Greece Offers New Bailout Concessions
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Debt-ridden Greece offered concessions Wednesday on its creditors' demands for more austerity measures, but Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras still urged his nation to vote "no" in a referendum Sunday on the lenders' plan for new restrictions in exchange for more bailout loans.
European leaders contend that a Greek vote against the lenders' plan would amount to Athens withdrawing from the 19-nation euro currency bloc, but Tsipras rejected that argument.
"A 'no' vote is a decisive step for a better agreement, which we will aim to sign straight after the referendum," the prime minister said in a televised speech to his countrymen. "'No' does not mean a rupture with Europe."
Earlier, Tsipras told Greece's international creditors in a letter that Athens is prepared to accept most of Europe's terms for new bailout money. German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected new negotiations, telling her country's parliament in Berlin, "We will wait for the referendum. There can be no negotiations on a new aid program before the referendum."
The Greek letter to creditors was shared with news outlets hours before a teleconference of eurozone finance ministers on Athens' request for $32.4 billion in new funding. After the meeting, however, the finance chiefs decided not to negotiate any more ahead of the Sunday vote.
A bank manager tries to explain the situation to hundreds of pensioners queuing outside a National Bank branch in Athens, Greece, July 1, 2015. About one thousand Bank branches around Greece opened on Wednesday to allow pensioners to receive a small part
US expresses concern
In Washington, President Barack Obama said Tuesday the Greek financial crisis is "an issue of substantial concern," but one that affects Europe more than the United States. Obama said the U.S. does not believe the ongoing financial turmoil will result in "a major shock" to the American economy, the world's largest.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who spoke with several European finance ministers by telephone Tuesday, said afterward that it is in the best interests of all parties, and for the global economy, if Greece and its creditors continue to work toward a solution that puts Greece on a path toward reform and recovery within the eurozone.
Pro-Euro protesters attend a rally in front of the parliament building, in Athens, Greece, June 30, 2015.
Eurozone
The German leader, Europe's staunchest advocate for tough austerity measures in Greece, rejected the notion that the Greek financial turmoil would lead to the demise of the eurozone.
"The world is watching us," she said. "But the future of Europe is not at stake. The future of Europe would be at stake if we forgot who we are and what makes us strong - a community based on rules and responsibility."
The Greek letter to creditors was shared with news outlets hours before a teleconference of eurozone finance ministers on Athens' request for $32.4 billion in new funding.
The finance ministers had decided not to extend a bailout program for Greece on Tuesday, and the Greek government failed to make a $1.8 billion loan payment to the International Monetary Fund. That default marked the first time a developed country has failed to meet a payment deadline on an IMF loan.
The Fitch ratings agency Tuesday downgraded Greece's credit rating further into "junk" status, meaning it considers the country likely to default on private debt.
Debt burden
Greece has amassed a huge debt over the last five years. As a condition for new loans, lenders have insisted the government must introduce more austere economic reforms, but until now, the government has balked at such demands. Greece says its citizens have suffered enough with spending cuts and tax hikes that have lowered their standard of living.
Greece has amassed a huge debt over the last five years. As a condition for new loans, lenders have insisted the government must introduce more austere economic reforms, but until now, the government has balked at such demands. Greece says its citizens have suffered enough with spending cuts and tax hikes that have lowered their standard of living.
Banks in Greece are closed this week as an emergency measure to control financial turmoil. Automated banking centers (ATMs) have continued operating, but with sharp restrictions on the amount of euros account-holders can withdraw. Authorities in Athens allowed about a thousand bank branches across the country to open Wednesday to serve pensioners who do not have ATM cards and need to withdraw cash.
Some analysts argue the reluctance also is a collective move to humble the Greek government and avoid further negotiations until it is clear which way the voters will vote Sunday and whether they will stick to an austerity program.
And it isn’t clear which way the voters will go in a referendum by which pollsters say Greeks are utterly confused. Some say a majority will reject the bailout deal while others say more Greeks now favor the bailout after a week of economic disruption, with banks closed and capital controls imposed by Athens to halt capital flight. Polls show the “no” vote remains ahead, but that the gap is narrowing.
Left-wing parties and a militant bloc within the prime minister’s ruling Syriza party have reacted with fury at Tsipras’s offer, dubbing it a betrayal. The prime minister is due to explain his offer to Greeks in a televised address later Wednesday.
The country’s Communist Party has described the deal as “the worst bailout” ever and accused the prime minister of “shamefully fooling the Greek people.”
The anti-capitalist Antarsya bloc also issued a blistering attack, saying whatever it was called, the accord would further impoverish Greeks. "The negotiations of submission…have to stop now,” the far-left group said in a press statement. It added that the time had come for Greece to leave the European Union and write off all its debt.
The anti-capitalist Antarsya bloc also issued a blistering attack, saying whatever it was called, the accord would further impoverish Greeks. "The negotiations of submission…have to stop now,” the far-left group said in a press statement. It added that the time had come for Greece to leave the European Union and write off all its debt.
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis indicated late Tuesday that the referendum might be scrapped, if a deal could be reached.
But his German counterpart, Wolfgang Schaeuble, closed the door on that happening, saying Wednesday the Greek offer had come too late and it was still not clear what Greece wanted.
The offer "did not provide further clarity,” he said, adding that there was “no basis” for serious negotiations with Athens at the moment.
Jamie Dettmer contributed to this report from Istanbul.
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- Philip Chism, 16, is accused of brutally killing Colleen Ritzer, 24, in 2013
- She was attacked in bathroom at Danvers High School, Massachusetts
- Teenager then dragged her into the woods in a barrel and positioned a tree-branch 'sexually' in her body, police say
- Attorneys say the right to a fair trial has been 'poisoned' by news coverage
- They are also wary a number of residents know he 'confessed' to the crime
Published: 09:02 EST, 23 June 2015 | Updated: 16:32 EST, 1 July 2015
A teenager accused of raping and murdering his math teacher has been brought back into court while his lawyers demand the trial should change venue.
Phillip Chism, 16, allegedly strangled, sexually assaulted and slit the throat of Colleen Ritzer, 24, in a bathroom at Danvers High School in Massachusetts in October 2013 before dragging her body out in a recycling barrel and dumping her remains in nearby woods.
His attorneys say his right to a fair trial has been 'poisoned' by extensive news coverage of the criminal charges against him and the numerous tributes to the teacher have generated 'enormous sympathy' within the community.
Police officers said he was found carrying a bloodied box cutter and Miss Ritzer's underwear in his backpack when he was arrested.
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Phillip Chism, 16, who is accused of raping and murdering his math teacher Colleen Rizter in 2013, appeared at Salem Superior Court in Massachusetts on Tuesday as his lawyers tried to get the trial location changed
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Attorneys for the teenager, who was 14 when he allegedly slit the teachers throat in a bathroom at Danvers High School in Massachusetts, say his right to a fair trial has been 'poisoned' by the extensive news coverage
Court documents said a tree branch was 'sexually positioned' in the victim's body while authorities found a scrawled note beside the corpse saying: 'I hate you all.'
The Salem News reports that in a motion filed Monday ahead of next Tuesday's hearing on a change-of-venue request, they asked a judge to move the trial out of Essex County and the Boston area, suggesting western Massachusetts.
'The sustained coverage of the lengthy hearings on the defendant’s motion to suppress (his statement to police) has insured that a large number of residents of Essex County know that Philip Chism confessed to the crime,' the lawyers wrote.
'There is little chance of a fair trial where the fact that the defendant has confessed is widely known.'
They added that coverage and numerous faundraisers 'have created an enormous amount of sympathy' for Ritzer, and could make the jury bias.
The defense also mentioned moment of silence offered during the 2013 World Series just two days after her death.
The prosecution has not yet responded.
Chism is scheduled to stand trial in October on charges that include murder, rape and robbery.
The teenager, who was 14 at the time, had recently moved to Danvers from Clarksville, Tennessee, after his parents went through a 'stressful' divorce.
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The body of Colleen Ritzer, 24, was found in woods next to the school with a scrawled note lying next to her which read: 'I hate you all'
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Her body is seen being carried from the wooded area just hours after the brutal slaying
It is known that Ritzer asked Chism to stay late at school on October 22 to help her with something.
But surveillane camera footage shows Chism following his math teacher into a bathroom around 3pm where he allgedly raped her twice, once with a tree branch, and slayed her with a box cutter.
The security camera then captures Chism bringing a recycling bin into the bathroom which he is believed to have used to drag Ritzer's body outside into a wooded area behind the soccer fields.
Her body was found not far from the bin, dumped in a 'sexually positioned manner' with a scrawled note saying 'I hate you all'.
After dumping her body, prosecutors say Chism returned to school barefoot where he changed into his soccer clothes and threw away his bloodied school clothes.
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Chism bowed his head as he was brought into the courtroom in handcuffs. His lawyers argued many residents in the area know he 'confessed' to his crimes
He then went to eat a burger at Wendy's and caught a screening of Woody Allen film 'Blue Jasmine'.
Police arrested him later that evening when he was found walking down a busy highway. He had a bloody box-cutter in his pocket along with Ritzer's underwear.
At the police station, Chism admitted to killing Ritzer after waiving his Miranda rights, but said he didn't sexually assault her.
He has since plead not guilty to both charges of aggravated rape and first-degree murder.
In May last year more than 3,000 people turned out to participate in a 5K race in Andover to support the Colleen Ritzer Memorial Scholarship Fund.
The event was organized as Ritzer's family released a video speaking about the great 'pain and sorrow' of their loss.
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A memorial for Colleen Ritzer is set up outside Danvers High School in October 2013 as the community mourned her loss
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Denise Reagan, an attorney for Chism, addresses the court during a hearing as she presents her motion
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CHARLESTON, S.C. — The road trips were short and simple.
Dylann Roof climbed into his car with a “Confederate States of America” license plate, two cameras in tow, and visited a series of places in his native South Carolina that he associated with the subjugation of black people.
The island to which huge numbers of enslaved Africans were brought.
Four former plantations where they worked.
A small museum devoted to the Confederacy.
Two cemeteries, one black and one white, where slaves and Confederate soldiers were buried.
The beginning, middle and end of American slavery.
Before making his final trip, to 110 Calhoun St. in Charleston — where he is accused of fatally shooting nine black people at Emanuel AME Church, a historic place whose founders once planned a slave revolt — he put pictures of those visits, along with photographs of him holding a .45-caliber Glock pistol and a Confederate flag, on his Web site, “Last Rhodesian.”
The effect of this final journey, with these sightseeing predecessors as background, has been so forceful on the national psyche that it may accomplish something that no other white-supremacist horror has: drive the Confederate flag from the halls of Southern state governments, and from much of the mainstream marketplace.
No other event — the murder of Emmett Till, the bombing of the church in Birmingham, Ala., that killed four young girls, the killing of Medgar Evers, the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — has caused conservative white Southern politicians to say the X-marked red, white and blue flag is a symbol of hatred and call for its ouster. No other killing prompted retailers to say they will stop selling the flag.
No one can know what Roof’s thoughts and full actions were on these road trips, although there may be more to learn as the investigation develops. Retracing his steps, finding the places where he made his photographs, nonetheless offers some insight into his view of the South and the Confederacy.
He was drawn to former slave-owning plantations recast as “graceful” tourist attractions meant to evoke an antebellum ideal of romance and valor of the “Gone With the Wind” variety. This sophistication never really existed — plantations were brutal money-making enterprises that thrived on human bondage, beatings and rape. But there is an entire industry devoted to the moonlight-and-magnolias ideal and it is very popular.
The beginning
The order and dates of Roof’s trips from his home in Columbia aren’t clear, as the time/date stamps on his photographs appear to show only when they were uploaded. But from seasonal clues, and from his appearance, it’s likely that they were all taken within the past year. In one, of him at a beach, he appears to be wearing the same sweater he wore when he went to Emanuel AME.
The sites are all in or around Charleston, Columbia and Greenville, running southeast to northwest. A little more than 200 miles separates the farthest points, but an interstate connects all three. From his home in the central part of the state, Charleston was about two hours away and Greenville, 90 minutes. It’s possible that he could have visited them all in two or three outings.
Roof appears to have traveled alone and spoken to few people. No one at any site remembers seeing him, and no wonder: The pictures show him dressed unremarkably, in dark clothes and boots, with his bowl haircut, standing either alone or well away from other tourists. In some photos, he wears a black jacket with flag patches of white-minority-ruled Rhodesia and South Africa. The pictures appear to have been taken with a timer. Each spot where he snapped a picture of himself has an object on which he could have balanced the camera or placed a tripod.
The photos that have so inflamed public opinion — of Roof glaring at the camera, gun or the Confederate flag in hand, or burning the American flag — were all taken at private residences that have not been identified.
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A Web site linked to accused Charleston shooter Dylann Roof includes chilling images, detailed racist rationale
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A Web site linked to accused Charleston shooter Dylann Roof includes chilling images, detailed racist rationale
The online manifesto attributed to Dylann Roof reveals a deep hatred of minorities, particularly black people. From Roof's Web site
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Roof drove to Sullivan’s Island, just north of Charleston Harbor and connected to the mainland by a short bridge. Historians say as many as 40 percent of all enslaved Africans brought to British North America disembarked here, looking out across flat tidal marshes and waves of heat that would define the rest of their lives.
A plaque by the side of tiny Poe Avenue is the only marker of this somber fact.
“It’s never too late to honor the dead,” Nobel laureate Toni Morrison said in a ceremony here in 2008. She had come to dedicate a park bench, a small memorial, along the nearby docks, and tossed a wreath into the water as a memorial for those who died on the Middle Passage.
Roof came to mock them.
He posed by the Sullivan’s Island road sign, by the plaque, then went the 100 yards or so to the beach.
Here he drew “1488” in the sand as the waves rolled in. It’s numerology well-known to white supremacists. Fourteen stands for the 14-word mandate of George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The 88 is the symbol for “Heil Hitler” (“h” is the eighth letter of the alphabet).
So, on the very place where nearly half of all African Americans can trace their histories: Heil Hitler.
Men fish on the beach near Fort Moultrie where Dylann Roof is thought to have previously visited, dug markings in the sand, and taken photos at Sullivan’s Island, S.C. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Standing here, looking out over the bay, visitors notice something: Fort Sumter, the island fortress where the Civil War began. Roof came all this way to Sullivan’s Island, but if he took the tour boat to Fort Sumter, he included no photographs.
At first, it seems odd for someone who drives a car with a Confederate license plate to ignore the place where the Confederacy began. But when the totality of pictures on his Web site, and the manifesto he posted there, are considered, it becomes apparent that the only part of the Confederacy that interested him was slavery. There are no pictures of Civil War battlefields, no screeds about the heroic Robert E. Lee, George Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg, no Lost Cause ideology.
There are pictures of Roof holding the Confederate flag, toying with his Glock and glowering at the camera. He wears a jersey with “88” in some pictures, and uses a still frame from a 1992 Australian film about skinheads, “Romper Stomper,” as the sole image on the site’s homepage. Rhodesia, Hitler, Australian skinheads, the Confederacy — he was putting together a paper-thin I-read-it-in-a-chat-room survey of worldwide white supremacy.
The middle
From Sullivan’s Island, it’s about a 20-minute drive past strip malls and through suburbs to Boone Hall Plantation & Gardens.
Privately owned, it is distinguished today by (a) a row of towering live oaks, more than 200 years old, draped with Spanish moss, that form a shaded approach to the mansion, and (b) the tourists who pay $20 to tour the property and be escorted through the house by a hostess in a Colonial-era dress.
The plantation’s Web site opens on a video of soaring orchestral voices and instrumentation, replete with images of budding flowers, galloping polo ponies, the live oaks, the big house. Weddings and other events on the cotton dock — “A building which is nestled in a majestic setting on a tidal marsh amongst three centuries of history, beauty and grace” — start at $4,200.
The first photo in Roof’s portfolio is of him in one of the slave cabins, now maintained as an interpretive history exhibit, posing in front of wax figures of slaves.
He includes a picture of himself squatting in front of the brick mansion, apparently to bolster his idea of how well slave owners lived, unaware that it was built in 1936 by a Canadian.
“This disturbed person . . . came here to further his agenda, not ours,” Rick Benthall, Boone’s director of marketing and public relations, said in a statement.
Roof also went to Magnolia Plantation & Gardens, on the banks of the Ashley River, west of Charleston. It also goes heavy on the antebellum romance idea. “Magnolia cooperates with nature to create a tranquil landscape like Eden where humanity and nature are in harmony,” the Web site advertises.
The McLeod home is seen at the McLeod Plantation, where Dylann Roof is thought to have previously visited and taken photos, in Charleston, S.C. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
It’s tempting to speculate that these types of Disneyesque fantasies attracted Roof. But he also went to McLeod Plantation, just south of Charleston on James Island. That property, which opened to public tours this spring under the ownership of the Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission, bills itself as an “important Gullah/Geechee heritage site.” Which is to say, a memorial to the enslaved more than to the masters.
And yet Roof took the same pictures here — in front of the slave cabins, in front of the main house — as he did at the lush plantations. He also exited the front gate, walked across Country Club Drive and about 20 yards into a grassy, tree-filled lot. There’s a weathered wooden sign here, marking a lost-to-time cemetery of “our African Ancestors.” Roof set the camera a few feet back, then posed in front of the sign: arms clasped behind his back, smirking.
It’s worth noting that Roof offers no evidence that he drove a few miles north to Georgetown, S.C., to take in the Friendfield Plantation, where some of first lady Michelle Obama’s ancestors were enslaved. It’s now run as a 3,264-acre “historic hunting property.”
The end
Roof also gassed up the car and went west to Greenville, three hours and change from McLeod, to visit the Museum and Library of Confederate History. He took yet another picture of himself outside, but no one inside remembers him. It’s in keeping with the intellectual thinness of the rest of his travels: a toe-touch at the shrine, and then he was gone.
Likewise, when he visited the Elmwood Cemetery in Columbia, a sprawling place that includes about 1,200 Confederate graves, he did so without any apparent depth of thought.
The first picture he posted was of a statue of an angel that stands perhaps 100 yards inside the main gate, along the main drive. It’s impossible to miss. He appears to have no connection to the family plot at which he posed. Then he walked about 60 or 70 feet to pose beneath a huge magnolia tree, probably balancing the camera on a headstone. And he took a picture of the wrought-iron arch that marks the section marked off for some of the Confederate soldiers, just over a small ridge.
The photos could have all been taken in less than 10 minutes.
John Sherrer III, director of cultural resources at Historic Columbia, a nonprofit agency devoted to preserving local history, reviewed all of Roof’s pictures for The Washington Post. There is no special Southern symbolism, he said, no coded South Carolina-themed message to the masses.
“It’s a superficial montage of plantations and iconic flora — the live oaks, the magnolias, the Spanish moss — that people often consider to be stereotypical images of the South,” he said.
Thematically, Roof’s journey was also a montage of subjugation, beginning with the cruel Ellis Island of African Americans and how they had been made to suffer.
He ended it in the fellowship of their descendants, just across Charleston Harbor, as they prayed and worshiped the God they credited for their and their ancestors’ strength, succor and mercy. And then, police say, Roof raised the Glock and began to kill them.
Murder suspect Dylann Roof and his alleged manifesto(1:34)
Dylann Roof is in custody after police say he opened fire at a historic African American church in Charleston, SC. Here's a look at the 21-year-old's background, including recent arrests, and what authorities say happened inside the church. (Alice Li/The Washington Post)
Neely Tucker is a staff writer in the Sunday Magazine. He has reported from more than 50 countries around the world and from two dozen of these United States.
Peter Holley is a general assignment reporter at The Washington Post. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:peter.holley@washpost.com">peter.holley@washpost.com</a>.
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WikiLeaks publishes list allegedly showing NSA targeted German ministers beyond Merkel
UK Holds Terror Drill as MPs Mull Tunisia Responseby webdesk@voanews.com (Henry Ridgwell)
After pledging a tough response to last Friday’s terror attack in Tunisia, which came just days before the 10th anniversary of the bomb attacks on London’s transport network, British security services are shifting their focus to overseas counter-terror operations. VOA's Henry Ridgwell has more.
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Газета.Ru Президент Украины Петр Порошенко заявил о необходимости углубления сотрудничества с США в военно-технической сфере в ходе встречи с делегацией конгресса, передает «Интерфакс». «Сейчас мы имеем высокий уровень доверия между Украиной и США. Именно поэтому я ... Порошенко обсудил с сенаторами из США кооперацию в военной сфереРИА Новости Порошенко обсудил военное сотрудничество с конгрессменами СШАУкраинское национальное информагентство Порошенко призвал американцев «к более глубокому» военному сотрудничествуКомсомольская правда Интерфакс -РБК Украина -Комсомольская Правда в Украине Все похожие статьи: 42 » |
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Global Chatter Greets US-Cuba Announcementby webdesk@voanews.com (Michael Bowman)
The restoration of full diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba sparked overwhelmingly positive reactions around the world, except in the United States, where opinions diverged widely. A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he “welcomes the announcement today that Cuba and the United States will reopen embassies in Havana and Washington, D.C.” “The restoration of diplomatic ties is an important step on the path toward the normalization of relations. The secretary-general hopes that this historic step will benefit the peoples of both countries,” the spokesman added. For decades, Switzerland has served as a go-between for Washington and Havana, housing the U.S. Interest Section in the Cuban capital. In a statement, the Swiss government said: “Switzerland strongly believes that the reopening of the two embassies and the normalization process will overall be beneficial for the two states and contribute to security, stability and prosperity in the region. Switzerland views the normalization of relations between Cuba and the U.S. as very positive – not only for these two countries but for the whole region and for world stability.” ‘Incentivizing a police state’ By contrast, reactions are decidedly mixed in Washington and across the United States. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican John Boehner, said in a statement, “The Obama administration is handing the Castros a lifetime dream of legitimacy without getting a thing for the Cuban people being oppressed by this brutal communist dictatorship.” Echoing the criticism, Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, the son of parents who immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba, said: “Our demands for freedoms and liberty on the island will continue to be ignored, and we are incentivizing a police state to uphold a policy of brutality. A policy of the United States giving and the Castro brothers freely taking is not in our national interest and not a responsible approach when dealing with repressive rulers that deny freedoms to [their] people. An already one-sided deal that benefits the Cuban regime is becoming all the more lopsided.” ‘New era of possibility’ House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi disagreed. “Reopening embassies lays the foundation for a new, more productive relationship with Cuba that can support and advance key American priorities, including human rights, counter-narcotics cooperation, business opportunities for American companies, migration, family unification, and cultural- and faith-based exchanges,” she said. “President Obama’s bold leadership has opened a new era of possibility in U.S.-Cuban relations.” That sentiment was echoed by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy. “Finally, after 55 years, a failed, punitive and ineffective policy of isolation is ending,” Leahy said. “After 55 years, the wealthiest, most powerful nation - which stands for ideals aspired to by people around the world will be represented by an official embassy where we can put our best face forward on behalf of the American people as well as the Cuban people.” ‘Unclear what… has been achieved’ Some U.S. lawmakers like Senator Marco Rubio - another American-born son of Cuban immigrant parents - are threatening to try to block confirmation of the first U.S. ambassador to Havana in more than 50 years. “Throughout this entire negotiation, as the Castro regime has stepped up its repression of the Cuban people, the Obama administration has continued to look the other way and offer concession after concession,” said Rubio, who is also campaigning for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 2016. “It remains unclear what, if anything, has been achieved since the president's December 17th announcement [that the U.S. and Cuba had agreed to talks on resuming normal diplomatic relations], in terms of securing the return of U.S. fugitives being harbored in Cuba, settling outstanding legal claims to U.S. citizens for properties confiscated by the regime, and in obtaining the unequivocal right of our diplomats to travel freely throughout Cuba and meet with any dissidents, and most importantly, securing greater political freedoms for the Cuban people,” he continued. Other lawmakers are already looking ahead to breaking another barrier between Washington and Havana: the decades-old U.S. trade embargo of Cuba. Taking to Twitter, Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar wrote: “Glad president announced plans to open embassy in Cuba. Major step forward. Next we need to pass my bipartisan bill to lift trade embargo.” ‘Caving to Castro’ Reaction extended beyond Capitol Hill. A former U.S. envoy to the Organization of American States, Roger Noriega, tweeted, “Obama rationalizes his capitulation on #Cuba with deceitful rhetoric. Perhaps some LatinAm govts applaud #Obama's caving to Castro because he will join their shameful chorus of silence on human rights.” By contrast, the president of the New York-based Council of the Americas, Susan Segal said, "We congratulate the U.S. government on the sweeping changes it has taken to end a policy of isolation towards Cuba. The overwhelming support that this new course has received from leaders and people around the hemisphere and the world confirm that the Obama administration is moving in the right direction. We look forward to seeing Congress further the goals of these new policies to bring positive tangible benefits to the people and businesses of the U.S., Cuba, and the region." ‘Necessary step’ Some appear to have had a change of heart on the matter. Two months ago, Democratic Senator Bill Nelson told VOA, “If we are going to have a normal relation with Cuba, they have got to open up, stop human-rights abuses, and [accept] the rule of law.” Wednesday, Nelson signaled a shift in thinking. Rather than setting reform as a pre-condition for diplomatic ties, he said those ties might work toward the reform he wants to see. “I still distrust Castro, but we have to get that regime to open up, stop human rights abuses, and give the Cuban people their basic freedoms,” he said. “I think reopening the embassies is a necessary step in the long process toward achieving that goal.” Not all reaction was political. Individual Americans tweeted their thoughts as well, with one wondering when Cuban rum might be available for purchase in the United States, and another urging U.S. carmakers to mark the occasion by re-introducing vehicle models from the 1950s – a nod to vintage cars still found on the streets of Havana. Yet another tweeted, “Wake me up when they start shipping the stogies" - a reference to Cuba’s world-famous cigars.
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Turkish officials told Reuters that Gazprom and Turkey are “likely to finalise a deal on natural gas prices by mid-July.”
Monitor: Islamic State Less Visible in Syrian Strongholdby webdesk@voanews.com (Reuters)
The hardline Islamic State group has installed surveillance cameras in its Syrian stronghold Raqqa city because it does not appear to have enough members to patrol the streets, a group monitoring the war said on Wednesday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, citing activists on the ground, said Islamic State appeared to have sent members from Raqqa into battle in other parts of Syria, leading to a reduction in patrols of its self-appointed religious police in the northern city. Raqqa is Islamic State's defacto capital for territory that spreads across Syria and Iraq. The group has been put under pressure across northern Syria by Kurdish YPG forces and allied Syrian rebels, as well as U.S.-led airstrikes. On Wednesday, Kurdish forces said they had recovered full control of a town on the Turkish border further north after Islamic State fighters raided its outskirts the day before in preparation for a larger assault. In Raqqa city, Islamic State has enforced a strict rule based on its ultra-hardline interpretation of Islam. This has included public killings of people accused of violations, banning alcohol and cigarettes as well as establishing a strict head-to-toe dress code for women. The Britain-based Observatory, which collects information from sources on the ground, said the cameras were also installed to help protect the group's senior figures in the city, who are concerned about informants passing information to its enemies. Islamic State is concerned that people in Raqqa are giving away the locations of its leaders and their bases to U.S.-led forces bombing the group, the Observatory's head Rami Abdulrahman said. The jihadists enforce tough controls on communications in the city. They also run public services such as electricity and water, pay salaries, control traffic, and are in charge of nearly everything from bakeries to schools. The Observatory said Islamic State had been directing services such as electricity to the areas where its leaders in Raqqa live while other parts were cut off.
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The Russian energy giant cut off deliveries because of a pricing dispute amid political tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
This piece originally ran in the German newspaper BILD as Die Welt der Spionage im Jahr 2015. For the benefit of readers who don’t know German, I’m providing the English version — enjoy!
The latest Wikileaks sensation concerns allegations that the U.S. National Security Agency has been spying on Paris. Based on purloined intelligence documents, it appears that NSA has intercepted the communications of three French presidents – Chirac, Sarkozy, and Hollande.
President Obama has delivered his usual mea culpa, as he previously did with Chancellor Merkel, adding that the United States is no longer doing such things. That may, or may not, be true, but there’s little doubt that NSA will be back to intercepting high-level communications in Paris soon, no matter what Obama says right now.
France, although it’s an ally that’s back in NATO after decades of being barely in the Atlantic Alliance, is also a major world power that has nuclear weapons and often doesn’t see eye-to-eye with Washington – or London. Of course NSA and its Anglosphere partners like Britain’s GCHQ are trying to intercept the phone calls and emails of the French president and his top officials. They would be derelict of duty if they did not.
France’s difficult trade relations – not always noted for their transparency – alone would be enough to justify monitoring the Élysée Palace. When you add to that Parisian longstanding ties to questionable regimes and the venerable French tendency to go their own way in foreign affairs – while not always being honest with allies about their unstated policies – knowing what Paris is reallyup to is something any major power will want to know. In reality, there are dozens of intelligence services that want to know what’s happing in the Élysée Palace, and the BND is one of them.
The official French reaction to the NSA revelations has been moderate, in contrast to the German hysteria over Handygate. The American ambassador has been summoned, but that’s as far as this “scandal” will really go. Paris has no intention of making a “big deal” over this story.
Some of this has to do with French maturity about espionage. Everybody spies. Every developed country has a foreign intelligence service whose job is breaking the laws of foreign countries. France knows this.
Neither is this the first time in recent years that the Americans got caught spying on the Seine. Back in 1996, the CIA, though careless tradecraft, got embroiled in a messy scandal that involved deep-cover spies and mistresses – the perfect French recipe. Again, Paris didn’t make too big a fuss.
Why should they? The French are very adept at espionage themselves and they know how the game is played. The DGSE, the French foreign intelligence service, analogous to the BND, has a well-honed reputation for efficiency and daring. Year in and year out, the DGSE ranks among the Big Five counterintelligence threats to the United States, after Russia, China, Cuba, and Israel, roughly in that order.
And the French are good at spying too. During some of my stints in Eastern Europe, I was watched at least as closely by French “allies” as I was by “hostile” local security services. That’s just how the spy-game gets played.
Moreover, Paris doesn’t seek to make too public a fuss about NSA intercepting the calls of the French president, since the DGSE is doing the exact same thing. When Germany was aflutter with revelations of NSA spying on Chancellor Merkel, thanks to Edward Snowden, the French took it in stride, indeed with a Gallic shrug. Of course the Americans were doing this, they said to reporters – who didn’t know this?
“I had telephone tap transcripts in my hands of President George W. Bush that we carried out,”explained a former DGSE official, who seemed mystified by German outrage, which he found contrived. Was the fanfare “populism or crass ignorance?” he wondered, “because we obviously send our reports to [our] political authorities.”
More than a hundred intelligence services worldwide would like to get their hands on the communications of the American president – and it’s naïve to think that none of them ever do. Sometimes top espionage agencies, for instance the KGB, have recruited human spies inside the White House too.
In the twenty-first century, we all depend on electronic communications of every sort – Handys, iPads, instant messages – to live our daily lives. Leaders are no different. President Obama demanded that NSA find him a secure way to use his beloved Blackberry – which represents a huge vulnerability to espionage.
Any world leader in 2015 who does not think that his or her communications are being targeted intensely by multiple intelligence agencies is so foolish as to be unfit for office.
Smart leaders understand that they may be subject to monitoring at any time. The cunning ones know how to employ this to their advantage. I am aware of at least three world leaders in recent memory who, aware that somebody may be listening in, intentionally gave misleading information on an open telephone line. On at least one occasion, such a clever lie to fool the spies significantly skewed major international diplomacy – to the advantage of that leader’s country.
In a formal sense, this is termed denial and deception by American intelligence. But informally, any wise top official will think about doing the same. You can never be sure who’s getting your message, beyond its intended recipients, so if you’re a world leader, it’s safe to assume you’re not alone on the line with the person you’re talking to.
Again, the French understand all this and make accommodations. The French Foreign Ministry has invested heavily in hundreds of late-model cell phones with advanced encryption, to offer a degree of security. Nevertheless, explained a senior French diplomat, “You cannot say just anything on just any network!”
That, in 2015, is the simple truth. Top officials of any Western government should always assume they are being listened to when they pick up a phone or use email. Any other assumption is grossly naïve.
If they’re lucky, it will be a friendly service that’s listening in, but it may well be the Russians and Chinese, who are interested in a lot more than advantages in trade talks. Only the dead have seen the end of war, explained Plato well over two millennia ago, and the same is true of espionage. Spying is called the Second Oldest Profession with good reason.
Filed under: Counterintelligence, Espionage, USG
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China’s top legislature on Wednesday adopted a sweeping new national security law touching on everything from the military and economy to the environment, religion, the Internet, food safety and space exploration, saying the country needed to bolster legal measures in the face of “ever-growing security challenges.”
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Defense Secretary Ash Carter will recommend naming Lt. Gen. Robert Neller, a commander who served in Iraq's western province during one of the most violent periods of the war, as the next commandant of the Marine Corps, officials said Wednesday.
There's been a subtle shift in the way politicians and advocates talk about veterans struggling with postwar mental illness.
United States intelligence officials expressed concerns about a federal database containing details of security-clearance applications in the years prior to a massive cyber hacking incident that led to the theft of millions of personnel records.
North Korea’s Uncertain Future by Glynn Cosker
By William Tucker
Chief Correspondent for In Homeland Security
Chief Correspondent for In Homeland Security
North Korea’s state news agency KNCA recently reported that the nation is “facing its worst drought in a century.” It is unusual for the North Korean regime to make such announcements, rather they try to keep internal issues away from the national and international attention publically and only ask for assistance privately.
NATO should beef up its maritime arm in response to the rising threat from an increasingly "bold" and "aggressive" Russia, commanders said Wednesday.
WASHINGTON — The US Army is seeking to equip its cyber warriors with cutting edge networking hardware, and it is going outside the traditional acquisitions system to do it
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First Posted: Jul 01, 2015 03:00 PM EDT
America's top spies are predominantly white and male, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Tuesday announced a number of measures to increase diversity within its ranks.
Eleven percent of the CIA's top-ranking Senior Intelligence Service consists of members belonging to a racial or ethnic minority, Politico detailed. Across its entire workforce, however, minorities account for 24 percent. CIA Director John Brennan, who 18 months ago had commissioned the so-called "Diversity in Leadership Study," noted the findings presented a challenge to the agency.
"I was deeply concerned that the senior levels of CIA did not reflect the diversity of the Agency workforce or of the Nation we serve, and that this problem had persisted despite repeated efforts by Agency leaders to address it," Brennan said in a statement. "Excellence in foreign intelligence demands broad perspectives ... (and) diversity -- of thought, ethnicities, backgrounds, and experiences -- is essential to CIA's mission success."
The report, which was compiled by business executive and civil-rights activist Vernon Jordan, also noted that minority women continue to be underrepresented at the spy agency. It further detailed challenges faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers and decried the "lack of (an) inclusive culture" at the CIA.
"In practice, the agency does not recognize the value of diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives, nor consistently promote an inclusive, 'speak-up' culture where all opinions are heard, valued and taken into account," the study said.
Brennan ordered immediate steps to correct the situation and part of the evaluations of top officials will now depend on the extent to which they foster diversity. Senior leadership will also be required to attend "diversity and inclusion training," according to Politico.
"I urge every Agency officer to answer the study's call to action and to join me in making CIA a place where all of America's talent and perspectives are welcome and included, and where all individuals are empowered to reach their full potential," the director insisted.
© 2015 Latin Post. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Greece’s confrontation with the euro overlords will shape resistance to austerity – and the future of the whole European Union
It’s now clear that Germany and Europe’s powers that be don’t just want the Greek government to bend the knee. They want regime change. Not by military force, of course – this operation is being directed from Berlin and Brussels, rather than Washington.
But that the German chancellor Angela Merkel and the troika of Greece’s European and International Monetary Fund creditors are out to remove the elected government in Athens now seems beyond serious doubt. Everything they have done in recent weeks in relation to the leftist Syriza administraton, elected to turn the tide of austerity, appears designed to divide or discredit Alexis Tsipras’s government.
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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Now that Mexico's top court has given the green light to gay marriage, a host of states should bring their laws into line, a Supreme Court justice said.
At home and in the streets, Greeks are weighing the monumental choice they have to make on Sunday: more financial pain to stay with the euro, or the uncertainty of being cut loose.
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