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Kim Jong Un just had his own uncle killed. Why?

Max Fisher
Washington Post
Thu, 12 Dec 2013 10:59 UTC
Image
© Yonhap/AFP/Getty Images
Footage shown by North Korea's KCTV and released by South Korea's Yonhap news agency shows Jang Song Thaek being removed from a Politburo meeting.
Just over a week after South Korean intelligence officials revealed that North Korea had purged senior government official Jang Song Thaek, who also happened to be the uncle of leader Kim Jong Un, North Korean state media have announced that Jang has been executed. Jang's bizarre case raises two closely related but distinct questions: What did Jang do? And why would Kim have his own uncle put to death?

The truth, needless to say, is probably not that Jang was killed for "half-heartedly clapping," as the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency claims in a lengthy explanation for the execution. More likely, this is perhaps a way for Kim to consolidate his power within a large, inscrutable bureaucracy that's dominated by much older and more experience cadres who may have resisted the young upstart's leadership.

The highly public purge of Jang has been unprecedented from the beginning. North Korea has had plenty of political purges in its history, but never like this; they've been done quietly, behind the scenes. But state media denounced Jang earlier this week, publicly condemning him and listing his alleged crimes. The entire front page of the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper was dedicated to Jang's ouster on Monday; so was a special broadcast on North Korean state TV that showed troops arresting Jang in the middle of a politburo meeting.

Turning this high-level political purge into such a national display is totally without precedent for North Korea. That may give us some clue as to what happened and why Kim would order his own uncle put to death.
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Megaphone

Greenwald's Twitter war over PayPal-NSA allegations

JP Sottile
My FireDogLake
Wed, 11 Dec 2013 10:41 UTC
Image
© Flickr CC
Glenn Greenwald defended his work against sharp Twitter criticism.
In the interconnected, instantaneous and byte-sized world of internet journalism, both cyber-space and real-time often bend and warp into a self-referential wormhole.

And one of those fascinating wormholes just opened on Twitter as super neo-journalist Glenn Greenwald and 9/11 whistleblower Sibel Edmonds exchanged a series of increasingly vitriolic and accusatory tweets over Edmonds' latest blog on Boiling Frogs Post: BFP Breaking News - Omidyar's PayPal Corporation Said To Be Implicated in Withheld NSA Document.

In it, Edmonds claims that Greenwald's soon-to-be financial partner and backer - PayPal billionaire Pierre Omidyar - was, in effect, a knowing partner with NSA spying and financial data-mining efforts:
The 50,000-pages of documents obtained by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden contain extensive documentation of PayPal Corporation's partnership and cooperation with the National Security Agency (NSA), according to three NSA veterans.
However, Edmonds also writes:
To date, no information has been released as to the extent of the working relationship and cooperation between the two entities - NSA and PayPal Corporation.
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Card - MC

Glenn Greenwald goes on record: "I don't doubt PayPal cooperates with NSA!"

Sibel Edmonds
Boiling Frogs Post
Fri, 13 Dec 2013 00:00 UTC
PPP
© Unknown
PayPal pyramid
On December 11, 2013, at 4:16 pm, after the publication of our report on NSA-PayPal partnership and long-going cooperation, Glenn Greenwald responded via twitter, and here is what he said-verbatim:
"I don't doubt PayPal cooperates with NSA - that this is in the docs that we've been paid to withhold are total lies."
Let's remain completely verbatim and verified:
John Schoneboom @jrs7000

@ggreenwald Come on. Docs aside, you deny PayPal arrangement with NSA, or consider it irrelevant? Not accusing you, seeking clarification.

Glenn Greenwald ✔ @ggreenwald

Follow

@jrs7000 I don't doubt Paypal cooperates with NSA - that this is in the docs that we've been paid to withhold are total lies.

4:16 PM - 11 Dec 2013

17 RETWEETS 7 FAVORITES
All right, even though I find it repulsive, I am going to try putting on a Greenwald Hat, respond to his statement the way he is used to responding to inquiries he finds unpleasant and tough. Here I go.
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Hotdog

Top U.S.-backed rebel commander flees Syria

Noah Rayman
Time World
Thu, 12 Dec 2013 00:00 UTC
Idris
© John Thys/AFP/Getty Images
General Salim Idris speaks during a press conference at the EU Parliament in Brussels on March 6, 2013.
Growing infighting among rebel factions

The top Western-backed rebel commander in Syria has fled the country amid growing infighting with Islamist rebels, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

Gen. Salim Idris of the Free Syrian Army fled into Turkey and flew to Doha, Qatar on Sunday after Islamist rebel groups took over his headquarters and warehouses of U.S.-provided military gear along the border between Turkey and Syria, the Wall Street Journal reports.
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Sheriff

Is the US Border Patrol out of control?

Lourdes Medrano
Christian Science Monitor
Thu, 12 Dec 2013 08:00 UTC
border patrol
© Ross D. Franklin/AP/File
Border Patrol agents patrol the border fence, in Naco, Arizona
A new study is adding to long-standing concerns that the Border Patrol is subject to inadequate oversight, with border-crossers claiming mistreatment and abuse at the hands of agents.

The issue has grown in importance as the Border Patrol itself has more than doubled in size during the past decade to more than 21,000 agents. The Border Patrol recorded 1.67 million apprehensions on the Southwest border form 2009 to 2012. With border enforcement central to immigration reform proposals in Washington, the Border Patrol's footprint could grow even further.

About 1 in 10 migrants detained for crossing the border illegally reported some form of physical abuse - such as hitting, kicking, and pushing - at the hands of border agents, according to the study, released this week by the Immigration Policy Center, a liberal think tank in Washington. And about 1 in 4 reported that while in custody they were yelled at, threatened, or verbally abused, some with nationalistic or ethnic slurs.

"This is an agency that has almost total impunity in many, many areas," says David Shirk, a border expert and political scientist at the University of San Diego who was not involved in the study. "We need the Border Patrol to take criticisms, to respond thoughtfully and seriously to these kinds of questions and allegations."

Under current practices, if an agent is reported for bad conduct, he says, "It all stays within the agency, and it is not subject to outside scrutiny."

For its part, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Customs and Border Enforcement, which includes the Border Patrol, did not respond directly to the study, but released a statement saying it takes seriously the safety of detainees as well as complaints against its employees.
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Blue Planet

Examining the global state of human rights

Carol J. Williams
Los Angeles Times/MCT
Thu, 12 Dec 2013 08:00 UTC
The death of revered South African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela has spurred reflection on the global state of human rights in the years since his transformation from political prisoner to president and elder statesman.

Those striving to build on Mandela's vision of equality and mutual respect see a world that is profoundly more free, fair and accountable than the one that existed when he walked out of prison in 1990 to wage the final battle in the war on apartheid.

Human rights horror stories persist in many places around the world, most disturbingly in Syria, where nearly three years of civil war have left more than 100,000 dead and devastated the home life and livelihoods of millions. Even countries like Myanmar, where military dictatorship has given way in the past few years to pluralism and social reform, the progress has been uneven, rights advocates say.

Impact of technology

But Mandela's inspiring leadership of South Africa from institutionalized racism to one of the continent's most prosperous and established democracies has coincided with the end of authoritarian rule in Eastern Europe, worldwide growth in the number and clout of human rights groups and dramatic technological advances that prevent despots from doing their worst without the outside world's notice.

"There are 500,000 videos on YouTube from the Syrian conflict. We now find out in minutes what is going on in different parts of the world," said Iain Levine, deputy executive program director for Human Rights Watch.

He pointed out that as he spoke, a colleague was live-blogging from Central African Republic, where United Nations peacekeepers have been deployed to quell Muslim-Christian fighting in the impoverished and restive state.
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Pistol

Who's tallying the body counts from police shootings?

James Bovard
CounterPunch
Thu, 12 Dec 2013 08:00 UTC
Armed Police
© PA
President Barack Obama, calling for new gun control legislation earlier this year, appealed to "all the Americans who are counting on us to keep them safe from harm." He also declared, "If there is even one life we can save, we've got an obligation to try." But some perils are not worth registering on Obama's scorecard.

While the president frequently declaims on the dangers of privately-owned guns, his administration is scorning a mandate to track how many Americans are shot and killed each year by government agents. The same 1994 law that temporarily banned the sale of assault weapons also required the federal government to compile data on police shootings nationwide. However, neither the Justice Department nor most local police departments have bothered to tally such occurrences.

Instead, the Justice Department relied on the National Crime Survey of citizens to gauge the police use of force. But as Prof. James Fyfe, one of the nation's foremost experts on police shootings, observed in 2001, that survey relies on "questions about how often the respondents have been subjected to police use of force. Since dead people can't participate in such a survey, this work tells us nothing about how often police kill."

Many police shootings involve self-defense against violent criminals or protection of people against dangerous culprits in the act of wreaking havoc. However, killings by police are not a negligible proportion of the nation's firearms death toll. Shootings by police accounted for almost 10 percent of the homicides in Los Angeles County in 2010, according to the Los Angeles Times.
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USA

15 innocent people at a wedding in Yemen killed by US drone


Times Online
Sat, 14 Dec 2013 09:19 UTC
Image

Children murdered by the US military/political/industrial complex.
America faced a renewed backlash in Yemen yesterday after a drone strike killed 15 people - at least 12 of them wedding guests.

The strike, on Thursday evening, was aimed at a convoy of 11 vehicles thought to belong to al-Qaeda, and took place near the town of Radaa in the province of al-Baydah in the centre of the country.
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Display

France moving towards a police state: outcry against new surveillance law


Russia Today
Thu, 12 Dec 2013 15:28 UTC
france cyber snoop
© AFP / Jacques Demarthon
Outraged opponents of the new law allowing French intelligence and the government to spy on internet users without any authorization, say it will "weaken the country's position" in the European and international debate on protection of personal data.

The law, which was passed on Wednesday, will enable public officials - from local gendarmes and anti-terrorist agencies to tax authorities - to request connection data transmitted in real time, including location information from cell phones.

Until now, demands for data interception had to be authorized by a judge of the National Commission for the Control of Security Intercepts.

However, from now on Article 13 of the new law allows intelligence services from the state's defense, interior, economy, tax and finance ministries to find out just about anything about any individual without authorization from a judge.
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Take 2

Omidyar's PayPal Corporation said to be implicated in withheld NSA documents

Sibel Edmonds
Boiling Frogs Post
Wed, 11 Dec 2013 00:00 UTC
The U.S. Government, An Implicated Billionaire, Fortune-Seeking Journalists & A Public in the Dark

Paypal
© Boiling Frogs Post
The 50,000-pages of documents obtained by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden contain extensive documentation of PayPal Corporation's partnership and cooperation with the National Security Agency (NSA), according to three NSA veterans. To date, no information has been released as to the extent of the working relationship and cooperation between the two entities- NSA and PayPal Corporation. What's more, the billionaire owner of PayPal Corporation has entered into a $250 Million business partnership with two journalists-Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, a journalist duo who possess the entire cache of evidence provided by Edward Snowden. Despite earlier pledges by the journalists in question, only one percent (1%) of Snowden's documents has been released.

BFP was recently contacted by a retired NSA official who claims that the documents obtained by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden contain extensive documentation pertaining to NSA's partnership with major U.S. financial institutions, including credit card companies and PayPal Corporation. The official, who requested anonymity, also alleges that a deal was made in early June, 2013 between the journalists involved in this recent NSA scandal and U.S. government officials, which was then sealed by secrecy and nondisclosure agreements by all parties involved.
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