Monday, 27 July 2015
Columns – Not a good idea to spy on friends
THERE’s been so much dramatic news these days – from Greece’s miseries to Iran, China from blowhard Donald Trump – that the shocking story of how America’s National Security Agency has been spying on German and French leadership has gone almost unnoticed.
Last year, it was revealed that the NSA had intercepted Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone. She is supposed to be one of Washington’s most important allies and the key power in Europe. There was quiet outrage in always subservient Germany, but no serious punitive action.
Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, was also bugged by American intelligence. Her predecessor, Luiz Lula da Silva, was also apparently bugged.
This year, came revelations that NSA and perhaps CIA had tapped the phones of France’s president, Francois Hollande, and his two predecessors, Nicholas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac. Hollande ate humble pie and could only summon some faint peeps of protest to Washington. Luckily for the US, Charles de Gaulle was not around. After the US tried to strong-arm France, “le Grand Charles” kicked the US and Nato out of France.
Last week, WikiLeaks revealed that the NSA had bugged the phone of Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for over a decade. Imagine the uproar and cries “the Gestapo is back” if it were revealed that German intelligence had bugged the phones of President Barack Obama or Secretary of State John Kerry.
A lot of Germans were really angry that their nation was being treated by the Americans as a northern banana republic. Many recalled that in the bad old days of East Germany its intelligence agency, Stasi, monitored everyone’s communications under the direct supervision of KGB big brother at Moscow Centre.
The National Security Agency and CIA claim their electronic spying is only aimed at thwarting attacks by anti-American groups (aka “terrorism”). This claim, as shown by recent events, is untrue. One supposes the rational must be a twist on the old adage “keep your enemies close, but your friends even closer”.
Ironically, the political leaders listed above – save perhaps Brazil’s da Silva – are all notably pro-American and responsive to Washington’s demands.
Why would the US risk alienating and humiliating some of its closet allies?
One suspects the reason is sheer arrogance … and because US intelligence could do it. But must US intelligence really know what Mr Merkel is making Mrs Merkel for dinner?
Until WikiLeaks blew the whistle, some European leaders may have known they were being spied upon but chose to close their eyes and avoid making an issue. Raising a fuss would have forced them to take action against the mighty US.
Besides, British, Italian and French intelligence are widely believed to have bugged most communications since the 1950’s. But not, of course, the White House or Pentagon. The only nation believed to have gotten away with bugging the White House was Israel during the Clinton years. The Pentagon was bugged by a number of foreign nations, including Israel, China and Russia.
Humiliating Europe’s leaders in this fashion is a gift to the growing numbers of Europeans who believe their nations are being treated by the US as vassal states.
There is widespread belief in Western Europe that US strategic policy aims at preventing deeper integration of the EU and thwarting a common foreign policy or a powerful European military. Britain serves as a Trojan horse for America’s strategic interests in Europe.
Way back in the 1960’s, then German defence minister Franz Josef Strauss, an ardent proponent of a truly united Europe, thundered that Europeans would not play spearmen to America’s atomic knights. But, of course, that’s just what happened.
The US still runs and finances Nato in the same way the Soviet Union commanded the Warsaw Pact. Washington calls on Europe for troop contingents in its Middle East and south Asian colonial wars in the same way that the Persian Empire summoned its vassals to war.
Many Germans and French, both right and left, would like their leaders to react more forcefully to NSA’s ham-handed spying. However, Merkel and Hollande are both political jellyfish eager to evade any confrontation with Big Brother in Washington. Maybe he has too much dirt on them.
But a confrontation is inevitable one day if Europe is to regain its true independence that was lost after World War II.
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8 years without justice for American military murders
On July 27, 2007, US Apache helicopters slaughtered Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several other unarmed men in a public square in Eastern Baghdad.
Wikileaks obtained and decrypted this previously unreleased video footage from a US Apache helicopters showing the slaughter of Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several others as the chopper gunmen shoot and kills them in a public square in Eastern Baghdad.
The unarmed journalists were apparently assumed to be insurgents but after the initial shooting, another unarmed group of adults and children arrives on the scene in a minivan and attempted to transport the wounded. They were fired upon as well by US military gunships.
The official statement on this incident initially listed all adults as insurgents and claimed the US military did not know how the deaths occurred. Wikileaks released this video with transcripts and a package of supporting documents on April 5th 2010 onhttp://collateralmurder.com but no American troops or commanders responsible for the killing have ever been brought to justice.
, born September 1, 1984, was an Iraqi freelance photojournalist killed, along with his assistant and a number of other Iraqi citizens, by U.S. military forces in the New Baghdad district ofBaghdad, Iraq, during an airstrike on July 12, 2007.
He was one of the first photographers trained by the Reuters news agency as part of a strategy to employ photojournalists with strong local knowledge and access to areas considered too dangerous for Western photographers to work in. Chris Helgren, former Reuters chief photographer who instigated the agency’s plan, called Noor-Eldeen one of the star recruits of the initial recruitment stage, and said, “In Mosul, he started from nothing and is now the pre-eminent photographer in Northern Iraq.”
Chmagh was born January 1, 1967 in Iraq. He joined the Reuters news organization before the United States-led invasion in 2003. With 4 children of his own, he financially supported his family and another three through his work.
Chmagh also supported his sister’s family after insurgents killed her husband.
Chris Helgren, then Reuters’ chief photographer in the region, launched a plan to employ and train Iraqis, with more local knowledge and access to areas now perilous for Westerners.
Helgren said: “There are few ‘good news’ stories to be had in this war and wars by definition are tales of violence. And to get there, drivers like Saeed Chmagh are indispensable.” “Saeed had a reputation of being fiercely loyal and appeared fearless to me. If you ever needed to get quickly to a dangerous area, passing chicanes of barbed wire and boobytraps, Saeed was your man. But he also had a very quiet, loving side and spoke often of his kids.”
For more than two years after the shooting, Reuters and other organizations sought probes into the deaths of Noor-Eldeen and other journalists killed in Iraq, but the U.S. military withheld key information on the grounds that it was classified.
The military also refused to release a video taken from one of the gunships that captured the complete sequence and radio communication during the shootings. On April 5, 2010, the video was released on the website WikiLeaks, which said it acquired the video from a military whistle-blower and viewed it after breaking the encryption code.
The shootings and Noor-Eldeen’s deaths are detailed in The Good Soldiers, a 2009 nonfiction book by David Finkel.
After wounded children were found among the carnage, American soldiers decided against transporting them to the best available medical facilities and instead turned them over to Iraqi police for treatment at a local medical facility.
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Saturday, 25 July 2015
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