Author Archives: News Sources

Why I believe Yasser Arafat was poisoned

David Barclay writes: Polonium 210 is so toxic that it is difficult to explain just how dangerous it is – a fatal dose is almost a million times less than is needed for cyanide, for example.

Its danger comes from its high radioactivity. It decays by giving out alpha radiation and once Po210 is absorbed and is circulating in the body, it silently and fatally damages each individual cell. Half of any amount of Po210 decays in this way every 138 days.

It is impossible to physically see what would be a fatal amount of solid polonium, making it impossible for anyone to detect that they have been given the poison. Obviously, this also makes it remarkably easy to give to someone in a drink or food.

Strangely though, it is completely safe to handle, because alpha radiation is stopped by even a sheet of paper or by human skin. It can be carried around in a test tube for years without harming anyone, until it gets into someone’s blood stream.

I believe it did get into Yasser Arafat’s bloodstream and here is why. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

In Afghanistan, interpreters who helped U.S. in war denied visas; U.S. says they face no threat

The Washington Post reports: A growing number of Afghan interpreters who worked alongside American troops are being denied U.S. visas allotted by Congress because the State Department says there is no serious threat against their lives.

But the interpreters, many of whom served in Taliban havens for years, say U.S. officials are drastically underestimating the danger they face. Immigration attorneys and Afghan interpreters say the denials are occurring just as concerns about Taliban retribution are mounting due to the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

“There are tons of Talibs in my village, and they all know that I worked with the Americans,” said one interpreter, Mohammad, who asked that his last name not be published for security reasons. “If I can’t go to the States, my life is over. I swear to God, one day the Taliban will catch me.”

Mohammad received a U.S. form letter saying he had failed to establish that there was a “serious threat” against his life. He had explained in his application that the Taliban had spotted him on the job and spread word in his village that he was a wanted man. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Typhoon Haiyan overshadows UN climate talks

The Associated Press reports: The devastation caused by Typhoon Haiyan cast a gloom over U.N. climate talks Monday as the envoy from the Philippines broke down in tears and announced he would fast until a “meaningful outcome is in sight.”

Naderev “Yeb” Sano’s emotional appeal was met with a standing ovation at the start of two-week talks in Warsaw where more than 190 countries will try to lay the groundwork for a new pact to fight global warming.

U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres also made reference to the “devastating impact” of the typhoon in her opening speech, and urged delegates to “go that extra mile” in their negotiations.

Scientists say single weather events cannot conclusively be linked to global warming. Also, the link between man-made warming and hurricane activity is unclear, though rising sea levels are expected to make low-lying nations more vulnerable to storm surges.

Nevertheless, extreme weather such as hurricanes often prompt calls for urgency at the U.N. talks.

Last year, Hurricane Sandy’s assault on the U.S. East Coast and Typhoon Bopha’s impact on the Philippines were mentioned as examples of disasters the world could see more of unless it reins in the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet.

“We can fix this. We can stop this madness. Right now, right here,” Sano told delegates in Warsaw. [Continue reading…]

Sano appeared on CNN earlier this year:

Facebooktwittermail

Why France is to blame for blocking the Iran nuclear agreement

Christopher Dickey writes: Those who follow closely the machinations of the Quai d’Orsay (as the French foreign ministry is called) see French perversity as just one part of the picture, along with some fundamental shifts in the government’s attitudes toward the Middle East.

“Of course if you are a French politician, there is always some benefit when you pee on the shoes of the Americans,” says journalist Gilles Delafon, author of Reign of Contempt, an up-close look at French diplomacy under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy from 2007-2012. “There is also the fact that President Hollande is going to visit Israel this month.”

Indeed. The reasons French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius gave for dashing the high hopes for a deal with Iran in Geneva echoed in substance the bitter attacks on the negotiating process leveled earlier in the week by Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. Hollande certainly will get a warmer reception by the Likud and its allies as a result.

Syria has been a complicating factor. It’s now well known that the Israelis and Saudis were appalled when President Obama first threatened to bomb the military installations of the Assad regime to punish it for using chemical weapons, then reversed course, pleaded for the approval of Congress and accepted a Russian-brokered diplomatic deal to eliminate Assad’s poison-gas arsenal.

But it was French President Hollande who really got left out on a limb. When no other country agreed to back Obama’s attack plan, Hollande committed himself not only to give political support, but also to participate in the operation. According to the French press, some French warplanes were already on their way to the skies over Syria when Hollande got word the attack had been called off.

Hollande has the lowest approval ratings of any president in modern French history, and that little humiliation at Obama’s hands did him no good at all.

But there is also a deeper current of hostility to Obama’s penchant for peacemaking. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Iran says it will allow IAEA to inspect Arak reactor

UPI reports: Iran says it will permit the International Atomic Energy Agency to start inspecting a heavy-water reactor in Arak and a uranium mine, officials said.

An agreement to inspect the facilities was signed in Tehran Monday by Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization, and Yukiya Amano, director general of the IAEA, the semiofficial Fars News Agency reported.

Iranian officials said the agreement opened the way for inspections at the reactor and the Gachin uranium mine. It was described as “the Iranian government’s new approach” on the nuclear issue, the report said.

Facebooktwittermail

How the NSA and GCHQ spied on OPEC

Der Spiegel reports: America’s NSA and Britain’s GCHQ are both spying on the OPEC oil cartel, documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal. The security of the global energy supply is one of the most important issues for the intelligence agencies.

Documents disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal that both America’s National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have infiltrated the computer network of the the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

In January 2008, the NSA department in charge of energy issues reported it had accomplished its mission. Intelligence information about individual petroleum-exporting countries had existed before then, but now the NSA had managed, for the first time, to infiltrate OPEC in its entirety.

OPEC, founded in 1960, has its headquarters in a box-like building in Vienna. Its main objective is to control the global oil market, and to keep prices high. The 12 member states include Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran and Iraq.

When the NSA used the Internet to infiltrate OPEC’s computers, its analysts discovered an internal study in the OPEC Research Division. It stated that OPEC officials were trying to cast the blame for high oil prices on speculators. A look at files in the OPEC legal department revealed how the organization was preparing itself for an antitrust suit in the United States. And a review of the section reserved for the OPEC secretary general documented that the Saudis were using underhanded tactics, even within the organization. According to the NSA analysts, Riyadh had tried to keep an increase in oil production a secret for as long as possible. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Senior leader of insurgent Haqqani network killed in Islamabad

The Guardian reports: A senior leader of the Haqqani network, one of the most feared insurgent groups fighting western forces in Afghanistan, was gunned town in mysterious circumstances on the outskirts of Pakistan’s capital city on Sunday evening, Taliban and official sources have confirmed.

Nasiruddin Haqqani died in a hail of bullets fired by unknown assailants as he bought bread in a shopping area just a few miles from the heart of Pakistan’s government.

His body was later taken away for burial in the lawless border region of North Waziristan, apparently without the knowledge of authorities.

An Islamabad police spokesman said he was unaware of either the shooting or the removal of his body, despite extensive local media coverage.

Critics of Pakistan have long claimed it tolerates the Haqqani network, or even gives it some level of official support. Islamabad does not regard the organisation as a threat to its own security and believes it may even be a useful ally in its fraught relations with Afghanistan. Intelligence officials in Miran Shah, the capital of North Waziristan, said Haqqani’s body arrived at in tribal agency at 3pm on Monday and around 25 people took part in his funeral prayers before he was buried at an unknown location. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Super Typhoon Haiyan is a wake-up call for UN Climate Summit

Jamie Henn writes: The timing is tragically ironic. As Super Typhoon Haiyan — one of the strongest storms ever recorded — smashes into the Philippines, sending millions fleeing for safety, negotiators from around the world are beginning to arrive in Warsaw, Poland for the latest installment of the United Nations Climate Talks, COP 19.

Climate change is loading the dice for extreme weather events like Haiyan. The storms strength and rapid development have been aided by unusually warm ocean waters and warm, moist air (warm air holds more water vapor than cold). Global warming also causes sea level rise, increasing the risk of flooding from storm surges, especially in low-lying areas like much of the Philippines. Carbon dioxide is the steroids that leads to grand-slam storms like Haiyan.

Haiyan should be a five-alarm wake up call for negotiators in Warsaw and the capitals that sent them here. Over the next two-weeks, despite the best attempts of the nations most vulnerable to climate change, negotiators from the largest emitting countries will bask under the fluorescent lights of yet another conference center to bicker, delay, and obfuscate. Meanwhile, millions of people in the Philippines — and other impacted communities around the world — will be sleeping in relief centers and bravely trying to rebuild their homes.

John Vidal writes: I met Naderev Saño last year in Doha, when the world’s governments were meeting for the annual UN climate talks. The chief negotiator of the Filipino delegation was distraught. Typhoon Bopha, a category five “super-typhoon” with 175mph winds (282km/h) had just ripped through the island of Mindanao. It was the 16th major storm of the year, hundreds of thousands of people had lost their homes and more than 1,000 had died. Saño and his team knew well the places where it had hit the hardest.

“Each destructive typhoon season costs us 2% of our GDP, and the reconstruction costs a further 2%, which means we lose nearly 5% of our economy every year to storms. We have received no climate finance to adapt or to prepare ourselves for typhoons and other extreme weather we are now experiencing. We have not seen any money from the rich countries to help us to adapt … We cannot go on like this. It cannot be a way of life that we end up running always from storms,” he said. He later told the assembly: “Climate change negotiations cannot be based on the way we currently measure progress. It is a clear sign of planetary and economic and environmental dysfunction … The whole world, especially developing countries struggling to address poverty and achieve social and human development, confronts these same realities.

“I speak on behalf of 100 million Filipinos, not as a leader of my delegation, but as a Filipino …” At this point he broke down.

Facebooktwittermail

Cyber spying risks the future of the internet, says Eugene Kaspersky

The Sydney Morning Herald reports: Cyber espionage between nations has reached such damaging levels it risks not only the trust between friendly countries, but the future of the internet itself.

That is the view of Eugene Kaspersky, the ebullient chief executive of Russian security firm Kaspersky Labs, who is in Canberra this week to deliver the message to politicians and business leaders.

Speaking ahead of his speech to the National Press Club on Thursday, Mr Kaspersky told Fairfax Media he was “very surprised” and concerned about the extent of espionage currently undertaken by Western countries. He also warned Australia to invest in educating a new generation of security engineers to future-proof its critical systems.

“Cyber espionage is not new,” he said. “We knew that from years ago, but I did not expect it in such a huge scale and coming from so many different nations.”
Advertisement

Mr Kaspersky said he feared governments would withdraw to their own parallel networks away from the prying eyes of others, and would cease investing in the development of the public internet, products and services.

“If governments and enterprises exit the public internet, there will be a lot less investment. If they emigrate to a separate zone, I’m afraid the internet will have a crisis”. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

A fraying of the public/private surveillance partnership

Bruce Schneier writes: The public/private surveillance partnership between the NSA and corporate data collectors is starting to fray. The reason is sunlight. The publicity resulting from the Snowden documents has made companies think twice before allowing the NSA access to their users’ and customers’ data.

Pre-Snowden, there was no downside to cooperating with the NSA. If the NSA asked you for copies of all your Internet traffic, or to put backdoors into your security software, you could assume that your cooperation would forever remain secret. To be fair, not every corporation cooperated willingly. Some fought in court. But it seems that a lot of them, telcos and backbone providers especially, were happy to give the NSA unfettered access to everything. Post-Snowden, this is changing. Now that many companies’ cooperation has become public, they’re facing a PR backlash from customers and users who are upset that their data is flowing to the NSA. And this is costing those companies business.

How much is unclear. In July, right after the PRISM revelations, the Cloud Security Alliance reported that US cloud companies could lose $35 billion over the next three years, mostly due to losses of foreign sales. Surely that number has increased as outrage over NSA spying continues to build in Europe and elsewhere. There is no similar report for software sales, although I have attended private meetings where several large US software companies complained about the loss of foreign sales. On the hardware side, IBM is losing business in China. The US telecom companies are also suffering: AT&T is losing business worldwide.

This is the new reality. The rules of secrecy are different, and companies have to assume that their responses to NSA data demands will become public. This means there is now a significant cost to cooperating, and a corresponding benefit to fighting. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The U.S. Army discovers Africa

Andrew Bacevich writes: On the list of U.S. military priorities, Africa has always ranked right smack at the bottom. Now that appears to be changing. As Eric Schmitt recently reported in the New York Times, “thousands of soldiers once bound for Iraq or Afghanistan are now gearing up for missions in Africa.” Before the gearing up proceeds much further, Americans might want to ask a few questions. Chief among them are these: Why the sudden shift in priorities? What’s the aim? Who stands to benefit? What risks does the militarization of U.S. policy in Africa entail?

Among the various services, the U.S. Army in particular finds the prospect of an expanded Africa presence appealing. As Schmitt observed, with U.S. forces out of Iraq and soon scheduled to leave Afghanistan, “the Army is looking for new missions around the world.” For Army leaders, Africa spells opportunity, a chance to demonstrate continuing relevance at a time when the nation’s appetite for sending U.S. troops to invade and occupy countries has pretty much evaporated.

Thus, we have U.S. Army Africa, or USARAF, the latest in the Pentagon’s ever-growing roster of military headquarters. The mission of this command, which describes itself as “America’s premier Army team dedicated to positive change in Africa,” manages to be at once reassuringly bland and ominously ambitious. On the one hand, USARAF “strengthens the land force capabilities of African states and regional organizations.” On the other, it “conducts decisive action in order to establish a secure environment and protect the national security interests of the United States.”

One might hope that successfully accomplishing the first half of that mission — U.S. troops training and equipping African counterparts — will preclude the second. More likely, however, such efforts will pave the way for “decisive action,” a euphemism for war.

Let’s discard the euphemisms. Here is a classic example of bureaucratic interests displacing strategic calculation, not to mention common sense, as a basis for policy. For the Navy and Air Force, the Obama administration’s much-ballyhooed “pivot” toward East Asia has come as something of a godsend. Addressing the putative threat posed by a rising China promises to keep those services busy (and flush with cash) for decades to come. Yet apart from a possible resumption of the long-dormant Korean War, Asian scenarios involving a large-scale commitment of Army forces are difficult to conjure up. So expanding the “global war on terrorism” into the heart of Africa allows the Army to make its own pivot. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Six months after Obama promised to divulge more on drones, here’s what we still don’t know

By Cora Currier, ProPublica, November 5, 2013

November 6: This story has been updated to reflect new developments.

Nearly six months ago, President Obama promised more transparency and tighter policies around targeted killings. In a speech, Obama vowed that the U.S. would only use force against a “continuing and imminent threat to the American people.” It would fire only when there was “near-certainty” civilians would not be killed or injured, and when capture was not feasible.

The number of drone strikes has dropped this year, but they’ve continued to make headlines. On Friday, a U.S. drone killed the head of the Pakistani Taliban. A few days earlier came the first drone strike in Somalia in nearly two years. How much has changed since the president’s speech?

We don’t know the U.S. count of civilian deaths

The administration says that it has a count of civilian deaths, and that there is a “wide gap” between U.S. and independent figures. But the administration won’t release its own figures.

Outside estimates of total civilian deaths since 2002 range from just over 200 to more than 1,000.  The Pakistani government has given three different numbers: 400, 147, and 67.

McClatchy and the Washington Post obtained intelligence documents showing that for long stretches of time, the CIA estimated few or no civilian deaths. The documents also confirmed the use of signature strikes, in which the U.S. targets people without knowing their identity. The CIA categorized many of those killed as simply “other militants” or “foreign fighters.” The Post wrote that the agency sometimes designated “militants” with what seemed like circumstantial or vague evidence, such as “men who were 2018probably’ involved in cross-border attacks” in Afghanistan.

The administration reportedly curtailed signature strikes this year, though the new guidelines don’t necessarily preclude them. A White House factsheet released around Obama’s speech said that “it is not the case that all military-aged males in the vicinity of a target are deemed to be combatants.” It did not say that people must be identified. (In any case, the U.S. has not officially acknowledged the policy of signature strikes.)

Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed only that four Americans have been killed by drone strikes since 2009: Anwar al Awlaki and his sixteen-year-old son, Abdulrahman, Samir Khan, and Jude Kenan Mohammed. Holder said that only the elder Awlaki was “specifically targeted,” but did not explain how the others came to be killed.

Although Obama said that this disclosure was intended to “facilitate transparency and debate,” since then, the administration has not commented on specific allegations of civilian deaths.

We don’t know exactly who can be targeted

The list of groups that the military considers “associated forces” of Al Qaeda is classified. The administration has declared that it targets members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and “elements“ of Al Shabaab, but there are still questions about how the U.S. determines that an individual belonging to those groups is in fact a “continuing and imminent threat.” (After the terror alarm that led to the closing of U.S. embassies this summer, officials told the New York Times they had “expanded the scope of people [they] could go after” in Yemen.)

This ties into the debate over civilian casualties: The government would seem to consider some people legitimate targets that others don’t.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch conducted in-depth studies of particular strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, respectively. They include eyewitness reports of civilian deaths. (Most of the deaths investigated happened before the Obama administration’s new policies were announced, although the administration has not said when those guidelines went into effect.) The reports also raised questions of the legality of specific strikes, questioning whether the deaths were all unavoidable casualties of legitimate attacks.  

It does not appear that the U.S. plans to expand strikes against Al Qaeda to other countries 2013 officials have reportedly told Iraq, for example, it won’t send drones there. But the U.S. has established a surveillance drone base in Niger, and fed information from drones to French forces fighting in Mali.

Continue reading →

Facebooktwittermail

Talks with Iran yet to produce a nuclear agreement

The New York Times reports: Marathon talks between major powers and Iran failed on Sunday to produce a deal to freeze its nuclear program, puncturing days of feverish anticipation and underscoring how hard it will be to forge a lasting solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Emerging from a last-ditch bargaining session that began Saturday and stretched past midnight, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said they had failed to overcome differences. They insisted they had made progress, however, and pledged to return to the table in 10 days to try again, albeit at a lower level.

“A lot of concrete progress has been made, but some differences remain,” Ms. Ashton said at a news conference early Sunday. She appeared alongside Mr. Zarif, who added, “I think it was natural that when we started dealing with the details, there would be differences.”

In the end, though, it was not only divisions between Iran and the major powers that prevented a deal, but fissures within the negotiating group. France objected strenuously that the proposed deal would do too little to curb Iran’s uranium enrichment or to stop the development of a nuclear reactor capable of producing plutonium.

“The Geneva meeting allowed us to advance, but we were not able to conclude because there are still some questions to be addressed,” the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, told reporters after the talks ended.

Neither Ms. Ashton nor Mr. Zarif criticized France, saying that it had played a constructive role. But the disappointment was palpable, and the decision to hold the next meeting at the level of political director, not foreign minister, suggested that the two sides were less confident of their ability to bridge the gaps in the next round. [Continue reading…]

Julian Borger adds: Privately, however, other diplomats at the talks were furious with the role of the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, whom they accused of breaking ranks by revealing details of the negotiations as soon as he arrived in Geneva on Saturday morning, and then breaking protocol again by declaring the results to the press before Ashton and Zarif had arrived at the final press conference.

Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani said on Sunday that its “rights to enrichment” of uranium were “red lines” that would not be crossed and that the Islamic Republic had acted rationally and tactfully during the negotiations, according to Iranian media reports quoted by Reuters.

“We have said to the negotating sides that we will not answer to any threat, sanction, humiliation or discrimination. The Islamic Republic has not and will not bow its head to threats from any authority,” he said during a speech at the National Assembly, Iran’s student news agency said.

French opposition was focused on a draft text agreement that laid out a short-term deal to slow down or stop elements of the Iranian nuclear programme in return for limited sanctions relief. The French complained that the text, which they said was mostly drafted by Iran and the US, had been presented as a fait accompli and they did not want to be stampeded into agreement.

Fabius told France Inter radio yesterday morning that Paris would not accept a “fools’ game”. “As I speak to you, I cannot say there is any certainty that we can conclude,” he said.

Iranian officials insisted that the draft had been written in close collaboration with western officials, and said France was single-handedly holding up progress by dividing the “P5+1” negotiating group, comprising the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China.

Zarif would not comment on the French role directly but said: “Although the questions of the P5+1 should be addressed, a great deal of time is being spent on negotiations within the P5+1 group. This is normal because they are six nations with different views and their own national interests and they need to agree.” He said that when the P5+1 was ready to agree, “we are ready to find a solution”.

Facebooktwittermail

Crackdown on migrants: Saudi Arabia’s self-inflicted crisis

Brian Whitaker writes: Two people died in Riyadh on Saturday in fights involving foreign migrants, Saudi citizens and police.

The rioting, in the Manfouhah district of the capital – a poor neighbourhood where many East Africans live – was the worst outbreak of violence since the Saudi authorities launched their “all-out” campaign to round up “illegal” workers and expel them from the kingdom.

On Tuesday an Ethiopian man was shot dead by police in the same district, reportedly while resisting arrest.

The two who died on Saturday night are said to be a Saudi man who was hit by a stone and a man of African origin who was shot by police. AFP says a further 68 people were injured (28 Saudis and 40 foreigners) and 561 people were arrested.

An Ethiopian official told AFP that trouble broke out when Saudi police attempted to round up Ethiopians who had failed to regularise their status in the kingdom and move them to a camp which had been specially set up in the area, to await deportation.

Arab News reports:

Armed with knives, the rioters gathered in the district’s narrow streets early evening Saturday, threatening policemen, motorists, and pedestrians, witnesses and police said.

Anti-riot police fired guns into the air and used truncheons to disperse the large crowds, mostly foreigners who appeared to be Africans, notably Ethiopians …

The injured, mostly Saudis and legal residents, have suffered knife-stabbing wounds and bruises from the rioters, who were among those receiving hospital treatment …

A large security force cordoned off the central Riyadh district and closed its entry and exit points, arresting a number of the violent illegal workers and calling on the rest of them to turn themselves in, according to Brigadier General, Naser al-Qahtani, media spokesman for Riyadh Police.

The Riyadh Connect website has a collection of photos and videos from the scene. Twitter user Mona Kareem has also been posting links to photos and videos.

The crackdown on migrants, which has so far been largely ignored by western media, is rapidly turning into a full-blown and self-inflicted crisis. The authorities have clearly spent a lot of time planning for the mass arrests and deportations but seem to have given almost no thought to the knock-on effects. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Iran nuclear deal remains elusive as split emerges in Western camp

Reuters reports: France warned of serious stumbling blocks to a long-sought accord with Iran as unity among Western powers seemed to fray in talks on getting Tehran to curtail a nuclear program seen as a bomb risk in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.

Iranian media quoted the Islamic Republic’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, as saying “the issues are serious and there is still a gap in stances”, and that the talks would probably end later in the day and be resumed at a later date.

As discussions stretched on, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius was doubtful whether they would soon succeed in nailing down an interim deal that would begin to defuse fears of a stealthy Iranian advance towards nuclear arms capability.

“As I speak to you, I cannot say there is any certainty that we can conclude,” Fabius said on France Inter radio, stressing that Paris could not accept a “sucker’s deal”.

His pointed remarks hinted at a rift brewing within the Western camp. A Western diplomat close to the negotiations said the French were trying to upstage the other powers.

“The Americans, the EU and the Iranians have been working intensively together for months on this proposal, and this is nothing more than an attempt by Fabius to insert himself into relevance late in the negotiations,” the diplomat told Reuters, speaking on the condition of anonymity. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Israel tries to undermine possible international nuclear deal with Iran

The Washington Post reports: Israeli officials registered fierce opposition to an emerging international nuclear deal with Iran on Friday, making clear that the Obama administration faced the uncomfortable prospect of reaching an agreement with one of America’s firmest enemies while overriding the objections of one of its firmest friends.

Backed by bipartisan supporters in Congress, Israel is casting a pall over what the White House had hoped was good news — a bargain for Iran to suspend most of its uranium enrichment for six months in exchange for a temporary easing of sanctions. Before meeting Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Friday, however, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the agreement would give up too much too early and that it threatened Israel’s security.

“This is a very bad deal,” Netanyahu said.

Kerry traveled from Israel to Switzerland, where he joined talks with Iranian and European foreign ministers in an attempt to narrow what he said were remaining differences in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Kerry also bargained directly with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, a clear sign that the Obama administration prizes the deal, and the possibility of better U.S. relations with Iran, despite Israeli objections.

“I want to emphasize there are still some very important issues on the table that are unresolved,” Kerry said in Geneva. “It is important for those to be properly, thoroughly addressed.”

Kerry’s brief remarks contained none of the hopeful rhetoric about a new day in U.S.-Iranian relations that he has voiced before, perhaps in deference to Israel. He did not make any public remarks in Israel, perhaps in hopes of avoiding a public confrontation with Netanyahu. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Firsthand accounts of how NSA surveillance chilled the right to association

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has provided a federal judge with testimony from 22 separate advocacy organizations detailing how the National Security Agency’s (NSA) mass telephone records collection program has impeded the groups’ work, discouraged their members and reduced the numbers of people seeking their help via hotlines. The declarations accompanied a motion for partial summary judgment filed late Wednesday, in which EFF asks the court to declare the surveillance illegal on two levels — the law does not authorize the program, and the Constitution forbids it.

In First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA, EFF represents a diverse array of environmentalists, gun-rights activists, religious groups, human-rights workers, drug-policy advocates and others that share one major commonality: they each depend on the First Amendment’s guarantee of free association. EFF argues that if the government vacuums up the records of every phone call — who made the call, who received the call, when and how long the parties spoke — then people will be afraid to join or engage with organizations that may have dissenting views on political issues of the day. The US government acknowledged the existence of the telephone records collection program this summer, after whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked a copy of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order authorizing the mass collection of Verizon telephone records.

“The plaintiffs, like countless other associations across the country, have suffered real and concrete harm because they have lost the ability to assure their constituents that the fact of their telephone communications between them will be kept confidential from the federal government,” EFF Senior Staff Attorney David Greene said. “This has caused constituents to reduce their calling. This is exactly the type of chilling effect on the freedom of association that the First Amendment forbids.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail