What Kind of Damage?

Posted on December 13, 2013 by Muller

CBS reports that the U.S. intelligence community is split over the possibility of granting NSA total surveillance whistle-blower Edward Snowden amnesty after it has realized that just one per cent of the whole material (another 1.5 million classified documents) has been published so far. While Rick Leggett, who is now in charge of the Snowden leak task force which tries to prevent another leak like this one and which tries to figure out how much damage, for NSA, the Snowden leaks have done and still could do, seems to be quite positive, his boss, NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander used an outrageous example to point to an alleged dilemma.

“This [granting Snowden amnesty] is analogous to a hostage-taker taking 50 people hostage, shooting 10 and then say, ‘If you give me full amnesty, I’ll let the other 40 go.’

“I think people have to be held accountable for their actions. … Because what we don’t want is the next person to do the same thing, race off to Hong Kong and to Moscow with another set of data, knowing they can strike the same deal.”

Well, people have to be held accountable, but that applies in particular to unelected individuals such as Alexander and the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, who, in any democracy, should and would long have been prosecuted for lying in Congress. From what we have learned from Snowden’s leaks so far, the damage the NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ has “unwittingly” (by us citizens) done to our liberties is the sole scandal here. We, the people, want to know all. We need to know, in order to hold Alexander and his buddies accountable.

13 December 2013 @ 2:53 pm.

Last modified December 13, 2013.

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Greenwald vs. Sackur

Posted on November 30, 2013 by Muller

HARDtalk Stephen Sackur’s task at the BBC is “to hold people accountable” with “[i]n-depth interviews with hard-hitting questions and sensitive topics being covered as famous personalities from all walks of life talk about the highs and lows in their lives.” One must not forget, though, that the BBC is only a semi-autonomous (meaning UK government-dependent) public broadcaster. How its staff has to spread propaganda, for example, about the whole NSA/GCHQ surveillance scandal brought to light by whistle-blower Edward Snowden can be watched almost on a daily basis by televised “opinions” of its reporters.

Thursday’s show had journalist Glenn Greenwald, who had mainly reported on Edward Snowden’s leaks, and the BBC unsurprisingly seems to be surprised that,

“Journalist Glenn Greenwald who reported on the data leaked by US whistleblower Edward Snowden has told HARDtalk it is the job of journalists to investigate the claims of people in power.

Mr Greenwald said the Iraq war was as an example of how the US and UK governments had made ‘false claims’ to gain support for the war.

‘People in power, specifically national security officials will routinely lie to their population,’ he added.” (My emphasis.)

Sackur, who has a reputation of relentlessly and impudently interrupting his guests whenever he would not agree with what they claim, was put in his right place by Greenwald as usual. Here we saw two kinds of journalists, one who claims to be hard hitting but actually just trying to serve authorities, and an honest one who ultimately made his excellent point. Good interview.

30 November 2013 @ 10:39 am.

Last modified December 1, 2013.

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The Poetry of Hassan Rouhani

Posted on November 29, 2013 by Muller

Whether the Iranian people can trust their new president Hassan Rouhani is still not clear. Whether his apparent rather diplomatic style of foreign politics will be followed by domestic reforms neither is. There may already be notable signs, however, that the expected end of 35 years of cold war with the west may soon result in a surge of lower-scale freedom in the Islamic Republic. The above music video by Hossein Mebashi which uses Hassan Rouhani’s words when he addressed his Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at his inauguration in August (allegedly by permission) shows beautiful young Iranians apparently holding him accountable for the promised, well, Obamaesque “change”, “hope”, “Yes we can”.

Obama’s promises have proved to be false in the meantime.

The Iranian civilization is much older than that of the United States. The Iranian people have endured cruel rulers in their long history and numerous conquests starting with Alexander of Macedon, the Arabs, the Ghaznavids, the Seljuqs, the Mongols, and the Timurids. In the end, they have been able time and again to “Persianize” whoever conquered them. It is not really expected that that will be successful with the U.S. and the west. Becoming the desired and tolerated, by the U.S., hegemony in the region is not too bad a perspective.

29 November 2013 @ 8:33 am.

Last modified November 29, 2013.

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A Capitulation

Posted on November 24, 2013 by Muller

Whether the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei will ever give his blessing to the compromise reached in today’s early hours in Geneva with its factual far-reaching retrenchment of Iran’s nuclear program is seriously doubted. What actually has been negotiated by world powers P5+1 and the Iranian delegation led by foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is already disputed. The crux of the matter, Iran’s right (haqq) to enrich uranium under the NPT, seems still to be denied by the White House. That was certainly one of the red lines drawn by Khamenei himself just before the talks in Geneva resumed.

It may quickly turn out that the alleged breakthrough was actually a bad preliminary deal, not only for Israel as Benjamin Netanyahu unsurprisingly concluded, but also for the Iranians. There seems to be no face-saving aspect in the final result. The deal (that what has been made public so far) may be considered a capitulation by the Iranian people after 34 years of cold war with the U.S. and other western powers. President Obama’s statement this morning unmistakably uses language of the victorious power.

“[T]he United States and our friends and allies have agreed to provide Iran with modest relief, while continuing to apply our toughest sanctions. We will refrain from imposing new sanctions, and we will allow the Iranian government access to a portion of the revenue that they have been denied through sanctions. But the broader architecture of sanctions will remain in place and we will continue to enforce them vigorously. And if Iran does not fully meet its commitments during this six-month phase, we will turn off the relief and ratchet up the pressure.”

So, whether sanctions will ever be lifted is completely unclear. The likelihood for another war in the region increased today, not attenuated.

24 November 2013 @ 8:23 am.

Last modified November 24, 2013.

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Welcome to the Pleasure Dome

Posted on November 19, 2013 by Muller

Qatar

Derision is granted for the design of Qatar’s new “vagina stadium” for the 2022 World Cup which has surfaced on the weekend. Over the top phantasies in a boys’ country. But it also indicates that a phallic society may esteem its female private parts as well.

Whether construction work will actually start next year in Al Wakrah after guffaws of laughter is not so sure. True embarrassment, on the other hand, should be given rise to yesterday’s report by Amnesty International about slave labor in the oil and gas rich Gulf country’s construction sector.

19 November 2013 @ 8:10 am.

Last modified November 19, 2013.

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