compliant. Even old paper records that are scanned to be processed through FOIA can be made 508 compliant with just a few clicks in Adobe Acrobat, according to this Department of Homeland Security guide (essentially OCRing the text, and including information about where non-textual fields appear). Even if agencies are insistent it is too difficult to OCR older documents that were scanned from paper, they cannot use that excuse with digital records.
  • Privacy. Another commonly articulated concern about posting FOIA releases online is that doing so could inadvertently disclose private information from "first person" FOIA requests. This is a valid concern, and this subset of FOIA requests should not be posted online. (The Justice Department identified "first party" requester rights in 1989. Essentially agencies cannot use the b(6) privacy exemption to redact information if a person requests it for him or herself. An example of a "first person" FOIA would be a person's request for his own immigration file.) Cost and Waste of Resources. There is also a belief that there is little public interest in the majority of FOIA requests processed, and hence it is a waste of resources to post them. This thinking runs counter to the governing principle of the Freedom of Information Act: that government information belongs to US citizens, not US agencies. As such, the reason that a person requests information is immaterial as the agency processes the request; the "interest factor" of a document should also be immaterial when an agency is required to post it online. Some think that posting FOIA releases online is not cost effective. In fact, the opposite is true. It's not cost effective to spend tens (or hundreds) of person hours to search for, review, and redact FOIA requests only to mail it to the requester and have them slip it into their desk drawer and forget about it. That is a waste of resources. The released document should be posted online for any interested party to utilize. This will only become easier as FOIA processing systems evolve to automatically post the documents they track. The State Department earned its "E-Star" status demonstrating this very principle, and spent no new funds and did not hire contractors to build its Electronic Reading Room, instead it built a self-sustaining platform that will save the agency time and money going forward.
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Pambazuka - Egypt is calling the West's bluff over its phony war on ISIS - 1 views

www.pambazuka.net/...94051 war & peace Libya Egypt U.S.-foreign-policy ISIL
shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • As Egyptian President Sisi calls for more support in the fight against NATO-funded militias in Libya, the West’s refusal to back him raises the question of their ultimate aims in entering the region. The West is complicity in enabling ISIS to gain a strong foothold and further destabilise Libya, Syria and, potentially, Egypt.Western states are trumpeting ISIS as the latest threat to civilisation, claiming total commitment to their defeat, and using the group’s conquests in Syria and Iraq as a pretext for deepening their own military involvement in the Middle East. Yet as Libya seems to be following the same path as Syria – of ‘moderate’ anti-government militias backed by the West paving the way for ISIS takeover – Britain and the US seem reluctant to confront them there, immediately pouring cold water on Egyptian President Sisi’s request for an international coalition to halt their advances. By making the suggestion – and having it, predictably, spurned – Sisi is making clear Western duplicity over ISIS and the true nature of NATO policy in Libya.
  • On 29th August 2011, two months before the last vestiges of the Libyan state were destroyed and its leader executed, I was interviewed on Russia Today about the country’s future. I told the station: “There’s been a lot of talk about what will happen [in Libya after the ouster of Gaddafi] – will there be Sharia law, will there be a liberal democracy? What we have to understand is that what will replace the Libyan state won’t be any of those things. What will replace the Libyan state will be the same as what has replaced the state in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is a dysfunctional government, complete lack of security, gang warfare and civil war. And this is not a mistake from NATO. They would prefer to see failed states than states that are powerful and independent and able to challenge their hegemony. And people who are fighting for the TNC, fighting for NATO, really need to understand that this is NATO’s vision for their country.” Friends at the time told me I was being overly pessimistic and cynical. I said I hoped to God that they were right. But my experiences over a decade following the results of my own country (Britain)’s wars of aggression in places like Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq long after the mainstream media had lost interest, led me to believe otherwise.
  • Of course, it was not only me who was making such warnings. On March 6th 2011, several weeks before NATO began seven months of bombing, Gaddafi gave a prophetic interview with French newspaper Le Monde du Dimanche, in which he stated: “I want to make myself understood: if one threatens [Libya], if one seeks to destabilize [Libya], there will be chaos, Bin Laden, armed factions. That is what will happen. You will have immigration, thousands of people will invade Europe from Libya. And there will no longer be anyone to stop them. Bin Laden will base himself in North Africa and will leave Mullah Omar in Afghanistan and Pakistan. You will have Bin Laden at your doorstep.”
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • his is the state of affairs NATO bequeathed to Libya, reversing the country’s trajectory as a stable, prosperous pan-African state that was a leading player in the African Union, and a thorn in the side of US and British attempts to re-establish military domination. And it is not only Libya that has suffered; the power vacuum resulting from NATO’s wholesale destruction of the Libyan state apparatus has dragged the whole region into the vortex. As Brendan O Neill has shown in detail, the daily horrors being perpetrated in Mali, Nigeria and now Cameroon are all a direct result of NATO’s bloodletting, as death squads from across the entire Sahel-Sahara region have been given free reign to set up training camps and loot weapons across the giant zone of lawlessness which NATO have sculpted out of Libya.
  • The result? African states that in 2010 were forging ahead economically, greatly benefitting from Chinese infrastructure and manufacturing investment, moving away from centuries of colonial and neo-colonial dependence on extortionate Western financial institutions, have been confronted with massive new terror threats from groups such as Boko Haram, flush with new weaponry and facilities courtesy of NATO’s humanitarianism. Algeria and Egypt, too, still governed by the same independent-minded movements which overthrew European colonialism, have seen their borders destabilised, setting the stage for ongoing debilitating attacks planned and executed from NATO’s new Libyan militocracy. This is the context in which Egypt is launching the regional fightback against NATO’s destabilisation strategy.
  • Over the past year in particular, Egyptians have witnessed their Western neighbour rapidly descending down the same path of ISIS takeover as Syria. In Syria, a civil war between a Western-sponsored insurgency and an elected secular government has seen the anti-government forces rapidly fall under the sway of ISIS, as the West’s supposed ‘moderates’ in the Free Syrian Army either join forces with ISIS (impressed by their military prowess, hi-tech weaponry, and massive funding) or find themselves overrun by them. In Libya, the same pattern is quickly developing. The latest phase in the Libyan disaster began last June when the militias who dominated the previous parliament (calling themselves the ‘Libya Dawn’ coalition) lost the election and refused to accept the results, torching the country’s airport and oil storage facilities as opening salvos in an ongoing civil war between them and the newly elected parliament. Both parliaments have the allegiance of various armed factions, and have set up their own rival governments, each controlling different parts of the country. But, starting in Derna last November, areas taken by the Libya Dawn faction have begun falling to ISIS. Last weekend’s capture of Sirte was the third major town to be taken by them, and there is no sign that it will be the last. This is the role that has consistently been played by the West’s proxies across the region – paving the way and laying the ground for ISIS takeover. Egyptian President Sisi’s intervention – airstrikes against ISIS targets in Libya - aims to reverse this trajectory before it reaches Iraqi-Syrian proportions.
  • The internationally-recognised Libyan government based in Tobruk – the one appointed by the House of Representatives that won the election last summer - has welcomed the Egyptian intervention. Not only, they hope, will it help prevent ISIS takeover, but will also cement Egyptian support for their side in the ongoing civil war with ‘Libya Dawn’. Indeed, Egypt could, with some justification, claim that winning the war against ISIS requires a unified Libyan government committed to this goal, and that the Dawn’s refusal to recognise the elected parliament , not to mention their ‘ambiguous’ attitude towards ISIS, is the major obstacle to achieving such an outcome. Does this mean that the Egyptian intervention will scupper the UN’s ‘Libya dialogue’ peace talks initiative? Not necessarily; in fact it could have the opposite effect. The first two rounds of the talks were boycotted by the General National Congress (GNC) - the Libya Dawn parliament- safe in the knowledge that they would continue to receive weapons and financing from NATO partners Qatar and Turkey whilst the internationally-recognised Tobruk government remained under an international arms embargo. As the UK’s envoy to the Libya Dialogue, Jonathan Powell, noted this week, the “sine qua non for a [peace] settlement” is a “mutually hurting stalemate”. By balancing up the scales in the civil war, Egyptian support military support for the Tobruk government may show the GNC that taking the talks seriously will be more in their interests than continuation of the fight.
  • Sisi’s call for the military support of the West in his intervention has effectively been rejected, as he very likely expected it to be. A joint statement by the US and Britain and their allies on Tuesday poured cold water on the idea, and no wonder – they did not go to all the bother of turning Libya into the centre of their regional destabilisation strategy only to then try to stabilise it just when it is starting to bear fruit. However, by forcing them to come out with such a statement, Sisi has called the West’s bluff. The US and Britain claim to be committed to the destruction of ISIS, a formation which is the product of the insurgency they have sponsored in Syria for the past four years, and Sisi is asking them to put their money where their mouth is. They have refused to do so. In the end, the Egyptian resolution to the UN Security Council (UNSC) on Wednesday made no mention of calling for military intervention by other powers, and limited itself to calling for an end to the one-sided international arms embargo which prevents the arming of the elected government but does not seem to deter NATO’s regional partners from openly equipping the ‘Libya Dawn’ militias. Sisi has effectively forced the West to show its hand: their rejection of his proposal to support the intervention makes it clear to the world the two-faced nature of their supposed commitment to the destruction of ISIS.
  • There are, however, deep divisions on this issue in Europe. France is deepening its military presence in the Sahel-Sahara region, with 3000 troops based in Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali and a massive new base opened on the Libyan border in Niger last October, and would likely welcome a pretext to extend its operations to its historic protectorate in Southern Libya. Italy, likewise, is getting cold feet about the destabilisation it helped to unleash, having not only damaged a valuable trading partner, but increasingly being faced with hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the horror and destitution that NATO has gifted the region. But neither are likely to do anything without UNSC approval, which is likely to continue to be blocked by the US and Britain, who are more than happy to see countries like Russian-allied Egypt and Chinese-funded Nigeria weakened and their development retarded by terror bombings. Sisi’s actions will, it is hoped, not only make abundantly clear the West’s acquiescence in the horrors it has created – but also pave the way for an effective fightback against them.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15
     
    Now why would the U.S. and European powers oppose military intervention against ISIL in Libya if ISIL is in fact this force of unmitigated evil we hear about so often in American politics? Or is it a matter of who actually controls ISIL?  
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US General Says Venezuela Coup Possible, Denies Involvement | News | teleSUR - 0 views

www.telesurtv.net/...Involvement-20150313-0005.html war & peace Venezuela U.S.-foreign-policy coup SouthCom Kelly
shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The high-ranking military official has made confusing statements about possible U.S. involvement in coup plans in Venezuela. Contrary to the statements by White House and State Department officials, the head of U.S. Sourthern Command said Thursday that an unconstitutional change in government could be planned for Venezuela. “A coup? You know, I don't know anyone that would want to take that mess over, but it might be that we see, whether it's at the end of his term or whatever, I wouldn't say -- I wouldn't (say) necessarily a coup, but there might be with -- the same ruling party … some arrangements to change leadership,” said Marine General John Kelly, Commander of U.S. Southern Command. The Southern Command, or Southcom, is a joint command of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and several other U.S. federal agencies, with more than 1,200 military and civilian personnel. It is responsible for military planning and operations in Latin America and the Caribbean.
  • The Venezuelan government has claimed, and shown proof, of thwarting a plan to overthrow it. The goverment says opposition leaders worked together with members of the Venezuelan navy and U.S. embassy offiicals. To date, U.S. officials have denied their involvement in such plans. The U.S. military leader continued with statements denying involvement in or knowledge of any coup plans. “I’m certainly not involved in any way, shape or form with coup planning. I don't know anyone who is. And I probably would know if someone was,” Kelly said in a press gathering speaking about Soutcom's 2015 Posture Statement to Congress. “And as far as the Air Force -- or, they claimed it was a U.S. Air Force pilot. This would really be a question for the State Department. But I believe it was a U.S. pilot,” he continued, referring to Venezuela detaining a U.S. pilot and accusing him of spying and recruiting Venezuelans to join the coup plot.
  • In the statement, Southcom identifies regional organizations such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Bolivarian Allliance for our Americas (ALBA) as “challenges … which deliberately exclude the United States and seek to limit (the United States') role in the hemisphere.” On Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama issued an executive order declaring Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” Venezuelan and Latin American leaders have blasted the declaration as a form of U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Latin American countries.
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