John Fitzpatrick. About New China, the Koreas, Myanmar, Thailand, and also about Japanese and Chinese writers and poets. The main emphasis is on North Asia and the political tectonics of this very important, powerful, and many-peopled area.
WikiLeaks' Assange urges support for Snowden, slams Obama 'betrayal'
By Laura Smith-Spark, CNN
June 22, 2013 -- Updated 1513 GMT (2313 HKT)
Assange to leaker: Go to Latin America
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Assange says President Obama has betrayed a generation, according to the text of a speech
"Edward Snowden's ordeal is just beginning," Assange says of the NSA leaker
Snowden is charged by federal prosecutors with espionage and theft of government property
"This isn't a phenomenon that is going away," says Assange of young, tech-savvy leakers
London (CNN) -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange urged the world Saturday to "stand with" Edward Snowden, the man who admitted leaking top-secret details about U.S. surveillance programs, according to the text of a speech posted on Twitter.
As he appealed for a "brave country" to step forward and offer Snowden asylum, Assange also accused U.S. President Barack Obama of betraying a generation of "young, technically minded people."
Assange was scheduled to speak from the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Saturday, but the appearance was postponed at short notice "due to a security situation," WikiLeaks said on Twitter.
Wednesday marked a year since Assange sought refuge in the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations that he raped one woman and sexually molested another.
Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is accused in the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history. His court-martial is set to begin Monday, June 3, at Fort Meade, Maryland. He has pleaded guilty to 10 of 22 charges against him and faces up to two decades in jail. He has not pleaded guilty to the most serious charge -- that of aiding U.S. enemies, which carries the potential for a life sentence. At a February proceeding, Manning read a statement detailing why and how he sent classified material to WikiLeaks, a group that facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information through its website.
On the eve of the court-martial, Manning's attorney, David Coombs, thanked people for their support and fund-raising efforts in "this important case."
Former hacker Adrian Lamo turned Manning in to authorities. The Army private allegedly told Lamo about leaking the classified records.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fled to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations that he raped one woman and sexually molested another. Assange has said he fears Sweden will transfer him to the United States, where he could face the death penalty for the work of WikiLeaks if he were charged or convicted of a crime. Manning has said he gave material to WikiLeaks after initially trying to contact The New York Times and The Washington Post. WikiLeaks has never confirmed that Manning was the source of its information.
Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a longtime volunteer and spokesman for WikiLeaks, was considered to be Assange's closest collaborator. He quit WikiLeaks and told CNN that Assange's personality was distracting from the group's original mission. Domscheit-Berg went on to publish a tell-all book about the inner workings of WikiLeaks. He wrote that Assange evolved into a "paranoid, power-hungry, megalomaniac."
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Assange: Obama using double rhetoric
Assange has repeatedly said the allegations in Sweden are politically motivated and tied to the work of his website. Ecuador's government granted him asylum in August, but British authorities have said they will arrest him if he leaves the premises.
As a result of his decision to seek refuge in the embassy, "I have been able to work in relative safety from a U.S. espionage investigation," said Assange, according to the text of the speech.
"But today, Edward Snowden's ordeal is just beginning."
Assange's words came hours after Snowden was charged by U.S. federal prosecutors with espionage and theft of government property, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in U.S. District Court in Virginia on Friday.
Snowden, 30, has admitted in interviews that he was the source behind the leak of classified documents about the NSA's surveillance programs. Those leaks were the basis of reports this month in Britain's Guardian newspaper and The Washington Post.
He is believed to be in hiding in Hong Kong. The United States has asked authorities there to detain the former National Security Agency contract analyst on a provisional arrest warrant, The Washington Post reported, citing unnamed U.S. officials.
Assange, in his published speech, said the espionage charge had come "like clockwork," making Snowden the eighth "leaker" to be charged with that count by the Obama administration.
"Two dangerous runaway processes have taken root in the last decade, with fatal consequences for democracy," he said.
"Government secrecy has been expanding on a terrific scale. Simultaneously, human privacy has been secretly eradicated ... The U.S. government is spying on each and every one of us, but it is Edward Snowden who is charged with espionage for tipping us off."
Also among the eight "leakers" is WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning, Assange said. Manning is being court-martialed on charges he aided U.S. enemies by leaking documents he obtained as an Army intelligence analyst.
He named the others as Barrett Brown, Jeremy Hammond, Aaron Swartz, Gottfrid Svartholm and Jacob Appelbaum.
Assange suggested Obama was the real "traitor" for his failure to live up to his promises of hope, change and transparency in government. And he warned that the U.S. government will lose the battle if it tries to take on the tech-savvy people now calling its actions into question.
"Edward Snowden is one of us. Bradley Manning is one of us. They are young, technically minded people from the generation that Barack Obama betrayed. They are the generation that grew up on the Internet, and were shaped by it," he said.
"The U.S. government is always going to need intelligence analysts and systems administrators, and they are going to have to hire them from this generation and the ones that follow it.
"One day, they will run the CIA and the FBI. This isn't a phenomenon that is going away."
Assange added that charging Snowden "is intended to intimidate any country that might be considering standing up for his rights" and appealed for efforts to find asylum for him to be intensified
The US justice department has filed
criminal charges against a fugitive ex-intelligence analyst who leaked details
of a secret surveillance operation.
The charges against ex-National Security Agency (NSA) analyst Edward Snowden
include espionage and theft of government property.
In May, Mr Snowden fled to Hong Kong after leaking details of a programme to
monitor phone and internet data.
The US is also reported to be preparing an extradition request.
His leaks revealed that US agencies had systematically gathered vast amounts
of phone and web data.
The criminal complaint was lodged with a federal court in the Eastern
District of Virginia and a provisional arrest warrant had been issued, court
documents show.
Mr Snowden was charged with "Theft of Government
Property", "Unauthorized communication of National Defense Information
Information" and "Willful Communication of Classified Communications
Intelligence".
Each of the charges carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence. The complaint
is dated 14 June although it was made only public on Friday.
Mr Snowden's whereabouts are unknown since he left his hotel on 10 June,
after going public about his responsibility for the leaks.
Hong Kong police have declined to comment on a local newspaper report that he
is staying in a police safe house.
The BBC's Katy Watson in Washington says the move shows how seriously the US
administration is taking the issue.
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, a member of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, welcomed the charges.
"I've always thought this was a treasonous act,'' he said in a statement. "I
hope Hong Kong's government will take him into custody and extradite him to the
US."
Correspondents say that although the US and Hong Kong co-operate on law
enforcement matters, Mr Snowden's appeal rights could drag out any extradition
proceedings. Beijing influence
Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of China, has a high degree of
autonomy from Beijing and signed an extradition treaty with the US in 1998.
The debate in Hong Kong over whether Mr Snowden should be handed over to the
US continues. Legislator Leung Kwok-hung said Beijing should tell the
authorities to protect Mr Snowden from extradition and the people of the
territory should "take to the streets" to shelter him.
Beijing is allowed to exert its influence in foreign policy matters, says the
BBC's Juliana Liu in Hong Kong, but it cannot order officials to deviate from
the law.
Beijing is highly unlikely to intercede in what is likely to be the early
stages of a long legal battle, our correspondent adds.
The leaks led to revelations that the US is systematically seizing vast
amounts of phone and web data under an NSA programme known as Prism.
Mr Snowden also alleged that US intelligence had been hacking into Chinese
computer networks.
He said he had decided to speak out after observing "a continuing litany of
lies" from senior officials to Congress.
The leaks have been a severe embarrassment for President Barack Obama's
administration.
US officials have since launched a robust defence of the practice by US
intelligence agencies of gathering telephone and internet data from private
users around the world.
They say Prism cannot be used to intentionally target any Americans or anyone
in the US, and that it is supervised by judges.
Earlier this week the head of the NSA, Gen Keith Alexander, told Congress
that it had helped to thwart terror attacks.
In another development, the Guardian newspaper has reported that the
UK is tapping fibre-optic cables and gathering large quantities of data.
The Guardian says its report is based on more documents released by Mr
Snowden and leaked from the UK's electronic eavesdropping agency, GCHQ.
Data from global communications, including internet and phone use, was stored
for up to 30 days to be analysed the papers says.
Tahiti's footballers have received a standing ovation from the crowd at the Maracana in Brazil after being crushed by Spain 10-0 at the Confederations Cup.
Spain broke the record for the biggest margin of victory at an international FIFA event, as Fernando Torres scored four times and David Villa claimed a hat-trick.
Tahiti sit 138th in the FIFA rankings and qualified for the tournament by winning the 2012 OFC Nations Cup.
The result equalled their heaviest defeat - a 10-0 demolition by New Zealand in 2004 - but Spain fell short of matching their 13-0 annihilation of Bulgaria in a 1933 friendly.
No team had previously won by 10 goals at an international FIFA event, with Hungary (9-0 against South Korea at the 1954 World Cup, 10-1 against El Salvador at the 1982 World Cup) and Yugoslavia (9-0 against Zaire at the 1974 World Cup) the co-holders of the previous record.
Tahiti's goalkeeper Mickael Roche, who was drafted into the side to replace Xavier Smith, has told Australia Network he has mixed feelings about the match.
"It was still great to play Spain - it was an experience," he said.
"We have such great support from the crowd here - they gave us a standing ovation despite the result, even when the score is that heavy, it is unbelievable."
Fernando Torres has also praised the Tahitians for their performance.
"Often inferior teams look to break up the game and get aggressive, they play without spirit or hope," he said.
"Standards aside, Tahiti showed a great example of how to go about playing football.
"We have tried to show them respect in every sense."
For a nation largely comprised of 'boat people', asylum has generated the most debate, and at times hysteria, of all immigration matters in Australia.
By Melissa Phillips, University of Melbourne and Martina Boese, University of Melbourne
For a nation largely comprised of “boat people”, asylum has generated the most debate, and at times hysteria, of all immigration matters in Australia.
Is this due to what multiculturalism academic Ghassan Hage calls the “sensitivity of thieves”, linking the invasion and theft of Australian land from its traditional owners by white settlers 200 years ago with current attitudes to asylum?
Or do attitudes to asylum reflect a genuine concern for Australia as a sovereign nation?
The setting of tight restrictions on immigration policy has been Australian politics since federation. One of the first acts of federal parliament in 1901 was the Immigration Restriction Act that established a dictation or language test for potential migrants in any European language.
At the same time, the Pacific Islander Labourers Act placed restrictions on the arrival of Pacific Island workers. These and other measures that limited the immigrant population to white, English-speaking people would come to be known as the “White Australia” policy – a policy that would remain in place for the next six decades.
In addition to controlling the entry of certain groups or types of people deemed unsuitable, the White Australia policy supported an image of the “ideal” future citizen who would fit with Australia’s national character.
The policy of assimilation, first imposed on Aboriginal Australians, was subsequently applied to migrants. In essence, assimilationist policies meant that irrespective of heritage, language or culture, all differences would be erased and people would come under the rubric of “Australian”. It was assimilationist policies that resulted in Aboriginal Australians being denied their heritage and official citizenship.
Even as the White Australia policy was being informally relaxed, migrants were also expected to avoid displaying cultural and linguistic differences. These federally-imposed policies actively encouraged a homogenising force of White Australia. Fears of countless numbers of Asians “invading” Australia, commonly referred to as the “yellow peril”, were invoked by proponents of the White Australia policy as a justification for this “you’re either with us or against us” approach to a vision of a white Australia.
After the mass migration programs from the 1950s onwards, the White Australia policy was finally relaxed in the 1960s. Some of these programs brought groups of people displaced by World War Two to Australia. Like they are today, displaced people only formed a small proportion of much larger migration programs.
Migrants and displaced people were accommodated in government-run hostels where they were provided with training and other support. But in these early days, migrants and displaced people had no limits imposed on their movement and while they did face hostility as newcomers, they soon settled and found work.
With the arrival of Vietnamese asylum seekers in the 1970s, the phrase “boat people” entered the national lexicon and a spotlight was shone on people fleeing their homes due to persecution. Up until now migration, including the humanitarian (refugee) component, had largely been controlled centrally by the Department of Immigration. Who was arriving, when and how, was clearly set under quotas and a visa system. But between 1976 and 1982, 2,059 Indo-Chinese refugees arrived directly in Australia by boat.
They were met with mixed reactions – racism, public alarm, concern over their cultural differences and also, importantly, genuine concern about their welfare and plight. At the highest level, prime minister Malcolm Fraser permitted the admission of Indo-Chinese refugees arriving by boat and supported the resettlement of over 200,000 more refugees whose claims were processed in camps in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Thailand.
While some have cautioned against characterising this as a “golden age” of asylum, Fraser’s decision to offer permanent protection to these boat arrivals and then resettle countless thousands more demonstrated unparalleled humanity. Arguably the closest any other Australian prime minister has come to such a courageous act of flexibility within the immigration program was Bob Hawke, who allowed 42,000 Chinese students to remain permanently in Australia after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
Since the 1990s, asylum policy could be characterised as a race to the bottom on both sides of politics. In 1992, Paul Keating’s Labor government introduced mandatory detention for all people arriving without a valid visa. People who entered Australia on a valid visa and then claimed asylum were, and still are, not subject to mandatory detention. They remain in the community for the duration of their asylum claim.
One of the lower points of asylum policy was the 2001 Tampa Affair. Having already introduced temporary protection visas (TPVs) for onshore asylum seekers in 1999 and with an election on the horizon, prime minister John Howard used the arrival of a boatload of asylum seekers seeking entry to Australia as a moment to initiate some of the harshest policy responses to asylum seekers.
These measures included refusing the boat in question to enter Australia’s territorial waters and excising Christmas Island from the migration zone. There was widespread public support for these measures, and attitudes to asylum harshened in the aftermath of Howard’s election victory and the arrival of more boats.
Under Kevin Rudd there were promising signs of a shift in attitudes to asylum. The TPV system was dismantled and some detained asylum seekers were released into the community. The number of boats carrying asylum seekers into Australian waters kept increasing, however. This served the Coalition opposition well as a convenient reminder of the government’s failure in tackling an issue deemed to be out of control. Australia has a long history of boat arrivals – so why is a hard line being taken on asylum seekers today? Commonwealth of Australia
In 2011, the proposed “Malaysian solution” by prime minister Julia Gillard signalled a major setback. However, the suggested exchange of 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia for 4000 refugees and the building of detention centres in Malaysia was prevented by the High Court’s ruling on insufficient human rights protection under Malaysian law and the invalidity of the ministerially-agreed bargain.
Lacking options for legal amendments due to its minority in the Senate, the Gillard government’s next step was the appointment of the Houston Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers. The panel’s recommendation to re-introduce offshore processing on Nauru and re-establish a regional processing centre on Manus Island was met with disbelief by many. The strategically named “no advantage” rule, aimed at denying boat arrivals any advantage in the processing of their claims, revealed the government’s desperate attempt to signal they were still in charge of Australia’s borders.
The language of rules and order in combination with insinuations of foul play through “queue jumping” has long dominated public discourse on asylum seekers, not only in Australia. The “bogus asylum seeker” has become a widely used term that neatly separates undeserving and deserving refugees.
The most recent low point in the sad affair of Australian asylum policy is the excision of the Australian mainland and Christmas Island from the migration zone. This allows the removal of those deemed as unlawful arrivals for detention and processing offshore. Former immigration minister Chris Bowen had referred to this legislation as a “stain on our national character” when it was put to parliament under the Howard government.
Does anyone really believe that these changes will stop people’s desperate attempts to reach a safer place via a potentially deadly journey? The number of deaths keep increasing while Australia keeps watching on the current stalemate in Canberra.
With a federal election looming neither major party is proposing a shift away from demonising asylum seekers. It is somewhat striking that the same country that has gained international reputation for its system of humanitarian settlement services demonstrates so little political will for a humane response to treating asylum seekers.
While immigration matters have long been exploited at the political level, concern for asylum seekers has waxed and waned at a community level. There have been genuine demonstrations of concern for people on TPVs and over deaths at sea. But what is numerically one of the smaller migration programs – when compared to both temporary and permanent skilled migration – does garner overwhelming public attention, which is more than often negative.
What is clear is that when strong political leadership and genuine concern at the community level coalesce – as they did during Malcolm Fraser’s time – compassion for asylum seekers is possible. Melissa Phillips has received funding from the Australian Research Council.
Pyongyang reacted angrily to tougher sanctions after its third nuclear test
Chinese trade with North Korea has been a lifeline for the isolated regime
But Beijing has struggled to control the angry rhetoric from its neighbor
Expert: China fears a North Korean collapse would spark a refugee crisis
Editor's note: Episode 9 of On China with Kristie Lu Stout focuses on China-North Korea relations -- Wednesday, June 19: 0530 ET, 1230 ET. Watch in Hong Kong at 1730 HKT, 0030 HKT.
Hong Kong (CNN) -- The naughty step is not working.
After the United Nations slapped tougher sanctions on North Korea after its third nuclear test in February this year, Pyongyang screamed in defiance. It canceled its hotline with South Korea, withdrew its workers from the Kaesong industrial complex it jointly operates with Seoul, and carried on with its over-the-top threats.
China may have backed those sanctions but the economic lifeline is still there. Trade goes on between North Korea and China. In 2011, before some of these trade embargoes began, China accounted for an estimated 67.2% of North Korea's exports and 61.6% of imports, according to the CIA World Factbook.
"If you talk to officials at the border, there's no change," says Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, the North Asian head of the International Crisis Group.
On China: China's influence on N. Korea
On China: Preventing a nuclear N. Korea
China changing tone on North Korea?
China's influence in the N. Korea crisis
"And a lot of that trade is conducted by government trading companies especially on the North Korean side," adds the Los Angeles Times' Beijing Bureau Chief Barbara Demick. "There's a lot more China could do that it has chosen not to."
So why is China not using its economic leverage to rein in the nuclear threat and proliferator next door?
In a word -- fear.
There's fear of a North Korean collapse that would lead to instability and a refugee crisis along its 1,400 kilometer (880 mile) border with North Korea. And then there's the far greater fear of an all-out conflict that would redraw the geopolitical map.
"Their end goal might be similar in terms of denuclearization, but China is looking at preventing war on the peninsula, which would allow a pro-Western government right on its border," says Kleine-Ahlbrandt.
And there's something else holding Beijing back -- the historic and symbolic relationship with Pyongyang that is hard to give up.
"The Chinese Communist Party thinks of North Korea as this small state that is in its own image," says Demick. "The structure of the North Korean government is very similar to the Chinese government and, in a way, it's the pure Communist state.
"It's just really hard psychologically to dump North Korea."
It's just really hard psychologically to dump North Korea. Barbara Demick
"They treat North Korea a bit like a wayward child," adds Kleine-Ahlbrandt. " You want to be the one to punish your child, but you're not going to turn them over to police."
But for many people in China, enough is enough.
"Their rhetoric is increasing the number of Chinese who feel very, very disgusted by their behavior, their psyche and their regime," says Zhu Feng, professor of International Relations at Peking University.
"China's government is seriously under fire because I think the majority of Chinese really, really feel that North Korea's bad behavior will inevitably endanger China."
Beijing has mastered the art of "scream-free parenting" with Pyongyang. It has learned to lower its voice and control its emotional reaction with every new threat or missile test.
But public opinion is shifting and China's new leadership is recognizing the need to re-evaluate how it manages its troublesome neighbor.
In a sign of Beijing's evolving approach toward North Korea, Chinese President Xi Jinping recently offered this veiled criticism: "No one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains."
The pressure is on for China to spell out -- and carry out -- the consequences for North Korea's bad behavior.
(CNN) -- Today, the United States is conducting offensive cyberwar actions around the world.
More than passively eavesdropping, we're penetrating and damaging foreign networks for both espionage and to ready them for attack. We're creating custom-designed Internet weapons, pre-targeted and ready to be "fired" against some piece of another country's electronic infrastructure on a moment's notice.
This is much worse than what we're accusing China of doing to us. We're pursuing policies that are both expensive and destabilizing and aren't making the Internet any safer. We're reacting from fear, and causing other countries to counter-react from fear. We're ignoring resilience in favor of offense.
Bruce Schneier
Welcome to the cyberwar arms race, an arms race that will define the Internet in the 21st century.
Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued last October and released by Edward Snowden, outlines U.S. cyberwar policy. Most of it isn't very interesting, but there are two paragraphs about "Offensive Cyber Effect Operations," or OCEO, that are intriguing:
"OECO can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance U.S. national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging. The development and sustainment of OCEO capabilities, however, may require considerable time and effort if access and tools for a specific target do not already exist.
"The United States Government shall identify potential targets of national importance where OCEO can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as compared with other instruments of national power, establish and maintain OCEO capabilities integrated as appropriate with other U.S. offensive capabilities, and execute those capabilities in a manner consistent with the provisions of this directive."
These two paragraphs, and another paragraph about OCEO, are the only parts of the document classified "top secret." And that's because what they're saying is very dangerous.
Cyberattacks have the potential to be both immediate and devastating. They can disrupt communications systems, disable national infrastructure, or, as in the case of Stuxnet, destroy nuclear reactors; but only if they've been created and targeted beforehand. Before launching cyberattacks against another country, we have to go through several steps.
We have to study the details of the computer systems they're running and determine the vulnerabilities of those systems. If we can't find exploitable vulnerabilities, we need to create them: leaving "back doors" in hacker speak. Then we have to build new cyberweapons designed specifically to attack those systems.
Sometimes we have to embed the hostile code in those networks, these are called "logic bombs," to be unleashed in the future. And we have to keep penetrating those foreign networks, because computer systems always change and we need to ensure that the cyberweapons are still effective.
Like our nuclear arsenal during the Cold War, our cyberweapons arsenal must be pretargeted and ready to launch.
That's what Obama directed the U.S. Cyber Command to do. We can see glimpses in how effective we are in Snowden's allegations that the NSA is currently penetrating foreign networks around the world: "We hack network backbones -- like huge Internet routers, basically -- that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one."
The NSA and the U.S. Cyber Command are basically the same thing. They're both at Fort Meade in Maryland, and they're both led by Gen. Keith Alexander. The same people who hack network backbones are also building weapons to destroy those backbones. At a March Senate briefing, Alexander boasted of creating more than a dozen offensive cyber units.
Longtime NSA watcher James Bamford reached the same conclusion in his recent profile of Alexander and the U.S. Cyber Command (written before the Snowden revelations). He discussed some of the many cyberweapons the U.S. purchases:
"According to Defense News' C4ISR Journal and Bloomberg Businessweek, Endgame also offers its intelligence clients -- agencies like Cyber Command, the NSA, the CIA, and British intelligence -- a unique map showing them exactly where their targets are located. Dubbed Bonesaw, the map displays the geolocation and digital address of basically every device connected to the Internet around the world, providing what's called network situational awareness. The client locates a region on the password-protected web-based map, then picks a country and city -- say, Beijing, China. Next the client types in the name of the target organization, such as the Ministry of Public Security's No. 3 Research Institute, which is responsible for computer security -- or simply enters its address, 6 Zhengyi Road. The map will then display what software is running on the computers inside the facility, what types of malware some may contain, and a menu of custom-designed exploits that can be used to secretly gain entry. It can also pinpoint those devices infected with malware, such as the Conficker worm, as well as networks turned into botnets and zombies -- the equivalent of a back door left open...
"The buying and using of such a subscription by nation-states could be seen as an act of war. 'If you are engaged in reconnaissance on an adversary's systems, you are laying the electronic battlefield and preparing to use it' wrote Mike Jacobs, a former NSA director for information assurance, in a McAfee report on cyberwarfare. 'In my opinion, these activities constitute acts of war, or at least a prelude to future acts of war.' The question is, who else is on the secretive company's client list? Because there is as of yet no oversight or regulation of the cyberweapons trade, companies in the cyber-industrial complex are free to sell to whomever they wish. "It should be illegal,' said the former senior intelligence official involved in cyberwarfare. 'I knew about Endgame when I was in intelligence. The intelligence community didn't like it, but they're the largest consumer of that business.'"
That's the key question: How much of what the United States is currently doing is an act of war by international definitions? Already we're accusing China of penetrating our systems in order to map "military capabilities that could be exploited during a crisis." What PPD-20 and Snowden describe is much worse, and certainly China, and other countries, are doing the same.
All of this mapping of vulnerabilities and keeping them secret for offensive use makes the Internet less secure, and these pre-targeted, ready-to-unleash cyberweapons are destabalizing forces on international relationships. Rooting around other countries' networks, analyzing vulnerabilities, creating back doors, and leaving logic bombs could easily be construed as an act of war. And all it takes is one over-achieving national leader for this all to tumble into actual war.
It's time to stop the madness. Yes, our military needs to invest in cyberwar capabilities, but we also need international rules of cyberwar, more transparency from our own government on what we are and are not doing, international cooperation between governments and viable cyberweapons treaties. Yes, these are difficult. Yes, it's a long slow process. Yes, there won't be international consensus, certainly not in the beginning. But even with all of those problems, it's a better path to go down than the one we're on now.
We can start by taking most of the money we're investing in offensive cyberwar capabilities and spend them on national cyberspace resilience. MAD, mutually assured destruction, made sense because there were two superpowers opposing each other. On the Internet there are all sorts of different powers, from nation-states to much less organized groups. An arsenal of cyberweapons begs to be used, and, as we learned from Stuxnet, there's always collateral damage to innocents when they are. We're much safer with a strong defense than with a counterbalancing offense.
It is not that Julia Gillard is attacked as Prime Minister because she is a Woman...the fact is that the Gillard Government is the worst Government Australia has ever manufactured and this fact is mostly the Prime Minister's direct fault. It is not that somehow immediately 'bad forces' intrinsically undermine the current Prime Minister's Office, but rather that Gillard has destroyed any decent person's respect for this, up til now, reasonably decent and usually respected role.
The thing I find most disappointing about the Labor Government, having had so many great and never to be repeated opportunities for empowered Independence, Power and Significance for the benefit of Australians over the term of their government for 30 years into the future, have refused, at every opportunity, to do so...and have, consistently, in policy and preference, done the opposite. As if Gillard, Swan, Wong, Shorten, Garratt etc see Australians all as weak minded folk who just want to retire and die, UNABLE TO FACE A DECENT FUTURE FOR THEIR OWN CHILDREN, AS IF THIS DETRACTS Somehow FROM THEIR OWN MEANING!!!!
In this way, the Australian Labor Party is fully responsible and is the worst government Australia has ever had. Ever. It is not only the most anti-Labor government Australia has ever had, it is also the most Anti-historical government...so happy with the misery of the past...so happy to bring more misery to us. So happy with total dependence. So unhappy with intelligence, so unhappy with Human Reason.
I would expect that Tony Abbott will win the next 2 Federal elections very easily and then half way through the second term, Malcolm Turnbull will take over as Prime Minister and lead Australia into being a decent Australia Republic...something that the Australian Labor Party, under Gillard, has discounted totally as being 'far too hard' for Labor to do, ever. By that time the Opposition Labor Party will compose of Bill Shjorten as Opposition leader and Penny Wong as Deputy...but neither of them really get the importance of the ideology they have betrayed...so the Labor Party, in exile, will be in exile for a long, long time...not because of the weakness of intelligence of its leaders, but because of the weakness in them, in terms of real quality, as people.
As an Australian, I think Australia is an okay place to live. I have lived in other countries, under other systems, some democratic, some Royalist, some communist-totalitarian, but all in all, Australia is okay.
It is nice and yet nothing really special.
The best thing about Australia is also the worse thing: the lack of people here. I have lived in a city bigger than the Australian national population...and there are many things nice about Australians in terms of being an endangered species in terms of numbers, but there are also some equally quite sad and lonely things about this reality...but that is a discussion for some other time.
I believe I was Lucky to be born as an Australian but this never translates into me being Proud to be born as an Australian...because birth/race and location is really much of a lottery.
I like Australia, after 60 years, but it has taken this long. You will not see me hanging the bizarre Australian flag from my doorstep...although there is nothing essentially wrong with the Australian Flag, apart from the British Flag so dominant in the sinister upper corner.
I will not be hanging this flag from my house, ever. It is a flag of Oppression, of ownership by someone else, and remains so, and will remain so until the British double-cross is removed.
The stars of the southern cross against the beautiful blue sky is a much better and more fitting and more beautiful flag for us as a people. We do not need a boomerang in it... the southern cross is our flag...without British and without Boomerang etc simply because when we look into the evening clear sky we see these stars...we do not need to see the British or the Boomerangs...every human being who has ever lived and belonged here for 100,000 years has always looked up to the Southern Cross to estimate their place of being...that is enough for me, and it is enough for all decent Australians to know where they are and who they are.
It is pretty clear that with Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan, Bill Shorten at the helm, the ALP will be demolished as a political entity in September...for a minimum of 20 years.
With Kevin Rudd and a new team at the helm, the ALP will be demolished for maybe 10 years.
You can see why Bill Shorten is being so ambivalent right now...
His chances for himself as a 'statesman' will increase if both Julia and Kevin fail completely....so he is in a hard place, but a hard place he created for himself and indeed, for us.
The problem with being a Great Manipulator, as Bill Shorten most certainly is, is that he is also a very flawed human being, and this keeps showing through in public.
We are all flawed human beings, but NOT THAT flawed as is young small Bill. It's true.
None of the current ALP ministers show any real abiding strategic political intelligence or ideology at all.
This is what the ALP actually is now...short term profit entrepreneurs using 'the Faithful' for their own purposes to continue to wear nice suits and jackets and get paid for pronouncements that look kind of okay but aren't backed up at all by real human work or real human initiative... or even real political normalcy. The Australian Labor Party is a Party bereft of Human Reason.
It isn't going to work.
They've had the massive opportunities, opportunities no one in Australian politics has ever had before, ever, the opportunities to enshrine and ensure a decent well-off Australia that persists well into the future for many decades, and, at every opportunity they've stuffed up every single one of those opportunities based upon really silly and very conservative and almost antediluvian ideas.
We were already behind the 'eight ball' of the Asian Century at the start, because of John Howard, but we have jumped so far back now into the 1950s of Australia that it is really breathtaking, as a failure to thrive. Australia a Nation that chooses to fail to thrive under Gillard. A nation that chooses the darkness. Chooses the small ambitions of its leaders, full of hate for each other, over what is actually fair and decent and a good future for all Australians.
No. No more of this rubbish.
Because of Julia and Wayne and Bill and Penny and Peter we are now at least 20 years behind 'the Asian Century' for the intrinsically important decisions that had to be made...& that opportunity won't come again...and they did all that in 3 years...
No.
No.
The ALP? No. No Way.
Respecting my country is important to me.
Apart from a few times when I've voted for the Greens, I've always voted for the Australian Labor Party, since I was 19 years old.
When I was 18 years old I voted for the Australian Liberal Party and I regretted that for half a lifetime really. I'm 59 now.
Come September, I will be voting for the Liberal Party again for 2 serious reasons:
1: The Australian Labor Party is a party and a government of Farce and Self-Hatred with seriously career-minded ALP folk are jostling for power rather than having a vision for the future, and hating each other much more than they hate the opposition ideology. Policies are determined on the basis of 'what might people support today? So, let us do whatever that is.' without thought of the cost or consequence of the actions, spread out over the years ahead. The ALP's vision for Disability Insurance and for Education are prime examples of this...sure, they are both good ideas but the cost and implications and consequences have not been analysed at all. Most people would support these ideas, as most people would support 'Motherhood' as a good idea... The cost to Australia of the Gillard Government's dumping of the Rudd plan to tax mining companies 'something' has meant that the highest earners have not paid tax...during a rich period for them. How this can be seen as good social policy is really beyond me.
The Carbon Tax purpose was, apparently, to reduce pollution and raise money for sustainable innovation tied to the Euro carbon price...but the reality is that the Euro price has fallen to about nothing, so nothing much is coming in for innovation except the money...a tax on us, that will be used to pay the usual bills of a government that has run out of money due to very poor decisions during the longest richest times we have known as a country.
Australia avoided the first hurt of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis not because of Government being smart but because we sold heaps of minerals to China. Then we set up a US Marine base in Darwin to use military force against China in the future, and instantly our sales to China went down and will continue to go down, understandably. This was such a stupid decision. Short-sighted, based on racism and on just always doing what the USA does, and we have suffered for this a lot already and will continue to. The GFC of 2008 hasn't even half finished yet...that the Australian Labor Government had no idea of this, well, this just shows the appalling decisions of the ALP still continue.
2: The other reason I will be voting for the Liberal Party is that the local member can be easily contacted and will reply to concerns and enquiries from me, as a citizen. I have asked the ALP for advice, help, intervention etc and have never ever received any reply and I would guess that this is because I don't represent a Trade Union or an important Mining Company...I am just a person who every now and then seeks some assistance. The local federal Liberal Party member has always replied very fast and 70% of the time has helped me a lot, and at other times has made sure I know why he disagrees with me...and I can at least respect that.
The NSA was targeted by an Anonymous 'trolling' operation in the days after Snowden's revelations [Reuters]
On June 8, Juan Cole, one of the few true Middle East experts in the US, posted a short entry on his Informed Comment blog. The title said it all: "We misunderstood Barack: He only wanted the domestic surveillance to be made legal, not to end it".
But domestic surveillance was far from the only Bush policy that Obama has wanted to continue, despite giving supporters the opposite impression. The continued - if reduced - use of indefinite detention is one example, the continued - vastly expanded - use of drones is another, and underlying them all is the continued self-defeating policy of fighting a global "war on terrorism" - but debranding it, because the term "war on terror" has become toxic, and renaming it makes it harder to oppose.
Foreign policy is not the only area in which Obama has turned out to be far more conservative than his 2008 campaign supporters had reason to believe, and there's surely a variety of different factors involved. But in the overlapping realms of foreign policy and national security highlighted by the revelations of Edward Snowden, one factor in particular deserves our attention: what the radical sociologist C. Wright Mills described over half a century ago as "crackpot realism".
In his 1956 book, The Power Elite, Mills wrote: "For the first time in American history, men in authority are talking about an 'emergency' without a foreseeable end... such men as these are crackpot realists: in the name of realism they have constructed a paranoid reality all their own."
Taking for granted that paranoid reality then, of course the calculus shifts entirely to preventing any successful attack, however small, because of where it might lead - and doing so, effectively, forever. Such is the framework within which the liberal John F Kennedy said we would "bear any burden, pay any price" - but certainly not ask about the burden and the price of the crackpot realist mindset itself. And that is the unaskable question that anti-war activists posed in the 1960s, that Daniel Ellsberg posed when he released the Pentagon Papers, and that Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden pose for us today. More of the same Mills was writing about Cold War America. But given how much actual military power the Soviet Union possessed, compared with how little al-Qaeda has, the crackpot realism Mills wrote about pales in comparison with that of today. Although it was madness to believe that the Soviet Union would actually launch a nuclear war, thus ensuring its own destruction, there was at least a real military capability involved. Al-Qaeda, in contrast, wasn't even a military force when it pulled off the 9/11 attacks, touching off America's "war on terror" response - which was exactly what al Qaeda wanted, since going to war was the only way they could possibly become the "holy warriors" they imagined themselves to be. It was, quite frankly, America's military response to 9/11 that created al Qaeda as a military force and legitmised its bogus claim to the mantle of being called "holy warriors".
Edward Snowden's crime is not that he revealed too much, but too little.
Thus, the decision to respond to 9/11 as an act of war rather than a crime was arguably Washington's greatest foreign policy blunder ever. The straight-forward equivalent of trying to fight a fire with gasoline. And it need not have been.
The whole world was horrified by the 9/11 attacks. Even Afghanistan's Taliban ruler, Mullah Omar, was unwilling to defend them, and was willing to turn bin Laden over to an Islamic court if presented with evidence of al-Qaeda's responsibility. Of course that was an "unthinkable" course of action for America's military-industrial elite at the time. But, as I've discussed here before, the people of the United States - even in the face of tremendous one-sided propaganda (one study found that op-eds in the New York Times and the Washington Post ran 44-2 in favour of war during the first three weeks after September 11) - were remarkably more open-minded. A week after 9/11, a Gallup poll found that, while 54 percent of US respondents favoured a military response, 30 percent favoured a criminal justice response and 16 percent were undecided.
Gallup international asked the same question of people in 34 other countries, with landslide majorities 2-, 3- even 4-1 in favour of a criminal justice response in almost every one of them. But the exceptions, favouring a military reaction, proved just as instructive as the worldwide supermajorities for a criminal justice response. There were just two exceptions: India and Israel. Both have decades of history trying in vain to use military force to crush "Muslim extremists," who are almost entirely of their own making. Anyone with a lick of sense would ask India and Israel what to do about 9/11, and then pull a George Costanza, and do precisely the opposite. But the US did not have a lick of sense. Not in 2001, and not under George W Bush.
As a result, and as one of Juan Cole's guest bloggers, Chase Madar, recently pointed out: "The government endangered us with foreign quagmires; it's the Bradley Mannings that might keep us safe," US casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan are now double the number killed in 9/11, the number of seriously wounded US military personnel is at least 50,000. "And if you dare to add in as well the number of Iraqis, Afghans, and foreign coalition personnel killed in both wars, the death toll reaches at least a hundred 9/11s and probably more." False promises
By 2008, things had changed. In fact, there was hope and change... or at least so people hoped. But as Juan Cole pointed out, Obama's supporters were mostly mistaken about the largely cosmetic nature of the change he was offering. More broadly than just on the matter of domestic spying, Obama took the position of opposing "dumb wars" - a stance that enabled him to win the Democratic nomination, since he hadn't been in DC in 2002, when all the other Democratic hopefuls were giving Bush a blank cheque to invade Iraq. But when you really think about it, who isn't opposed to dumb wars? The question really is: how, in general, do you go about telling dumb wars from wise ones... if, indeed there are any wise ones.
Opposing dumb wars should be the starting point of an intelligent debate, not the end point. But that's what it was in Obama's election campaign, which is, according to Mills, just another symptom of a system infected with crackpot realism.
US to prosecute NSA leaker Snowden
Bush's war making had been so spectacularly dumb that no-one really forced the issue and made Obama explain what he meant in terms of guiding principles which could let us understand what he intended to do in future situations. He did contrast Afghanistan with Iraq, and say that he would shift forces to fight there. But many observers felt that was simply electioneering, posturing to be safe. Once he got into office, and heard how hopeless the Afghanistan situation was, they assumed, he'd quietly change his tune and not expand the war there - as, indeed, Vice President Biden apparently advised him to do.
After all, they don't call Afghanistan the "graveyard of empires" for nothing. Perhaps if Obama had been pressed to explain himself beforehand, to explain the difference between dumb wars and smart ones, then people might have known what to expect. Perhaps, Obama might even have been forced to take a genuinely sane position, instead of a crackpot realist one.
Let us recall the historical background for Obama's argument, the historical background of America's two prototypical "good wars": the Civil War and World War II. Both were fought for good moral reasons - even, one could argue, out of profound moral necessity. And yet both were fought because the seeds of that moral necessity were sown long in advance, when more just policies could have prevented them both. And both resulted in such horrors that even the victors were shamed. How "good" could such wars be, even if the evils they were fought against were as monstrous as anything in human history?
This is the sort of question that Americans have never, as a nation, grappled with in the post 9/11 era. And yet, it's a question that defines us as a nation, not by the answer we give, but by the refusal to answer it, the refusal to even attempt an answer, the refusal to engage and struggle with it. And crackpot realism is our agreed-upon means of evasion, the foundation of our national consensus in the one area where conservatives are actually willing to let Obama have his consensus.
That alone should tell us how rotten the consensus is. And that is the unquestioned foundation, the backdrop for everything that is being argued over in the realms of secret surveillance and secret war fighting today. As long as we do not confront the foundations of crackpot realism in our national thinking, all our discussions will veer off course, hitting the wrong targets, spreading the very chaos and confusion that we vainly hope to contain.
I'd like to offer one more quote from C Wright Mills, which also seems completely contemporary almost 60 years later:
"America - a conservative country without any conservative ideology - appears now before the world a naked and arbitrary power, as, in the name of realism, its men of decision enforce their often crackpot definitions upon world reality. The second-rate mind is in command of the ponderously spoken platitude. In the liberal rhetoric, vagueness, and in the conservative mood, irrationality, are raised to principle. Public relations and the official secret, the trivialising campaign and the terrible fact clumsily accomplished, are replacing the reasoned debate of political ideas in the privately incorporated economy, the military ascendancy, and the political vacuum of modern America."
Against this backdrop, Edward Snowden's crime is not that he revealed too much, but too little. The rest is up to all of us.
Paul Rosenberg is a California-based writer, senior editor for Random Lengths News, where he's worked since 2002. He's also written for Publishers Weekly, Christian Science Monitor, LA Times, LA Weekly and Denver Post. In 2000/2001, he was a principal editor/writer at Indymedia LA. He was a front-page blogger at Open Left from 2007 to 2011.
Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is accused in the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history. His court-martial is set to begin Monday, June 3, at Fort Meade, Maryland. He has pleaded guilty to 10 of 22 charges against him and faces up to two decades in jail. He has not pleaded guilty to the most serious charge -- that of aiding U.S. enemies, which carries the potential for a life sentence. At a February proceeding, Manning read a statement detailing why and how he sent classified material to WikiLeaks, a group that facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information through its website.
On the eve of the court-martial, Manning's attorney, David Coombs, thanked people for their support and fund-raising efforts in "this important case."
Former hacker Adrian Lamo turned Manning in to authorities. The Army private allegedly told Lamo about leaking the classified records.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fled to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations that he raped one woman and sexually molested another. Assange has said he fears Sweden will transfer him to the United States, where he could face the death penalty for the work of WikiLeaks if he were charged or convicted of a crime. Manning has said he gave material to WikiLeaks after initially trying to contact The New York Times and The Washington Post. WikiLeaks has never confirmed that Manning was the source of its information.
Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a longtime volunteer and spokesman for WikiLeaks, was considered to be Assange's closest collaborator. He quit WikiLeaks and told CNN that Assange's personality was distracting from the group's original mission. Domscheit-Berg went on to publish a tell-all book about the inner workings of WikiLeaks. He wrote that Assange evolved into a "paranoid, power-hungry, megalomaniac."
Assange: Obama using double rhetoric 
Edward Snowden fled to Hong Kong before the scandal
broke 
On China: China's influence on N. Korea 
On China: Preventing a nuclear N. Korea 
China changing tone on North Korea? 
China's influence in the N. Korea crisis 
Obama: NSA programs are transparent
Releasing NSA leaks: A public service?
NSA fallout could be 'harmful'
Could the NSA leaker defect to China?
