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Patriot Act Fails on House floor - but it will be back


Raw Story
Tue, 08 Feb 2011 21:36 UTC
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A plan that would have seen the House of Representatives extend controversial provisions of the Patriot Act with little debate failed Tuesday night, as a group of Republicans joined a majority of Democrats in voting no.

The House voted 277 to 148 for the Patriot Act extension -- 23 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass it under a procedure that allows bills that aren't controversial to pass quickly.

But it appears the bill was controversial enough to convince some two dozen tea party-backed Republican freshmen to join a majority of Democrats in voting against it, The Hill reported.
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Star of David

Is Israel Facing an Existential Threat?

Adrian Michaels
The Telegraph, UK
Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:00 UTC
Tzipi Livni
© The Associated Press
Tzipi Livni: leadership does not benefit from fear
It is always worth listening to Israelis in their own country when discussing apparent and growing threats to wipe them out. The diplomatic niceties in the West, still carefully preserved even in these crazy days of Middle East policy on the hoof, become irrelevant when one is talking about threats on the same street.

Here at the annual Herzliya conference on security and defence, it took a defence minister to blow through cobwebs of diplomat-ese. Matan Vilnai harangued his audience at the opening on Sunday night. People need to understand what it means to be in the Middle East. If the whole world could understand, he said, it would be important. "We are now in a third world war," he said. Israel didn't have a minister for homeland security. It does now. There is an axis of evil that runs from Beirut to Damascus to Tehran. After Israel withdrew from Gaza it became a terror base. And so on.

None of this was new. But it takes on a different hue when delivered within miles of Hizbollah rockets. Changes in Egypt, Lebanon and elsewhere have the Israelis scared stiff.

But I have been lucky too to have met a former head of Mossad this morning who gave a completely different perspective. Efraim Halevy belongs to the school that says Israel needs to stop viewing everything, from Iranian weapons to Turkish flotillas to homegrown jihadis in Oregon, as an existential threat.
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MIB

Suleiman: The CIA's man in Cairo

Lisa Hajjar
Aljazeera
Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:10 UTC
Suleiman, a friend to the US and reported torturer, has long been touted as a presidential successor.
Image
© Getty Images
Suleiman meets with Israeli president Shimon Peres in Tel Aviv, November 2010
On January 29, Omar Suleiman, Egypt's top spy chief, was anointed vice president by tottering dictator, Hosni Mubarak. By appointing Suleiman, part of a shake-up of the cabinet in an attempt to appease the masses of protesters and retain his own grip on the presidency, Mubarak has once again shown his knack for devilish shrewdness. Suleiman has long been favoured by the US government for his ardent anti-Islamism, his willingness to talk and act tough on Iran - and he has long been the CIA's main man in Cairo.

Mubarak knew that Suleiman would command an instant lobby of supporters at Langley and among 'Iran nexters' in Washington - not to mention among other authoritarian mukhabarat-dependent regimes in the region. Suleiman is a favourite of Israel too; he held the Israel dossier and directed Egypt's efforts to crush Hamas by demolishing the tunnels that have functioned as a smuggling conduit for both weapons and foodstuffs into Gaza.

According to a WikiLeak(ed) US diplomatic cable, titled 'Presidential Succession in Egypt', dated May 14, 2007:
"Egyptian intelligence chief and Mubarak consigliere, in past years Soliman was often cited as likely to be named to the long-vacant vice-presidential post. In the past two years, Soliman has stepped out of the shadows, and allowed himself to be photographed, and his meetings with foreign leaders reported. Many of our contacts believe that Soliman, because of his military background, would at least have to figure in any succession scenario."
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Star of David

Cables say Israel favours Suleiman


Aljazeera
Tue, 08 Feb 2011 15:07 UTC
Preference for Egypt's new vice-president to succeed Mubarak disclosed by leaked documents obtained by WikiLeaks.

Image
© AFP
Mounting protests against Mubarak's rule prompted the Egyptian leader to appoint Suleiman as vice-president
Omar Suleiman, Egypt's recently appointed vice-president, has long long seen by Israel as the favoured successor to Hosni Mubarak, the current president, according to a leaked diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website, and published by the UK daily, The Telegraph.

The August 2008 cable said David Hacham, a senior adviser at the Israeli ministry of defence (MoD), told US officials the Israelis expected Suleiman, spelt Soliman in some cables, to take over.

"Hacham noted that the Israelis believe Soliman is likely to serve as at least an interim president if Mubarak dies or is incapacitated," the cable sent from the US embassy in Tel Aviv said.

"We defer to Embassy Cairo for analysis of Egyptian succession scenarios, but there is no question that Israel is most comfortable with the prospect of Omar Soliman," the memo cited US diplomats as saying.

The cable said Hacham was full of praise for Suleiman, even noting that "a 'hot line' set up between the MoD and Egyptian General Intelligence Service is now in daily use".
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Passport

Israeli Espionage in America, A National Security Scandal

Jim W. Dean
Veterans Today
Tue, 08 Feb 2011 13:11 UTC
"How do I want to rob, cheat and lie to thee. Let me count the ways... military, nuclear, political, academic, media and your law enforcement institutions."

The biggest national security scandal story of our times is the extent that Israeli espionage has gone on here for decades. There is an aspect of the War on Terror on which our elite leadership refuses to level with the public...how terrified our defense, political, counter intelligence and legal institutions are when it comes to rooting them out and shutting it all down. All other terrors pale into insignificance. And they treat this affliction with an age old cure...denial.

Image
© Unknown
My first exposure to Israeli espionage scholastically was through Steven Green's book Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations With A Militant Israel(1984). Green was one of the earliest users of the then new Freedom of information Act, filing hundreds of requests to get previously classified military and diplomatic Intel reports.
The book is a gold mine, so much so that some in the Reagan administration considered a rump prosecution of Green to scare others off from doing similar work. Cooler heads prevailed and they ended up reclassifying some of the best parts of the book despite Green's archives being publicly available at the Hoover institute. There is a phrase to describe this...'contempt for the public'.
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Light Sabers

Tunisia Calls Up Reservists


Aljazeera
Tue, 08 Feb 2011 10:10 UTC
Continued violence raises questions about stability as the interim government struggles to stem unrest.

Tunisia has asked military reservists to report for duty in a new drive to restore order, three weeks after an uprising overthrew the north African nation's long-term president.

Tuesday's order came as security officials in the coalition government said there was a conspiracy by officials close to the old administration to spread chaos and take back power.


The interim government was put in place after Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian president, fled to Saudi Arabia.

After days of gunfights and looting immediately after Ben Ali was pushed out, it had seemed security was being restored but since last week violence has flared again, raising new questions about Tunisia's stability.
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Recycle

Sheik al-Torture is now a democrat

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:26 UTC
Image
© Unknown
The Egyptian revolution is being dissolved right in front of the world's eyes by an optical illusion.

The protesters who have been on the streets for two weeks still want President Hosni Mubarak out. Now. Yet United States President Barack Obama is firmly in not-so-fast mode, glad that "Egypt is making progress". Obama has not mentioned even once the capital words "free elections".

Washington's "orderly transition" road map - fully supported by Tel Aviv and European capitals - is a facelift. Mubarak stepping down has become an afterthought; the already anointed successor is Vice President Omar Suleiman, the former head of the Mukhabarat, whom the protesters call "Sheik al-Torture".

Sheik al-Torture already behaves as a president - while the actual president is still inhabiting his palace, but as a ghost. The regime, a brutal military dictatorship, remains an immovable subject - even while being denounced by the protesters as illegitimate from A to Z, from the executive to the legislative. The key point is that acting president Suleiman is the regime. If French philosopher Jean Baudrillard was alive, he would say this revolution never took place - except on the world's television screens.
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Handcuffs

Tell Your Representative to Reject the PATRIOT Act Sneak Attack Before Today's Vote!

Kevin Bankston
Activist Post
Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:02 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Tell your Congressperson to vote NO on the USA PATRIOT Act in today's vote! The PATRIOT reauthorization bill being fast-tracked to the House floor contains NO reforms to the law, and will be voted upon with NO debate and NO opportunity for amendments to add oversight and accountability. Help stop this sneak attack on your civil liberties: there are only hours left to visit our Action Center and tell your Representative to vote "NO" on H.R. 514, the PATRIOT extension bill.

In late 2009, when PATRIOT reauthorization was originally being considered by Congress, many important PATRIOT reform measures were proposed and debated, and a bill filled with powerful new checks and balances was reported favorably out of the House Judiciary Committee. But, as Congress ran up against the renewal deadline, it decided that there was not enough time to fully consider those reforms. So, in February 2010, Congress instead extended the "sunsetting" sections of the law until the end of this February, with a promise to fully consider the issues before the next deadline.

But Congress is breaking its promise to consider reforms to the PATRIOT Act. In a legislative sneak attack, the new Republican leadership in the House is trying push Representatives to rubber-stamp another PATRIOT renewal. The House leaders just announced on Friday that they'll be "suspending the rules" so that a bill introduced by Rep. Sensenbrenner to extend the expiring PATRIOT provisions until December 8, 2011 will go to the House floor for a vote TODAY, without any debate and without any opportunity for anyone to offer amendments to improve the bill.
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Evil Rays

FCC: Presidential Emergency Alerts to be Tested

Suzanne Kubota
FederalNewsRadio
Tue, 08 Feb 2011 10:18 UTC
EAS
© n/a
Everybody has heard the national Emergency Alert System (EAS). Those familiar "duck calls" that reassure listeners "THIS is a test...this is ONLY a test..."

The FCC is planning an upgrade to the tests by including presidential announcements in the system.

Lisa Fowlkes, deputy chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau of the FCC, explained to the Federal Drive the Presidential Alert isn't new.

"The primary goal is to provide the President with a mechanism to communicate with the American public during times of national emergency," said Fowlkes. The change, she said, is that prior to last week's order there was no rule in place to call for or allow a test from top to bottom.

Fowlkes said, "There's never been a test from top to bottom where it's issued by FEMA and it goes straight down to all the different levels of EAS to the American public. So this is a way for us to glean, okay, if there were an actual emergency and the federal government needed to activate the Presidential EAS, making sure that it actually works the way it's designed to."
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Padlock

Torture complaints hit Bush on ninth anniversary of key decision

Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story
Tue, 08 Feb 2011 09:16 UTC
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Nine years ago today, the Bush administration decided that international law does not apply to prisoners of war. It was a watershed moment in US history, resulting in a policy of torture that pervaded and darkened the Bush years, and inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad.

To mark that grim anniversary, two men who claim to have been victims of torture filed official complaints in Geneva, Switzerland, seeking a ruling on universal jurisdiction.

If the court sides with their complaints, US President George W. Bush likely would not face arrest; he would not, however, enjoy free travel around the world.
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