Author Archives: News Sources

Greenwald ditches plan for Snowden interview — ‘it would be used just as crass entertainment’

The Washington Post reports: Glenn Greenwald, one of two reporters to disclose the existence of a massive National Security Agency surveillance program, has held preliminary talks with American TV networks to conduct an interview with his chief source, fugitive leaker Edward Snowden.

Greenwald said Monday night that he decided not to do the interview, despite discussing a licensing fee of up to $50,000 for landing an interview with Snowden.

An interview with Snowden would be a major coup for any news outlet, but few journalists have access to the 30-year-old former government contractor, who fled the United States and has been granted asylum in Russia.

Greenwald, who works for the Guardian newspaper, is one of the few journalists who conceivably could land such an interview. Snowden contacted him anonymously earlier this year, and they built a relationship that led him to disclose details of the NSA’s massive and secret data-collection program known as PRISM.

Snowden also contacted Barton Gellman, who reported on the PRISM program for The Washington Post. Gellman’s Post story was published a few minutes before Greenwald and the Guardian released their own.

Greenwald said via e-mail that he spoke with NBC, and “very preliminarily” with ABC, about a Snowden interview.

He wrote: “The reason we didn’t do it is three-fold: 1) I don’t want to distract attention away from NSA spying and the substance of the disclosures by re-focusing attention on Snowden; 2) Snowden agreed with my suggestion that doing an interview at this time was not productive for the same reason: he wants media attention on NSA spying, not on himself; and 3) I saw no real value in the interview — it would be used just as crass entertainment — and so didn’t want to be involved right now.” [Continue reading…]

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Military rule advances throughout Egypt

Reuters reports: Egypt’s interim president named at least 18 new provincial governors on Tuesday, half of them retired generals, in a shake-up that restored the influence of men from army and police backgrounds and flushed out Muslim Brotherhood members.

Deposed President Mohamed Mursi had appointed a number of civilians as provincial governors during his one year in office. Many of them were members of the Brotherhood. That marked a break with the Hosni Mubarak era, when the posts typically went to retired army and police officers.

The new appointees were sworn in by interim President Adli Mansour, head of the army-backed government which replaced the Mursi administration that was removed from power last month after mass protests against Brotherhood rule.

Critics said the line-up announced on Tuesday was a step backwards.

“It is Mubarak’s days,” prominent blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah wrote on his Twitter feed. “Down down with every Mubarak. Sisi is Mubarak,” he added, referring to General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the army chief who deposed Mursi.

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Israel builds new settlement to host Palestinian peace talks

As part of their continuing efforts to bring peace to the conflict-stricken region, Israeli government officials announced today the construction of a new settlement on Palestinian lands where future peace talks can be held. “After years of failed diplomacy, it has become clear that we need to make a fresh start, and what better way to do so than by appropriating a small amount of Palestinian territory where Israeli citizens can live and negotiators from both sides can talk about a peaceful way forward?” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, referring to the civilian Jewish community that will be constructed in place of multiple razed city blocks in the West Bank. “With this new settlement in place, I believe that our prospects of peace and unity will be brighter than ever. In fact, we should build more settlements so there can be even more places to negotiate.” Netanyahu noted that any individuals currently living on the future site of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have exactly 36 hours to leave before they are forcibly removed.

OK. In case you hadn’t already guessed: this comes from The Onion. But is the real news any less farcical?

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Not anymore: A story of Syria’s revolution

Business Insider: One key thing has been lost amidst reports of foreign fighters and al-Qaeda-affiliated rebels fighting in the Syrian civil war: the revolution began with an Arab Spring “Day of Rage” on March 15, 2011, when a group of 200 mostly young protesters gathered in the Syrian capital of Damascus to demand democratic reforms and the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad.

American Matthew Van Dyke, a self-described “freedom fighter” who gives a new definition to the term “combat journalist,” has not forgotten that fact.

The 34-year-old documentary filmmaker, who arrived in Aleppo in October after helping Libyan rebels topple ruler Muammar Qaddafi, has produced a mini-documentary titled “Not Anymore: A Story Of Revolution.”

The 14-minute short — which will be screened at film festivals this summer — details Syria’s struggle for freedom as experienced by a 32-year-old rebel fighter and a 24-year-old female journalist in Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city.

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Majid Rafizadeh interviewed on Syria

PolicyMic: Sarah Browne (SB): What does the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt mean to Syria and why is Asaad in celebration?

Majid Rafizadeh (MR): From Assad’s perspective, he is fighting radical Islamic and fundamentalist groups associated with the Muslim brotherhood and Al-Qaeda. Assad’s regime claims that it struggles to defeat these Islamist groups which want to take over the country and the region. In addition, Assad and his people repeatedly point out that political Islam and the Islamists can not govern a country efficiently. As a result, the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood was viewed as strong evidence and proof for Assad’s claims. In other words, from Assad’s perspective, the fall of Morsi and his party buttressed his long-held opinion that political Islam is a failure.

Furthermore, we should not forget that Assad’s regime has been at odds with the Muslim Brotherhood since 1970, when Hafez Al-Assad, father of Bashar Al-Assad, came to power. The 1982 massacre in Hama which was committed by the Assad regime obliterated the Muslim Brotherhood operation in Syria. However, they came back since the uprising erupted. Secondly, the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt has been siding with Gulf states (including Saudi Arabia and Qatar) to support the rebels. Morsi harshly criticized the Alawite sect of Assad. The Muslim Brotherhood backs the rebels and anti-Assad groups. Therefore, the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi was also viewed as another victory for Assad’s regime.

SB: Does it seem likely that Syrian terror groups could obtain chemical weapons and if so, how will that affect the rest of the world?

MR: At this point, it is difficult to argue that the rebels or other Islamist groups who are fighting Assad will have access to chemical weapon anytime soon. The regime has been moving around the chemical weapons and they have been obscuring their places. In addition, the rebels and Islamists groups do not possess the technological capabilities of creating chemical weapons at this point. However, if chemical weapons fall in the hands of anti-Assad groups, including the rebels, Free Syrian Army, and Al Qaeda-linked groups such as Jubhat Alnusra, we might see immediate international intervention to neutralize the chemical weapons, or the region will face a larger conflagration.

SB: What will become of Syrian refugees?

MR: The refugees situation is tragic and the scope and the servity of the crisis is unprecedented since the Rwandan genocide. Even António Guterres, the head of the United Nations refugee agency, who expressed growing alarm, told the Security Council that the pace at which the Syrians’ are fleeing their country is the worst since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The United Nations has estimated that there are approximaetly 2.5 million Syrian refugees registered and there could be as many as three million refugees by the end of the year. In addition, around one fourth of the population has been internally dispalced. More than five million of Syria’s 23 million citizens have been forced from their homes. Aid groups estimate that there are 1.6 million school-age children among the refugees from Syria’s civil war. Sixty percent of the camp’s population is under 17, and they are in need of basic education and food. One in three Syrians are in “desperate” need for basic needs such water, food, blanket and shetlter. I think as the war continues, the situtaion of the Syrian refugees will deteriorate and the United Nations will find it harder and harder to address the basic needs of millions of refugees. This can have tremendous negative consequences on the physical and psychological health of not only millions of children but the global health, as well as on the the education, of millions of children and security of the region. [Continue reading…]

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After Guantánamo, another injustice

John Grisham writes: About two months ago I learned that some of my books had been banned at Guantánamo Bay. Apparently detainees were requesting them, and their lawyers were delivering them to the prison, but they were not being allowed in because of “impermissible content.”

I became curious and tracked down a detainee who enjoys my books. His name is Nabil Hadjarab, and he is a 34-year-old Algerian who grew up in France. He learned to speak French before he learned to speak Arabic. He has close family and friends in France, but not in Algeria. As a kid growing up near Lyon, he was a gifted soccer player and dreamed of playing for Paris St.-Germain, or another top French club.

Tragically for Nabil, he has spent the past 11 years as a prisoner at Guantánamo, much of the time in solitary confinement. Starting in February, he participated in a hunger strike, which led to his being force-fed.

For reasons that had nothing to do with terror, war or criminal behavior, Nabil was living peacefully in an Algerian guesthouse in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sept. 11, 2001. Following the United States invasion, word spread among the Arab communities that the Afghan Northern Alliance was rounding up and killing foreign Arabs. Nabil and many others headed for Pakistan in a desperate effort to escape the danger. En route, he said, he was wounded in a bombing raid and woke up in a hospital in Jalalabad.

At that time, the United States was throwing money at anyone who could deliver an out-of-town Arab found in the region. Nabil was sold to the United States for a bounty of $5,000 and taken to an underground prison in Kabul. There he experienced torture for the first time. To house the prisoners of its war on terror, the United States military put up a makeshift prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Bagram would quickly become notorious, and make Guantánamo look like a church camp. When Nabil arrived there in January 2002, as one of the first prisoners, there were no walls, only razor-wire cages. In the bitter cold, Nabil was forced to sleep on concrete floors without cover. Food and water were scarce. To and from his frequent interrogations, Nabil was beaten by United States soldiers and dragged up and down concrete stairs. Other prisoners died. After a month in Bagram, Nabil was transferred to a prison at Kandahar, where the abuse continued. [Continue reading…]

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Loser in Mali presidential race vows to create opposition

Reuters reports: Soumaila Cisse, loser in Mali’s presidential elections, vowed on Tuesday that he would build the country’s first proper opposition in years, as Malians applauded his concession to Ibrahim Boubacar Keita which dispelled fears of fresh conflict.

Cisse conceded defeat late on Monday as it became clear that former prime minister Keita had swept Sunday’s second round vote. Keita has promised to restore the pride of a nation riven by a military coup and an Islamist revolt last year.

On the streets of the riverside capital Bamako, residents heaped praise on Cisse’s gesture, which avoided a potentially lengthy and acrimonious battle in a country already weary of turmoil.

Television showed Cisse going in person with his wife and children to congratulate Keita and his family at their home.

“Soumaila’s conduct was truly impeccable,” said Aissata Camara, a pharmacy lab technician. “It was very impressive and very democratic as well. It was a relief for all of us.”

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Obama tries to restore people’s trust by appointing a liar to review surveillance programs

TechDirt: Well, this is rather incredible. Remember on Friday how one of President Obama’s efforts to get people to trust the government more concerning the NSA’s surveillance efforts was to create an “outside” and “independent” board to review it all? Specifically, he said:

Fourth, we’re forming a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies. We need new thinking for a new era. We now have to unravel terrorist plots by finding a needle in the haystack of global telecommunications. And meanwhile, technology has given governments — including our own — unprecedented capability to monitor communications.

So I am tasking this independent group to step back and review our capabilities — particularly our surveillance technologies. And they’ll consider how we can maintain the trust of the people, how we can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how these surveillance technologies are used, ask how surveillance impacts our foreign policy — particularly in an age when more and more information is becoming public. And they will provide an interim report in 60 days and a final report by the end of this year, so that we can move forward with a better understanding of how these programs impact our security, our privacy, and our foreign policy.

Okay. Outside, independent. Sure, that might help. Except, that was Friday. Today is Monday. And, on Monday we learn that “outside” and “independent” actually means setup by Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper — the same guy who has already admitted to lying to Congress about the program, and has received no punishment for doing so. This is independent? From this we’re supposed to expect real oversight?!? [Continue reading…]

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America cares for you — until you start asking questions

Gary Younge writes: When Ray Kelly, the man Barack Obama is currently considering to lead homeland security, was the New York City police commissioner, he allegedly had a policy of terrorising black and Latino neighbourhoods.

A hearing into the city’s stop-and-frisk policies in spring heard how Kelly told state senator Eric Adams that “he targeted and focused on [black and Latino youth] because he wanted to instil fear in them every time they left their homes that they could be targeted by the police”. The hearing also heard a secret recording of South Bronx deputy inspector Christopher McCormack telling a subordinate to stop “the right people at the right time, the right location”, and focus stop-and-frisks on “male blacks” between 14 and 21.

A decision on the constitutionality of the city’s stop-and-frisk practices is expected any time now, marking the latest in a summer of legal showdowns that have exposed both the power and partiality of the American state. Many who previously understood the legal system and its enforcers to be dispassionate arbiters of justice working in the interests of society as a whole have been forced to re-evaluate their assumptions.

First came the trial of Bradley Manning, charged in a military court with “aiding the enemy” for passing diplomatic cables and other classified military information to WikiLeaks. Then came the manhunt for Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, who leaked evidence of mass snooping. More recently there was the trial of George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watchman in Florida who pursued Trayvon Martin, a young, black, unarmed teen, and shot him dead after Martin confronted him. Soon will come the verdict on stop-and-frisk.

Each, clearly, is its own case, with its own dynamics, outcomes and facts on the ground. There are many who will favour prosecution in one case but not in another. The point here is not that the cases raise identical issues.

And yet for all their glaring differences they share at some crucial traits: each, in its own way, raises fundamental questions about the function and purpose of the American state, the moral underpinnings of the legal system in which it is grounded, and the degree to which the law is designed to work for or against the people in whose name it operates. [Continue reading…]

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Obama’s game: Push for change and be content when nothing’s accomplished

Under the headline, “Obama Plan to Revamp NSA Faces Obstacles,” the Wall Street Journal reports: Obama faces pushback from civil-liberties advocates who say his proposals don’t go far enough. Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) said he welcomed the proposals but would fight to have them “strengthened” so that, among other things, the phone-data collection program is ended.

One question is how strongly Mr. Obama will fight for his plan. He devised it while under growing pressure from some Democrats and foreign allies after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked information about NSA surveillance.

Mr. Obama said his chief goal was to gain public trust in the NSA programs and engage in a national debate about surveillance. But he also has said he was comfortable with the current programs. So he could say he spurred a debate and tried to address privacy concerns even if no changes result.

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Michael Hayden, Bob Schieffer and the media’s reverence of national security officials

Glenn Greenwald writes: In 2006, the New York Times won the Pulitzer Prize for having revealed that the NSA was eavesdropping on Americans without warrants. The reason that was a scandal was because it was illegal under a 30-year-old law that made it a felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison for each offense, to eavesdrop on Americans without those warrants. Although both the Bush and Obama DOJs ultimately prevented final adjudication by raising claims of secrecy and standing, and the “Look Forward, Not Backward (for powerful elites)” Obama DOJ refused to prosecute the responsible officials, all three federal judges to rule on the substance found that domestic spying to be unconstitutional and in violation of the statute.

The person who secretly implemented that illegal domestic spying program was retired Gen. Michael Hayden, then Bush’s NSA director. That’s the very same Michael Hayden who is now frequently presented by US television outlets as the authority and expert on the current NSA controversy – all without ever mentioning the central role he played in overseeing that illegal warrantless eavesdropping program.

As Marcy Wheeler noted: “the 2009 Draft NSA IG Report that Snowden leaked [and the Guardian published] provided new details about how Hayden made the final decision to continue the illegal wiretapping program even after DOJ’s top lawyers judged it illegal in 2004. Edward Snowden leaked new details of Michael Hayden’s crime.” The Twitter commentator sysprog3 put it this way:

Inviting Hayden to comment on regulation of surveillance is like having Bernie Madoff comment on regulation of Wall Street.”

But inviting Hayden to do exactly that is what establishment media outlets do continually. [Continue reading…]

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The innocents caught under the drones: For fearful Yemenis the U.S. and al Qaeda look very similar

The Independent reports: I have encountered two separate Yemens this past week: the one portrayed in Western media outlets and the other reality of living in Sana’a. One was rife with conflict and insecurity, the other associated with the navigation of the capital’s gridlocked traffic. Yet the two Yemens collided in a visceral way for most people.

The al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) plot, described vaguely by President Obama as a “threat stream”, and the subsequent US embassy closure in Sana’a were far from the minds of most Yemenis. Most were more preoccupied with the approaching conclusion of Ramadan, the Eid al-Fitr celebrations and the political direction of the nation, most notably the United Nations-backed National Dialogue Conference, which aims at drafting a new constitution before elections in February.

Then, the calm and pre-Eid excitement in Sana’a was punctured on Tuesday morning, two days before the end of Ramadan. Sana’a residents were shocked and terrified by the strange buzzing sound that accompanied an unfamiliar aircraft hovering above the capital, which followed a morning drone strike in the Hadramaut region.

The buzzing induced terror in residents, and speculation between friends and family as well as on social media. The capital was abuzz with concern about drone strikes in different sections of the city. The terror was unquantifiable. [Continue reading…]

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The U.S. must not bear silent witness to another crackdown in Bahrain

Jeffrey Bachman and Matar Ebrahim Matar write: While the US media focuses on events in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere, the people of Bahrain continue to risk their freedom, their mental and physical well-being, and their lives, to carry on with their demands for democracy and human rights. Members of the political opposition, human rights activists, doctors and ordinary Bahraini citizens have been arbitrarily detained, charged with crimes such as “inciting hatred of the regime” and “attempting to overthrow the government”, tortured as a form of punishment and as a means to acquiring forced confessions, and killed by excessive use of force.

The popular protest movement in Bahrain began on 14 February 2011. At one point, early in the uprising, an estimated quarter of Bahrain’s population participated in nonviolent protests. That is equivalent to 75 million Americans protesting simultaneously. The Bahraini regime and its Gulf Co-operation Council partners, led by Saudi Arabia, crushed the protests with overwhelming force.

Yet, Bahraini people still do not have the overt support of the US government – despite President Obama’s (and other administration officials’) claims that the United States stands with all who have democratic aspirations. [Continue reading…]

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The NSA is turning the internet into a total surveillance system

Alexander Abdo and Patrick Toomey write: Another burst of sunlight permeated the National Security Agency’s black box of domestic surveillance last week.

According to the New York Times, the NSA is searching the content of virtually every email that comes into or goes out of the United States without a warrant. To accomplish this astonishing invasion of Americans’ privacy, the NSA reportedly is making a copy of nearly every international email. It then searches that cloned data, keeping all of the emails containing certain keywords and deleting the rest – all in a matter of seconds.

If you emailed a friend, family member or colleague overseas today (or if, from abroad, you emailed someone in the US), chances are that the NSA made a copy of that email and searched it for suspicious information.

The NSA appears to believe this general monitoring of our electronic communications is justified because the entire process takes, in one official’s words, “a small number of seconds”. Translation: the NSA thinks it can intercept and then read Americans’ emails so long as the intrusion is swift, efficient and silent. [Continue reading…]

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There is no terrorist threat: The feds want you to think there is, compliant media goes along

Patrick Smith writes: Summertime, and the chicanery is easy. The Obama administration’s latest rendering of our invisible but eternal “terrorist threat,” I mean.

After a week of ghost stories about an imminent but vaporous plot on the part of an al-Qaida “affiliate” — this is the big new word — it is hard to decide which is more disheartening: 1) The White House’s blithe if clumsy deployment of factoids, 2) the supine complicity of the media (and this, frankly, is my choice), or 3) the willingness of honorable liberals and capital-D Democrats to go along with the show simply because Obama is maestro and one stays with Obama no matter what he does.

Nothing can be said for certain as to what prompted the State Department to close more than 20 embassies and consulates in the Middle East and North Africa last Sunday, and this is by design. But it is no excuse not to raise the possibility that Americans are eating a summer salad of nonsense served to justify objectionable surveillance practices now coming in for scrutiny.

This prospect seems so self-evident that one feels almost silly raising it, except that so few have. Let us insert it into the conversation. To me, the silence among our newspapers and broadcasters on this point confirms only how dangerously circumscribed American political discourse has become. It is all text and subtext now, and the subtext, by definition, is known but never allowed to pierce the surface of silence. [Continue reading…]

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Piece Process: West Bank settlement expansion — 1,200 new homes — moves ahead with Obama’s approval

The Associated Press reports: Israel approved building nearly 1,200 more settlement homes Sunday and prepared the release of more than two dozen long-held Palestinian prisoners — highlighting an apparent settlements-for-prisoners trade-off that got both sides back to peace talks after a five-year freeze.

Yet concerns were mounting, especially among Palestinians, that the price is too steep. Sunday’s announcement was Israel’s third in a week on promoting Jewish settlements on war-won lands the Palestinians want for a state. It fueled Palestinian fears of a new Israeli construction spurt under the cover of U.S.-sponsored negotiations.

(Just in case it’s not obvious: “Piece” process is not a typo.)

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