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2016-03-03T16:47:00.002-08:00

Ernesto Zedillo

Ernesto Zedillo, in full Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León (born December 27, 1951, Mexico City, Mexico), president of Mexico from 1994 to 2000.

Reared in a working-class family in Mexicali, Mexico, just south of the California border, Zedillo returned to his native Mexico City in 1965 to study at the National Polytechnic Institute. In 1971 he joined the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the dominant political party in Mexico since 1929. Zedillo also studied in the United States, receiving his doctorate in economics from Yale University in 1981. He then worked for Mexico’s central bankand at the Ministry of Programming and Budget, becoming secretary in 1988. As such, he successfully controlled Mexico’s immense foreign debt and reduced the inflation rate from 160 percent to only about 8 percent in five years. He also helped Mexico achieve its first balanced budget. Appointed secretary of education in 1992, Zedillo decentralized the public school system and attempted to revise textbooks and raise the literacy rate. In 1993 he became campaign manager for PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, and when Colosio was assassinated on March 23, 1994, Zedillo was named the party’s candidate. He won by a comfortable margin, although the election was the closest in the PRI’s history. As president he continued the economic policies of his predecessor, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, but devoted a major effort to restoring public confidence, which was so badly damaged by the scandals of the Salinas administration.

Soon after taking office, Zedillo faced an economic crisis as the country was forced to devalue the peso, causing the Mexican stock market to plunge. In 1995 he accepted the terms of a U.S. plan to stabilize the currency, and by the late 1990s Mexico’s economy was slowly improving. Zedillo also instituted a number of reforms designed to end political corruption and create freer elections. Barred by the constitution from running for reelection, he announced in 1999 that the PRI would, for the first time, hold a presidential primary; critics, however, charged that the vote was rigged. Francisco Labastida Ochoa was selected PRI’s candidate, but he was defeated in the 2000 presidential election by Vicente Fox Quesada of the National Action Party (PAN). Zedillo left office later that year, ending the PRI’s 71-year rule of Mexico.

2016-03-03T13:24:00.003-08:00

Environmental and indigenous rights leader murdered in Honduras

An environmental rights activist known for her fight to stop hydroelectric plants and mines from encroaching on indigenous lands was shot dead early on Thursday in Honduras.

Berta Caceres, a 43-year-old teacher, was shot and killed by two men at her home in La Esperanza, Honduras, 112 miles (180 kilometers) west of the capital, Tegucigalpa, Honduran security minister Julian Pacheco said, condemning the attack.

One other person was wounded in the incident, which is under investigation.

Caceres, who had received death threats, won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015 for her struggle to prevent the construction of a $50 million dam that threatened to displace hundreds of Indians.

“The cowardly killing of Berta is a tragedy that was waiting to happen. For years, she had been the victim of a sustained campaign of harassment and threats to stop her from defending the rights of indigenous communities,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.

The project, which was subcontracted by a local company to Chinese builder Sinohydro, has been temporarily suspended thanks to protests led by Caceres.

Reuters

Palestine: Gaza activity update - July 2015

2015-07-17T03:49:00.002-07:00

- One year report

16 July 2015

Yann Libessart/MSF

Plastic surgery on a patient with burn wounds on the head.

Gaza is regularly subjected to outbursts of violence. Most recently, Israel’s ‘Operation Protective Edge’ targeted Gaza Strip for 50 days in July and August 2014 – the deadliest and most destructive of Israel’s three wars on Gaza since 2008. To date, Gaza is almost completely sealed off by a blockade imposed by Israel, which has been bolstered by the near-total closure of the Rafah crossing to Egypt since October 2014.

MSF’s activities in Gaza have evolved in response to people’s changing needs. Currently they include surgery, post-operative care, specialised dressings care, psychological care, occupational therapy and physiotherapy, including a specialised unit dedicated to physiotherapy of the hand.

Since MSF launched its surgical programme in 2009, more than 1,400 patients have received surgery. Before last summer’s war on Gaza, more than 60 percent of our patients receiving surgical care were burns cases. During the last war this changed, with some 85 percent of our surgical patients treated for war injuries. In 2015, with the continuing blockade leading to extensive power cuts, around 75 percent of our patients have burns injuries.

Emergency surgery during the war

MSF’s post-operative clinic in Gaza City remained open during the 2014 offensive, run by a skeleton team of key staff. In total, 165 new patients were treated between 15 July and 24 August 2014, while the team continued to provide follow-up care to existing patients in a critical condition.

During the first week of the conflict, additional MSF surgical and emergency teams arrived in Gaza City and immediately started work in the surgical units, intensive care units and emergency rooms of Al Shifa and Nasser hospitals. An MSF team also supported the burns unit in Al Shifa hospital, operating on 85 patients in August alone.

During the 50 days of the war, the demand for reconstructive surgery in Gaza dramatically increased, and MSF established an emergency surgical team in Gaza to perform lifesaving operations. A permanent reconstructive surgery team stayed on in Gaza until December 2014. Since then, an MSF team has made regular short visits to Gaza to carry out reconstructive surgery.

Susanne Doettling/MSF

Nadir, a 20-year old architecture student. During the war, the Israeli army shot at Nadir while he was opening a gas canister, which exploded. He has severe burns on his hands, arms, back and abdomen. MSF surgeons have performed surgery on him but he needs follow-up procedures. The last round, scheduled by MSF for the end of April, had to be postponed when the MSF surgeon, who had already arrived in Jerusalem, was not authorised by Israel to enter Gaza.

War-related and domestic burns injuries

One year after the war, life amidst the ruins and under the Israeli blockade is extremely tough. Power cuts are a daily reality, and MSF’s clinics in Gaza City and Khan Younis are full of children with severe burns from household cooking accidents in homes damaged during the war. In June this year, for example, more than 80 percent of all the patients treated at MSF facilities in Gaza were burns victims, 65 percent of them children under the age of 15.

In April 2015, in the course of a 15-day visit, an MSF surgical team conducted 30 complex surgeries, two-thirds of them on children. Ninety percent had burns injuries, and the remaining 10 percent had trauma injuries. MSF teams have already identified 113 patients to be treated for burns injuries during the next surgical round. Others are in need of reconstructive surgery or physiotherapy after being injured in last summer’s war.

MSF has 350 patients on its waiting list for reconstructive surgery, and struggles to refer patients to Jordan to its hospital specialising in war surgery, as Gazans cannot easily get permission to leave Gaza, even for specialised care. Up until June 2015, MSF had only managed to refer four patients for treatment elsewhere. Getting specialised burns surgeons into Gaza is also a struggle. In April 2015, the Israeli Civil Administration blocked one of our surgeons from entering Gaza, forcing us to cancel a second round of burns surgeries planned to start in late-April.

Half of Gaza’s population, some 950,000 people, are children under the age of 18. They are particularly traumatised and brutalised by the wars and by the devastating effect of the ongoing blockade on their daily lives. The UN estimates that some 551 children were killed in the 2014 war on Gaza, many in their own homes. One-third of the 3,000 children injured in the conflict are likely to have physical disabilities for the rest of their lives, while many of those who escaped physical injury are in need of psychological care.

The majority of patients in MSF’s post-operative care clinics in Gaza City and Khan Younis are children with injuries either from the war or from domestic accidents, often due to living in damaged homes or makeshift shelters, under extensive power cuts due to the ongoing blockade.

Susanne Doettling/MSF

Iman, 3 years old, injured her arm in a domestic accident with boiling water. Surgery was performed by MSF in April 2015.

Preventing domestic burns

MSF’s first burns awareness campaign was launched in October 2014, targeted mainly at mothers and children. Its aim was to prevent the domestic accidents that cause burns, and to spread the message that once a child gets burnt, any delay in getting medical care can be dangerous. An interactive programme was developed specifically for primary schoolchildren and their teachers and parents.

Between December 2014 and April 2015, the MSF burns awareness campaign reached more than 32,000 children in more than 80 schools and kindergartens across the Gaza Strip. During the same period, more than 3,000 teachers and parents attended presentations on preventing accidents that might result in children getting burnt.

MSF has also continued to run specialised training sessions for hospital staff alongside the Ministry of Health. In late-April 2015, 120 nurses at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City attended a training on providing intensive care.

MSF has been working in Gaza since 1989, providing medical care according to people’s needs. Medical activities have included surgery, post-operative care, specialised dressings care, psychological care, occupational therapy and physiotherapy, including running a specialised unit dedicated to physiotherapy of the hand. MSF addresses specific medical needs that cannot be met by Gaza’s health service, and responds to the direct or indirect consequences of violence. In the West Bank, MSF has been running mental health programmes in Jenin, Hebron, Nablus and Qalqilya governorates since 2000, which were extended to East Jerusalem in 2011.

Leaks Cables Show a Saudi Obsession With Iran

2015-07-16T06:29:00.000-07:00

Wiki

BEIRUT, Lebanon — For decades, Saudi Arabia has poured billions of its oil dollars into sympathetic Islamic organizations around the world, quietly practicing checkbook diplomacy to advance its agenda.

But a trove of thousands of Saudi documents recently released by WikiLeaks reveals in surprising detail how the government’s goal in recent years was not just to spread its strict version of Sunni Islam — though that was a priority — but also to undermine its primary adversary: Shiite Iran.

The documents from Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry illustrate a near obsession with Iran, with diplomats in Africa, Asia and Europe monitoring Iranian activities in minute detail and top government agencies plotting moves to limit the spread of Shiite Islam.

The scope of this global oil-funded operation helps explain the kingdom’s alarm at the deal reached on Tuesday between world powers and Iran over its nuclear program. Saudi leaders worry that relief from sanctions will give Iran more money to strengthen its militant proxies. But the documents reveal a depth of competition that is far more comprehensive, with deep roots in the religious ideologies that underpin the two nations.

A cable from the Saudi Embassy in Pakistan noting that the president of the International Islamic University of Islamabad had invited the Iranian ambassador to a cultural week on campus.

The documents indicate an extensive apparatus inside the Saudi government dedicated to missionary activity that brings in officials from the Foreign, Interior and Islamic Affairs Ministries; the intelligence service and the office of the king.

Recent initiatives have included putting foreign preachers on the Saudi payroll; building mosques, schools and study centers; and undermining foreign officials and news media deemed threatening to the kingdom’s agenda.

At times, the king got involved, ordering an Iranian television station off the air or granting $1 million to an Islamic association in India.

“We are talking about thousands and thousands of activist organizations and preachers who are in the Saudi sphere of influence because they are directly or indirectly funded by them,” said Usama Hasan, a senior researcher in Islamic studies at the Quilliam Foundation in London. “It has been a huge factor, and the Saudi influence is undeniable.”

A cable from the Saudi Embassy in Budapest requesting funds to open Islamic centers.

While the documents do not show any Saudi support for militant activity, critics argue that the kingdom’s campaign against Shiites — and its promotion of a strict form of Islam — has eroded pluralism in the Muslim world and added to the tensions fueling conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.

The Saudi government has made no secret of its international religious mission, nor of its enmity toward Iran. But it has found the leaks deeply embarrassing and has told its citizens that spreading them is a crime.

While it has acknowledged a link between the documents and an electronic attack on the Foreign Ministry, it has said that some of the documents are fabricated. But many of them contain correct names and telephone numbers, and a number of individuals and associations named in them verified their contents when reached by reporters from The New York Times.

The trove mostly covers the period from 2010 to early 2015. It documents religious outreach coordinated by the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, an interministerial body that King Salman dissolved in a government overhaul after his ascension this year.

A cable from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Saudi Embassy in Tajikistan says the kingdom is surveying Iranian moves in Russia.

The Foreign Ministry relayed funding requests to officials in Riyadh; the Interior Ministry and the intelligence agency sometimes vetted potential recipients; the Saudi-supported Muslim World League helped coordinate strategy; and Saudi diplomats across the globe oversaw projects. Together, these officials identified sympathetic Muslim leaders and associations abroad; distributed funds and religious literature produced in Saudi Arabia; trained preachers; and gave them salaries to work in their own countries.

One example of this is Sheikh Suhaib Hasan, an Indian Islamic scholar who was educated in Saudi Arabia and worked for the kingdom for four decades in Kenya and in Britain, where he helped found the Islamic ShariaCouncil, according to a cable from the Saudi Embassy in London whose contents were verified by his son, Mr. Hassan of the Quilliam Foundation.

Clear in many of the cables are Saudi fears of Iranian influence and of the spread of Shiite Islam.

The Saudi Embassy in Tehran sent daily reports on local news coverage of Saudi Arabia. One cable suggested the kingdom improve its image by starting a Persian-language television station and sending pro-Saudi preachers to tour Iran.

Other cables detailed worries that Iran sought to turn Tajikistan into “a center to export its religious revolution and to spread its ideology in the region’s countries.” The Saudi ambassador in Tajikistan suggested that Tajik officials could restrict Iranian support “if other sources of financial support become available, especially from the kingdom.”

The fear of Shiite influence extended to countries where Muslims are small minorities, like China, where a Saudi delegation was charged with “suggesting practical programs that can be carried out to confront Shiite expansion in China.” And documents from the Philippines, where only 5 percent of the population is Muslim, included suggested steps to “restrict the Iranian presence.”

In 2012, Saudi ambassadors from across Africa were told to file reports on Iranian activities in their countries. The Saudi ambassador to Uganda soon filed a detailed report on “Shiite expansion” in the mostly Christian country.

A cable from the predominantly Muslim nation of Mali warned that Iran was appealing to the local Muslims, who knew little of “the truth of the extremist, racist Shiite ideology that goes against all other Islamic schools.”

Many of those seeking funds referred to the Saudi-Iranian rivalry in their appeals, the cables showed.

One proposal from the Afghan Foundation in Afghanistan said that it needed funding because such projects “do not receive support from any entities, while others, especially Shiites, get a lot of aid from several places, including Iran.”

Reached in Kabul, the Afghan capital, one of the center’s founders, Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, acknowledged that the group had appealed for Saudi funding but said that it had received none.

The kingdom has at times interfered directly with Iran’s outreach.

From 2010 to 2013, it tried multiple ways to force an Iranian Arabic-language satellite television station, Al Alam, off the air.

These efforts included issuing royal decrees aimed at stopping the broadcast, pressuring the Riyadh-based satellite provider Arabsat to drop the channel, and using “technical means” to weaken the channel’s signal so it did not reach Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia, where many Shiites complain of discrimination by their Sunni monarchs.

A Beirut-based manager of Al Alam acknowledged that the channel had faced Saudi pressure since 2010, which had succeeded in getting two Arab satellite providers to drop the channel.

“We are broadcasting normally” via European satellites, the manager said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private company matters. “The only disruption we have is when we broadcast a show about Bahrain.”

Some of the cables reported on seemingly mundane events.

The Saudi Embassy in Sri Lanka reported a meeting between the Iranian ambassador and a group of religious scholars, noting that it began at 7:30 p.m.

Elsewhere, the kingdom intervened against foreign officials it perceived as threats.

After the president of the International Islamic University of Islamabad in Pakistan, Mumtaz Ahmad, invited the Iranian ambassador to a cultural week on campus, the Saudi Embassy called Mr. Ahmad to express “its surprise,” according to one cable, suggesting that he invite the wife of the Saudi ambassador instead.

Mr. Ahmad refused to disinvite the Iranian ambassador, so Saudi diplomats suggested having Suliman Aba al-Khail, a Saudi academic with a position in the university’s administration, convene a board meeting and “choose a president for the university who is consistent with our orientation,” the cable said.

A faculty member at the university said that Mr. Ahmad, a political science professor with a doctorate from the University of Chicago, had clashed with conservative faculty members for trying to reduce Saudi influence on campus.

After Mr. Ahmad resigned as president in 2012, the Saudi ambassador worked with the president of Pakistan at the time, Asif Ali Zardari, to have a Saudi citizen named as university president, according the faculty member.

“In the end they won,” said the faculty member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to anger his employer.

Saudi Arabia has long invested in training foreign preachers, providing scholarships to international Muslim students to study Shariah at Saudi universities. The documents show that the kingdom gives some of them government salaries to work in their home countries. The cables named 14 new preachers to be employed in Guinea and said contracts had been signed with 12 others in Tajikistan.

Another cable said the Foreign Ministry was studying a request from an Islamic association near the Iranian border in Afghanistan to pay local preachers to spread Sunni Islam.

Some of the costliest projects were in India, which Saudi Arabia sees as a sectarian battleground.

Cables indicated that $266,000 had been granted to an Islamic association to open a nursing college; $133,000 had been used for an Islamic conference; and another grant went to a vocational training center for girls.

King Abdullah, who died in January, signed off on a $1 million gift to the Khaja Education Society, and a smaller amount went to a medical college run by Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen.

A member of first group, Janab Moazam, confirmed that it had been granted the money and said that half had already been delivered. An official from the second group, Abdullah Koya Madani, confirmed that the group had received Saudi funding.

Even humanitarian relief is sometimes sectarian. In 2011, the Saudi foreign minister requested aid for flood victims in Thailand, noting that “it will have a positive impact on Muslims in Thailand and will restrict the Iranian government in expanding its Shiite influence.”

Elsewhere, Saudi Arabia sees its religious work as a way to improve its reputation. The Saudi ambassador to Hungary requested $54,000 per year for an Islamic association as well as for authorization to found a cultural center. O ne cable said such aid would undermine extremism and “play a positive role in portraying the beautiful and moderate image of the kingdom.”

Silica structures in natural reed leaves can be exploited as electrode material in lithium-ion batteries

2015-07-15T05:52:00.003-07:00

July 15, 2015

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-07-silica-natural-reed-exploited-electrode.html#jCp

Silica structures in natural reed leaves can be exploited as electrode material in lithium-ion batteries
July 15, 2015
Silica structures in natural reed leaves can be exploited as electrode material in lithium-ion batteries
The distinct structural and water-repellant properties of common reeds have been used by man for ages, for example as construction materials and for thatching roofs. How the micro- and nanostructured silica arrangements that are abundantly present in natural reed leaves can be exploited for producing the anode materials in lithium-ion batteries has recently been explored by Chinese and German scientists and is published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.
Nanoporous silicon is believed by many to be the next-generation anode material in lithium-ion batteries as it offers the benefit of a much higher theoretical capacity and lower operating voltage than the commonly used graphitic carbon materials. The big challenge, however, is finding a suitable low-cost strategy to employ an appropriate nanostructured silicon material that would compensate for the large volume expansion upon lithium insertion. A truly distinct approach from the elaborate physical or chemical treatments of expensive silicon precursors has been explored by Yan Yu and her colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, the University of Science and Technology of China, and the South China University of Technology.
The scientists imagined that the hierarchical architecture of the silica already present in the leaves of common reed plants can readily transform into the micro- and nanoporous silicon architecture required for lithium-ion battery materials. "Reed leaves exhibit well-defined sheetlike 3D hierarchical microstructures," they point out, "which can be transformed into the 3D highly porous hierarchical silicon architectures by magnesiothermic reduction." This magnesiothermic reduction was also combined with a simple carbon-coating step to eventually achieve an anodic material exhibiting high specific capacity, very good rate capability, and cycling stability, just as it is required in advanced lithium-ion batteries.
What is particularly interesting here is that the topological architecture of the original silicates within the reed leaves is extraordinarily well preserved during the applied chemical and physical treatment steps. Upon the purification from the dry reed leaves, the three-dimensional structure only shrinks, but retains its mesoporous network. It does not even change during the reduction to the final carbonized silicon network. This robustness in structure preservation makes reed plants, which grow as large monocultures in the wetlands of temperate regions, especially suitable as a new, sustainable feedstock for battery materials.

Edward Snowden made debate leading to new UK surveillance laws 'urgent'

2015-07-14T10:09:00.001-07:00

By Graham Lanktree
July 14, 2015 15:24 BST

Banksy 'Spy Booth' mural in Cheltenham(Getty Images)

Surveillance carried out by the UK on its own citizens and others around the world must become more transparent and face tougher regulation, says a group of British intelligence chiefs and privacy experts.

Revelations of worldwide bulk surveillance made by US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 "has had the effect of making this debate much more urgent," said Michael Clarke, director general of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

"The British public are entitled to some answers following the disclosures," concludes Clarke and others, such as Lord Jonathan Evans, former director general of the security service MI5, in a new report released on 14 July. It suggests a raft of changes in UK new surveillance laws.

It is the last of three documents that will shape the UK's the new laws being set forth this September. The document will go directly to prime minister David Cameron for consideration.

"Time is of the essence," said one of the report's authors Jeffrey Rooker as the recommendations were released early Tuesday. "We need a draft bill by September with a proper bill by February."

A key recommendation is that government ministers should be allowed to sign off on surveillance warrants. But those need to be scrutinized through judicial review "checking its reasonableness and lawfulness," said Sir David Omand, an author of the report and director of the UK's signals intelligence agency GCHQ from 1996-97. The judicial review, the report directs, should take place before the warrant is carried out.

Edward Snowden(Getty)

Right now UK ministers sign off on warrants and a judicial watchdog reviews just 10% of all warrants passing through the system later on.

The recommendation differs from UK independent surveillance watchdog David Anderson QC's report A Question Of Trust released in June. Anderson indicated that ministers should be cut out of signing warrants. Afterward he said that he appreciated RUSI's approach and that the government would be more likely to take it up.

"Most of the opinions that they expressed I think were very close to those ... in my own report," Anderson said. "The government has a pretty strong steer as to the direction things are going to have to go — and that's the direction of radical change."

Anderson singled out the UK's 2000 law called the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) as being "patched up so many times as to make it incomprehensible" in his report. The current domestic spying laws are "undemocratic, unnecessary and – in the long run – intolerable," he wrote.

The new RUSI report agrees with Anderson that this law and others relating to domestic surveillance "should be replaced by a comprehensive new law".

The report reaches toward putting strict rules around intrusion into citizens' private lives and allowing secret evidence presented in an Investigatory Powers Tribunal to be challenged by lawyers.

Whether or not the government takes up the report's findings depends on "how determined the government is in making the judicial element work," said Clarke.

'Credibility gap'

Snowden's revelations in 2013 of programs like the UK's formerly secret Tempora program — which saves large amounts of bulk Internet data — in the Guardian and Washington Post have created a "credibility gap" between government and the public, the panel said.

In these programs, however, the group saw "no evidence that the British government knowingly acts illegally in intercepting private communications".

Yet Snowden's disclosures of the secret programs in his release of the large volumes of government documents has created a situation that "is radically different and the public has greater expectations of openness and transparency in government."

"It is not sufficient for the government to assume it has public consent for the secret parts of its work just because it had it in the past."

Israel Pirates board Gaza flotilla flagship on high sea raid

2015-06-28T20:55:00.001-07:00

Israel Pirates Gaza flotilla flagship on high sea raid

Contact has been lost with the Swedish boat Marianne, which had been leading the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla, after other boats turned back. The IDF announced that they intercepted and searched the vessel which had tried to "breach the maritime blockade."

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition lost contact with the flagship of the flotilla at 10:57pm GMT, the organization said. The vessel was some 100 nautical miles from its destination at when it happened.

Published time: June 29, 2015 02:19
Edited time: June 29, 2015 03:36

Voting to Leave Israel

2014-12-14T19:43:00.002-08:00

Voting on whether to stay in Israel

Op-ed: The upcoming elections are not about leadership, the peace process or the cost of living; they are about whether Israel will have anything to offer its young generation in the coming years.

Naor Narkis

Published:

12.14.14, 22:12 / Israel Opinion

Exactly a month and a half ago, I was sitting with my laptop in a small apartment in central Berlin. My inbox was flooded with thousands of letters from Israelis from different backgrounds, who told me about their pain and their strong desire to leave the country which has done everything in its power to drive them away.

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A country in which a young working couple is incapable of buying an apartment. A country in which a family decides not to have another child because of the alarming costs. A country in which the measure for success is wealthy parents rather than talent and abilities.

2015 Elections

Netanyahu's blatant election economy / Sever Plocker

Op-ed: The only goal of the prime minister's plan to eliminate VAT on a small number of supervised food products is to lure voters and buy their support at the polls for a bargain price.

Full op-ed

There were those who called me "anti-Zionist" for this act. An evil, miserable person encouraging Israelis to move to Germany, which nearly destroyed the Jewish people just a millisecond ago in historical terms.

But at the same time, there were those who looked the truth in the eye. The real and concrete danger for Zionism is that talented young people will stop seeing Israel as their home and set their sights on better options.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 'We have learned that change is impossible with him at the lead' (Photo: EPA)

Yes, we deserve much more than the Israeli government is giving us today: A war every 18 months and a terrifying mortgage.

Those moments, I never imagined that the government would be shattered into pieces and that elections would come at such a perfect timing. Most of the people who approached me, and I received about some 20,000 appeals, were young talented, working and educated people who cannot live in Israel in dignity.

We know the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, from our youth. He was prime minister when we were in elementary school, finance minister and the person who outlined the economic policy when were in high school, foreign minister when we served in the army, and the prime minister again when we received our academic degree, entered the labor market and got married.
And this is the State of Israel he has created for us: A place which many citizens have been thinking of living in the past year. a state where talent and efforts are not linked to success and wellbeing.

This election is an opportunity

The early elections can be seen as an opportunity and as a miracle. I want to live in Israel. There is nothing for me in Germany. I have no roots in Paris. I'm not interest in the glamour of Los Angeles.

If there is one thing I have realized in the past few months it is that instead of leaving Israel, the state which so many generations of Jews fought for, it's time for us to exile the leaders who hurt us from politics. If the prime minister had a shred of integrity, he would resign, as a leader who has failed in every single field should do.

The citizen is at the bottom of the food chain (Photo: Ido Erez)

There are those who say that these elections are about the state's leadership and about the cost of living. Others say that they are about the stalemated peace process or about the unnecessary nationality bill. But in my opinion, these elections are about whether our generation will have anything left in Israel in the coming years.

Do we have a chance to start a family here and provide for it? Buy an apartment? Develop professionally and personally? Will we live in a country in which the citizen comes first, or a country in which the citizen is at the bottom of the food chain, after the wealthy people, the supermarket chains, the Knesset lobbyists and the egoistic political interests?
The recent messages we are receiving from the politicians who allegedly oppose the situation Israel in and Netanyahu's years-long policy are creating distrust among many people, which may be reflected in one of the lowest voter turnouts in Israel's history.
Why can't people who allegedly oppose this policy tell us wholeheartedly and firmly that they will prevent Netanyahu's fourth term as Israel's prime minister?

Promise not to serve under Netanyahu

Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni took a step in the right direction when they teamed up, but even they are refusing to make that commitment – and they are both people who served as ministers in his governments.

Yair Lapid and his friends won't commit to that either, and neither will Moshe Kahlon, who symbolizes a hope for change in many people's eyes. And we have all seen that change is impossible with Netanyahu at the lead.
My generation is looking at you and pleading with you to make the effort to give us a chance to live in dignity and wellbeing in Israel. The leaders of all the parties which are offering us a different Israel, and Israel which will head in a completely different direction, should form an alliance within several days and promise not to recommend to President Reuven Rivlin after the elections that Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud should form the next government.
Netanyahu's policy has been tried and failed – big time. Israel has neither a strong economy nor strong security. Take this step, and we will give you our support.
The elections are drawing nearer. Netanyahu has become much weak since the 2011 social protest, but he is still very strong and longs to remain in power. Every day in which you fail to unequivocally declare that you will not join forces with him again is an embarrassment for you and a disaster for us.
We know that keeping your ego in check will require a huge sacrifice on your part, but you must show responsibility and do it quickly. Help us exile Netanyahu from politics, instead of him sending us to get a foreign passport.
Naor Narkis was the initiator of the "Berlin protest."

The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase's Worst Nightmare

2014-11-08T10:40:00.003-08:00

By Matt Taibbi | November 6, 2014

She tried to stay quiet, she really did. But after eight years of keeping a heavy secret, the day came when Alayne Fleischmann couldn't take it anymore.
"It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street," she says. "I thought, 'I can't sit by any longer.'"
Fleischmann is a tall, thin, quick-witted securities lawyer in her late thirties, with long blond hair, pale-blue eyes and an infectious sense of humor that has survived some very tough times. She's had to struggle to find work despite some striking skills and qualifications, a common symptom of a not-so-common condition called being a whistle-blower.

Fleischmann is the central witness in one of the biggest cases of white-collar crime in American history, possessing secrets that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon late last year paid $9 billion (not $13 billion as regularly reported – more on that later) to keep the public from hearing.
Back in 2006, as a deal manager at the gigantic bank, Fleischmann first witnessed, then tried to stop, what she describes as "massive criminal securities fraud" in the bank's mortgage operations.
Thanks to a confidentiality agreement, she's kept her mouth shut since then. "My closest family and friends don't know what I've been living with," she says. "Even my brother will only find out for the first time when he sees this interview."
Six years after the crisis that cratered the global economy, it's not exactly news that the country's biggest banks stole on a grand scale. That's why the more important part of Fleischmann's story is in the pains Chase and the Justice Department took to silence her.
She was blocked at every turn: by asleep-on-the-job regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission, by a court system that allowed Chase to use its billions to bury her evidence, and, finally, by officials like outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, the chief architect of the crazily elaborate government policy of surrender, secrecy and cover-up. "Every time I had a chance to talk, something always got in the way," Fleischmann says.
This past year she watched as Holder's Justice Department struck a series of historic settlement deals with Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America. The root bargain in these deals was cash for secrecy. The banks paid big fines, without trials or even judges – only secret negotiations that typically ended with the public shown nothing but vague, quasi-official papers called "statements of facts," which were conveniently devoid of anything like actual facts.

Jamie Dimon (Photo: Bloomberg/Getty)

And now, with Holder about to leave office and his Justice Department reportedly wrapping up its final settlements, the state is effectively putting the finishing touches on what will amount to a sweeping, industrywide effort to bury the facts of a whole generation of Wall Street corruption. "I could be sued into bankruptcy," she says. "I could lose my license to practice law. I could lose everything. But if we don't start speaking up, then this really is all we're going to get: the biggest financial cover-up in history."
Alayne Fleischmann grew up in Terrace, British Columbia, a snowbound valley town just a brisk 18-hour drive north of Vancouver. She excelled at school from a young age, making her way to Cornell Law School and then to Wall Street. Her decision to go into finance surprised those closest to her, as she had always had more idealistic ambitions. "I helped lead a group that wrote briefs to the Human Rights Chamber for those affected by ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina," she says. "My whole life prior to moving into securities law was human rights work."
But she had student loans to pay off, and so when Wall Street came knocking, that was that. But it wasn't like she was dragged into high finance kicking and screaming. She found she had a genuine passion for securities law and felt strongly she was doing a good thing. "There was nothing shady about the field back then," she says. "It was very respectable."
In 2006, after a few years at a white-shoe law firm, Fleischmann ended up at Chase. The mortgage market was white-hot. Banks like Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup were furiously buying up huge pools of home loans and repackaging them as mortgage securities. Like soybeans in processed food, these synthesized financial products wound up in everything, whether you knew it or not: your state's pension fund, another state's workers' compensation fund, maybe even the portfolio of the insurance company you were counting on to support your family if you got hit by a bus.
As a transaction manager, Fleischmann functioned as a kind of quality-control officer. Her main job was to help make sure the bank didn't buy spoiled merchandise before it got tossed into the meat grinder and sold out the other end.
A few months into her tenure, Fleischmann would later testify in a DOJ deposition, the bank hired a new manager for diligence, the group in charge of reviewing and clearing loans. Fleischmann quickly ran into a problem with this manager, technically one of her superiors. She says he told her and other employees to stop sending him e-mails. The department, it seemed, was wary of putting anything in writing when it came to its mortgage deals.

"I could lose everything. But if we don't start speaking up, we're going to get the biggest financial cover-up in history."

"If you sent him an e-mail, he would actually come out and yell at you," she recalls. "The whole point of having a compliance and diligence group is to have policies that are set out clearly in writing. So to have exactly the opposite of that – that was very worrisome." One former high-ranking federal prosecutor said that if he were taking a criminal case to trial, the information about this e-mail policy would be crucial. "I would begin and end my opening statement with that," he says. "It shows these people knew what they were doing and were trying not to get caught."
In late 2006, not long after the "no e-mail" policy was implemented, Fleischmann and her group were asked to evaluate a packet of home loans from a mortgage originator called GreenPoint that was collectively worth about $900 million. Almost immediately, Fleischmann and some of the diligence managers who worked alongside her began to notice serious problems with this particular package of loans.
For one thing, the dates on many of them were suspiciously old. Normally, banks tried to turn loans into securities at warp speed. The idea was to go from a homeowner signing on the dotted line to an investor buying that loan in a pool of securities within two to three months. Thus it was a huge red flag to see Chase buying loans that were already seven or eight months old.
What this meant was that many of the loans in the GreenPoint deal had either been previously rejected by Chase or another bank, or were what are known as "early payment defaults." EPDs are loans that have already been sold to another bank and have been returned after the borrowers missed multiple payments. That's why the dates on them were so old.
In other words, this was the very bottom of the mortgage barrel. They were like used cars that had been towed back to the lot after throwing a rod. The industry had its own term for this sort of loan product: scratch and dent. As Chase later admitted, it not only ended up reselling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of those crappy loans to investors, it also sold them in a mortgage pool marketed as being above subprime, a type of loan called "Alt-A." Putting scratch-and-dent loans in an Alt-A security is a little like putting a fresh coat of paint on a bunch of junkyard wrecks and selling them as new cars. "Everything that I thought was bad at the time," Fleischmann says, "turned out to be a million times worse." (Chase declined to comment for this article.)
When Fleischmann and her team reviewed random samples of the loans, they found that around 40 percent of them were based on overstated incomes – an astronomically high defect rate for any pool of mortgages; Chase's normal tolerance for error was five percent. One mortgage in particular that sticks out in Fleischmann's mind involved a manicurist who claimed to have an annual income of $117,000. Fleischmann figured that even working seven days a week, this woman would have needed to work 488 days a year to make that much. "And that's with no overhead," Fleischmann says. "It wasn't possible."
But when she and others raised objections to the toxic loans, something odd started happening. The number-crunchers who had been complaining about the loans suddenly began changing their reports. The process she describes is strikingly similar to the way police obtain false confessions: The interrogator verbally abuses the target until he starts producing the desired answers. "What happened," Fleischmann says, "is the head diligence manager started yelling at his team, berating them, making them do reports over and over, keeping them late at night." Then the loans started clearing.
As late as December 11th, 2006, diligence managers had marked a full 33 percent of one loan sample as "stated income unreasonable for profession," meaning that it was nearly inevitable that there would be a high number of defaults. Several high-ranking executives were copied on this report.
Then, on December 15th, a Chase sales executive held a lengthy meeting with reps from GreenPoint and the diligence team to examine the remaining loans in the pool. When they got to the manicurist, Fleischmann remembers, one of the diligence guys finally caved under the pressure from the sales executive. "He had his hands up and just said, 'OK,' and he cleared it," says Fleischmann, adding that he was shaking his head "no" even as he was saying yes. Soon afterward, the error rate in the pool had magically dropped below 10 percent – a threshold that itself had just been doubled to clear the way for this deal.
After that meeting, Fleischmann testified, she approached a managing director named Greg Boester and pleaded with him to reconsider. She says she told Boester that the bank could not sell the high-risk loans as low-risk securities without committing fraud. "You can't securitize these loans without special disclosure about what's wrong with them," Fleischmann told him, "and if you make that disclosure, no one will buy them."
A former Olympic ski jumper, Boester was such an important executive at Chase that when he later defected to the Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel, Dimon cut off trading with Citadel in retaliation. Boester eventually returned to Chase and is still there today despite his role in this affair.
This moment illustrates the most basic element of the case against Chase: The bank knowingly peddled products stuffed with scratch-and-dent loans to investors without disclosing the obvious defects with the underlying loans.
Years later, in its settlement with the Justice Department, Chase would admit that this conversation between Fleischmann and Boester took place (though neither was named; it was simply described as "an employee . . . told . . . a managing director") and that her warning was ignored when the bank sold those loans off to investors.

Photo: Illustration by Victor Juhasz

A few weeks later, in early 2007, she sent a long letter to another managing director, William Buell. In the letter, she warned Buell of the consequences of reselling these bad loans as securities and gave detailed descriptions of breakdowns in Chase's diligence process.
Fleischmann assumed this letter, which Chase lawyers would later jokingly nickname "The Howler" after the screaming missive from the Harry Potter books, would be enough to force the bank to stop selling the bad loans. "It used to be if you wrote a memo, they had to stop, because now there's proof that they knew what they were doing," she says. "But when the Justice Department doesn't do anything, that stops being a deterrent. I just didn't know that at the time."
In February 2008, less than two years after joining the bank, Fleischmann was quietly dismissed in a round of layoffs. A few months later, proof would appear that her bosses knew all along that the boom-era mortgage market was rotten. That September, as the market was crashing, Dimon boasted in a ball-washing Fortune article titled "Jamie Dimon's SWAT Team" that he knew well before the meltdown that the subprime market was toast. "We concluded that underwriting standards were deteriorating across the industry." The story tells of Dimon ordering Boester's boss, William King, to dump the bank's subprime holdings in October 2006. "Billy," Dimon says, "we need to sell a lot of our positions. . . . This stuff could go up in smoke!"
In other words, two full months before the bank rammed through the dirty GreenPoint deal over Fleischmann's objections, Chase's CEO was aware that loans like this were too dangerous for Chase itself to own. (Though Dimon was talking about subprime loans and GreenPoint was technically an Alt-A pool, the Fortune story shows that upper management had serious concerns about industry-wide underwriting problems.)

The ordinary citizen who is the target of a government investigation cannot pick up the phone, call the prosecutor and have his case dropped. But Dimon did just that.

In January 2010, when Dimon testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, he told investigators the exact opposite story, portraying the poor Chase leadership as having been duped, just like the rest of us. "In mortgage underwriting," he said, "somehow we just missed, you know, that home prices don't go up forever."
When Fleischmann found out about all of this years later, she was shocked. Her confidentiality agreement at Chase didn't bar her from reporting a crime, but the problem was that she couldn't prove that Chase had committed a crime without knowing whether those bad loans had been sold.
As it turned out, of course, Chase was selling those rotten dog-meat loans all over the place. How bad were they? A single lawsuit by a single angry litigant gives some insight. In 2011, Chase was sued over massive losses suffered by a group of credit unions. One of them had invested $135 million in one of the bank's mortgage--backed securities. About 40 percent of the loans in that deal came from the GreenPoint pool.
The lawsuit alleged that in just the first year, the security suffered $51 million in losses, nearly 50 times what had been projected. It's hard to say how much of that was due to the GreenPoint loans. But this was just one security, one year, and the losses were in the tens of millions. And Chase did deal after deal with the same methodology. So did most of the other banks. It's theft on a scale that blows the mind.
In the spring of 2012, Fleischmann, who'd moved back to Canada after leaving Chase, was working at a law firm in Calgary when the phone rang. It was an investigator from the States. "Hi, I'm from the SEC," he said. "You weren't expecting to hear from me, were you?"
A few months earlier, President Obama, giving in to pressure from the Occupy movement and other reformers, had formed the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group. At least superficially, this was a serious show of force against banks like Chase. The group would operate like a kind of regulatory Justice League, combining the superpowers of investigators from the SEC, the FBI, the IRS, HUD and a host of other federal agencies. It included noted anti-corruption- investigator and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, which gave many observers reason to hope that finally something would be done about the crimes that led to the crash. That makes the fact that the bank would skate with negligible cash fines an even more extra-ordinary accomplishment.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (L) speaks whille Attorney General Eric Holder listens during a news conference at the Justice Department on January 27th, 2012. (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty)

By the time the working group was set up, most of the applicable statutes of limitations had either expired or were about to expire. "A conspiratorial way of looking at it would be to say the state waited far too long to look at these cases and is now taking its sweet time investigating, while the last statutes of limitations run out," says famed prosecutor and former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
It soon became clear that the SEC wasn't so much investigating Chase's behavior as just checking boxes. Fleischmann received no follow-up phone calls, even though she told the investigator that she was willing to tell the SEC everything she knew about the systemic fraud at Chase. Instead, the SEC focused on a single transaction involving a mortgage company called WMC. "I kept trying to talk to them about GreenPoint," Fleischmann says, "but they just wanted to talk about that other deal."
The following year, the SEC would fine Chase $297 million for misrepresentations in the WMC deal. On the surface, it looked like a hefty punishment. In reality, it was a classic example of the piecemeal, cherry-picking style of justice that characterized the post-crisis era. "The kid-gloves approach that the DOJ and the SEC take with Wall Street is as inexplicable as it is indefensible," says Dennis Kelleher of the financial reform group Better Markets, which would later file suit challenging the Chase settlement. "They typically charge only one offense when there are dozens. It would be like charging a serial murderer with a single assault and giving them probation."
Soon Fleischmann's hopes were raised again. In late 2012 and early 2013, she had a pair of interviews with civil litigators from the U.S. attorney's office in the Eastern District of California, based in Sacramento.
One of the ongoing myths about the financial crisis is that the government is outmatched by the legal talent representing the banks. But Fleischmann was impressed by the lead attorney in her case, a litigator named Richard Elias. "He sounded like he had been a securities lawyer for 10 years," she says. "This actually looked like his idea of fun – like he couldn't wait to run with this case."
She gave Elias and his team detailed information about everything she'd seen: the edict against e-mails, the sabotaging of the diligence process, the bullying, the written warnings that were ignored, all of it. She assumed that it wouldn't be long before the bank was hauled into court.
Instead, the government decided to help Chase bury the evidence. It began when Holder's office scheduled a press conference for the morning of September 24th, 2013, to announce sweeping civil-fraud charges against the bank, all laid out in a detailed complaint drafted by the U.S. attorney's Sacramento office. But that morning the presser was suddenly canceled, and no complaint was filed. According to later news reports, Dimon had personally called Associate Attorney General Tony West, the third-ranking official in the Justice Department, and asked to reopen negotiations to settle the case out of court.
It goes without saying that the ordinary citizen who is the target of a government investigation cannot simply pick up the phone, call up the prosecutor in charge of his case and have a legal proceeding canceled. But Dimon did just that. "And he didn't just call the prosecutor, he called the prosecutor's boss," Fleischmann says. According to The New York Times, after Dimon had already offered $3 billion to settle the case and was turned down, he went to Holder's office and upped the offer, but apparently not by enough.
A few days later, Fleischmann, who had by then moved back to Vancouver and was looking for work, was at a mall when she saw a Wall Street Journal headline on her iPhone: JPMorgan Insider Helps U.S. in Probe. The story said that the government had a key witness, a female employee willing to provide damaging testimony about Chase's mortgage operations. Fleischmann was stunned. Until that moment, she had no idea that she was a major part of the government's case against Chase. And worse, nobody had bothered to warn her that she was about to be effectively outed in the newspapers. "The stress started to build after I saw that news," she says. "Especially as I waited to see if my name would come out and I watched my job possibilities evaporate."
Fleischmann later realized that the government wasn't interested in having her testify against Chase in court or any other public forum. Instead, the Justice Department's political wing, led by Holder, appeared to be using her, and her evidence, as a bargaining chip to extract more hush money from Dimon. It worked. Within weeks, Dimon had upped his offer to roughly $9 billion.
In late November, the two sides agreed on a settlement deal that covered a variety of misbehaviors, including the fraud that Fleischmann witnessed as well as similar episodes at Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns, two companies that Chase had acquired during the crisis (with federal bailout aid). The newspapers and the Justice Department described the deal as a "$13 billion settlement," hailing it as the biggest white-collar regulatory settlement in American history. The deal released Chase from civil liability. And, in what was described by The New York Times as a "major victory for the government," it left open the possibility that the Justice Department could pursue a further criminal investigation against the bank.
But the idea that Holder had cracked down on Chase was a carefully contrived fiction, one that has survived to this day. For starters, $4 billion of the settlement was largely an accounting falsehood, a chunk of bogus "consumer relief" added to make the payoff look bigger. What the public never grasped about these consumer--relief deals is that the "relief" is often not paid by the bank, which mostly just services the loans, but by the bank's other victims, i.e., the investors in their bad mortgage securities.
Moreover, in this case, a fine-print addendum indicated that this consumer relief would be allowed only if said investors agreed to it – or if it would have been granted anyway under existing arrangements. This often comes down to either forgiving a small portion of a loan or giving homeowners a little extra time to pay up in full. "It's not real," says Fleischmann. "They structured it so that the homeowners only get relief if they would have gotten it anyway." She pauses. "If a loan shark gives you a few extra weeks to pay up, is that 'consumer relief'?"
The average person had no way of knowing what a terrible deal the Chase settlement was for the country. The terms were even lighter than the slap-on-the-wrist formula that allowed Wall Street banks to "neither admit nor deny" wrongdoing – the deals that had helped spark the Occupy protests. Yet those notorious deals were like the Nuremberg hangings compared to the regulatory innovation that Holder's Justice Department cooked up for Dimon and Co.
Instead of a detailed complaint naming names, Chase was allowed to sign a flimsy, 10-and-a-half-page "statement of facts" that was: (a) so short, a first-year law student could read it in the time it takes to eat a tuna sandwich, and (b) so vague, a halfway intelligent person could read it and not know anyone had done anything wrong.
The ink was barely dry on the deal before Chase would have the balls to insinuate its innocence. "The firm has not admitted to violations of the law," said CFO Marianne Lake. But the deal's most brazen innovation was the way it bypassed the judicial branch. Previously, federal regulators had had bad luck with judges when trying to dole out slap-on-the-wrist settlements to banks. In a pair of celebrated cases, an unpleasantly honest federal judge named Jed Rakoff had rejected sweetheart deals worked out between banks and slavish regulators and had commanded the state to go back to the drawing board and come up with real punishments.
Seemingly not wanting to deal with even the possibility of such a thing happening, Holder blew off the idea of showing the settlement to a judge. The settlement, says Kelleher, "was unprecedented in many ways, including being very carefully crafted to bypass the court system. . . . There can be little doubt that the DOJ and JP-Morgan were trying to avoid disclosure of their dirty deeds and prevent public scrutiny of their sweetheart deal." Kelleher asks a rhetorical question: "Can you imagine the outcry if [Bush-era Attorney General] Alberto Gonzales had gone into the backroom and given Halliburton immunity in exchange for a billion dollars?"
The deal was widely considered a good one for both sides, but Chase emerged with barely a scratch. First, the ludicrously nonspecific language surrounding the settlement put you, me and every other American taxpayer on the hook for roughly a quarter of Chase's check. Because most of the settlement monies were specifically not called fines or penalties, Chase was allowed to treat some $7 billion of the settlement as a tax write-off.
Couple this with the fact that the bank's share price soared six percent on news of the settlement, adding more than $12 billion in value to shareholders, and one could argue Chase actually made money from the deal. What's more, to defray the cost of this and other fines, Chase last year laid off 7,500 lower-level employees. Meanwhile, per-employee compensation for everyone else rose four percent, to $122,653. But no one made out better than Dimon. The board awarded a 74 percent raise to the man who oversaw the biggest regulatory penalty ever, upping his compensation package to about $20 million.

"The assumption they make is that I won't blow up my life to do it. But they're wrong about that."

While Holder was being lavishly praised for releasing Chase only from civil liability, Fleischmann knew something the rest of the world did not: The criminal investigation was going nowhere.
In the days leading up to Holder's November 19th announcement of the settlement, the Justice Department had asked Fleischmann to meet with criminal investigators. They would interview her very soon, they said, between December 15th and Christmas.
But December came and went with no follow-up from the DOJ. She began to wonder: If she was the government's key witness, how was it possible that they were still pursuing a criminal case without talking to her? "My concern," she says, "was that they were not investigating."
The government's failure to speak to Fleischmann lends credence to a theory about the Holder-Dimon settlement: It included a tacit agreement from the DOJ not to pursue criminal charges in earnest. It sounds outrageous, but it wouldn't be the first time that the government used a wink and a nod to dispose a bank of major liability without saying so publicly. Back in 2010, American Lawyer revealed Goldman Sachs wanted a full release from liability in a dozen crooked mortgage deals, while the SEC didn't want to give the bank such a big public victory. So the two sides quietly agreed to a grimy compromise: Goldman agreed to pay $550 million to settle a single case, and the SEC privately assured the bank that it wouldn't recommend charges in any of the other deals.
As Fleischmann was waiting for the Justice Department to call, Chase and its lawyers had been going to tremendous lengths to keep her muzzled. A number of major institutional investors had sued the bank in an effort to recover money lost in investing in Chase's fraud-ridden home loans. In October 2013, one of those investors – the Fort Worth Employees' Retirement Fund – asked a federal judge to force Chase to grant access to a series of current and former employees, including Fleischmann, whose status as a key cooperator in the federal investigation had made headlines in The Wall Street Journal and other major media outlets.

Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty

In response, Dorothy Spenner, an attorney representing Chase, told the court that Fleischmann was not a "relevant custodian." In other words, she couldn't testify to anything of importance. Federal Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV took Chase's lawyers at their word and rejected the Fort Worth retirees' request for access to Fleischmann and her evidence.
Other investors bilked by Chase also tried to speak to Fleischmann. The Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh, which had sued Chase, asked the court to force Chase to turn over a copy of the draft civil complaint that was withheld after Holder's scuttled press conference. The Pittsburgh litigants also specified that they wanted access to the name of the state's cooperating witness: namely, Fleischmann.
In that case, the judge actually ordered Chase to turn over both the complaint and Fleischmann's name. Chase stalled. Later in the fall, the judge ordered the bank to produce the information again; it stalled some more.
Then, in January 2014, Chase suddenly settled with the Pittsburgh bank out of court for an undisclosed amount. Months after being ordered to allow Fleischmann to talk, they once again paid a stiff price to keep her testimony out of the public eye.
Chase's determination to hide its own dirt while forcing Fleischmann to keep her secret was becoming more and more absurd. "It was a hard time to look for work," she says. All that prospective employers knew was that she had worked in a department that had just been dinged with what was then the biggest regulatory fine in the history of capitalism. According to the terms of her confidentiality agreement, she couldn't even tell them that she'd tried to keep the bank from committing fraud.
Despite it all, Fleischmann still had faith that the Justice Department or some other federal agency would make things right. "I guess I was just a trusting person," she says. "I wasn't cynical. I kept hoping."
One day last spring, Fleischmann happened across a video of Holder giving a speech titled "No Company Is Too Big to Jail." It was classic Holder: full of weird prevarication, distracting eye twitches and other facial contortions. It began with the bold rejection of the idea that overly large financial institutions would receive preferential treatment from his Justice Department.
Then, within a few sentences, he seemed to contradict himself, arguing that one must apply a special sort of care when investigating supersize banks, tweaking the rules so as not to upset the world economy. "Federal prosecutors conducting these investigations," Holder said, "must go the extra mile to coordinate closely with the regulators who oversee these institutions' day-to-day operations." That is, he was saying, regulators have to agree not to allow automatic penalties to kick in, so that bad banks can stay in business.
Fleischmann winced. Fully fluent in Holder's three-faced rhetoric after years of waiting for him to act, she felt that he was patting himself on the back for having helped companies survive crimes that otherwise might have triggered crippling regulatory penalties. As she watched in mounting outrage, Holder wrapped up his address with a less-than-reassuring pronouncement: "I am resolved to seeing [the investigations] through." Doing so, he added, would "reaffirm" his principles.
Or, as Fleischmann translates it: "I will personally stay on to make sure that no one can undo the cover-up that I've accomplished."
That's when she decided to break her silence. "I tried to go on with the things I was doing, but I just stopped sleeping and couldn't eat," she says. "It felt like I was trying to keep this secret and my body was literally rejecting it."
Ironically, over the summer, the government contacted her again. A new set of investigators interviewed her, appearing to have restarted the criminal case. Fleischmann won't comment on that investigation. Frustrated as she has been by the decisions of the higher-ups in Holder's Justice Department, she doesn't want to do anything to get in the way of investigators who might be working the case. But she emphasizes she still has reason to be deeply worried that nothing will be done. Even if the investigators build strong cases against executives who oversaw Chase's fraud, Holder or whoever succeeds him can still make the whole thing disappear by negotiating a soft landing for the company. "That's the thing I'm worried about," she says. "That they make the whole thing disappear. If they do that, the truth will never come out."
In September, at a speech at NYU, Holder defended the lack of prosecutions of top executives on the grounds that, in the corporate context, sometimes bad things just happen without actual people being responsible. "Responsibility remains so diffuse, and top executives so insulated," Holder said, "that any misconduct could again be considered more a symptom of the institution's culture than a result of the willful actions of any single individual."
In other words, people don't commit crimes, corporate culture commits crimes! It's probably fortunate that Holder is quitting before he has time to apply the same logic to Mafia or terrorism cases.
Fleischmann, for her part, had begun to find the whole situation almost funny.
"I thought, 'I swear, Eric Holder is gas-lighting me,' " she says.
Ask her where the crime was, and Fleischmann will point out exactly how her bosses at JPMorgan Chase committed criminal fraud: It's right there in the documents; just hand her a highlighter and some Post-it notes – "We lawyers love flags" – and you will not find a more enthusiastic tour guide through a gazillion-page prospectus than Alayne Fleischmann.
She believes the proof is easily there for all the elements of the crime as defined by federal law – the bank made material misrepresentations, it made material omissions, and it did so willfully and with specific intent, consciously ignoring warnings from inside the firm and out.
She'd like to see something done about it, emphasizing that there still is time. The statute of limitations for wire fraud, for instance, has not run out, and she strongly believes there's a case there, against the bank's executives. She has no financial interest in any of this, no motive other than wanting the truth out. But more than anything, she wants it to be over.
In today's America, someone like Fleischmann – an honest person caught for a little while in the wrong place at the wrong time – has to be willing to live through an epic ordeal just to get to the point of being able to open her mouth and tell a truth or two. And when she finally gets there, she still has to risk everything to take that last step. "The assumption they make is that I won't blow up my life to do it," Fleischmann says. "But they're wrong about that."
Good for her, and great for her that it's finally out. But the big-picture ending still stings. She hopes otherwise, but the likely final verdict is a Pyrrhic victory.
Because after all this activity, all these court actions, all these penalties (both real and abortive), even after a fair amount of noise in the press, the target companies remain more ascendant than ever. The people who stole all those billions are still in place. And the bank is more untouchable than ever – former Debevoise & Plimpton hotshots Mary Jo White and Andrew Ceresny, who represented Chase for some of this case, have since been named to the two top jobs at the SEC. As for the bank itself, its stock price has gone up since the settlement and flirts weekly with five-year highs. They may lose the odd battle, but the markets clearly believe the banks won the war. Truth is one thing, and if the right people fight hard enough, you might get to hear it from time to time. But justice is different, and still far enough away.

From The Archives Issue 1222: November 20, 2014

Ed Snowden Taught Me To Smuggle Secrets Past Incredible Danger. Now I Teach You.

2014-10-29T17:14:00.001-07:00

Ed Snowden Taught Me To Smuggle Secrets Past Incredible Danger. Now I Teach You.

By Micah Lee Yesterday at 10:36 AM

Late on the evening of January 11, 2013, someone sent me an interesting email. It was encrypted, and sent from the sort of anonymous email service that smart people use when they want to hide their identity. Sitting at the kitchen table in the small cottage where I lived in Berkeley with my wife and two cats, I decrypted it.
The anonymous emailer wanted to know if I could help him communicate securely with Laura Poitras, the documentary filmmaker who had repeatedly cast a critical eye on American foreign policy.

From: anon108@■■■■■■■■■
To: Micah Lee
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013
Micah,
I’m a friend. I need to get information securely to Laura Poitras and her alone, but I can’t find an email/gpg key for her.
Can you help?

I didn’t know it at the time, but I had just been contacted by Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who was then preparing a momentous leak of government data.
A month earlier, Snowden had anonymously emailed Glenn Greenwald, a Guardian journalist and chronicler of war-on-terror excesses, but Greenwald didn’t use encryption and didn’t have the time to get up to speed, so Snowden moved on. As is now well known, Snowden decided to contact Poitras because she used encryption. But he didn’t have her encryption key, as is necessary to send someone encrypted email, and the key wasn’t posted on the web. Snowden, extraordinarily knowledgeable about how internet traffic is monitored, didn’t want to send her an unencrypted email, even if just to ask for her key. So he needed to find someone he thought he could trust who both had her key and used encrypted email.
That was me.
And as it turned out, several months later I was drawn more deeply into the whole thing, when Snowden got back in touch and asked me to work with him to launch an online anti-surveillance petition.
Until now, I haven’t written about my modest role in the Snowden leak, but with the release of Poitras’ documentary on him, “Citizenfour,” I feel comfortable connecting the dots. I think it’s helpful to show how privacy technologists can work with sources and journalists to make it possible for leaks to happen in a secure way. Securing those types of interactions is part of my job now that I work with Greenwald and Poitras at The Intercept, but there are common techniques and general principles from my interactions with Snowden that could serve as lessons to people outside this organization.

When I got that first email, I was working as a staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and as the chief technology officer of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. My encryption key was posted at both sites, so Snowden was able to find it easily, and the key was digitally signed by people who were well-known in the privacy world (pioneering blogger Cory Doctorow and free software champion Richard Stallman, for instance); this meant those people had digitally vouched, in a way that was incredibly difficult to forge, that the key really belonged to me and not to, say, some NSA trickster. In other words, Snowden didn’t need to worry about the key being a fake. Poitras was a founding board member of the FPF, so he assumed I would have her key, and he was right.
It wasn’t uncommon for me to receive the type of email Snowden sent — strangers send me encrypted emails all the time, requesting help. Some of those emails are from people who appear to have personal issues to work out, but the inquiry from Snowden, emailing under a pseudonym, struck me as serious. I quickly forwarded it in an encrypted email to Poitras. The encryption technology we used — the standard among email users concerned with privacy — is known by two acronyms: GPG, for GNU Privacy Guard, or PGP, for Pretty Good Privacy.

From: Micah Lee
To: Laura Poitras
Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2013
Hey Laura,
This person just send me this GPG encrypted email. Do you want to respond? If you want to, and you need any help with using crypto, I’m happy to help.

Like me, Poitras was accustomed to receiving anonymous inquiries, and she recognized that this one was credible. A few hours later, she sent me a reply.

From: Laura Poitras
To: Micah Lee
Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2013
Hey Micah,
Thanks for asking. Sure, you can tell this person I can be reached with GPG at: laurapoitras@gmail.com
I’ll reply with my public key.
I’m also on jabber/OTR at:
l.p.@jabber.org
I hope all is good with you!
Laura

The frustrating and ironic thing about GPG is that even experts make mistakes with it. Even, as it turns out, Edward Snowden.
I now had Poitras’ permission to send Snowden her encryption key, but in his first email to me, Snowden had forgotten to attach his key, which meant I could not encrypt my response. I had to send him an unencrypted email asking for his key first. His oversight was of no security consequence—it didn’t compromise his identity in any way—but it goes to show how an encryption system that requires users to take specific and frequent actions almost guarantees mistakes will be made, even by the best users.
After receiving Snowden’s key, I sent him an encrypted email with Poitras’ key. This enabled him to send his first encrypted email to Poitras, in which he called himself Citizenfour. But I wasn’t out of the identity-confirmation picture yet.
Snowden and Poitras quickly set up a more secure channel for communication. Poitras created an anonymous email account, doing so with the Tor Browser that masks your identity on the web, and she created a new GPG key, just for communicating with Citizenfour. This was advisable because, if she were under surveillance by the NSA or any other intelligence agency, they might have compromised her known accounts, and she would prefer for there to be no trace of her true name in the correspondence with this secrecy-seeking stranger.
But the internet is a hall of mirrors. Even though Snowden and Poitras had set up new anonymous email accounts and traded GPG keys through a trusted chain of communication, it’s still possible that something could have gone wrong. Maybe one end of the communication (either Snowden or Poitras) could have had their computer hacked, with the attacker in a position to impersonate them. Or maybe they could be victim to a man-in-the-middle attack where, for example, the NSA tricks two parties who think they’re having an encrypted conversation directly with each other into secretly having two separate encrypted conversations with the attacker, who forwards their messages along.
To be extra sure that these things weren’t happening, Snowden wanted to verify through a separate channel that he had Laura’s legitimate key. He asked Poitras to get me to tweet the fingerprint of her new GPG key.
Just a tiny bit of background: encryption keys are technically just strings of random data that scramble and unscramble information. Because these keys are too long to memorize or conveniently post on bios or put on business cards, each one has a far shorter “fingerprint” that is unique to the key. These fingerprints are just 40 characters long. To verify the new key that Poitras had sent him, Snowden needed to receive her new fingerprint from me and then compare it to the one he was using.
If the fingerprint that I tweeted didn’t match the key that Poitras sent him, that would be evidence that NSA or some other actor may be attempting a man-in-the-middle attack. If the fingerprints matched, however, he could be confident that he had her real key and no one was attacking their communication.
On January 28, Laura sent me the following encrypted email—

From: 303@riseup.net
To: Micah Lee
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2013
Hey Micah,
This is Laura Poitras.
Someone is trying to verify my fingerprint to this email. The person has proposed you tweet the fingerprint. Would you be able to tweet this to your acct:
1EBF 5F15 850C 540B 3142 F158 4BDD 496D 4C6C 5F25
Let me know if possible.
Thanks,
Laura

It might seem strange to use Twitter, a public platform, to convey crucial information, but in some circumstances it makes perfect sense. Doing a man-in-the-middle attack against encrypted email without getting caught is significantly simpler than performing an attack on a public platform that anyone in the world might notice. If NSA had hacked my Twitter account and posted the wrong fingerprint, there’s a good chance I, or one of my followers, would notice and start looking into it.
So on January 28, I tweeted Poitras’ new fingerprint:

With that, Snowden, using the handle Citizenfour, had a very secure channel for communicating with Poitras, using the email address 303@riseup.net. I assumed this would be the end of my work with him.

Encrypting Greenwald

Snowden signed off from my life, or so I thought, with a final request: He asked that I help Greenwald get encrypted. He said it was an important task, though he didn’t tell me why. He also told me that someday I would be proud of the role I was playing.
I tried to teach GPG to Greenwald but I had the same problem Snowden had encountered when he reached out in December, that Greenwald was busy and couldn’t focus on it. Several months later, however, I succeeded in getting Greenwald up to speed on using an encrypted chat system called Off-the-Record (OTR), which is much simpler than GPG. For the first time he was able to have encrypted communications on the internet.
Then, on May 9, I got an encrypted email from Poitras that was exciting and alarming.

From: Laura Poitras
To: Micah Lee
Date: Thu, 9 May 2013
I’m working on something with Glenn and I really need to get him on a secure (preferably Tails) system. He does not have the technical skills to set this up himself, and I’m trying to keep things compartmentalized, so I don’t want to email him about this topic directly on a non-secure channel.

Poitras didn’t tell me what was going on, and I didn’t ask. Not who, not what. The same with Greenwald. I didn’t ask. This was basic operational security. Whatever they were doing was sensitive, and I had no need to know. Whether you’re working in the analog or digital world, this is one of the simplest and most important security practices: share secrets only with people who have to know. The fewer people who know a secret, the lower the chances are that it will be compromised.
Tails, the secure system Poitras asked me to get for Greenwald, is serious business. It’s a hardened operating system designed for people who need to be anonymous, and not a lot of people use it. The acronym stands for The Amnesic Incognito Live System. Before Poitras asked me to teach it to Greenwald, I had never used it. Crucially, everything you do in Tails is anonymous. All internet activity is routed through Tor, so by default your privacy is protected. And you run Tails directly off of a DVD or a USB stick — it is not installed on your hard drive. Since Tails operates completely independently from your hard drive and usual operating system, it offers a hefty dose of protection from malware and from anyone who might inspect your computer to look at what you’ve been doing.
It’s also a free software project, just like Tor, GPG, and OTR. That means the code is open source and can be peer reviewed, a level of transparency that makes the software resistant to backdoors, covert access points buried deep in the code.
On May 13, after creating a customized version of Tails for Greenwald, I hopped on my bike and pedaled to the FedEx office on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, where I slipped the Tails thumb drive into a shipping package, filled out a customs form that asked about the contents (“Flash Drive Gift,” I wrote), and sent it to Greenwald in Brazil. He received the package two weeks later, it having been delayed in transit, for what I believed to be bureaucratic rather than nefarious reasons, and the blue thumb drive actually made a cameo appearance in “Citizenfour.” For a technologist, this was a dream come true.

Snowden’s Website

Near the end of May, I received an anonymous and encrypted email from an account called “verax,” which is Latin for “truth teller.” The writer told me that he was the same person I had been in touch with several months earlier. He had a new request.
Would I help him build a website that would launch a global petition against surveillance?
I still didn’t know his name, where he was located, or what else he was up to, though clearly whatever he had going on with Poitras and Greenwald was sensitive. Because of my respect for them, I believed that anything they were going to this much trouble to accomplish was going to be worthwhile, so I agreed to build the site. I started using Tails in all my work with the contact, because I sensed that I had to take the highest security precautions possible. As Poitras had done with him in January, I created a new anonymous email account and GPG key just for communicating with him. He was glad that I did.

From: verax@■■■■■■■■■
To: ■■■■■■■■■
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013
Got it. Good idea, btw. There are some issues with keys being used for fingerprinting as they move over the network.

He said he was writing an anti-surveillance manifesto that he wanted to post on the yet-to-be-named site, along with a petition that people could add their names to. The site would be unveiled once the journalists he was working with published their first stories. I had ample experience building privacy-respecting websites, including many online petitions for EFF. Among others, I built a petition against the draconian online copyright enforcement bill SOPA that sent more than a million emails to Congress. So this was familiar territory for me.
Working in Tails to remain anonymous while I developed the site, however, meant that this would be trickier than the web development I’d done in the past. I didn’t have access to the latest browsers I was used to, and I didn’t dare test the mobile version of the site on my smartphone. I also had concern that my coding style might betray my identity: my code for this project used similar commenting and naming conversions as other code I’d written in the past. Trying to develop software without your personal coding style is like trying to write an essay using someone else’s voice. I was also concerned that the visual designs I was creating could be compared to my work in the past.
Snowden was even more worried about detection, though I didn’t know it at the time. He expected to be quickly arrested and prevented from speaking for himself, and predicted that the government would use that silence to mischaracterize his intentions. To keep that from happening, Snowden decided to take a highly visible online stand against mass surveillance. Part of his plan included the petition website that he asked me to build.
On May 27, Snowden had his first encrypted conversation directly with Greenwald, who agreed to travel to Hong Kong with Poitras, funded by Guardian.
As my work on the site got underway, I had an encrypted chat with Poitras and mentioned what I was doing, though I didn’t give her many details; just as I didn’t need to know everything she was doing, she didn’t need to know everything I was doing. She warned me to be extremely careful, and added that a very big story was in the works. I promised to be careful.
I was in a strange position. I was working with Snowden (whose name, in late May, I still didn’t know) and I suspected he was a whistleblower working with Poitras, but I didn’t know what he was blowing the whistle on, I didn’t know a large volume of documents were involved, and I had no idea where he was located. I didn’t know, for that matter, that Greenwald and Poitras would soon be heading to Hong Kong to meet him there. My ask-no-questions cluelessness was best for all concerned.
Days later, I was having an encrypted chat with Poitras, from our anonymous accounts, and she sounded excited. “You’ll never guess where we are right now,” I remember her writing. She didn’t tell me where she was, of course, because I didn’t need to know.
Snowden and I exchanged encrypted emails to discuss the site mockup and the site’s functionality, and he let me know a bit of what was going on. “Just wanted to provide an update on the work out here,” he emailed me on June 3. “Had an extremely productive meeting with two journalists today you may know, and will encounter a third tomorrow [Ewen MacAskill, a Guardian reporter who joined Greenwald and Poitras at the last moment]. After discussion, may hold off on the declaration for a few more days to give them time to work first.”
He told me his name, so that I could attach his signature to the end of the manifesto. This was about a week before the rest of the world would learn who he was. Using Tor, I searched the internet for Edward Snowden, but I couldn’t find anything. I checked LinkedIn, I checked Facebook, I think I even checked Twitter, and I found nothing. Who was this guy?
I learned more from the manifesto he sent me. It chilled my spine. He wrote about ubiquitous surveillance by not just the NSA but the intelligence agencies in the “Five Eyes” alliance: Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. He wrote about privacy and the lack of accountability, and what this means to democracy around the world. I still didn’t know exactly what he was leaking, but I could tell it would be big.
It turned out that he wasn’t familiar with the subtleties of using Twitter in petition campaigns. Due to my work at EFF, I knew that one of the things that can make a campaign go viral is offering a pre-written tweet to people who sign your petition and allowing them to send that tweet from their own account with just a couple of clicks. People often post these tweets, and that’s almost more helpful than their signatures since it vastly increases the campaign’s visibility. I explained this to Snowden, and also explained that it was really important to have a good hashtag for the campaign. He got it immediately, thanked me for pointing this out, and suggested the following Twitter template:

“This tweet is being monitored. Join me in breaking the back of the internet spy machine: https://www.supportonlinerights.com #HiNSA #HiGCHQ”

Snowden decided that the site should be called supportonlinerights.com, and we got to work registering it and finding a hosting company. But we ran into trouble paying for the registration and hosting. Snowden was using his real name and email address (edsnowden@lavabit.com) and his own credit cards — he was not yet an international fugitive — but he was also using Tor, and this caused problems. Tor protects your identity by routing your web activity through a number of nodes, so that the site you are in touch with does not know your IP address or where you connect to the Internet from. But this creates a problem when you want to pay a bill, because the use of Tor can trigger fraud warnings with corporate payment departments, since Tor links your traffic to IP addresses that might be flagged as sources of abuse.
The company through which Snowden was registering his domain name and hosting his site, Dreamhost, initially rejected his credit cards. This led to a funny situation. Snowden, in his Hong Kong hotel room, wasn’t just discussing government secrets with Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill. He was also chatting online with customer support. Trying to troubleshoot these problems, I checked the complaint logs he had opened and noticed that he explained he was using Tor because he was traveling overseas and didn’t trust the local ISPs. Eventually he prevailed and his credit cards were accepted. Here is the original registration record in the internet’s “WHOIS” system:

I was a bit nervous at the time, and my wife was very nervous, because the government does not look kindly on whistleblowers and the people who work with them. For security reasons, we were in a bubble. I hadn’t told any of my co-workers at EFF that I was building a website for a whistleblower. So there weren’t a lot of people to turn to for advice or comfort. Nonetheless, I was quite excited, especially after Greenwald’s first story was published on June 5, revealing a secret NSA program to collect massive amounts of domestic phone data. I finally knew what Snowden was leaking.
“Big news today, huh?” I emailed him. “How are you doing?”
He responded quickly.

From: verax@■■■■■■■■■
To: ■■■■■■■■■
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013
Oh, that old thing? That could have come from anywhere..
Timing is everything on this, and we aren’t close to finished. It’s encouraging to see prominent civil rights organizations already calling for change, and I’m hopeful that maybe this time, things will be different.
Come Monday, people will have something to be angry about. I think that will be the day. Please feel free to criticize the draft as much as you’d like: it needs to be something people are willing to give words to their own feelings.

The next few days brought a blitz of headline-grabbing stories about NSA surveillance from Greenwald, Poitras, and MacAskill as well as the The Washington Post’s Barton Gellman, who received documents from Snowden even though he hadn’t made the risky trip to Hong Kong. On June 9, there was another thunderbolt: Greenwald, MacAskill, and Poitras broke the news that Edward Snowden was their source, releasing a 12-minute interview with him in which he explained his motivations.
At this point I was terrified. What if he got arrested and extradited to the U.S.? What if he were forced into solitary confinement for long stretches, as had happened to Chelsea Manning? What if he was tortured or killed?
I also worried about properly shepherding the project with which he had entrusted me. What was the contingency plan for the petition website? If he was arrested, should I unilaterally launch supportonlinerights.com?
“I hope you’re safe and doing well,” I emailed Snowden. “In case anything happened to you, what would you like me to do with the website?”
The site was ready to go. At the time, I was using the Declaration of Independence as a placeholder for the manifesto; for security reasons, I didn’t want to load the manifesto until the launch. Here’s what it looked like:

On the same day the interview was posted, Gellman published the “Verax” handle while Snowden was still using it. This caused me great concern. When Snowden reached out in late May asking me to build the petition website, he initially emailed my public email address from his Verax address. I had tried hard to have no traceable connection to Snowden, but now the FBI and NSA knew his handle and were, I believed, in a position to search their massive surveillance databases to find his full email address and perhaps the email addresses he had communicated with, including mine. While I knew that I hadn’t broken any laws, I became worried that I would receive a knock on the door. I could deal with that — the EFF is, after all, filled with lawyers — but my wife was quite scared for me.
I was unable to concentrate on anything else as I waited to hear from Snowden. Due to Gellman’s story, I wasn’t sure whether he was still using his “Verax” address. (Gellman later told me he that he didn’t — and doesn’t — think he put anyone at risk, and that he carefully weighed the decision to publish the “verax” handle.)
On June 13, after he had parted ways with Greenwald and Poitras and gone underground in Hong Kong, he finally emailed me.

From: verax@■■■■■■■■■
To: ■■■■■■■■■
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013
I’m still here. As you may have heard, I’m on the run. Tons of surveillance, media, and less savory teams crawling all over this place…
I have a new draft for the site, but I keep revising it. Hold off on any action for now. I’m thinking something major may happen on Saturday and give us a venue to bring this to the fore.
Thank you again for all of your help and support. I’m sorry this has become so dangerous for everyone involved, but I suppose this is precisely what needed to be illustrated about our government. Let’s hope people reign it back in.

We never launched the website. When it became clear that Snowden wasn’t immediately getting arrested or prevented from communicating, and that the U.S. government wasn’t forcibly denying the public an accurate understanding of what he did and what his motivations were, he decided the website was no longer necessary. He never wanted the story to be about himself anyway, preferring instead that the public debate stay focused on NSA spying.

Teaching Snowden’s Lessons

After the dust settled, I sat down to write a simple tutorial for using the open source tools that allowed me, Poitras, Greenwald, and Snowden to communicate securely, and I ended up with a 30-page whitepaper called Encryption Works: How to Protect Your Privacy in the Age of NSA Surveillance. I took the name from Snowden’s now-famous quote: “Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.”
The post-Snowden world is a different place. While the NSA and its allied spy agencies still have very little accountability, and while their leaders can still lie to Congress without consequence, they’re no longer operating in the dark. The internet is enjoying a renaissance of security research to try to fix the major technical holes spy agencies have been exploiting for over a decade, and companies are demanding the right to protect the privacy of their users and to challenge gag orders. Lawsuits against NSA are finally moving through the courts, when before they were stalled.
In January 2014 Edward Snowden became the newest board member of Freedom of the Press Foundation, joining Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, as well as Poitras, Greenwald, myself, and others.
Snowden was right. I am proud of the role that I played in shining light on the global espionage apparatus.
Intercept senior writer Peter Maass and assistant research editor Alleen Brown contributed to this report.

Email the author: micah.lee@theintercept.com

UBER SF- A text by Jean-Sébastien CloutierTwitterEmail

2014-09-10T17:13:00.003-07:00

The growing popularity of ride sharing - shopping trips - undermines the taxi industry in the United States. Applications like UberX, which also just made its entry in Toronto, allow customers to find a particular ready to lead, often for less than a taxi.

- Anthony Morin
"Taxi drivers are really angry because the public now has the power not to choose a taxi and choose either Uber, Lyft and Sidecar. "- Anthony Morin
UberTaxis Canada
For now, UberTaxis is present in several Canadian cities, including Montreal. The application allows you to attach a taxi directly using an integrated GPS map that shows where members drivers closest Uber - independent taxis for most. Passengers wait less time than a traditional taxi, and the driver, being more active, is meanwhile more money. It pays 15% of the fare for Uber. Unlike the commercial carpooling in the United States, not all can be conductive.

We went to San Francisco, where this phenomenon was born. Cradle of choice for web companies and other start-up companies, the California city was the birthplace of Uber in 2009 and Lyft and Sidecar 2012 Today, the three companies are competing for the carpool market. And taxis, themselves, fear of disappearing.

At noon there, Anthony Morin wanted to show us how the application of Lyft is effective. He lives in the Sunset District, in the southwest of San Francisco, and he has no car. Anthony goes to work downtown, 7 kilometers from home.

"There, I did the application on my phone. There is someone who has agreed to pick me up. That tells me that he will come in less than 10 minutes. It gives me the style of car, what color, what brand, etc. [...] It gives me the name of the driver, his name is Samuel [...] and it told me that the 5-star, it has a rating of 4.9. So he's a good person. "

The wait is never long the application is so popular in San Francisco. Samuel shows up and agrees to get us up too. In a relaxed atmosphere Anthony and her talk about everything and nothing. The race takes about twenty minutes and costs $ 17.

Commercial applications carpooling calculate the bill based on the distance traveled and the time of transport. No exchange of money; everything is virtual and credit card is automatically charged member passenger. Lyft, Uber and Sidecar take a 20% commission on each race, the rest goes to the driver.

"You talk with this person, it's easy, it's effective. I feel good in this system and it's cheaper than a taxi, "says Anthony.

Cheaper than a taxi?

We examined whether it was actually cheaper by repeating the same route. First observation: Anthony lives in a little frequented by taxi and 10 minutes instead of waiting area with Lyft, it took nearly an hour for a car. Second observation: the race cost $ 23, or $ 6 more than Lyft.

Companies do not give accurate statistics on the number of their members, but the increase is exponential since 2012 in 16 months, the Taxi Association of San Francisco has identified 7,000 different license plates associated with trading carpooling and she although there are probably many more.

"These companies are pirates who want to eliminate us and bought politicians," says Walter Morgan, who works in the taxi industry for 17 years.

An allusion to San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who has publicly given his support last year to companies doing business carpooling. They create jobs, he has said, and meet a need for citizens.So on the back of his car, Walter stuck this short sentence: " Dump Mayor Ed Lee . "

One way to express anger and perhaps also his impotence. In 2013, California became the first state to regulate the commercial carpooling. There, Uber, Lyft and Sidecar are now Transportation Network companies . They must ensure their drivers among others for $ 1 million in case of accidents and ensure they have no criminal record. Bonds then, but mostly a legal status.

"The goal was not to take sides. It is up to consumers to do so. And it turns out they use many commercial carpooling. So our role is to ensure their safety, "explains Marzia Zafar, Director of Policy at the Public Utilities Commission of California.

A response that greatly pleases the Canadian spokesman at Uber, Lisa Hutniak. "We want good regulations and that is exactly the case in San Francisco, where it all began for us. We love working with progressive makers able to see ahead. Uber has the wind in your sails! "

Become a driver, it pays!

The application carpool Uber called UberX the United States - also others have called UberPOP -. It made its debut in Toronto on Monday and it already experiencing explosive growth with our southern neighbors. To testify, Uber has presented one of its most active in San Francisco drivers.Since January, 4000 Sebastian Marc made trips to UberX!

"I told myself I have free time sometimes on Saturday night or Friday night. Rather than going to the bar, I started to take a little bottle that, I said to myself why not work! It'll be healthier for me, why not raise a little more money. "

A little? To say the least. Sebastian, during some weekends, can earn $ 35 to $ 40 an hour. "What I love about UberX also means that it is very flexible in terms of time, I can drive whenever I want.When I have free time, hop! I live here in town, I go out of my apartment, I go in the car, I put the application on and I'm at work! "

Difficult, therefore, to contradict taxi drivers worried. Across the industry behind Uber court. The company, she said, does not follow the rules. Some controversy regarding the safety of users and the insurance coverage provided to drivers were also revealed. All this does not prevent Uber claims $ 18 billion, a presence in 180 cities and growing at breakneck speed

"Of course they deprive us customers! In addition, they do not have to pay license or afford $ 100 a day like me to their employer, "complains Walter Morgan.

In San Francisco, some drivers have lost half of their income in recent years. No comprehensive study has yet measured the impact of the commercial carpooling on taxis, nor on the congestion and pollution of the city. Except qu'UberX, Lyft or Sidecar have clearly transformed the ways to get around. And they may well transform ours soon.

Uber’s Controversial Insurance Policy is Secret No More

2014-09-03T21:27:00.003-07:00

(Photo: Jeremy Raff/KQED)

A couple of days ago, the San Francisco Bay Guardian got hold of the holy grail of Lyft/UberX detractors, a document long sought by taxi companies and others calling for greater oversight of these ride services.

On Monday night, the Guardian posted Uber’s secret insurance policy. The weekly said that someone sent it the document anonymously, and that it was sent to a number of taxi-industry advocates as well.

Apparently in response, Uber soon posted the policy on its own website. Uber wrote in a blog post: “We are confident it is a best-in-class policy and hope that this additional transparency addresses any remaining questions about the insurance provided to ridesharing partners on our platform.”

The policy was written by James River Insurance Co., based in Richmond, Virginia. How much Uber is paying in premiums is redacted in both the leaked and company versions.

Secrecy an issue

The taxi industry across the country has made a big issue of the non-public nature of the ride-services’ policies. In covering the issue over the past year, we have frequently heard from taxi companies, drivers and regulators that because these documents have been seen only by the California Public Utilities Commission, no one knows what exclusions and other conditions might get the companies off the hook — and its drivers on the hook — for liability costs in an accident.

But early indications are that those looking for a smoking gun to implicate Uber as engaging in insurance hocus-pocus may be disappointed. The Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association — which appreciates the technological marvel of loosely regulated, app-based dispatch startups about as much as the music industry liked Napster — focused on the name of the company listed as insured on the policy. Under “name of insured,” it says “Rasier LLC,” which is a subsidiary of Uber.

“This is some sort of corporate shell game,” said William Rouse, past president of the TLPA and currently general manager of Los Angeles Yellow Cab. “The policy states that insurance kicks in only when Rasier LLC is liable. But Uber — not Rasier LLC — is the company providing for-hire transportation across the U.S. This could be the mechanism Uber uses to avoid paying out any insurance whatsoever. Why would any city allow Uber to operate on its streets with the company’s deceitful practices now on full display?”

However, “Uber Technologies Inc.” is indeed named as an “additional insured” in an addendum to the policy. (Update Thursday: Robert Passmore, senior director of personal lines policy at the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, told the San Francisco Chroniclethis is not an unusual way to do things.)

The insurance issue came to the fore after a fatal New Year’s Eve accident involving an UberX driver in San Francisco. Syed Muzaffar, driving an SUV, drove into a family in a Tenderloin crosswalk, killing 6-year-old Sofia Liu. Uber said the driver was not covered under the $1 million liability policy mandated by the CPUC because he was between calls.

Uber closed that gap to a certain degree two weeks ago, when it announced it had added coverage for the period when a driver is logged into its app but not yet on a call. (Lyft said it would similarly augment its coverage.) However, UberX’s added coverage is capped at $100,000 total per incident for bodily injury and $25,000 per incident for property damage, the company said. That’s far less than the New Year’s Eve accident, for example, is likely to incur in terms of liability.

Controversy over insurance coverage has become a sort of Achilles’ heel for the fast-growing ride-service industry as it fights numerous regulatory battles in multiple cities and states. In January, the California Department of Insurance issued a warning to ride-service drivers about potential gaps in coverage that could leave them liable in an accident.

In Chicago recently, the City Council actually subpoenaed the policies of UberX, Lyft and Sidecar in search of holes that could leave drivers and passengers unprotected. Meanwhile, there have been at least two reports of insurers canceling the personal auto coverage of ride-service drivers, leading many of them to hide their status as commercial drivers.

The policy: Excess vs. primary insurance

You can take a look at the insurance policy, which makes for fascinating reading if you’re an actuary, here or embedded at the end of this article. If you follow this stuff, I imagine you’re going to hear a fair bit of analysis over the next few days. We asked Pete Moraga of theInsurance Information Network of California, someone who has expressed skepticism to us in the past about ride-service insurance, to take a look. He told us the contract contains a lot of standard boilerplate language and exclusions found in other insurance contracts. TheSan Francisco Chronicle showed the policy to a couple of other insurance industry professionals, and they agreed there is nothing unusual about the policy.

It’s still early, but all in all one would have to say the release of the policy has been a positive development for Uber and maybe the entire TNC industry. Why? Because, as previously mentioned, the taxi industry has been attempting to use the refusal of the TNCs to make their insurance policies public to sow distrust in them and create a sense that the coverage likely includes a host of conditions unfavorable to drivers and the public. So far, that does not look to be true.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t still issues with TNC insurance. Uber’s policy functions as excess insurance for drivers who contract with the company. Excess insurance is meant to supplement a primary policy, paying claims where the primary insurance leaves off. The TNCs have always said that should a driver’s personal insurance fail to cover an accident, their excess coverage will “drop down” to become primary insurance, picking up the entire tab if necessary. But the insurance industry has said repeatedly that drivers’ personal policies will nevercover an accident involving a ride-service vehicle, because personal policies routinely exclude coverage for commercial use. TNCs, however, have insisted that claims are getting through on personal policies. To which some in the insurance and taxi industries have replied that’s only because those insurers don’t actually knowthat the accidents occurred during a TNC call.

OK, to the seven insurance industry people still reading, let’s put it this way: During a hearing last week on TNC insurance issues held by California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, insurance groups said the ride-services were basically getting a free ride, no pun intended, by relying on drivers’ personal insurance to cover some claims.

It’s one reason the taxi industry is so angry: They pay for primary insurance, which is more expensive because it covers more claims than excess insurance. When the CPUC hammered out its TNC rules last year, the California Department of Insurance issued an opinion that its preferred option would have been to require that ride services carry primary insurance, because a dual system of commercial excess insurance sitting on top of personal primary insurance could result in confusion to consumers and drivers who need to file claims.

But the department also said an excess, drop-down policy would suffice as the next-best thing, and the CPUC declined to require that TNCs get primary insurance.

Pete Moraga, from the Insurance Information Network of California, said Uber’s policy still “begs the question: Did (Uber) purchase the excess policy knowing that drivers’ own policies would not cover commercial use of the auto, or did they try to imply to drivers signing up that their own personal policy would cover them?”

Lane Kasselman of Uber’s communications department responded with this:

“Our teams work with partner drivers to answer any questions they have about a range of issues, including insurance. As a matter of law, all California drivers are required to have auto insurance, so we require that drivers have it to partner with us.

“Personal auto insurance is a contract between the driver and their insurer. Most personal auto insurance policies contain an exclusion for transporting passengers for hire, that’s why we have the commercial policy in place. We tell drivers to report all accidents to their personal insurance provider, and we report it to our insurance at the same time. We expect drivers to be truthful with all parties involved.”

CPUC takes another look

On Tuesday the CPUC issued a call for comments on proposed modifications to the regulations it issued last year. Among the changes floated is the requirement that TNC insurance go into effect “when the TNC app is open and available to accept rides” — in other words, between calls. This is a change that UberX and Lyft have said they have already made, and one that would have extended coverage to Syed Muzaffar, the UberX driver in the New Year’s Eve accident, who was waiting to be assigned a passenger when the accident occurred.

The CPUC is also proposing that TNCs be required to offer $1,000,000 in uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage; $50,000 in comprehensive coverage (theft, fire, vandalism); $50,000 in collision coverage (when the accident is the driver’s fault); and $5,000 in medical payments due to bodily injury sustained by the driver or passengers.

The document from CPUC Commissioner Michael Peevey said, “While efforts to craft market-based solutions are certainly appreciated, not all of the TNCs who have filed applications with the Commission have voluntarily proposed solutions to close the acknowledged insurance gap. Thus, the assigned Commissioner believes it is incumbent on the Commission to consider fashioning a remedy that will apply on an industry-wide basis.”

Uber said it “strongly supports requests for public comment,” because “for far too long transportation regulation has been made in the dark, and it’s long past time the riding public had a say.”

Note: In the original version of this article, one insurance expert called into question whether the text of Uber’s policy specified that drivers would be covered if their personal insurance policy declined to do so. However, when Uber pointed out to us where that issue was in fact addressed, the expert agreed with them, and therefore we have deleted that section of the originalarticle.

Uber Insurance Policy

Explore: Lyft, ride-sharing, TNC, UberX

Category: Economy, Transportation

ISRAEL - More Accusations of War Crime this time by the Christian Science Monitor

2014-08-06T12:58:00.003-07:00

Khan Younis, Gaza Strip — It had been three nightmare nights. Faten Qdeih and her six children had fled Israeli shelling of their home, but were trapped by tanks and soldiers that shot at the crowd trying to escape. Wherever they went, explosions followed.

And it wasn't over.

A mortar shell rocked the building where they had taken refuge on the third day. Ms. Qdeih, bleeding from shrapnel, rushed the family into the street. Dodging shells, they ran to another building. It was hit too. Her seven-year-old son Anas dashed outside in fear just as another strike landed. Qdeih followed him and found his lifeless body.

Her daughters screamed. Dizzy, Qdeih made a heart-wrenching decision: She left her dead son behind and ran with the living. “I would rather I had died than see what I've seen," she said later.

Qdeih is one of the survivors of the Israeli assault in late July on Khuzaa, a neighborhood on the eastern edge of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, within sight of the Israeli border.

What unfolded in Khuzaa between July 21 and 25 amounts to a war crime, according to a dozen witnesses interviewed by the Monitor and an independent investigation by Human Rights Watch. HRW calls what happened there – the shelling, a refusal to allow civilians safe passage – an "apparent violation of the laws of war."

"When will there be justice for the civilians in Khuzaa, who suffered shelling for days, then faced deadly attacks by Israeli soldiers after being ordered to leave the town?" asked the group's Middle Eastdirector, Sarah Leah Whitson, in a statement released Monday.

The survivors are asking the same question as the latest Israel-Gaza war appears to be dying down. In the days ahead, the debate over whether the level of force used by Israel in Gaza was legitimate or illegal is likely to remain heated.

While the events in Khuzaa are just a snapshot from a short, sharp war, similar tales are told from other Gaza neighborhoods, particularly ones close to the border with Israel. Israel is likely to have to answer in the coming weeks and months why so many more civilians were killed in the latest conflict with Hamas in Gaza than in previous engagements.

Thwarted flight

Khuzaa survivors say efforts to flee were blocked by Israeli tanks and that Israeli soldiers shot at them as they waved white flags. Emergency responders say the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) shot at ambulances trying to enter the area.

The IDF says it makes an extraordinary effort to avoid civilian casualties and gives civilians a chance to evacuate. Civilian casualties, the IDF says, are inevitable because Hamas fighters mingle among civilians using them as "human shields." The IDF did not respond to seven requests for comment over five days about its version of events in the neighborhood.

It's not just Khuzaa. On Sunday an Israeli attack at aUnited Nations-run shelter in the southern town of Rafah left 10 people dead, prompting outrage from the UN and the US. State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement the US "is appalled by today’s disgraceful shelling."

It was the sixth such shelter hit in the nearly month-old conflict. Hospitals and Gaza's lone power station have been hit too, as have hundreds of homes and apartment blocks. Israel says all were legitimate military targets.

For the former residents of Khuzaa, Israeli culpability is assumed. And the events that drove them from their homes are likely to be scrutinized and argued about for years to come.

The recent past

Violence in Khuzaa isn't new. During Israel's "Operation Cast Lead" offensive in 2008-2009, Israeli soldiers fired on a group of women and children attempting to leave Khuzaa, according to a UN factfinding commission. One woman died as soldiers prevented ambulance access.

The losses could be worse this time. Ashraf Al Qedra, spokesman for Gaza's Health Ministry, estimated that more than 100 people died in the incident.

The assault on Khuzaa began July 21. Ahead of the attack, Israel dropped leaflets warning people to evacuate, but Qdeih says she never saw them. House-shaking, glass-shattering explosions soon followed. She huddled at home with her four daughters and two sons, unsure of what to do.

On Wednesday morning, July 23, Qdeih and hundreds of neighbors decided to flee. They gathered together, raised white flags, and walked toward what they hoped was safety. They quickly encountered Israeli tanks.

The soldiers in the tanks opened fire, according to witnesses. “The first bullet struck someone pushing the wheelchair for his handicapped sister,” says Esma Abu Erjala. “When they started shooting, we were falling over one another” trying to escape.

The girl in the wheelchair was left behind.

Many took shelter in the home of a doctor, Kamal Qdeih. He treated those who had been shot – around two dozen – as airstrikes continued. Ms. Erjala's sister was shot in the abdomen. She called for ambulances, but none came.

The women and children gathered in a building next to the doctor's home, where they huddled on the floor. They made sure there were no fighters in their midst, says Qdeih. In the morning she gave her son Anas a date, which he shared with his brother, and a spoiled cucumber, the only food available. After this small meal, a mortar hit the house. Qdeih was hit with shrapnel.

She ran out of the house with her children, and into the mortar bombardment that killed her son.

Another escape attempt

About 70 others in Khuzaa spent the night in a basement, and when they emerged in the morning on July 24, says Erjala, they "found a wasteland."

Mohamed Ismail says people were willing to risk the tanks. “We decided it's better to go there than to wait for death."

A group gathered, and men took off their shirts and shoes to avoid being mistaken for militants. They once again raised white cloths. Kamal Qdeih says the men yelled “peaceful!” as they walked. “We were not expecting to get out alive,” says Erjala. They left behind the seriously wounded.

Erjala and her nephew were burdened with their wounded relative. Wael Abu Erjala says he'll be haunted by a boy, dying in the street and calling for help. “I was carrying my aunt so I couldn't go to him. … I don't think I'll ever sleep after what I saw.”

On this try, they encountered Israeli soldiers who directed them to leave, ending what Wael Abu Erjala calls “three days of hell.”

Ambulances?

Ziad Abu Amr tried to evacuate people from Khuzaa on the morning of July 24. He called people in the district, urging them to move forward, but withdrew after watching a missile from a drone hit a motorized tricycle trying to bring people out.

Wesam Nebhan of Khan Younis's European Hospital says he accompanied an ambulance on four attempts to rescue Khuzaa residents the morning of July 24, but they were repelled. “This is really a massacre,” he says.

A spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross says the organization arranged passage for ambulances into Khuzaa three times, evacuating 18 unharmed civilians as well as 10 wounded and seven dead. But the ambulances that entered had limited access. Many of the dead and wounded were left behind.

On July 25, Israeli forces fired on an ambulance entering Khuzaa, killing a paramedic, according to the ICRC. Dr. Qedra, of the health ministry said that five paramedics were killed trying to reach the wounded.

Sameh Al Burai and Ahmed Aldabba contributed to this report.

International outrage over the deadly shelling of a UN school in Rafah

2014-08-03T20:40:00.002-07:00

Rafah card situation.
Rafah card situation. | The World
At least ten Palestinians have been killed, Sunday, Aug. 3, in a bombing Hit a UN school that welcomes refugees in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip.

SCENES OF CHAOS

The school run by UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works United Nations for Palestine Refugees in the Near East] was transformed into a center for about 3,000 refugees after the war began between Hamas and Israel on July 8.

"According to preliminary information, there are many dead and injured after a bomb" first explained the spokesman of the UN organization. Journalists on the spot described scenes of chaos, where rescuers démenaiennt as they could to evacuate the wounded, amid current Gazans out of breath in pools of blood with children in their arms.

A child asks for help in the ruins of the hit by an Israeli strike in Rafah, on August 3rd school.
A child asks for help in the ruins of the hit by an Israeli strike in Rafah, on August 3rd school. | REUTERS / Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Then Sunday night, the Israelis have acknowledged fired "near" in this sector:

"The Israeli army has targeted three Islamic Jihad terrorists mounted on a motorcycle near an UNRWA school in Rafah. The defense forces of Israel examine the effects of the reform this post. "
In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also said, without directly addressing the bombed school: "Israel does not direct its fire at civilians and regret any attack that hits civilians in a non intentionnnelle."

"THIS MADNESS MUST STOP"

Expressing "very affected", the Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki-moon called the bombing a "clear violation of international humanitarian law" in a statement in which he referred to a "scandal":

"This is a scandal and morally criminal. This madness must stop. "
Without explicitly assigning responsibility for the attack on Rafah to one side or the other, Mr. Ban stressed that the Israeli army was "repeatedly informed of the location" shelters UN three of which have been recently affected by deadly bombings. These shelters "should be secure and not combat zones areas," he said.

Read also the reactions: Gaza: international community increase the tone

The United States, key allies of Israel, are said to share "appalled" by a "bombing shameful." The French President, Francois Hollande, said it was "unacceptable" the bombing of the school and asked that those responsible for this action, he has not appointed, "for their actions."

Thirty Palestinians had been killed in the bombing of UN schools, including Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya (north), sparking a fierce international condemnation emotion and the United Nations. UNRWA had openly accused Israel of being behind the drama of Jabaliya.

Read also our article: UN accuses Israel of "deliberately defy" international law

1,712 Palestinians killed since July 8

According to a toll released Saturday by the Palestinian aid, 1,712 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians, were killed. This balance increases over the bombings, but also as research discovering new bodies under the rubble.
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) advance another record, killed in 1439. Of these, at least 852 civilians, including 252 children. Some 250,000 Palestinians were displaced by the conflict, more than 170,000 have sought refuge in one of the 82 centers managed by the UN.
Israeli side, 63 soldiers and three civilians were killed and 400 others injured. The army announced that it has hit more than 4,000 "targets" in the Gaza Strip and has identified about 2,000 rockets into Israel.

The President of the United States Barack Obama acknowledged Friday

2014-08-02T09:20:00.002-07:00

as he had done in the past, Americans had "tortured people" after the attacks of September 11, 2001, calling not to judge too harshly .
"We did a lot of things right, but we tortured people," he said, referring to the next declassification of a parliamentary report on the interrogation techniques used by the CIA between 2002 and 2006, during the President George W. Bush.

torture
"When we used certain enhanced interrogation techniques, techniques that I believe that any honest person and should be considered as torture, we have crossed a line," said he continued, in a point Press the White House.

Interrogation techniques
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the CIA captured dozens of people suspected of links with Al Qaeda, and used to "muscular interrogation techniques." These methods included sleep deprivation, the exposure of the inmate or waterboarding.

Caution
Recalling that it had banned these methods upon his arrival at the White House, Obama has however warned against any judgment "too preachy" in this period. "I think when we look back, it is important to remember how many people were afraid after the fall of the Twin Towers (WTC), the Pentagon had been hit, a plane had crashed in Pennsylvania "has he said. "People did not know whether further attacks were imminent. There was tremendous pressure on the shoulders of the security forces and our national security teams to try to cope with this situation," he said.

declassification
Mr. Obama, who has always supported the declassification of the parliamentary report found that it would be useful to help the United States to turn the page. "We must, as a country, our responsibilities facing what happened so that I hope it does not happen again in the future," he said.

CIA Does the Torture, U.S. Ally Pays the Price - Dennis J. Kucinich

2014-07-25T15:54:00.004-07:00

The European Court of Human Rights yesterday ruled against Poland, charging our ally with human rights violations forhelping the CIA operate an 'extraordinary rendition' program in which two persons suspected of terrorism were delivered to a "black site" in 2002-2003, for detention, interrogation and torture -- in the attempt to extract bogus confessions.

Court documents provide insight into the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques": Hooding, handcuffing, chambering a bullet, putting the gun to the suspect's head while cocking the trigger; threatening a hooded, naked suspect with a power drill; threatening to apprehend the suspect's mother or female relative, bring them before him to be sexually assaulted; various stress positions which could force dislocation of limbs; using a stiff brush on a suspect's naked body to induce pain; suspending the suspect on a bar or a hook for two to three days at a time; water boarding; electric shock; threatening to sodomize the suspect and to infect the suspect with the HIV virus.

The torture program has resulted in deaths of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. One Guantanamo inmate who was tortured will soon go on trial before a US military tribunal. No one at the CIA has been prosecuted for torturing suspects. But one CIA agent who blew the whistle on an agency practitioner of torture was sentenced to two years in federal prison.

This year America will observe the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11, a tragedy that should never have been appropriated to advance a foreign policy agenda that included war against innocent people, torture and murder of terror "suspects" abroad, and the destruction of dearly held US Constitutional values here at home.

It is time to take truth off the torture rack. America needs a full accounting of those dark days through a process of Truth and Reconciliation.

Follow Dennis J. Kucinich on Twitter:www.twitter.com/Dennis_Kucinich

New bombing in Gaza, eight dead

2014-07-21T07:38:00.000-07:00

Israeli soldiers fire on the Gaza Strip on July 20.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza showed no sign of respite Monday, the 14th day of the Israeli offensive on the Palestinian enclave, following its bloodiest day despite calls from the international community to the truce .

On Monday, a hospital in the center of the Gaza Strip was hit by an Israeli strike, killing five Palestinians as rescue and injuring several people. Later, eight Palestinians, including 4 children, were killed in an Israeli air strike on the center of Gaza City, said the Palestinian aid.

The latest deaths bring to at least 36 the number of Palestinians killed in a series of Israeli strikes on Monday the Palestinian enclave, said Ashraf al-Qodra, spokesman for the emergency services in Gaza.

The Security Council of the UN called in the night to "immediately cease hostilities" in the Gaza Strip, where more than 500 Palestinians were killed, including more than 140 Sunday since the beginning of the Israeli offensive against the Gaza July 8. Twenty Israelis, including 18 soldiers, were killed. This conflict, the bloodiest since 2009 in Gaza, is the fourth between Hamas and Israel for the army since 2006, the goal is always the same. Breaking capacity of the Islamist movement to reach Israeli territory with rockets and its fighters.

Monday morning, at least nine Palestinians, including four children, were killed in an Israeli air strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. The victims all belonged to the same family who resided in the house covered by the attack. The bodies of 16 Palestinians killed in an Israeli air raid were also found Monday in the rubble of a house near Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

On the Israeli side, the localities near the Gaza Strip have been put on alert Monday morning, according to Army Radio, and residents were asked not to leave their homes.

On the diplomatic front, the 15 member countries of the Security Council requested the night, after two hours of closed-door consultations, a "return to the cease-fire in November 2012," between Israel and Hamas and called for "respect for international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians." U.S. President Barack Obama, expressing concern about the "growing number of deaths" in Gaza, said his chief diplomat John Kerry would go to Cairo on Monday and told to find a "cease-fire immediately."

While Israel has intensified its offensive Sunday to neutralize the military capabilities of the Islamist movement Hamas, which controls Gaza, the Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki-moon, on tour in the Middle East urged Israel "do more "to spare civilians. He denounced "horrific action" of the army Chajaïya, a suburb east of Gaza City, where more than 70 Palestinians died Sunday.

Ban Ki-moon must go Monday to Kuwait, the second leg of his tour which should then lead to Cairo, Jerusalem, Ramallah and Amman.

"Crime against humanity"

In a televised address, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who met in Doha with Ban Ki-moon described the bombing Chajaïya "crime against humanity" whose perpetrators must be "prosecuted and punished." Raids against Chajaiya are the deadliest since the war of 2008-2009 in the Palestinian enclave.

"Chejaïya is a civilian area where Hamas has placed its rockets, its tunnels, command centers," justified the army, "it's been days since we warned civilians Chajaya they had to evacuate. Hamas has ordered them to stay, it was Hamas that put them in the crosshairs. "

For the Israeli army, the day of Sunday was also black: with 13 soldiers from the elite Golani brigade killed, the death toll in the military offensive rises to 18, a number not seen since the Lebanon war 2006. army also recorded at least 55 wounded. Two Israeli civilians also died since the start of the Israeli operation "protective border."

The armed wing of Hamas said Sunday night that an Israeli soldier abducted, sparking jubilation in the streets of Gaza City. Kidnapping which was denied by the Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor. Israel has mobilized 53,200 men over 65,000 reservists authorized by the government for the attack on this small strip of land 362 km2 crammed into poverty 1.8 million people, or one population densities the highest in the world.

The new spiral of violence was unleashed after the abduction and murder of three Israeli students in June, awarded by Israel to Hamas, followed by the murder of a young Palestinian in Jerusalem burned.

2014-07-18T13:07:00.000-07:00

Israeli Secret Service
1948
THE MAP

The Jewish Vision

THE MAP

2014-07-18T13:02:00.003-07:00

Presbyterian Church (USA) Makes Controversial Divestment Move Against Israel

2014-06-21T10:16:00.002-07:00

The largest U.S. Presbyterian church narrowly voted Friday to divest from three multinational corporations that it said supply Israel with products that promote violence in occupied Palestinian territories.

The divestment, vehemently opposed by many of the nation's prominent Jewish organizations, and hailed by many pro-Palestinian activists, passed by seven votes after hours of tense and complex debate. It means the Presbyterian Church (USA) will sell its shares of Motorola Solutions, Caterpillar and Hewlett Packard, worth about $21 million.

The vote at the church's biennial General Assembly, meeting this week in Detroit, was 310 to 303. It makes the 1.76-million member church the largest religious group to vote for divestment, an issue that has been fiercely debated in recent years among mainline Protestants. The Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America both have rejected divestment. Presbyterians have discussed divestment for a decade, and a similar vote was defeated by a slim margin two years ago at the last church assembly.

There was an audible gasp on the floor in at the COBO Center in downtown Detroit after the motion passed. "In no way is this a reflection of our lack of love for our Jewish brothers and sisters," Heath Rada, the church assembly's moderator, told the assembly afterwards.

But opponents described it as exactly that.

"This decision will undoubtedly have a devastating impact on relations between mainstream Jewish groups and the national Presbyterian Church (USA)," said Rabbi Steve Gutow, president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, whose organization was one of several major Jewish groups that had flown rabbis to Detroit to plead against divestment. Gutow, in a statement, described the vote as stemming from a "deep animus" in church leadership against "both the Jewish people and the State of Israel."

Supporters of the wider Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, described Presbyterian divestment as a victory, though the measure the church passed Friday evening separated itself from the movement.

Divesting from the three companies is "not to be construed or represented by any organization of the PC(USA) as divestment from the State of Israel, or an alignment with or endorsement of the global BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanctions) movement," said the text of the Presbyterian's overture.

The vote, amended several times on the assembly floor, also supported interfaith cooperation, the right of Israel to exist, and a two-state solution. In addition, it said the church should strive for "positive investment" in nonviolent efforts that help everyday Israelis and Palestinians. An effort supporting "positive investment" was passed at the church assembly in 2012, and the church has since invested close to a $1 million in education, renewable energy and microfinance in the Palestinian territories, according to Elizabeth Dunning, moderator of the church Mission Responsibility Through Investment committee.

Dunning said the church singled out Caterpillar because its bulldozers have been used to demolish Palestinian homes. Motorola Solutions, she said, was selected because the Israeli Defense Force buys the company's communication technologies. She said the church targeted Hewlett-Packard because the Israeli Navy has used its products to coordinate the blockade of the Gaza Strip and because its biometric scanners are in place at checkpoints.

In a prior interviews and statements, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard representatives have defended their products and cited their safety and human rights protection measures. A Motorola Solutions spokeswoman said the company's checkpoint equipment helps "people to get to their place of work or to carry out their business in a faster and safer way." Caterpillar has said it doesn't sell its equipment directly to Israel, but to the U.S. government.

Pro-divestment speakers at the convention on Friday said the church has tried over the years to discuss its concerns with the companies, to no avail.

"These companies have failed to modify their behavior and continue to profit from Israeli human rights abuses and non-peaceful pursuits," said the Rev. Walt Davis, a professor emeritus of San Francisco Theological Seminary and member of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network.

The network, a strong divestment supporter made up of Presbyterians, came under intense criticism this week by Jewish and pro-Israel activists, who had attacked not only its position on divestment, but also "Zionism Unsettled," a booklet it published that was sold in the church's online store. It called Zionism a "false theology."

More than 1,700 rabbis signed a letter to the church asking it to oppose divestment and criticizing it for selling the network's literature. Major Jewish groups, including the Union for Reform Judaism and the Anti-Defamation League, came out against the pamphlet and divestment. Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director, said Friday that church leaders have "fomented an atmosphere of open hostility to Israel" and that the vote sent a "painful message" about Jewish-Presbyterian relations.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, twice addressed Presbyterians on the assembly floor to plead against divesting -- including offering to set up a meeting for church leaders with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if they voted it down. He said the church was not only choosing divestment, but "separation" from Israel and Jewish allies. "So be it," he added.

In one move that did align with pro-Israel groups' goals, but was largely overshadowed by divestment, the church voted down a proposal to boycott all Hewlett-Packard products.

The church is not the first religious group to divest, though it's the biggest and most influential. The Friends Fiduciary Corp., which coordinates investments for 250 Quaker groups, divested from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Veolia Environment in 2012. Last year, the Mennonite Central Committee decided to not "knowingly invest in companies that benefit from products or services used to perpetrate acts of violence against Palestinians [and] Israelis." Although the United Methodists voted against churchwide divestment in 2012, its General Board of Pension and Health Benefits decided last week to sell its stock in G4S, a prison and security services company, after members asked questions about its work in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Not all Jews came out against the Presbyterian vote. Jewish Voice for Peace, a pro-divestment group based in Oakland, California, and Washington, D.C., sent several rabbis, many of the Reconstructionist denomination, to lobby in Detroit.

"We are grateful the church voted not to profit from the suffering of Palestinians under Israel's 47-year-old occupation," said Cecilie Surasky, the organization's deputy director. "Now that U.S.-backed peace talks have proven to be ineffective, we hope that others, including Jewish institutions, will follow suit. Divestment has become one of our best hopes for change."

PressTV - US ‘open to discussions’ with Iran over Iraq: Kerry

2014-06-16T12:51:00.002-07:00

US Secretary of State John Kerry says the Obama administration is “open to discussions” with Iran and does “not rule out” military cooperation with the Islamic Republic to help resolve the crisis in Iraq.

Militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have taken control of some key northern Iraqi cities including Mosul, the country’s second-largest city, and Tikrit, the birthplace of former Baathist dictator Saddam Hussein.

The militants, who have posted pictures of their atrocious acts against Iraqis online, have vowed to continue their offensive towards the capital Baghdad but Iraqi armed forces have advanced toward their strongholds. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has warned that the militants have nowhere to hide.

In an interview with Yahoo News on Monday, Kerry said Washington is “open to discussions” with Tehran if Iran can help end the violence.

“We're open to discussions if there is something constructive that can be contributed by Iran, if Iran is prepared to do something that is going to respect the integrity and sovereignty of Iraq and ability of the government to reform,” he said.

Asked if the United States would seek possible military cooperation with Iran, Kerry said the Obama administration does “not rule out anything that would be constructive.”

Kerry’s remarks come as a number of US officials, including Rep. Peter King (R-New York) and House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), have warned that the ISIL militants pose the greatest threat to the United States since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Some US officials have already said that Undersecretary of State William Burns may discuss the recent crisis in Iraq with an Iranian delegation during nuclear talks in the Austrian capital, Vienna, which begins on Monday and will end on Friday.

However, Iran has repeatedly said that its delegation only discusses the country’s nuclear energy program during the negotiations with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – Britain, China, France, Russia, and the US – plus Germany.

ISH/HRJ

The Presbyterian Church’s Tough Love Of Israel -Sam Bahour

2014-06-15T06:30:00.002-07:00

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American business consultant in Ramallah, the West Bank, and blogs at epalestine.com

AP Photo / DAVID ZALUBOWSKI

The 2 million-member Presbyterian Church (USA) is about to make history in the Middle East, yet again. In the coming days, local delegates from the Church will travel to Detroit to attend the 221st Presbyterian General Assembly to consider a set of eight overturesthat ask church leaders to review support of two states for Palestine and Israel in light of unfolding facts on the ground. Other issues to be considered are backing of equal rights and unblocked economic development for all inhabitants of Israel, and divesting from the likes of Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola Solutions. The Church is clearly stepping up to the plate and realigning its policies with its values.

Political America and Corporate America should be taking note.

Reminiscent of the struggle against Apartheid South Africa, the Church is poised to step in where successive US administrations have failed to hold Israel accountable to international and humanitarian law, not to mention sheer common sense.

The U.S. has paid never-ending lip service to the need to end Israel’s 47-year military occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. During the past two decades, the U.S. has coupled lip service with the monopolizing of a peace process that has led the international community to a dead end; not to mention leaving Muslim and Christian Palestinians on the ground, in the occupied territory as well as in Israel, standing naked in front of a state bent on militarily controlling another people and discriminating against over 20 percent of their own non-Jewish population. Presbyterians have had enough and are taking the lead to change the equation and stop the damage being perpetrated by Israel.

Political America should not take lightly the new reality that mainstream churches and civil society have reached a point where they can no longer blindly repeat calls for a resolution based on “two states” when Israeli actions on the ground, by way of continued illegal settlement building and much more, have created a single state reality between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River. Secretary of State John Kerry alluded to exactly this at the outset of the last failed round of U.S.-led negotiations when he testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in April 2013 and noted, "I believe the window for a two-state solution is shutting, I think we have some period of time – a year to year-and-a-half to two years, or it's over." The Presbyterian Church is crying out from the highest mountain it can that for a two-state solution not to be “over” immediate action must be taken. They are calling for the Church to review this core issue over the next two years.

Corporate America should also be closely following the Presbyterian General Assembly’s proceedings.

In the 2012 Assembly, delegates addressed the issue of divesting from firms that benefit from or contribute to Israel’s military occupation by attempting to pass a resolution calling for divestment from Israel. When the so-called pro-Israel lobby got word of this, they mobilized to introduce and pass a counter overture that promotes “positive investment” instead of divestment. In a perfected Orwellian move, these lobbyists publicly promote investment in Palestine, while simultaneously turning a blind eye to the systematic Israeli polices strangling the Palestinian economy.

Investment in Palestine -- without divestment from the Israeli occupation -- only continues to underwrite the status quo of military occupation. For investment to be successful occupation must be dismantled and sovereign control of Palestine’s economic resources passed to the Palestinians.

In this month’s Assembly, the divestment resolution will be brought to the floor once again for a vote. Now it comes at the heels of Secretary’s Kerry’s failed blitz to resolve the conflict and a momentous trip by the Pope to Bethlehem where he prayed at the illegal Separation Wall. The US-based organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, recently noted that the Israel lobby’s efforts have included offering Presbyterian leaders all-expenses-paid trips to Israel. Presbyterians can use this opportunity to straighten the White House’s spine based on what the administration already knows: Israel is intentionally blocking progress in the peace talks while jeopardizing US strategic interests in the region, not to mention the fate of Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Palestinian civil society and Palestinians -- Christians and Muslims -- have urged everyone interested in seeing peace with justice to divest from the occupation and to invest only where the occupation does not benefit. We struggle to remain hopeful while a cement wall as high as 24 feet tall snakes through our homeland. After all, we do not seek a beautified prison. We want the prison walls dividing Palestinians from Palestinians to come tumbling down, and that will not happen unless economic pressure is placed on Israel to end the occupation. Thus, the upcoming Assembly’s overture that calls for divestment from firms benefiting from the occupation, while affirming “Occupation-Free Investment in Palestine,” is spot on.

Palestinians did not invent the non-violent tool of divestment. After unsuccessfully trying to secure their rights using a multitude of other means, Palestinians have focused their efforts on non-violent methods of resisting military occupation that have been used throughout history by others: boycott, divestment, sanction, international law, civil disobedience, diplomatic efforts, economic resistance, and the like. Supporting these tools is supporting non-violence; the alternative is to push Palestinians into using violent means of resistance. If nonviolence is deemed unacceptable then violence becomes that much more likely.

The upcoming Presbyterian votes provides an important opportunity to say yes to nonviolence as the means to overcoming Israeli occupation and discrimination.

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American business consultant in Ramallah, the West Bank, and blogs at epalestine.com.

Ralph Nader: GM Must Pay Big for What Was Clearly an Institutional Cover-Up

2014-06-10T14:30:00.001-07:00

Top management must be held accountable for a pattern of inaction and the auto company's uncommunicative committee structures.

The ongoing and tragic General Motors debacle involving the mishandling of the fatal ignition switch defect reached its latest milestone with the release last week of a company-commissioned 315-page report by former U.S. Attorney Anton Valukas. Valukas condemned GM’s “troubling disavowal of responsibility” that led “to devastating consequences.” He declared that for more than a decade, the facts about these faulty switches that took the lives of motorists by stalling and depowering the vehicles thrashed around an “astonishing number of committees” inside GM’s sprawling silo-like bureaucracy.

The Valukas Report concluded that there was no cover-up, even though GM’s new CEO Mary Barra attributed the delay to a “pattern of incompetence and neglect.” She dismissed mid-level employees, some senior level managers, disciplined five others and installed new executives to supposedly shape up the place.What Valukas delivered for top GM management was concisely described by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who said, “It seems like the best report money can buy. It absolves upper management, denies deliberate wrongdoing and dismisses corporate culpability.”

In her speech to 1,000 GM employees, Barra began to get at the core problem when she declared that employees should report failures to their supervisors and, if that doesn’t work, to “contact me directly.” This is not remotely the right sequence. Few employees would expose their careers to such potential retaliation by the “cover their rear” attitude of the GM hierarchy.

The report cites what has become known as the “GM nod”: “The GM nod, Barra described, is when everyone nods in agreement to a proposed plan of action, but then leaves the room with no intention to follow through, and the nod is an empty gesture.” Other witnesses explained the “GM salute, a crossing of the arms and pointing toward others, indicating that the responsibility belongs to someone else.”

Meanwhile, year after year, nearly 3 million Chevrolet Cobalts and Saturn Ions, among others, carried this lethal but easily fixable defect, resulting in highway crashes, deaths and injuries. Not until February of this year did GM announce the recall of millions of these cars. Nor did the Department of Transportation act to compel such a recall, even though it knew about the defect for years. Finally, this year, it fined GM the maximum sum of $35 million.

How can top management not be held accountable for such apattern of inaction, such a miasma of evasive, uncommunicative committee structures, such a malfunctioning chaos of mortal information not being passed on to the top officials of the company? Taken together, it clearly was a 13-year institutionalcover-up.

Clarence Ditlow, longtime GM watchdog and head of the Center for Auto Safety, which I co-founded, called the Valukas report“little more than an elaborate whitewash that buys into GM’s arguments that it was a bunch of incompetent engineers, lawyers and mid-level managers who were fired as a result.” Ditlow argues that “GM has a corporate culture where denying safety problems has been prevalent and taking responsibility for safety defects has been rare.” He also faulted the report’s “buying into the company’s argument that this is just an airbag defect – yet stalling has been the subject of over 300 safety recalls from all companies from 1966-2013. The Valukas report ignores the 2004 death and injury Early Warning Reports (EWR) filed by GM on the models covered by the ignition switch recall through 2013.”

Incredibly, the ignition switch hazard was classified as a “customer convenience issue,” rather than an urgent safety failure. But as former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration physicist Dr. Carl E. Nash told me, GM has a long history of denial, delay, cover-ups and blaming everyone but itself for millions of serious defective motor vehicles.

GM is bracing for the results of the Justice Department’s criminal investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s probe, and the two Congressional Committees’ ongoing inquiries, all of which lie ahead. But on its own, GM must act to compensate the bereaved families and the injured survivors in product-defect crashes both before and after its 2009 bankruptcy and its $50 billion government bailout. The kangaroo court of corporate bankruptcy dissolved existing personal injury claims, stripping the victims of their constitutional rights to have their day in court.

Secondly, shuffling personnel and rearranging committees will not do the job Barra says she wants done. What will be effective is if she establishes an independent ombudsman who confidentially receives complaints from internal whistle-blowers and reports them directly to GM’s CEO and President, as well as to the Department of Transportation. As Nassim Taleb wrote in his recent book Antifragile, nothing is more productive of accountability than top bosses having “skin in the game.”

Providing a monetary incentive to the reporting employee for saving the company a boatload of trouble and averting highway tragedies will also help. Companies often give money to workers who suggest dollar-saving ways to run production or distribution lines. GM can certainly do the same for internal life-saving reports by conscientious GM personnel.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and author of Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State.

Time to unmask apartheid Israel

2014-06-08T08:03:00.002-07:00

PressTV - Time to unmask apartheid Israel: Analyst

It is high time that the true face of the apartheid Zionist regime was laid bare to the world, an analyst writes for Press TV.

“It is time to set the record straight on Israel’s apartheid policy and genocide against Palestinians and to confront the enemies of truth,” Christof Lehmann wrote in a column for the Press TV website.

The analyst’s column was in reaction to last Friday’s Israeli police raid on the offices and studios of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) in the occupied East al-Quds (Jerusalem).

“The incident sends a clear message. Those behind the propaganda, the denigration, and the dehumanization of Arab land are afraid of the truth,” wrote Lehmann.

The Israeli regime, aided by the United States and European governments, Lehmann said, is heavily investing in “propaganda industry” to portray Arabs as “villains and sub-human” in media and Hollywood-funded films.

“The challenge is to go to any lengths to deconstruct the stage set for Arab land; to show the true face of Palestine and the true face of Zionism,” wrote Lehmann, adding, “Tear down the stage set for Arab land and you will be surprised how different the world looks.”

The analyst added that the Israeli seizure of Palestinian lands constitutes an “illegal military occupation.”

He said that “silence” vis-à-vis the “decades-long extermination of Palestinians” by the Israeli regime amounts to “complicity.”

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds in 1967.

Israel is currently faces a widening boycott campaign by some European businesses over its illegal settlement activities on the occupied Palestinian land.

Two of Europe’s biggest financial institutions have boycotted transactions with Israeli companies involved in the illegal settlement construction.

The European Union has also blocked all grants and funding to any Israeli entity based in the illegal settlements.

KA/HMV/SL

2014-05-21T16:46:00.000-07:00

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