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The House just passed a White House-backed National Security Agency reform bill Wednesday, but it faces an uphill battle in the Senate, where lawmakers say the legislation would make America less safe, and an key electronic privacy group is pulling its long-time support for the proposal.

The issue for both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and the Electronic Freedom Foundation is Section 215 of the Patriot Act, a provision that allows for the bulk collection of American phone records by the NSA. A federal court ruled the program illegal last week, but left the door open for Congress to allow it with new legislation. The House bill removes Section 215, while the legislation being considered by the Senate contains it.

McConnell’s problem with the House version of the disingenuously-named USA Freedom Act is that it doesn’t give the government the authority to continue mass collection of American data. He maintains eliminating the program would make the United States less safe, despite little evidence that the data collected by the government has stopped terror attacks.

Wednesday’s House vote is the latest episode in a two-year struggle to pass intelligence reform in the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks about the NSA’s broad surveillance operations. Tech companies, Obama, civil liberty groups, and many lawmakers support reform efforts, but getting a bill Congress and the White House can agree on has so far proven elusive. The House vote approving the measure by an overwhelming 338 to 88 margin also comes as intelligence and defense officials debate the ground rules of cyberwar.

Still, the bill could die a quick death in the Senate, where a similar measure failed to garner enough support to even make it to the floor for a vote. McConnell, along with other Republican hawks like Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), are promising to fight the bill once it arrives in the upper chamber.

The EFF, a group that has been advocating for electronic privacy since 1990, supported the bill as recently as last week. Now, though, it’s singing a different tune, saying the court ruling finding the surveillance program illegal changed their position. In a blog post Monday, EFF’s civil liberty director, David Greene, and its legislative analyst, Mark Jaycox, argued the ruling should compel Congress to revert to a 2013 version that contained stronger provisions outlawing mass surveillance.

Other privacy advocates are also opposed to the bill. Daniel Schuman, policy director of the progressive group Demand Progress, said the legislation does not address the controversial Section 706 provision allowing the government to collect email and internet traffic information

“Taking a bite of a poisoned apple is not going to address the underlying issues,” he said. “You don’t ask for the bare minimum.”

Photo Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images

 

Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor was one of the few bright spots on the United States’ much-maligned rail system. Connecting Boston to Washington via major cities including New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, the route was both profitable and enjoying a steady rise in ridership numbers. The deadly Amtrak accident Tuesday night, which killed at least seven people and injured dozens more when it derailed in Philadelphia, will change that, at least in the short term. Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter called the accident “an absolute disastrous mess,” adding: “Never seen anything like this in my life.” And in an ironic case of timing, on Wednesday the House Appropriations voted to cut Amtrak’s public funding in 2016, from $1.4 billion to roughly $1.1 billion.

How do you solve a problem like Amtrak, which has bled money practically since it began operating in 1971? Tokyo thinks it has a solution, at least for the Northeast Corridor: a high speed rail, built with Japanese technology and funded, at least in part, by Japanese money. In September, an investor group told Maryland state regulators it had lined up more than $5 billion from Tokyo, “which hopes to showcase the technology behind superconducting magnetic levitation or ‘maglev’ trains to an American audience,” according to The Washington Post. And in October, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that if Tokyo built the train, “you could travel from Washington to Baltimore in 15 minutes, and to New York within less than an hour.”

It would also help solve Amtrak’s problem of reliability. That’s what people want from Amtrak and especially its high-speed Acela line, according to R. Richard Geddes, director of Cornell’s infrastructure policy program: for a train scheduled to arrive at 10:30 a.m., for example, to actually arrive at 10:30 a.m. Amtrak’s express Acela line, which takes just under 3 hours to travel from Washington to New York City, was on time 69 percent of the time over the past year, compared with near 100 percent for Japan’s high speed rail the Shinkansen, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Safety-wise, Tokyo’s train system certainly is not any worse than Amtrak — though it might not be much better, either. “Amtrak is certainly not a notoriously dangerous mode of transportation,” said Clifford Winston, a transportation expert at the Brookings Institution think-tank. “We’re not behind the curve here.” And Tokyo has had its share of rail accidents, most notoriously in April 2005, when a commuter train derailed and crashed into an apartment building, killing 107 people on the train and injuring hundreds more.

Tokyo’s proposal is not out of the blue. Besides potential developments in the Washington-to-New York City route, there’s also a company trying to develop a high speed rail between Dallas and Houston. And in January, the state of California broke ground on a high-speed rail connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco – though it’s not expected to be operating until 2028. While emphasizing that the cause of Tuesday’s accident is still unknown, Geddes said “there’s consensus that Amtrak needs to be upgraded and modernized.”

So is high-speed rail the way to go? Probably not – because of the cost. Even if Tokyo does pay for more than $5 billion of the D.C.-to-Baltimore route, the entire project would reportedly cost at least $10 billion. And citizens of Baltimore and Washington aren’t exactly clamoring for the ability to travel quicker between the two cities. The tens of billions of dollars needed to build a maglev line between Washington and New York, the only connection that would make sense for the system, is so huge that the project won’t get built, Andy Kunz, president and CEO of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association, told The Washington Post late last year.

Why don’t we spend the tens of billions of dollars to upgrade our rail system? As New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio pointed out in a recent interview, China spends 9 percent of its GDP on infrastructure, while the United States spends only 1.7 percent. In March, Beijing announced that it will be spending roughly $128 billion on domestic rail construction in 2015, whereas the United States typically only spends $50 billion annually on road and transit projects.

Winston said the U.S. doesn’t spend tens of billions of dollars on rail projects because it would be a huge waste of money. China and Japan, with their extensive network of high-speed rail, “are making huge sacrifices for the systems they have – the billions and trillions they’re spending on these systems are costing them elsewhere.” High-speed rail, he said, doesn’t make sense in a country with a population as spread out, and as dependent on planes, and automobiles, as is the United States.

Rather, instead of relying on foreign government money, bring in the private sector. Upgrading the Northeast Corridor, Geddes said, can be done with a public-private partnership. This allows for more innovation and accountability – two qualities Amtrak sorely lacks. “The best practices come from the private sector,” said Winston. Trying to find government best practices – including with Tokyo — “is a race of the bottom.” Amtrak’s history “is a long and sad one,” said Winston. Its future doesn’t have to be.

 

 

JIJI PRESS/AFP/Getty Images

Ten years ago, Uzbekistan’s security forces shot dead hundreds of unarmed people demonstrating for greater economic and political freedom in the eastern city of Andijan. Initial international condemnation came quickly, but as is too often the case, world interest has evaporated like drops of water in the Central Asian sun. Repression in Uzbekistan has only intensified since then.

The Andijan massacre of May 13, 2005, belongs to a shameful global list of missed opportunities for justice and accountability. World leaders by and large did little to censure the government of President Islam Karimov. Tashkent’s dictator stared them all down — and the world blinked.

The course of events not only reveals a great deal about Karimov, whose iron-fisted rule has lasted since the Kremlin installed him as Communist Party boss in 1989. It also shows the consequences of the world’s failure to insist that justice be done — or anyone be held accountable — for such a shocking abuse of power. And 10 years later, the human rights violations perpetrated by the regime remain a blot on the world’s conscience.

The massacre began on the night of May 12, 2005, following weeks of protests in connection with the trial of 23 local businessmen for “religious extremism” — a charge regularly used by authorities to neutralize dissent. Arrested in June of 2004 on these trumped up charges, their trial, which was punctuated by protests, had for many come to embody the key injustices of life in Karimov’s Uzbekistan: grinding poverty, corruption, widespread rights abuses, and a campaign of persecution against religious Muslims. When the verdict was finally read on May 11, the long-simmering tensions in Andijan that had permeated the trial boiled over into open violence. A group of 50 to 100 men, mainly supporters of the jailed businessmen, attacked several government buildings and broke into the city prison to release them, along with hundreds of other prisoners.

Following the prison break, in the early hours of May 13, thousands of residents began to gather in Andijan’s central Bobur Square to protest what they saw as an unfair trial and the wider economic and political injustices in the country. Many expected that Uzbek government officials, including even President Karimov himself, might come to address the throng.

But in the morning on May 13, Uzbek security forces fired machine guns into the crowd from armored personnel carriers (APCs) and sniper positions above the square without warning. Surrounded, protesters were unable to escape. Troops blocked off the square and opened fire, killing and wounding unarmed civilians en masse. Security forces later swept through the area and executed some of the wounded where they lay. The massacre lasted hours.

As U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights at the time, I first called for an independent investigation into the Andijan events on May 18, five days after the killings took place. The report by my office in the immediate aftermath concluded that “consistent, credible eyewitness testimony strongly suggests that military and security forces committed grave human rights violations in Andijan,” even a “mass killing.” The report was based on interviews with eyewitnesses in neighboring Kyrgyzstan, where some of the survivors had fled immediately after the violence.

The events in Andijan initially attracted widespread international condemnation. In addition to my office, other U.N. bodies — as well as the European Union, the United States, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the NATO Council — condemned the response by Uzbek security forces and called for an independent international investigation into the events, demanding unhindered access.

After the Uzbek government adamantly rejected these calls and refused to cooperate with the international community, the EU imposed sanctions on Uzbekistan, including an EU-wide visa ban for high-ranking officials “directly responsible for the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force in Andijan,” and an embargo on arms exports to the country. The United States didn’t go that far, but it did further tighten restrictions it had placed on military assistance.

But the pressure wasn’t enough — and Karimov didn’t budge.

In the years that followed, condemnation subsided and the outside world seemed as anxious to move on and forget the massacre as the regime did. Within a couple years — without giving the sanctions any chance to have serious impact — the EU eased and then dropped its economic restrictions. Germany was a key actor in the phasing out of sanctions, seeking to hold on to its military base in the town of Termez. The United States didn’t stand firm either. In 2012, keen to maintain good relations with Karimov in order to receive his assistance in transiting supplies in and out of neighboring Afghanistan, the Obama administration waived all restrictions on military assistance even as Uzbekistan’s rights record continued to worsen: Ever more political prisoners were hauled into jails and labor camps, where torture is systematic.

In short, the Uzbek government got away with mass murder because, as is often the case, interests prevailed over principles, and the world was willing to forget the victims in order to work with the killers. It’s the worst lesson possible for aspiring tyrants.

Still, it’s never too late to change that message and start sending the right signal to Karimov and other murderous autocrats. Those responsible for these kinds of atrocities should be forever afraid that the time for reckoning will come. Given the appalling human rights situation that remains in the country — no media freedom, political opposition is forbidden, thousands of political prisoners are imprisoned, the security services use systematic torture, and slave labor is used in the cotton fields — a coordinated international response remains urgent.

Members of the U.N. Human Rights Council should mark the 10th anniversary of the Andijan massacre by establishing a special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Uzbekistan to hold the government accountable for ongoing, egregious abuses and to ensure sustained scrutiny. It’s role would be similar to the one for North Korea.

It may seem a small measure in the overall scheme of things, but for a country so averse to independent scrutiny, such a mechanism would place consistent and public pressure on Tashkent to account for its abuses. It would also be a modest corrective to the injustice done to the victims of Andijan and send a crucial message of support to the millions of other Uzbeks whose human rights have been denied these past 10 years.

DENIS SINYAKOV/AFP/Getty Images

Since assuming power in 2011, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has presided over a brutal consolidation of power, executing his perceived enemies with incredible frequency and morbid creativity. At least 70 officials have been executed during this time, and the latest victim was his defense chief, Hyon Yong Chol, who was executed using an anti-aircraft gun, according to South Korean spies. His crime: insubordination and allegedly falling asleep during an event attended by Kim.

North Korea typically executes traitors, spies, and other disloyal subjects by firing squad, but Kim’s brief reign has been replete with reports of grisly execution methods. The use of anti-aircraft guns to carry out executions hints at the use of public brutality as a means of repression in North Korea. (Incredibly, one such execution — perhaps even Chol’s — may have been captured on publicly available satellite imagery.) High-caliber anti-aircraft guns of the variety used in the latest execution are enormously powerful machine guns capable of slinging what are the equivalent of U.S. 50-caliber rounds miles into the sky. When directed at the human body at close range, the destruction would be devastating and a human body likely pulverized.

Why use such a weapon? South Korean spies say that a large crowd had gathered for Chol’s execution. Presumably the spectacle of a human body being destroyed by high-caliber machine gun fire is one the crowd will not forget anytime soon.

And Hyon’s execution isn’t the first time that North Korea has used anti-aircraft guns as a method of execution. Before executing his powerful uncle, Jang Song Thaek, in 2013, Kim Jong Un had the man’s two top lieutenants killed with the weapons. Jang was later executed by firing squad, though some spurious reports described him being killed by a pack of hungry dogs.

This kind of brutality appears to be becoming more commonplace under Kim’s rule. In 2012, the North Korean leader executed a deputy defense minister using mortar rounds after the military official allegedly broke a prohibition on drinking alcohol during the mourning period for Kim’s father.

There’s reason to believe Kim learned from his father’s own creativity in executions. After North Korea’s 6th Army Corps rose up against him in 1995, Kim Jong Il reportedly tied up the officers responsible for the attempted coup in their headquarters, and then burned down the building, according to one account of uprising. Another description of the event claims the soldiers responsible were executed by machine-gun brandishing firing squads.

Today, the threats arrayed against Kim appear far less serious than the 6th Corps uprising. Rather, Kim’s reign of terror has appeared geared toward amassing power and eliminating perceived rivals to the throne. There have been no credible reports during his reign of a coup being attempted, though it’s certainly likely that North Korea would not publicize such a plot if one had been launched and subsequently crushed. This year alone, Kim executed a senior official who dared complain about his forestry policy. Another official charged with economic planning was killed after complaining about the design of a roof on a building being built in the North Korean capital. Separately, four members of the Unhasu Orchestra were killed on espionage charges.

For Kim, apparently, even orchestra pits become snake pits that must be tamed — sometimes with anti-aircraft guns.

ED JONES/AFP/Getty Images

Begun shortly before his death and later completed and released by Russian opposition figures, the “Putin. War” report of Boris Nemtsov alleges Russian involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Speaking to Radio Sputnik, author Stephen Lendman explains how the West has seized on the report to strengthen its propaganda war against Moscow.

Après la rencontre média annuelle d'Airbus qui était prévue lundi et mardi à Séville, une autre
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Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

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