Sandra Finley

2018-06-04 Interview Edward Snowden: ‘The people are still powerless, but now they’re aware’, The Guardian

Uncategorized No Responses »

Jun 052018

(Note: 2013 interview of Snowden. 12 minutes. Link in the article below, worth listening to a second time.)

By Ewen MacAskill and Alex Hern

Five years after historic NSA leaks, whistleblower tells the Guardian he has no regrets

Edward Snowden remains in exile in Russia. Photograph: Lindsay Mills

Edward Snowden has no regrets five years on from leaking the biggest cache of top-secret documents in history. He is wanted by the US. He is in exile in Russia. But he is satisfied with the way his revelations of mass surveillance have rocked governments, intelligence agencies and major internet companies.

In a phone interview to mark the anniversary of the day the Guardian broke the story, he recalled the day his world – and that of many others around the globe – changed for good. He went to sleep in his Hong Kong hotel room and when he woke, the news that the National Security Agency had been vacuuming up the phone data of millions of Americans had been live for several hours.

Snowden knew at that moment his old life was over. “It was scary but it was liberating,” he said. “There was a sense of finality. There was no going back.”

What has happened in the five years since? He is one of the most famous fugitives in the world, the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary, a Hollywood movie, and at least a dozen books. The US and UK governments, on the basis of his revelations, have faced court challenges to surveillance laws. New legislation has been passed in both countries. The internet companies, responding to a public backlash over privacy, have made encryption commonplace.

Snowden, weighing up the changes, said some privacy campaigners had expressed disappointment with how things have developed, but he did not share it. “People say nothing has changed: that there is still mass surveillance. That is not how you measure change. Look back before 2013 and look at what has happened since. Everything changed.”

The most important change, he said, was public awareness. “The government and corporate sector preyed on our ignorance. But now we know. People are aware now. People are still powerless to stop it but we are trying. The revelations made the fight more even.”

He said he had no regrets. “If I had wanted to be safe, I would not have left Hawaii (where he had been based, working for the NSA, before flying to Hong Kong).”

His own life is uncertain, perhaps now more than ever, he said. His sanctuary in Russia depends on the whims of the Putin government, and the US and UK intelligence agencies have not forgiven him. For them, the issue is as raw as ever, an act of betrayal they say caused damage on a scale the public does not realise.

This was reflected in a rare statement from Jeremy Fleming, the director of the UK surveillance agency GCHQ, which, along with the US National Security Agency . was the main subject of the leak. In response to a question from the Guardian about the anniversary, Fleming said GCHQ’s mission was to keep the UK safe: “What Edward Snowden did five years ago was illegal and compromised our ability to do that, causing real and unnecessary damage to the security of the UK and our allies. He should be accountable for that.”

Jeremy Fleming of GCHQ addresses a security conference

The anger in the US and UK intelligence communities is over not just what was published – fewer than 1% of the documents – but extends to the unpublished material too. They say they were forced to work on the assumption everything Snowden ever had access to had been compromised and had to be dumped.

There was a plus for the agencies. Having scrapped so much, they were forced to develop and install new and better capabilities faster than planned. Another change came in the area of transparency. Before Snowden, media requests to GCHQ were usually met with no comment whereas now there is more of a willingness to engage. That Fleming responds with a statement reflects that stepchange.

In his statement, he expressed a commitment to openness but pointedly did not credit Snowden, saying the change predated 2013. “It is important that we continue to be as open as we can be, and I am committed to the journey we began over a decade ago to greater transparency,” he said.

Others in the intelligence community, especially in the US, will grudgingly credit Snowden for starting a much-needed debate about where the line should be drawn between privacy and surveillance. The former deputy director of the NSA Richard Ledgett, when retiring last year, said the government should have made public the fact there was bulk collection of phone data.

The former GCHQ director Sir David Omand shared Fleming’s assessment of the damage but admitted Snowden had contributed to the introduction of new legislation. “A sounder and more transparent legal framework is now in place for necessary intelligence gathering. That would have happened eventually, of course, but his actions certainly hastened the process,” Omand said.

The US Congress passed the Freedom Act in 2015, curbing the mass collection of phone data. The UK parliament passed the contentious Investigatory Powers Act a year later.

Ross Anderson, a leading academic specialising in cybersecurity and privacy, sees the Snowden revelations as a seminal moment. Anderson, a professor of security engineering at Cambridge University’s computer laboratory, said: “Snowden’s revelations are one of these flashbulb moments which change the way people look at things. They may not have changed things much in Britain because of our culture for adoring James Bond and all his works. But round the world it brought home to everyone that surveillance really is an issue.”

MPs and much of the UK media did not engage to the same extent of their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, the US, Latin America, Asia and Australia. Among the exceptions was the Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert, who pressed the issue until he lost his seat in 2015. “The Snowden revelations were a huge shock but they have led to a much greater transparency from some of the agencies about the sort of the things they were doing,” he said.

One of the disclosures to have most impact was around the extent of collaboration between the intelligence agencies and internet companies. In 2013, the US companies were outsmarting the EU in negotiations over data protection. Snowden landed like a bomb in the middle of the negotiations and the data protection law that took effect last month is a consequence.

One of the most visible effects of the Snowden revelations was the small yellow bubble that began popping up on the messaging service WhatsApp in April 2016: “Messages to this chat and calls are now secured with end-to-end encryption.”

Before Snowden, such encryption was for the targeted and the paranoid. “If I can take myself back to 2013,” said Jillian York, the director for international freedom of expression at the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “I maybe had the precursor to [the encrypted communication app] Signal on my phone, TextSecure. I had [another email encryption tool] PGP, but nobody used it.” The only major exception was Apple’s iMessage, which has been end-to-end encrypted since it was launched in 2011.

Watch Edward Snowden’s interview with The Guardian in 2013

Developers at major technology companies, outraged by the Snowden disclosures, started pushing back. Some, such as those at WhatsApp, which was bought by Facebook a year after the story broke, implemented their own encryption. Others, such as Yahoo’s Alex Stamos, quit rather than support further eavesdropping. (Stamos is now the head of security at Facebook.)

“Without Snowden,” said York. “I don’t think Signal would have got the funding. I don’t think Facebook would have had Alex Stamos, because he would have been at Yahoo. These little things led to big things. It’s not like all these companies were like “we care about privacy”. I think they were pushed.”

Other shifts in the technology sector show Snowden’s influence has in many ways been limited. The rise of the “smart speaker”, exemplified by Amazon’s Echo, has left many privacy activists baffled. Why, just a few years after a global scandal involving government surveillance, would people willingly install always-on microphones in their homes?

“The new-found privacy conundrum presented by installing a device that can literally listen to everything you’re saying represents a chilling new development in the age of internet-connected things,” wrote Gizmodo’s Adam Clark Estes last year.

Towards the end of the interview, Snowden recalled one of his early aliases, Cincinnatus, after the Roman who after public service returned to his farm. Snowden said he too felt that, having played his role, he had retreated to a quieter life, spending time developing tools to help journalists protect their sources. “I do not think I have ever been more fulfilled,” he said.

But he will not be marking the anniversary with a “victory lap”, he said. There is still much to be done. “The fightback is just beginning,” said Snowden. “The governments and the corporates have been in this game a long time and we are just getting started.”

2018-02-27 Canada’s largest integrated energy company has filed an application for a massive new oilsands project defying expectations of slowing growth in the oilsands, Financial Post

Climate No Responses »

Jun 052018

http://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/suncor-energy-files-application-for-160000-bpd-lewis-oilsands-project

Suncor Energy files application for 160,000-bpd Lewis oilsands project

2018-02-27

Geoffrey Morgan

CALGARY – Canada’s largest integrated energy company has filed an application for a massive new oilsands project defying expectations of slowing growth in the oilsands.

The Alberta Energy Regulator issued a notice Tuesday that Suncor Energy Inc. is seeking regulatory approval to build a 160,000-barrels-per-day steam-based oilsands project north of Fort McMurray called Lewis. The project would not require federal approval from the National Energy Board, which Ottawa is currently reorganizing.

Regulatory filings from Calgary-based Suncor show the project – which would be built in four identical 40,000-bpd phases – would cost $6.2 billion in total and the company hopes to begin construction in 2024, with oil production starting 2027.

“This is a growth project,” Suncor spokesperson Erin Rees said in an email, adding that the company has not officially sanctioned the project.

In its application, Suncor said the project would contribute almost $3.4 billion to Alberta’s GDP and employ an average of 580 construction workers per year and 1,000 construction workers at its peak it 2027 and 2028.

The permit will help Suncor plan its next projects to replace the production that will end in the 2030s, according to one analyst.

“The life of mine plans show production ending. It’s so far away that nobody really thinks about it, but it’s probably a decade of planning,” GMP FirstEnergy analyst Michael Dunn said of the mine retirement.

He said Suncor is looking at ways to boost production so that its oilsands upgrading facilities — vital for the company to get a higher price for its bitumen — will continue to be fully utilized.

“All these things go into the decision-making,” Dunn said, adding that Suncor will need to look at replacing its production from its base mine potentially through lease swaps with Syncrude or through new projects.

The Lewis project’s timeframe aligns with Suncor’s efforts to boost production ahead of the anticipated closure of the company’s main mining operation north of Fort McMurray in the early 2030s. Suncor’s detailed mine plans, and the AER’s tailings plans, show the company’s primary mining operations will wrap up in 2033.

“With Suncor’s Oil Sands Base Plant approaching end of mine life (2033), the AER is concerned with the length of time remaining to resolve Suncor’s site-specific issues,” an AER report from Oct. 2017 states. The AER approved Suncor’s plan to address those issues the regulator had identified.

Suncor produced 296,700 bpd from mining operations in the fourth quarter of 2017, which accounts for roughly 55 per cent of the company’s operated oilsands production with the balance coming from steam-based projects.

Suncor has also recently boosted its stake in the Syncrude oilsands mining venture to 58 per cent and is also ramping up production at its recently completed $17-billion Fort Hills project – neither of those projects will expire in the 2030s.

During an earnings call this month, Suncor president and CEO Steve Williams described the Lewis project – and the company’s Meadow Creek East and Meadow Creek West projects – as the next wave of growth for Suncor, beginning at the end of 2022. “You will start to see one of those come on every 12 to 24 months,” Williams said.

At the time he said those “replication” projects would drive growth for Suncor rather than investment in major new projects and blasted Canada’s current regulatory and tax framework as being too burdensome for major projects like its recently completed $17 billion Fort Hills mine.

Financial Post

2018-06-04 Monsanto No More: Agri-Chemical Giant’s Name Dropped In Bayer Acquisition, National Public Radio (NPR), U.S.

Genetically Modified No Responses »

Jun 042018

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/06/04/616772911/monsanto-no-more-agri-chemical-giants-name-dropped-in-bayer-acquisition

by Camila Domonoske

A protester takes part in a March Against Monsanto in Paris in May 2016. The European chemical and pharmaceutical giant Bayer is buying Monsanto — and dropping the U.S. company’s now-controversial name.

Francois Mori/AP

Originally, it was just a name — Olga Monsanto’s name, to be precise.

Around the turn of the 20th century, she married a man named John Francis Queeny. He named his artificial sweetener company after her. And over decades, that company expanded from the sweetness business into agri-chemicals, where it began to dominate the industry.

These days Monsanto is shorthand for, as NPR’s Dan Charles has put it, “lots of things that some people love to hate”: Genetically modified crops, which Monsanto invented. Seed patents, which Monsanto has fought to defend. Herbicides such as Monsanto’s Roundup, which protesters have sharply criticized for its possible health risks. Big agriculture in general, of which Monsanto was the reviled figurehead.

And soon Monsanto will be no more.

Bayer, the German pharmaceutical giant and pesticide powerhouse, announced in 2016 it would be buying Monsanto in an all-cash deal for more than $60 billion.

Now, as the merger approaches, Bayer has confirmed what many suspected: In the merger, the politically charged name “Monsanto” will be disappearing.

The combined company will be known simply as Bayer, while product names will remain the same.

The move is not exactly a surprise — it makes sense that Bayer might want to weed out some of the intense negative associations associated with the Monsanto brand. In a way, it’s an indication of how successful anti-Monsanto protesters have been in shaping public perception.

In the company’s latest statement, Bayer implicitly acknowledged how hostile debates over genetically modified crops and other agricultural products have become.

“We aim to deepen our dialogue with society. We will listen to our critics and work together where we find common ground,” the chairman of Bayer’s board of management, Werner Baumann, said in the statement. “Agriculture is too important to allow ideological differences to bring progress to a standstill. We have to talk to each other. We need to listen to each other. It’s the only way to build bridges.”

NPR’s Charles has reported extensively on genetically modified organisms. As he has noted, the political and social impacts of Monsanto’s disappearance might reverberate not just in the U.S., but in Europe.

In the U.S., one question is whether protesters who have joined “Marches Against Monsanto” will “still march if there’s no Monsanto,” he says.

Meanwhile, in Europe, there has long been broad opposition to genetically modified crops. After Bayer acquires Monsanto, “suddenly, the leading seller of GMOs [will] be European, rather than American,” Charles writes. “Would that matter? It’s hard to say, but it seems possible.”

Bayer’s acquisition of Monsanto is part of a larger trend of consolidation in the agriculture industry — already dominated by massive corporations.

Once the merger is complete, on June 7, one of the world’s largest pesticide producers will be combined with the world’s largest seed company.

By any name, it will be the world’s largest seed and ag-chemical company.

2018-06-04 Election – The people of Ontario don’t like the high cost of nuclear energy. The Federal Govt, the 1%, and the spin doctors think nuclear energy is great.

Nuclear No Responses »

Jun 042018

A major discontent among the people of Ontario in the Election (June 7) is the price of energy. i.e Nuclear Energy. They call it a “hydro” problem.

Excerpt from Global News:

WATCH: How big is Ontario’s hydro problem? And can the Liberals, NDP or PCs fix it?

The Progressive Conservatives have done their best to fan the flames of voter resentment by blaming the premier, the CEO of Hydro, and Hydro’s board of directors for rate increases.

Whatever the technical and legal justifications, paying the CEO of Hydro $6 million a year (Doug Ford’s “six-million-dollar man”), along with the board members voting themselves generous fee increases, has been like rubbing salt in the wounds of angry consumers.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = =

I documented the West to East success in Canada of opposition to the nuclear industry and a sampling of the corruption between the nuclear industry, the Government and the University, Saskatchewan:

2018-03-19 Does Environment Minister McKenna KNOW that Natural Resources Minister Carr is pushing nuclear energy in the UN climate talks, Bonn Germany, May 2018? My letter to the Minister.

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(BACKGROUND ON SMRs, Small Modular Reactors: http://forum.stopthehogs.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=20)

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Here they are, pushing the industry again – – gotta hang onto the gravy train.

Subject: Nuke Conference – Saskatoon – June 3-6, 2018 – SMRs are on the Agenda . . . .

https://www.cns-snc.ca/events/cns2018/

2018-06-04 Monsanto shedding name: Bayer acquisition leads to change for environmental lightning rod. USA Today

Corruption, March Against Bayer-Monsanto, Take back the University 1 Response »

Jun 042018

Surprising how much of mainstream media reduces the resistance to what “Monsanto” represents, to “environmentalists”.

“Corruption” as the main issue! Monsanto is the evil empire. It is not difficult to provide the documentation to make the case.

So now, “Monsanto” is “Bayer-Monsanto”.

= = = = = = = = = = =

Nathan Bomey

Top officials for Monsanto and Bayer defended their proposed $66 billion merger before skeptical senators on Tuesday, insisting that the deal would lead to greater investments in technology that could help American farmers. (Sept. 20) AP

The name Monsanto is no more but not necessarily for reasons that would satisfy the seed and pesticide company’s many critics.

Monsanto, often assailed for its impact on the earth and on human health, will shed its moniker after German giant Bayer officially acquires the company on Thursday.

While health and agricultural firm Bayer had been considering axing the Monsanto brand for some time, the decision to abandon the name was made official Monday.

“Bayer will remain the company name,” Bayer said in a statement. “Monsanto will no longer be a company name. The acquired products will retain their brand names and become part of the Bayer portfolio.”

The deal was set in motion in September 2016, when Bayer agreed to pay $66 billion for Monsanto amid a global shakeup fueled by sluggish crop prices.

The agribusiness merger won conditional U.S. antitrust approval in May after the companies agreed to sell off $9 billion in assets to preserve competition.

Monsanto long has been a lightning rod for what critics say is its role in environmental degradation and perpetuation of harmful chemicals.

More: Mega deal: Bayer-Monsanto $66B merger wins conditional Department of Justice approval

More: Big deal: Bayer getting Monsanto for $66B

More: Merger advances: EU approves Bayer takeover of Monsanto after concessions

Bayer signaled Monday that it would take steps to “strengthen its commitment in the area of sustainability” after the Monsanto deal is complete.

“We aim to deepen our dialogue with society,” Bayer Chairman Werner Baumann said in a statement. “We will listen to our critics and work together where we find common ground. Agriculture is too important to allow ideological differences to bring progress to a standstill. We have to talk to each other. We need to listen to each other. It’s the only way to build bridges.”

2018-05-31 Did Canada buy an oil pipeline in fear of being sued by China? Bruce Livesay, The Guardian

Climate, Trade Deals, PPPs, Integration Canada-U.S. 3 Responses »

Jun 012018

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/31/justin-trudeau-kinder-morgan-pipeline-china-did-he-fear-being-sued

Did Canada buy an oil pipeline in fear of being sued by China?
The logic to Trudeau’s action may lie in an obscure and overlooked 2014 agreement to ensure China got a pipeline built

Bruce Livesey

Last modified on Thu 31 May 2018 19.02 BST

Justin Trudeau in Toronto, Canada on Tuesday. Photograph: Canadian Press/Rex/Shutterstock

Why is Justin Trudeau buying a pipeline?

Canada’s government announced yesterday it was planning to purchase the Trans Mountain pipeline for $4.5bn. This pipeline – which transports oil from Alberta’s tar sands to the western coast of British Columbia – is at the centre of a bitter political war that shows no signs of abating.

Standing in opposition are the government of British Columbia, the environmental movement, coastal communities and many indigenous groups. Collectively, they’re alarmed about the possibilities of oil spills and exacerbating climate change.

Pressing for the pipeline is the oil industry and the governments of Canada and Alberta – whose premier, Rachel Notley, crowed after the decision: “Pick up those tools, folks, we have a pipeline to build.”

By buying the pipeline from its current owner, Kinder Morgan, Trudeau’s government could face a price tag much larger than $4.5bn if the government wants it actually built. The Financial Post has suggested that finishing the new expansion would cost an additional $6.9bn.

Trudeau’s ferocious desire to build the pipeline at any cost seems bizarre on the face of it. Ostensibly, his government claims the pipeline is good for the Canadian economy. But the pipeline will be shipping unrefined oil – known as bitumen – to be refined in the US and Asia. This will cost oil refinery jobs in Canada, which is where most employment in the oil industry exists. Canada has been closing refineries for years now. The pipeline will only accelerate this trend.

Moreover, developing the oil sands ensures Canada will never come close to meeting its commitments to the Paris climate accord. In 2015, Trudeau promised to cut emissions dramatically: 30% from 2005 levels by 2030. But most of the oil in Alberta’s tar sands will have to stay in the ground to prevent a global warming catastrophe.

So what’s going on?

The logic to Trudeau’s action may lie in an obscure and often overlooked agreement called the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (Fipa).

This agreement, ratified in 2014, was negotiated by the previous Harper government. It was passed without a vote in Parliament. Fipa, which remains in place until 2045, was signed to ensure that China got a pipeline built from Alberta to BC, among other benefits.

By then, China was already investing heavily in the oil sands. In 2009, PetroChina bought a 60% interest in two undeveloped oil sands projects, containing an estimated 5bn barrels of oil. And in 2013, the Chinese state-owned CNOOC purchased the third-largest Canadian oil and gas company, Nexen, for $15.1bn. China needs the oil to help fuel its industrial growth.

Yet this Fipa is the sort of agreement that undermines the sovereignty of nations to the benefit of private interests. Fipas are Canada’s name for bilateral investment treaties, which are frequently used by corporations around the world to challenge public policies or community decisions that interfere with their ability to make money. Canada’s first FIPA took the form of a single chapter in the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). Since then, Canada has paid out $160m to US corporations who challenged public decisions, including environmental policy. Canadian mining companies are using Fipas with developing countries to claim damages from community opposition to unwanted mega-projects.

In the case of the Fipa with China, it notably allows Chinese energy companies to challenge local, provincial and federal policies or laws that interfere with their “right” to make a profit from energy projects. So any environmental regulations, or halted pipelines, or First Nations land claims, could be subject to lawsuits brought by Chinese corporate interests. (Conversely, Canadian companies operating in China have the same rights to do the same thing over there.) A clause in the Fipa, called Investor State Arbitration, gives them this capacity.

“More troubling, there is no requirement in the treaty for the federal government to make public the fact of a Chinese investor’s lawsuit against Canada until an award has been issued by a tribunal,” Osgoode Hall international investment law professor Gus Van Harten has noted.

“This means that the federal government could settle the lawsuit by paying out public money before an award is issued, and we would never know.”

This is no small threat: a few years ago, a Chinese insurance company launched a $2bn arbitration claim against Belgium under a foreign investment protection treaty.

And in 2016, the energy giant TransCanada sued the US government for cancelling the Keystone XL oil pipeline. TransCanada was seeking $15bn.

Trudeau is desperate to keep China happy. In 2016, his government began negotiating a free trade agreement with China. At the time, the Globe and Mail reported, “a senior Chinese official said this will require Canadian concessions on investment restrictions and a commitment to build an energy pipeline to the coast”.

Less than a year later, Trudeau approved the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline. Talks for the free trade agreement are ongoing.

Now he has bought that pipeline, and will have to live with the political fallout, which will likely include protesters, court cases and other acts of civil disobedience. In what might be a strategy to avoid lawsuits from Chinese companies that may result in massive secret payouts, Trudeau’s government may find itself arresting Canadians.

2018-05-31 Daniel Ellsberg, ‘the most dangerous man in America,’ comes to Sonoma

Daniel Ellsberg No Responses »

Jun 012018

CHRISTIAN KALLEN

INDEX-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Before Julian Assange, before Edward Snowden, before Chelsea Manning, there was Daniel Ellsberg.

It’s a name many of us have heard all our lives, first as a shadowy defense department consultant who spilled the beans on the U.S. government’s decades of lying about Vietnam, then as poster boy in a landmark Supreme Court case on freedom of the press, and more recently as a critic of the very nuclear policy he helped craft, over 50 years ago.

But most of all, he’s the man who brought down Richard Nixon – albeit not directly. Instead his release of the top-secret “Pentagon Papers” led to a federal indictment on espionage, which in turn led to Nixon’s hand-picked crew of dirty tricks operatives known as the Plumbers breaking into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office in search of incriminating evidence.

They didn’t find much of use, but the Plumbers continued their illicit investigations at the Watergate Hotel a few months later, where they were interrupted in mid-theft and arrested. One thing led to another, and despite his comfortable re-election in 1972, Nixon resigned from office in August, 1974, thereby avoiding pending impeachment.

It was Henry Kissinger’s fear of what else Ellsberg may have had in hand that led him to call him “the most dangerous man in America,” a phrase that became the title of a 2009 documentary on Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.

All of which gives Ellsberg the catbird seat on some of the most important political events of the 20th century, and with it a rare perspective on the current state of political crisis. He’ll be speaking in Sonoma next Monday, June 4, the latest of the Sonoma Speakers Series parade of guest lecturers.

“Ellsberg has a lot to talk about, and we are honored to have him take our stage and share his knowledge, experiences and his very interesting life with our Sonoma audience,” said Kathy Witkowicki of the Sonoma Speakers Series. “The fact that the event is sold out is proof that the general public wants to hear what this man has to say.”

With a new book out, and the recent chronicle of the Pentagon Papers in the Oscar-nominated “The Post,” the 87-year-old former defense department strategist, think-tank consultant, and constant gadfly to the secretive and powerful finds himself once again with a lot to say, and an audience eager to hear it.

In “The Post,” Matthew Rhys (of “The Americans” TV series) portrays a nervous, driven Ellsberg, trying to get the top-secret government studies of the war in Vietnam before anyone who will publish them. In that movie it was Ellsberg’s colleague in domestic espionage, Andrew Russo, who clips the top and bottom “top secret” notations off the papers before they are photocopied.

In reality, Ellsberg revealed, it was his 10-year-old daughter Mary who did the scissors-work. And his 13-year old son, Robert, ran the photocopier.

The story is found in “Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers,” which Ellsberg published in 2002. Just last year Ellsberg released “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner,” and the dangers of nuclear war continue to concern him.

“I tried to publish this book in 1975, as soon as the war was over,” Ellsberg told the Index-Tribune by phone from his Berkeley hills home he shares with his second wife, Patricia. “But it was turned down, they said they couldn’t sell more than 1,400 copies. We’ve done more than that now.”

2018-06-01 Democracy in Europe Movement 2025

Baltasar Garzon No Responses »

Jun 012018

I want to take a closer look at this Democracy in Europe Movement. I see where the Spanish Judge, Baltasar Garzon is part of it.

Click on the small text under the Title of this posting, the category “Baltasar Garzon”, to generate a list of postings related to him. The first is

2009-03-31 Will a Spanish Judge Bring Bush-Era Figures to Justice? (torture at Guantanamo Bay)

He has pushed for prosecution of transnational corporations.

Earlier, Garzon played a significant role in tackling the brutal military dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet. Not all accounts tell of Garzon’s role.

Pinochet’s regime was responsible for various human rights abuses during its reign, including murder and torture of political opponents. According to a government commission report that included testimony from more than 30,000 people, Pinochet’s government killed at least 3,197 people and tortured about 29,000. Two-thirds of the cases listed in the report happened in 1973.^[151] (Wikipedia)

I will spare you the details of the sadism and the horror.

^{Maybe – – I don’t know – – the difficulty in stopping Pinochet, and bringing him to trial ?: it was a CIA-backed coup that put Pinochet in power, in the first place, in 1973.}

At any rate, if Baltasar Garzon is involved, I am interested. He seems to me to be a man of integrity and courage.

DiEM25 salutes the Spanish parliament’s decision to move past Rajoy to a new era of change

2018-05-30 Opinion Say hello to Justin Trudeau, the world’s newest oil executive, The Guardian, Bill McKibbon

Climate No Responses »

May 302018

The Canadian prime minister presents himself as a climate hero. By promising to nationalise the Kinder Morgan pipeline, he reveals his true self

@billmckibben

In case anyone wondered, this is how the world ends: with the cutest, progressivest, boybandiest leader in the world going fully in the tank for the oil industry.

Justin Trudeau’s government announced on Tuesday that it would nationalize the Kinder Morgan pipeline running from the tar sands of Alberta to the tidewater of British Columbia. It will fork over at least $4.5bn in Canadian taxpayers’ money for the right to own a 60-year-old pipe that springs leaks regularly, and for the right to push through a second pipeline on the same route – a proposal that has provoked strong opposition.

That opposition has come from three main sources. First are many of Canada’s First Nations groups, who don’t want their land used for this purpose without their permission, and who fear the effects of oil spills on the oceans and forests they depend on. Second are the residents of Canada’s west coast, who don’t want hundreds of additional tankers plying the narrow inlets around Vancouver on the theory that eventually there’s going to be an oil spill. And third are climate scientists, who point out that even if Trudeau’s pipeline doesn’t spill oil into the ocean, it will spill carbon into the atmosphere.

Lots of carbon: Trudeau told oil executives last year that “no country would find 173bn barrels of oil in the ground and just leave it there”. That’s apparently how much he plans to dig up and burn – and if he’s successful, the one half of 1% of the planet that is Canadian will have awarded to itself almost one-third of the remaining carbon budget between us and the 1.5 degree rise in temperature the planet drew as a red line in Paris. There’s no way of spinning the math that makes that okay – Canadians already emit more carbon per capita than Americans. Hell, than Saudi Arabians.

Is this a clever financial decision that will somehow make Canada rich? Certainly not in the long run. Cleaning up the tar sands complex in Alberta – the biggest, ugliest scar on the surface of the earth – is already estimated to cost more than the total revenues generated by all the oil that’s come out of the ground. Meanwhile, when something goes wrong, Canada is now on the hook: when BP tarred the Gulf of Mexico, the US was at least able to exact billions of dollars in fines to help with the cleanup. Canada will get to sue itself.

No, this is simply a scared prime minister playing politics. He’s worried about the reaction in Alberta if the pipe is not built, and so he has mortgaged his credibility. His predecessor, Stephen Harper, probably would not have dared try – the outcry from environmentalists and First Nations would have been too overwhelming. But Trudeau is banking on the fact that his liberal charm will soothe things over. Since he’s got Trump to point to – a true climate denier – maybe he’ll get away with it.

But it seems like a bad bet to me. Faced with the same situation – a revolt over the Keystone XL pipeline – Barack Obama delayed for several years to avoid antagonizing either side. He ultimately decided he couldn’t defend the climate cost of building it, and so became the first world leader to explicitly reject a big piece of infrastructure on global warming grounds. Trudeau has made the exact opposite call, and now we’ll see if pipeline opponents cave.

I was in Vancouver two weeks ago to help activists raise money for lawyers, and I would guess that the civil disobedience will continue – so far, two members of parliament have been arrested, an escalation we’ve never seen even in the States. Coast Salish elders have built a “watch house” along the pipeline route and, as at Standing Rock, other native activists have been pouring in – I’m guessing that making this petro-colonialism officially state sponsored will only harden people’s resolution. The showdown will be powerfully symbolic: kayaktivists, for instance, have paddled peacefully around the pipeline’s terminal, at least until Kinder Morgan put up an ugly razor wire barrier in the middle of the harbor.

Now it’s Trudeau who owns the razor wire, Trudeau who has to battle his own people. All in the name of pouring more carbon into the air, so he can make the oil companies back at the Alberta end of his pipe a little more money. We know now how history will remember Justin Trudeau: not as a dreamy progressive, but as one more pathetic employee of the richest, most reckless industry in the planet’s history.

“Les Miz”, a powerful call. “Do you hear the people sing?”

Climate, Corruption, Empowerment, Non-Violent Resistance, Occupy Movement, Solidarity with the Warriors, Sustainability No Responses »

May 282018

“Do You Hear the People Sing?”

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You might take a few minutes for 2011-05-11 Revolution, song and youtube by Coco Love Alcorn (young Canadian), closely related.

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BELOW:

the lyrics
the oil sands and this Kindermorgan is a reminder of the French Revolution
“20 different languages”
flash mobs everywhere, “Do you hear the people sing?”
Rousing video , 17 Jean Valjeans from just some of the worldwide productions assembled on one stage. Large choir and more cast near the end. Canada represented by Michael Burgess

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LYRICS, LES MISERABLES

“Do You Hear The People Sing?”

[Enjolras:]
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

[Combeferre:]
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?

[Courfeyrac:]
Then join in the fight
That will give you the right to be free!

[All:]
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

[Feuilly:]
Will you give all you can give
So that our banner may advance?
Some will fall and some will live
Will you stand up and take your chance?
The blood of the martyrs
Will water the meadows of France!

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the oil sands and this Kindermorgan is a reminder of the French Revolution

My friend who has learning disabilities likes “Les Miserables”, the musical. She has seen it, and played it many times over. Auditory memory serves her quite well. Internet searches are aided by spell check. Today, she left a phone message:

Just to let you know that the oil sands and this Kindermorgan is a reminder of the French Revolution. When angry men or people start together, remember that scene where they all come in with one voice to be heard I don’t know In Canada it is to say no more destruction It is Les Miz, it’s the 2^nd half, it’s do you hear the yells of angry men, it’s the 2^nd song. So I think it may be a good idea to listen to that and take the French Revolution that’s right now in 20 different languages. I think now it’s time that we say enough to Trudeau. Bye.

I googled “Les Miz yells of angry men“.

Up came the powerful youtube video, excerpted directly from the film Les Miserables, “Do You Hear the People Sing?”

The 2nd line of the song is “Singing a song of angry men“. See the video above.

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“20 different languages”

Until I spoke with my friend, I didn’t understand that she had found a DIFFERENT youtube of the song – – her reference to “20 different languages”.

Back to google, and up comes the same song, sung by multiple Jean Valjeans, from different countries, in different languages.

My friend understands that Climate Change is a huge challenge. She understands that it’s a stupid society that allows the bees to be killed (she works on a farm that grows herbs, vegetables, hay for the sheep, cattle. They plant, weed, grow and harvest. She sees another pollinator, humming birds, almost every day in the summertime. During the previous two summers, one was a regular visitor to her window. She knows that the “neonic” chemicals kill song birds, as well as bees. They kill hummingbirds, too?

She connected “the angry men” in Les Miz to the anger over Government failure to do what it’s supposed to do: Just to let you know that the oil sands and this Kindermorgan is a reminder of the French Revolution.

“Do You Hear the People Sing” is being heard by people all over the world, in many different languages. In our phone conversation, she told me that we are on the brink of a Revolution, just like in Les Miz. I don’t think she knows what followed the French Revolution – – the Reign of Terror.

This time around, people who have been working for decades to establish new and better pathways, in combination with today’s connectedness, will do a better job of making the transition to something better.

For the sake of the new life being born by young mothers today, I hope I’m right!

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Flash mobs everywhere, “Do you hear the people sing”

LATER: I stumbled on a flash mob video of “Do you hear the people sing?”. Didn’t have time to add it here. Today, June 14, I went back to find it. I googled “youtube flash mob do you hear the people sing?”. The list of flash mobs is long. The song has been sung and marched in many different places. I had no idea.

So I think it may be a good idea to listen . . . . yes!

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Rousing video , 17 Jean Valjeans from just some of the worldwide productions assembled on one stage.

Large choir and more cast near the end. Canada represented by Michael Burgess

17 Jean Valjeans “Les Miserables”

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