High/Low

Source: Al Jazeera

An emotional search for belief and identity in modern China as gamblers deal with debt and addiction.

 

Gambling has long been part of life in China, but in a society increasingly divided by rich and poor, the Chinese have become obsessed with winning easy money.

And as gambling is illegal in China, so Hong Kong and Macau have become top destinations for Chinese gamblers.

In this Witness film, four gamblers who pin their hopes on games of luck and fortune, take us on an emotional search for belief and identity in money-centric modern China.

Filmmaker's View

By Jean-Louis Schuller and Sam Blair

Jean-Louis Schuller and I became intrigued by Hong Kong’s obsession with money and wealth whilst we were making another film there.

Hong Kong is built on and bloated by banking, trade and consumer culture. We wondered how that affected the lives that we saw in the never-ending lines of tower blocks and the daily crush on the streets. We found our answer in the obsession with gambling that is endemic in the city and even more so in neighbouring Macau, which had recently overtaken Las Vegas as the casino capital of the world – discovering a deeply troubling culture of increasing speculation, addiction and debt. We were compelled to return and make a film that got beneath Hong Kong and Macau’s surface gloss and into the heart of this phenomenon.

One of the biggest hurdles to overcome in making the film was finding people willing to talk about their lives.

In China, “saving face” (maintaining personal reputation and honour) is incredibly important so opening up and telling the world about your problems is not the norm, quite the opposite. Obviously for documentary filmmakers this is problematic.

We started out by visiting the numerous church-based groups set up to try and counter the wave of gambling addiction. These churches, tucked away in true Hong Kong style on the 15th floor of a tower block, offered counselling and spiritual guidance to the increasing number of people who were in incredibly perilous situations after gambling away extraordinary amounts of money.

Michael, a taxi driver, was one such character. He had his quiet family life shattered as he gambled away tens of thousands of dollars by speculating on the stock exchange - in Hong Kong playing the stocks is simply another way to gamble for some. We were intrigued to find out how a modest man like Michael lost control and risked so much. We also wanted to find out what motivated him to act in this way. Michael’s recent religious conversion compelled him to open up to us and share his amazing story.

Our biggest challenge was finding a young character, someone who was still gambling and was willing to be filmed. After many false starts, Wu, who ran a counselling centre for gamblers, introduced us about Ji, a young man he had started to help. And fortunately for us, he agreed to be filmed.

Ji worked in a kitchen but spent most of his restless energy gambling or talking about gambling. It seemed to be his only dream, his only idea of how to escape the limits of his life. Wu tried to reason with Ji and told him to find meaning in his life away from gambling. But for Ji, like so many others in Hong Kong and Macau, the allure of gambling is in the fantasy it offers – the chance to reach for a life tantalisingly out of reach, the opportunity to be one of the lucky few.

A world built for the rich

Our cities are adapting to a new reality, from which the poor are forcibly exiled.

Yiannis Baboulias

Source: Al Jazeera

 

It's very much obvious for anyone following public discourse in economics that Thomas Piketty's best-seller Capital in the Twenty-first Century has brought the problem of inequality to the forefront, with mixed results. US President Barack Obama vowed to make it a central issue for his administration before backing down and doing absolutely nothing. The British government has been trying its best to play down the fact that it's a problem for Britain, blaming immigrants instead.

They ignore the plethora of evidence offered by, among others, the Office of National Statistics, which revealed  in May that the wealthiest 10 percent of households in the UK own 44 percent of the country's total aggregate household wealth while the least wealthy half own just nine percent.

But inequality has entered the conversation and there's very little governments can do to hide what is self-evident. As a result of this change in consciousness, a new-found awareness has grown among the public and the media, who are now very quick to pick up on, and scrutinise examples of the ever-growing income disparity across the globe.

It has also brought to light the many ways in which our societies grow hostile towards the less fortunate. There is now a vast array of ways in which social classes try their best to keep those underneath them completely out of sight, a desire hard-wired in city planning and architecture.


 Such an example was reported by the New York Post last month, the last in a chain of eyebrow-raising news on the subject. The city council gave the green light to plans for a block of luxury apartments, coming with a selection of "affordable units", a way for the developer to get some substantial tax cuts and for some lucky, less well-off families, to get houses in "a fantastic new building".

  But it also came with something else: a separate entrance for those families.

The entrance, now dubbed "the poor door", will be located in the opposite side of the building and it will basically make sure that the two categories of residents never meet.

There is a practical argument to this: It is to exempt the less well-off families from the really high maintenance costs the richer residents will be paying for the various amenities.   

While it's true that you shouldn't burden affordable apartments with high costs, essentially negating the point of them, let us ponder on the wolds "poor" and "affordable" for a second.

For a working class family, like the one I grew up in, there is nothing affordable about most affordable apartments. If the UK - where poor doors are quite widespread - is anything to go by, these properties cost 80 percent of the average rent in the area they are in, according to the latest ruling . That translates to an average of £18,000 ($30,300) per year for a three bedroom apartment, when families who consider themselves middle class in Britain make on average £43,592 ($73,000).

This is an optimistic scenario, as the bar of entry for new, "affordable" housing, is thought to be around £70,000 ($117,800) for a family, while last year, even the Conservative Westminster council warned London Mayor Boris Johnson that plans to set new rent levels at up to 80 percent of market rent would require council tenants in a three-bedroom home in the borough to have an annual income of £109,000 ($180,000) in order to be considered affordable, reported The Guardian .

Just how far have the rich pulled away from the rest of us? With Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in the US defining middle class as anyone with household incomes up to $250,000, our views on the issue may have become more than a little skewed.

This is not of course the only instance of something that was built to exclude. The "poor door" may enflame liberal sensibilities, but it's a distinctly middle class issue. Other dramatic changes are reshaping our environment in ways that project extreme hostility towards the less fortunate.

What goes on behind walls
 
Hail the rise of the gated community. While not as inhumane as those meant to keep people in, like the Roma ghettos in Slovakia, we have witnessed the proliferation of such developments across the globe. The rich shut themselves away in safety and luxury. They are a definitive sign of how far income inequality has taken our societies in the past three decades.

From luxurious condos resting next to the slums of Rio and other big South American cities, to the new developments in Spain, the US, India, Russia, South Africa and elsewhere, all examples of the haves removing themselves from society, declaring not only that the poor "are not like us" but that "they will never be like us". 

Even Greece, a relatively classless and overwhelmingly safe society, saw the opening of the first such community in Crete, an event that conveniently escaped the Greek media.
 
When the haves can't remove themselves due to lack of space, plans are put in place to remove the unwashed masses from sight. In Singapore, they are considering floating neighbourhoods for foreign workers only, to keep them away from their cities.

Do all of these countries face such grave security issues that require the most affluent to hide away behind walls or sending the poor away? Surely not. If not in all countries, crime is definitely on the decline in most of the world, so is poverty. But what is on the rise is inequality and the unwillingness of those who benefit from it, to cohort with those that don't.

Tom Clark, author of Hard Times: The Divisive Toll of the Economic Slump , wrote recently : "Among those substantially hit by austerity, 62 percent told YouGov last year that they rejected the coalition's cuts as too hasty; among those not much affected, a similar majority of 65 percent felt that the cutting should be maintained or stepped up."

This change in speeds has taken hold across the spectrum and across the globe, shaping the way classes interact with public space and subsequently its evolution. It is the subtle ways in which our urban landscapes are changing that show the true cruelty born out of the slump.

Hostility as the new normal
 
In what used to be the gritty side of Southwark in South London, now newly gentrified, anti-homeless spikes were installed outside a building where homeless people took shelter at night. A picture of it was posted online and the reaction was strong enough to make the owner of the building promise to remove them.

The number of rough-sleepers has swollen since the UK introduced severe penalties, including imprisonment, for anyone squatting empty properties. In parallel, so have measures such as anti-homeless spikes. Bus stops with arm rests designed to discourage sleeping. Benches with a tilt such as those installed in London's Camden district - asymmetrical surfaces made out of small stones, disguised as decoration, pointy blocks of cement underneath bridges.

All these are weapons against the already most hard-hit category of people, the homeless, who already suffer disproportionately from addiction, mental health issues and malnutrition,in some of the richest countries in the world.

As Rowland Atkinson, co-director of the Centre for Urban Research at the University of York, told The Guardian : "If you were being a bit cynical but also realistic, it is a kind of assault on the poor, a way of trying to displace their distress. You have various processes coming together, including economic processes that are making people vulnerable in the first place, like the bedroom tax and thresholds on welfare, but the next step seems to be to say: 'We are not even going to allow you to accommodate yourself in the most desperate way possible.'"

This trend, visibly present since the 1990s, is dubbed "hostile architecture".

Where more inclusive societies, like that of Denmark, build parks and public spaces with a view to invite and be enjoyed by as many as possible, countries where extreme inequality is becoming the norm, such as the UK and the US, opt for hostile and disengaging urban scenery.

We are right to be worried about these new realities. Gated communities and hostile architecture are brushed aside as temporary issues at best, to be fixed when "times are better". But what we should be worried about is not solely if we are building a world to be enjoyed only by the rich in the short term, but also what that world might look like in the long term.

To us, such city furniture may look simply as a temporary manifestation of bad character, brought on by a prolonged economic crisis. But to those that will inherit them, they may look like no more than war zones; financial battlefields, from which humanity is totally absent.

Yiannis Baboulias is a journalist, writer and founding member of Precarious Europe, examining issues of precariousness, new nationalisms and independence movements across Europe. His work has been featured in the New Statesman, Vice and The Guardian among others.

 

President Barack Obama Weekly Address August 9, 2014 (Video/Trascript )

 
President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
August 9, 2014

This week, I authorized two operations in Iraq.  First, I directed our military to take action to protect our American diplomats and military advisors serving in the city of Erbil.  In recent days, terrorist forces neared the city.  Thursday night, I made it clear that if they attempted to advance further, our military would respond with targeted strikes.  That’s what we’ve done.  And, if necessary, that’s what we will continue to do.  We have Americans serving across Iraq, including our embassy in Baghdad, and we’ll do whatever is needed to protect our people.

Second, we’ve begun a humanitarian effort to help those Iraqi civilians trapped on that mountain. The terrorists that have taken over parts of Iraq have been especially brutal to religious minorities—rounding up families, executing men, enslaving women, and threatening the systematic destruction of an entire religious community, which would be genocide. 

The thousands—perhaps tens of thousands—of Iraqi men, women and children who fled to that mountain were starving and dying of thirst.  The food and water we airdropped will help them survive.  I’ve also approved targeted American airstrikes to help Iraqi forces break the siege and rescue these families.  Earlier this week, one anguished Iraqi in this area cried to the world, “There is no one coming to help.”  Today, America is helping. 

The United States cannot and should not intervene every time there’s a crisis in the world.  But when there’s a situation like the one on this mountain—when countless innocent people are facing a massacre, and when we have the ability to help prevent it—the United States can’t just look away. That’s not who we are. We’re Americans.  We act.  We lead.  And that’s what we’re going to do on that mountain.  As one American who wrote to me yesterday said, “it is the right thing to do.”  
As Commander-in-Chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq.  American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq, because there’s no American military solution to the larger crisis there. 

What we will do is continue our broader strategy in Iraq.  We will protect our citizens.  We will work with the international community to address this humanitarian crisis.  We’ll help prevent these terrorists from having a permanent safe haven from which to attack America.  And we’ll continue to urge Iraqi communities to reconcile, come together and fight back against these terrorists so the people of Iraq have the opportunity for a better future—the opportunity for which so many Americans gave their lives in Iraq in a long and hard war.

Today, we salute our brave men and women in uniform—especially our courageous pilots and crews over Iraq.  They’re protecting our fellow Americans.  They’re helping save the lives of innocent people on a mountain—people who today know that there’s a country called America that cares for them, too, and that is willing to stand up—not just for our own security, but for the dignity and freedom that belongs to all people.

Global Missionary: John Kerry's Faltering Effort to Redefine US Foreign Policy

By Holger Stark
Source: Der Spiegel

John Kerry has spent months rushing from one conflict to the next, but has little show for it. His failures are symptomatic of an America that lacks a foreign policy identity -- and of a country that seems uncomfortable with its role as a superpower.

In the Middle East, it doesn't take much to be branded a terrorist -- even if you are the US secretary of state. The week before last, John Kerry spent several days traveling back and forth between Cairo, Jerusalem and Ramallah in an effort to establish a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But his efforts were not universally appreciated. The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that senior officials in Jerusalem described his cease-fire proposal as a "strategic terrorist attack."

The derisive comment came after Kerry presented what was essentially a reasonable plan. It called for a temporary cessation of hostilities during which negotiations for a long-term armistice could continue. But instead of being appreciated, it was mocked. Jerusalem angrily rejected the plan, saying it only catered to demands made by Hamas.

A short time later, things got even worse. Israel's Channel 1 broadcast the alleged transcript of an antagonistic telephone conversation between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It later turned out the transcript was a fake.

When Kerry did finally manage to broker a 72-hour cease-fire at the end of last week, the resulting hope was short-lived. Just three hours into the suspension of hostilities, Hamas allegedly abducted an Israeli soldier andthe cease-fire was history. Israel later announced that the soldier had been killed rather than abducted.

In recent days, global diplomacy has seemed like an absurd form of theater, with John Kerry in the role of the tragic hero. He doesn't look like the secretary of state from a world power, Haaretz jeered, but like "an alien who just disembarked his spaceship in the Mideast." In speaking last week about the hostile atmosphere, Kerry vowed to keep trying, saying: "None of us here are stopping."

The helplessness of the world's most important foreign minister shows just how little influence the US still hasin the Middle East. And with each failure, Washington's influence in the rest of the world erodes as well. A civil war is raging in eastern Ukraine, an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program is still a long way off, Islamist terrorists now control large swaths of Iraq -- and the US doesn't appear to be in a position to do anything about it.

Searching for a Role
 
Now, as secretary of state it is his task -- exactly 10 years after he was nominated as the Democratic candidate for president, only to lose to George W. Bush -- to mediate in large conflicts from Israel to Iran. But as part of a government that is steering America away from its traditional role as global hegemon, Kerry also embodies the dilemma of the United States' global role in the 21st century: How successful can a US foreign policy be íf it depends more on strong words than it does on tanks and aircraft carriers?

On a Tuesday in spring, John Kerry appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to talk about the end of the Middle East peace talks. Behind heavy brocade curtains that blocked out the daylight, Kerry described a weekend spent waiting at home for Israel to release a handful of Palestinian prisoners. The gesture of goodwill had previously been agreed to and it was hoped the release would allow the peace negotiations to continue. Hours went by and Kerry began to get anxious. But the Israelis didn't release the prisoners; instead, they announced settlement expansion. "Poof, that was the moment," Kerry said, forming an imaginary explosion with his hands.

For a moment, Kerry seemed like a child whose toy had just broken. He saw the peace process as his own personal project; he had spent months in Ramallah, Tel Aviv, Qatar, Riyadh and Amman. He had wanted to force through a deal and reshape the Middle East. And then things went "poof."

As usual, Kerry's appearance was impeccable, with his marine-blue pinstriped suit and perfectly coiffed silver hair. The only blemishes were the conspicuous rings under his eyes and the cough he had brought home with him from one of his trips abroad. Kerry is intimately familiar with the room where the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations meets. In 1971, he spoke out in opposition to the Vietnam War after receiving a medal for bravery in recognition of his command of a boat in the Mekong River delta. Later, Kerry himself chaired the committee for four years.

But during Kerry's testimony in spring, the Republicans were not satisfied with Kerry's answer. "You can't help but get the impression our foreign policy is just spinning out of control," said a Senator from Idaho. His counterpart from Tennessee said, in reference to Syria: "You have to be disappointed by the lack of action."

Then, John McCain took the floor, the Republican Party éminence grise who sees military intervention as the solution to most problems, no matter where and against whom. McCain demanded that the US help arm Ukraine and then cited President Theodore Roosevelt's famous tenet to "speak softly and carry a big stick," an approach that helped establish the US as a global power at the beginning of the 20th century. "What you're doing is talking strongly and carrying a very small stick, in fact, a twig," McCain said.

A Divided Country
 
The conflict over where America is drifting currently counts among the greatest debates being waged in Washington. Conservatives, such as the political scientist Robert Kagan, have been the most vocal. Kagan recently warned of a "collapse of global order" in an essay in the New Republic. It was titled "Superpowers Don't Get to Retire" and argued that only American power can "keep the lid closed on ... Pandora's box." In its most recent issue, Foreign Policy magazine described the "path to national renaissance" and asks: "Have We Hit Peak America?"

The US remains the world's only superpower, but it is also on the search for a new foreign policy identity. It is a country divided, torn between what Kagan calls "world-weariness" and the craving for the powerful role it once played.

Obama is a president of "retrenchment," the word Americans use to describe their retreat from the foreign policy front. Obama didn't bomb Syria, refused to send ground troops back into Iraq and opted not to intervene when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula. "We are no longer in a Cold War. There's no Great Game to be won," Obama said last autumn in a speech to the United Nations. In a more recent address, he said: "Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail." Thus, John Kerry's mission: to construct an effective foreign policy without the help of a hammer.

"The president appreciates Kerry's tireless work ethic and willingness to take diplomatic risks," says Obama's deputy security advisor Ben Rhodes. Such qualities, he continues, are "well-suited to a time when diplomacy has moved to the forefront of our foreign policy."

Hurrying from Crisis to Crisis
 
During his first 12 months in office, Kerry flew more than 300,000 miles across the globe, more than any of his predecessors at the State Department. He made a state visit to China and traveled to Afghanistan to help resolve a dispute over election results. On the weekend of the World Cup final, he flew to Vienna for talks on the Iranian nuclear program and a meeting with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier about the espionage case that has currently been weighing on German-American relations. Soon after, he was in the Middle East in an attempt to stop the fighting.

Kerry is 70 years old. He and his wife Teresa Heinz -- an heir to part of the Heinz Ketchup fortune -- own homes in Boston and Washington D.C. in addition to a property in Pittsburgh and a summer house on Nantucket. Heinz is thought to be worth a half billion dollars. When travelling together, the couple flies in their own Gulfstream and bring along a personal chef. Kerry could easily spend his time sailing with his grandchildren and taking it easy.

Instead, he hurries from one crisis to the next, and his office now only books appointments for him at the last minute. And yet, despite the enormous workload, Kerry seems as though he has found his calling. "I don't know how he does that," says David McKean.

McKean is Kerry's director of policy planning. His office is located on the seventh floor of the State Department building; Roman columns frame the gold gilded elevator. Kerry's offices are to the right, through the security checkpoint while McKean's wing is to the left. The two have known each other since Kerry was a junior prosecutor in Massachusetts and McKean has been working for him since 1987, first as his office manager in the Senate and then in his campaign team.

The Global Missionary
 
Kerry's role is different than that of his predecessor, Hillary Clinton, McKean says. When Clinton became secretary of state in 2009, America's image in the world was at an historical nadir and her mission, McKean says, was that of making amends. Kerry, he continues, can build on that, implementing phase two after the Bush years: the attempt at influencing global politics without military interventions and waterboarding. "Kerry knows in most countries one of the key players, the head of state or the foreign minister," McKean says. "He uses these contacts. As secretary of state, he is the right man at the right time."

Kerry has always seen himself as a kind of global missionary. As a young senator, he flew to Manila to monitor elections there; in Nicaragua, he convinced the Sandinistas to make concessions; later, he investigated the involvement of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega in the drug trade. Kerry is able to convince people with a combination of charm, persistence and experience. He has an anecdote and a hug ready for each of his guests. "He thinks he can make the difference," says Douglas Frantz, one of his undersecretaries of state.

That helps explain Kerry's commitment to mediating between Israel and the Palestinians. Though Obama already failed once in the attempt four years ago, Kerry told SPIEGEL before he set off for his most recent mission to the Middle East that making an effort at mediation is "in our DNA as a country, and it's in our DNA as a friend to Israel." He doesn't regret having tried. "I think everyone also understands that someday, at some point, the parties will return to the peace process because it's the only way to ever achieve any kind of lasting peace and security and stability," Kerry says.

One of Kerry's tactics is to convince his counterparts that America is their closest ally, but since the NSA spying affair, at the latest, that approach hasn't worked particularly well. And when it comes to such entrenched conflicts as that between Israel and the Palestinians, it certainly won't suffice.

One day in May 2013, after speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas about the conditions for an agreement between the two sides, Kerry had a spontaneous idea: He had his delegation stop at a shawarma restaurant in Ramallah. The staff rushed to serve him amid much excitement as Kerry, dressed a dark suit with a strawberry-red tie, ordered a turkey shawarma. "Man, this is good," he exulted as he ate.

The anecdote is a perfect illustration of Kerry's way of approaching people, but the event in Ramallah causes unexpected ripples. Republicans accuse Kerry of having shown too much support of the Palestinians while Israelis say he's portraying himself as a savior. Since then, they have snidely called him the shawarma diplomat.

At the height of last year's peace negotiations, Kerry spoke with his partners in the Middle East almost every day over the phone -- often early in the mornings or late at night from his villa in Georgetown over an encrypted line. But when Kerry was travelling and under time pressure, he sometimes used a normal telephone.

Tapped Phone
 
Several sources in the intelligence community have confirmed to SPIEGEL that a large part of these discussions, which ran over satellite uplinks, were listened in on by at least two intelligence services, including that of the Israelis. The Chinese and the Russians were also probably monitoring the calls. As a result, the Israelis often knew exactly what Kerry had discussed with the other side. Kerry knew the risk, but he wanted results -- and the conversations were more important to him than his security people's concerns. Neither the Israelis nor the State Department would comment on the phone monitoring.

The recordings allowed the Israelis to see through Kerry's diplomatic balancing act. The more time he spent working as an intermediary, the stronger their attacks became. Kerry has an "incomprehensible obsession and a sense of messianism," Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon spat at the beginning of this year. "The only thing that might save us is if John Kerry wins the Nobel Prize and leaves us be."

Effective foreign policy, says Daniel Hamilton of Johns Hopkins University in Washington, involves a savvy combination of "soft power" and "hard power." Bill Clinton, he says, demonstrated this masterfully in the 1990s, but Kerry lives in his plane and spends most of his time trying to solve acute crises. "What he is lacking is a strategic vision. And he is working with a president who is primarily concerned with domestic issues."

Kerry is an old-school secretary of state. He sees America's role as that of a hegemon and global mediator, and sometimes also as that of a global policeman. But Obama has a different view of the world. He doesn't want to intervene everywhere in the world and prefers to focus on problems closer to home.

The Syria crisis has shown their contrasting worldviews in especially stark relief. On a Friday in late August 2013, Kerry made a passionate speech against Syria's use of chemical weapons in State Department. He said that he knows Americans are tired of war, but "fatigue does not absolve us of our responsibility." It's about keeping a promise, he said, that the "most heinous weapons must never again be used against the world's most vulnerable people." They were the words of a field marshal; it sounded as if Kerry had just given the order to fire off a salvo of mid-range missiles.

Deep Disappointment
 
That evening, Obama invited his advisors into the Oval Office and told them that no air strikes would take place without Congressional approval, thus taking the military option off the table. The announcement made Kerry look bad. And Obama didn't consult Kerry in reaching his verdict; he merely informed him of his decision. Even so, Kerry defended Obama's position afterwards as if it had been his own.

According to Obama advisor Ben Rhodes, the two men have a "close relationship" but for observers, it is obvious that is not a friendship. The two have, however, known each other for a long time. Indeed, one could even say Kerry discovered Obama. When Kerry was running for president 10 years ago, he asked the then widely unknown Democratic politician from Illinois to speak at the Democratic National Convention. The appearance made Barack Obama world famous, while Kerry's election loss that year was extremely difficult for him. To describe it as "deeply disappointing is an understatement," David McKean says.

Although Obama thanked Kerry for the opportunity to speak at the convention, he made Hillary Clinton his first secretary of state and had hoped to replace her with Susan Rice. Kerry only got the job because Rice made misleading statements about the attack on the American consulate in Libya in 2012, making herself politically untenable.

The relationship between the two men can be summed up in an encounter that took place in October 2012. It was the height of the presidential election campaign and Obama wanted Kerry to help him practice for a crucial debate. Kerry was supposed to play Mitt Romney, Obama's Republican rival, in a practice duel at a hotel in Virginia. Obama's advisors had asked Kerry to annoy Obama as much as possible while he spoke.

Kerry argued shrewdly, pushed the president around and cut in so many times that Obama snarled that he didn't constantly want to be interrupted. Ultimately Obama stood up and left the room, making it clear that he thought Kerry's behavior was insolent. Kerry serves a function for Obama, but he isn't part of the president's inner circle.

Because of the crisis in the Middle East, Kerry didn't have the time to meet with SPIEGEL, but offered to answer questions in writing. One of them was about whether a world could exist in which another power, like China, took over America's role.

'More Engaged, Not Less'
 
"Never," the secretary of state answered, "and no one contemplates the United States doing anything but leading." He compared the current situation to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union, saying: "Back then, a lot of people thought America should just take its peace divvidend and pull back from the world." But it was a moment, he argues, that required America's leadership. The current situation, he believes, is very similar -- a time in which the world is "extraordinarily complicated" and that the US "must be more engaged, not less."

Has the renunciation of military force lessened America's international influence? Kerry rejects the premise: The US still uses force as a threat, he argues, pointing to the Syrian chemical-weapons agreement and the bombardment of Libya to save Libyans from being killed by the regime as examples.

American politics are like a Hollywood film: History is written based on results, there is always a winner and a loser. If Kerry is able to reach an agreement with Iran or broker a deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians, he will be considered by history to be a hero. But if he doesn't accomplish anything, then he may become a symbol of the US's political decline. It's possible that the great era of American dominance has come to an end, and that a new geopolitical chapter will begin -- a possibility that even the conservatives fear.

During Kerry's appearance before the Foreign Affairs Committee, he was questioned by the Republicans for an hour, but remained unruffled. In the end he turned to the right and looked directly at John McCain. The two of them have known each other for 30 years, both men have fought in Vietnam and both have run for, and failed to win, the presidency.

"Your friend Teddy Roosevelt," Kerry said to McCain, "also said the credit belongs to the people who are in the arena trying to get things done."

Climate Change & Wildfires Explained in Less Than Three Minutes

President Obama's Science Advisor, Dr. John Holdren, explains in less than three minutes how the growing number of intense wildfires are linked in part, to climate change. Learn more at http://wh.gov/climate-change

President Obama Makes a Statement on Iraq

 

State Dining Room

THE PRESIDENT:  Good evening.  Today I authorized two operations in Iraq -- targeted airstrikes to protect our American personnel, and a humanitarian effort to help save thousands of Iraqi civilians who are trapped on a mountain without food and water and facing almost certain death.  Let me explain the actions we’re taking and why.    

First, I said in June -- as the terrorist group ISIL began an advance across Iraq -- that the United States would be prepared to take targeted military action in Iraq if and when we determined that the situation required it.  In recent days, these terrorists have continued to move across Iraq, and have neared the city of Erbil, where American diplomats and civilians serve at our consulate and American military personnel advise Iraqi forces. 

To stop the advance on Erbil, I’ve directed our military to take targeted strikes against ISIL terrorist convoys should they move toward the city.  We intend to stay vigilant, and take action if these terrorist forces threaten our personnel or facilities anywhere in Iraq, including our consulate in Erbil and our embassy in Baghdad.  We’re also providing urgent assistance to Iraqi government and Kurdish forces so they can more effectively wage the fight against ISIL.

Second, at the request of the Iraqi government -- we’ve begun operations to help save Iraqi civilians stranded on the mountain.  As ISIL has marched across Iraq, it has waged a ruthless campaign against innocent Iraqis.  And these terrorists have been especially barbaric towards religious minorities, including Christian and Yezidis, a small and ancient religious sect.  Countless Iraqis have been displaced.  And chilling reports describe ISIL militants rounding up families, conducting mass executions, and enslaving Yezidi women. 

In recent days, Yezidi women, men and children from the area of Sinjar have fled for their lives.  And thousands -- perhaps tens of thousands -- are now hiding high up on the mountain, with little but the clothes on their backs.  They’re without food, they’re without water.  People are starving.  And children are dying of thirst.  Meanwhile, ISIL forces below have called for the systematic destruction of the entire Yezidi people, which would constitute genocide.  So these innocent families are faced with a horrible choice:  descend the mountain and be slaughtered, or stay and slowly die of thirst and hunger.

I’ve said before, the United States cannot and should not intervene every time there’s a crisis in the world.  So let me be clear about why we must act, and act now.  When we face a situation like we do on that mountain -- with innocent people facing the prospect of violence on a horrific scale, when we have a mandate to help -- in this case, a request from the Iraqi government -- and when we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, then I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye.  We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide.  That’s what we’re doing on that mountain.

I’ve, therefore, authorized targeted airstrikes, if necessary, to help forces in Iraq as they fight to break the siege of Mount Sinjar and protect the civilians trapped there.  Already, American aircraft have begun conducting humanitarian airdrops of food and water to help these desperate men, women and children survive.  Earlier this week, one Iraqi in the area cried to the world, “There is no one coming to help.”  Well today, America is coming to help.  We’re also consulting with other countries -- and the United Nations -- who have called for action to address this humanitarian crisis. 

I know that many of you are rightly concerned about any American military action in Iraq, even limited strikes like these.  I understand that.  I ran for this office in part to end our war in Iraq and welcome our troops home, and that’s what we’ve done.  As Commander-in-Chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq.  And so even as we support Iraqis as they take the fight to these terrorists, American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq, because there’s no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq.  The only lasting solution is reconciliation among Iraqi communities and stronger Iraqi security forces. 

However, we can and should support moderate forces who can bring stability to Iraq.  So even as we carry out these two missions, we will continue to pursue a broader strategy that empowers Iraqis to confront this crisis.  Iraqi leaders need to come together and forge a new government that represents the legitimate interests of all Iraqis, and that can fight back against the threats like ISIL.  Iraqis have named a new President, a new Speaker of Parliament, and are seeking consensus on a new Prime Minister.  This is the progress that needs to continue in order to reverse the momentum of the terrorists who prey on Iraq’s divisions.

Once Iraq has a new government, the United States will work with it and other countries in the region to provide increased support to deal with this humanitarian crisis and counterterrorism challenge.  None of Iraq’s neighbors have an interest in this terrible suffering or instability.

And so we’ll continue to work with our friends and allies to help refugees get the shelter and food and water they so desperately need, and to help Iraqis push back against ISIL.  The several hundred American advisors that I ordered to Iraq will continue to assess what more we can do to help train, advise and support Iraqi forces going forward.  And just as I consulted Congress on the decisions I made today, we will continue to do so going forward.

My fellow Americans, the world is confronted by many challenges.  And while America has never been able to right every wrong, America has made the world a more secure and prosperous place.  And our leadership is necessary to underwrite the global security and prosperity that our children and our grandchildren will depend upon.  We do so by adhering to a set of core principles.  We do whatever is necessary to protect our people.  We support our allies when they’re in danger.  We lead coalitions of countries to uphold international norms.  And we strive to stay true to the fundamental values -- the desire to live with basic freedom and dignity -- that is common to human beings wherever they are.  That’s why people all over the world look to the United States of America to lead.  And that’s why we do it.

So let me close by assuring you that there is no decision that I take more seriously than the use of military force.  Over the last several years, we have brought the vast majority of our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.  And I’ve been careful to resist calls to turn time and again to our military, because America has other tools in our arsenal than our military.  We can also lead with the power of our diplomacy, our economy, and our ideals.

But when the lives of American citizens are at risk, we will take action.  That’s my responsibility as Commander-in-Chief.  And when many thousands of innocent civilians are faced with the danger of being wiped out, and we have the capacity to do something about it, we will take action.  That is our responsibility as Americans.  That’s a hallmark of American leadership.  That’s who we are.

So tonight, we give thanks to our men and women in uniform  -— especially our brave pilots and crews over Iraq who are protecting our fellow Americans and saving the lives of so many men, women and children that they will never meet.  They represent American leadership at its best.  As a nation, we should be proud of them, and of our country’s enduring commitment to uphold our own security and the dignity of our fellow human beings.

God bless our Armed Forces, and God bless the United States of America.

Gaza Crisis: 'The Real Danger to Israel Comes from Within'

Interview Conducted by Julia Amalia Heyer

Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, but left behind death and destruction. Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz tells SPIEGEL that her country is gripped by fear and is becoming increasingly suspicious of democracy.

SPIEGEL: There was widespread support in Israel for the operation in the Gaza Strip, despite the huge numbers of civilian casualties and the deaths of hundreds of children. Why is that?

 Illouz: Where you see human beings, Israelis see enemies. In front of enemies, you close ranks, you unite in fear for your life, and you do not ponder about the fragility of the other. Israel has a split, schizophrenic self-awareness: It cultivates its strength and yet cannot stop seeing itself as weak and threatened. Moreover, both the fact that Hamas holds a radical Islamist and anti-Semitic ideology and the fact that there is rabid anti-Arab racism in Israel explain why Israelis see Gaza as a bastion of potential or real terrorists. It is difficult to have compassion for a population seen as as threatening the heart of your society.

SPIEGEL: Is that also a function of the fact that Israeli society has become increasingly militaristic?

Illouz: Israel is a colonial military power, a militarized society and a democracy all folded into one. The army, for example, controls the Palestinians through a wide network of colonial tools, such as checkpoints, military courts (governed by a legal system different from the Israeli system), the arbitrary granting of work permits, house demolitions and economic sanctions. It is a militarized civil society because almost every family has a father, son or brother in the army and because the military plays an enormous role in the ordinary mentality of ordinary Israelis and is crucial in both political decisions and in the public sphere. In fact, I would say that "security" is the paramount concept guiding Israeli society and politics. But it is also a democracy, which grants rights to gays and makes it possible for a citizen to sue the state.

SPIEGEL: Still, many would say that Israel has gone too far in this war with Hamas.

About Eva Illouz

 Eva Illouz, 53, was born in Morocco and grew up in Sarcelles, near Paris. She is a professor of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She researches the relationship between emotions, economy and communication and has written several books including "Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation," which was published in English last year. Illouz also regularly writes essays and columns exploring the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its consequences for Israeli society.

 Illouz: I think Israelis have lost what we can call a "humanitarian sensibility," the capacity to identify with the suffering of a distant other. In Israel, there has been a change in perception of the "Palestinian other." The Palestinian has become a true enemy in the perception of Israelis, in the sense that "they are there" and "we are here." They ceased having a face and even a name.

SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for the shift?

Illouz: Israelis and Palestinians used to be mixed. They worked as construction workers and as cheap, underpaid labor. Then the wall was built. Then the road blocks came, which hampered the Palestinians' freedom of movement. The massive reduction in work permits followed. And in a few years Palestinians disappeared from Israeli society. The Second Intifada put the nail in that coffin, so to speak. The nature of Israeli leadership has also changed. The messianic right has progressively gained power in Israel. It used to be marginal and illegitimate; it is now increasingly mainstream. This radical right sits in Parliament, controls budgets and has changed the nature of discourse. Many Israelis do not understand the radical nature of the right in Israel. It successfully disguises itself as "patriotic" or "Jewish."

SPIEGEL: Why is the right so strong at the moment even though there are far fewer terror attacks in Israel than there used to be?

Illouz: Entire generations have been raised with the territories, with Israel being a colonial power. They do not know anything else. You have the settlements which are highly ideological. They expanded and entered Israeli mainstream political life. Settlements were strengthened by systematic government policies: They got tax breaks; they had soldiers to protect them; they built roads and infrastructure which are much better than those inside the country. There are entire segments of the population that have never met a secular person and have been educated religiously. Some of these religious segments are also very nationalist. The reality we are faced with in Israel is that we must choose between liberalism and Jewishness, and if we choose Jewishness, we are condemned to become a religious Sparta which will not be sustainable. Whereas in the 1960s, you could be both socialist and Zionist, today it is not possible because of the policies and identity of Israel. Then you have the role which Jews who live outside Israel play in Israel. Many of these Jews have very right-wing views and contribute money to newspapers, think tanks and religious institutions inside Israel. Let's face it: the right has been more systematic and more mobilized, both inside and outside Israel.

SPIEGEL: Do Jews in the Diaspora see Israel differently than do Jews in Israel?

Illouz: Diaspora Jews have been shaped by the memory of the Shoah. They often live in societies in which their own democratic rights are guaranteed. Sometimes they are under the assault of anti-Semitism and thus feel an urge to reinforce Jewish identity. They do not understand the distress of Israelis who see democracy progressively eaten away by dark forces. Today, Diaspora Jews and Jews in Israel do not have the same interests anymore.

SPIEGEL: What will happen if democratic principles continue to erode?

Illouz: One or two years ago, the newspaper Haaretz conducted a poll which found that 40 percent of the people said they were considering leaving Israel. I don't know the actual numbers, but I have never heard as much alienation from Israel as during this period. The people who live in secular Tel Aviv have much less in common with their religious counterparts in Jerusalem than they do with people living in Berlin.

SPIEGEL: You describe a fearful, anxious country.

Illouz: Fear is deeply engrained in Israeli society. Fear of the Shoah, fear of anti-Semitism, fear of Islam, fear of Europeans, fear of terror, fear of extermination. You name it. And fear generates a very particular type of thinking, which I would call "catastrophalist." You always think about the worst case scenario, not about a normal course of events. In catastrophalist scenarios, you become allowed to breach many more moral norms than if you imagined a normal course of events.

SPIEGEL: This differing perception of threats and conflict is problematic. Whereas Israel sees itself as the victim, the rest of the world is increasingly seeing the country as a violent occupying power.

Illouz: Imagine that you were a girl raised by a very brutal father. You would develop a "healthy" suspicion of men and would become very cautious. If you were to live for a time in an environment of good and nurturing men, your suspicions would relax. But if you lived in an environment in which some men were very brutal and some were not, your healthy suspicion would turn into an obsessive incapacity to differentiate between different types of men, the brutal and the caring. That is the historical trauma of the consciousness that Jews live with. The Israeli psyche has become incapable of making these distinctions.

SPIEGEL: Does this fear justify the kind of brutal violence that has been visited upon the civilian population in the Gaza Strip?

Illouz: Of course it doesn't. I'm only saying that fear is central to the Israeli psyche. These fears are cynically used by leaders like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He makes Israelis believe that they all want to destroy us. Hamas wants to destroy us, the UN wants to destroy us, al-Qaida and Iran want to destroy us. ISIS wants to destroy us. The European anti-Semites want to destroy us. This is basically the filter through which a conflict with Hamas is interpreted by the ordinary Israeli. Another dimension of this prism is that "they" are not human beings. Palestinians are dehumanized because they put their soldiers amongst civilians, send their children to fight, spend and waste their money on building deadly tunnels rather than on building up their own society. Along with the dehumanization of the other, Israelis have a strong sense of their own moral superiority. "We ask people to get out of their houses; we call them on the phone to make sure civilians are evacuated. We behave humanly," the Israeli thinks. An army with good manners.

SPIEGEL: And nevertheless, civilians have been the primary victims, with schools, housing complexes and hospitals being bombed.

Illouz: Yes, despite this, many Israelis still hold on the view they are morally superior. They judge by the intention, whereas the world judges by the consequences.

SPIEGEL: Still, an enormous wave of hatred has become visible in Israel in recent weeks. And it's not only directed at the Palestinians, but also at segments of Israeli society.

Illouz: Some basic norms of speech have been breached by some rabbis and Knesset members, who feel no qualms expressing hatred for Arabs in ways that provide legitimation to hatred. This is very worrisome. It happened because entire generations have been raised believing in religious and ultra-nationalist views. I don't think that there is more hatred in Israel than in some racist pockets of German or French society. But when some Palestinians recently sang in the streets of Paris "Death to the Jews," the reaction of the government of Prime Minister Manuel Valls was swift and clear. The authorities sent a strong message that there are forms of speech and forms of belief that are inadmissible. What is lacking in Israeli society is that kind of very strong moral normative claim coming from its leaders.

SPIEGEL: How do you explain this paradox -- the hate on the one hand and Israel's emphasis on its liberal values on the other?

Illouz: Israel started as a modern nation. It derived its legitimacy from the fact that it had democratic institutions. But it was also building highly anti-modern institutions in wanting to create a Jewish democracy by giving power to rabbis, in creating deep ethnic inequalities between different ethnic groups such Jews of Arab countries vs. Jews of European descent; Arabs vs. Jews; Jews vs. non-Jews. It thus blocked universalist thinking.

SPIEGEL: Would you say that the Jewish character of the country has subsumed the democratic character?

Illouz: Yes, definitely. We are at the point where it has become clear that Jewishness has hijacked democracy and its contents. It happened increasingly when the school curriculum started getting changed and emphasizing more Jewish content and less universal content; when the Ministry of the Interior expelled foreign workers because Shas party members were afraid non-Jews would inter-marry with Jews; when human rights are thought of as being left-wing only because human rights presuppose that Jews and non-Jews are equal.

SPIEGEL: That doesn't sound particularly encouraging.

Illouz: The only response is to create a vast camp of people who defend democracy. The right-left divide is no longer important. There is something more urgent right now: the defense of democracy. The voice of the extreme right is much louder and clearer than it was before. That's what's new: a racist right that is not ashamed of itself, that persecutes dissenters and even people who dare express compassion for the other side. The real danger to Israel and its sustainability comes from within. The fascist and racist elements are no less a security threat than the outside enemies.

SPIEGEL: Israeli enemies have also accused the country of no longer being democratic. Does that bother you?

Illouz: With all my critique and occasional disgust at Israeli arrogance, I am also puzzled that Israel is indeed singled out. Look at what happens in Syria or in Nigeria or Iraq. Why isn't the world demonstrating in the streets in the same way it is doing for Israel? America has also a shocking record outside its own borders. Where are the intellectuals who are going to boycott America? Where are they?

SPIEGEL: Do you support the military operation in the Gaza Strip?

Illouz: No, I don't. I'm not a pacifist in the sense that I do not think that military operations are always wrong. But I'm not in favor of this operation because there was no political process beforehand. Netanyahu gave such obvious sings that he was not interested in a political process. Instead, Netanyahu constantly undermined Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. I refuse categorically the idea that our only relationship with the Palestinians is a military one. We are in a march of folly. There is an increasingly large group of people who really think that they can subdue the Palestinian population and sustain a regime where Israel keeps dominating them.

 SPIEGEL: Is that not the consequence of 47 years of occupation, this feeling of not having to make any more concessions?

Illouz: Israelis pay a price, but we are not really aware of it. We don't know how it feels to live in a peaceful society, devoted exclusively to culture, education and improving the living conditions of everyone. People don't make a connection between the bad living conditions they have and the amount of resources invested in the settlements and in the army. In psychology, they call it dissociation. Israeli society has become very insensitive. Not only to the suffering of others, but also to its own suffering.

Francis and the Nuns

Is the new Vatican all talk?

By Mary Gordon

Source: Harper’s Magazine

A year ago this month, Pope Francis gave a long interview to Antonio Spadaro, the editor in chief of an Italian Jesuit journal called La Civiltà Cattolica. Francis was just a few months into his papacy at the time, and the interview — published simultaneously by more than a dozen Jesuit outlets — was for many people around the world their introduction to the first Latin-American pontiff. The interview is long and complex, but a few words were quoted everywhere. “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods,” Francis told Spadaro. “When we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the Church . . . is clear and I am a son of the Church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.” 

This may not sound like much — it was, after all, a shift in emphasis, not in doctrine — but coupled with subsequent statements about the evil of inequality, the pope’s words suggested the possibility of a new era for the Church, one in which economic justice would take precedence over divisive social issues. Perhaps the most important change was tonal: the punitive, absolutist cadences of John Paul II and Benedict XVI had been replaced by gentle, openhearted language. Progressives both in the Church and outside it celebrated the development. Suddenly, the world had a new apostolic heartthrob: Francis was Time magazine’s Person of the Year and the cover boy for Rolling Stone.

Wiretapped: Israel Eavesdropped on John Kerry in Mideast Talks

New information indicates that Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on telephone conversations by US Secretary of State John Kerry. Sources told SPIEGEL the government then used the information obtained from the calls during negotiations in the Mideast conflict.

SPIEGEL has learned from reliable sources that Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on US Secretary of State John Kerry during Middle East peace negotiations. In addition to the Israelis, at least one other intelligence service also listened in as Kerry mediated last year between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states, several intelligence service sources told SPIEGEL. Revelations of the eavesdropping could further damage already tense relations between the US government and Israel.

During the peak stage of peace talks last year, Kerry spoke regularly with high-ranking negotiating partners in the Middle East. At the time, some of these calls were not made on encrypted equipment, but instead on normal telephones, with the conversations transmitted by satellite. Intelligence agencies intercepted some of those calls. The government in Jerusalem then used the information obtained in international negotiations aiming to reach a diplomatic solution in the Middle East.
In the current Gaza conflict, the Israelis have massively criticized Kerry, with a few ministers indirectly calling on him to withdraw from peace talks. Both the US State Department and the Israeli authorities declined to comment.

Only one week ago, Kerry flew to Israel to mediate between the conflict parties, but the Israelis brusquely rejected a draft proposal for a cease-fire. The plan reportedly didn't include any language demanding that Hamas abandon its rocket arsenal and destroy its tunnel system. Last year, Kerry undertook intensive diplomatic efforts to seek a solution in the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but they ultimately failed. Since those talks, relations between Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been tense.

Still, there are no doubts about fundamental support for Israel on the part of the United States. On Friday, the US Congress voted to help fund Israel's "Iron Dome" missile defense system to the tune of $225 million (around €168 million).

President Barack Obama Weekly Address August 2, 2014 (Video/Trascript )

President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
August 2, 2014

Hi, everybody.  My top priority as President is doing everything I can to create more jobs and more opportunities for hardworking families to get ahead. 

On Friday, we learned that our economy created over 200,000 new jobs in July.  That’s on top of about 300,000 new jobs in June.  We’re now in a six-month streak with at least 200,000 new jobs each month.  That hasn’t happened since 1997.  All told, our businesses have created 9.9 million jobs over the past 53 months.  That’s the longest streak of private-sector job creation in our history. 

Because of you – because of your hard work and determination – America has recovered faster and come farther than almost any other advanced country on Earth.  The economy is clearly getting stronger.  Things are clearly getting better.  And the decisions we make now can keep things moving in that direction. 

That’s what’s at stake right now.  Making sure our economy works for every working American.  Making sure that people who work hard can get ahead.  That’s why I’ve been pushing for common-sense ideas like rebuilding our infrastructure in a way that supports millions of good jobs and helps our businesses compete.  Raising the minimum wage.  Making it easier for working folks to pay off their student loans.  That’s why I’ve been pushing for fair pay and paid leave. 

These policies have two things in common.  All of them would help working families feel more stable and secure.  And all of them have been blocked or ignored by Republicans in Congress.

That’s why my administration keeps taking what actions we can on our own to help working families – because Congress is doing so little for working families.  House Republicans actually got together this week and voted to sue me for taking actions on my own.  And then they left town for the month without settling a bunch of unfinished business that matters to working families across America.

The bottom line is this – we’ve come a long way these past five and a half years.  Our challenges are nowhere near as daunting as they were back then.  But imagine how much farther along our economy would be – how much stronger our country would be – if Congress would do its job. 

I’ll never stop trying to work with both parties to get things moving faster for the middle class.  And I could use your help.  If you see your Member of Congress around home this month, tell him or her what’s on your mind.  Ask them why they haven’t passed bills to raise the minimum wage or help with student loans or enact fair pay for women.

And when they return from vacation next month, instead of trying to pass partisan bills on party lines, hopefully we can come together with the sense of common purpose that you expect.  And in the meantime, I will never stop doing whatever I can, whenever I can, not only to make sure that our economy succeeds, but that people like you succeed. 

Thanks, and have a great weekend.

'I'm not a spy:' Reporters reveal surveillance fears

By Hamish Boland-Rudder

Source: The Center for Public Integrity

U.S. government surveillance programs are scaring away sources, making journalists feel like criminals and spies, and impacting the public’s access to quality news reporting, according to a new report released today.

The 130-page With Liberty to Monitor All report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union was based on 92 interviews with journalists, lawyers, and former and current U.S. government officials, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Within the context of recent revelations of widespread surveillance by US authorities, including by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the report seeks to document how government spying has affected not just the work of journalists and lawyers, but also the subsequent impact on the public’s access to information.

While far from scientific, the report’s recurring theme is one of growing difficulty for journalists trying to cultivate and protect sources, and develop stories that involve sensitive or controversial government issues. Of the 46 journalists interviewed, many spoke of the time-consuming and arduous measures they have had to go to in recent times to ensure their work and their sources were not compromised – interestingly, much of it involved a delicate balance between using special technology, such as encryption, and abandoning technology altogether.

“Journalists told us that officials are substantially less willing to be in contact with the press, even with regard to unclassified matters or personal opinions, than they were even a few years ago,” the report said.

“In turn, journalists increasingly feel the need to adopt elaborate steps to protect sources and information, and eliminate any digital trail of their investigations—from using high-end encryption, to resorting to burner phones [discarded after a short period of time], to abandoning all online communication and trying exclusively to meet sources in person.”

The journalists also said the additional security measures were not only a burden that made reporting take longer, but also sometimes threatened to scare sources away.

“In many instances, for encryption to work, both the journalist and the source must have some facility with the same encryption tool. Some journalists expressed doubts about their own ability to master encryption and related technologies,” the report said.

“Others noted that many would-be sources lack the technical savvy to approach journalists safely, and even that using encrypted methods of communication with typical sources—as opposed to sources who already prefer to use encryption—might ‘spook’ them.”

“They’re going to feel like they’re doing something wrong,” said investigative journalist Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, in her interview for the report. “Your source has to be really committed [to bother with advanced security measures].”
Most journalists also expressed doubts about how effective their security measures were in the first place. Some did not believe encryption offered ironclad protection, and many indicated that journalists were simply not equipped or trained to adequately cover their tracks against the reach of authorities like the NSA or other intelligence services.

“I don’t want the government to force me to act like a spy. I’m not a spy; I’m a journalist,” Washington Post reporter Adam Goldman told the report’s authors. “What are we supposed to do? Use multiple burners? No email? Dead drops? I don’t want to do my job that way. You can’t be a journalist and do your job that way.”

Government officials interviewed countered journalists’ concerns that increased surveillance was making it more difficult to work or receive material from whistleblowers, pointing to stories like the NSA revelations from Edward Snowden as proof that a culture of leaking is alive and well.

But the report details a number of deterrents put in place by the government to discourage leaks, including over-classification of documents, limiting officials’ contact with media, and the “Insider Threat Program” which calls on government employees to be alert to colleagues who may be leaking state secrets.

It also points out that the risk of prosecution for whistleblowers has never been higher.

“It is not lost on us, or on our sources, that there have been eight criminal cases against sources [under the current administration] versus three before [under all previous administrations combined],” said Charlie Savage, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times.

Ultimately, the report argues that increased surveillance and government crackdown on officials speaking with and leaking to media will have a negative impact on “news coverage, public accountability, and the quality of democratic debate.”

“The US government has an obligation to defend national security, yet many of its surveillance practices go well beyond what may be justified as necessary and proportionate to that aim. Instead, these practices are undermining fundamental rights and risk changing the nature of US democracy itself,” the report said. “The net result is a less informed public.”

President Barack Obama Weekly Address July 26, 2014 (Video/Trascript )

President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
July 26, 2014

Hi, everybody.  Our businesses have now added nearly 10 million new jobs over the past 52 months.  The unemployment rate is at its lowest point since September 2008 – the fastest one-year drop in nearly 30 years.  401(k)s are growing, fewer homes are underwater, and for the first time in more than a decade, business leaders around the world have declared that the world’s number one place to invest isn’t China; it’s the United States of America – and our lead is growing.

None of this is an accident.  It’s thanks to the resilience and resolve of the American people that our country has recovered faster and come farther than almost any other advanced nation on Earth.

But there’s another trend that threatens to undermine the progress you’ve helped make.  Even as corporate profits are as high as ever, a small but growing group of big corporations are fleeing the country to get out of paying taxes.  They’re keeping most of their business inside the United States, but they’re basically renouncing their citizenship and declaring that they’re based somewhere else, just to avoid paying their fair share.

I want to be clear: this is only a few big corporations so far.  The vast majority of American businesses pay their taxes right here in the United States.  But when some companies cherrypick their taxes, it damages the country’s finances.  It adds to the deficit.  It makes it harder to invest in the things that will keep America strong, and it sticks you with the tab for what they stash offshore.  Right now, a loophole in our tax laws makes this totally legal – and I think that’s totally wrong.  You don’t get to pick which rules you play by, or which tax rate you pay, and neither should these companies. 

The best way to level the playing field is through tax reform that lowers the corporate tax rate, closes wasteful loopholes, and simplifies the tax code for everybody.  But stopping companies from renouncing their citizenship just to get out of paying their fair share of taxes is something that cannot wait.  That’s why, in my budget earlier this year, I proposed closing this unpatriotic tax loophole for good.  Democrats in Congress have advanced proposals that would do the same thing.  A couple Republicans have indicated they want to address this too, and I hope more join us. 

Rather than double-down on the top-down economics that let a fortunate few play by their own rules, let’s embrace an economic patriotism that says we rise or fall together, as one nation, and as one people.  Let’s reward the hard work of ordinary Americans who play by the rules.  Together, we can build up our middle class, hand down something better to our kids, and restore the American Dream for all who work for it and study for it and strive for it.

Thanks, and have a great weekend.

President Barack Obama Weekly Address July 19, 2014 (Video/Trascript )

President Barack Obama

Weekly Address

The White House

Hi, everybody.  Over the past 52 months, our businesses have created nearly 10 million new jobs.  The unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest point since 2008.  Across lots of areas – energy, manufacturing, technology – our businesses and workers are leading again.  In fact, for the first time in over a decade, business leaders worldwide have declared that China is no longer the world’s best place to invest – America is.

None of this is an accident.  It’s thanks to your resilience, resolve, and hard work that America has recovered faster and come farther than almost any other advanced country on Earth.

Now we have the opportunity to ensure that this growth is broadly shared.  Our economy grows best not from the top-down, but from the middle-out.  We do better when the middle class does better.  So we have to make sure that we’re not just creating more jobs, but raising middle-class wages and incomes.  We have to make sure our economy works for every working American.

My opportunity agenda does that.  It’s built on creating more jobs, training more workers, educating all our kids, and making sure your hard work pays off with higher wages and better benefits.

On Thursday, I traveled to Delaware to highlight how we’re trying to create more good, middle-class jobs rebuilding America: rebuilding roads and bridges, ports and airports, high-speed rail and internet.

This week, Vice President Biden will release a report he’s been working on to reform our job training system into a job-driven training system.  And I’ll visit a community college in L.A. that’s retraining workers for careers in the fast-growing health care sector. Because every worker deserves to know that if you lose your job, your country will help you train for an even better one.

In recent days, both parties in Congress have taken some good steps in these areas.  But we can do so much more for the middle class, and for folks working to join the middle class.  We should raise the minimum wage so that no one who works full-time has to live in poverty.  We should fight for fair pay and paid family leave.  We should pass commonsense immigration reform that strengthens our borders and our businesses, and includes a chance for long-time residents to earn their citizenship.

I want to work with Democrats and Republicans on all of these priorities.  But I will do whatever I can, whenever I can, to help families like yours.  Because nothing's  more important to me than you -- your hopes, your concerns, and making sure this country remains the place where everyone who works hard can make it if you try.  Thanks so much, and have a great weekend.

Karima Bennoune: When people of Muslim heritage challenge fundamentalism

Source: TED 

Karima Bennoune shares four powerful stories of real people fighting against fundamentalism in their own communities — refusing to allow the faith they love to become a tool for crime, attacks and murder. These personal stories humanize one of the most overlooked human-rights struggles in the world. 

Could I protect my father from the Armed Islamic Group with a paring knife? That was the question I faced one Tuesday morning in June of 1993, when I was a law student.

I woke up early that morning in Dad's apartment on the outskirts of Algiers, Algeria, to an unrelenting pounding on the front door. It was a season as described by a local paper when every Tuesday a scholar fell to the bullets of fundamentalist assassins. My father's university teaching of Darwin had already provoked a classroom visit from the head of the so-called Islamic Salvation Front, who denounced Dad as an advocate of biologism before Dad had ejected the man, and now whoever was outside would neither identify himself nor go away. So my father tried to get the police on the phone, but perhaps terrified by the rising tide of armed extremism that had already claimed the lives of so many Algerian officers, they didn't even answer. And that was when I went to the kitchen, got out a paring knife, and took up a position inside the entryway. It was a ridiculous thing to do, really, but I couldn't think of anything else, and so there I stood.

When I look back now, I think that that was the moment that set me on the path was to writing a book called "Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism." The title comes from a Pakistani play. I think it was actually that moment that sent me on the journey to interview 300 people of Muslim heritage from nearly 30 countries, from Afghanistan to Mali, to find out how they fought fundamentalism peacefully like my father did, and how they coped with the attendant risks.

Luckily, back in June of 1993, our unidentified visitor went away, but other families were so much less lucky, and that was the thought that motivated my research. In any case, someone would return a few months later and leave a note on Dad's kitchen table, which simply said, "Consider yourself dead." Subsequently, Algeria's fundamentalist armed groups would murder as many as 200,000 civilians in what came to be known as the dark decade of the 1990s, including every single one of the women that you see here. In its harsh counterterrorist response, the state resorted to torture and to forced disappearances, and as terrible as all of these events became, the international community largely ignored them. Finally, my father, an Algerian peasant's son turned professor, was forced to stop teaching at the university and to flee his apartment, but what I will never forget about Mahfoud Bennoune, my dad, was that like so many other Algerian intellectuals, he refused to leave the country and he continued to publish pointed criticisms, both of the fundamentalists and sometimes of the government they battled. For example, in a November 1994 series in the newspaper El Watan entitled "How Fundamentalism Produced a Terrorism without Precedent," he denounced what he called the terrorists' radical break with the true Islam as it was lived by our ancestors. These were words that could get you killed.

My father's country taught me in that dark decade of the 1990s that the popular struggle against Muslim fundamentalism is one of the most important and overlooked human rights struggles in the world. This remains true today, nearly 20 years later. You see, in every country where you hear about armed jihadis targeting civilians, there are also unarmed people defying those militants that you don't hear about, and those people need our support to succeed.

In the West, it's often assumed that Muslims generally condone terrorism. Some on the right think this because they view Muslim culture as inherently violent, and some on the left imagine this because they view Muslim violence, fundamentalist violence, solely as a product of legitimate grievances. But both views are dead wrong. In fact, many people of Muslim heritage around the world are staunch opponents both of fundamentalism and of terrorism, and often for very good reason. You see, they're much more likely to be victims of this violence than its perpetrators. Let me just give you one example. According to a 2009 survey of Arabic language media resources, between 2004 and 2008, no more than 15 percent of al Qaeda's victims were Westerners. That's a terrible toll, but the vast majority were people of Muslim heritage, killed by Muslim fundamentalists.

Now I've been talking for the last five minutes about fundamentalism, and you have a right to know exactly what I mean. I cite the definition given by the Algerian sociologist Marieme Helie Lucas, and she says that fundamentalisms, note the "s," so within all of the world's great religious traditions, "fundamentalisms are political movements of the extreme right which in a context of globalization manipulate religion in order to achieve their political aims." Sadia Abbas has called this the radical politicization of theology. Now I want to avoid projecting the notion that there's sort of a monolith out there called Muslim fundamentalism that is the same everywhere, because these movements also have their diversities. Some use and advocate violence. Some do not, though they're often interrelated. They take different forms. Some may be non-governmental organizations, even here in Britain like Cageprisoners. Some may become political parties, like the Muslim Brotherhood, and some may be openly armed groups like the Taliban. But in any case, these are all radical projects. They're not conservative or traditional approaches. They're most often about changing people's relationship with Islam rather than preserving it. What I am talking about is the Muslim extreme right, and the fact that its adherents are or purport to be Muslim makes them no less offensive than the extreme right anywhere else. So in my view, if we consider ourselves liberal or left-wing, human rights-loving or feminist, we must oppose these movements and support their grassroots opponents. Now let me be clear that I support an effective struggle against fundamentalism, but also a struggle that must itself respect international law, so nothing I am saying should be taken as a justification for refusals to democratize, and here I send out a shout-out of support to the pro-democracy movement in Algeria today, Barakat. Nor should anything I say be taken as a justification of violations of human rights, like the mass death sentences handed out in Egypt earlier this week. But what I am saying is that we must challenge these Muslim fundamentalist movements because they threaten human rights across Muslim-majority contexts, and they do this in a range of ways, most obviously with the direct attacks on civilians by the armed groups that carry those out. But that violence is just the tip of the iceberg. These movements as a whole purvey discrimination against religious minorities and sexual minorities. They seek to curtail the freedom of religion of everyone who either practices in a different way or chooses not to practice. And most definingly, they lead an all-out war on the rights of women.

Now, faced with these movements in recent years, Western discourse has most often offered two flawed responses. The first that one sometimes finds on the right suggests that most Muslims are fundamentalist or something about Islam is inherently fundamentalist, and this is just offensive and wrong, but unfortunately on the left one sometimes encounters a discourse that is too politically correct to acknowledge the problem of Muslim fundamentalism at all or, even worse, apologizes for it, and this is unacceptable as well. So what I'm seeking is a new way of talking about this all together, which is grounded in the lived experiences and the hope of the people on the front lines. I'm painfully aware that there has been an increase in discrimination against Muslims in recent years in countries like the U.K. and the U.S., and that too is a matter of grave concern, but I firmly believe that telling these counter-stereotypical stories of people of Muslim heritage who have confronted the fundamentalists and been their primary victims is also a great way of countering that discrimination. So now let me introduce you to four people whose stories I had the great honor of telling.

Faizan Peerzada and the Rafi Peer Theatre workshop named for his father have for years promoted the performing arts in Pakistan. With the rise of jihadist violence, they began to receive threats to call off their events, which they refused to heed. And so a bomber struck their 2008 eighth world performing arts festival in Lahore, producing rain of glass that fell into the venue injuring nine people, and later that same night, the Peerzadas made a very difficult decision: they announced that their festival would continue as planned the next day. As Faizan said at the time, if we bow down to the Islamists, we'll just be sitting in a dark corner. But they didn't know what would happen. Would anyone come? In fact, thousands of people came out the next day to support the performing arts in Lahore, and this simultaneously thrilled and terrified Faizan, and he ran up to a woman who had come in with her two small children, and he said, "You do know there was a bomb here yesterday, and you do know there's a threat here today." And she said, "I know that, but I came to your festival with my mother when I was their age, and I still have those images in my mind. We have to be here." With stalwart audiences like this, the Peerzadas were able to conclude their festival on schedule.

And then the next year, they lost all of their sponsors due to the security risk. So when I met them in 2010, they were in the middle of the first subsequent event that they were able to have in the same venue, and this was the ninth youth performing arts festival held in Lahore in a year when that city had already experienced 44 terror attacks. This was a time when the Pakistani Taliban had commenced their systematic targeting of girls' schools that would culminate in the attack on Malala Yousafzai. What did the Peerzadas do in that environment? They staged girls' school theater. So I had the privilege of watching "Naang Wal," which was a musical in the Punjabi language, and the girls of Lahore Grammar School played all the parts. They sang and danced, they played the mice and the water buffalo, and I held my breath, wondering, would we get to the end of this amazing show? And when we did, the whole audience collectively exhaled, and a few people actually wept, and then they filled the auditorium with the peaceful boom of their applause. And I remember thinking in that moment that the bombers made headlines here two years before but this night and these people are as important a story.

Maria Bashir is the first and only woman chief prosecutor in Afghanistan. She's been in the post since 2008 and actually opened an office to investigate cases of violence against women, which she says is the most important area in her mandate. When I meet her in her office in Herat, she enters surrounded by four large men with four huge guns. In fact, she now has 23 bodyguards, because she has weathered bomb attacks that nearly killed her kids, and it took the leg off of one of her guards.

Why does she continue? She says with a smile that that is the question that everyone asks— as she puts it, "Why you risk not living?" And it is simply that for her, a better future for all the Maria Bashirs to come is worth the risk, and she knows that if people like her do not take the risk, there will be no better future. Later on in our interview, Prosecutor Bashir tells me how worried she is about the possible outcome of government negotiations with the Taliban, the people who have been trying to kill her. "If we give them a place in the government," she asks, "Who will protect women's rights?" And she urges the international community not to forget its promise about women because now they want peace with Taliban. A few weeks after I leave Afghanistan, I see a headline on the Internet. An Afghan prosecutor has been assassinated. I google desperately, and thankfully that day I find out that Maria was not the victim, though sadly, another Afghan prosecutor was gunned down on his way to work. And when I hear headlines like that now, I think that as international troops leave Afghanistan this year and beyond, we must continue to care about what happens to people there, to all of the Maria Bashirs. Sometimes I still hear her voice in my head saying, with no bravado whatsoever, "The situation of the women of Afghanistan will be better someday. We should prepare the ground for this, even if we are killed."

There are no words adequate to denounce the al Shabaab terrorists who attacked the Westgate Mall in Nairobi on the same day as a children's cooking competition in September of 2013. They killed 67, including poets and pregnant women. Far away in the American Midwest, I had the good fortune of meeting Somali-Americans who were working to counter the efforts of al Shabaab to recruit a small number of young people from their city of Minneapolis to take part in atrocities like Westgate. Abdirizak Bihi's studious 17-year-old nephew Burhan Hassan was recruited here in 2008, spirited to Somalia, and then killed when he tried to come home. Since that time, Mr. Bihi, who directs the no-budget Somali Education and Advocacy Center, has been vocally denouncing the recruitment and the failures of government and Somali-American institutions like the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center where he believes his nephew was radicalized during a youth program. But he doesn't just criticize the mosque. He also takes on the government for its failure to do more to prevent poverty in his community. Given his own lack of financial resources, Mr. Bihi has had to be creative. To counter the efforts of al Shabaab to sway more disaffected youth, in the wake of the group's 2010 attack on World Cup viewers in Uganda, he organized a Ramadan basketball tournament in Minneapolis in response. Scores of Somali-American kids came out to embrace sport despite the fatwa against it. They played basketball as Burhan Hassan never would again. For his efforts, Mr. Bihi has been ostracized by the leadership of the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, with which he used to have good relations. He told me, "One day we saw the imam on TV calling us infidels and saying, 'These families are trying to destroy the mosque.'" This is at complete odds with how Abdirizak Bihi understands what he is trying to do by exposing al Shabaab recruitment, which is to save the religion I love from a small number of extremists.

Now I want to tell one last story, that of a 22-year-old law student in Algeria named Amel Zenoune-Zouani who had the same dreams of a legal career that I did back in the '90s. She refused to give up her studies, despite the fact that the fundamentalists battling the Algerian state back then threatened all who continued their education. On January 26, 1997, Amel boarded the bus in Algiers where she was studying to go home and spend a Ramadan evening with her family, and would never finish law school. When the bus reached the outskirts of her hometown, it was stopped at a checkpoint manned by men from the Armed Islamic Group. Carrying her schoolbag, Amel was taken off the bus and killed in the street. The men who cut her throat then told everyone else, "If you go to university, the day will come when we will kill all of you just like this."

Amel died at exactly 5:17 p.m., which we know because when she fell in the street, her watch broke. Her mother showed me the watch with the second hand still aimed optimistically upward towards a 5:18 that would never come. Shortly before her death, Amel had said to her mother of herself and her sisters, "Nothing will happen to us, Inshallah, God willing, but if something happens, you must know that we are dead for knowledge. You and father must keep your heads held high."

The loss of such a young woman is unfathomable, and so as I did my research I found myself searching for Amel's hope again and her name even means "hope" in Arabic. I think I found it in two places. The first is in the strength of her family and all the other families to continue telling their stories and to go on with their lives despite the terrorism. In fact, Amel's sister Lamia overcame her grief, went to law school, and practices as a lawyer in Algiers today, something which is only possible because the armed fundamentalists were largely defeated in the country. And the second place I found Amel's hope was everywhere that women and men continue to defy the jihadis. We must support all of those in honor of Amel who continue this human rights struggle today, like the Network of Women Living Under Muslim Laws. It is not enough, as the victims rights advocate Cherifa Kheddar told me in Algiers, it is not enough just to battle terrorism. We must also challenge fundamentalism, because fundamentalism is the ideology that makes the bed of this terrorism.

Why is it that people like her, like all of them are not more well known? Why is it that everyone knows who Osama bin Laden was and so few know of all of those standing up to the bin Ladens in their own contexts. We must change that, and so I ask you to please help share these stories through your networks. Look again at Amel Zenoune's watch, forever frozen, and now please look at your own watch and decide this is the moment that you commit to supporting people like Amel. We don't have the right to be silent about them because it is easier or because Western policy is flawed as well, because 5:17 is still coming to too many Amel Zenounes in places like northern Nigeria, where jihadis still kill students. The time to speak up in support of all of those who peacefully challenge fundamentalism and terrorism in their own communities is now.

Thank you.

 (Applause)