Jun 06

Today’s News 6th June 2018

  • Merkel Backs Macron's European Army Initiative

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel removed one of the biggest barriers to the creation of a European Army on Tuesday when she told a German newspaper that she supported the idea “in principle,” according to RT.

    “I am in favor of President Macron’s proposal for an intervention initiative,” the German chancellor told Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper on Sunday.

    The topic has been under discussion since September, when French President Emmanuel Macron laid out his vision for a pan-European “military intervention force” with a shared military budget funded by aggregated tax receipts and supervised by a single finance minister. Macron’s vision – which is central to his integrationist message – was similar to a proposal laid out during a speech last summer by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who declared at the time that “soft power alone is not powerful enough.”

    Merkel

    In his speech, Macron described a European military that could protect the continent by deploying to hotspots around the globe, just like NATO does. But why can’t Europe just rely on NATO? Because, as Merkel has pointed out, NATO is de facto controlled by the US, and the US “can no longer be relied on to protect us.”

    Whatever form it eventually takes, the European defense force must “fit into the structure of defense cooperation,” Merkel said.

    “However, such an intervention force with a common military-strategic culture must fit into the structure of defense cooperation,” she said.

    She added that the Bundeswehr “must, in principle, be part of such an initiative,” but that it “doesn’t mean that we are to be involved in every mission.”

    “European defense cooperation is very important. Of the 180 weapon systems that currently co-exist in Europe, we must move to a situation like the United States, which has only about 30 weapons systems,” Merkel said.

    Until now, talks about creating a defense force have been complicated by Berlin’s cautious approach to the initiative. EU leaders signed off on a scaled-down version of Macron’s EU Army in December when they signed the harmless-sounding Permanent Structured Cooperation – or PESCO – pact.

  • Mass-Migration Should Be Accepted By Western Nations, UN SecGen

    Just a day after Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis rejected Angela Merkel’s “flexible system” plan for migration, letting Frontex become a European border police force that can act independently, exclaiming that protecting frontiers should be up to individual countries.

    “The idea that Frontex will guard everything by itself is not realistic in the long term,” Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis told reporters when asked about her comments. “Individual states must guard that.”

    As Reuters reports, the Czech Republic and other central and eastern EU members Hungary, Slovakia and Poland – known as the Visegrad group – have strongly opposed a quota system drawn up by the European Commission to redistribute asylum seekers around the bloc.

    We are reminded of comments during a presentation earlier this year on the management of migration processes by António Guterres, the Secretary General of The United Nations, who proclaimed that UN member states should prepare for great migratory movements.

    And this is not a joke: The UN, led by António Guterres, wants to manage and influence migration. All this, of course, is dressed up in pretty words about the need to provide humanitarian aid, and also justified by the benefits that resettlement of the population is to give to the economies of particular countries. However, in fact, this means only one thing: Europe and the entire Western World must prepare for the flood of Africans.

    Currently, nearly 1.3 billion people live in Africa, and by the end of this century there will be 350% more, or 4.4 billion. It is obvious that the continent, whose inhabitants are not able to feed themselves, let alone achieve an adequate level of urbanization and industrialization, cannot cope with such a sharp demographic increase. The UN therefore came up with the idea of resettling Africans to Europe and highly developed countries on other continents.

    At the end of 2016, just after his election as UN Secretary General, António Guterres said: 

    “We must convince Europeans that migration is inevitable and that multiethnic and multireligious societies create wealth”.

    It can be assumed here that the goal set by the former UN commissioner for refugees (A. Gutters served this function from June to December 2015), is to promote migration, give it a legal framework and manage it globally.

    The first major step towards formalization of this phenomenon was the creation of the “Making Migration Work for All” report, which says in no uncertain terms that nation-states are to cease to exist. The document says that migration would be beneficial to everyone. And it is beneficial… to migrants alone (who apart from being accommodated in apartments live on undeserved entitlements) rather than to the average European who has to work to make a living for himself and his family, pay for his home and, additionally, provide for millions more newcomers.

    The position expressed by Gutters during the presentation of this report makes our hair stand on end.3) The analysis of the speech of the UN secretary implies a simple conclusion: migration will still be bigger, we (UN) will manage it, and you (Western countries and societies) have to adapt:

    „The fundamental challenge is to maximize the benefits of this orderly, productive form of migration while stamping out the abuses and prejudice that make life hell for a minority of migrants.”

    and:

    „States need to strengthen the rule of law underpinning how they manage and protect migrants — for the benefit of their economies, their societies and migrants themselves.”

    The propaganda statement that migration brings social and economic benefits has become so deeply rooted in the media and political rhetoric that some people have begun to believe in it. It is a pity that theses statements are not supported by any calculations or analyses.

    „Migration is a positive global phenomenon. It powers economic growth, reduces inequalities, connects diverse societies and helps us ride the demographic waves of population growth and decline.”

    According to a research conducted by the Hungarian Századvég foundation, mass migration is perceived by the citizens of all 28 European Union countries as a threat to the EU economy, the heritage of the member states and the presence of Third World aliens is believed to undermine security.

    The vast majority, as many as 68%, are afraid of the inflow of migrants from North Africa. For 70% of the inhabitants of the Old Continent, the growing number of Muslims is a serious threat, while only 8% say that this issue is not a problem. Citizens of European countries are afraid of increased crime and subsequent terrorist attacks. More than half of the pollees think that immigrants come to Europe mainly for economic reasons, that is, they are attracted by a high level of social benefits. 57% of respondents believe that the influx of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East will change the culture of their country, and 73% state that financial support for migrants will be a serious burden on state budgets. 61% believe that the influx of people from the Third World will weaken the EU economy.

    Negative processes accompanying the resettlement of people were, however, completely ignored by the UN and transferred to countries which are not able to cope with this phenomenon:

    „Migration (…), which powers economic growth, reduces inequalities, connects diverse societies (…) remains poorly managed.”

    and:

    „The best way to end the stigma of illegality and abuse around migrants is, in fact, for Governments to put in place more legal pathways for migration.”

    The report completely distorts the nature of threats to Western civilization, and also underestimates the importance of homogeneity, rejecting entirely the advantage that national states offer. The United Nations points out that shrinking populations is a danger for Europe, and Antonio Guterres suggests that the demographic collapse can be remedied by resettling the population surplus from Africa. By the end of this century, the number of indigenous Europeans will amount to fewer than a quarter of a billion, whereas there will be almost 4.4 billion Africans. The host society, according to the UN Secretary General, has no right to think that migrations are a negative phenomenon:

    „It can be seen, too, in the political impact of public perception that wrongly sees migration as out of control. The consequences include increased mistrust and policies aimed more at stopping than facilitating human movement.”

    Also, the International Migration Organization, which participated in the work on this report, states on its Twitter account that „Migration is inevitable, desirable and necessary”. The question arises: who wants migration and who thinks it is necessary? Certainly not the inhabitants of the countries to which the alleged refugees are streaming.

    The report states that:

    • migration is inevitable, therefore it must be properly organized and the UN provides guidance on how to manage it;

    • nation states must adapt to the admission of migrants in accordance with the guidelines;

    • the societies of developed countries must become accustomed to having their countries flooded with masses of migrants.

    The powers that be are trying to convince us of the alleged benefits of mass migration and the resettlement of Africans into Europe. Reality contradicts wishful thinking. Increasingly, citizens of host countries are afraid to leave their homes not to mention that an increased part of their earnings, is used to provide for the newcomers. We have also come to the point where negation of positive aspects of migration is regarded as racism and xenophobia, and to the fact that if someone wants to live in a one-nation state, he is labelled as a nationalist, with the word being unjustifiably negatively charged.

    A mass inflow of the so-called “refugees” on the Old Continent is not perceived by its inhabitants as a phenomenon that  culturally enriches and will also have a positive impact on the economy. However, global organizations do not take this into account and enforce their own plan to create a nationally and religiously heterogeneous society, where tradition and cultural identity are not desirable.

    António Guterres and the UN know better what is good for western nations, ignoring the data presented by many organizations, including the Gefira Foundation, which underline a number of negative phenomena caused by the mass flooding of Europe by Third World populations.


    However, circling back to Czech PM Babis’ comments, he reminds the good UN SecGen that elections this weekend in Slovenia, won by an anti-immigration opposition party, and in Italy which yielded the EU’s first anti-establishment government, showed how the policy stance of Visegrad had spread.

    “So, this opinion on migration will prevail in the whole of Europe, and we have to stop migration outside the European continent and help the people in Africa and Syria”, he said.

    But then again – what does democracy matter anyway?

  • U.S. Nuclear Bombers Flyby Disputed Islands Amid Escalating Tensions With China

    A U.S. defense official Monday told CNN’s Washington bureau that two nuclear-capable U.S. Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bombers flew very close to the heavily contested and militarized Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

    The aggressive flybys come days after Secretary of Defense James Mattis warned of “consequences” if Beijing continues weaponizing the South China Sea, further accusing China of “intimidation and coercion” in the Indo-Pacific region, which he specifically made clear that Washington has zero plans on leaving the heavily disputed area.

    His speech, well, it promoted an angry Chinese response during IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, a civilian and military defense summit in Singapore, where Lieutenant General He Lei told reporters, “Any irresponsible comments from other countries cannot be accepted.”

    As we explained on Saturday during the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue,” The United States and China appear to be headed for a military collision in the Southeast Asia region.”

    Beijing claims that most of the resource-rich sea, which overlaps claims from Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam, belongs to China. To reinforce such claims, Beijing quickly built artificial islands and erected military bases on Parcels and Spratly islands. Regarding trade, more than USD five trillion in shipping trade flows through the region per annum.

    The U.S. defense official, who has classified knowledge of the B-52s original flight plan, said the operation called for two nuclear-capable U.S. Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bombers to fly roughly 20-miles from the militarized Spratly islands.

    U.S. Air Force Captin Victoria Hight, a spokeswoman for U.S. Pacific Air Forces, told CNN that the bombers did not fly in the vicinity of the islands.

    A Pentagon spokesperson said the Guam-based bombers were on “a routine training mission,” departing from Andersen Air Force Base “to the Navy Support Facility” at Diego Garcia Atoll, a British Indian Ocean Territory.

    U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Chris Logan said the operation was part of U.S. Pacific Command’s “Continuous Bomber Presence” missions, which he explained are “intended to maintain the readiness of U.S. forces.”

    “U.S. Pacific Command’s CBP missions, which have been routinely employed since March 2004, are flown in accordance with international law,” Logan added.

    The B-52s operation to buzz China’s militarized islands came shortly after Mattis warned Beijing that “the placement of these weapons systems is tied directly to military use for the purposes of intimidation and coercion,” adding that “China’s militarization of the Spratlys is also in direct contradiction to President Xi Jinping’s 2015 public assurances in the White House Rose Garden that they would not do this.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Last week, the Pentagon increased its rhetoric about China’s militarization of islands in the South China Sea, even as the Trump administration asked Beijing for cooperation on North Korea. When questioned by a journalist about the ability of the Pentagon to “blow apart” China’s artificial islands, Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie, director of the Joint Staff, told reporters, “I would just tell you that the United States military has had a lot of experience in the Western Pacific taking down small islands.”

    Meanwhile, Beijing reacted to the threat via Pentagon statements. On Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the U.S. accusing China of militarizing the islands was, “like a thief crying, Stop thief!’”

    “Why does the U.S. choose to sail every now and then close to Chinese South China Sea islands and reefs? What is the U.S. trying to do?” she said.

    Last month, we reported that the U.S. Navy conducted its “freedom of navigation” patrols near the heavily disputed islands to demonstrate the right to sail through those international waters, which sparked outrage via Bejing.

    From Mattis to Lt. General He militant jawboning this past weekend at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, to U.S. Naval warships and B-52s encircling the militarized islands, followed by China’s warning that any tariffs by Trump would kill a trade deal between the U.S. and China, it appears that Sino-American relations continue to plunge. It seems like the heavily disputed waters in the South China Sea could emerge as the next geopolitical and military flashpoint. Which, when one considers that according to the RAND Corp, and the IMF, China will surpass the U.S. as the world’s leading military superpower some time in the next 2 decades… As stated below, the trend is evident, Washington and Bejing are preparing for war.

  • Priestap: FBI's Strzok Played "More Central Role Than Previously Known" In Clinton, Russia Probes

    Peter Strzok, the FBI counterintelligence agent pulled off Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe last year for sending anti-Trump / pro-Clinton text messages to his “lovebird” FBI mistress, played a more central role than previously known in both the Russia and Hillary Clinton investigations, a lawmaker told Fox News on Tuesday. 

    The assessment of Strzok’s involvement comes after six hours of closed-door interviews with FBI espionage chief Bill Priestap, along with an analysis of “recent records.” 

    Priestap was interviewed Tuesday as part of an ongoing joint investigation by the House Judiciary and Oversight committees. Priestap was Strzok’s supervisor and oversaw both the Russia and Clinton investigations.

    The lawmaker described Strzok as a very cooperative witness, but added that unanswered questions remained about Priestap’s overseas travel. One line of questioning Tuesday concerned a trip to London by Priestap in May 2016 and whether it was connected to the Russia case.

    The trip was referenced by Strzok in a May 4, 2016 text message to FBI lawyer Lisa Page that said “Bill” would be “back from London next week.” –Fox News

    Strzok emailed Priestap on January 30, 2016 along with another colleague to express dismay about statements made by former White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest claiming that Hillary Clinton was not the target of the FBI probe into her use of a private server while she was Secretary of State. 

    “Below not helpful,” Strzok wrote. “Certainly the WH is going to do whatever it wants, but there is a line they need to hold with regard to the appearance of non-interference.”

    We also learned in May that Peter Strzok went on a secret trip to London in the summer of 2016 to meet with Australian ambassador, Alexander Downer, to describe his meeting with Trump campaign advisor, George Papadopoulos. The FBI kept details of the operation secret from most of the DOJ – with “only about five Justice Department officials” aware of the full scope of the case. 

    Fearful of leaks, they kept details from political appointees across the street at the Justice Department. Peter Strzok, a senior F.B.I. agent, explained in a text that Justice Department officials would find it too “tasty” to resist sharing. “I’m not worried about our side,” he wrote. –NYT

    And in what appears to reveal Strzok’s own doubts over the case right after he returned from London, a text message he sent to his mistress, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, reads “I cannot believe we are seriously looking at these allegations and the pervasive connections.”

    Strzok was reassigned to the FBI’s Human Resources department following the discovery of over 50,000 text messages sent between he and Page, many of which showed overt bias towards Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump. While Strzok remains on the FBI’s payroll, Lisa Page resigned in May to “pursue other opportunities.” 

    Congressional investigators will interview two other FBI officials later in the month; Michael Steinbach – former head of the agency’s national security division, and Steinbach’s predecessor, John Giacalone. Furthermore, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz – whose highly anticipated report on FBI misconduct is reportedly going to come any day, is also expected to brief lawmakers.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  • Cambridge Analytica Boss 'Borrowed' $8 Million Before It Collapsed, FT Reports

    Shortly after former Cambridge Analytics CEO Alexander Nix learned British media was reporting on allegations about his firm’s role in the leak of Facebook data, he allegedly withdrew $8 million from the company… and investors are not happy.

    In a lengthy and detailed story in The Financial Times, Nix is accused of making off with the funds right before the firm collapsed into liquidation; and the investors who had backed a potential rebranding of the firm are pressing Nix to repay the money.

    The investors said Emerdata, a company set up last year to acquire and rebrand Cambridge Analytica and a related company, SCL Group, had raised $19m from powerful international investors in January to expand the company’s services and bid for more commercial work.

    The money ran out quickly, the people said, because of outstanding bills to advertisers and other suppliers, and because of the alleged withdrawal by Mr Nix. According to some of the people, Mr Nix has indicated that he intends to repay part of the money. One person added that Mr Nix said the withdrawal was made in exchange for unbooked services.

    Bankruptcy filings in New York show that Cambridge Analytica received an $8.8m loan from Emerdata before it entered administration, though it is not clear what the loan was intended for.

    Documents show the debt is classified as an unsecured “non-priority” loan that might not have to be returned.

    But the story gets even more intriguing when one finds out who the ‘investors’ in the apparent rebranding of Cambridge Analytica’s “data-science-as-a-service” business model…

    Company filings in the UK show Emerdata earlier this year issued nearly 2m shares and added several new directors to its board including Rebekah and Jennifer Mercer, the daughters of hedge fund billionaire and prominent Trump supporter Robert Mercer.

    As a reminder, the prominent conservative billionaire investor, Trump campaign supporter and patron of Steve Bannon, Robert Mercer, stepped down as co-chief executive and board member of the world’s most profitable and secretive hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, on January 1, 2018.

    Additionally, Johnson Ko, executive director of Reorient Group, was also added as a director of Emerdata in January. Mr Ko is a business partner of Erik Prince, another Trump associate and the founder of private mercenary group Blackwater, at the security firm Frontier Services Group.

    And judging by the second half of The Financial Times’ story, Cambridge Analytica was planning a full resurrection as documents seen by the FT confirm that a holding company was established to acquire Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group, which had previously focused on defense (which explains Erik Prince’s influence) and political work (which explains the Mercer’s interest), including Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. These documents and a private placing memorandum set out plans to raise about $30m to pitch for more commercially-related work and develop a “high-volume core business” with off-the-shelf data-targeting products.

    “Governments have access to vast quantities of data; on both their own citizens and foreign nationals. These data can be used to help governments identify, segment and target key audiences for campaigns of information or influence.”

    Cambridge Analytica also formed a working group of senior ex-military personnel and government executives to identify products and services most relevant to government clients, according to the documents.

    We suspect this is very much not the last we hear of Cambridge Analytica’s ‘business model’ though getting on the wrong side of the Mercers and Erik Prince may mean that this is the last we hear from Mr. Nix.

  • Russia Building The Trans-Arabian Railway Will Make The Saudis More Multipolar

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

    The CEO of Russian Railways, the state-backed leader in this industry, announced his company’s intent in participating in the Trans-Arabian Railway during last week’s Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), thus drawing attention to a project that’s been on the drawing board for a few years already but has failed to get off the ground.

    The concept is for the GCC states to tighten their non-energy economic integration with one another through a coastal railway that hugs the southern edge of the Persian Gulf and would run from Kuwait to Oman, but this vision hasn’t yet been prioritized. That might change in the coming future, however, as a result of trilateral cooperation between Russia, Saudi Arabia, and China.

    To explain, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s ambitious Vision 2030 agenda of socio-economic reforms dovetails perfectly with China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity in the sense that it aims to position the Wahhabi Kingdom as a tri-continental economic hub for Afro-Eurasia.

    Some of the over $130 billion worth of investments that China clinched in Saudi Arabia last year alone will be used to modernize the recipient’s economy and place it on the trajectory for developing a sustainable post-oil future, and it’s here where Russia’s railway expertise comes in.

    Russian Railways has been working very hard to establish itself as a global player and the Trans-Arabian Railway project provides the perfect opportunity for showcasing its services. Not only that, but it’s a quid pro quo for Saudi investment in the Russian economy over the past couple of years, and it will help to accelerate the Russian-Saudi rapprochement, too. 

    Moscow’s deepening all-around involvement in Arab affairs, especially with the influential GCC, will enable it to gain wider respect and acceptance as a Mideast power as well.

    Altogether, Russia’s successful involvement in the Trans-Arabian Railway project and China’s game-changing investments in the Kingdom could help Saudi Arabia diversify its foreign policy and ultimately become more multipolar as a result.

  • China Offers $72 Billion MLF "To Ensure Banking Liquidity Remains Stable"

    Just hours after we warned that it was time to start worrying about China’s debt default avalanche, and shortly after the PBOC lowered its credit quality restrictions for collateral, China offered its Medium-term Lending Facility (MLF) to inject CNY463bn (~$72bn) of liquidity.

    As we detailed earlier, the recent blow out in Chinese corporate bond spooked none other than the PBOC, which last last Friday announced that it will accept lower-rated corporate bonds as collateral for a major liquidity management tool in a move that analysts see as designed in part to restore confidence in the country’s corporate bond market.

    Specifically, the central bank said that it had decided to expand the collateral pool for the medium-term lending facility (MLF) to include corporate bonds rated AA+ or AA by domestic rating agencies.  The central bank also added as collateral financial bonds rated AA and above with proceeds to support rural development, small enterprises and green projects, as well as high-quality loans supporting green projects and small enterprises, the PBoC said in a statement posted on its website.

    The PBoC said the expansion of collateral would “help alleviate the financing difficulties of small companies and to promote the healthy development of the corporate bond market.”

    CICC confirmed as much, writing in a note that “the expansion of collateral for MLF, to some extent, is intended to bolster confidence in lower-rated corporate bonds … and to avoid creating an apparent net financing gap which would impact the real economy.”

    Translated: the PBOC is providing yet another backdoor bailout to China’s latest and greatest distressed sector in hopes of avoiding an avalanche of defaults as credit conditions become increasingly tighter as the PBOC hikes tit for tat with the Fed.

    *  *  *

    Today’s MLF was offered at 3.3% -very marginally above the 3.25% one-year term rate for the last MLF in February saying it was “to ensure banking liquidity remains stable”

    Notably, 259.5 billion yuan of MLF loans werer set to mature on Wednesday, so today 463 billion yuan really exposes the need for liquidity (rolling all the prior loans and an additional 203.5 billion yuan was required).

    However, there was also a net withdrawal of open market operations of 180 billion yuan due to maturing repo agreements.

    Which means the net liquidity injected today was 23.5 billion yuan (still around $3.6 billion).

    While today’s PBOC intervention may delay the moment of reckoning for the world’s most indebted corporate sector, it will not eliminate it. One potential catalyst: Chinese companies have to repay a total of 2.7 trillion yuan of bonds in the onshore and offshore market in the second half of this year, and together with another 3.3 trillion yuan of trust products set to mature in the second half, the funding problems will get worse. As already more than eight high-yield trust products have delayed payments so far this year.

    To be sure, Beijing will do everything in its power to avoid a default waterfall, but another emerging – pardon the pun – risk is that as Boyd concludes, negative sentiment towards Chinese corporates could become a major headwind for EM debt, even as the crises in Argentina, Brazil and Turkey appear to calm down, resulting in another significant capital outflow from Emerging Markets, and even more pained complaints from EM central bankers begging the Fed to halt its tightening, or else.

  • Edward Snowden: "The People Are Still Powerless… But Now They're Aware"

    Authored by Ewan MacAskill and Alex Hern via The Guardian,

    Five years after historic NSA leaks, the whistleblower tells the Guardian he has no regrets…

    Edward Snowden has no regrets five years on from leaking the biggest cache of top-secret documents in history. He is wanted by the US. He is in exile in Russia. But he is satisfied with the way his revelations of mass surveillance have rocked governments, intelligence agencies and major internet companies.

    In a phone interview to mark the anniversary of the day the Guardian broke the story, he recalled the day his world – and that of many others around the globe – changed for good. He went to sleep in his Hong Kong hotel room and when he woke, the news that the National Security Agency had been vacuuming up the phone data of millions of Americans had been live for several hours.

    Snowden knew at that moment his old life was over. “It was scary but it was liberating,” he said. “There was a sense of finality. There was no going back.”

    What has happened in the five years since? He is one of the most famous fugitives in the world, the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary, a Hollywood movie, and at least a dozen books. The US and UK governments, on the basis of his revelations, have faced court challenges to surveillance laws. New legislation has been passed in both countries. The internet companies, responding to a public backlash over privacy, have made encryption commonplace.

    Snowden, weighing up the changes, said some privacy campaigners had expressed disappointment with how things have developed, but he did not share it.

    “People say nothing has changed: that there is still mass surveillance. That is not how you measure change. Look back before 2013 and look at what has happened since. Everything changed.”

    The most important change, he said, was public awareness.

    “The government and corporate sector preyed on our ignorance. But now we know. People are aware now. People are still powerless to stop it but we are trying. The revelations made the fight more even.”

    He said he had no regrets.

    “If I had wanted to be safe, I would not have left Hawaii (where he had been based, working for the NSA, before flying to Hong Kong).”

    His own life is uncertain, perhaps now more than ever, he said. His sanctuary in Russia depends on the whims of the Putin government, and the US and UK intelligence agencies have not forgiven him. For them, the issue is as raw as ever, an act of betrayal they say caused damage on a scale the public does not realise.

    This was reflected in a rare statement from Jeremy Fleming, the director of the UK surveillance agency GCHQ, which, along with the US National Security Agency. was the main subject of the leak. In response to a question from the Guardian about the anniversary, Fleming said GCHQ’s mission was to keep the UK safe: “What Edward Snowden did five years ago was illegal and compromised our ability to do that, causing real and unnecessary damage to the security of the UK and our allies. He should be accountable for that.”

    Jeremy Fleming of GCHQ addresses a security conference. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

    The anger in the US and UK intelligence communities is over not just what was published – fewer than 1% of the documents – but extends to the unpublished material too. They say they were forced to work on the assumption everything Snowden ever had access to had been compromised and had to be dumped.

    There was a plus for the agencies. Having scrapped so much, they were forced to develop and install new and better capabilities faster than planned. Another change came in the area of transparency. Before Snowden, media requests to GCHQ were usually met with no comment whereas now there is more of a willingness to engage. That Fleming responds with a statement reflects that stepchange.

    In his statement, he expressed a commitment to openness but pointedly did not credit Snowden, saying the change predated 2013. “It is important that we continue to be as open as we can be, and I am committed to the journey we began over a decade ago to greater transparency,” he said.

    Others in the intelligence community, especially in the US, will grudgingly credit Snowden for starting a much-needed debate about where the line should be drawn between privacy and surveillance. The former deputy director of the NSA Richard Ledgett, when retiring last year, said the government should have made public the fact there was bulk collection of phone data.

    The former GCHQ director Sir David Omand shared Fleming’s assessment of the damage but admitted Snowden had contributed to the introduction of new legislation. “A sounder and more transparent legal framework is now in place for necessary intelligence gathering. That would have happened eventually, of course, but his actions certainly hastened the process,” Omand said.

    The US Congress passed the Freedom Act in 2015, curbing the mass collection of phone data. The UK parliament passed the contentious Investigatory Powers Act a year later. 

    Ross Anderson, a leading academic specialising in cybersecurity and privacy, sees the Snowden revelations as a seminal moment. Anderson, a professor of security engineering at Cambridge University’s computer laboratory, said:

    “Snowden’s revelations are one of these flashbulb moments which change the way people look at things. They may not have changed things much in Britain because of our culture for adoring James Bond and all his works. But round the world it brought home to everyone that surveillance really is an issue.”

    MPs and much of the UK media did not engage to the same extent of their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, the US, Latin America, Asia and Australia. Among the exceptions was the Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert, who pressed the issue until he lost his seat in 2015.

    “The Snowden revelations were a huge shock but they have led to a much greater transparency from some of the agencies about the sort of the things they were doing,” he said.

    One of the disclosures to have most impact was around the extent of collaboration between the intelligence agencies and internet companies. In 2013, the US companies were outsmarting the EU in negotiations over data protection. Snowden landed like a bomb in the middle of the negotiations and the data protection law that took effect last month is a consequence.

    One of the most visible effects of the Snowden revelations was the small yellow bubble that began popping up on the messaging service WhatsApp in April 2016: “Messages to this chat and calls are now secured with end-to-end encryption.” 

    Before Snowden, such encryption was for the targeted and the paranoid. “If I can take myself back to 2013,” said Jillian York, the director for international freedom of expression at the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “I maybe had the precursor to [the encrypted communication app] Signal on my phone, TextSecure. I had [another email encryption tool] PGP, but nobody used it.” The only major exception was Apple’s iMessage, which has been end-to-end encrypted since it was launched in 2011.

    Developers at major technology companies, outraged by the Snowden disclosures, started pushing back. Some, such as those at WhatsApp, which was bought by Facebook a year after the story broke, implemented their own encryption. Others, such as Yahoo’s Alex Stamos, quit rather than support further eavesdropping. (Stamos is now the head of security at Facebook.)

    “Without Snowden,” said York. “I don’t think Signal would have got the funding. I don’t think Facebook would have had Alex Stamos, because he would have been at Yahoo. These little things led to big things. It’s not like all these companies were like “we care about privacy”. I think they were pushed.”

    Other shifts in the technology sector show Snowden’s influence has in many ways been limited. The rise of the “smart speaker”, exemplified by Amazon’s Echo, has left many privacy activists baffled. Why, just a few years after a global scandal involving government surveillance, would people willingly install always-on microphones in their homes?

    “The new-found privacy conundrum presented by installing a device that can literally listen to everything you’re saying represents a chilling new development in the age of internet-connected things,” wrote Gizmodo’s Adam Clark Estes last year.

    Towards the end of the interview, Snowden recalled one of his early aliases, Cincinnatus, after the Roman who after public service returned to his farm. Snowden said he too felt that, having played his role, he had retreated to a quieter life, spending time developing tools to help journalists protect their sources. “I do not think I have ever been more fulfilled,” he said. 

    But he will not be marking the anniversary with a “victory lap”, he said.

    There is still much to be done.

    “The fightback is just beginning,” said Snowden.

    “The governments and the corporates have been in this game a long time and we are just getting started.”

  • The US's Fingerprints Are All Over Nicaragua's Bloody Civil Unrest

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    Bloody protests against Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega’s government have the United State’s fingerprints all over it.  Over 100 people have been killed since the civil unrest broke out in mid-April and it doesn’t take much to realize the US government is fueling the bloodbath.

    According to RT, the so-called marea rosa, or “pink tide”, of allied leftist governmentswhich held sway across Latin America in previous years is being rolled back. Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff was removed from power in a right-wing coup, co-conspirators of which have now managed to imprison the current presidential frontrunner, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno has stabbed his former leader Rafael Correa in the back by barring him from seeking re-election, while seemingly purging his cabinet of remaining Correa loyalists and beginning the process of allowing the US military back into the country. 

    These are all coalescing as other democratic and not-so-democratic removals of leftist governments from power continue. NATO has nabbed itself a foothold in the Latin American region, now that Colombia has joined the obsolete yet aggressively expanding Cold War alliance, in a thinly veiled threat to neighboring authoritarian Venezuela.

    Now it’s Nicaragua’s turn for the US to interfere in the government’s efforts to “police the entire world,” paid with by our stolen tax money, of course. Student demonstrations began in the capital Managua as a reaction to the country’s failure to handle forest fires in one of the most protected areas of the Indio Maiz Biological Reserve. The situation was then exacerbated when, two days later, the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front announced it was slashing pensions and social security payments, sparking further anti-government protests. Targeted opposition violence along with police repressions have led to a mounting body count on both sides. Violence persists in the country, despite the fact that President Ortega has now ditched the proposed welfare reforms and has been engaging in talks with the opposition.

    The government has adamantly denied it was responsible for snipers killing at least 15 people at a recent demonstration. And, while we may never know what really happened, it’s fair to say an embattled national leadership in the midst of peace talks has little to gain from people being gunned down in front of the world’s media at an opposition march on Mother’s Day. All I’ll say on the matter is it’s not like we didn’t have mysterious sharpshooters picking off protesters during US-supported coups in Venezuela and Ukraine. –RT

    It is unsurprising then that the US is apparently attempting to capitalize on the growing discontent, stoking dissent among the youth in a deliberate attempt to destabilize the Sandinista government. Infamously nefarious US soft power organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, also known as the CIA’s ‘legal window’, have set up extensive networks in Nicaragua. Among the leading Nicaraguan student activists currently touring Europe to garner support for the anti-government movement is Jessica Cisneros. Cisneros is a member of the Movimiento Civico de Juventudes, which is funded by Madeline Albright’s National Democratic Institute (NDI). Albright is the former US Secretary of State that said that 500,000 Iraqi Children dying as a result of US sanctions against Saddam Hussein was “worth it”.

    If the idea of Washington supporting progressive anti-government forces in Latin America confuses you, then you’re failing to grasp the nature of US interference. During the Cold War, for example, the US supported both the Mujahideen inAfghanistan as well as eastern European trade unionists against the Soviet Union. Indeed, throughout the Syrian conflict, Washington has been arming leftist groups alongside jihadist organizations. It goes without saying that, despite US politicians getting all dewy-eyed over “freedom fighters,” the likes of Jihadists or even trade unionists are not welcome in US society. –RT

    It isn’t like the US never interferes, in fact, if it can, it will. And unfortunately, all we get is the bill and the knowing that our tax dollars are being used to slaughter human beings we don’t even know.

Digest powered by RSS Digest