Glenn Greenwald just published his account of how he came to receive and report on a trove of top secret documents from Edward Snowden, in a new book, No Place to Hide. Read an excerpt on Antiwar.com today: How I Met Edward Snowden.
In the first episode of The United States of Secrets, a landmark two-part series for Frontline on PBS, Greenwald tells of how he almost missed the scoop of the decade.
Part one of the United States of Secrets airs this week on PBS. Part two airs next week. Check your local listings.
Attorney Phillip Crawford and Antiwar.com’s economist David Henderson are spearheading a protest Opposing U.S. Intervention in Ukraine. The demonstration is scheduled for Tuesday, May 13 staring at 4:00 PM. The protest held at Window-on-the-bay in Monterey, California on Del Monte Blvd near Camino El Estero, across from the McDonald’s restaurant. Professor Henderson is the co-chair of the Peace Coalition of Monterey County and a leader in Libertarians for Peace. Libertarians have been in the forefront against the countless wars conducted by United States against nations that have not attacked America.
For more information, please contact Lawrence Samuels, Co-chair of Libertarians for Peace of Monterey County at 831-238-5058.
Retired US Army major and Guantanamo JAG attorney Todd Pierce, interviewed on “London Real” on the Gitmo prison, the espionage act, and lawless Global War on Terrorism.
A political sideshow to the escalating focus on the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram is what it means for Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects. Boko Haram was not officially designated a terrorist group until Clinton stepped down and John Kerry became Secretary of State. This, Republicans tell us, reveals she is weak on terrorism and doesn’t have the leadership or foresight to keep the country safe as president.
To try and make a substantive political point on the basis of the farcical and arbitrary State Department terrorist list is laughable. The “official list” is so fickle and ludricous as to be useless in any serious political discussion except to demonstrate how illegitimate it is.
The government puts individuals or groups on and takes them off according to its interests at the time: Nelson Mandela was on it before he became admired by the world as a man of peace, Saddam Hussein was on it until the U.S. decided it wanted to support him militarily against Iran in the 1980s, the Iranian group MEK was on it until 2012 when the U.S. decided having an Iranian dissident group off the terrorist list could be in its benefit, etc.
And of course, any militant groups that the U.S. wants to aid with money and weapons can’t be on the terrorist list, even if they conduct terrorist operations.
More than that, there was some internal logic to holding off on designating Boko Haram. New York Times:
Such a step would have made it illegal for any individual in the United States to provide “material or resources” to the group and, proponents say, would also have focused international attention on the danger the group posed.
But Johnnie Carson, who was the assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 2009 to 2013, said in an interview on Thursday that he had opposed making the designation “for six or seven different reasons.”
Mr. Carson said he was concerned that the move would generate publicity for the group and help it attract support from other extremists. He said he was also worried that the designation might legitimize a heavy-handed crackdown by Nigeria’s security forces at a time when American officials were urging them to avoid human rights abuses.
“It would have aligned us with a flawed Nigerian security strategy,” Mr. Carson said.
There was concern that the designation might prompt the group to attack American interests in the region. The Nigerian government also strongly opposed the move, fearing it would raise Boko Haram’s standing.
There are two important points to make on the basis of this reporting. First, this U.S. official implicitly reveals what I’ve already said about Boko Haram: that it is a localized militant group that could be antagonized to more ambitious goals in response to U.S. meddling.
Secondly, it has been confirmed in congressional testimony that the U.S. government has a secret list of groups and individuals it considers officially designated terrorists. That list is classified, meaning that the American people can’t even know who their own government considers enemies. But further, it means that the State Department’s designation is largely moot, because the U.S. government already was taking action against Boko Haram in a covert way going back several years and so probably already had the group on its secret list.
US Air Force conducting military exercises in South Korea. Credit: DoD
The Cato Institute’s Doug Bandow argues for the U.S. to pull out of South Korea:
Washington needs to reflect first on why the North is such a problem for America. A small, impoverished, and distant state, even with a handful of nuclear weapons (but no delivery capacity), obviously is no match for the globe’s superpower. Ordinarily the former wouldn’t be interested in the latter.
But the U.S. maintains a defense treaty with and garrison in the ROK, routinely deploys naval and air units around the DPRK, regularly conducts military exercises in the South, and constantly threatens war against the North. Pyongyang can’t very well ignore America.
Thus, going home should be the foundation of U.S. policy toward the Koreas.
…Washington should loosen military ties with South Korea and extricate itself from a potential Korean conflict. The U.S. should terminate the “mutual” defense treaty, withdraw the permanent garrison, and end the periodic threats.
Chances are slim to nil that the U.S. will actually pull out of South Korea and stop subsidizing its security from the North. Primarily, this is because, as I wrote at Al Jazeera America earlier this year, “the U.S. military presence in South Korea is not about deterring North Korea. More accurately, it is about maintaining U.S. military dominance in the Asia-Pacific region.”
In other words, containing China:
Ironically, the U.S.’s continued military presence and defense treaty with South Korea does nothing to weaken Pyongyang. Instead, it engenders geopolitical calculations on the part of regional great powers like China to prop up the North Korean regime.
…To Beijing, Pyongyang is something of a nuisance — a perpetually erratic regime with a hellish human rights record that is a constant source of aggravation to China, which is trying to avoid such negative attention from the international community.
China nevertheless endures this embarrassment and continues to safeguard the survival of the North Korean regime because it “is important to Beijing as a bulwark against U.S. military dominance of the region,” according [a 2013 Council on Foreign Relations report].
China’s reluctant support of the DPRK has allowed the latter to maintain its survival and slowly increase its nuclear capabilities. But China, like other nuclear weapons states, despises proliferation, even among its allies, because it diminishes the power and freedom of movement enjoyed by the exclusive club of nuclear powers. In all likelihood, China would halt its lenient backing of the DPRK if the risk of U.S. troops right on China’s border wasn’t in the cards.
As Bandow puts it, “Withdrawal also would reduce Beijing’s perception that the U.S. is seeking to contain China in cooperation with the ROK.”
As per usual, U.S. interventionism makes things less stable, in addition to serving as a dangerously wasteful sink-hole for U.S. resources.
