IAN COBAIN, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: This is the new warfare. It is the obvious next step in asymmetrical conflict. Lower risk for Americans, and probably cheaper. But, I wonder, is it making more enemies than it is eliminating? If I lived in a little village in the Afghan mountains and, in the middle of night, a drone strike blew up one of the houses, killing a neighbor family, I might have some serous attitude about it.
When Bilal Berjawi spoke to his wife for the last time, he had no way of being certain that he was about to die. But he should have had his suspicions.
A short, dumpy Londoner who was not, in the words of some who knew him, one of the world’s greatest thinkers, Berjawi had been fighting for months in Somalia with al-Shabaab, the Islamist militant group. His wife was 4,400 miles away, at home in west London. In June 2011, Berjawi had almost been killed in a US drone strike on an al-Shabaab camp on the coast. After that he became wary of telephones. But in January last year, when his wife went into labour and was admitted to St Mary’s hospital in Paddington, he decided to risk a quick phone conversation.
A few hours after the call ended Berjawi was targeted in a fresh drone strike. Perhaps the telephone contact triggered alerts all the way from Camp Lemmonier, the US military’s enormous home-from-home at Djibouti, to the National Security Agency’s headquarters in Maryland. Perhaps a few screens also lit up at GCHQ in Cheltenham? This time the drone attack was successful, from the US perspective, and al-Shabaab issued a terse statement: […]
No Comments
JUAN COLE, - Informed Comment
Stephan: More and more judicial decisions, particularly those of Republican appointed judges, overwhelmingly favor corporations over people. These decisions get almost no coverage in the media, but they have real and far-reaching consequences. Here's an example of what I mean.
‘Sweeping’ subpoena violates rights of those who spoke out against oil giant’s devastating actions in Ecuador
– Lauren McCauley writes at Commondreams
‘Following their guilty sentence for the dumping of 18.5bn gallons of toxic waste in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Chevron is amassing the personal information of the environmentalists and attorneys who fought against them in an effort to prove ‘conspiracy.’
The US government is not the only entity who, with judicial approval, is amassing massive amounts of personal information against their so-called enemies.
A federal judge has ruled to allow Chevron, through a subpoena to Microsoft, to collect the IP usage records and identity information for email accounts owned by over 100 environmental activists, journalists and attorneys.
The oil giant is demanding the records in an attempt to cull together a lawsuit which alleges that the company was the victim of a conspiracy in the $18.2 billion judgment against it for dumping 18.5 billion gallons of oil waste in the Ecuadorean Amazon, causing untold damage to the rainforest.
The ‘sweeping’ subpoena was one of three issued to Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft.
‘Environmental advocates have the right to speak anonymously and travel without their every move and association being exposed to Chevron,’ said Marcia Hofmann, Senior Staff Attorney […]
No Comments
JOAN WALSH, Editor-at-Large - Salon
Stephan: The entire security apparat, perhaps because it is predicated on priorities other than those of the Constitution is inherently in conflict with democracy. Here is yet another aspect of what I mean.
You don’t have to think Edward Snowden is a hero, to be horrified by the latest revelations about the secret workings of the court that approves the president’s many requests for surveillance. Or at least you shouldn’t have to think that.
But revelations by the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in the last few days about the sweeping yet secret workings of the FISA court, appointed solely by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, have gotten far less attention than Snowden’s original revelations – and far less than they deserve. The man who just presided over a genteel gutting of the Voting Rights Act, who is laying the groundwork for doing away with affirmative action and who may have led his liberal colleagues to dramatically curtail the power of Congress to compel state action with his Obamacare ruling, has huge sway over our national security machinery. He has appointed all the sitting judges, and 10 of 11 are Republicans, with no confirmation or even oversight by Congress. Both of Roberts’ roles are hugely influential, and disturbing.
A few weeks ago Reuters reported the sweep of Roberts’ influence: He appoints all FISA judges, drawn from the federal bench, and right now […]
No Comments
GLENN GREENWALD, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: There is something very wrong about the narrative of the Edward Snowden story. I agree with this essay. Everything is focused on Snowden and not on what his leaks have revealed. A story with profound implications for our society has devolved instead into a kind of thriller movie script.
When you give many interviews in different countries and say essentially the same thing over and over, as I do, media outlets often attempt to re-package what you’ve said to make their interview seem new and newsworthy, even when it isn’t. Such is the case with this Reuters article today, that purports to summarize an interview I gave to the daily newspaper La Nacion of Argentina.
Like everything in the matter of these NSA leaks, this interview is being wildly distorted to attract attention away from the revelations themselves. It’s particularly being seized on to attack Edward Snowden and, secondarily, me, for supposedly ‘blackmailing’ and ‘threatening’ the US government. That is just absurd.
That Snowden has created some sort of ‘dead man’s switch’ – whereby documents get released in the event that he is killed by the US government – was previously reported weeks ago, and Snowden himself has strongly implied much the same thing. That doesn’t mean he thinks the US government is attempting to kill him – he doesn’t – just that he’s taken precautions against all eventualities, including that one (just incidentally, the notion that a government that has spent the last decade invading, bombing, torturing, rendering, kidnapping, imprisoning […]
No Comments
TARA CULP-RESSLER, - Nation of Change
Stephan: Another failure of the illness profit system, and an alarm about the disparity of wealth, and its impact on ordinary Americans. It actually costs people years off their lives.
On Tuesday, a new report revealed that Americans are in ‘mediocre
No Comments
