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Photos by: joanneleon. August 15, 2013.
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Burn Down The Mission - Elton John (Tumbleweed Connection)
News & Opinion
Jack Goldsmith, assistant Attorney General from the Bush administration and was a law prof at Univ. of Chicago, now a Harvard law prof. It was reported that the Obama admin is looking to use Kosovo as a legal precedent for attacking Syria. The problem is that Kosovo was specifically not supposed to ever be used as a precedent. To attack another country you either have to have a self defense reason or the UN Security Council's approval. We've got neither on Syria. To attack them would be blatantly illegal.
The Kosovo Precedent for Syria Isn’t Much of a Precedent
But Kosovo is not much of a precedent, at least if the administration wants to satisfy international law. The intervention in Kosovo, like the one that might take place in Syria, was an ostensible humanitarian intervention that occurred without Security Council support and that was not justified on self-defense. (These similarities are why Kosovo is being studied.) As such, the Kosovo bombings were impossible to square with the U.N. Charter. Moreover, many supporters of the intervention worried at the time that (as Anthea Roberts put it) “recognizing a right of unilateral humanitarian intervention would lead to abuse,” and thus “that such uses of force should remain illegal but that the law should turn a blind eye to breaches in particular cases, such as Kosovo.” Along these lines, the best that can be said of the Kosovo campaign is that it was – in the words of the Independent International Commission on Kosovo – “illegal, yet legitimate.”
It wasn’t just legal scholars and international jurists went out of their way to emphasize that Kosovo was not a precedent for lawful humanitarian interventions. So too did U.S. officials. When questioned in 1999 whether it was “possible to see the repetition of the Kosovo precedent of the use of force against a nation in other regions?,” Secretary of State Albright said that Kosovo “was a unique situation sui generis in the region of the Balkans.” Mike Matheson, a senior lawyer in the State Department, was more explicit. Discussing the U.S. view on the international legality of the Kosovo intervention, he said (my emphasis) that “many NATO states – including the United States – had not accepted the doctrine of humanitarian intervention as an independent legal basis for military action that was not justified by self-defense or the authorization of the Security Council.”
Syria: Cameron and Obama move west closer to intervention
British prime minister and US president agree that alleged chemical attack 'requires a response'
David Cameron and Barack Obama moved the west closer to military intervention in Syria on Saturday as they agreed that last week's alleged chemical weapon attacks by the Assad regime had taken the crisis into a new phase that merited a "serious response".
In a phone call that lasted 40 minutes, the two leaders are understood to have concluded that the regime of Bashar al-Assad was almost certainly responsible for the assault that is believed to have killed as many as 1,400 people in Damascus in the middle of last week. Cameron was speaking from his holiday in Cornwall.
The prime minister and US president said time was running out for Assad to allow UN weapons inspectors into the areas where the attack took place. Government sources said the two leaders agreed that all options should be kept open, both to end the suffering of the Syrian people and to make clear that the west could not stand by as chemical weapons were used on innocent civilians.
The conservative Telegraph. They are noticing the same political peculiarities across the pond that we are noticing here when it comes to the Snowden files stories. IMHO, that's because the divides don't fall along political lines. It's a lot more complicated than that. And then again, it's a lot simpler. Nobody likes being spied on. So who exactly is defending this? Anyway, I find this encouraging and kind of hilarious in gallows humor kind of way. I've noticed a number of journalists talking about the relative silence on the whole thing in Britain. Maybe that's about to change. Brilliant move with the overreach, guys, grabbing Miranda in the Heathrow transit zone and smashing the Guardian's computers! Whoa, she doesn't mince words here. Anyway, a must read.
It's Left-wing prats who are defending our freedoms
The visit by national security agents to smash up computers at the Guardian newspaper is shocking, like something out of East Germany in the 1970s
A few weeks ago, a British national newspaper was visited by a detachment of national security agents who demanded that its computers and hard drives be destroyed. The security men then stood over its staff while they smashed their equipment to pieces. In the peace-time history of a free country, this incident is about as shocking as it gets. And yet, a remarkable consensus has grown up, including – I’m sorry to say – many on my side of the political fence, to the effect that this is no big deal.
The reasons that this scene – which looks, on the face of it, like something out of East Germany in the 1970s – is apparently perfectly acceptable seem to be: a) the data in the computers was a threat to the national security of this country and to that of our American allies; b) this information was stolen from the US government and published illegally by people who are narcissistic/eccentric/of dubious political judgment, and c) the newspaper in question was the Guardian, which is full of annoying Left-wing prats. Let’s consider these points in order of importance.
David Miranda's detention is a threat to press freedom, say European editors
Newspapers urge prime minister to restore Britain's reputation for free press after holding of Guardian journalist's partner
In an open letter to David Cameron published in today's Observer, the editors of Denmark's Politiken, Sweden's Dagens Nyheter, Norway's Aftenposten and Finland's Helsingin Sanomat describe the detention of David Miranda, the partner of the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, as harassment.
They say that the "events in Great Britain over the past week give rise to deep concern" and call on the British prime minister to "reinstall your government among the leading defenders of the free press".
[...]
Meanwhile it has emerged that the US government's efforts to determine which highly classified materials Snowden took from the NSA have been frustrated by the former contractor's sophisticated efforts to cover his digital trail.
The Associated Press reported that the US government investigation is examining whether Snowden was able to defeat safeguards established to deter people looking at information without proper permission by deleting or bypassing electronic logs.
In July, nearly two months after Snowden's earliest disclosures, the NSA director, Keith Alexander, declined to say whether he had established what Snowden had downloaded or how many NSA files he had taken with him.
The latest disclosure undermines the Obama administration's assurances to Congress and the public that the NSA surveillance programs cannot be abused because its spying systems are so aggressively monitored and audited.
I believe that open letters can be republished in full. If not, someone please give me a heads up and I'll cut this back to fair use guidelines.
Press freedom: an open letter to David Cameron from Nordic editors
While domestic security must be upheld, it is equally important to protect open public debate
We know that you will agree that one of the hallmarks of free and open democracies is a vivid public debate addressing all fundamental aspects of society, including the balance and possible conflict between the legitimate security concerns of governments and the protection of privacy and the free press. We all understand both the imperative to uphold domestic security and the equally important imperative to protect our open public debate about the limits to and legal implications of these efforts. The debate is not a sign of weakness of our democracies. It is the basis of our strength.
Against this backdrop, events in Great Britain over the past week give rise to deep concern. We may differ on where to draw the line and strike the right balance, but we should not differ in our determination to protect an open debate about these essential questions. Also, we should stand united to protect individuals engaging in such debates within the parameters of democracy and the rule of law.
The free press plays a crucial role in this regard, also in situations where information revealed by the press is most inconvenient to governments and the intelligence community. We are surprised by the recent acts by officials of your government against our colleagues at the Guardian and deeply concerned that a stout defender of democracy and free debate such as the United Kingdom uses antiterror legislation in order to legalise what amounts to harassment of both the paper and individuals associated with it. Moreover, it is deeply disturbing that the police have now announced a criminal investigation. We hope this is not to be seen as a step against journalists doing journalism.
The implication of these acts may have ramifications far beyond the borders of the UK, undermining the position of the free press throughout the world.
Mr Prime Minister, we hope that you will soon act to rectify this and reinstall your government among the leading defenders of the free press and an open debate in accordance with the proud tradition of your country.
Bo Lidegaard
Executive editor-in-chief
Politiken, Denmark
Peter Wolodarski
Executive editor-in-chief
Dagens Nyheter, Sweden
Hilde Haugsgjerd
Executive editor-in-chief
Aftenposten, Norway
Riikka Venäläinen
Editor-in-chief
Helsingin Sanomat, Finland
Readout of the President’s Meeting with the National Security Council Regarding the Reported Use of Chemical Weapons in Syria
Readout of the President’s Meeting with the National Security Council Regarding the Reported Use of Chemical Weapons in Syria
President Obama convened a meeting of his National Security Council today to discuss the reported use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government on Wednesday, August 21 near Damascus. In coordination with international partners and mindful of the dozens of contemporaneous witness accounts and record of the symptoms of those killed, the U.S. intelligence community continues to gather facts to ascertain what occurred. The President also received a detailed review of a range of potential options he had requested be prepared for the United States and the international community to respond to the use of chemical weapons.
Participants in today’s meeting included:
The Vice President
Secretary of State John Kerry
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel
White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Samantha Power
National Security Advisor Susan Rice
White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Brennan
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey
Deputy Attorney General James Cole
Deputy National Security Advisor Antony Blinken
Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Lisa Monaco
Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Benjamin Rhodes
National Security Advisor to the Vice President Jacob Sullivan
Action
From the Imgur Public Gallery
"Brits are asleep. Post pics of driving on the right.'"
Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
The Evening Blues
Out of Control NSA Spied on U.N., E.U.
Events in Syria Lead Back to Israeli Report of Imminent US-Led Attack from Jordan
NSA Review Panel Member Advocated Infiltrating Social Media To 'Increase Faith In Government'
script
Observer front page: Cameron and Obama on the brink of Syria intervention http://t.co/...
— Guardian news (@guardiannews) August 24, 2013
More Tunes
Come Down In Time - Elton John (Tumbleweed Connection)