Tag: Russia

The Fall Out from NSA Spying Here and Abroad

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

As the United States scrambles to cover up the contradictory web if lies it has woven over the NSA spying, the Europeans have expressed their displeasure and threatened to scuttle talks on the trade agreement with the US. This left President Barack Obama, who has been touring Africa, trying to mend fences:

After the Guardian’s disclosure that US agencies were secretly bugging the French embassy in Washington and France’s office at the UN in New York, (French president, François) Hollande called for an immediate halt to the alleged spying.

“We cannot accept this kind of behaviour between partners and allies,” he said. “We ask that this stop immediately … There can be no negotiations or transactions in all areas until we have obtained these guarantees, for France but also for all of the European Union … We know well that there are systems that have to be checked, especially to fight terrorism, but I don’t think that it is in our embassies or in the European Union that this threat exists.”

(German chancellor, Angela) Merkel delivered her severest warning yet on the NSA debacle. “We are no longer in the cold war,” her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said. “If it is confirmed that diplomatic representations of the European Union and individual European countries have been spied upon, we will clearly say that bugging friends is unacceptable.”

Seibert said Berlin was keen on the trade talks with Washington, but qualified that support: “Mutual trust is necessary in order to come to an agreement.” [..]

Martin Schulz, the president of the European parliament, likened the NSA to the Soviet-era KGB and indirectly suggested a delay in the talks. Greens in the European parliament, as well as in France and Germany, called for the conference to be postponed pending an investigation of the allegations. They also called for the freezing of other data-sharing deals between the EU and the US, on air transport passengers and banking transactions, for example, and called for the NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, to be granted political asylum in Europe. French Greens asked Hollande to grant Snowden asylum in France.

Back in the US, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is still in hot water despite for his halfhearted letter of apology to Congress for “erroneous” responses to questions he was given days before.

But Clapper did not say in the letter why he had taken him until June to correct the mistake. Senator Wyden’s spokesman made it clear on Monday that the senator had made attempts to get Clapper to correct the record before the revelations in the Guardian, but was rebuffed. “Senator Wyden had a staff member contact the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on a secure phone line soon after the March hearing to address the inaccurate statement regarding bulk collection on Americans.

“The ODNI acknowledged that the statement was inaccurate but refused to correct the public record when given the opportunity. Senator Wyden’s staff informed the ODNI that this was a serious concern.

“Senator Wyden continued to raise concerns about the government’s reliance on secret law in the weeks following the hearing, prior to the Guardian publishing its first story several weeks later.”

A bipartisan group of senators expressed their displeasure  and accused Clapper of intentionally misleading congress to prevent a public discussion of secret interpretations of the Patriot Act thus undermining public trust in government.

A week ago, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) wrote Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the NSA, that documents on its web site intended to clarify the two surveillance programs, Section 215 of the Patriot Act and Section 702 of FISA, were ” misleading and inaccurate.” The “fact sheet” were scrubbed from the web site shortly after the senators complaint.

Following a complaint from two senators, the National Security Agency has removed from its website two fact sheets designed to shed light on and defend a pair of surveillance programs. Users now trying to access the documents detailing surveillance under legal authorities known as Section 215 and Section 702 receive an error message when they try to load the fact sheets. [..]

The documents, still available here, were published in the wake of revelations about the extent of the NSA’s surveillance programs. They sought to highlight the safeguards the NSA uses to make sure American communications aren’t caught up in its surveillance – or if they are, what the NSA does to remove identifying information about U.S. citizens. Wyden and Udall, both of whom sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee, have long called for more transparency on how the NSA protects Americans’ privacy — but said the NSA’s fact sheets gave the wrong impression.

Meanwhile in Russia Edward Snowden remains at the Moscow airport without a valid passport. With his asylum options shrinking, he has withdarwn his request for  asylum with Russia after President Vladimir Putin required he stop leaking information about the US spy programs.

Icelandic investigative journalist and spokesperson for WikiLeaks, Kristinn Hrafnsson appeared with Amy Goodman and Aaron Mate on today’s Democracy Now blasting the United States for leaving Snowden “stateless.”



Transcript can be read here

U.S Foreign Policy & The End Of Empire

MIT Professor Noam Chomsky talks with Real News CEO Paul Jay about the history and current state of US foreign policy debunking various myths – including the myth that republicans are the warmongers and that democrats are more “peace” oriented, from FDR’s and Roosevelt’s vision for world domination by the U.S. after the second world war, through the current situation of U.S. toothless sanctions and delusional attempts at threats and references to a U.S led  “international community” that much of the rest of the world simply shrugs off and laughs at.

So by now, you know, the traditional backyard, the Western Hemisphere, a big piece of it, South America, it has become much more independent. They’re throwing out all US military bases. They’re moving towards some degree of integration. They’re not following the US orders. We just saw that when Brazil joined with Turkey to arrange for a mechanism for Iran to enrich substantial parts of its uranium outside of Iran.

[snip]

The issue of sanctions on Iran is a very striking illustration of the increasing limitations of US power. I mean, that’s kind of like-you read the foreign policy literature and, you know, government statements, this is the big problem. This is in fact called the year of Iran, and Iran is described as the greatest threat to world order. I’ll come back in a moment to what the threat is. But part of this is the US effort to try to get the world to accept the harsh US sanctions, not the UN sanctions. UN sanctions are pretty much toothless, so China and Russia and others go along with them willingly. The US sanctions are much harsher. They have no international legitimacy other than the force that lies behind them, and the US is getting desperate about the fact that the rest of the world isn’t following them.

So Brazil has-and Turkey, neighboring power and leading power in the Third World, have just essentially rejected them. Turkey’s announced it’s going to triple its growing trade with Iran, establish a new pipeline.

Brazil says, look, we go along with the Non-Aligned countries and most of the world in supporting Iran’s right to enrich uranium. But the big one is China. That they can’t push around, and they’re very upset about it. A couple of weeks ago, the State Department issued a warning to China and said that if you want to join the international community-meaning, what we run-you have to meet your international responsibilities, namely, follow US orders, follow our sanctions.

It probably elicited laughter in the Chinese foreign office. They cannot force them to do it. And this is indication of an erosion of the ability to coerce. You can have 800 military bases and spend as much as the rest of the world combined on the military, but you can’t force China, or even Turkey or even Brazil, to follow your orders.



Real News Network –  November 21, 2010

Chomsky on U.S. Global Policy

U.S. still wants to dominate but cannot order other big powers as it pleases;

Iran war threat is real


..full transcript below..

DREAM Now Letters to Barack Obama: Stop Ivan Nikolov’s Deportation

Originally posted on Citizen Orange.

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service.  With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

Dear Mr. President,

In May, my mother and I were picked up in an immigration raid in our home. I was told that in 2002, when I was just 12, I missed a court date at which I was ordered removed from this country. I’ve been in detention for three months, now, awaiting my deportation.  My mother was deported on Friday, August 6th, and I’m set to be deported any day now.

The Week in Editorial Cartoons – The Real Costs of Fossil Fuels

Crossposted at Daily Kos

Matt Bors

Matt Bors, Comics.com (Idiot Box)

12

Tragic Air Crash Kills Polish President, Scores More, in Russia

Poland’s President, Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria, and much of his cabinet, and all the passengers have been killed in a terrible airplane crash near Smolensk, Russia, when the ancient Tu -154 Tupolev carrying them missed the runway in thick fog and went down.  There were no survivors.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

“We still cannot fully understand the scope of this tragedy and what it means for us in the future. Nothing like this has ever happened in Poland,” Paszkowski (foreign ministry spokesperson) said. “We can assume with great certainty that all persons on board have been killed.”

The crash is likely to be a setback in Polish-Russian relations which had been improving of late after being poisoned for decades over the Katyn massacre.

Russia never has formally apologized for the murders of some 22,000 Polish officers, but Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s decision to attend a memorial ceremony earlier this week in the forest near Katyn was seen as a gesture of goodwill toward reconciliation. Rossiya-24 showed hundreds of people around the Katyn monument, many were holding Polish flags, some of them were weeping.

In a case of horrible irony, President Kaczynski and his army Chief of Staff and Deputy Foreign minister  were to attend a memorial service to mark the Kaytn Massacre, or Zbrodnia Kaytnska, near Smolensk,  when about 22,000 Polish POW officers were murdered by the Soviet Secret Service NKVD  during World War 2  by order of Stalin, in 1940.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K…

Blasts in Moscow metro kill at least 37

HQ of Russia’s successor to the Soviet-era KGB is located above one station

MOSCOW – At least 37 people were killed Monday when two separate blasts rocked metro stations in central Moscow during rush hour, law enforcement and emergency officials said.

Russian prosecutors said they had launched a “terrorism probe.”

No group immediately took responsibility for the blasts but suspicion is likely to fall on groups from Russia’s North Caucasus, where Moscow is fighting a growing Islamist insurgency.  Emergency Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said the dead in the first explosion included 14 people who were in the train’s second car where the blast occurred and another 11 people who were on the platform at the Lubyanka station in central Moscow. The explosion occurred at 7:56 a.m. local time (11:56 p.m. ET).

Obama Scraps Central European “Missile Defense”!

The Wall Street Journal is reporting what would be maybe the best move, yet, by the Obama Administration:

The White House will shelve Bush administration plans to build a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, according to people familiar with the matter, a move likely to cheer Moscow and roil the security debate in Europe.

The U.S. will base its decision on a determination that Iran’s long-range missile program has not progressed as rapidly as previously estimated, reducing the threat to the continental U.S. and major European capitals, according to current and former U.S. officials.

This is a brilliant move, on several levels, the first and foremost being that “missile defense” is an enormously expensive farce that has yet to come close to being a proven technology. Despite billions upon billions poured into the coffers of its various contractors. Beyond that, though, merely attempting to put even an ostensibly advanced weapons system in Central Europe, in nations that were once part of the former Soviet Union’s buffer zone, was seen as a blatant provocation to Russia, thus politically enabling the hard line Putin regime. As explained by the BBC:

Pepe Escobar On The Afghanistan Presidential Election

Does it matter who will win the Afghan presidential election – Hamid Karzai or Abdullah Abdullah? Not that much, as this was an election to legitimize the US and NATO occupation of parts of the country not controlled by the Taliban. But in terms of the New Great Game in Eurasia, as Pepe Escobar argues, that’s when the grand American strategy can be perceived in full bloom : it involves nothing less than rehabilitating the “evil” Taliban. Anything goes when it comes to Washington trying to establish an energy corridor from the Caspian to South Asia, bypassing Russia.



Real News Network – August 26, 2009

The Afghan Chessboard

Pepe Escobar commentary: The real meaning of the Afghan elections

Deadly Democracy: Lancet Study Confirms Millions Died From “Shock Therapy”

The world has become so inured to mass death, perhaps the following will merit little comment or outrage among our political punditry, even if the story did make the back pages of the New York Times.

A new Lancet study, “Mass privatisation and the post-communist mortality crisis,” confirms what has been known but little discussed in the past eight to ten years: millions of people, mostly men of employment age, died as a result of the effects of the “shock therapy” transition from a collectivized to a privatized economy in Russia and other formerly “communist” states in East Europe. According to the Times article, by 2007 “the life expectancy of Russian men was less than 60 years, compared with 67 years in 1985.”  

Mrs. Palin. A Weekend Song For Dharmaniacs.

The weekend viral.  

Meanwhile, Around the World …

You’d think the world would just give us a break while we’re watching all this money fly around, but alas, that is not to be.

Two stories, both found at Raw Story.

One, Pakistani troops fire on intruding U.S. choppers:

ISLAMABAD, Sept 22 (Reuters) – Pakistani troops fired on two U.S. helicopters that intruded into Pakistani airspace on Sunday night, forcing them to turn back to Afghanistan, a senior Pakistani security official said on Monday.

It was the second such incident in a week, and reflects frayed relations with the United States over Pakistan’s failure to act more forcibly against Islamist fighters in the tribal lands bordering Afghanistan.

The number of missile attacks by U.S. drone aircraft in the remote tribal areas has multiplied in recent weeks.

The helicopters violated the border in the area of Lowara Mandi, 40 km (25 miles) west of Miranshah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region, at around 9 p.m. on Sunday, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

There was no official confirmation.

So this is not an “official story.”  Of course it is pretty damned official that the US has been going in to Pakistan recently:

Pakistan’s army chief has criticised the US military for making unilateral cross-border raids in the the hunt for al-Qaeda’s top leadership, as tensions between the allies reached new heights on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America.

In an unusually tough statement, General Ashfaq Kayani, Chief of Army Staff, said that there was “no agreement or understanding with the coalition forces whereby they are allowed to conduct operations on our side of the border”. Pakistan would defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity “at all costs”, he said.

The statement followed revelations this week that President Bush had approved US special forces incursions into Pakistan in July – without the Pakistani Government’s approval – and comments by the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who told Congress that a new cross-border strategy was needed to wipe out al-Qaeda “safe havens” in Pakistan.

Winning hearts and minds all over the world, that’s our Georgie.

McPocalypse Now

I belong to the generation that had school drills for the Big One.  Many of us can remember the look of terror in the eyes of our parents as we sat around the TV watching President Kennedy announce the “quarantine” of Cuba on October 7, 1962.

Will the world’s families once again feel that horrible terror?

(cross-posted on dKos)

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