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New Zealand PM Retracts Vow to Resign if Mass Surveillance Is Shown |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=29455"><span class="small">Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept</span></a>
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Tuesday, 10 March 2015 08:11 |
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Greenwald writes: "A mountain of evidence has been presented that indisputably proves that New Zealand does exactly that which Prime Minister Key vehemently denied - exactly that which he said he would resign if it were proven was done."
New Zealand prime minister John Key. (photo: Eric Feferberg/Getty Images)
New Zealand PM Retracts Vow to Resign if Mass Surveillance Is Shown
By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
10 March 15
 n August, 2013, as evidence emerged of the active participation by New Zealand in the “Five Eyes” mass surveillance program exposed by Edward Snowden, the country’s conservative Prime Minister, John Key, vehemently denied that his government engages in such spying. He went beyond mere denials, expressly vowing to resign if it were ever proven that his government engages in mass surveillance of New Zealanders. He issued that denial, and the accompanying resignation vow, in order to re-assure the country over fears provoked by a new bill he advocated to increase the surveillance powers of that country’s spying agency, Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) – a bill that passed by one vote thanks to the Prime Minister’s guarantees that the new law would not permit mass surveillance.
Since then, a mountain of evidence has been presented that indisputably proves that New Zealand does exactly that which Prime Minister Key vehemently denied – exactly that which he said he would resign if it were proven was done. Last September, we reported on a secret program of mass surveillance at least partially implemented by the Key government that was designed to exploit the very law that Key was publicly insisting did not permit mass surveillance. At the time, Snowden, citing that report as well as his own personal knowledge of GCSB’s participation in the mass surveillance tool XKEYSCORE, wrote in an article for the Intercept:
Let me be clear: any statement that mass surveillance is not performed in New Zealand, or that the internet communications are not comprehensively intercepted and monitored, or that this is not intentionally and actively abetted by the GCSB, is categorically false. . . . The prime minister’s claim to the public, that “there is no and there never has been any mass surveillance” is false. The GCSB, whose operations he is responsible for, is directly involved in the untargeted, bulk interception and algorithmic analysis of private communications sent via internet, satellite, radio, and phone networks.
A series of new reports last week by New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager, working with my Intercept colleague Ryan Gallagher, has added substantial proof demonstrating GCSB’s widespread use of mass surveillance. An article last week in the New Zealand Herald demonstrated that “New Zealand’s electronic surveillance agency, the GCSB, has dramatically expanded its spying operations during the years of John Key’s National Government and is automatically funnelling vast amounts of intelligence to the US National Security Agency.” Specifically, its “intelligence base at Waihopai has moved to ‘full-take collection,’ indiscriminately intercepting Asia-Pacific communications and providing them en masse to the NSA through the controversial NSA intelligence system XKeyscore, which is used to monitor emails and internet browsing habits.”
Moreover, the documents “reveal that most of the targets are not security threats to New Zealand, as has been suggested by the Government,” but “instead, the GCSB directs its spying against a surprising array of New Zealand’s friends, trading partners and close Pacific neighbours.” A second report late last week published jointly by Hager and the Intercept detailed the role played by GCSB’s Waihopai base in aiding NSA’s mass surveillance activities in the Pacific (as Hager was working with the Intercept on these stories, his house was raided by New Zealand police for 10 hours, ostensibly to find Hager’s source for a story he published that was politically damaging to Key).
That the New Zealand government engages in precisely the mass surveillance activities Key vehemently denied is now barely in dispute. Indeed, a former director of GCSB under Key, Sir Bruce Ferguson, while denying any abuse of New Zealander’s communications, now admits that the agency engages in mass surveillance.
Meanwhile, Russel Norman, the head of the country’s Green Party, said in response to these stories that New Zealand is “committing crimes” against its neighbors in the Pacific by subjecting them to mass surveillance, and insists that the Key government broke the law because that dragnet necessarily includes the communications of New Zealand citizens when they travel in the region.
So now that it’s proven that New Zealand does exactly that which Prime Minister Key vowed would cause him to resign if it were proven, is he preparing his resignation speech? No: that’s something a political official with a minimal amount of integrity would do. Instead – even as he now refuses to say what he has repeatedly said before: that GCSB does not engage in mass surveillance – he’s simply retracting his pledge as though it were a minor irritant, something to be casually tossed aside:
When asked late last week whether New Zealanders have a right to know what their government is doing in the realm of digital surveillance, the Prime Minister said: “as a general rule, no.” And he expressly refuses to say whether New Zealand is doing that which he swore repeatedly it was not doing, as this excellent interview from Radio New Zealand sets forth:
Interviewer: “Nicky Hager’s revelations late last week . . . have stoked fears that New Zealanders’ communications are being indiscriminately caught in that net. . . . The Prime Minister, John Key, has in the past promised to resign if it were found to be mass surveillance of New Zealanders . . . Earlier, Mr. Key was unable to give me an assurance that mass collection of communications from New Zealanders in the Pacific was not taking place.”
PM Key: “No, I can’t. I read the transcript [of former GCSB Director Bruce Ferguson’s interview] – I didn’t hear the interview – but I read the transcript, and you know, look, there’s a variety of interpretations – I’m not going to critique–”
Interviewer: “OK, I’m not asking for a critique. Let’s listen to what Bruce Ferguson did tell us on Friday:”
Ferguson: “The whole method of surveillance these days, is sort of a mass collection situation – individualized: that is mission impossible.”
Interviewer: “And he repeated that several times, using the analogy of a net which scoops up all the information. . . . I’m not asking for a critique with respect to him. Can you confirm whether he is right or wrong?”
Key: “Uh, well I’m not going to go and critique the guy. And I’m not going to give a view of whether he’s right or wrong” . . . .
Interviewer: “So is there mass collection of personal data of New Zealand citizens in the Pacific or not?”
Key: “I’m just not going to comment on where we have particular targets, except to say that where we go and collect particular information, there is always a good reason for that.”
From “I will resign if it’s shown we engage in mass surveillance of New Zealanders” to “I won’t say if we’re doing it” and “I won’t quit either way despite my prior pledges.” Listen to the whole interview: both to see the type of adversarial questioning to which U.S. political leaders are so rarely subjected, but also to see just how obfuscating Key’s answers are.
The history of reporting from the Snowden archive has been one of serial dishonesty from numerous governments: such as the way European officials at first pretended to be outraged victims of NSA only for it to be revealed that, in many ways, they are active collaborators in the very system they were denouncing. But, outside of the U.S. and U.K. itself, the Key government has easily been the most dishonest over the last 20 months: one of the most shocking stories I’ve seen during this time was how the Prime Minister simultaneously plotted in secret to exploit the 2013 proposed law to implement mass surveillance at exactly the same time that he persuaded the public to support it by explicitly insisting that it would not allow mass surveillance.
But overtly reneging on a public pledge to resign is a new level of political scandal. Key was just re-elected for his third term, and like any political official who stays in power too long, he has the despot’s mentality that he’s beyond all ethical norms and constraints. But by the admission of his own former GCSB chief, he has now been caught red-handed doing exactly that which he swore to the public would cause him to resign if it were proven. If nothing else, the New Zealand media ought to treat that public deception from its highest political official with the level of seriousness it deserves.
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Obamacare's Projected Cost Falls Due to Lower Premiums Under Health Care Law |
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Tuesday, 10 March 2015 08:04 |
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Ehrenfreund writes: "It's positive news for Obama's law, which has been accused by Republicans of killing jobs and draining federal coffers."
(photo: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images)
Obamacare's Projected Cost Falls Due to Lower Premiums Under Health Care Law
By Max Ehrenfreund, The Washington Post
10 March 15
 he estimated cost of President Obama's signature health care law is continuing to fall.
The Congressional Budget Office announced on Monday that the Affordable Care Act will cost $142 billion, or 11 percent, less over the next 10 years, compared to what the agency had projected in January.
The nonpartisan agency said the Affordable Care Act will cost less for two essential reasons. The first, and most significant, is that health insurance premiums are rising more slowly, and thus requires less of a government subsidy.
In addition, slightly fewer people are now expected to sign up for Medicaid and for subsidized insurance under the law's marketplaces. That's because the agency now says that more people than anticipated already had health insurance before the law took effect, and fewer companies than anticipated are canceling coverage. All in all, three million fewer people are expected to sign up for Affordable Care Act provisions by 2025.
Still, by 2025, the CBO estimates "the total number of people who will be uninsured ... is now expected to be smaller than previously projected," because more will have had health insurance to begin with.
All around, it's positive news for Obama's law, which has been accused by Republicans of killing jobs and draining federal coffers. Indeed, the CBO itself warned last year the health care law could reduce full time employment as some chose to give up work that provided health care as they relied instead on the government's subsidies.
The administration's own poor handling of the ACA's online launch in the fall of 2013, combined with other errors, also have tarnished the law's image among many Americans. And to be sure, the law is still expensive -- expected to cost $1.2 trillion over 10 years.
But the cost of the law has been falling for several years, and now analysts are beginning to assess the evidence of the law's impact from its first-full year of implementation.
In March 2010, the CBO predicted that the law would cost $710 billion during the period from 2015 to 2019, without trying to come up with projections beyond that. After several revisions, the law is now expected to cost $506 billion – 29 percent less -- during those same five years, as shown in the chart.
CBO issued its new estimates less than a week after the Supreme Court heard a case challenging a crucial provision of the law. It’s unclear how the justices will rule, and a decision against the Obama administration could make these estimates irrelevant.
In revising their estimates, the agency noted two trends.
The first is the relatively modest increase in how much private insurance companies spend on their policyholders' health care. Between 1998 and 2005, spending on health care increased by an average of 5 percent per year, adjusting for inflation and demographics. That figure fell to 1.8 percent per year for the period from 2006 to 2013, the latest year for which data are available.
The administration has said that this decline in spending on medical care is at least partly a result of cost-saving measures in the Affordable Care Act. Critics have argued on the contrary that the decline was due to the recession, and that health care costs could begin to rise again. Independent experts have suggested that much of the effect is due to the weak economy, but not all of it.
The CBO had previously expected that the pace of increasing spending would rise fast again, but now they predict that "such a bounce back seems less likely in light of the further slowing of spending growth observed in the most recent data."
The agency also revised their estimates in response to new data on who was insured and how before the law took effect.
They concluded that fewer people were employed by firms that might stop offering coverage as a result of the law's passage, since their employees are now able to buy coverage individually through the exchanges. And they realized that fewer people were uninsured to begin with than they had thought.
As a result, fewer people will need to purchase insurance through the exchanges or need federal help to do so.
The agency also concluded that the number of people who rely on Medicaid is smaller than they had anticipated, which is another source of savings.
These revisions mean that while fewer people will gain coverage as a result of Obamacare, the number of people who will still lack insurance despite the law's passage is also lower than previously anticipated.
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The Conundrum of Corporation and Nation |
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Monday, 09 March 2015 14:13 |
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Reich writes: "The U.S. economy is picking up steam but most Americans aren't feeling it. By contrast, most European economies are still in bad shape, but most Europeans are doing relatively well."
Economist, professor, author and political commentator Robert Reich. (photo: Richard Morgenstein)
The Conundrum of Corporation and Nation
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
09 March 15
he U.S. economy is picking up steam but most Americans aren’t feeling it. By contrast, most European economies are still in bad shape, but most Europeans are doing relatively well.
What’s behind this? Two big facts.
First, American corporations exert far more political influence in the United States than their counterparts exert in their own countries.
In fact, most Americans have no influence at all. That’s the conclusion of Professors Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, who analyzed 1,799 policy issues — and found that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
Instead, American lawmakers respond to the demands of wealthy individuals (typically corporate executives and Wall Street moguls) and of big corporations – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.
The second fact is most big American corporations have no particular allegiance to America. They don’t want Americans to have better wages. Their only allegiance and responsibility to their shareholders — which often requires lower wages to fuel larger profits and higher share prices.
When GM went public again in 2010, it boasted of making 43 percent of its cars in place where labor is less than $15 an hour, while in North America it could now pay “lower-tiered” wages and benefits for new employees.
American corporations shift their profits around the world wherever they pay the lowest taxes. Some are even morphing into foreign corporations.
As an Apple executive told The New York Times, “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.”
I’m not blaming American corporations. They’re in business to make profits and maximize their share prices, not to serve America.
But because of these two basic facts – their dominance on American politics, and their interest in share prices instead of the wellbeing of Americans – it’s folly to count on them to create good American jobs or improve American competitiveness, or represent the interests of the United States in global commerce.
By contrast, big corporations headquartered in other rich nations are more responsible for the wellbeing of the people who live in those nations.
That’s because labor unions there are typically stronger than they are here — able to exert pressure both at the company level and nationally.
VW’s labor unions, for example, have a voice in governing the company, as they do in other big German corporations. Not long ago, VW even welcomed the UAW to its auto plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. (Tennessee’s own politicians nixed it.)
Governments in other rich nations often devise laws through tri-partite bargains involving big corporations and organized labor. This process further binds their corporations to their nations.
Meanwhile, American corporations distribute a smaller share of their earnings to their workers than do European or Canadian-based corporations.
And top U.S. corporate executives make far more money than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.
The typical American worker puts in more hours than Canadians and Europeans, and gets little or no paid vacation or paid family leave. In Europe, the norm is five weeks paid vacation per year and more than three months paid family leave.
And because of the overwhelming clout of American firms on U.S. politics, Americans don’t get nearly as good a deal from their governments as do Canadians and Europeans.
Governments there impose higher taxes on the wealthy and redistribute more of it to middle and lower income households. Most of their citizens receive essentially free health care and more generous unemployment benefits than do Americans.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that even though U.S. economy is doing better, most Americans are not.
The U.S. middle class is no longer the world’s richest. After considering taxes and transfer payments, middle-class incomes in Canada and much of Western Europe are higher than in U.S. The poor in Western Europe earn more than do poor Americans.
Finally, when at global negotiating tables – such as the secretive process devising the “Trans Pacific Partnership” trade deal — American corporations don’t represent the interests of Americans. They represent the interests of their executives and shareholders, who are not only wealthier than most Americans but also reside all over the world.
Which is why the pending Partnership protects the intellectual property of American corporations — but not American workers’ health, safety, or wages, and not the environment.
The Obama administration is casting the Partnership as way to contain Chinese influence in the Pacific region. The agents of America’s interests in the area are assumed to be American corporations.
But that assumption is incorrect. American corporations aren’t set up to represent America’s interests in the Pacific region or anywhere else.
What’s the answer to this basic conundrum? Either we lessen the dominance of big American corporations over American politics. Or we increase their allegiance and responsibility to America.
It has to be one or the other. Americans can’t thrive within a political system run largely by big American corporations — organized to boost their share prices but not boost America.
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Putin Wants to Eat Your Children |
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Monday, 09 March 2015 14:02 |
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Swanson writes: "If U.S. television and politicians started saying that Saudi Arabia should be bombed because it kills and tortures innocent people, within a week many millions of Americans would demand just that. And because those voices do say that about ISIS, many millions of Americans do favor a war on ISIS."
Vladimir Putin. (photo: Alexei Nikolsky/AP)
Putin Wants to Eat Your Children
By David Swanson, ZNet
09 March 15
f U.S. television and politicians started saying that Saudi Arabia should be bombed because it kills and tortures innocent people, within a week many millions of Americans would demand just that. And because those voices do say that about ISIS, many millions of Americans do favor a war on ISIS.
My point is not that bombs would be worse than the problem addressed and would make the problem itself worse as well, although that’s all true. Rather, my point is that most people who favor wars do so in order to blindly support a nation, and in blindly supporting that nation they allow it to dictate which wars they will favor. Although war supporters will give you reasons for the wars they favor, they actually favor whichever wars they are told to favor, and no others. And they’ll give you the reasons they are told to believe in as well.
More often than not, the U.S. public is advised to favor a war on a single individual of demonic nature, even though a war against an individual is completely nonsensical. According to nonsensical propaganda, you don’t bomb Iraqis; you bomb former-U.S.-ally Saddam Hussein. You don’t bomb Afghans; you bomb former-U.S.-ally Osama bin Laden. You don’t drone kill Pakistani and Yemeni and Somali children and women and men; you drone kill Al Qaeda Terrorist Number Three, over and over again. You don’t liberate Libya from what stability it had; you kill former-U.S.-ally Muammar Gadaffi. You don’t attack Panama; you attack former-U.S.-ally Manuel Noriega. Et cetera et cetera.
Well, it’s Vladimir Putin’s turn, which means Russia is at risk, which means the world is at risk, and yet the rough beast stumbling toward Bethlehem to be born is as oblivious to its conception as any unborn thing or television viewer.
The Washington Post has a criticism of the U.S. television show “House of Cards” as being unrealistic in its portrayal of a Putin character because the actor is too tall, the White House would never invite the Russian band Pussy Riot (jailed by Putin) to dinner with Putin, etc. If you actually watch the episode it gets a lot more unrealistic than that.
First the Putin character is made so obnoxious that you’re supposed to take the sociopathic (hands-on) murderer who’s the U.S. president for a nice reasonable guy. Then you’re supposed to accept the whole pretense that the United States wants to and can create “peace” between Israel and its victims despite giving Israel billions of dollars of weapons every year and blocking all global accountability for its crimes. Then you’re supposed to imagine that Russia and the United States can and should join forces and use those forces to violently bring about a state of nonviolence without ever even considering any of the grievances or injustices at the root of the problem.
Then comes a pretense that is central to the formulaic but muddy thinking that takes the U.S. into wars. When Pussy Riot protests Putin’s domestic abuses, the U.S. president declares that he will follow their example and “stand up” to Putin. This equation between protesting domestic crimes and threatening military hostility from abroad is absolutely insane but absolutely standard in war propaganda.
And why does the President feel obliged to “stand up” to Putin? Because of how the negotiations had gone earlier in the program. The U.S. asked for Putin’s help in “bringing peace” to the Middle East, and Putin said OK but I’d like you to take your missiles that are directed at Russia out of Eastern Europe. The President said he would pull out a small unspecified number but his doing so would have to be kept secret. Putin replied that such a bargain should not be secret and there would be no accountability if it were. And the U.S. President at that point freaked out, determined that Putin was an obnoxious jerk who ruined parties, imposed himself on the First Lady, and generally made everyone hate him as much as humanly possible, and therefore Russia deserved nothing and the world would be condemned to a greater likelihood of nuclear war.
You won’t find that account in the Washington Post but you will see it if you watch the program. Or if you read U.S. magazines you’ll find something similar. If you read U.S. books you’ll find the same themes. If you listen to your Congress members you’ll get the same general line. A war went from unpopular in 2013 to popular in 2014 because of some ugly videos of murders and the redirection of the war toward the murderers. Vladimir Putin is being set up as the reason for a popular war even as hostility is being provoked in Ukraine and throughout Eastern Europe.
This could be the last such set-up if we quickly learn our lesson and pull it back, or if we don’t.
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orty seven GOP senators 
