US President Barack Obama and his family were headed to Senegal on Wednesday, where they will start A week-long stay in Africa.
During the trip, Obama will meet with Senegal’s President Macky Sall on Thursday, South African President Jacob Zuma on Friday and Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete on Monday.
On Friday, Obama will arrive in South Africa, where the continued hospitalization of anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela has drawn the nation into a mood of worry and well-wishing for the 94-year-old former leader.
“We simply hope that he recovers,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on board Air Force One. “We continue to pray for him and his family, and obviously all of the South African people to whom he means so much as well as his admirers around the world.”
Carney was also asked about Wednesday’s decision by the US Supreme Court that handed victory to supporters of same-sex marriage, and whether the topic would come up in Obama’s official meetings in Senegal, where homosexuality is a criminal act.
“Well, I wouldn’t rule it out,” Carney said. “You can assume that that’s something that is both a concern to the president and the administration, and that would be something that we would discuss.”
Highlights of Obama’s trip will include a visit to Senegal’s Goree Island, the so-called “Door of No Return” for many African slaves; Robben Island off of Cape Town, where Mandela spent much of his 27 years in jail under the apartheid regime; and the memorial to the victims of the 1998 US embassy bombing in Dar es Salaam.
Obama will on Saturday host a town hall meeting at the University of Johannesburg in Soweto, part of his Young African Leaders Initiative. On Sunday, he is to deliver a major speech on his Africa policy in Cape Town.
On Tuesday, the final day of the journey, first lady Michelle Obama and former first lady Laura Bush will participate in an African First Ladies’ Summit in Dar es Salaam.
A driving interest underlying Obama’s journey – only his second to Africa since taking office in 2009 – is Africa’s economic boom and the investment competition coming from other parts of the world, including China. Obama will travel with a large economic and trade team.
Carney noted that the “intense focus on the Middle East” in the first decade of the century had “an unintended consequence that resulted in us not being as engaged in Africa … as President Obama believes we need to be.”
But he denied that the United States was “too late” and pointed out Washington’s ongoing engagement with Africa.Author: Pat Reber, dpa
Ordinary Senegalese are drawing lessons from the past and leaving nothing to chance so that they avoid “foreseeable” embarrassing circumstances during President Barack Obama’s visit, which commences on June 26.
Enduring long hours in traffic jams while waiting for high profile visitors to pass through, being unable to hawk their wares freely in the streets and being virtually “held prisoner in one’s house” are some of the embarrassments they recall from the 1998 visit of former American president Bill Clinton.
Many businesses particularly in downtown Dakar and its peripheral districts have already started recording low sales due to this anticipation. “We’ve virtually been closed for a week now,” says Doudou Keita, a garment seller in Guelle Tapé, a few kilometres from the city centre.
Mbaye Ndiaye, an economist formerly employed by the Trade ministry, says the visit will cause losses of several million dollars, especially to the informal sector “who will take months to recover”.
“While the Americans are capable of making our country a better place, Obama is also capable of making our small businesses in Dakar poorer,” argues Ndeye Diop, a doughnut and coffee seller in a conversation with her colleague.
Assuredly, Ndeye’s colleague Bintou Diagne retorted in English with a native accent “Yessi, e can!” It was a play on Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan: ‘Yes we can.’
These “unforeseeable” embarrassments have led thousands of Dakar city dwellers whose neighbourhoods are being “bunkered” to return to their villages until Obama – nicknamed “the big cat” – goes away.
Barack (which means ‘shack’ in Wolof) “should have lodged in a shack to show solidarity with the majority shack dwellers here”, leading comedian “Kutia” insistently jokes on television about Obama, who he calls the “White House rent payer”.
Pickpockets and prostitutes
Since the announcement of the date of his arrival, the thousands of street beggars in Dakar have visibly disappeared and gone underground.
The same thing has happened to the noisy hawkers on the streets of the capital, most of whom were mistakenly picked up by police during a clean-up against pickpockets classified by security agents as “persons with the propensity to cause embarrassment”.
This category also includes both licensed and unlicensed prostitutes who made good profits during visits by less high profile statesmen whose delegations frantically sought out their services.
But for Obama’s visit, they are among those bearing the heaviest brunt of the tour, which has been extended from 48 to 72 hours beginning this Wednesday.
“No matter…some of us can still harvest from Obama’s field”, says Aisha Konaté, a sex worker with nearly two decades of experience and who boasts of having contacts capable of roping in “high profile” clients to her private abode
For a week now, the national television “RTS” has been clocking Obama’s upcoming visit with the Senegalese and American flags displayed on the top left corner of TV screens, and the inscription “D-Day 3 days to go,” or whichever days are pending.
The youthful face of Obama has for two weeks been very visible on a billboard on one of the tallest buildings along the Place de l’independence main square in Dakar.
And elsewhere, especially at the heavily secured Leopold Sedar Senghor International airport, several giant Senegelase and American flags are flapping high in the sky around photographs of the two heads of state. – africareview.com
Hundreds of secret agents, three truckloads ofbulletproof glass sheets, 56 support vehicles – and fighter jets.
These will all be part of the security deployed this weekend to ensure US President Barack Obama’s safety during his visit to South Africa.
Referring to a US government internal planning document for the visit, the Washington Post reported that US Secret Service agents would be posted in secure facilities. An aircraft carrier with a fully equipped medical trauma centre will be part of the security arrangements.
According to the newspaper, support vehicles, which include 14 limousines, will be airlifted in by US military cargo planes.
US military helicopters were reportedly spotted yesterday flying over Pretoria and Johannesburg’s northern suburbs.
National police spokesman Sally de Beer confirmed the US aircraft fly-overs, saying they were part of an exercise in conjunction with the US government to ensureeverything ran smoothly when Obama arrived.
“There is nothing out of the ordinary. No outside country is operating independently [and] there is no one taking over our country,” she said.
Three Sea Knight helicopters and two Black Hawks were spotted flying over Illovo and Sandton.
ANC alliance partners Cosatu and the SACP have vowed to protest against the visit.
International Relations and Cooperation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said Obama would be warmly welcomed on Friday, as would any other “friendly” head of state.
She said Obama’s “historic visit” followed an invitation by President Jacob Zuma.
Obama will hold talks with Zuma in Pretoria on Saturday.
“The two leaders will discuss the status of relations between South Africa and the US.
“The talks will range from trade, health and education cooperation, development assistance to peace, security, development and cooperation in Africa,” she said.
Obama will arrive on Friday and will preside over a Young African Leaders Initiative meeting at the Soweto campus of the University of Johannesburg.
He will visit Robben Island and a US-funded Desmond Tutu Centre in Noordhoek. He will speak at the University of Cape Town on Sunday. – timeslive.co.za
Tshwane Metro have confirmed on Tuesday that several streets in the CBD were currently being cordoned off in preparation for the visit of US president Barack Obama.
Several streets in the Pretoria were closed off on Tuesday in preparation for the visit of US President Barack Obama, the Tshwane metro police said.
Spokesman Superintendent, Isaac Mahamba said several streets in central Pretoria were currently closed off as a dry run for security measures for the coming visit by president Barack Obama.
Mahamba was unable to confirm which streets would be affected by the security drill due to security reasons, but according to reports Pretorius and Beatrix Streets were currently closed off. Motorists were advised to use alternative routes on Tuesday.
President Barack Obama is reportedly due to arrive in South Africa with his family on 28 June for his first substantive visit to Africa since he took office.
It is currently still unknown if President Barack Obama will make a visit to the ailing former president Nelson Mandela that is being treated at the Medi-clinic Heart Hospital.
Reports indicated that the Obama family are due to meet with President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria on 29 June before travelling to Soweto and then to Cape Town on Sunday. – looklocal
Former NSA contractor Snowden remains in the transit zone of a Moscow airport. President Putin said that Snowden never crossed the Russian border and doesn’t fall under any extradition treaty. He called accusations against Russia “nonsense and rubbish.”
“It is true that Snowden has arrived to Moscow, and it really came as a surprise for us. He arrived as a transit passenger, and didn’t need a [Russian] visa, or any other documents. As a transit passenger he is entitled to buy a ticket and fly to wherever he wants,” Vladimir Putin said as he spoke to journalists in Finland.
Edward Snowden is still at the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, Putin stressed. He said that any accusations against Russia are “nonsense and rubbish,” as the former NSA contractor “has not crossed” the Russian border.
The President also pointed out that there is no extradition treaty between Russia and the US, which makes it impossible to extradite people like Snowden.
“We can only extradite any foreign citizens to such countries with which we have signed the appropriate international agreements on criminal extradition,” he explained.
Snowden “has not committed any crime” on Russian soil, Putin added. Russian security agencies “have never worked with and are not working with” the former CIA employee, he also stressed.
“Snowden is a free person. The sooner he chooses his final destination, the better it is for him and Russia,” Putin said.
He also expressed hope that the Snowden saga would not have any negative impact on Russian-American relations and that the US “will understand this.”
Putin also commented on the situation with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden, fearing that he would then be extradited to the US.
“Just like Snowden, he considers himself a rights advocate and fights for sharing information. Ask yourself: should or should not people like these be extradited to be later put to jail?” the President asked.
“In any case, I would like not to deal with such issues because it is like shearing a pig: there’s lots of squealing and little fleece,” he said.
Washington again requested that Moscow expel Snowden on Tuesday, urging Russia to build upon its bilateral law enforcement cooperation with the US.
Russia has “clear legal basis” to expel the NSA leaker, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in a statement. She added that Snowden would face espionage charges in the US, even without an extradition treaty.
The White House, along with Putin, doesn’t want the issue to negatively impact the nations’ bilateral relations, Hayden said. – RT
An Idaho ammunition manufacturer has developed a new line of pork-laced bullets they hope will fight against Islamic terrorists – and keep them from going to heaven.
South Fork Industries of Dalton Gardens, Idaho, took traditional bullets and coated them in pork-infused paint to make them “haram,” or unclean, under Islamic law. The company’s website labels the “Jihawg Ammo” bullets as “Peace Through Pork” and a “peaceful and natural deterrent to radical Islam.”
“With Jihawg Ammo, you don’t just kill an Islamist terrorist, you also send him to hell. That should give would-be martyrs something to think about before they launch an attack. If it ever becomes necessary to defend yourself and those around you our ammo works on two levels,” the company said in a press release earlier this month.
The pink and black box bills the bullets as “Freedom’s first choice in defensive ammunition,” and says, “There’s Pig in the Paint.” There’s a related line of gear that feature slogans like “Put Some Ham in MoHAMed” and a target poster that says “Give Em a Spankin with some Bacon.”
But some religious experts debate the theory that the bullets would prevent a Muslim from attaining salvation should they be shot with the pork-laced ammunition.
“There is no penalty for coming into contact with pork given by the Quran,’ said Shannon Dunn, assistant professor of religious studies at Gonzaga University, in an interview with Religion News Service. “To my knowledge, Muslims, especially unknowingly, would not be banned from heaven for eating or getting hit by pork. There are some interpreters who suggest that Muslims should eat pork than starve, if faced with that alternative.”
The “Jihawg Ammo” Facebook page has amassed nearly 6,000 likes and hundreds of comments discussing the controversial ammunition. – http://seattle.cbslocal.com
The U.S. assumes National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden remains in Russia, and officials are working with Moscow in hopes he will be expelled and returned to America to face criminal charges, President Barack Obama’s spokesman said Monday. He declared that a decision by Hong Kong not to detain Snowden has “unquestionably” hurt relations between the United States and China.
Snowden left Hong Kong, where he has been in hiding, and flew to Moscow but then apparently did not board a plane bound for Cuba as had been expected. His whereabouts were a mystery. The founder of the WikiLeaks secret-spilling organization, Julian Assange, said he wouldn’t go into details about where Snowden was but said he was safe.
Snowden has applied for asylum in Ecuador, Iceland and possibly other countries, Assange said.
At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S. was expecting the Russians “to look at the options available to them to expel Mr. Snowden back to the United States to face justice for the crimes with which he is charged.”
“The Chinese have emphasized the importance of building mutual trust,” he added. “And we think that they have dealt that effort a serious setback. If we cannot count on them to honor their legal extradition obligations, then there is a problem. And that is a point we are making to them very directly.”
Snowden has given highly classified documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers disclosing U.S. surveillance programs that collect vast amounts of phone records and online data in the name of foreign intelligence, often sweeping up information on American citizens. He also told the South China Morning Post that “the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data.”
Snowden still has perhaps more than 200 sensitive documents, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said over the weekend.
He had been in hiding in Hong Kong, a former British colony with a degree of autonomy from mainland China. The United States formally sought Snowden’s extradition but was rebuffed by Hong Kong officials who said the U.S. request did not fully comply with their laws. The Justice Department rejected that claim, saying its request met all of the requirements of the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Hong Kong.
Said Carney: “We are just not buying that this was a technical decision by a Hong Kong immigration official. This was a deliberate choice by the government to release a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant, and that decision unquestionably has a negative impact on the U.S.-China relationship.”
The dual lines of diplomacy — harsh with China, hopeful with the Russians — came just days after Obama met separately with leaders of both countries in an effort to close gaps on some of the major disputes facing them.
Snowden arrived in Moscow on Sunday, but his whereabouts were thrown into question Monday when a plane took off from Moscow for Cuba with an empty seat booked in his name. The U.S. has revoked his passport.
In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said it would be “deeply troubling” if Russia or Hong Kong had adequate notice about Snowden’s plans to flee to a country that would grant him asylum and still allowed him leave.
“We don’t know, specifically, where he may head, or what his intended destination may be,” Kerry said, responding to a question during a news conference in New Delhi where he was discussing bilateral issues between the U.S. and India.
U.S. officials pointed to improved cooperation with the Russians in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing and to assistance the U.S. has given Russia on law enforcement cases.
“We continue to hope that the Russians will do the right thing,” Kerry told NBC News. “We think it’s very important in terms of our relationship. We think it’s very important in terms of rule of law. These are important standards. We have returned seven criminals that they requested for extradition from the United States over the last two years. So we really hope that the right choice will be made here.”
“We don’t know, specifically, where he may head, or what his intended destination may be,” Kerry said during a news conference in New Delhi.
Carney said the U.S. was in touch through diplomatic and law enforcement channels with countries through which Snowden might travel or where he might end up.
“The U.S. is advising these governments that Mr. Snowden is wanted on felony charges and as such should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him here to the United States,” Carney said.
An Aeroflot representative who wouldn’t give her name told The Associated Press that Snowden wasn’t on flight SU150 to Havana, which was filled with journalists trying to track him down.
In Moscow, security around the aircraft was heavy prior to boarding and guards tried to prevent the scrum of photographers and cameramen from taking pictures of the plane, heightening the speculation that Snowden might have been secretly escorted on board.
After spending a night in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, Snowden had been expected to fly to Cuba and Venezuela en route to possible asylum in Ecuador.
Some analysts said it was likely that the Russians were questioning Snowden, interested in what he knew about U.S. electronic espionage against Moscow.
“If Russian special services hadn’t shown interest in Snowden, they would have been utterly unprofessional,” Igor Korotchenko, a former colonel in Russia’s top military command turned security analyst, said on state Rossiya 24 television.
The White House’s tough response to Hong Kong’s decision to let Snowden leave came just two weeks after Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for two days of personal diplomacy in a desert retreat in California.
Carney said that after the U.S. sought Snowden’s extradition from Hong Kong, authorities there requested additional information from the U.S.
“The U.S. had been in communication with Hong Kong about these inquiries and we were in the process of responding to the request when we learned that Hong Kong authorities had allowed the fugitive to leave Hong Kong,” Carney said.
Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, said his government had received an asylum request, adding Monday that the decision “has to do with freedom of expression and with the security of citizens around the world.”
Ecuador has rejected some previous U.S. efforts at cooperation and has been helping Assange avoid prosecution by allowing him to stay at its embassy in London.
But Assange’s comments that Snowden had applied in multiple places opened other possibilities of where he might try to go.
WikiLeaks has said it is providing legal help to Snowden at his request and that he was being escorted by diplomats and legal advisers from the group.
Icelandic officials have confirmed receiving an informal request for asylum conveyed by WikiLeaks, which has strong links to the tiny North Atlantic nation. But authorities there have insisted that Snowden must be on Icelandic soil before making a formal request. – AP
TV-personality Glenn Beck shows video of rebel eating human flesh
Broad majorities continue to oppose the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to anti-government groups in Syria. Last Thursday’s announcement that the U.S. would aid the rebels has not increased public support for action, and majorities of all partisan groups are opposed.
Overall, 70% oppose the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to anti-government groups in Syria; just 20% favor this. Opinion is little changed from December of last year (24% favor) and support is down slightly from March, 2012 (29% favor).
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted June 12-16 among 1,512 adults, finds a major factor in overall attitudes about Syria is the impression that the U.S. military is already stretched thin. About two-thirds (68%) say the U.S. is too overcommitted to get involved in another conflict, and just 27% disagree. The public also has questions about the opposition groups in Syria: 60% say that they may be no better than the current government.
There is very little partisan divide in attitudes about the conflict in Syria. Majorities of independents (74%), Republicans (71%) and Democrats (66%) oppose the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to anti-government groups in Syria.
Nearly identical majorities of Democrats (69%), independents (69%) and Republicans (68%) also believe that U.S. military forces are too overcommitted to get involved in another conflict.
Independents (66%) and Republicans (64%) are most concerned that the opposition groups in Syria may be no better than the current government, but 52% of Democrats also agree with this statement.
By a 58%-38% margin, more Democrats agree than disagree that the U.S. has a moral obligation to do what it can to stop the violence in Syria. Republicans are split with 49% saying the U.S. has a moral obligation to do what it can to stop the violence, and 48% saying it does not have this responsibility. Most independents (53%) disagree that the U.S. has a moral obligation to stop the violence in Syria.
The survey, conducted from Wednesday, June 12 through Sunday, June 16, found no significant trend in opinion about Syria over the course of the five nights of fieldwork. In the first two nights of interviewing 69% opposed arming Syrian rebels, in the final three nights of fieldwork 71% were opposed.
Even amidst developments on the ground in Syria and the announcement of U.S. plans to aid anti-government groups there, the public continues to pay very little attention to news about Syria. In a separate survey conducted Thursday through Sunday, just 15% say they are following news about charges that Syria has used chemical weapons against anti-government groups very closely, far fewer than are following other stories such as the government’s collection of communication information (35%) and news about the national economy (30%). In fact, 33% say they are following news about Syria not at all closely.
Partisans express similarly low levels of interest in the conflict in Syria. Just 12% of Democrats, 14% of Republicans and 17% of independents say they are following charges that Syria used chemical weapons very closely.
The 20% of the public that favors arming anti-government groups in Syria also expresses concerns about the U.S. getting involved. More than half (56%) of those who favor arming rebels agree with the statement that U.S. military forces are too overcommitted to get involved in another conflict, and 55% agree that the opposition groups in Syria may be no better than the current government. However, far larger majorities agree that it is important for the U.S. to support people who oppose authoritarian regimes (76%) and that the U.S. has a moral obligation to do what it can to stop the violence in Syria (75%).
To a lesser extent, those who oppose arming the rebels are sympathetic to some arguments for greater U.S. involvement in Syria. About half of those who oppose arming rebels (48%) agree that it is important for the U.S. to support people who oppose authoritarian regimes; 41% say the U.S. has a moral obligation to do what it can to stop the violence in Syria. – PEW
Roughly 80 percent of all the packaged foods sold within the United States contain chemicals outlawed in other parts of the world, Britain’s Daily Mail reports.
Six common food additives found in an estimated 8-out-of-10 products sold in American stores are banned outside of the US, the Mail claims, putting millions of Americans at risk of consuming chemicals considered too dangerous for humans in other countries.
Grocery shop items including best-selling soft-drinks and cereal sold in the US contain additives such as brominated vegetable oil, olestra and others that have been banned in the European Union and elsewhere.
The Daily Mail cites ‘Rich Food, Poor Food,’ a recently published book by Jayson Calton and Mira Calton, as the source for their claim that the majority of American groceries contain the additives.
Among the common items containing the chemicals are Mountain Dew, Chex Mix and Hungry Man frozen dinners, which are made with additives outlawed overseas due to health risks. The Caltons say these products are filled with some of the six “Banned Bad Boys” that are used in America but absent in supermarkets overseas.
“One of the most common ‘Bad Boys’ is different variations of food coloring, which actually is made from petroleum and is found in everyday items like soda, sports drinks, mac and cheese, cake, candy and several other common, American products,” reports the Daily Mail. One of the chemicals in that food coloring, they add, has been proven to cause various different cancers. Those artificial dyes have been outlawed in Norway, Finland, Austria, France and the United Kingdom
Another additive, brominated vegetable oil, has been banned in over 100 countries because it’s been linked to causing major organ damage, birth defects and hearing loss, among other side effects. Brominated vegetable oil, or BVO, is used in Mountain Dew, Gatorade, Powerade and Squirt — and around 10 percent of all drinks sold in the US.
A petition started earlier this year to get BVOs out of beverages sold in the US received over 206,000 signatures on the website Change.org.
“BVO is banned other places in the world, so these companies already have a replacement for it,” the petition’s author, Sarah Kavanagh, told The New York Times. “I don’t see why they don’t just make the switch.”
Another additive, potassium bromate, is used in American bakeries to speed up the process of preparing wraps, rolls and other bread products. It’s derived from the same chemical as BVO, though, and has been tied to causing kidney damage and cancer. That’s why it’s been outlawed in Europe, Canada and China, but not in the US.
Also on the Calton’s list is azodicarbonamide, a chemical the Daily Mail notes is used to make things like bleach and rubber yoga mats.
Azodicarbonamide is “approved to be a bleaching agent in cereal flour” and is “permitted for direct addition to food for human consumption,” according to the Food and Drug Administration. Along with waxy preservatives called butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) used in bubble gums, though, the additive has been banned in parts of Europe for potential health risks.
Rounding out the authors’ ‘Bad Boys’ list are Synthetic growth hormones rBGH and rBST and the chemical arsenic. They’ve both been banned in the EU for a variety of reasons, and perhaps for good reason: the arsenic put in American poultry can kill a human being if consumed in a high enough dosage.- RT
Ex-CIA contractor, Edward Snowden’s plane to Cuba will pass through US airspace, an Interfax source reports. Washington has an extradition notice against Snowden on charges of espionage and could intervene if the plane enters US jurisdiction.
Aeroflot flight SU150, leaves Moscow at 14:04 local time (11:04 GMT) and will fly through US airspace a couple of kilometers from the coast of New York on its way to Havana, reported Russian news agency Interfax, citing a source in Sheremetevo airport air traffic control. Snowden is checked into the flight to Havana in seat number 17A, reports the Associated Press, citing Aeroflot.
The source added that US air traffic control can legally ground the plane and take Snowden into custody on charges of espionage, theft and conversion of government property. However, the pilot may change the course of the flight so as not to pass through American airspace.
“The pilot of the plane is within his rights to change the course of the flight and there should be enough fuel to do so,” said the source to Interfax.
The Ecuadorian government has confirmed that Snowden filed for asylum and is processing the request.
WikiLeaks has actively assisted Snowden in eluding the US extradition order, has confirmed the fugitive’s final destination will be Ecuador.
Mr Snowden is “bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum, and is being escorted by diplomats and legal advisers from Wikileaks.”
The news that former CIA contractor Edward Snowden had left Hong Kong emerged on Sunday. The city’s authorities published a statement saying that Snowden had legally and voluntarily left Hong Kong on Sunday on a flight to a “third country” with a stopover in Moscow. The statement also said that the documents for Snowden’s extradition submitted to the Hong Kong authorities by Washington were not sufficient to be able to “process the request.”
The White House said it was “disappointed” with Hong Kong’s move to let Snowden go and has urged Russia to consider every option to expel the fugitive.
“The US is advising these governments that Snowden is wanted on felony charges, and as such should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States,” a state department official said.
Washington has stressed they will seek cooperation from whichever country Snowden arrives in.
Snowden initially fled to Hong Kong after leaking troves of classified data to UK newspaper the Guardian, including information of the US spy program Prism.- RT
The German Justice Minister has called the British spy agency’s massive eavesdropping of international fiber-optic cables ‘a catastrophe’. Sabine Leuthesser-Scharrenberger insisted European institutions should seek clarification “straight away”.
The exposure by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden of the global eavesdropping capabilities of the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have sent European capitals into a stupor.
Having revealed the NSA’s PRISM global surveillance program, Snowden told the UK’s Guardian newspaper information about Britain’s top secret Tempora surveillance project under which the UK’s GCHQ spying agency intercepts and stores for 30 days huge volumes of data, like emails, social network posts, phone calls and much more, culled from international fiber-optic cables.
The most vociferous reaction has come from Berlin where politicians have demanded a thorough investigation of the activities of the British intelligence-gathering community.
“If these accusations are correct, this would be a catastrophe,” German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in an email to the Reuters. She compared the news with a “Hollywood nightmare” and called on to the European institutions “to seek straight away to clarify the situation.”
“The accusations make it sound as if George Orwell’s surveillance society has become reality in Great Britain,” Thomas Oppermann, the leader of the opposition Social Democrats in the Bundestag told Reuters. German politicians called the situation ‘unbearable’ and demanded the government “act against a total surveillance of German citizens”.
A report in Britain’s Guardian newspaper has exposed that UK’s GCHQ has been spying on European capitals for at least 18 months intercepting data from over 200 fiber-optic cables.
Begun in 2008, by 2010 the Tempora project made GCHQ a true intelligence superpower, “’the biggest internet access’ of any member of the Five Eyes electronic eavesdropping alliance, comprising the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand,” The Guardian’s report claims.
By the end of 2012 the GCHQ agency reportedly had enough computational capacity to process information from 46 fibre-optic cables at a time, which amounted to 600 million international phone calls and internet messages daily.
While it was reported earlier that NSA shared classified information obtained through its tapping of the world’s largest internet providers with GCHQ, it became known that these were tit for tat relations and GCHQ shared the info it obtained with the NSA, too. The Guardian believes that the 850,000 NSA employees and US private contractors, like Edward Snowden, had access to GCHQ databases.
“The UK has a huge dog in this fight,” Snowden confirmed to the Guardian. “They [GCHQ] are worse than the US,” he stressed. – RT
The British spy agency GCHQ has access to the global network of communications, storing calls, Facebook posts and internet histories – and shares this data with the NSA, Edward Snowden has revealed to the Guardian in a new leak.
GCHQ’s network of cables is able to process massive quantities of information from both specific targets and completely innocent people, including recording phone calls and reading email messages, it was revealed on Friday.
“It’s not just a US problem. The UK has a huge dog in this fight,” Snowden told the Guardian. “They [GCHQ] are worse than the US.”
The Government Communications Headquarters agency has two different programs, aimed at carrying out this online and telephone monitoring – categorized under ‘Mastering the Internet’ and ‘Global Telecoms Exploitation.’ Both have been conducted in the absence of any public knowledge, reports the Guardian.
“If you remember, even the NSA said that they did not record phone calls, but according to these latest revelations by Edward Snowden, that up to ‘600 million’ telephone events last year were recorded a day by the GCHQ,” said RT’s Tesa Arcilla from London.
“There’s no doubt as to what the objectives of these programs were, having put them in place,” she said, emphasizing the titles.
The agency is able to store the volumes of data it amasses from fiber-optic cables for up to 30 days in an operation codenamed Tempora. The practice has been going on for around 18 months.
GCHQ which was handling 600m telephone ‘events’ a day, according to the documents, had tapped into over 200 fiber-optic cables and had the capacity to analyze data from over 46 of them at a time.
The cables used by GCHQ can carry data at 10 gigabits per second, which in theory, means they could deliver up to 21petabytes of information per day. The program is continuing to develop on a daily basis with the agency aiming to expand to the point it is able to process terabits (thousands of gigabits) of data at once.
“This appears to be dangerously close to, if not exactly, the centralised database of all our internet communications, including some content, that successive Governments have ruled out and Parliament has never legislated for,” said Nick Pickles of UK privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch.
“If GCHQ have been intercepting huge numbers of innocent people’s communications as part of a massive sweeping exercise then I struggle to see how that squares with a process that requires a warrant for each individual intercept. This question must be urgently be addressed in Parliament,” he stated.
By May last year, some 300 GCHQ-assigned analysts and 250 from the NSA had been specially allocated large quantities of data to trawl through as a result of the operations.
The Guardian reports that 850,000 NSA and outside contractors had potential access to the databases. However, the paper does not explain how it came to such an enormous figure
“These revelations reveal the scale of and the scope of cooperation between UK and US intelligence services,” said RT’s Gayane Chichakyan from Washington. “From these revelations we learned how dramatically it has expanded over the years.”
“The document shows the FISA court lets the NSA use data snagged ‘inadvertently.’ They basically give a warrant to target suspects,” she said, recalling Lieutenant General Keith Alexander’s quote after a 2008 visit to the Menwith RAF base in England: “Why can’t we collect all the signals all the time? Sounds like a good summer project for Menwith,” he had said.
The GCHQ project was first trialed in 2008. The intelligence organization has been labeled an ‘intelligence superpower’ on account of its technical capabilities, which by 2010 gave it the strongest access to internet communications out of the ‘Five Eyes’ – an international intelligence sharing alliance, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and US, brought into existence in 1946.
The mass-surveillance has seen the interception of data from transatlantic cables that also carry data to western Europe through ‘intercept partners’ commercial companies that had entered into private agreements with GCHQ. Many have been paid off for their cooperation.
GCHQ feared that exposure of the names of the companies involved could lead to “high-level political fallout,” and took measures to ensure names were kept secret. Warrants had reportedly been issued to compel the companies to cooperate so that GCHQ could engage in spying through them.
“They have no choice,” said a Guardian intelligence source.
Human rights groups have spoken out against the mass data collection: “They are exploiting the fact that the internet is so international in nature,” Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, told BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ program. “I’m pretty sad in a democracy when all that appears to be holding back the secret state is its physical and technological capability and not its ethics or a tight interpretation and application of the law,” she added.
Snowden previously warned that he would be releasing further information pertaining to mass security operations carried out on the unwary public, stating in a previous Q & A with the Guardian that the “truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.” – RT
Fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden was seeking asylum in Ecuador on Sunday after Hong Kong allowed his departure for Russia in a slap to Washington’s efforts to extradite him on espionage charges.
In a major embarrassment for President Barack Obama, an aircraft thought to have carried Snowden landed in Moscow on Sunday, and the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said he was “bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum.”
Earlier, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino, visiting Vietnam, tweeted: “The Government of Ecuador has received an asylum request from Edward J. #Snowden.”
It was a blow to Obama’s foreign policy goals of resetting ties with Russia and building a partnership with China. The leaders of both countries were willing to snub the American president in a month when each had held talks with Obama.
The United States continued efforts to prevent Snowden from gaining asylum. It warned Western Hemisphere nations that Snowden “should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States,” a State Department official said.
U.S. Senator Charles Schumer charged that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely knew and approved of Snowden’s flight to Russia and predicted “serious consequences” for a U.S.-Russian relationship already strained over Syria and human rights.
“Putin always seems almost eager to stick a finger in the eye of the United States – whether it is Syria, Iran and now of course with Snowden,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, told CNN’s “State of the Union” program. He also saw “the hand of Beijing” in Hong Kong’s decision to let Snowden leave the Chinese territory despite the U.S. extradition request.
Ecuador, which has been sheltering WikiLeaks‘ founder Julian Assange at its London embassy for the past year, once again took center stage in an international diplomatic saga over U.S. data secrecy.
Ecuador’s ambassador to Russia, Patricio Alberto Chavez Zavala, told reporters at a Moscow airport hotel he would hold talks with Snowden and Sarah Harrison, a WikiLeaks representative.
Hours later, shortly after midnight (2000 GMT Sunday), the ambassador emerged from a business-class lounge near the hotel and refused to say whether he had met Snowden or make any other comment. Shortly before he appeared, a cart with three plates of salmon and a Starbucks bag were rolled into the lounge.
Snowden, who had worked at a U.S. National Security Agency facility in Hawaii, had been hiding in Hong Kong, the former British colony that returned to China in 1997, since leaking details about secret U.S. surveillance programs to news media.
U.S. authorities had said on Saturday they were optimistic Hong Kong would cooperate over Snowden.
U.S. authorities have charged Snowden with theft of federal government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person, with the latter two charges falling under the U.S. Espionage Act.
A source at Russian airline Aeroflot said on Sunday that Snowden was booked on a flight scheduled to depart for Havana on Monday at 2:05 p.m. (1005 GMT) from the same Moscow airport where the flight from Hong Kong arrived, Sheremetyevo.
The chief of Cuba’s International Press Center, Gustavo Machin, said he had no such information though pro-government bloggers heaped praise on Snowden and condemned U.S. spying activity.
Venezuela, Cuba and Ecuador are all members of the ALBA bloc, an alliance of leftist governments in Latin America that pride themselves on their “anti-imperialist” credentials.
In their statement announcing Snowden’s departure, the Hong Kong authorities said they were seeking clarification from Washington about reports of U.S. spying on government computers in the territory.
The Obama administration has previously painted the United States as a victim of Chinese government computer hacking.
At a summit this month, Obama called on his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to acknowledge the threat posed by “cyber-enabled espionage” against the United States and to investigate the problem. Obama also met Putin in Northern Ireland last week.
A spokesman for the Hong Kong government said it had allowed the departure of Snowden – considered a whistleblower by his supporters and a criminal or even a traitor by his critics – as the U.S. request for his arrest did not comply with the law.
However, a U.S. Justice Department official said at no point in discussions through Friday did Hong Kong raise issues about the sufficiency of the U.S. arrest request.
“In light of this, we find their decision to be particularly troubling,” the official said.
U.S. sources familiar with the issue said Washington had revoked Snowden’s U.S. passport. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said revoking the passport of someone under a felony arrest warrant was routine and does not affect citizenship status.
“It’s a shocker,” Simon Young, a law professor with Hong Kong University said. “I thought he was going to stay and fight it out. The U.S. government will be irate.”
The issue has been a major problem for Obama, who has found his domestic and international policy agenda sidelined as he has scrambled to deflect accusations that U.S. surveillance practices violate privacy protections and civil rights. The president has maintained that the measures have been necessary to thwart attacks on the United States.
The White House had no comment on Sunday’s developments. – Reuters
US President Barack Obama’s upcoming visit to South Africa was condemned on Sunday by some trade unions, political parties, and civil society bodies.
“We categorically make it known that the visit of the US president to South Africa is an unwelcome visit that will be protested, picketed and resisted by all justice and peace-loving peoples of this country,” the organisations said in a joint statement on Sunday.
“Friendship with South Africa must be based on values of justice, freedom and equality, and these the US has offended, undermined and ridiculed through its actions in the global front,” they said.
The statement was issued by the National Unions of Metalworkers of SA, the SA Communist Party, the Young Communist League of SA, the SA Students’ Congress, the Muslim Students’ Association, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union, the Congress of SA Trade Unions, the Friends of Cuba Society, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel in SA, and the World Federation of Trade Unions.
“Our rejection is based the US’s arrogant, selfish and oppressive foreign policies, treatment of workers and international trade relations that are rooted in war-mongering, neo-liberal super-exploitation, colonial racism and the disregard and destruction of the environment, thus making the realisation of a just and peaceful world impossible,” they said.
Obama’s visit later this month would be his first to South Africa since he was elected head of state.
“The US, under his leadership, has escalated its assault on human rights, militarisation of international relations and continuing galloping of world resources at the absolute expense of the environment and oppressed peoples of the world,” the organisations said.
Issues such as the US’s use of world resources, its role maintaining the underdevelopment of the African continent, and its contribution to global warming would be highlighted in the protests.
The public was invited to participate in a national day of action on June 28, where there would be a protest march from the Union Buildings in Pretoria to the US embassy from 10am.
There would also be a demonstration on June 29 against the University of Johannesburg’s decision to award Obama an honorary doctorate. It would be held at the university’s Soweto campus at 11am. – Sapa
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US President Barack Obama and his family were headed to Senegal on Wednesday, where they will start A week-long stay in Africa.
