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First They Came For the iPhones...

Sunday February 28, 2016

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The FBI tells us that its demand for a back door into the iPhone is all about fighting terrorism, and that it is essential to break in just this one time to find out more about the San Bernardino attack last December. But the truth is they had long sought a way to break Apple’s iPhone encryption and, like 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act, a mass murder provided just the pretext needed. After all, they say, if we are going to be protected from terrorism we have to give up a little of our privacy and liberty. Never mind that government spying on us has not prevented one terrorist attack.

Apple has so far stood up to a federal government's demand that it force its employees to write a computer program to break into its own product. No doubt Apple CEO Tim Cook understands the damage it would do to his company for the world to know that the US government has a key to supposedly secure iPhones. But the principles at stake are even higher. We have a fundamental right to privacy. We have a fundamental right to go about our daily life without the threat of government surveillance of our activities. We are not East Germany.
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US Plotting Color Revolt in Russia?

Sunday February 28, 2016

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The annual meeting of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), which is the successor organization to the Soviet-era KGB is an important occasion to take the temperature in the ‘East-West’ relations. (The Cold War cliche is becoming useful once again.) President Vladimir Putin’s customary address at the FSB meeting was the hallmark of the occasion on Friday in Moscow.

The sensational part of Putin’s speech is his disclosure that the FSB is in possession of definite information that plots are being hatched in the West to stir up political turmoil in Russia as the country heads for crucial parliamentary election in October. Putin avoided the use of the expression "color revolution" but hinted at it. To quote him:
Of course, you (FSB) must also prevent any attempts from outside to intervene in our election and our country’s political life. As you know, such methods exists and have been put to use in a number of countries. Let me say again that this is a direct threat to our sovereignty and we will respond accordingly.

I read the regular documents you (FSB) prepare, read the summaries, and see the concrete indications that, regrettably, our ill-wishers abroad are preparing for these elections. Everyone should therefore be aware that we will defend our interests with determination and in accordance with our laws.
Elsewhere, Putin noted that foreign intelligence agencies have “stepped up their activity” and this was “convincingly confirmed” insofar as the FSB’s counter-intelligence interdicted over 400 foreign intelligence operatives last year and criminal charges were initiated against 23 of them.
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NATO Weakens As Old Alliances Break Down

Saturday February 27, 2016

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Last week, I suggested that since Turkey seems intent on starting a war with the Russians, NATO might be wise to dump Turkey, or face war with Russia over a part of the world that is not European. This suggestion came out of no special animosity for the Turkish state, but for the fact that I oppose NATO in its current form, and it’s obvious that Turkey is the soft underbelly of NATO that should be exploited accordingly. 

Little did I know at the time that Europe was already planning to informally announce that Turkey was pressing its luck with other NATO members. 

On Thursday, had I looked, I would have noticed that Benny Avni at the New York Post was suggesting that NATO is headed toward ending with a “whimper.” Avni asks: “[C]an anyone envision America — or anyone else in the alliance — rushing to Turkey’s aid in a military confrontation with Russia?”

Avni is pro-NATO, but he does seem to be observant, since The Daily Mail reported on Saturdaythat Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn had told Der Spiegel “NATO cannot allow itself to be pulled into a military escalation with Russia as a result of the recent tensions between Russia and Turkey.” 

Both the DM and the Washington Times report an unnamed German diplomat as saying “We are not going to pay the price for a war started by the Turks.”
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The US Banking System as an Arm of US Foreign Policy

Friday February 26, 2016

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The Russian government is readying a new issuance of foreign bonds and has invited non-Russian banks to participate in the bond auction. US banks would like to participate in the auction but have been warned by the State Department that this would violate the spirit, if not the letter, of US sanctions against Russia. Even though it wouldn’t be illegal for the banks to bid in the auction, the State Department is warning of “reputational risk” to those banks that do decide to participate. There must be stronger language that the State Department is using privately, in which they’re undoubtedly trying to make the banks an offer they can’t refuse.

This incident is one more example that demonstrates the contempt with which the US government holds private companies. Private companies are literally being conscripted to serve the state. Last week we found out about the FBI trying to force Apple to hack into phones it produces in order to allow the FBI access whenever it wants. Now we have the State Department trying to bully American banks into not doing business in Russia. In fact, the very concept of sanctions relies on private companies acting as arms of the state. No company would willingly turn down lucrative business opportunities in Russia. It is only through government threats that companies cooperate with sanctions. There is a name for an economic system in which ownership is nominally private but ultimate control is exercised by the government: fascism.
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The New Bipolar World Has Arrived

Friday February 26, 2016

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The United States, the lone superpower, has presented two draft resolutions to the UN Security Council on the North Korea problem and Syrian conflict respectively (here and here) – based on the understanding it reached through two water-tight bilateral consultative processes with two ‘half-superpowers’ – China and Russia. Now, don’t two halves make a wholesome one? Welcome to the new ‘bipolar’ world order.

Just as Beijing would have been taken by surprise at the US-Russian deal on Syria, which came out of the blue last Sunday, Moscow would take note that Washington and Beijing simply set out the road map on North Korea sanctions without taking Russia into confidence. But neither China nor Russia can complain because the lone superpower managed to make each feel special its own way.

A Russian diplomat in New York has promptly promised to study the draft resolution on North Korea sanctions. Beijing took a little extra time — almost two days — to issue a statement welcoming the US-Russian deal on Syria. The foreign ministers of Russia and China are not known to have spoken to each other even once during this past eventful one-week period although both claim to "co-ordinate" their foreign policy moves, while both nonetheless clocked several hours with their American counterpart.

It will be a signal achievement of the US diplomacy if it has succeeded in inserting itself laterally into the much-vaunted Sino-Russian entente. At any rate, Washington has brilliantly capitalized on the intense craving felt in Moscow and Beijing for somehow engendering an uplift in their respective ties with the US.
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The Media are Misleading the Public on Syria

Thursday February 25, 2016

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Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press. Reporting about carnage in the ancient city of Aleppo is the latest reason why.

For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: “Don’t send your children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the coffin.” Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey and sold it.
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Guantanamo Travesty: A Consequence Of Unconstitutional War

Wednesday February 24, 2016

President Obama has made his final effort to fulfill a campaign promise to close down the US detention facility at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba, sending Congress a plan that would see a new facility constructed in the US to house those of the 91 remaining prisoners who were not cleared for release. The plan is dead in the water in Congress, however, as Republicans in charge of the House and Senate have signaled a refusal to even work with the president on the issue. But this political tussle over the facility is in reality just a sideshow. Neither side wants to bring up the flawed and anti-American nature of Guantanamo and the undeclared and vague "war on terror" that prompted its creation. On the Liberty Report, however, that is precisely what we are interested in...
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Killing by Sanctions

Tuesday February 23, 2016

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While Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who is currently advising presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, famously said that the estimated 500,000 children who died as a result of US sanctions on Iraq was “worth it.” It was, perhaps, a rare moment of candor from a politician, an admission that Washington is willing to support ostensibly non-lethal measures in such an all-encompassing fashion as to produce mass deaths of people who have no ability to influence the actions undertaken by their government. Sanctions are collective punishment, a blunt edged weapon used all too frequently by Washington to compel foreign governments to submit without having to go to war. There is nothing benign about them and Americans should regard them as potentially just as deadly as direct military intervention.

There are currently a number of countries that are subject to US enforced sanctions but only three fall under the category of “state sponsors of terrorism.” They are Iran, Syria and Sudan. That status entails a number of US Government sanctions including a ban on arms-related exports and sales; controls over exports of dual-use items; prohibitions on economic assistance; and imposition of miscellaneous financial and other restrictions. The financial measures require the United States to oppose loans by the World Bank or other international financial institutions and prohibit any US person from engaging in a financial transaction with a terrorism-list government without a Treasury Department license issued by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The license and other approvals are reported to be complicated and the process is extremely difficult to navigate, discouraging anyone from having business dealings with the targeted countries.

Other sanctions are not always directly related to terrorism. They sometimes target select individuals and organizations that are considered by the US government to be focal points of some aberrant behavior. A number of Russian officials have been sanctioned over Ukraine and even over the functioning of the country’s judiciary while the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has been sanctioned both for its involvement with radical groups and its support of Tehran’s missile program.
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Syria Ceasefire: More War Or Chance For Peace?

Tuesday February 23, 2016

Washington's hawks are already trashing the Syria ceasefire deal that the US and Russia presented yesterday. The Russians will never honor their agreement, they argue. Nevertheless the agreement offers some slight hope that the five year war might be coming to a close -- but only if some of the dangerous ambiguities in the agreement are spelled out properly. What else will have to change if this deal has any chance? Tune in to the Liberty Report to find out...
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