Search Results for: here you go

Did you hear that the president of Israel said Israel is a “sick society”? Reuven Rivlin, a Likudnik, said this over the weekend. There’s been lots of coverage in Israel, but as Sullivan points out, the declaration hasn’t gotten much attention stateside. I should think it would be viral.

We’ve written before about how the NSA uses its own definitions of some fairly basic English words, in order to pretend to have the authority to do things it probably… doesn’t really have authority to do. It’s become clear that this powergrab-by-redefinition is not unique to the NSA when it comes to the executive branch of the government. Earlier this year, we also wrote about the stunning steady redefinition of words within the infamous „Authorization to Use Military Force“ (AUMF) that was passed by Congress immediately after September 11, 2001. It officially let the President use „all necessary and appropriate force“ against those who „planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.“ But, over time, the AUMF was being used to justify efforts against folks who had nothing to do with September 11th, leading to this neat sleight of hand in which the military started pretending that the AUMF also applied to „associated forces.“ That phrase appears nowhere in the AUMF, but it’s a phrase that is regularly repeated and claimed by the administration and the military.

On Monday former Republican Governor of Arkansas and potential GOP presidential nominee Mike Huckabee visited the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, stating that radical Islamists are coming after American boys. “If those could be your three teenage boys,” he said to Likud’s Danny Danon of Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Sha’er, and Eyal Yifrah—the three Israeli youths abducted on June 12, 2014 from a bus stop near where Huckabee was speaking—“I assure you there is not a teenage boy in America who is safe if these radicals continue their local purge of everything that does not bow to their radicalism.”

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Yes, I did speak with President Poroshenko this morning, and it seemed to me at any rate that our views on how to settle the conflict are very close, as the diplomats say. On the way here from Blagoveshchensk to Ulan Bator, I jotted down a few thoughts that could constitute an action plan of sorts. True, I have only these notes that I jotted down, but I can read them to you if you want. In order to stop the bloodshed and stabilise the situation in southeast Ukraine, I believe that the parties to the conflict should immediately agree on and coordinate the following steps:

This is a brilliant speech– not just in its ideas but its subtle manner, its means of entering a Jewish space and forever changing it. The speech avoids the rhetoric of anti-Zionism, but when you hear this speech, you realize that it is Over for the Israel lobby inside the Jewish Diaspora. It is just a matter of time.

„Netanyahu, quit, fascism is already passing“, „You don’t build democracy by suppressing protesters“, „No, no, no, we won’t let fascism pass“, „Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies“, „all of us together, without fear and hatred“, „democracy for all between the river and the sea“ and „there’s no difference between blood and blood, we are all human“. All the chants rhyme in Hebrew.

Hancock wrote me recently to inquire about a gripping video — the arrest by the Israeli military of a young Jewish American man named Lucas Koerner, posted by Mondoweiss in 2011. This video has been resurrected and is circulating around the internet these days. I myself received the link from several sources, including a lawyer friend who, like so many others, apparently didn’t realize Lucas’ act of defiance happened several years ago. Hancock wanted to know what happened after Koerner was arrested. We put Hancock in touch with Koerner and Hancock subsequently posted their email exchange on his Facebook. We learn that Lucas was held in jail for two days, then put under house arrest and flew back to the US the next day. Lucas wrote Hancock:

Over a decade ago, Yonatan Shapira, then an Israeli air force pilot, bravely confronted his top commander, Lt. General Dan Halutz, over what were euphemistically called “targeted assassinations.” Israeli warplanes regularly fired missiles at Hamas leaders in Gaza, also killing innocent civilians, some of them children. Shapira asked General Halutz, What if a Hamas leader were located in Tel Aviv? Would you order our pilots to fire there, risking Israeli bystanders? Halutz said no. So you value Israelis over Palestinians, Yonatan responded. Get someone else to fly your aircraft.

Reporter: Where are the civilians supposed to go? You’re all insane. They [Palestinians] started it. What are you all saying? They started it. The Israelis did not throw their– for months this has been going on. What are you supposed to do? How do I know? I have been over there. That’s how I know. And I wish the world would know. BBC should be ashamed of themselves. And CNN should be ashamed of themselves. And everybody, stop it already.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Amy, I’m just coming from the south of Gaza, from Khan Younis, where people are talking of a very brutal assault on southeastern Khan Younis, particularly in the area of Khuzaa. They say this was worse than Shejaiya, the Gaza City eastern town that was attacked on Sunday in the bloodiest day of the conflict. People say the attacks began Tuesday night, the Israeli military moving in, firing very heavily with shelling—shelling, F-16s and drone attacks. I spoke to multiple residents who said they tried to get out beginning yesterday morning. They walked out; they found Israeli tanks blocking the main streets. One group said that the Israeli tanks started firing on them. They fled back to their homes. They had to leave the wounded behind. They spent a harrowing 24 hours trying to go from house to house. They said each house they went to was shelled. And they finally ended up walking out, holding white flags and their hands above their heads, only Wednesday morning.

In Goliath, New York Times bestselling author Max Blumenthal takes us on a journey through the badlands and high roads of Israel-Palestine, painting a startling portrait of Israeli society under the siege of increasingly authoritarian politics as the occupation of the Palestinians deepens. (…) As Blumenthal reveals, Israel has become a country where right-wing leaders like Avigdor Lieberman and Bibi Netanyahu are sacrificing democracy on the altar of their power politics; where the loyal opposition largely and passively stands aside and watches the organized assault on civil liberties; where state-funded Orthodox rabbis publish books that provide instructions on how and when to kill Gentiles; where half of Jewish youth declare their refusal to sit in a classroom with an Arab; and where mob violence targets Palestinians and African asylum seekers scapegoated by leading government officials as „demographic threats.“

As the situation in Iraq begins to looks more and more like a complete state meltdown, Russia has stepped in with a familiar refrain: „We told you so.“ „We are greatly alarmed by what is happening in Iraq. We warned long ago that the affair that the Americans and the Britons stirred up there wouldn’t end well,“ Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday, according to Voice of Russia. He also described the Iraq war as a „total failure“ and said Russia was sorry that its forecasts had come true.

„Now a politician has to spend five hours a day begging rich people for money, so it’s easy for politicians to ignore the public interest,“ he added. (…) „Governments – that’s one threat; businesses are also collecting more information than they should. We now have a stalker economy where businesses are finding out everything about you.“

there are ways to protect our privacy online. That’s why a coalition of web sites, companies, and rights groups ranging from Amnesty International to Greenpeace USA, has begun a campaign to #ResetTheNet

1. We saw an example of the court orders that authorize the NSA to collect virtually every phone call record in the United States—that’s who you call, who calls you, when, for how long, and sometimes where.

For years now we’ve explained why Europe’s concept of a „right to be forgotten“ is a terrible, dangerous and impossible idea. The basic idea is that if you were involved in something that you’re not happy about later, you can demand that the incident be stricken from the record… everywhere. It’s a clear attack on free speech — allowing people to censor others from saying truthful and accurate things about someone.

This Wednesday evening there is to be a „Public Information Session and Discussion“ (pdf) about TISA: the Trade in Services Agreement. If, like me, you’ve never heard of this, you might think it’s a new initiative. But it turns out that it’s been under way for more than a year: the previous USTR, Ron Kirk, informed Congress about it back in January 2013 (pdf). Aside from the occasional laconic press release from the USTR, a page put together by the Australian government, and a rather poorly-publicized consultation by the European Commission last year, there has been almost no public information about this agreement. A cynic might even think they were trying to keep it quiet.

RT: As it stands at the moment, America seems to think the more Russia is punished here, the more sorted the situation will be, do you agree with that? Willie Wimmer: I think the situation is totally complicated and everything we know perhaps goes back to the Cuban crisis some decades ago. RT: In that the Cold War continues? WW: I think it’s even more complicated. It’s not only a Cold War it can be outstanding and dangerous and when we go back to the Cuban crisis, we know that big powers usually draw a red line and for the Americans it had been 90 km away from Miami there shouldn’t be a Soviet nuclear arsenal. And here in the Ukraine, it’s again similar. The Russian Federation draws a red line and they are not interested in having a country direct in their neighborhood who might change itself into a living danger, like a land mine, like a nuclear arsenal, which is located next to my own border. And therefore I think we face a critical situation in the next few weeks, perhaps even the next days and we only can hope that somebody might intervene in a sympathetic way and not create war in Europe.

This is not the first time reports from Ukraine hint at the poor state of the Ukrainian army, which has been sent to the south-east of the country to quell the anti-government protests. While Slavyansk activists told RT young soldiers were sent to shoot at them with no food supplies, some of the Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered to the locals told RIA Novosti they had to eat “a nettle soup,” which they gathered on the roadside. Other video reports coming from Slavyansk on Thursday told a similar story to the men interrupting Phillips.

(06.04.) The movement’s popularity has dwindled since it was split into two groups nearly three years ago. (..) In December, an Egyptian court sentenced the April 6 co-founder Ahmad Maher and two other colleagues — Mohammad Adel and Ahmad Douma — to three years in prison each on charges of holding unauthorised protests and assaulting policemen.

Klinchev then goes on to say that at around 12am he called General Guslavsky, who asked to come up to his office to talk. “Once I entered his office and took a seat, Lyashko along with another, about eight people, run into the room. In fact, many of them I personally know. There were also journalists, particularly, from the Ukraine TV channel. Those people were standing aside, while a group of four people started twisting [my arms]. They handcuffed me,” Klinchev said. He says they called him and his supporters “scum” and “scumbags”, who do not understand things. Lyashko and his people said Russian flags were “treason” and that is why “all of us should be butchered.”

Mikhail Bolotskikh, the governor of Ukraine’s eastern Lugansk region, has stepped down under pressure from protesters who gathered outside his office earlier on Sunday to protest his appointment by the interim authorities in Kiev, the local media reports. “I am asking you to relieve me of my duties,” Bolotskikh said in a statement published on Sunday.

(13.02.2014) Mr. Maduro ordered the arrest of an opposition leader and a former military chief as he claimed “fascist” forces financed from the United States were plotting against his government. He claimed the civil unrest was part of a plan by “far Right” opponents “to bring us to a dog fight, set our people at war, one against another” adding: “There will be no coup d’etat in Venezuela, you can rest assured.”

It won’t be long before you can download video of Earth from hundreds of miles above, thanks to Canadian company UrtheCast, which is providing a camera currently being installed by a pair of Russian astronauts outside of the International Space Station. According to George Tyc, Chief Technology Officer of UrtheCast, the camera will function as a „nearly live Google Earth,“ featuring continuously refreshed video of interesting areas where interesting events are going on, showing you what is changing, what is going on.“

Let’s repeat the details here: (1) FISA Court issues secret ruling that totally reinterprets Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act in a manner that appears to be quite different than any plain language reading. (2) Snowden leaks a bunch of documents that reveal the existence of certain bulk data collection which has everyone up in arms. (3) FISA Court itself says that more information is a good thing for debate, and that it would like to release the ruling in question, asking the DOJ to do some redactions as necessary. (4) The DOJ says, well, given the choice, we’d just as soon redact the whole damn thing. (5) The FISA Court says, „Come again? You need to explain that some more.“

• GOP senator in Ukraine to support pro-EU protests • Crowds protest president’s pro-Russian stance

I cannot say enough good things about Ryan Lizza’s comprehensive article about the NSA’s surveillance programs and the legal mess and political fights they’ve created. There’s nothing particularly new in the article, but it does an astoundingly good job putting everything that we’ve learned into context. Even as someone who’s been following all of this very closely, it was still a bit of a jumbled puzzle in my mind, but Lizza’s piece took all of it and laid out the entire picture. It goes through all of the details of how and why the NSA began the program, its regular and repeated (often egregious) abuses, and the questionable legal defenses to protect the program.

„I’ve gone up and down pretty much consistently throughout,“ Obama told ABC’s Barbara Walters in an exclusive interview at the White House. „But the good thing about when you’re down is that usually you got nowhere to go but up.“ Barbara Walters‘ exclusive interview with President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama airs on a special edition of „20/20,“ „Walters at the White House,“ on Friday, Nov. 29, at 10 p.m. ET

There’s the famous (incorrect) meme out there that Al Gore once took credit for inventing the internet (he didn’t), but it does appear that he has one thing very much in common with the guy who actually invented the web (which, of course, is not the internet), Tim Berners-Lee: they’re both absolutely disgusted by the NSA’s surveillance activities. Al Gore slammed the NSA in a speech in Montreal, saying that the NSA’s activities were „outrageous“ and „completely unacceptable.“ He even went so far as to say that Snowden „revealed evidence of what appears to be crimes against the Constitution of the United States.“ Furthermore, he took on the oft-repeated claim from the NSA and its defenders that they need to collect all the haystacks by quoting a scholar on the CIA: „when you are looking for a needle in a haystack, it’s not always wise to pile more hay on the haystack.“

The key buried point, however, is that — more than their content — these leaks are changing a fundamental shift in who “we” are. First, this shift is not about whether governments spy on each other. It’s about shattering the rigid insider/outsider boundaries that statecraft has relied on for centuries. As I argued before, Wikileaks was certainly a big shot across this bow, but not the only one. This trend is everywhere. Second, the most shocking revelation of all is that the NSA did not expect this leak to happen, either sooner or later. That’s a huge, telling blind spot about the current realities of governance.

That’s not a definite confirmation, but you can see how it would raise eyebrows. As the NYT report notes, in an earlier story, concerning claims that Level 3 had helped the intelligence community spy on Germans, the company had denied the report. The fact that it’s not denying it here, but rather pointing out that if it had helped there would be a gag order, certainly suggests the potential way in for the NSA. If so, Google might want to look rather closely at its agreement with Level 3.

Really now, if you are a movement conservative with solid work ethics, then why would you choose to demonize wealth? What’s so scary about a country club, golf club, polo club or — heaven forbid — a yacht club? Is there any evidence that the GOPers who are members of these clubs hold anti-Christian views?

My main point here, though, is a political one. Obama no longer sounds like a President who is seeking a “grand bargain” on the budget, and who, to that end, would be willing to enrage seniors and face down members of his own party. He sounds more like a President burned by his previous encounters with the Republicans, who has accepted that, for the foreseeable future, he’s going to be engaged in trench warfare, and so he had better make sure that the sandbags are in place and that the gun turrets are manned.

The primary Obamacare exchange contract went to the CGI Group, a Canadian consulting company.. A June report by the Government Accountability Office found that CMS had already committed to spend $394 million on the system.

Francis, at the start of a day-long trip to the island’s capital, put aside his prepared text at a meeting with unemployed workers, including miners in hard hats who told him of their situation, and improvised for nearly 20 minutes. „I find suffering here … It weakens you and robs you of hope,“ he said, „Excuse me if I use strong words, but where there is no work there is no dignity.“

(28.02.2013) It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that this amounts to a “nothing-to-see-here” assessment of what is happening. Consider what William Binney and Mark Klein have said and written, and what NSA is building, and then tell me if you believe that only three dozen people have access to the domestic intercepts. Come on. Get real.

„It’s of course our duty to ensure that the NSA stays within its legal bounds here in Congress and this amendment makes it perfectly clear for everyone to know and understand“ If it’s your duty, you damn suck at it. „Staying within the legal bounds“ means following existing, normal interpretations of the law, not a constant redrawing of boundaries and redefinitions of words like „relevant.“

So there we have it. If Bild got it right, Merkel is up for an electoral hammering and the rest of the world needs to wrap its head around the idea of PRISM being a collaborative scheme at the NATO level. However, if the German spy agencies are being truthful then there are two PRISMs that, by crazy coincidence, both deal in the interception of emails and phone calls. You choose.

The latest, as pointed out by Dan Tobias in our comments, is that the official newspaper of the Chinese government is now pointing to various attempts in the west to „block“ content to explain that internet censorship is in the public’s interest (they refer to it as „web regulation“ but you know what they mean).

Here’s one view, from Germany. Politicians from the Die Linke party posed a number of questions to their government on the subject of the latter’s use of surveillance techniques (original PDF in German.) Most of the answers were the kind of thing you might expect — „we can’t possibly go into details“ etc. etc. — but one was surprising.

Here’s the question asked by Pew Research: „As you may know, it has been reported that the National Security Agency has been getting secret court orders to track telephone call records of MILLIONS of Americans in an effort to investigate terrorism. Would you consider this access to telephone call records an acceptable or unacceptable way for the federal government to investigate terrorism?“ Here’s Rasmussen’s version: „The federal government has been secretly collecting the phone records of millions of Americans for national security purposes regardless of whether there is any suspicion of wrongdoing. Do you favor or oppose the government’s secret collecting of these phone records?“

Yesterday, it was revealed that Ed Snowden was the whistleblower, who exposed some details of NSA surveillance capabilities, often going far beyond what people expected. If you haven’t yet, you should watch his video interview with Glenn Greenwald where he goes into more detail:

When Falcone left us, I was in my car and I heard about his death on the radio. I even remember which twist on the hillside I was going round. When Borsellino died, I was in France and while I was queueing to buy a baguette, a lady said to me in French „They’ve killed another judge in Italy“.

Although New Zealand’s decision not to allow patents for programs „as such“ was welcome, other moves there have been more problematic. For example, after it became clear that the New Zealand intelligence service, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), illegally wiretapped and spied on Kim Dotcom, the New Zealand government announced that it would change the law so as to make it legal in the future to snoop on New Zealanders as well as on foreigners.

(05.01.) I just sent this to Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard magazine and one of the most influential advocates of our invasion of Iraq. He posted something this morning about my post where I found an old quote from Chuck Hagel about how the Iraq War is all about the oil. I’ll let you know when Bill gets back to me. (If you don’t know much about Bill, you can find a good introduction here about his pre-war debate with Daniel Ellsberg.)

Here’s what he said: „People say we’re not fighting for oil. Of course we are. They talk about America’s national interest. What the hell do you think they’re talking about? We’re not there for figs.“ Whew! Wouldn’t it put a spring in your step to read the news each morning and see Hagel’s name?

Back in September, we posted a leaked version of a draft for a cybersecurity executive order that the White House had been passing around, mainly to try to force Congress into passing a cybersecurity law. With the last ditch attempt by Senator Harry Reid to move that process forward failing, it took exactly a week for the White House to revise its draft exec order, and start passing it around on November 21st. And, today, that new draft leaked as well. You can see the full draft here or embedded below.

We just recently wrote about how the UN’s ITU (International Telecommunications Union) has been seeking to massively expand its mandate to take over international governance issues related to the internet, based on no real mandate other than one of its own making. Because of this, there are reasonable fears that it will end up creating dangerous rules that favor the incumbent telcos (often closely associated with certain governments) over what’s actually best for the internet.

The parties have failed. In the face of the abyss they have called in the technicians. The technicians in turn have failed. In the face of the possibility of being pursued, together with the politicians, by citizens armed with pitch forks, they called in the super-technicians. The super-technicians tested the situation, even because there’s no one left to call in.

“Allowing the military and NSA to spy on Americans on American soil goes against every principle this country was founded on.” –Rep. Jared Polis on House floor, 4/26/12

I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.

Hence, I had to ask myself whether I can come up with two or three words that can define my political direction. Surprisingly, the answer is „yes.“ I have three words, but I’m uttering them here only on condition that you promise to keep in mind that the discussion does not end with them, but rather, this is where it starts. As opposed to the demands voiced by my fellow politicians, this is not the bottom line of my political doctrine, but rather, the top line. These are the words that in my view should open the debate on the direction the State of Israel is going in. These three words are: Where’s the money?

There is a general feel of malaise and melancholy affecting jan25 protesters, for they feel as if they have accomplished nothing: that the SCAF has halted the revolution and ended it, and it was all for naught. Now this kind of talk infuriates me, not because of its self-pitying whiney nature from otherwise strong people, but because it’s categorically not true.

„We’ve gotten into this cycle where small groups of elites get together, argue with each other in secret, tell us occasional press reports of their version of the arguments, and at the last minute come up with a proposal that says ‚We’re either going to cut off your right leg, or shoot you in the head. Which would you prefer?’“ Gingrich said. „And we call that government.“

Peter Burns, former chief executive officer of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency * “The levels reported of 10 sieverts per hour are very high levels and it’s going to be very difficult to manage workers going into those areas and doing operations.” * “10 sieverts is actually a lethal dose of radiation. So you can’t afford to be exposed for more than a few minutes at those levels.” * “It means you’re directly exposed to fuel rods in the reactors or the spent fuel ponds very closely and while it’s possible to get to those levels it means there is very little shielding going on there.”

In Chicago, it’s the sale of parking meters to the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi. In Indiana, it’s the sale of the northern toll road to a Spanish and Australian joint venture. In Wisconsin it’s public health and food programs, in California it’s libraries. It’s water treatment plants, schools, toll roads, airports, and power plants. It’s Amtrak. There are revolving doors of corrupt politicians, big banks, and rating agencies. There are conflicts of interest. It’s bipartisan.

It’s a story CNN won’t report. Late at night there’s a pounding on the door in Misurata. Armed soldiers force young Libyan women out of their beds at gun-point. Hustling the women and teenagers into trucks, the soldiers rush the women to gang bang parties for NATO rebels or else rape them in front of their husbands or fathers. When NATO rebels finish their rape sport, the soldiers cut the women’s throats.

PROTESTERS WILL STAY „We are not going to budge from here,“ said a 44-year-old unemployed man who declined to give his name. He was among hundreds who have camped out all week at Puerta del Sol. „Our next move is to spread this to the rest of Europe.“