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Last night there was a debate (sort of) between Bart Gellman and Michael Hayden held at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy. It's well worth watching. There were a number of people livetweeting the event (more at the end than the beginning since it started at 6pm Eastern). Hayden's attitude and body language was really something to see.
I think that Gellman won, though there was no scoring. The audience was packed and very enthusiastic. Judging by their responses, I think it's pretty hard to say that Americans in general and young Americans specifically are apathetic about this subject. It's 1.5 hours in length. At the end, there are questions from the audience. I hope there's a transcript and if there's not, I'll consider transcribing some of it and grabbing some clips because there are some classics in there. I suspect that Emptywheel and others will be parsing it for tidbits of things revealed or argued. I'll try to come back to this through the week too. The dialogue is heavy at times and sometimes hard to hear but as I said, it's well worth your time just to see the Hayden attitude on display. One thing he does show is that he's resentful of Obama for the way he reined in Hayden as head of the CIA when he told him to shut down the black sites when he came into office. The black sites are of course where renditions, interrogations and torture occurred. Hayden also threw some whoppers out there about how no wrongdoing has been exposed and he talks a lot about whether or not the American public should have any say about the details of this surveillance state.
Leakers or Whistleblowers? National Security Reporting in the Digital Age
Revelations about government subpoenas of reporters' phone records and the massive leaks of classified information by M. Sgt. Manning and Edward Snowden have brought the tension between national security reporters and U.S. national security agencies to an all time high. Is it appropriate for the government to deter leaks through aggressive prosecution of those who disclose classified information to the press? Or do these individuals play a vital role in maintaining governmental accountability by enabling the press to inform the public about important matters of national security. These topics, as well as the controversial NSA surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden, will be explored in depth in an engaging dialogue between distinguished national security reporter, Bart Gellman, and former CIA and NSA Director, Michael Hayden, on November 11, 2013 at the Sanford School of Public Policy. Gellman and Hayden will answer questions from the moderator of the event, Duke public policy professor, David Schanzer, debate the issues with each other, and take questions from the audience. The event -- Leakers or Whistleblowers: National Security Reporting in the Digital Age — will be held in the Fleishman Commons at the Sanford School and is open to the public.
I'm astounded by this.
In the U.S. 49.7 Million Are Now Poor, and 80% of the Total Population Is Near Poverty
If you live in the United States, there is a good chance that you are now living in poverty or near poverty. Nearly 50 million Americans, (49.7 Million), are living below the poverty line, with 80% of the entire U.S. population living near poverty or below it.
That near poverty statistic is perhaps more startling than the 50 million Americans below the poverty line, because it translates to a full 80% of the population struggling with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on government assistance to help make ends meet.
In September, the Associated Press pointed to survey data that told of an increasingly widening gap between rich and poor, as well as the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs that used to provide opportunities for the “Working Class” to explain an increasing trend towards poverty in the U.S.
But the numbers of those below the poverty line does not merely reflect the number of jobless Americans. Instead, according to a revised census measure released Wednesday, the number – 3 million higher than what the official government numbers imagine – are also due to out-of-pocket medical costs and work-related expenses.
Unless Social Security Is Expanded with Increased Funding, We Face An Unprecedented Crisis of Millions of Baby Boomers In Poverty
A majority of Americans, especially women and people of color, will spend their final years living in poverty in coming decades unless Social Security is improved and expanded—not cut back as Republicans and President Obama seek—and there are many fair ways to accomplish that, experts told a congressional briefing last week. ...
“There is a retirement income crisis. It’s huge. Two-thirds of working Americans cannot maintain their standard of living in retirement—and that assumes they work until 65,” said Syracuse University’s Eric Kingson, co-director of Social Security Works, which convened the day-long session with Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. “Somewhere in the discussion about Social Security we forget that its purpose is to assist the American people… The end is the kind of society we want; the kind of support we want.” ...
“We’ve seen substantial reduction in benefits,” said Dean Baker, an economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, describing how benefits have been parred back since Congress' last major revision of the law in 1983. “They come to a reduction of about 25 percent from what they were back in 1983. The idea that we have not seen a big hit to benefits is flat-out wrong.”
Baker described four ways Congress has chipped away at Social Security benefits, now averaging $1,261 a month for an individual before taxes and other expenses, such as Medicare premiums. Congress has delayed cost-of-living increases. It set those increases below the real inflation rate. It raised income taxes on Social Security and raised the age when full retirement benefits can start. ...
What was especially striking about last Tuesday’s Social Seurity briefing is that the solutions are well known by anyone who’s taken a fair-minded look at the problem. Every advocacy group present passed out reports with variations on these same remedies, a mix of progressive tax increases implemented over time, and a focused and compassionate expansion of benefits based on specific age-group and income-based needs.
Snowden and the Future - Part I: Westward the course of Empire
NSA: our analogue spying laws must catch up with the digital era
News that US intelligence services tapped the phones of allied leaders has generated understandable outrage in Europe. But far more significant is the American government's practice of monitoring the communications of millions of ordinary people, who have no legal redress in the United States because they are foreigners.
Electronic surveillance has become easy. Authorities can reconstruct someone's life with a simple request to their mobile phone provider, while the costs of storing and processing massive amounts of data have declined dramatically. We already live much of our lives through digital communications, and the trend will only accelerate, so we need swift reform, or the problems will escalate. The issue is not just our emails and mobile phones but also our calendars, address books and medical and banking records. Governments and corporations are increasingly able to track people's location, associations and communications.
Existing legal frameworks were devised in an analogue age, when cross-border communication was rare and online communication and social media were unheard of. In that pre-internet age, surveillance techniques were labour-intensive and time-consuming, which helped to constrain arbitrary and abusive practices. The law has to catch up. ...
It's time for governments to come clean about their practices, and not wait for the newest revelations. All should acknowledge a global obligation to protect everyone's privacy, clarify the limits on their own surveillance practices (including surveillance of people outside their own borders), and ensure they don't trade mass surveillance data to evade their own obligations. Of course it is important to protect security, but western allies should agree that mass, rather than narrowly targeted, surveillance is never a normal or proportionate measure in a democracy.
Cold War Kids: surveillance in Germany
A lesson in the abuse of information technology: when Edward Snowden started revealing the extent of NSA’s spying into not only US citizens private conversations, but also those of foreign individuals, government and entities, outrage fell over the world the way dominos fall all over each other, in a cascade, a cacophony of screams and gasps that were only as loud as the ignominy of the revelations themselves. Not everyone was equal in the face of seemingly impotent rage: Brazil was more vocal than a suspiciously quiet Sweden, and France tried hard to balance a diplomatic act that Germany – and more precisely, its press – thoroughly ignored. It’s become impossible to bypass the German rage, to simply take Angela Merkel’s reaction – or lack thereof – to face value. While the UK has remained more or less silent on GCHQ’s collusion, and Spain is trying to mend the broken pieces of its own intelligence shortcomings, Germany is boiling, culminating this week into an all-encompassing call to provide Edward Snowden with the political asylum he was once denied.
There are many reasons why Germany is seeing red, and one of them lies within our own lifetimes. If you are in the early thirties, you remember a time when Europe was divided by an iron curtain put in place by a paranoid and vindictive soviet empire. This paranoia was in part justified and in part an integral component to the regime it created in the DDR. It was 24 years ago, and for two whole generations, the system of surveillance implemented against Germans, both East and West, was intrusive, invasive, violating, violent, isolating, and extremely pervasive in its everyday implications: no one was immune, no trust could be built as part of the social contract, and everyone was preemptively considered a criminal. It permeated German society until nowhere and no one was safe. It created an unstable and flailing national psychology that the fall of the Wall could only begin to stabilize. And a short generation later, Germany wakes up, betrayed again, once again shackled to the whimsy of another nation’s interest, another pawn in the foreign relations chessboard on which national sovereignty is only to be invoked in the name of the war on terror. Once again, Germany loses its grasp on itself. ...
The Berlin Wall fell 24 years ago today. German citizens took their own freedom back from the state that protected its interests as opposed to those of its citizens. German citizens now seek independence from United States intelligence, shall they become, again, so soon, mere pawns on the national security chessboard. This is not security. This is abuse.
Seattle police department has network that can track all Wi-Fi enabled devices
The Seattle Police Department purchased a “mesh network” in February that will be used by emergency responders, but which will also be capable of tracking anyone with Wi-Fi enabled device.
The network is not yet turned on, according to Seattle Police, but once it is, it will be able to determine the IP address, device type, downloaded applications, current location, and historical location of any device that searches for a Wi-Fi signal. The network is capable of storing that information for the previous 1,000 times a particular device attempted to access a Wi-Fi signal.
Jamela Debelak, of the American Civil Liberties Union (ALCU), is worried that police will use the network for more than just coordinating emergency responders. “They now own a piece of equipment that has tracking capabilities so we think that they should be going to City Council and presenting a protocol for the whole network that says they won’t be using it for surveillance purposes,” she told KIRO 7.
Will Jeh Johnson Make the Homeland More Secure?
Jeh Johnson, President Obama’s pick to replace outgoing Secretary Janet Napolitano as head of the Department of Homeland Security, will appear before the Senate Homeland Security Committee this week for his confirmation hearing. Johnson is an obscure figure to the general public, but his likely confirmation does not bode well for human rights, or your civil liberties. Johnson is civil and criminal trial lawyer who made millions defending corporations such as Citigroup and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. His government positions included a stint as New York assistant US attorney and general counsel for the Pentagon from 2009 to 2012, during President Obama’s first term. ...
One reason for Johnson’s unexpected nomination might well have to do with money. He was a heavy-weight fundraiser for Obama, raising more than $200,000 during Obama’s first campaign for office, according to USA Today reported in 2009. During the 2008 race, Obama's campaign website listed Johnson as a member of his national finance committee. Federal records show that Johnson has personally contributed over $100,000 to Democratic groups and candidates, including influential senators such as Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin and James Clyburn. ...
Johnson might also be receiving a kick upstairs for having been an unapologetic supporter and enabler of President Obama’s policy of drone warfare. His tenure at the Defense Department was marked by a dramatic increase in US drone strikes by both the military and the CIA. Johnson himself was personally responsible for providing the legal rationale for the military’s involvement in the drone program, and those legal memos remain hidden from the public and most of the Congress. ...
To the great dismay of civil rights advocates, Johnson also argued that U.S. citizens could be targeted in strikes. "Belligerents who also happen to be U.S. citizens do not enjoy immunity where noncitizen belligerents are valid military objectives," he said in a speech at Yale Law School. Johnson put his legal rationale into practice by authorizing the execution of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen and Al-Qaeda supporter who was killed by a drone strike in Yemen in September 2011. Johnson's support of drone warfare could bolster the Department of Homeland Security's effort to beef up its fleet of domestic drones, including Predator drones, with "nonlethal weapons."
At a 2011 Pentagon commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr., Johnson made the controversial statement that King would have supported the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that our nation's military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack,” he claimed. This is the same Dr. King who called the US was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, the same Dr. King who said that a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
The Untold Story of War: U.S. Veterans Face Staggering Epidemic of Unemployment, Trauma & Suicide
Libyan separatists take over oil exports as PM warns of foreign intervention
A separatist Libyan region has announced an establishment of an independent oil company after taking over several commercial sea ports. As Tripoli struggles to regain control, the PM has warned of foreign intervention unless central govt rule is restored.
On Monday, protesters told staff at Mellitah port, in Libya's north, to cease gas exports to Italy as parliament and government had not given in to demands for wider political rights. ...
In the latest display of lawlessness since colonel Gaddafi‘s assassination and foreign invasion, an autonomy movement has seized several ports and plans to sell crude oil, as Tripoli is trying to regain the facility.
In the eastern Cyrenaica region, militias and local tribal leaders are trying to create a loose federal system of government, sharing power with Fezzan, the south western region of Libya.
The prime minister of the self-proclaimed Cyrenaica government made a live announcement on nationwide television claiming that an oil firm has been set up in Tobruk next to the Hariga port where the locals on Friday refused to allow a government-chartered tanker to load 600,000 barrels of oil bound for Italy. ...
The creation of a separatist oil firm that will be responsible for oil exports was undertaken alongside a plan to set up an eastern central bank as a mix of militias and tribes seek more autonomy.
For the First Time Ever, a Prosecutor Will Go to Jail for Wrongfully Convicting an Innocent Man
Today in Texas, former prosecutor and judge Ken Anderson pled guilty to intentionally failing to disclose evidence in a case that sent an innocent man, Michael Morton, to prison for the murder of his wife. When trying the case as a prosecutor, Anderson possessed evidence that may have cleared Morton, including statements from the crime's only eyewitness that Morton wasn't the culprit. Anderson sat on this evidence, and then watched Morton get convicted. While Morton remained in prison for the next 25 years, Anderson's career flourished, and he eventually became a judge.
In today's deal, Anderson pled to criminal contempt, and will have to give up his law license, perform 500 hours of community service, and spend 10 days in jail. Anderson had already resigned in September from his position on the Texas bench.
What makes today's plea newsworthy is not that Anderson engaged in misconduct that sent an innocent man to prison. Indeed, while most prosecutors and police officers are ethical and take their constitutional obligations seriously, government misconduct--including disclosure breaches known as Brady violations--occurs so frequently that it has become one of the chief causes of wrongful conviction.
What's newsworthy and novel about today's plea is that a prosecutor was actually punished in a meaningful way for his transgressions.
Anti-LGBT groups acquire enough signatures to repeal California law protecting transgender students
Opponents of a controversial new California law that protects the rights of transgender students appear to have acquired the 500,000 signatures required to have an initiative to repeal it placed on the ballot. ...
Groups like the Faith and Public Policy Center and the Pacific Justice Institute insist that the law allows any male who claims to be transgender to have full access to female facilities, and that this has led to a string of incidents that include everything from harassment to rape.
No such incidents have been found in either school records or police reports.
The talks between the US (and 5+1 countries) and Iran are interesting for a lot of reasons but one of them is the way Iran is using social media, Twitter particularly. Their foreign minister who was at the talks has a confirmed Twitter account but three others are very active and for weird reasons, that I don't understand exactly, they can't officially confirm their accounts to Twitter like most celebrities and officials do but they have confirmed them in other ways and nobody doubts that these are the accounts of Rouhani and believe it or not the "supreme" leader Ayatollah Khomeini. It's really worth watching. Iran seems to be attempting to break through the heavily biased media reporting and alleged mistranslations of their words by going straight to the people via Twitter and I would say that it's working. Also, yesterday, Glenn Greenwald endorsed another Twitter user who lives in Brooklyn as someone to watch for good analysis, @WideAsleepZima.
This is Zarif, the foreign minister.
This is their nuclear energy department, I assume. Rouhani retweets messages from this account.
This is Rouhani's account, which we've seen before during the UN general assembly.
And this is the Ayatollah's account, which really blows my mind.
I found this to be a really informative article on antiwar.com about the negotiations. It might be considered controversial but I think it's well worth reading, especially for the clearly explained background information.
Saudi Arabia and Israel Try To Derail Nuclear Negotiations With Iran by Terrorism
Ever since Hassan Rouhani was elected Iran’s President on 14 June 2013 and promised that he will lead a government of "hope and prudence," the United States’ most important allies in the Middle East – Saudi Arabia and Israel – and their lobbies here have been doing their best to prevent any agreement between Iran and the Obama administration regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Israel and its lobby in the United States have succeeded in persuading Washington to impose the most crippling economic sanctions on Iran, disrupting and threatening the lives of tens of millions of ordinary Iranians. But that has not been enough for Israel. It wants Iran to surrender its national sovereignty and its rights under Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty that gives Iran the right to peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Thus, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been on an increasingly desperate diplomatic offensive to "prove" that Iran is not sincere in its effort to reach a nuclear agreement. After cynically calling the efforts by Iran’s new administration "a charm offensive;" referring to President Rouhani "a wolf in sheep’s clothing;" mentioning Iran 70 times and Rouhani – not Mr. Rouhani or President Rouhani – 25 times in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly meeting (while barely mentioning Israel’s war on the Palestinians); foolishly becoming an advocate of "democracy" for the Iranian people by declaring that if the Iranian youth were free, they would wear jeans and listen to Western music – which created a huge backlash by the Iranians (see here, here, and here), telling Netanyahu to first address democracy for the Palestinian people – and repeating his absurd claim that "Iran is preparing for another Holocaust," Netanyahu threatened once again that if forced to, Israel will attack Iran alone.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has also let the world know that it is angry at the Obama administration for not attacking Syria, for imposing military sanctions on the military junta in Egypt even though they are insignificant, and for trying to reach a diplomatic resolution of the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program. Never mind that Secretary of State John Kerry just said the other day that "Egyptians are following the right path." This is a path that was paved by the junta overthrowing Egypt’s democratically-elected government and President Mohamed Morsi. Never mind that President Obama changed his mind about attacking Syria after the huge worldwide backlash against his threats of military attacks.
This is the very controversial move that everyone is talking about. Who scuttled the talks? Early on it seemed clear that it was France. But after the fact, Kerry blamed it on Iran. Iran's supporters are not surprised but Iran's officials are not accepting this redirection of blame. I tend to believe the Iranians on this one, though that feels very strange to me. But the explanations about Saudi Arabia and Israel trying to derail any deal and using France as their proxy makes sense, is based on logic. Iran suddenly derailing the deal after seemingly working so hard to negotiate, and given what they have on the line, makes no sense.
Kerry: Iran deal unfinished because Iranians need to consult with leaders in Tehran
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry said here Monday that international talks over Iran’s disputed nuclear programs last weekend in Geneva ended with no deal in place because the Iranians were unable to accept the proposed terms without seeking additional approval in Tehran.
“There is still a gap in what they’re able to accept,” Kerry said of the Iranian delegation headed by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Other officials indicated that Iran was concerned about specific restrictions on its uranium-enrichment program and ongoing construction of a heavy-water reactor, whose spent nuclear fuel could be reprocessed to yield plutonium, which can be used in nuclear weapons.
Kerry, speaking at a news conference during a stop in this United Arab Emirates capital , denied reports that his negotiating partners from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union opposed some of the specifics of the draft agreement.
Haaretz.
Israel should seek the achievable rather than waging an unwinnable, all-out war with Washington
The ferocity of Israel’s onslaught against the emerging pact with Iran threatens to return Netanyahu and Obama to their bad old days of yesteryear./strong>
Over the past weekend of soaring emotions, Washington sold us out, President Barack Obama was declared Neville Chamberlain’s successor and Secretary of State John Kerry was branded as an out-and-out enemy of the Jewish people. And to add just a bit of loony to the crazy, France suddenly turned into a stalwart ally of Israel, through thick and thin.
Even though he continued his harsh offensive against the emerging deal with Iran on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to be turning down the heat of the disturbing outbursts that he exhibited on Friday, at the very same time that, according to his advisers, he was feeling the American knife imbedding in his back.
The ferocity of Netanyahu’s rage, accompanied as it was by a volley of protests and insults hurled by many Israeli politicians and commentators, astonished many Administration officials in Washington and surprised some of its detractors as well. No one denies Netanyahu’s right to vigorously protest against an agreement he views as “bad and dangerous,” but the talk of perfidy and betrayal harkened back to the dark period in relations between Obama and Netanyahu, before the former’s March 2013 trip to Israel and while the latter was still suspected of trying to get Mitt Romney elected in Obama's stead.
Action
Stop Watching Us.
The revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance apparatus, if true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights. We demand the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA's spying programs.
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