Daily Archives: 11 May 2012
Iran War Politics: Elizabeth Warren Contradicts Defense Secretary In Hawkish Talk, Bob Kerrey Calls Attack ‘Disaster’
Two of the nation’s most high-profile Democratic candidates for Senate seats have parted ways over U.S. policy on Iran, which is a top national security issue this election year.
Bob Kerrey, a former U.S. Navy SEAL and two-term senator from Nebraska who is running to win back his former seat, released an ad on Tuesday strongly opposing an attack on Iran, which he said would be “a disaster.”
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic Senate hopeful in Massachusetts, came under fire for a hawkish statement on Iran that contradicts intelligence assertions by senior U.S. defense officials. 
(Read more)
Whistleblower: The NSA is Lying — The U.S. Government Has Copies of Most of Your Emails
National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney reveals he believes domestic surveillance has become more expansive under President Obama than President George W. Bush. He estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion “transactions” — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans. This likely includes copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States. Binney talks about Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and challenges NSA Director Keith Alexander’s assertion that the NSA is not intercepting information about U.S. citizens. (Read more)
Hypocrisy! Obama announces sanctions against countries which spy on their citizens
Can the US sanction itself?
President Barack Obama announced Monday that he has signed an executive order allowing new sanctions against companies that enable Syria and Iran to use technology such as cell phone monitoring to carry out human rights abuses.
The order is part of a broader strategy intended to strengthen the administration’s ability to prevent atrocities, including creation of an Atrocities Prevention Board, Obama said in somber remarks at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“These technologies should be in place to empower citizens, not to repress them,” Obama said of the measure, which targets the Syrian and Iranian governments, as well as companies that provide them with high-tech equipment to use against their own people.
A White House statement said the executive order signed Sunday “authorizes sanctions and visa bans against those who commit or facilitate grave human rights abuses via information technology … related to Syrian and Iranian regime brutality.”
“This novel sanctions tool allows us to sanction not just those oppressive governments, but the companies that enable them with technology they use for oppression and the ‘digital guns for hire’ who create or operate systems used to monitor, track, and target citizens for killing, torture, or other grave abuses,” the White House statement said. (Read more)
Russian Police Make First Arrests Under New Anti-Gay Law
Russian police have detained two people in St. Petersburg for breaching a new law banning homosexual propaganda, the first arrests since the city’s legislature passed the controversial legislation in February.
The two gay rights activists were arrested on April 5 after holding placards reading “It’s normal to be gay.”
A court hearing is scheduled for April 6.
Under the new law, people convicted of promoting homosexuality or pedophilia among minors can be fined up to 5,000 rubles ($172) and organizations can be fined up to 500,000 rubles ($17,200). (Read more)