We’ve documented that the intelligence services intentionally create digital vulnerabilities, then intentionally leave them open … leaving us exposed and insecure.
Washington’s Blog asked the highest level NSA whistleblower ever* – Bill Binney – what he thinks of the attacks.
Binney told us:
This is what I called short sighted finite thinking on the part of the Intelligence Community managers.
This is also what I called (for some years now) a swindle of the tax
payers. First, they find or create weaknesses then they don’t fix these
weaknesses so we are all vulnerable to attack.
Then, when attacks occur, they say they need more money for cyber security — a total swindle!!! [Indeed.]
This is only the second swindle of the public. The first was terror
efforts by saying we need to collect everything to stop terror — another
lie. They said that because to collect everything takes lots and lots
of money.
Then, when the terror attack occurs, they say they need more money,
people and data to stop terror. Another swindle from the start. [The war
on terror is a “self-licking ice cream cone”, because it creates many more terrorists than it stops.]
And, finally, the latest swindle “THE RUSSIANS DID IT.” This is an
effort to start a new cold war which means another bigger swindle of US
tax payers.
For cyber security, I would suggest the president order NSA, CIA and
any others to fix the cyber problems they know about; then, maybe we
will start to have some cyber security.
The bottom line is that our intelligence services should start concentrating on actually defendingus, rather than focusing their resources on offensive mischief.
theduran | A widespread computer virus attack known as ‘WannaCry’ has been
compromising computers with obsolete operating systems across the world.
This should be the opening sentence of just about every article on this
subject, but unfortunately it is not.
The virus does not attack modern computer operating systems, it is
designed to attack the Windows XP operating system that is so old, it
was likely used in offices in the World Trade Center prior to September
11 2001, when the buildings collapsed. Windows XP was first released on
25 August, 2001.
Furthermore, early vulnerabilities in modern Windows systems were
almost instantly patched up by Microsoft as per the fact that such
operating systems are constantly updated.
The obsolete XP system is simply out of the loop.
A child born on the release date of Windows XP is now on the verge of his or her 17th birthday. Feeling old yet?
The fact of the matter is that governments and businesses around the
world should not only feel old, they should feel humiliated and
disgraced.
With the amount of money governments tax individuals and private
entities, it is beyond belief that government organisations ranging from
some computers in the Russian Interior Ministry to virtually all computers in Britain’s National Health Service,
should be using an operating system so obsolete that its manufacturer,
Microsoft, no longer supports it and hasn’t done for some time.
arstechnica | A highly virulent new strain of self-replicating ransomware shut down
computers all over the world, in part by appropriating a National
Security Agency exploit that was publicly released last month by the
mysterious group calling itself Shadow Brokers.
Wcry is reportedly causing disruptions at banks, hospitals,
telecommunications services, train stations, and other mission-critical
organizations in multiple countries, including the UK, Spain, Germany,
and Turkey. FedEx, the UK government's National Health Service, and
Spanish telecom Telefonica have all been hit. The Spanish CERT has called it
a "massive ransomware attack" that is encrypting all the files of
entire networks and spreading laterally through organizations.
The virally spreading worm was ultimately stopped when a researcher who uses the Twitter handle MalwareTech and works for security firm Kryptos Logic
took control of a domain name that was hard-coded into the
self-replicating exploit. The domain registration, which occurred around
6 AM California time, was a major stroke of good luck, because it was
possible only because the attackers had failed to obtain the address
first.
The address appeared to serve as a sort of kill switch the attackers
could use to terminate the campaign. MalwareTech's registration had the
effect of ending the attacks that had started earlier Friday morning in
other parts of the world. As a result, the number of infection
detections plateaued dramatically in the hours following the
registration. It had no effect on WCry infections that were initiated
through earlier campaigns.
WaPo | It is true, as I pointed out in a Post op-ed in October,
that Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, after her tarmac meeting with
Bill Clinton, had left a vacuum by neither formally recusing herself nor
exercising supervision over the case. But the remedy for that was for
Comey to present his factual findings to the deputy attorney general,
not to exercise the prosecutorial power himself on a matter of such
grave importance.
Until Comey’s testimony last week,
I had assumed that Lynch had authorized Comey to act unilaterally. It
is now clear that the department’s leadership was sandbagged. I know of
no former senior Justice Department official — Democrat or Republican —
who does not view Comey’s conduct in July to have been a grave
usurpation of authority.
Comey’s
basic misjudgment boxed him in, compelling him to take increasingly
controversial actions giving the impression that the FBI was enmeshed in
politics. Once Comey staked out a position in July, he had no choice on
the near-eve of the election but to reopen the investigation when new
evidence materialized. Regrettably, however, this performance made Comey
himself the issue, placing him on center stage in public political
discourse and causing him to lose credibility on both sides of the
aisle. It was widely recognized that Comey’s job was in jeopardy
regardless of who won the election.
It is not surprising that
Trump would be inclined to make a fresh start at the bureau and would
consult with the leadership of the Justice Department about whether
Comey should remain. Those deliberations could not begin in earnest
until the new deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, to whom Comey
would report, was confirmed and in a position to assess Comey and his
performance. No matter how far along the president was in his own
thinking, Rosenstein’s assessment is cogent and vindicates the
president’s decision.
Rosenstein made clear in his memorandum
that he was concerned not so much with Comey’s past arrogation of
power, as astonishing as it was, but rather with his ongoing refusal to
acknowledge his errors. I do not dispute that Comey sincerely believes
he acted properly in the best interests of the country. But at the same
time, I think it is quite understandable that the administration would
not want an FBI director who did not recognize established limits on his
powers.
It is telling that none of the president’s critics are
challenging the decision on the merits. None argue that Comey’s
performance warranted keeping him on as director. Instead, they are
attacking the president’s motives, claiming the president acted to
neuter the investigation into Russia’s role in the election.
The
notion that the integrity of this investigation depends on Comey’s
presence just does not hold water. Contrary to the critics’ talking
points, Comey was not “in charge” of the investigation.
Sputniknews | In his recent Davos speech, Kissinger reiterated that the global order the US and EU were familiar with is fading away.
"One of the key problems of our period is that
the international order with which we were familiar is disintegrating
in some respects, and that new elements from Asia and the developing
world are entering it," Kissinger pointed out Friday.
In light of this, it is no surprise that Kissinger sees Trump's approach toward Russia largely as a step in the right direction.
Kissinger as Trump's 'Informal Foreign Policy Adviser'
Citing information obtained by Western European intelligence
from Trump's transition team, the German newspaper wrote in late
December that Kissinger has repeatedly met with Trump in the past couple
of months and that the White House is likely to go for "constructive
cooperation" with the Kremlin.
In early January 2017, citing officials with Trump's transition team, Eli Lake of Bloomberg disclosed
that since the election, the veteran diplomat has been counselling
incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and his team, citing
officials with Trump's transition team.
But that's half the story. According to Lake, it was Kissinger who
urged Trump to nominate Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State and
recommended his former assistant K.T. McFarland to be Flynn's deputy.
"Kissinger is one of the few people in Trump's
orbit who can get him on the phone whenever he wants, according to one
transition adviser," Lake noted.
theautomaticearth | Take a step back and oversee the picture, and you’ll find that Trump
is not the biggest threat to American democracy, the media are. They
have a job but they stopped doing it. They have turned to smearing,
something neither the NYT nor the WaPo should ever have stooped to, but
did.
Democracy is not primarily under threat from what one party does, or
the other, or a third one, it is under threat because parties have
withdrawn themselves into their respective echo chambers from which no
dialogue with other parties is possible, or even tolerated.
None of this is to say that there will be no revelations about some
ties between some Russian entities or persons and some Trump-related
ones. Such ties are entirely possible, and certainly on the business
front. Whether that has had any influence on the American presidential
election is a whole other story though. And jumping to conclusions
because it serves your political purposes is, to put it mildly, not
helping.
The problem is that so much has been said and printed on the topic
that was unsubstantiated, that if actual ties are proven, that news will
be blurred by what was insinuated before. You made your bed, guys.
A lot of sources today talk about how Trump was reportedly frustrated
with the constant focus on the alleged Russia ties, but assuming those
allegations are not true, and remember nothing has been proven after a
year of echo-chambering, isn’t it at least a little understandable that
he would be?
Comey was already compromised from 10 different angles, and many
wanted him gone, though not necessarily at the same time. The same
Democrats, and their media, who now scream murder because he was fired,
fell over themselves clamoring for his resignation for months. That does
not constitute an opinion, it’s the opposite of one: you can’t change
your view of someone as important as the FBI director every day and
twice on Sundays without losing credibility.
And yes, many Republicans played similar games. It’s the kind of game
that has become acceptable in the Washington swamp and the media that
report on it. And many of them also protest yesterday’s decision.
Ostensibly, it all has to do not with the fact that Comey was fired, but
with the timing. Which in turn would be linked to the fact that the FBI
is investigating Trump.
But what’s the logic there? That firing Comey would halt that
investigation? Why would that be true? Why would a replacement director
do that? Don’t FBI agents count for anything? And isn’t the present
investigation itself supposed to be proof that there is proof and/or
strong suspicion of that alleged link between Russia and the Trump
election victory? Wouldn’t those agents revolt if a new director threw
that away with the bathwater?
Since we still run on ‘innocent until proven guilty’, perhaps it’s a
thought to hold back a little, but given what we’ve seen since, say,
early 2016, that doesn’t look like an option anymore. The trenches have
been dug.
These are troubled times, but the trouble is not necessarily where
you might think it is. America has an undeniable political crisis, and a
severe one, but that’s not the only crisis.
theatlantic | The Russians clearly understood what the visit and its timing meant,
which is why it was so prominently covered by the Kremlin media. The man
investigating Russian meddling in the election had just been fired by
the man whose campaign was under investigation. Which to the Russians
meant Trump essentially agreed with their reaction to the alleged
election interference—as Lavrov put it in his American press conference:
“Guys, you cannot be serious.” It is why he praised this administration
for being “business-like” and for “wanting to make deals,” which in
Russian has a few other shades of meaning. The word Lavrov used was dogovarivatsya,
meaning to come to an understanding and come to agreements; it’s a key
word both in Russian business and politics. At its heart is ruthless
pragmatic compromise. There is no room for feelings and values, and
certainly not for law. Only for interests and nebulous, subjective
notions of fairness. “For us, fairness is above the law, including
international law,” one Russian close to the Kremlin told me. “When it’s
advantageous for us to appeal to the law, we do it. When it’s not, we
ignore it.” It is why Lavrov said that he welcomed these talks with an
administration who wanted to dogovarivatsya, people “who were free of the dogmatism of the Obama administration.”
It
was all too perfect, starting with the idea of having Tillerson meet
with Putin in the Kremlin—which created an obvious opportunity for
Lavrov to reciprocate by meeting Trump in the White House—and ending
with the choice of music piped in to the American journalists waiting for Lavrov’s presser (“All I’m asking is for a little respect.”)
publicpool | The White House summoned the press pool just after 11:20 a.m. for
what some had assumed would be a spray of President Trump's meeting with
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Pool was ushered into the
Oval Office at 11:26 a.m., but Trump was instead seated beside former
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The meeting with Kissinger was not
on Trump's public schedule today.
POTUS, wearing a dark suit and red striped tie, said he met with Kissinger to talk "about Russia and various other matters."
"We're
talking about Syria and I think that we're going to do very well with
respect to Syria and things are happening that are really, really,
really positive," Trump added. "We're going to stop the killing and the
death."
POTUS then said he had a "very, very good meeting" with FM
Lavrov. He said both sides want to end "the killing -- the horrible,
horrible killing in Syria as soon as possible and everybody is working
toward that end."
The Lavrov meeting was closed to the press and
the only visual account we have of it thus far is via handout photos
from the Russian government.
Those images show Trump also met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Trump
circled back and said it was "an honor" to discuss the issues with
Kissinger because "he's been a friend of mine for a long time."
bloomberg | Sergei Lavrov's official job is foreign minister of Russia, but his
visit to Washington Wednesday won't be remembered for any diplomatic
breakthrough -- just for Lavrov's dripping irony and skill at provoking
adversaries. Lavrov's style, which mirrors that of his boss, Vladimir
Putin, is often criticized as unfit for a diplomat. But I'd argue that
Lavrov knows exactly what he's doing and that the medium is the message
here.
In Washington, Lavrov feigned astonishment for a U.S.
reporter who asked about Tuesday's firing of Federal Bureau of
Investigation chief James Comey: "Was he fired? You're kidding! You're
kidding!"
He also smuggled a photographer from the state-owned news agency,
TASS, into his meeting with President Donald Trump as his official
photographer. TASS immediately published photos of Trump beaming at his
Russian visitors, Lavrov and Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, who are
obviously delighted by the reception. With the U.S. press kept out,
these happy photos from their Russian propaganda source created an
uproar.
Sarcasm, provocation, a desire to throw interlocutors off
balance always bubble just below the surface of Lavrov's communications.
He regularly stuns Western conversation partners with crude or
offensive comments.
At a recent meeting of North Atlantic Treaty
Organization ministers, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson quipped,
"You cannot tango with Lavrov because he's not allowed to dance that
one." He meant that President Vladimir Putin determined policy in Russia
and Lavrov wouldn't be authorized to make deals. "My mother used to
tell me: always be a good boy, don't ever dance with other boys," the
Russian foreign minister responded.
In this, Lavrov's style mirrors that of his boss. In 2006, Putin memorably told Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to say hi to then-president Moshe Katsav,
accused of raping and sexually harassing women: "He turned out to be a
strong man, raped 10 women. I never would have expected it of him. He
has surprised us all, we all envy him." The Kremlin, whose communication
was a little more self-conscious back then, had to explain that Putin
didn't condone rape and that his words were meant as a hard-to-translate
joke.
Putin's crude jokes are often written off as a product of his
childhood on the streets of St. Petersburg. He's only as polished as an
intelligence officer who served in the former East Germany needed to
be. Lavrov, however, is a highly professional diplomat. He knows the
protocol, speaks three languages besides Russian, and is sophisticated
in his tastes and interests. Even his verse, while not touched by genius, is competent and far less embarrassing than the poetic efforts of many other Russian officials.
Lavrov
knows well how his remarks sound to Western ears. He is also aware that
sarcasm and taunts are often considered unprofessional and seen as a
sign of bad manners in the English-speaking world, especially in the
U.S. And yet he keeps saying things that would have gotten any Western
diplomat fired, playing out barbed comedy routines and engaging in
practical jokes worthy of a college student.
His style is the message: Russians won't play by others'
rules, it says. But this isn't about touting Russia's size and its
nuclear arsenal; it's more of a mischievous enticement, a dare.
Putin's
Russia has allied itself with Western populist forces, whose stand
against political correctness and the constant self-censorship that
comes with it constitutes a strong voter appeal. During the election
campaign in the U.S. last year, I was told many times that Trump's
penchant for uncensored speech was his most attractive quality. The
Dutch say the same of Geert Wilders, the French of Marine Le Pen. The
freedom to say whatever one wants without wondering if it could be
construed as misogynist, racist, homophobic or offensive in a myriad
other ways is, to many voters, a bonus.
Post-Soviet Russians have
relished their freedom to say whatever they want, to be sarcastic, crude
and informal, to be provocative and thus project confidence. Cursing in
the workplace, a lack of respect for propriety and protocol, an absence
of linguistic and ideological constraints were prizes to a society that
had just cast off the Communist straitjacket.
QZ | Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger may be in his nineties, but
he’s continuing to play a key, globe-spanning role in one of the most
substantive foreign policy negotiations of the US presidency so far.
Kissinger, who brokered a ground-breaking detente between the US and
China’s Communist Party’s in 1972, has served a valued go-between for
the two nations for more than four decades, earning him the nickname of
“old friend of the Chinese people.” It’s privilege he has shared with at least 600 people, although Kissinger may be the living person who has held the nickname the longest.
As recently as December, when then US president-elect Donald Trump
threatened upheaval between the world’s most powerful nations, by
accepting a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen, Kissinger was already in Beijing
with Chinese president Xi Jinping, reassuring him that “overall, we
hope to see the China-US relationship moving ahead in a sustained and
stable manner.” (A Bloomberg report suggested that Xi may have turned to the venerable diplomat
to better understand Trump, telling Kissinger he was “all ears”
regarding what he had to say about the future of US-China relations.)
Kissinger met with the incoming Trump administration soon after the
election, and helped to connect Chinese politicians with the US
president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the Washington Post reports—connections that ultimately led to this week’s meeting.
In doing so, he’s opened up a now familiar controversy in the US—who does Kissinger work for, exactly, and whose side is he on?
Kissinger is “representing China’s interests and trying to influence
American foreign policy,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs
lobbyist for Public Citizen, a nonpartisan group that advocates for
citizens’ rights in Congress. “That crosses the threshold for FARA,” he
said, referring to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
WaPo | For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.
Putin
should come to realize that, whatever his grievances, a policy of
military impositions would produce another Cold War. For its part, the
United States needs to avoid treating Russia as an aberrant to be
patiently taught rules of conduct established by Washington. Putin is a
serious strategist — on the premises of Russian history. Understanding
U.S. values and psychology are not his strong suits. Nor has
understanding Russian history and psychology been a strong point of U.S.
policymakers.
Leaders of all sides should
return to examining outcomes, not compete in posturing. Here is my
notion of an outcome compatible with the values and security interests
of all sides:
1. Ukraine should have the right to choose freely its economic and political associations, including with Europe.
2. Ukraine should not join NATO, a position I took seven years ago, when it last came up.
3.
Ukraine should be free to create any government compatible with the
expressed will of its people. Wise Ukrainian leaders would then opt for a
policy of reconciliation between the various parts of their country.
Internationally, they should pursue a posture comparable to that of
Finland. That nation leaves no doubt about its fierce independence and
cooperates with the West in most fields but carefully avoids
institutional hostility toward Russia.
4. It is incompatible with the rules of the
existing world order for Russia to annex Crimea. But it should be
possible to put Crimea’s relationship to Ukraine on a less fraught
basis. To that end, Russia would recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over
Crimea. Ukraine should reinforce Crimea’s autonomy in elections held in
the presence of international observers. The process would include
removing any ambiguities about the status of the Black Sea Fleet at
Sevastopol.
These are principles, not
prescriptions. People familiar with the region will know that not all of
them will be palatable to all parties. The test is not absolute
satisfaction but balanced dissatisfaction. If some solution based on
these or comparable elements is not achieved, the drift toward
confrontation will accelerate. The time for that will come soon enough.
libertyblitzkrieg | Which brings me to the final and most important part of this piece.
The entire Comey firing saga could go in several directions, but an
increasingly likely outcome is the one I don’t see being discussed
anywhere. First we need to ask ourselves, what’s likely to happen next?
Calls for a special prosecutor and independent investigation into
Trump-Russia collusion are likely to get louder and louder. Given the
timing of the firing, I support this and I think there’s a good chance
it’ll happen. I hope it does happen, as we really do need to put an end
to all the speculation and hysteria one way or the other, once and for
all. But here’s where it gets really interesting…
If Trump really did coordinate with the Russian government to affect
the U.S. election and indisputable evidence emerges, it will be an
enormous scandal and he will likely be removed from office. Personally, I
don’t think such evidence exists because I don’t think such collusion
happened, but I support an independent investigation. On the other hand,
what might happen if Trump didn’t collude with Russia?
Here’s where Trump legitimately has a chance to destroy the
Democratic Party once and for all. The Democrats have already been
putting all their eggs in the Russia conspiracy theory basket, and this
focus on Russia as opposed to jobs, healthcare, student loans, debt
slavery etc., has made the American public think the Democratic Party is more out of touch
than both Trump and the GOP. Given that’s where things stand today,
imagine what’ll happen to the party and its leaders if they start
spending 100% of their time pursuing this lead and then nothing comes
up? What then?
I’ll tell you what happens. The Democratic Party, as useless as it is
today, will completely evaporate as a serious political opposition
force in America. This is because it appears all of its handful of 2020
hopefuls seem to be completely hyperventilating and losing their minds
about Comey’s dismissal and asserting that it represents proof Trump
colluded with Russia.
Imagine if Trump
is cleared by an independent investigation? These Dems will look like
complete imbeciles with horrible judgement who wasted the nation’s time
while tens of millions of Americans struggled to make ends meet. This
will destroy the party and lead to an easy Trump win in 2020. This is a
potentially lethal trap for Democrats and they seem to be falling for it
in unison.
opendemocracy | Vulnerable employment, with workers experiencing high levels of
precariousness, is a global phenomenon. The ILO projects global growth
in vulnerable forms of employment to grow by 11 million a year. The impacts of this are being felt across developed, emerging and developing countries.
In the UK, much concern about the changing labour market has been
framed in terms of the shift in risk that has occurred between employers
and individuals. The gig economy is often used to epitomise the
imbalance in power between those controlling the technology, and those
carrying out the tasks:
However, this shift of risk reaches far beyond Uber drivers and
millennials on bicycles. It can be seen in the use of contracted, agency
and temporary staff and in the unpredictability of zero and minimum
hours contracts of those working for supermarkets, in warehouses, in
social care and in universities.
The impact of this on people’s lives is exacerbated by a parallel
transfer of risk in the systems set up to support those who are
unemployed or in low paid work. At the same time as work has become less
predictable, the safety net has become less springy and with bigger
holes.
This shift can be seen in cuts to social security, in the changes and
increasing conditionality that universal credit brings, in the way jobs
are measured and impact on poverty is not. It is seen in adult learning
and the introduction of adult learner loans. It is also seen in a
childcare sector that does not have the capacity to offer care to those
with unpredictable or non-standard hours, even though those are the jobs
increasingly likely to be available for those on low pay.
newyorker | “These are jobs that don’t lead to anything,” he said, without looking up from his work. “It doesn’t feel”—he weighed the word—“sustainable to me.”
The
American workplace is both a seat of national identity and a site of
chronic upheaval and shame. The industry that drove America’s rise in
the nineteenth century was often inhumane. The twentieth-century
corrective—a corporate workplace of rules, hierarchies, collective
bargaining, triplicate forms—brought its own unfairnesses. Gigging
reflects the endlessly personalizable values of our own era, but its
social effects, untried by time, remain uncertain.
Support
for the new work model has come together swiftly, though, in surprising
quarters. On the second day of the most recent Democratic National
Convention, in July, members of a four-person panel suggested that
gigging life was not only sustainable but the embodiment of today’s
progressive values. “It’s all about democratizing capitalism,” Chris
Lehane, a strategist in the Clinton Administration and now Airbnb’s head
of global policy and public affairs, said during the proceedings, in
Philadelphia. David Plouffe, who had managed Barack Obama’s 2008
campaign before he joined Uber, explained, “Politically, you’re seeing a
large contingent of the Obama coalition demanding the sharing economy.”
Instead of being pawns in the games of industry, the panelists thought,
working Americans could thrive by hiring out skills as they wanted, and
putting money in the pockets of peers who had done the same. The power
to control one’s working life would return, grassroots style, to the
people.
The basis for such
confidence was largely demographic. Though statistics about gigging work
are few, and general at best, a Pew study last year found that seventy-two per cent of American adults had
used one of eleven sharing or on-demand services, and that a third of
people under forty-five had used four or more. “To ‘speak millennial,’
you ought to be talking about the sharing economy, because it is core
and central to their economic future,” Lehane declared, and many of his
political kin have agreed. No other commercial field has lately drawn as
deeply from the Democratic brain trust. Yet what does democratized
capitalism actually promise a politically unsettled generation? Who are
its beneficiaries? At a moment when the nation’s electoral future seems
tied to the fate of its jobs, much more than next month’s paycheck
depends on the answers.
express | BARACK Obama will reportedly pocket a staggering £2.5million
(€3million) today for delivering a speech to a sold-out audience in
Milan as part of his lucrative post-presidential speaking tour.
The former President, who has already earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for private speeches since leaving the White House, will make his highest-paying appearance yet at the Global Food Innovation Summit today.
tomdispatch | Since the late eighteenth century, the United States has been
involved in an almost ceaseless string of wars, interventions, punitive
expeditions, and other types of military ventures abroad -- from
fighting the British and Mexicans to the Filipinos and Koreans to the
Vietnamese and Laotians to the Afghans and Iraqis. The country has
formally declared war 11 times and has often engaged in undeclared
conflicts with some form of congressional authorization, as with the
post-9/11 “wars” that rage on today.
Recent presidents have conducted such wars without seemingly asking
the hard questions -- whether about the validity of intelligence claims,
the efficacy of military power, or the likely blowback from invasions,
drone strikes, and the deposing of dictators. The consequences have been
catastrophic for Afghans and Iraqis, Libyans and Yemenis, among
others. At last, however, we finally have a president willing to raise
some of the hard questions about war. Well, at least, about one war. Or,
rather, questions about one war that are, at least, hard to decipher.
“People don't ask that question, but why was there the Civil War?” President Donald Trump wondered
in a recent interview, referring to America’s nineteenth century war
over slavery. “Why could that one not have been worked out?"
Trump then suggested that, had President Andrew Jackson -- to whom he’s compared himself -- been in office, he would have avoided the conflict that claimed
more American lives than any other: “He was really angry that he saw
what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, ‘There's no
reason for this.’” Of course, Andrew Jackson, who fought in his fair
share of America’s ceaseless conflicts (including against the British during the War of 1812 and the Seminoles in Spanish Florida), died in 1845, more than a decade and a half before the Civil War began.
No matter. The important thing is that we finally have a president
willing to ask some questions about some wars -- even if it’s the wrong
questions about a war that ended more than 150 years ago.
Today, TomDispatch regular
Andrew Bacevich offers a cheat sheet of sorts: the real questions about
war and national security that should be asked but never are in these
United States. Since it’s bound to take President Trump some time to
work his way to the present -- what with all the questions about why we
fought Japanese, Koreans, Spaniards, Filipinos, Chinese, Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, Japanese (again), Germans, Koreans (again), Chinese (again), Vietnamese, and so many others -- it’s incumbent upon the rest of us to start asking Bacevich’s questions and demanding some answers.
cbsnews | It is not often you get the chance to meet a man who holds a place in
history like Ben Ferencz. He's 97 years old, barely 5 feet tall, and
he served as prosecutor of what's been called the biggest murder trial
ever. The courtroom was Nuremberg; the crime, genocide; the defendants, a
group of German SS officers accused of committing the largest number of
Nazi killings outside the concentration camps -- more than a million
men, women, and children shot down in their own towns and villages in
cold blood.
Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive today. But he isn't content just to be part of 20thcentury history -- he believes he has something important to offer the world right now.
"If it's naive to want peace instead of war, let 'em make sure they say I'm naive. Because I want peace instead of war."
Twenty-two SS officers responsible for the deaths of 1M+
people would never have been brought to justice were it not for Ben
Ferencz.
The officers were part of units
called Einsatzgruppen, or action groups. Their job was to follow the
German army as it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and kill Communists,
Gypsies and Jews.
Ferencz believes "war
makes murderers out of otherwise decent people" and has spent his life
working to deter war and war crimes.
kunstler | If you seek to know why this country is in so much trouble, check out
the lead reports about the health care reform bill in today’s New York Times, WashPo,
and CNN. You will find there is no intelligible discussion in any of
them as to what’s actually ailing US health care. All you get is
play-by-play commentary about which political tag-team is “winning,” as
if this were a pro wrestling match — with an overlay of gloat that the
Republicans fell oafishly out of the ring in the early rounds.
Of course, an issue even larger than the health care fiasco is this
society’s tragic and astounding inability to discuss anything coherently
in the public arena, and that might possibly be traced to the failures
of education in our time and its effects on the current crop of editors
and news producers — people who grew up hearing that reality was just a
constructed “narrative” and that one narrative was as good as another.
So, you would surmise from reading the papers (or their web editions)
that the health care problem was simply a matter of apportioning
insurance coverage. That is what the stage magicians call misdirection.
Any way you cut the dynamics of health insurance, as practiced in the
USA these days, it is nothing but racketeering, literally a conspiracy
between informed players to swindle uninformed “patients.” The debate in
congress (and the news media) is just about who gets to be swindled.
This is almost entirely due to the hocus-pocus of pricing for
services. For an excellent dissection of all this, I urge you to read
Karl Denninger’s comprehensive manifesto, How To Permanently Fix Health Care For All,
which he posted one month ago. You have to wonder whether anybody in
congress happened to read this, because the debate has been devoid of
any of the crucial points that it addresses.
The way it works now, the so-called “providers” (doctors, hospitals)
refuse to post the cost of any service, and then charge whatever they
feel they can extract, subject to an abstruse and dishonest ceremonial
“negotiation” with the insurance company. The result: hospital and
insurance executives get paid multi-million dollar salaries, doctors get
to drive fine German cars, and the patient gets financially ass-raped,
kicked to the curb, and eventually stuffed into the bankruptcy courts.
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
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What day?
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