Network Archives

United Nations to question U.S. over spying allegations

"The United Nations will approach the US government over a report by a German magazine that US intelligence spied on video conferences by top UN officials, a spokesman said Monday. 'We are aware of the reports, and we intend to be in touch with the relevant authorities on this,' a UN spokesman, Farhan Haq, told reporters, adding that this meant the US administration. Haq told reporters the 1961 Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations has become 'well established international law, therefore member states are expected to act accordingly to protect the inviolability of diplomatic missions.'" Continue reading →

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U.S. tech sector feels pain from NSA PRISM revelations

"An industry group, the Cloud Security Alliance said last month that 10 percent of its non-US members have cancelled a contract with a US-based cloud provider, and 56 percent said they were less likely to use an American company. A separate report this month by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, or ITIF, a Washington think tank, said US cloud providers stand to lose $22 billion to $35 billion over the next three years due to revelations about the so-called PRISM program. Daniel Castro, author of the report, says a loss of trust in US tech firms could lead to 'protectionist' measures that hurt the fast-growing cloud sector." Continue reading →

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Passing Over Eisenhower

"Almost all of the major Internet industry giants are based in the United States. The tradition of strong entrepreneurship practiced in the US since their inception, mixed with their purchasing power and history of acquiring any sufficiently profitable venture or fascinating technology from abroad, has put the US into a prime position to be the global leader in provision of Internet services. That may just have ended. While US dominance over the roughly $11 trillion/year global Internet services market is still unchallenged, the damage that the revelations made about NSA’s vast global surveillance scheme may stymie their growth and perhaps even turn them into a localized recession." Continue reading →

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Hubris Isn’t the Half of It

"When Diane Sawyer asked Bush why he had claimed with such certainty that there were so many weapons in Iraq, he replied: 'What’s the difference? The possibility that [Saddam] could acquire weapons, If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger.' What's the difference? In a society based on the rule of law, the difference would be a criminal prosecution. MSNBC and Hubris steer us away from any ideas of accountability. And no connection is drawn to current war lies about Iran or other nations. But the production of programs like this one that prolong Americans' awareness of the lies that destroyed Iraq are the best hope Iran has right now." Continue reading →

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Syrian Christians fear rise of jihadist rebels

"Around 50,000 Christians now live in Wadi al-Nassara, where they have formed 'popular defence committees' with the blessing of the authorities. Christians account for only five percent of the population in Syria, and many back the Assad regime because they fear the growing strength of jihadists whose aim is to set up an Islamic state in Syria. The majority of rebel fighters — like the population — are Sunni Muslims, while Assad belongs to the Alawite community which is an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Though it started in mid-March 2011 with peaceful protests calling for the fall of Assad’s regime, Syria’s war has grown increasingly sectarian and jihadists have flooded the battlefields." Continue reading →

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Tony Blair supports intervention against Assad regime in Syria

"Tony Blair has called on the west to stop 'wringing our hands' as he endorsed intervention against the regime of Bashar al-Assad and warned governments against ostracising the military dictatorship in Egypt. In his first intervention since the chemical weapons attack last week, the former prime minister said the west should not be neutral in protecting Syrians from the Assad regime and 'affiliates of al-Qaida' seeking to exploit the instability. Blair, who was humiliated by Assad during a trip to Damascus after the 9/11 attacks, when the Syrian president likened Palestinian suicide bombers to the Free French, said it was time to intervene against the regime." Continue reading →

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George Galloway to turn to Kickstarter to fund anti-Tony Blair film

"Galloway is teaming up with documentary-maker Greg Ward to make The Killing of Tony Blair, which, according to Ward, 'will bring together many of the things George has been fighting for during his long political career'. In Ward's words, The Killing of Tony Blair 'details how Blair killed the Labour Party, killed hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and how he made 'a killing' out of doing both'. Galloway, currently the Respect MP for Bradford West, was expelled from the Labour party in 2003 after clashing with the leadership over the Iraq war. In a 2012 interview with GQ magazine he argued that Blair's assassination would be 'logical and explicable'." Continue reading →

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“Hubris”: New Documentary Reexamines the Iraq War “Hoax”

"A decade ago, on March 19, 2003, President George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq that would lead to a nine-year war resulting in 4,486 dead American troops, 32,226 service members wounded, and over 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians. The tab for the war topped $3 trillion. Bush did succeed in removing Saddam Hussein, but it turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction and no significant operational ties between Saddam's regime and Al Qaeda. That is, the two main assertions used by Bush and his crew to justify the war were not true. Our book was the first cut at an important topic: how a president had swindled the nation into war with a deliberate effort to hype the threat." Continue reading →

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