The Hasty And Ill-conceived Decision to Award U.S. President Barack Obama

Posted on July 16, 2013 by Muller

University of Umeå professor of Sociology Stefan Svallfors’ remark to the Nobel Peace Prize committee in Oslo today when justifying his nomination of Edward Snowden may be true. But will it be of any advantage? All three, Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange (they have been nominated for three successive years now), as well as Snowden of course, deserve the prize which has been so much discredited for decades, at least since it was awarded to Henry Kissinger in 1974 and recently to the European Union. Obama was another outright wrong choice (and maybe one of the more spectacular ones) already in 2009 when he had taken all of us in with his verbose speeches.

By mentioning that mistake he will probably prevent chairman Thorbjørn Jagland and his committee from even considering him (or them).

Here is Svallfors’ letter in translation.

“Best committee members!

I suggest that the 2013 Peace Prize awarded to the American citizen Edward Snowden.

Edward Snowden has – in a heroic effort at great personal cost – revealed the existence and extent of the surveillance, the U.S. government devotes electronic communications worldwide. By putting light on this monitoring program – conducted in contravention of national laws and international agreements – Edward Snowden has helped to make the world a little bit better and safer.

Through his personal efforts, he has also shown that individuals can stand up for fundamental rights and freedoms. This example is important because since the Nuremberg trials in 1945 has been clear that the slogan “I was just following orders” is never claimed as an excuse for acts contrary to human rights and freedoms. Despite this, it is very rare that individual citizens having the insight of their personal responsibility and courage Edward Snowden shown in his revelation of the American surveillance program. For this reason, he is a highly affordable candidate.

The decision to award the 2013 prize to Edward Snowden would – in addition to being well justified in itself – also help to save the Nobel Peace Prize from the disrepute that incurred by the hasty and ill-conceived decision to award U.S. President Barack Obama 2009 award. It would show its willingness to stand up in defense of civil liberties and human rights, even when such a defense be viewed with disfavor by the world’s dominant military power.

Sincerely,

Stefan Svallfors

Professor of Sociology at Umeå University”

Snowden’s situation in the transit area of an airport in Moscow seems to be quite desperate. He has just applied for temporary asylum in Russia. Sort of the goose asking the fox for shelter.

16 July 2013 @ 2:46 pm.

Last modified July 16, 2013.

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The Damavand Site

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Muller

Damavand01Recently taken off the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations Iranian Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) has once again claimed another secret nuclear site in Iran. According to Reuters, it is located 10 km east of the village of Damavand, some 50 km east of Tehran. Construction has been there since at least 2006 and was recently finished.

Damavand02

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs instantly denied that the site was nuclear and hidden.

A youtube video by Joseph Hirsch distracts when identifying another construction site a few km west to Damavand as the site in question.

15 July 2013 @ 12:10 pm.

Last modified July 15, 2013.

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The Snowden-Greenwald Affair

Posted on July 14, 2013 by Muller

Update below.

While NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has got stuck in the transit area of a Moscow airport for the fourth week, the man who broke his story, Guardian’s blogger Glenn Greenwald, arranges for constant publicity about the material Snowden is apparently in possession of. Remember, the man has asked President Putin for asylum who has exhorted him, with a smirk, not to damage the United States anymore. When Greenwald uses any mainstream media reporting on his own interviews for agitated rectification, he certainly disobliges  Snowden’s case.

His recent interview with the Argentine newspaper La Nacion contains absurd self-important answers to some interesting questions.  When having been asked, “Beyond the revelations about the spying system performance in general, what extra information has Snowden?” he responded,

“Snowden has enough information to cause more damage to the US government in a minute alone than anyone else has ever had in the history of the United States. But that’s not his goal. [His] objective is to expose software that people around the world use without knowing what they are exposing themselves without consciously agreeing to surrender their rights to privacy. [He] has a huge number of documents that would be very harmful to the US government if they were made public.” (Emphasis added.)

Or, when asked, “Are you afraid that someone will try to kill him?” he verbosely makes clear,

“It’s a possibility, although [it] do[es] not bring many benefits to anyone at this point. [He has a]lready distributed thousands of documents and made sure that several people around the world have their entire file. If something were to happen, those documents would be made public. This is [his] insurance policy. The U.S. government should be on [their] knees every day praying that nothing happens to Snowden, because if something happens, all information will be revealed and that would be their worst nightmare.”

What a rant. It is blackmailing and it discredits Snowden and his motives. Either Snowden has proof of further NSA’s crimes and wrongdoings, then it should be made public as soon as possible. Or he has not.

So far, his leaks have led to healthy worldwide public awareness of a surveillance state. If discredited by publicity-craving individuals such as Glenn Greenwald, all might be in vain.

14 July 2013 @ 4:47 pm.

Update.

“And big one, and soon.” Glenn Greenwald won’t stop publishing reports based on Edward Snowden’s leaks as he has told POLITICO in an interview on Friday, although it seems that Snowden is willing to stop leaking U.S. secrets, as has been requested by Russian president Vladimir Putin who has to undersign Snowden’s application for asylum. So, there will be “big stories” soon.

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Plausible Deniability

Posted on July 7, 2013 by Muller

Snowden-hero

Der Spiegel reporter Marcel Rosenbach has entertained today in German TV presseclub “plausible deniability”, a common strategy when government officials need to lie and deceit when held accountable for their unconstitutional acts by  lawmakers and the public. One outrageous example is of course Director of National Intelligence James Clapper who, when explicitly asked by Senator Ron Wyden in March, i.e. some time before Edward Snowden’s leak, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundred of millions of Americans”, responded with “No, sir.”

Clapper has meanwhile apologized for this straight lie but has not been prosecuted as far as we know. Instead, diplomatic imbroglio has been caused when overfly permissions had been denied by several European countries, in anticipatory obedience, for the Bolivian presidential aircraft supposed to carry president Evo Morales from Moscow safely back to his country. The whistle-blower, who got stuck in the transit area of the airport, was suspected to be aboard. “No wheeling and dealing” to return Snowden back to America, President Barack Obama had reassured us when having been asked by reporters on his visit of Senegal last week. “I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker.” The opposite was the case. Obama has become notorious in contradicting his own sayings.

Rosenbach had, of course, another example in mind when coining his term, “plausible deniability”. Germany’s secretary of the Interior and boss of its secret service Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) is about to fly, due to public pressure, to the U.S. and shall visit next week NSA headquarters in Fort Meade in Maryland. On his agenda are discussions of the meanwhile disclosed fact that Germany seems to be a main NSA target in Europe. On the surface. Friedrich has expressed much sympathy for kraken-like surveillance practices of the NSA. He was quick in, well, triumphantly rejecting Snowden’s application for political asylum in Germany.

Snowden has meanwhile revealed, in encrypted emails which have been exchanged with Spiegel reporters, that a special NSA department (Foreign Affairs Directorates) closely coordinates works with foreign secret services including BND. As French AFP knows, “[t]he partnerships are organised so that authorities in other countries can ‘insulate their political leaders from the backlash’ if it becomes public ‘how grievously they’re violating global privacy’.”

So, “western states are in bed with NSA.” Friedrich’s visit may not really be about criticizing the NSA for their brazen practices. He has probably to discuss with his American counterparts how to minimize and deal with the damage Snowden’s leaks have already caused for public reputation of government representatives.

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel called last week U.S. President Barack Obama, who agreed to a “high-level meeting” between US and German security officials in the coming days to address intelligence matters, she probably meant Friedrich and his entourage.

7 July 2013 @ 5:33 pm.

Last modified July 7, 2013.

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Now ElBaradei

Posted on July 6, 2013 by Muller

Update below. Update II.

Obama’s Nobel peace prize colleague of 2005, Mohamed ElBaradei, seems at first sight the only reasonable figure in post-military coup Egypt. The already appointed Prime Minister‘s main task will be organizing new elections for president and parliament. Since it is said that there is no coup in which the U.S. is not involved in essence, Obama himself may have suggested the former IAEA DG, once heavily criticized by his predecessor G.W. Bush for being too lenient with Iran and its, as far as we know, peaceful nuclear program.

ElBaradei is largely unknown to the ordinary Egyptian. Essentially secular, highly professional, and Muslim Brotherhood-critic ElBaradei maybe Egypt’s last best hope although he might not be able to mobilize the devout masses. The country is at the brink of a civil war, though. How he can get control over the army or what the army’s role after the elections will be is absolutely unclear at the moment.  At present, it seems that he won’t run for presidency.

6 July 2013 @ 8:20 pm.

Update, 7 July 2013.

Unsurprisingly, ElBaradei’s nomination as interim PM was immediately challenged by a strong opposition of Islamic fundamentalists. As mentioned above, he is not popular in Egypt. He had been hesitant to engage in Egyptian politics so far and has not expressed his will to run for president before. “The nomination of ElBaradei violates the roadmap that the political and national powers had agreed on with General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi,” said Al Nour party’s deputy leader Ahmed Khalil.

Update II.

The White House has quickly rejected claims that Obama himself has urged Adly Mansour to nominate Mohamed ElBaradei. Seems so as if others have had the same clue. Given the latest claims by Obama about his craving of getting whistle blower Edward Snowden (“No wheeling and dealing, not scrambling jets”) when he on the other hand had managed to get European governments deny flyover permits for Bolivian president Morales on his return flight from Moscow one may cast doubt on trustworthiness of his words.

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