Saturday, September 07, 2013

War Criminals

"Chile’s Supreme Court admits wrong-doing during Pinochet dictatorship" (The Common Ills):
Today in an unprecedented move, the Chilean Supreme Court admitted it failed to sufficiently to protect victims from widespread government-sponsored violence during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The court stopped short of a full apology.  Next Wednesday is the 40th anniversary of the military coup.  FSRN’s Jorge Garreton has more.
On Tuesday, the National Association of Magistrates of the Judiciary issued an apology for failing to protect Chileans from violence by the government.  During the nearly two-decade rule of Pinochet, tens of thousands of people were killed, detained, tortured, and disappeared by the government.  Current Chilean President Sebastian Piñera has blamed the Judiciary for not protecting victims. Today, on the urging by the Association of Magistrates, the Supreme Court responded.  The Court admitted to grave actions and omissions, and failing to protect people from human rights violations, including denying protection to those detained and disappeared.  Jorge Garreton, FSRN, Santiago.

The above is huge news especially for people of my generation.

Augusto Pinochet was one of the worst War Criminals, up there with Richard Nixon, among others.  The Chilean people suffered under him.  He was installed via a CIA-backed coup which ousted the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende.

Allende was for the people.  The US government was not.

After Allende was assassinated, Pinochet began a war on the people of Chile and did so with the US government's knowledge and consent

The US government should have issued their own statement of apology but they can't, they still exercise the same undemocratic and War Criminal practices.


 "Media: The silence, the fawning, the unanswered" (Ava and C.I., The Third Estate Sunday Review):
All last week, the White House used the media in an effort to sell war on Syria. From the various staffers tasked to whispering sotto voice on background to the State Department's own personal troll doll Marie Harf through Secretary of Mental State Dangerous John Kerry all the way up to The Dalibama of War, every claim they made floated over the airwaves, along the internet and into print -- usually without even the mildest of questioning taking place.  It was as though fact checkers were on a forced hiatus.
For weeks now, there had been brief sightings of St. Barack in the tiny, bucolic, media villages of PBS and CNN.  It was during his visit to the latter that he performed a self-less miracle -- tanking CNN's ratings to allow MSNBC and Fox News to sail past, Fox News doing so with nearly four times as many viewers.  It was very similar to a wonder performed by Our Blessed Michelle who is said to have turned school lunches into vomit.

On Saturday afternoon, he and Joe Biden made an address from the Rose Garden . . .  and both were squinty eyed  . . . and old . . . and frightening.  Frightening, if not in that there's-a-killer-right-behind-you! manner then at least in the, "Good gosh, have you seen Kris Jenner?  She looks more and more like Tom Cruise!"  That said, it was the perfect location for Barack's remarks because historically, pre-1902, what is today's Rose Garden was also full of s**t but, back then, it was horse s**t.


In the Rose Garden yesterday, like a Price Is Right show model, Biden just stood there throughout without speaking.  He could have been St. Gregory the Wonder Worker and the vice president still wouldn't have been any help to Barack who was determined to continue his lie that it was necessary for the US to attack Syria.

At one point, he huffed, "What's the purpose of the international system that we've built if a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by the governments of 98 percent of the world's people and approved overwhelmingly by the Congress of the United States is not enforced?"

Maybe St. Barack can put down that Course in Miracles and pick up a few volumes of international law?

What's the point of building international law, we wondered, if signing onto it doesn't mean you'll follow it?

International law is very clear on this.  IPS analyst Phyllis Bennis appeared on many programs last week -- including  KPFA's Up Front with Guest Host Philip Maldari on Tuesday, Democracy Now! on Wednesday and FAIR's Counterspin on Friday -- to address various issues an attack on Syria would raise and what was required for such an attack.  Here she is speaking with Peter Hart on Counterspin:



Phyllis Bennis:  Only if the [United Nations] Security Council votes to endorse the use of force is the use of force legal.  No other agency, institution, organization has that right.  So the Kosovo precedent that you refer to and that unfortunately this is being talked about in the press.  It's being asserted that if the Security Council doesn't agree, there are other options.  Yeah, there are other options.  The problem is they're all illegal.  The Kosovo model was illegal.  What the US did in 1999, when it wanted to bomb, to start an air war against Serbia over Kosovo, realized it would not get support of the Security Council because Russia had said it would veto.  So instead of saying, 'Well okay we don't have support of the Security Council, I guess we can't do it,' they said, 'Okay, we won't go to the Security Council, we'll simply go to the NATO High Command and ask their permission.'  Well, what a surprise, the NATO High Command said 'sure.'  It's like the hammer and the nail.  If you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  If you're NATO everything looks like it requires military intervention.  The problem is, under international law, the UN charter is the fundamental component under international law that determines issues of war and peace.  And the charter doesn't say that the Security Council or NATO or the President of the United States can all decide over the use of force.  The only agency that can legally approve the use of force is the Security Council of the United Nations.  Period.  Full stop.


It's good that Barack's decided to consult with Congress -- the Constitution actually requires their authorization so it's good that he is at least (in this case) going to obey US laws.  But even should the Congress grant approval, that won't make an attack in compliance with international law.  The US would not be responding to an attack on it so the only way to legally attack Syria would be to have UN authorization.

I had hoped to highlight from Ava and C.I.'s piece all week.  That really didn't happen.  But I did love the above and the way they transitioned in tone.



"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Friday, September 6, 2013.  Chaos and violence continue, Nouri lobbies to kill the protest movement, the protests continue, Iran supposedly is ordering an attack on the US in Iraq if the US launches an attack on Syria, Women's Media Center fails the left by funding (and publishing) propaganda which is now being grabbed by conservatives to justify attacking Syria, Glenn Greenwald and others reveal more about Barack Obama's illegal spying programs and more.


At the Washington Post today, conservative Michelle Bernard tries (and fails) to make a coherent case for war on Syria.  Her prop of choice?  Iraqi women.  Bernard's part of the cheap trash who ignore Iraqi women.  The women of Iraq suffer and they suffer without any help from world government's so Bernard's lies aren't needed.  She insists that women are suffering in Syria.  It's similar to the propaganda Women's Media Center -- in the roll out for war that Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan and Jane Fonda all hope you never call them on -- was featuring a few months back.  That shouldn't surprise you.

When The Brides of War enlist to become love slaves of Barack, they run to Lauren Wolfe for information.  The hustler also works for The Atlantic.  She specializes in "OHMYGOD!WOMENAREBEINGKILLEDSOMEWHEREANDIMUSTANDWILLSTOPIT!"
'journalism.'


Here's some information for all the tricked out sex slaves in the nunnery of St. Barack: War kills.

War kills indiscriminately.  There is no 'precision' in war.  It is bloody, it is messy and it is deadly.

Do women suffer during war?

Yes, children they do.  In The War Against Women, the late Marilyn French established this with a historical overview of war and how it functions alongside the patriarchy, how the domination sought in war is also sought in society.

I realize this is new ground for Michelle Bernard.   And probably for the idiot Lauren Wolfe.

Bernard wants you to know that, in 2003, shortly after the start of the Iraq War, she actually managed to chat with a few Iraqi women in DC who had been brought in, by the Bully Boy Bush administration, to speak to Congress.  Guess what they told Bernard?  They wished the war had started sooner!  Isn't it shocking?  Iraqi women, as the war had just started, would be flown to the US to lobby Congress and they supported the war!  Well case closed, yet again!

But before Bernard does her victory lap, let's all grasp that the women were propaganda tools of the White House -- which is why they were able to travel to the US to begin with.

And let's further grasp what Michelle Bernard doesn't grasp or won't tell you.

The year is 2013.  Michelle insists that Iraqi women told her they were better off due to war ("What took you so long!" she quotes one Iraqi saying) so the US should attack Syria.

What's she leaving out?

How about today?

How about the effects of ten years of war on Iraq and, yes, on Iraqi women?  Let's start with Wednesday's snapshot:

And in southern Baghdad, NINA reports:
Police source told NINA that an improvised explosive device, emplaced near women beauty salon in Shurta neighborhood, went off wounding the salon's owner and three other civilians, happened to be nearby, as well as causing damages to the salon.

That attack is very important. al Qaeda may or may not be responsible for that attack but for years they have launched attacks in that area.  The attack, if carried out by al Qaeda, may have been an attack on business or anything.  But the best guess is it being an attack on women who refuse to live in Iraq as though Iraq is Afghanistan.

That attack was and remains important but no western news outlet treated it as such.  No one filed a report on it.  As always when women are the intended targets, the press looked the other way.  In fact, the only time the western press tends to note women dying is when they can (accurately or inaccurately) label them a prostitute.  Zainab Salbi founded Women for Women International.  Last March, she wrote a column for CNN on the status of women in Iraq:

On the political front, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has not appointed a single woman to a senior cabinet position, despite the fact women are guaranteed 25% of the seats in parliament by the constitution. The Ministry of Women's Affairs, a poorly-funded and mostly ceremonial department, is the lone ministry headed up by a woman.
 Constitutionally, women were able to secure the ability to pass their citizenship on to their children by non-Iraqi husbands, making Iraq one of a handful Arab countries with such a provision for their female citizens.
But on the other hand, women are no longer guaranteed equal treatment under one law in terms of marriage, divorce, inheritance and custody. That law, the Family Statutes Law, has been replaced one giving religious and tribal leaders the power to regulate family affairs in the areas they rule in accordance with their interpretation of religious laws.
This not only is making women more vulnerable, it is giving women from various sects (Sunni or Shia) or religion (Muslim or Christian) different legal treatments on the same issues.
 Economically, women have gone from being visibly active in the Iraqi work force in the 1980s -- particularly in the farming, marketing and professional services sectors -- to being nearly non-existent in 2013.
The women who could afford it withdrew from the public space due the violence dominating the streets. 10 years ago Iraq produced much of its own food and had a productive industrial sector -- but now Iraq imports practically all of its food, and farmers and factory workers simply found themselves out of a job as industry ground to a halt. And while both women and men suffered as a result, the impact on women was greater due to their limited mobility in the face of poor security.
 Violence against women -- and the lack of legal protection for women -- is also on the rise. Women's rights groups blame the increase in violence on the social and economic pressure that families face, the lack of public and political will to stop it, and the increase religious conservatism that often justifies the violence.
 MADRE's Yifat Susskind and Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq's Yanar Mohammed wrote a column on the status of women in Iraq this year as well:

If you talk to women in war zones anywhere, they’ll tell you that domestic violence increases in war-time. But in Iraq, violence against women has also been systematic. And unknown to most Americans, it has been orchestrated by some of the very forces that the US boosted to power.
Like religious fundamentalists everywhere, these sectarian militias and clerics have a social vision for their country that depends on subjugating women. But because the US wagered that they could deliver stability, these men were cultivated as allies in Iraq. As we now know, they never even got the stability they traded women’s rights for.
The dynamic was clearly at work in the drafting of Iraq’s constitution, heavily brokered by the US. To pass it, the US needed support from Islamist parties. They got it by trading away women’s rights. In fact, the current constitution is a huge step backwards for Iraqi women. It replaces one of the Middle East’s most expansive laws on the status of women, dating from 1959, with separate and unequal laws on the basis of sex. They subjected Iraqi women to a newly introduced Sharia law promoted in an article in the new constitution.
So the ridiculous Michelle doesn't just remain a groupie in the Cult of St. Barack,  she's also a dumb liar who thinks she can trick America into supporting war on Syria by insisting war was what Iraqi women wanted and it made their lives better.  And Women's Media Center -- Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan and Jane Fonda -- need to be called out for entering into the dangerous relationship with Lauren Wolfe.  You'd think Gloria would especially avoid that relationship which makes it appear that Women's Media Center is nothing but a government propaganda outlet -- she will never escape working for the CIA in college or the rumors that she continued working for them after college.  I do not believe she worked for them after college.  She would deny the "working for" in college but she received rewards and she did their work, including reporting back afterwards -- a detail that she bragged about repeatedly in the 60s -- check the articles from that era -- but rewrote history a decade later when the Red Stockings went public with Gloria's CIA work.  For those unfamiliar with the charges, post-college, a sort of diagram is drawn of Gloria with various CIA and CIA-linked figures.  The Red Stockings felt that feminism was being watered down in the seventies and felt Gloria had a great deal to do with it.  They began digging around and found Gloria's college CIA link.  They raised the issue publicly and it was in all of the feminist press of the era except Ms. magazine (which Gloria controlled -- though one of the charges was that Ms. was a CIA front).  Gloria ignored the charges and people began lying for Gloria.  When she finally answered the charges, after Betty Friedan had helped publicize them, she suddenly never knew it was a CIA front funding her travel until after the fact.  And the media was kind to Gloria and ran with that crap without questioning it.  The same MSM printed articles in the 60s where Gloria bragged about her work for the CIA in that era, portraying herself as some sort of Agent 99.
It's very telling that Gloria, Jane and Robin would fund a Syrian project (Wolfe's) to begin with.  Feminists should be focused on Iraq where women's rights and status suffered a tremendous blow.  You want to speak out against war, how about you chronicle the effects war has had on the lives of Iraqi women.  Instead, they've funded alarmist propaganda which, no surprise, is now being used to argue war.
Gloria, Jane and Robin are you really that stupid?  (Answer: Yes, they apparently are.)
Gloria, Jane and Robin are silent on Syria.  They won't decry an attack on it and they have funded a propaganda mill whose intent is to force action.  What's going on here?
Three elderly women have made it their goal to cure male impotency.
At the heart of the arguments for an attack on Syria is the male impotency.  Scott Lemieux (American Prospect) notes today, "At bottom, as James Fallows notes, the case for action against Syria is based on the same logical error as too many foreign-policy disasters past: we have to "do something," and military action is ... something."  That feeling of powerlessness, that heaven forbid, even men might have to feel.  Instead of telling the Peter Pans of the world to go with it, explore it, grasp it and become better humans as a result, the elderly Wendys of Jane, Robin and Gloria intend to hover the beds in the nursery at night ensuring ejaculation, no limp noodles on their watch.
There is not a need to do anything.  Syria has a civil war.  Now Spain had a civil war (1936 to 1939) and the US government stayed out of it.  Many of those Americans back then who had a side in that war traveled to Spain and fought.  That's certainly an option for Nicholas Kristof and the other saggy penises.   600,000 deaths is considered a conservative estimate of the death toll.  You can also review these stats offered by PBS for the American civil war. 
On this week's Moyers & Company (link is video and text, airs on many PBS stations across the country), Phil Donahue is the guest host and he speaks with Andrew Bacevich about an attack on Syria.  Excerpt.

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, I'm pleased to have this chance to chat with you for a lot of reasons. One, I don’t know who else has more cred than you.
What would a 23-year graduate of West Point offer us now regarding the dilemma in which Obama finds himself, regarding Syria?

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, I mean, if I could have five minutes of the president's time, I'd say, "Mr. President, the issue really is not Syria. I mean, you're being told that it's Syria. You're being told you have to do something about Syria, that you have to make a decision about Syria. That somehow your credibility is on the line."
But I'd say, "Mr. President, that's not true. The issue really here is whether or not an effort over the course of several decades, dating back to the promulgation of the Carter Doctrine in 1980, an effort that extends over several decades to employ American power, military power, overt, covert military power exercise through proxies, an effort to use military power to somehow stabilize or fix or liberate or transform the greater Middle East hasn't worked.
“And if you think back to 1980, and just sort of tick off the number of military enterprises that we have been engaged in that part of the world, large and small, you know, Beirut, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and on and on, and ask yourself, 'What have we got done? What have we achieved? Is the region becoming more stable? Is it becoming more Democratic? Are we enhancing America's standing in the eyes of the people of the Islamic world?'
"The answers are, 'No, no, and no.' So why, Mr. President, do you think that initiating yet another war, 'cause if we bomb Syria, it's a war, why do you think that initiating yet another war in this protracted enterprise is going to produce a different outcome? Wouldn't it be perhaps wise to ask ourselves if this militarized approach to the region maybe is a fool’s errand.
"Maybe it's fundamentally misguided. Maybe the questions are not tactical and operational, but strategic and political." You know, I have to say, I'm just struck by the fact that Secretary of State Kerry has become the leading proponent for war. It's our secretary of state's job apparently--


PHIL DONAHUE: He threw his medal-- he threw his medals back.


ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, that's why it's doubly ironic. 'Cause the Secretary of State is the war promoter. And that our secretary of state happens to be a guy who came into politics basically advertising himself as the guy who because of his--


PHIL DONAHUE: Understands war?


ANDREW BACEVICH: --Vietnam experiences, understands war, understands the lessons of Vietnam, and is therefore going to prevent us from doing dumb things. On the contrary, he's the lead cheerleader to go through another dumb thing.


PHIL DONAHUE: President Obama would say to you, "These are children being grossly and painfully killed."


ANDREW BACEVICH: Yeah.

PHIL DONAHUE: "How can you watch these videos with the foam coming out of the nostrils. And we've got to do something."

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, the attack is a heinous act. Now does the fact that they were killed with chemicals make it more heinous than if they were killed with conventional ammunitions? I'm not persuaded.
 I mean, I think the issue, one of the issues here, to the extent that moral considerations drive US policy, and I would say as a practical matter they don't, but let's pretend that they do to the extent that moral considerations drive US policy, there's a couple of questions to ask. One would be, "Why here and not someplace else?"
I mean, just weeks earlier, the Egyptian Army killed many hundreds of innocent Egyptians. And we sort of shook our finger at Egypt a little bit, but didn't do anything. So why act in Syria? Why not act in Egypt? I think that that needs to be sort of, that needs to be clarified.
And the other question will be, "Well, if our concerns are humanitarian, why is waging war the best means to advance a humanitarian agenda?" If indeed US policy is informed by concern for the people of Syria, let's just pretend that's the case even though I don't think it is. If it's informed by concern for the people of Syria, why is peppering Damascus with cruise missiles the best way to demonstrate that concern?
I mean, a little bit of creative statesmanship it seems to me might say that there are other things we could do that would actually benefit the people of Syria, who are suffering greatly, who are fleeing their country in the hundreds of thousands. Who are living in wretched refugee camps. Why don't we do something about that? Why wouldn't that be a better thing to do from a moral perspective than bombing Damascus?

Sidebar, it's good to see Phil back on TV and while he wanted his down time and enjoys it, it would be great to have him as the permanent guest host on Moyers' program or, if he could be talked into it, the host of his own weekly program.  That media note also lets me note that Kim Petersen continues his media critique of The Real News Network with "TRNN and Intellectual Integrity" (Dissident Voice).
UPI reports, "An intercepted order from Iran instructs militants in Iraq to hit the U.S. Embassy and other interests if a military strike on Syria occurs, U.S. officials said.  Officials said the recently intercepted message was sent by Qasem Soleimani, head of Revolutionary Guards' Qods Force, to Iranian-supported Shiite militias in Iraq, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday."  (Military Times carries a longer UPI report on this topic.)  Reuters adds the US Embassy in Baghdad is thought to be a likely target.  Hispanic Business headlines their report "Iran Orders Hit on U.S. Embassy if Syria attacked." At the US State Dept press briefing today, Matthew Lee (AP) attempted to get a statement on these reports from spokesperson Marie Harf.

QUESTION: Let’s start with embassy security personnel

MS. HARF: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: -- movements, non-evacuation, evacuations, that kind of thing.

MS. HARF: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: The – were – are the threats that exist that – or that you believe to exist to your personnel and interest in Lebanon and – or Beirut specifically and in Adana – are they related to Syria, or are they related to something else?

MS. HARF: Well, these are potential threats, as we said in the statement this morning. Obviously, the tension in region – in the region, including in Syria, plays a role in this. I think it would be obvious to most people and would be silly to think otherwise. So clearly that plays a role there, other regional tensions as well. And we’ll continue evaluating on a post-by-post basis to see if we have to take any additional steps.

QUESTION: All right. And are – but are you aware of any specific – a specific Syria-related threat to either of these posts?

MS. HARF: I am not. No. Again, we said this morning --

QUESTION: You’re not. Okay.

MS. HARF: -- that we’re concerned about tension in the region and potential threats.

QUESTION: Right. I understand.

MS. HARF: Obviously, we make decisions on a post-by-post basis for – with a variety of factors, but I’m not aware of any specifics. But again, we’re evaluating information every day, and we’ll take appropriate steps as necessary.

QUESTION: Okay. So there was a report overnight, or last night, that there had been a threat or intelligence intercept of a threat to the Embassy in Baghdad.

MS. HARF: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: Can you – and I noticed that unlike Beirut and – or unlike Lebanon and Turkey there was no new warning today, no new even internal thing that went up on the Embassy website in Baghdad. So I’m just wondering is that – does that – is that report accurate? Is there such a threat? Are you concerned about it? And if you are, is anything being done to reduce it?

MS. HARF: Well, I’m not going to comment on reports about alleged intelligence that may or may not exist. Clearly, we remain concerned in looking at the security throughout the region. Again, you noted that we have not taken any action in terms of our posts in Iraq, so I think I would probably leave it at that for now on that point. Again, we’ll keep reevaluating, but nothing to announce for any other posts at this time.

QUESTION: So it would not – can – is it safe to infer from what you’re saying that the fact that there was no change or there hasn’t been any announcement – announced change to the posture in Iraq that that means that the – that you don’t really ascribe – if there really was such a threat, you don’t ascribe much credibility to it?

MS. HARF: I’m not – I wouldn’t – I would caution you from inferring anything, I guess. What I would say is that I’m not going to comment on this alleged piece of intelligence and that we will make decisions on our posts on a day-by-day basis on a variety of information. Again, nothing to announce in terms of Baghdad.

QUESTION: Right, except that you said “nothing to announce,” and then you say you’re not going to comment on this one --

MS. HARF: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: -- alleged threat. But then you point to the fact that there hasn’t been any change in posture in Iraq.

MS. HARF: Right. There hasn’t.

QUESTION: So if you’re not trying to make us or lead us to infer --

MS. HARF: I’m just stating a couple of facts.

QUESTION: -- anything --

MS. HARF: I’m just stating a couple of facts, Matt. You can infer what you like from it, but I’m just stating the fact that there’s been no change in Baghdad and that I’m not going to comment one way or the other on that report.
An attack on Syria solves nothing.  It will cost lives, it will cost dollars.  US Labor Against The War carries the following from the National Priorities Project:
Northampton, MA – As federal lawmakers and the American people grapple with the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Syria, National Priorities Project (NPP) announces the release of a new interactive tool tracking the Cost of National Security. The site features counters displaying the real-time cost of U.S. military programs, including the Tomahawk Cruise Missile – the weapon to be used in a strike on Syria.
Tomahawk Cruise Missiles Will Cost Taxpayers $36,000 Every Hour in 2013
“In 2013, the Pentagon already plans to purchase 200 Tomahawk missiles for a total cost to U.S. taxpayers of $320 million in just one year, or over $36,000 every hour,” said Jo Comerford, Executive Director at NPP. “That cost would spike if we ultimately fired hundreds of missiles at Syria, as we did in Libya.” In 2011, U.S. forces fired 110 Tomahawk missiles in the first hour of the strike on Libya. That conflict cost the nation upwards of $1 billion.
In addition to the Tomahawk, the new Cost of National Security site displays rolling counters tracking the cost per hour of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the entire Department of Defense, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Foreign Military Aid, and Homeland Security.
The site also allows users to see the local cost of these programs for 9,900 cities and towns, and every state, Congressional District, and county in the nation. In tandem with NPP’s Trade-Offs tool, users can see what their city or town could have bought instead – from police officers to school teachers to Pell grants.
Impossible to Predict the Cost of Intervention in Syria
“Back in 2003, Bush administration officials projected $60 billion as a high-end estimate for the Iraq war,” said Mattea Kramer, NPP’s Research Director. “A decade later, the cost of the Iraq war has exceeded $800 billion – including $7 billion this year. Bottom line, right now, it’s impossible to know if military intervention in Syria will cost the U.S. $100 million or hundreds of billions.”
Little Support for Military Intervention
According to recent polling, only 26 percent of Americans support military intervention in Syria, while 40 percent favor humanitarian assistance instead. In addition to military-related spending, Cost of National Security tracks humanitarian aid and spending on a host of domestic programs. Said Comerford, “National Priorities Project created Cost of National Security to provoke a national debate about what it takes to be a secure nation.”
******************************

Jo Comerford
Executive Director
National Priorities Project
243 King Street, Suite 109
Northampton, MA 01060
413.584.9556 w
413.559.1649 c
@jcomerfordnpp
Isabel Coles and Peg Mackey (Reuters) report, "Baghdad and foreign oil companies at work in Iraq's giant oilfields are adopting extra security measures in anticipation of retaliatory attacks if the United States strikes neighbouring Syria, industry sources said on Friday."  Again, an attack on Syria solves nothing.  As Amria Mohsen (Huffington Post UK) observes:

Most importantly, we must question what the outcome of any strike on Syria would be. One would think it would be enough to see the carnage that this kind of adventurism inflicted on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. A succession of "wars on terror" and operations to "bring democracy" to Afghanistan has seen the country literally razed to the ground. Libya still remains in total chaos, whilst Iraq undoubtedly represents the greatest human tragedy of our time. Estimates put the death toll at between 100,000 and one million, with some as high as 2.7 million - again a bitter war of numbers that totally disregards the suffering inflicted upon the country. One would be remiss not to mention the effects that "humanitarian intervention" had on the city of Fallujah where the "toxic legacy of the US assault" - where there is, ironically, evidence that the US used chemical weapons - was considered, by international studies, to be "worse than Hiroshima."
Some will speak of the Syrian refugees.  They're not the only refugees in the world.  The Iraq refugee crisis continues -- internally and externally.  On internals, All Iraq News reports Parliamentary Emigration Committee Chair Liqa Wardi declared today that 110 families in Anbar Province had fled due to the violence.  National Iraqi News Agency reports Parliament's Foreign Relations Committee Chair Homam Hamoudi declared today that a military strike on Syria will not help anything and that the answer is to hold a Geneva II Conference to work towards peace.
But if, for example, your goal, like David Kilgour's, is regime change in Iran, you want war on Syria.  And it's in that context, not humanitarian concern, that Bomb-Bomb-Bomb-Iran John McCain's support for war on Syria really makes sense.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee bill (giving the White House everything it asked for) makes no sense either when you examine it.  Vote Vets' Jon Soltz (Huffington Post) points out:
Sixty-six American troops killed. Two hundred ninety-five Wounded in Action.
Are those numbers from an American combat operation? Not according to our government, which said they, and the other 50,000 troops in Iraq (which included me), were part of the "official end to Operation Iraqi Freedom and combat operations," under Operation New Dawn, after August 2010.
I thought back to that, today, as I read about one very interesting line in the Senate resolution authorizing military action in Syria, which passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Most in the media, and on the Hill, talk about how the resolution disallows American troops on the ground. That isn't true. What the bill says is, "The authority granted in section 2 does not authorize the use of the United States Armed Forces on the ground in Syria for the purpose of combat operations."
That is key. Officially, those 66 Americans killed, and 295 wounded in Iraq were not part of combat operations, either. Yet, for those of us on the ground, we knew they very much were.
Whenever we send troops to the kind of asymmetrical battlefield that we had in Iraq, and would definitely see in Syria, they are automatically combat troops. They can face attack at any time, and would have to respond appropriately, at any time. To say they will be in any kind of safe-zone, away from combat, is naïve.
On today's Free Speech Radio News, protests were noted:
Jes Burns:  The US continued its domestic and international push for military intervention in Syria today.  Peace activists across the globe, from Cairo to Kuala Lumpur, have been marching and holding rallies to oppose military involvement.  And organizers intend to keep up the pressure - more protests are scheduled today and over the weekend.  FSRN’s Mark Taylor-Canfield has more from Seattle.


Mark Taylor-Canfield:  Demonstrations are being held today in Tokyo, Honolulu, San Francisco, and Seattle to show opposition to a proposed US military strike on Syria.  The latest opinion polls show that the majority of Americans are opposed to military intervention. Activists will be gathering in downtown Seattle to hold a rally and march, and in San Francisco protesters planned to converge on Market Street during rush hour.  Protests are also being organized in Asheville, North Carolina, Tuscon, Arizona and dozens of other US cities.  Activists in Seattle are also organizing a benefit to raise funds for Syrian war refugees. According to the Interoccupy website, more than 250 rallies and direct actions for peace in Syria have been scheduled since reports of a chemical weapons attack emerged.  Mark Taylor-Canfield, FSRN, Seattle.
The  International Action Center and A.N.S.W.E.R.  are organizing a series of protests:

Now is the time for the people to step up pressure on Congress and demand that they vote NO to any resolution authorizing a military attack on Syria.

On Saturday, September 7, people are descending on Washington, D.C., for a major demonstration that will assemble at the White House and march on the Capitol Building as Congress returns to Washington, D.C., and prepares to vote. This demonstration is initiated by a broad ad hoc coalition called the Vote No War Against Syria Coalition. If you or your organization would like to be an endorser of the Sept. 7 demonstration, email votenowaronsyria@yahoo.com.

Those who can will stay over in Washington for daily demonstrations, and to maintain a round-the-clock visible anti-war presence at the U.S. Capitol building beginning Saturday, September 7 and continuing daily as Congress meets to take up and vote on the resolution.




Syria shares a border with  Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Iraq.  It's largest border is the eastern border, where Syria and Iraq meet.  Asia News reports:


War "is a terrible experience" that "we have already had" and therefore "we feel a lot closer" to Syria," said Mar Raphael Louis Sako. Speaking to AsiaNews, the Chaldean patriarch called on the bishops, priests and faithful of Iraq "to fast for peace in Syria and the Middle East."
Stressing "the suffering" of the Syrian people, His Beatitude said, "We saw a similar thing ten years ago." From hindsight, after the United States-led war in 2003 ended in Saddam Hussein's fall, "we have had neither democracy nor freedom." Instead, "confusion and security are getting worse. . . . Every day, more people die in Iraq."


Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has proposed an eight-point peace plan for Syria.  Iraqi Spring MC notes that before Nouri can resolve the crisis in Syria, he first needs to resolve the crises in Iraq.  Iraqi Spring MC is the protest movement's media outlet.  Protests have been continuous in Iraq since December 21st.  Tom Peterson (Christian Science Monitor) reports of last Saturday's protests:

Many Iraqis are worried that democracy, never firmly rooted here, is sliding away from their country. On Saturday, Iraq’s security forces stopped demonstrators from protesting against the parliament’s pension program, which activists say is excessive. In Baghdad, police closed off several main roads and bridges to stop protesters from reaching designated gathering places.
Despite the prohibition, hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in several cities where protest leaders say police beat and arrested some participants. Iraqi officials said they forbade the protests because a large gathering would have been susceptible to a terrorist attack.
“We were expecting big support from the government, because we saw the government on the media in favor of pension reforms, but instead, they beat some of our friends and arrested them. It’s shocking,” says Akeel Ahmad, a protester who could not reach the demonstration due to police checkpoints.
The ban on Saturday’s protests is the latest evidence of growing authoritarianism in Iraq.
Nouri has actively attempted to shut down the protests -- including by attacking them.  The most infamous attack would be the April 23rd massacre of a sit-in in Hawija which resulted from  Nouri's federal forces storming in.  Alsumaria noted Kirkuk's Department of Health (Hawija is in Kirkuk)  announced 50 activists have died and 110 were injured in the assault.   AFP reported the death toll rose to 53. UNICEF noted that the dead included 8 children (twelve more were injured).  While slaughtering peaceful demonstrators in public, Nouri lobbied in private to shut down the protests.  Ali Mamouri (Al-Monitor) reports:
In previous protests and in the latest one as well, the Iraqi government resorted to religious authorities to issue fatwas that forbade participation in protests, under the pretext of tough conditions in the region and in Iraq specifically.
However, Najaf’s four authorities rejected this demand and criticized the government. The latter had previously succeeded in obtaining fatwas from figures close to Iran, including Sheikh Muhammad Mahdi al-Asefi, the official representative of Khaminei in Iraq, and Muhammad Kazem al-Haeri, who is close to the Iranian leadership. Both issued fatwas warning people not to take to the streets, thus stirring even more distress.
The government made yet another attempt, when it sent a special delegation including prominent figures in the Islamic Dawa Party and the government, like Sheikh Abdel Halim Zuheiri, special adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, and Tareq Najem, former director of the prime minister’s office. A source close to the office of Muhammad Said al-Hakim told Al-Monitor that the latter received the delegation after Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani refused — a sign of anger toward the government’s constant failure and massive corruption.
According to the source, Zuheiri expressed his concern regarding the protests that are being organized by activists from several cities in Iraq and asked Hakim to assist in halting them. However, Hakim strongly opposed Zuheiri in this regard and censured the Iraqi government, asking Zuheiri, “Why didn’t you respond to the demands of the protesters instead of trying to stop protests, which are a legitimate right for everyone?”
Sistani’s official representative, Seyyed Ahmad Safi, proceeded with his criticism for the failure and corruption of the government during the Friday prayer ceremony in Karbala. Moreover, he supported the protests that were meant to be held on the following day and asked the Iraqi government to implement a clear plan to solve the situation, in case it was sincere in its attempts to overcome the current problems. Sistani had supported the demands of the protesters in the past and described them as legitimate, while asking the Iraqi government to respond to them through providing services and security and canceling any unaccepted privileges that the MPs and ministers granted themselves.
Despite Nouri's repeated attempts to kill the movement, protests continue in Iraq. Protests continue in Iraq.  Iraqi Spring MC notes protests took place in Ameriya,  Jalawla, Baji, Mosul, Baquba, Ramadi, and Baghdad.  In Babylon, Iraqi Spring MC reports Nouri's thugs have grabbed three preachers and nine worshipers. 

Turning to the US where's there no end to the revelations regarding Barack Obama's illegal spying programs. Joseph Menn (Reuters) reports, "The U.S. National Security Agency has secretly developed the ability to crack or circumvent commonplace Internet encryption used to protect everything from email to financial transactions, according to media reports citing documents obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden."  Jon Healy (Los Angeles Times) offers this call:


 The latest Edward Snowden-powered exposé published by the New York Times, ProPublica and the Guardian is, to me, the most frightening. It reveals that the National Security Agency has moved beyond its historic role as a code-breaker to become a saboteur of the encryption systems. Its work has allegedly weakened the scrambling not just of terrorists' emails but also bank transactions, medical records and communications among coworkers.

How bad is it?  CNN explains:
According to the reports, the NSA, alongside its UK equivalent, Government Communications Headquarters, better known as GCHQ, has been able to unscramble much of the encoding that protects everything from personal e-mails to banking systems, medical records and Internet chats.

The agencies' methods include the use of supercomputers to crack codes, covert measures to introduce weaknesses into encryption standards and behind-doors collaboration with technology companies and internet service providers themselves.

That's a lot of new information to absorb and sometimes the best way to understand new information is for it to be broken down into a discussion.  Yesterday evening, on KPFA's Flashpoints, guest host Kevin Pina explored the latest revelations with The Bill of Rights Defense Committee's Shahid Buttar:

Kevin Pina:  Well, Shahid, am I right in saying that people should not be complacent just because we're getting -- sort of getting used to the news now?  That we should still be concerned about this?

 Shahid Buttar: Absolutely.   You know, every day, more trickles out.  And the latest revelations that the NSA and its British counterparts have essentially cracked commercially available encryption codes has dramatic implications for everything from online commerce to our most private communications.  And it is absolutely essential that the American people stay very loud and engaged to force a long overdue change and for us to restore fundamental rights.

Kevin Pina:  Well so what does this mean that they've cracked basic encryption codes?  It means that no data can ever be secure now?

 Shahid Buttar: For all intents and purposes.  There are some strong versions of encryption that remain, at the moment, uncracked by the NSA.  But one of the implications of today's revelations is that the NSA is much further along in its crypto-analysis project to essentially de-encrypt everything than anyone at this point had realized.  There was a famous  saga from the 90s, the crypto-wars, when essentially Silicon Valley  had essentially outflanked the Pentagon and now the tides have changed and until the latest revelations no one had even realized that that had happened.

 Kevin Pina:  Well I'm also wondering, you know, there's a G-20 that's going on now and you know if it weren't for Syria pushing it off the board now, Edward Snowden would probably be high up there on the list of what Russia and the United States would be discussing.  But with Syria, there's no peep whatsoever about it, just a few mentions here and there.  But Edward Snowden did a great contribution.  Did he not make a great contribution to our understanding of exactly the full extent of NSA spying on its own citizens?

 Shahid Buttar:  No question.  Absolutely.  An enormous contribution.  The only quibble I would have is we still don't know the full extent and even the entire corpus of his disclosures would not itself about the latest revelations was the fact that the NSA describes American consumers as "adversaries"  and has worked not only to rig the international encryption standards to suit its own ends and also collaborated in secret with the tech companies to engineer vulnerabilities into their own commercially available programs but also that they'd actually employed spies -- human intelligence operatives into the tech companies which is deeply disturbing.  And the fact that all of this is happening in secret yet still available to contractors -- like Edward Snowden -- is especially disturbing.  It's disturbing in a lot of different directions.  The idea that we, the American people are paying our tax dollars to an agency that regards us as adversaries is certainly a problem in itself.

 So the selfish (and criminal) actions of the NSA have put the entire internet at risk?  Yes.  James Ball, Julian Borger and Glenn Greenwald (Guardian) report:

 "Backdoors are fundamentally in conflict with good security," said Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist and senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. "Backdoors expose all users of a backdoored system, not just intelligence agency targets, to heightened risk of data compromise." This is because the insertion of backdoors in a software product, particularly those that can be used to obtain unencrypted user communications or data, significantly increases the difficulty of designing a secure product."
This was a view echoed in a recent paper by Stephanie Pell, a former prosecutor at the US Department of Justice and non-resident fellow at the Center for Internet and Security at Stanford Law School.
"[An] encrypted communications system with a lawful interception back door is far more likely to result in the catastrophic loss of communications confidentiality than a system that never has access to the unencrypted communications of its users," she states.


AMY GOODMAN:  Glenn, welcome back to Democracy Now! We haven’t spoken to you since your partner, David Miranda, was held at Heathrow for nine hours, the airport in Britain, and we want to get to that. But first, talk about the significance of this latest exposé that both The Guardian, The New York Times and ProPublica have published today.


GLENN GREENWALD: First of all, I think there’s significance just in the partnership itself. It’s very unusual for three media organizations to work so closely on a story of this magnitude. And that happened because the U.K. government tried forcibly to prevent The Guardian from reporting on these documents by pressuring The Guardian editor-in-chief in London, Alan Rusbridger, to destroy the hard drives of The Guardian which contained these materials, which is why they ended up making their way to The New York Times and ProPublica. So I think it clearly backfired, now that there are other media organizations, including probably the most influential in the world, The New York Times, now vested in reporting on the story.
The significance of the story itself, I think, is easy to see. When people hear encryption, they often think about what certain people who are very interested in maintaining the confidentiality of their communications use, whether it be lawyers talking to their clients, human rights activists dealing with sensitive matters, people working against oppressive governments. And those people do use encryption, and it’s extremely important that it be safeguarded. And the fact that the NSA is trying to not only break it for themselves, but to make it weaker and put backdoors into all these programs makes all of those very sensitive communications vulnerable to all sorts of people around the world, not just the NSA, endangering human rights activists and democracy activists and lawyers and their clients and a whole variety of other people engaged in sensitive work.
But encryption is much more than that. Encryption is really the system that lets the Internet function as an important commercial instrument all around the world. It’s what lets you enter your credit card number, check your banking records, buy and sell things online, get your medical tests online, engage in private communications. It’s what protects the sanctity of the Internet. And what these documents show is not just that the NSA is trying to break the codes of encryption to let them get access to everything, but they’re forcing the companies that provide the encryption services to put backdoors into their programs, which means, again, that not only the NSA, but all sorts of hackers and other governments and all kinds of ill-motivated people, can have a weakness to exploit, a vulnerability to exploit, in these systems, which makes the entire Internet insecure for everybody. And the fact that it’s all being done as usual with no transparency or accountability makes this very newsworthy.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Glenn, going back to the mid-1990s in the Clinton administration, when the government tried to establish these backdoors into communications on the Internet, there was a public debate and a rejection of this. What has happened since then now in terms of how the NSA operates?
GLENN GREENWALD: Right, it’s interesting. If you go back to the mid-'90s, that debate was really spawned by the attack on Oklahoma City, which the Clinton administration—on the Oklahoma City courthouse by Timothy McVeigh, which the Clinton administration immediately exploited to try and demand that every single form of computer security or human communication on the Internet be vulnerable to government intrusion, that it all—that there be no encryption to which the governments didn't have the key. And as you said, a combination of public backlash and industry pressure led to a rejection of that proposal, and the industries were particularly incensed by it, because they said if you put backdoors into this technology, it will make it completely vulnerable. If anyone gets that key, if anybody figures out how to crack it, it will mean that there’s no security anymore on the Internet.
And so, since the NSA and the U.S. government couldn’t get its way that way, what they’ve done instead is they resorted to covert means to infiltrate these companies, to pressure and coerce them, to provide the very backdoors that they failed to compel through legislation and through public debate and accountability. And that is what this story essentially reveals, is that the entire system is now being compromised by the NSA and their British counterpart, the GCHQ, systematic efforts to ensure that there is no form of human commerce, human electronic communication, that is ever invulnerable to their prying eyes. And again, the danger is not just that they get into all of our transactions and human communications, but that they are making it much easier for all kinds of other entities to do the same thing.








 

 
 

 
 











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