Tag: ek Politics

Andrew Bacevich

Extended

Transcript

Chaos in Iraq

“We have been engaged in the Islamic world at least since 1980, in a military project based on the assumption that the adroit use of American hard power can somehow pacify or fix this part of the world. We can now examine more than three decades of this effort.

Let’s look at what U.S. military intervention in Iraq has achieved, in Afghanistan has achieved, in Somalia has achieved, in Lebanon has achieved, in Libya has achieved. I mean, ask ourselves the very simple question. Is the region becoming more stable? Is it becoming more democratic? Are we alleviating, reducing the prevalence of anti-Americanism?”

Fair Taxes for All

How Tax Reform Can Save the Middle Class

It’s just a Nobel Prize.  What does he know about Economics?

Ukraine

Il Papa

Ganja

Hillary, Hillary

Inequality

I’m no expert and who believes them anyway?  Normally I support my opinions by quoting sources, these are my naked oservations.

Iraq is collapsing.  The Kurds are carving out their Kurdistan.  The Sunni are reclaiming their Assyria.  Persia is asserting its empire (not called the Persian Gulf for nothing).

In short the artificial divisions imposed by French and British Colonialism are dissolving.

Is this a good thing?  As Mao famously said of whether the invention of fire was good for the Chinese people- “Too soon to tell.”

Was this predicatble, in that nobody could have predicted except Tom Clancy kind of way?

Pfft.

Everybody predicted it.

Would a U.S. troop prescence have prevented it?  Can U.S. military action undo it?

The British ruled India for 300 years.  After they left a great civil war divided the territory along ethnic and sectarian lines.  How long should they have stayed?

No.

In conjunction with American Express of all people.

Vodafone reveals existence of secret wires that allow state surveillance

Juliette Garside, The Guardian

Thursday 5 June 2014

The company said wires had been connected directly to its network and those of other telecoms groups, allowing agencies to listen to or record live conversations and, in certain cases, track the whereabouts of a customer. Privacy campaigners said the revelations were a “nightmare scenario” that confirmed their worst fears on the extent of snooping.

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Direct-access systems do not require warrants, and companies have no information about the identity or the number of customers targeted. Mass surveillance can happen on any telecoms network without agencies having to justify their intrusion to the companies involved.

Industry sources say that in some cases, the direct-access wire, or pipe, is essentially equipment in a locked room in a network’s central data centre or in one of its local exchanges or “switches”.

…

Vodafone is calling for all direct-access pipes to be disconnected, and for the laws that make them legal to be amended. It says governments should “discourage agencies and authorities from seeking direct access to an operator’s communications infrastructure without a lawful mandate”.

All states should publish annual data on the number of warrants issued, the company argues. There are two types – those for the content of calls and messages, and those for the metadata, which can cover the location of a target’s device, the times and dates of communications, and the people with whom they communicated.

For brevity, the Guardian has also used the term metadata to cover warrants for customer information such as name and address. The information published in our table covers 2013 or the most recent year available. A single warrant can target hundreds of individuals and devices, and several warrants can target just one individual. Governments count warrants in different ways and New Zealand, for example, excludes those concerning national security. While software companies like Apple and Microsoft have jumped to publish the number of warrants they receive since the activities of America’s NSA and Britain’s GCHQ came to light, telecoms companies, which need government licences to operate, have been slower to respond.

Vodafone Reveals Government Agencies Have Direct Access To Its Network Around The World, No Warrants Required

by Glyn Moody, TechDirt

Fri, Jun 6th 2014

The Guardian story has lots of new information, and is well-worth reading. It includes a table that shows the number of warrants issued last year for legal interception of content, on a country-by-country basis. There are some surprises here — for example, the fact that the Australian government issued 685,757 warrants for metadata, which is even more than the UK’s 514,608 warrants, despite the fact that Australia has well under half the population of the UK. There are other fascinating details in the Vodafone Law Enforcement Disclosure Report itself. For example, it contains this explanation about what exactly a warrant might encompass these days:

Each warrant can target any number of different subscribers. It can also target any number of different communications services used by each of those subscribers and — in a modern and complex all-IP environment — it can also target multiple devices used by each subscriber to access each communications service. Additionally, the same individual can be covered by multiple warrants: for example, more than one agency or authority may be investigating a particular individual. Furthermore, the legal framework in some countries requires agencies and authorities to obtain a new warrant for each target service or device, even if those services or devices are all used by the same individual of interest. Note that in the majority of countries, warrants have a time-limited lifespan beyond which they must either be renewed or allowed to lapse.

As people’s digital lives grow more complex and the number of communications devices and services used at home and work on a daily basis continues to increase, the ratio of target devices and services accessed to warrants issued will continue to increase. To illustrate this with a hypothetical example:

a single warrant targets 5 individuals;

each individual subscribes to an average of eight different communications services provided by up to eight different companies: a landline phone line, a mobile phone, two email accounts, two social networking accounts and two “cloud”; storage accounts; and

each individual owns, on average, two communications devices fitted with a SIM card (a smartphone and a tablet) in addition to a landline phone and a laptop.

In the hypothetical example above, that one warrant could therefore be recorded as more than 100 separate instances of agency and authority access to individual services on individual devices used by individual subscribers.

That means that the number of warrants listed in the Vodafone report, and collected in the Guardian table mentioned above, is likely to be a significant underestimate of the total number of acts of surveillance being conducted.

…

Direct access, as revealed by Vodafone, not only allows governments real-time access to enormous quantities of private communications data, but does so in a way that hides the fact that the interception is taking place at all, even to the companies involved. As Vodafone notes, introducing the requirement for a warrant for all such interception would make it much easier for companies to resist, alert the public to the sheer scale of the surveillance being carried upon them, and probably act as a natural brake on governments. Direct access to the network represents a huge exacerbation of the dangers of government surveillance: it is simply too easy to “collect it all.” Vodafone’s disclosure report is an important step towards changing that; the “other telecoms groups” mentioned above should now follow suit by issuing their own.

In The Guardian piece referenced above there’s also this information-

In Albania, Egypt, Hungary, India, Malta, Qatar, Romania, South Africa and Turkey, it is unlawful to disclose any information related to wiretapping or interception of the content of phone calls and messages including whether such capabilities exist.

Which I think serves as an introduction to this from Marcy Wheeler-

Those Cable Landings Chelsea Manning Didn’t Leak

By emptywheel

Published June 4, 2014

While the BT/Vodaphone details are worth clicking through to read, I’m particularly interested in the focus on the base in Oman. (See an interactive map of the cable landings here.)

…

The Brits would have you believe – and I have no reason to doubt them – that this cable landing in Oman is one of the key points in their surveillance infrastructure.

I raise this because of a cable listing the globe’s critical infrastructure – and fearmongering surrounding it – that Chelsea Manning leaked to Wikileaks. As I noted at the time, while the cable lists a slew of cable landings as critical infrastructure sites – including the Hibernia Atlantic undersea cable landing in Dublin, which gets mentioned in the Register story – it does not list a single cable landing site in the Middle East.

…

Note, Bahamas’ telecom, which recent reporting has also noted is critical to NSA’s spying, also gets no mention.

That’s not surprising in the least. The cable (and the list) is classified Secret. NSA and GCHQ’s prime collection points are (as the Register notes) classified several levels above Top Secret.

And while the list provided some indication of what sites were significant by their absence, it’s likely that the sites that were listed were the relatively unimportant sites.

At trial, Manning’s lawyers repeatedly point out that she had chosen not to leak stuff from JWICS, which would be classified at a higher level. The stuff she leaked, which she got on SIPRNET, was by definition less sensitive stuff.

I don’t mean to suggest this reflects on the relative value of what either Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning leaked. I think it is a good indication, though, of how unfounded a lot of the fear mongering surrounding this particular leaked cable was.

(Part 1)

Former Chief of Navy SEALs Finds Keystone XL an Easy Terror Target

By Brad Wieners, Business Week

June 04, 2014

Hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer, a climate change activist and staunch opponent of the prospective 1,179-mile pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to Cushing, Okla., has hired retired Navy SEAL chief David “Dave” Cooper to assess how vulnerable the Keystone XL might be to deliberate sabotage. In a 14-page report made public today (but redacted to keep it from being a playbook for aspiring terrorists), Cooper concludes that a small group of evildoers could easily cause a catastrophic spill of millions of gallons of diluted bitumen, or tar sands crude, from the Keystone XL. They could do it with as little as four pounds of commercial-grade, improvised explosives. Cooper even did a dry run, using the completed Keystone I pipeline as a proxy; he hung out at a critical valve station long enough to content himself that he could have planted some explosives and left without a hitch.

In what Cooper deems “the most likely scenario,” a single attack could result in 1.2 million gallons of Alberta crude tarring Nebraska farms and waterways. He calculated this using published emergency shutdown response times and pipeline flow forecasts from the government and TransCanada (TRP:CN), the company that wants to build and operate the line. A coordinated attack at multiple locations, Cooper suggests, could trigger a 7.24 million gallon flood.

…

Cooper is a highly decorated, 25-year veteran of the special forces and ran the elite unit known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group that’s far better known as “SEAL Team Six.” He declines to give details, but he served in Afghanistan and Yemen and was in the unit’s command during the rescue of Maersk Alabama Captain Richard Phillips off Somalia and the killing of Osama bin Laden. He was the top-ranking enlisted SEAL at Dam Neck Annex, in Virginia Beach, until his retirement in 2012.

Former Navy SEAL Commander Says Keystone XL Would Be Extremely Vulnerable To Terrorist Attack

By Ryan Koronowski, Think Progress

June 5, 2014 at 12:08 pm

Throughout Keystone XL’s approval process, both proponents and opponents have paid a lot of attention to pipeline safety. Some say that pipelines are safer than shipping oil by rail, while others point to pipeline explosions, spills, leaks, and failures that threaten aquifers, sensitive lands, and populous areas. The security vulnerabilities of the pipeline receive little mention. In fact, Cooper points out that the detailed discussion of how safe a completed Keystone XL pipeline would be actually provides detailed information to would-be criminals, saboteurs, or terrorists like the route, vulnerable areas, and the thickness of the pipeline. Even though much of this disclosure is unavoidable – on the part of owners and government officials – Cooper said it was “concerning” that neither spoke much about security.

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He conducted a “red cell scenario” analysis of a domestic pipeline’s security vulnerabilities, accessing only the information available to someone with an internet connection and no inside knowledge from TransCanada or government. This involved a site visit to one existing pipeline – Keystone 1 – to ascertain how easy it would be for someone to gain access to a completed Keystone XL pipeline. This was done as a “cold shot,” meaning a mock penetration of a target with no practice or notification and very little planning. Cooper just went to the small town of Stanton, Nebraska and walked up to the pipeline.

He wrote that he was able to “stand at a Keystone 1 pump station for over 15 minutes snapping photos,” and “was not approached, questioned, or ever noticed.”

The assessment “found that a handful of terrorists could use just four pounds of explosives at each of the three pump facilities located [REDACTED] to cause explosives that could trigger a catastrophic spill of 7.24 million gallons of dilbit (with its highly toxic chemicals).” In the most damaging scenarios depicting a coordinated attack across dozens of miles of pipeline, several explosions at pump stations would cause 60 percent of the oil in those sections of pipeline to spill. Worryingly, it would take eleven and a half minutes to shut down the pipeline to stop the flow. Both of those numbers came directly, according to Mr. Cooper, from TransCanada’s own estimates. He used this to calculate that the amount could reach 8.21 million gallons.

Questions Raised About Integrity of Keystone XL’s Southern Route After Conditions Added for Northern Leg

By Julie Dermansky, DeSmogBlog

Thursday, 05 June 2014 09:36

The new conditions weren’t based solely on the construction issues found in the southern route of the pipeline, now called the Gulf Coast pipeline. They were the result of “observations in the field during construction projects from several pipeline operators over the past few years,” Damon Hill, spokesperson for PHMSA, told the Associated Press.

The new conditions were based on “systemic problems regulators found in the pipeline industry, not just the Keystone XL’s southern route,” Richard Kurpewicz, president of Accufacts Inc., a consulting firm that provides pipeline expertise, told DeSmogBlog.

…

Fairchild and Crawford are part of a group of landowners who live with the southern route of the Keystone XL pipeline on their property and who, along with environmentalists, met with Roderick Seeley, director of the Southwest Region of PHMSA, to ask questions about the inspection process they witnessed in January.

The group presented documentation of shoddy construction practices and questioned the regulators about their absence during the pipeline installation and repair process. PHMSA representatives conceded they don’t have enough inspectors to watch everything but said, despite their absence in the field, they have “faith in the process.”

“At the meeting, PHMSA assured us that all the problems we referenced had been fixed, even though that assertion was based almost entirely on taking TransCanada’s word for it,” the Tar Sands Blockade recently wrote on its blog. “PHMSA’s inspections only occurred an average of 2-3 times per month.”

The group that attended the meeting requested that a new pressure test of the pipeline be done to test the welds on the numerous repairs. A pressure test can pinpoint faulty girth welds. For each repair that required a segment of pipe be replaced, new girth welds were made.

“If girth welds fail, there is the danger of a rupture,” Kurpewicz told DeSmogBlog.

Evan Vokes, a former TransCanada mechanical engineer turned whistleblower, points out: “Flaws in girth welds are not easy to catch, so each new section introduced into the pipeline adds another potential weakest link.” He too believes a new pressure test is merited.

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“We have very few tools to work with,” Jeffrey Wiese, PHMSA’s safety official, told industry insiders at a pipeline safety conference in New Orleans in 2013,  according to an Inside Climate News report. But that doesn’t explain why regulators did nothing more than issue warning letters to TransCanada after identifying code violations, opting not to fine or sanction the company.

Vokes doubts the new conditions will change anything. “If sanctions are not levied, there will be no improvement in the system,” he said.

“If PHMSA believes the public is in danger, they have the power to shut down a project,” Kurpewicz told DeSmogBlog.

Nope, more complicated than that.

What Excuse Remains for Obama’s Failure to Close GITMO?

By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

3 Jun 2014, 9:18 AM EDT

The excuse-making on behalf of President Obama has always found its most extreme form when it came time to explain why he failed to fulfill his oft-stated 2008 election promise to close Guantanamo. As I’ve documented many times, even the promise itself was misleading, as it became quickly apparent that Obama – even in the absence of congressional obstruction – did not intend to “close GITMO” at all but rather to re-locate it, maintaining its defining injustice of indefinite detention.

But the events of the last three days have obliterated the last remaining excuse. In order to secure the release of American POW Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the Obama administration agreed to release from Guantanamo five detainees allegedly affiliated with the Taliban. But as even stalwart Obama defenders such as Jeffery Toobin admit, Obama “clearly broke the law” by releasing those detainees without providing Congress the 30-day notice required by the 2014 defense authorization statute (law professor Jonathan Turley similarly observed that Obama’s lawbreaking here was clear and virtually undebatable).

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But the eagerness of many Democrats to radically change everything they claimed to believe as of January 20, 2009 is far too familiar and well-documented at this point to be worth spending much time on. Far more significant are the implications for Obama’s infamously unfulfilled pledge to close Guantanamo.

The sole excuse now offered by Democratic loyalists for this failure has been that Congress prevented him from closing the camp. But here, the Obama White House appears to be arguing that Congress lacks the authority to constrain the President’s power to release detainees when he wants. What other excuse is there for his clear violation of a law that requires 30-day notice to Congress before any detainees are released?

But once you take the position that Obama can override – i.e., ignore – Congressional restrictions on his power to release Guantanamo detainees, then what possible excuse is left for his failure to close the camp? As Jason Leopold notes in an astute article at Al Jazeera, this week’s episode “has led one human rights organization to question why the Obama administration has not acted to transfer dozens of other detainees who have been cleared for release for many years.”

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Obama defenders seem to have two choices here: either the president broke the law in releasing these five detainees, or Congress cannot bind the commander-in-chief’s power to transfer detainees when he wants, thus leaving Obama free to make those decisions himself. Which is it?

Richard Clarke served as the nation’s top counterterrorism official under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush before resigning in 2003 in protest of the Iraq War. A year before the Sept. 11 attacks, Clarke pushed for the Air Force to begin arming drones as part of the U.S. effort to hunt down Osama bin Laden. According to Clarke, the CIA and the Pentagon initially opposed the mission. Then Sept. 11 happened. Two months later, on November 12, 2001, Mohammed Atef, the head of al-Qaeda’s military forces, became the first person killed by a Predator drone. According to the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, U.S. drones have since killed at least 2,600 people in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Transcript

Transcript

You know, I’m not a woman and I can’t claim understanding of what it looks like from their point of view anymore than I can truly grasp the inner life of any other human.  I only know it from this side of my eyes.

Yet I’ve always attempted to treat everyone as I would wish for myself which may explain my particular disdain for bullies who abuse their power.

I’ve done some thinking about it over the last couple of days and I guess my conclusion is that this is the way I want to be remembered, as someone who wasn’t afraid to stand up for what’s right and defend people who are under attack.

There are worse things they could write on your gravestone.

It was lovely ground.