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Actor Christopher Lee dies at the age of 93

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The veteran actor was best known for roles including Dracula and Saruman in the Lord of the Rings franchise

Sir Christopher Lee, who passed away at the weekend. AFP PHOTO / CARL COURT (Photo credit should read CARL COURT/AFP/Getty Images)

Sir Christopher Lee, who passed away at the weekend. CARL COURT/AFP/Getty Images

by The Guardian

Sir Christopher Lee has died at the age of 93 after being hospitalised for respiratory problems and heart failure.

The veteran actor, best known for a variety of films from Dracula to The Wicker Man through to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, passed away on Sunday morning at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, according to sources.

The decision to release the news days after was based on his wife’s desire to inform family members first. The couple had been married for over 50 years.

As well as his career in film, Lee also released a series of heavy metal albums, including Charlemagne: The Omens of Death. He was knighted in 2009 for services to drama and charity and was awarded the Bafta fellowship in 2011.

His film career started in 1947 with a role in gothic romance Corridor of Mirrors but it wasn’t until the late 50s, when Lee worked with Hammer, that he started gaining fame. His first role with the studio was The Curse of Frankenstein and it was the first of 20 films that he made with Peter Cushing, who also became a close friend. “Hammer was an important part of my life, and generally speaking, we all had a lot of fun,” he said in a 2001 interview.

Christopher Lee as Dracula. Photograph: REX/Moviestore Collection

Lee’s most famous role for Hammer was playing Dracula, a role which became one of his most widely recognised although the actor wasn’t pleased with how the character was treated. “They gave me nothing to do!” he told Total Film in 2005. “I pleaded with Hammer to let me use some of the lines that Bram Stoker had written. Occasionally, I sneaked one in. Eventually I told them that I wasn’t going to play Dracula any more. All hell broke loose.”

In the 70s, Lee continued to gain fame in the horror genre with a role in The Wicker Man, a film which he considered to be his best. “Wonderful film… had a hell of a time getting it made,” he said. “Its power lies in the fact that you never expect what eventually happens, because everyone is so nice.” He went on to play a Bond villain in 1974’s The Man with the Golden Gun and turned down a role in Halloween, which he later said was one of biggest career regrets. In his career, he also turned down a role in Airplane!, something he also regretted.

Christopher Lee as Saruman. Photograph: EPA

His concern over being typecast in horror films led him to Hollywood and roles in Airport ‘77 and Steven Spielberg’s 1941. His career saw a resurgence in 2001 with a role as Saruman in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and then as Count Dooku in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

He also became a regular collaborator with Tim Burton, who cast him in Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows. Burton went on to award him with a Bafta fellowship.

In 2011, he returned to Hammer with a role in the Hilary Swank thriller The Resident although he generally tried to avoid the horror genre in later years. “There have been some absolutely ghastly films recently, physically repellent,”he said. “What we did was fantasy, fairy tales – no real person can copy what we did. But they can do what Hannibal Lecter does, if they’re so inclined, people like Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nilsen, and for that reason, I think such films are dangerous.”

UN peacekeepers accused of swapping goods for sex

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Hundreds of exploitation and abuse allegations, many involving children, made in 2008-2014 period, UN draft report says.

UN peacekeepers

by Al Jazeera

UN peacekeepers commonly pay for sex with cash, dresses, jewellery, perfume, mobile phones and other items despite a ban on such relationships, a draft UN report has concluded.

The draft study by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), obtained by Reuters news agency, says surveys of hundreds of women in Haiti and Liberia found their reasons for selling sex included hunger, poverty and lifestyle improvement.

“Evidence from two peacekeeping mission countries demonstrates that transactional sex is quite common but underreported in peacekeeping missions,” concluded the OIOS draft dated May 15.

The UN currently has more than 125,000 troops, police and civilians deployed in 16 operations around the world.

The OIOS draft report also notes that “the number of condoms distributed, along with the number of personnel undergoing voluntary counselling and confidential testing for HIV … suggest that sexual relationships between peacekeeping personnel and the local population may be routine”.

It said a UN bulletin issued in 2003 banned transactional sex by peacekeepers, in part because it undercuts the organisation’s credibility in areas where it is serving.

The OIOS draft said 480 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse had been made between 2008 and 2013, of which one-third involved children.

It said missions in Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Haiti and South Sudan accounted for the largest numbers of accusations.

In 2014 it said 51 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse had been made against UN peacekeepers.

States providing troops to UN missions have the primary responsibility to investigate allegations against their soldiers and police.

“Despite continuing reductions in reported allegations, that are partly explained by underreporting, effectiveness of enforcement against sexual exploitation and abuse is hindered by a complex architecture, prolonged delays, unknown and varying outcomes, and severely deficient victim assistance,” OIOS said.

‘Fundamental problems’

Speaking to Al Jazeera from London on Thursday, Anneke Van Woudenberg, Africa deputy director at Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights monitor, said she was not surprised by the findings in the draft UN report.

“This is something that we have seen in many countries of the world where the UN is operating and it has been a problem that has been going on for many years,” she said.

“The UN has tried to tighten up on it, but it has got a couple of fundamental problems – one of which is that there is immunity from prosecution for peacekeepers that are deployed on UN peacekeeping missions.

“If those peacekeepers commit crimes [while on mission], they cannot be held to account in those countries. They can only be held to account in their home countries, and far too often this immunity is like a protective cloak.”

The draft report included a response by the UN Departments of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support.

They regretted that OIOS did not evaluate prevention efforts and only focused on enforcement and remedial assistance efforts.

 

Furthering a failed strategy, Obama to send more ground troops to Iraq

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Critics say that everything the administration is doing in Middle East is making things worse, not better.

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a media conference at the conclusion of the G-7 summit on Monday, June 8, 2015. (Photo: Markus Schreiber/AP)

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a media conference at the conclusion of the G-7 summit on Monday, June 8, 2015. (Photo: Markus Schreiber/AP)

by Jon Queally, Common Dreams

In a move anti-war critics and foreign policy experts are certain to call simply an extension of a policy that has proved a failure, the New York Times reports the Obama administration is planning to build a new military base in the western part of Iraq and send additional ground troops in an attempt to turn the tide against Islamic State (ISIS) forces who have continued to take and hold ground on sides of the Syrian border in recent weeks.

After recent advances by ISIS that allowed them to capture the city of Ramadi in Iraq’s Anbar Province, the Pentagon is talking openly about sending what it calls “additional trainers” to bolster the Iraqi army in the Sunni-dominated region that skirts Syria.

As the Times reports:

 In a major shift of focus in the battle against the Islamic State, the Obama administration is planning to establish a new military base in Anbar Province, Iraq, and to send 400 more American military trainers to help Iraqi forces retake the city of Ramadi. […]

The additional American troops will arrive as early as this summer, a United States official said, and will focus on training Sunni fighters with the Iraqi Army. The official called the coming announcement “an adjustment to try to get the right training to the right folks.”

Though there are already approximately 3,000 U.S. soldiers on the ground in Iraq, President Obama made headlines on Monday when he spoke from the G7 summit in Germany and admitted that the U.S. did not yet have a “complete strategy” for dealing with ISIS.

However, as Jason Ditz writes at Anti-War.com, the idea to send additional U.S. troops to Iraq was not entirely unexpected,

as President Obama had previously indicated this his primary goal at this point was to speed up the training of Iraqi troops. The new troops are being labeled “trainers,” but are likely to be among those that Pentagon officials are openly talking about “embedding” on the front lines, meaning they’d be sent into direct combat.

As losses have mounted in Iraq and Syria, with ISIS taking more and more cities, the Pentagon has repeatedly rejected the idea that the strategy was at all flawed, and has tried to blame Iraqi troops for not winning more. The US appears to be doubling down on this narrative by adding troops.

But according to critics of Obama’s foreign policy and war strategy in Syria and Iraq, everything the administration is doing “right now is making the situation worse” – not better.

That is the sentiment of Phyllis Bennis, senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, who in a recent interview with the Real News Network said the Pentagon’s plan to send more weapons and troops (whether you call them “trainers” or “advisers” or something else) will only prolong the violence in the region. Describing the situation as “whack-a-mole,” Bennis said the outcomes over the last year have been terrible and that a continuation of the strategy would predictably create more chaos and death for the people of Iraq and Syria.

“We suddenly have the challenge of dealing with ISIS in Ramadi in Iraq,” she explained, “so we’re going to send a huge amount of resources, soldiers and new weapons and whatever, to Ramadi, where in the meantime whether it’s in Syria, whether it’s in Iraq, there are other crisis zones that are being created, even as we speak. And the more weapons that get sent, the more weapons end up in the hands of ISIS. That’s true in Iraq, it’s true in Syria.”

She continued:

As long as we keep saying we have to do the military stuff better, we have to do more weapons, we have to do more training, we have to change the training, we have to train this group rather than that group, it’s not going to work. It hasn’t worked yet. And it simply isn’t going to work, because every one of those military actions ends up creating more anger, more opposition, even in those rare occasions when the U.S. gets the person they’re actually aiming at rather than 15 innocent civilians who happen to be surrounding them. Even in those situations, those people have families and friends and villages and tribes and religious groups that they’re part of who are outraged at the U.S. military assaults. And every bit of that outrage over time, as it gets worse and worse, and deeper and deeper, it turns into greater support for the most extremist terrorist elements. So this is a failed strategy.

Meanwhile, in a lengthy article published in The Nation, Sherle R. Schwenninger, director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation and a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, argues that the disaster fostered by the U.S. in Iraq and Syria proves without question the overall failure of Obama’s foreign policy mindset. Though he acknowledges that the prevailing criticism in Washington, D.C. from liberal interventionists and the neoconservatives that drove and supported the failed policies of President George W. Bush say that Obama has been too timid in his handling of the war in Syria and Iraq, Schwenninger says the reality, in fact, is that “the administration has been too quick on the draw” and that if Obama had not worked to funnel supplies of weapons into the region or “done more to restrain our allies from supporting foreign jihadi fighters in both Syria and Iraq,” it is possible that “ISIS would not be on the march to the degree that it is today.”

However, he continued, “by helping to open the floodgates for both weapons and fighters, the administration is now looking at an endless new war that will only bleed us morally as well as financially. If Obama had actually acted with the restraint that his critics accuse him of, can anyone seriously say we would be worse off?”

Importantly, Schwenninger points out that among those saying that Obama’s policy is not aggressive enough when it comes to Iraq and Syria, are the same people–including Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham and other prominent war hawks,  “who cheered us into the war in Iraq.” The credentials of these critics, he argues, should have been thoroughly discredited them, “but over the last several years, they have had a disproportionate influence in shaping a narrative of US foreign policy that is almost as misguided as the one they spun in the lead-up to the Iraq War.”

And while the fighting continues and the war expands with the sending of more foreign weapons and troops, who benefits?

According to Bennis, it’s certainly not the Iraqi or Syrian people.

“The people who benefit,” she told the TRNN, “are the CEOs and the shareholders of these giant corporations who make the planes and the bombs and the bullets and the teargas, and all of the weapons that are being sold to all the different sides. They are the ones who are a huge stumbling block.”

But if more weapons and an expanded military footprint by the U.S. are not the answer, what is? Bennis says that answer to that question has always been the same: a call for both a cease fire and a regional arms embargo, followed by serious diplomatic efforts. Explaining what that might look like, she said:

Well, I think you start from the vantage point that if you’re serious about diplomacy, everybody has to be at the table. You don’t exclude anyone because you think they’re a terrorist, or you think they might not abide by the agreements. Because if you exclude people, you’re giving them the excuse to violate any agreement that’s reached. This was the lesson that former senator George Mitchell brought back after helping to negotiate the Good Friday accords in Northern Ireland. He said if you’re serious about diplomacy, everybody has to be at the table.

So if we start from that vantage point, if we’re talking about talks to end the Syrian civil war, Iran has to be at the table. Part of the reason the talks failed the last two times was that the U.S. took the position that Iran is prohibited. Iran can’t come, because they’re part of the problem. Well, they are part of the problem. So is the U.S. But the problem is if you ignore the people who are part of the problem, they’re not ever going to become part of the solution. So yes, Iran has to be at the table. Russia has to be at the table. The Syrian regime has to be at the table. All of the Syrian opposition forces have to be at the table.

The U.S. allies in the region that are arming and paying all of those opposition forces, some of whom are extremist Muslims, the Nusra Front. Some are more secular forces. But the strongest ones, the ones with the biggest presence and the strongest presence on the ground, are all Islamist. They need to be at the table. Those governments that are arming them, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the UAE, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, all those governments have to be at the table.

This is going to be big, regional, and indeed global negotiations that should be under the auspices of the United Nations. People say, well, how can you talk about negotiating, you can’t talk to ISIS. They’re crazy. I’m not necessarily saying that you start with direct talks with ISIS. That may or may not be possible at a later point. But at the initial point, you must talk to those who are enabling ISIS. That means talking to the governments that are responsible for arming, that are providing the arms that ISIS is stealing, and that are directly supporting ISIS and ISIS-linked forces, like in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Gulf. That also means you have to support the presence at the table not only of the government of Syria, for example, the government of Bashar al-Assad. But you also have to have at the table those who are arming and paying that regime. So that means that Russia and Iran have a major role to play.

In the end, Bennis concluded, an arms embargo may be the hardest part to imagine, because “that’s where people are making money off of these wars.”

Watch the full interview:

Greece earthquake: magnitude 5.2 tremor felt in Athens

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No apparent injuries or damage, with epicentre located under the sea between island of Evia and the Greek mainland

An earthquake of magnitude 5.2 has been felt in Athens, the Greek capital. Photograph: Alamy

An earthquake of magnitude 5.2 has been felt in Athens, the Greek capital. Photograph: Alamy

A magnitude 5.2 earthquake rattled Greece’s capital early on Tuesday but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The Geodynamic Institute in Athens said the quake occurred at 4.09am in the Gulf of Northern Evia, about 50 miles (80km) north of Athens in a narrow strip of sea between the island of Evia and mainland Greece.

Greece’s Civil Protection Agency said police in the city of Halkida, near the quake’s epicentre, and elsewhere in the surrounding region reported no damage.

Earth tremors and quakes are frequent in Greece and neighbouring Turkey.

“It was an earthquake that occurred quite near the surface and was felt quite intensely in Athens — from an area where quakes are fairly common but rarely stronger than today’s event,” said seismologist Efthimios Lekkas, director of the state-run Earthquake Planning and Protection Organisation.

“There have already been two aftershocks after this earthquake … I don’t think there is any particular cause for concern.”

The US Geological Survey recorded the earthquake as being of magnitude 5.2 and a depth of 3.6 miles.

(AP)

China ship disaster death toll crosses 300

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A total of 331 people confirmed dead in ship tragedy, as more than 100 still remain unaccounted for, state media says.

Passengers' relatives have raised questions about whether the ship should have continued its cruise after the storm [Reuters]

Passengers’ relatives have raised questions about whether the ship should have continued its cruise after the storm [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

The death toll in China cruise ship disaster has risen to 331, state media has said, making it China’s deadliest boat disaster in nearly seven decades.

Disaster teams on Saturday searched the now-upright ship for more bodies as more than 100 remained unaccounted for.

Just 14 people have been confirmed alive out of the 456 – mostly tourists aged over 60 – on board when the “Eastern Star” rapidly sunk on the Yangtze river in a storm on Monday.

Authorities gave the death toll of 331 as of 08:00 am (0000 GMT) on Saturday, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.

Xinhua earlier gave the total of confirmed dead as 345, but then revised it down to 331. An official said on Thursday that no new survivors are expected to be found.

Authorities have attributed the overturning of the cruise boat to sudden, severe winds, but also have placed the surviving captain and his first engineer under police custody.

Passengers’ relatives have raised questions about whether the ship should have continued its cruise after the storm started in a section of Hubei province and despite a weather warning earlier in the evening.

The vessel was cited for safety infractions two years ago, according to a notice by the Nanjing Maritime Bureau, but no further details have been given about the state of the ship.

Information about the sinking and media access to the site have been tightly controlled, and any online criticism of the search operation quickly doused.

Tragic Explosion in Ghana Kills at Least 200

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This was the worst disaster in over a decade since the 2001 stampede at a stadium that left 120 people dead. | Photo: Reuters

This was the worst disaster in over a decade since the 2001 stampede at a stadium that left 120 people dead. | Photo: Reuters

by teleSUR

Hundreds sought shelter at a gas station that later exploded due to a fuel leak consequence of torrential rains that caused massive floods.  The death toll due to a massive explosion that occured Wednesday in Ghana’s capital Accra has risen to over 200, the Interior Ministry reported Friday.

Torrential rains caused huge floods, which in turn provoked a spillage at a gas station with the consequent explosion and flames, from which hundreds of people attempted to flee. Some drowned and many more died from causes directly related to the blast, officials told news media.

The fuel leak at the station caused also destroyed nearby buildings, local officials said.

President John Mahama told journalist Thursday the West African country would observe three days of mourning with flags flying at half-staff. He also pledged US12 million for rescue operations and for repairs of damaged infrastructure.

The U.S. news agency AP said that TV footage showed corpses being piled into the back of a pickup truck and other charred bodies trapped amid the debris. Floodwaters around the site hampered rescue and recovery efforts.

This was the worst disaster to strike the nation in more than a decade. In May 2001, 120 people died in a stampede at the national stadium during a football match.

Most of the victims had sought shelter from the floods at the state state-owned GOIL gas station, located near a busy downtown intersection. Hours later, people were engulfed in flames, while others died in the blast, authorities said.

The rains have left thousands homeless, while exposing the weaknesses of Accra’s infrastructure, as the government has failed to keep pace with the growing population and years of rapid economic expansion.

Witnesses said low-wage workers struggling home through the seasonal storm with roads closed and minivan buses not running were victims of the blast, the force of which gave few a chance to escape, according to Reuters.

“It was an explosive fire and so the people sheltering at the filling station did not have an opportunity to escape,” fire brigade spokesman Prince Billy Anaglate told reporters. Some victims were burned beyond recognition. Many were trapped and incinerated in the wreckage of cars and minivans on the station’s forecourt.

Four million US government workers hit by cyber breach

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FBI investigating cyberattack that is believed to have compromised data of current and former federal employees.

Since the intrusion, OPM said it had implemented additional security precautions for its networks [Reuters]

Since the intrusion, OPM said it had implemented additional security precautions for its networks [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

The US government agency that collects personnel information for federal employees has said that a cybersecurity breach had compromised the data of up to four million people.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Thursday that it has launched a probe and would hold the culprits accountable, Reuters reported.

“The FBI is working with our interagency partners to investigate this matter,” the bureau said in a statement.

“We take all potential threats to public and private sector systems seriously, and will continue to investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace.”

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) detected new malicious activity affecting its information systems in April and the Department of Homeland Security said it concluded at the beginning of May that the agency’s data had been compromised. The office handles employee records and security clearances.

“This would likely be the largest theft of US government data in the history of the United States,” Patty Culhane, Al Jazeera’s White House correspondent reporting from Washington, said.

“Basically, OPM is like the human resources department of the entire federal government. They also get security background checks for people who want to get security clearances,” she said.

“The big question remains exactly what information was stolen? Was it social security number, your federal ID or was it salary information. Right now OPM is not saying.”

A US law enforcement source told Reuters a “foreign entity or government” was believed to be behind the cyberattack. Authorities were looking into a possible Chinese connection, a source close to the matter said.

A Chinese embassy spokesman in Washington said hypothetical accusations were irresponsible and counterproductive.

“Jumping to conclusions and making [a] hypothetical accusation is not responsible,” and is “counterproductive”, Chinese embassy spokesman Zhu Haiquan said in emailed comments.

Security precautions

The OPM had previously been the victim of a cyberattack, as have various federal government computer systems at the state department, the US Postal Service and the White House.

Since the intrusion, OPM said it had implemented additional security precautions for its networks. It said it would notify the 4 million people affected and offer credit monitoring and identity theft services to the people affected.

“The last few months have seen a series of massive data breaches that have affected millions of Americans,” US Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement.

But he called the latest intrusion “among the most shocking because Americans may expect that federal computer networks are maintained with state of the art defences”.

It is thought that the ramifications of the data breach could potentially affect every federal agency.

WikiLeaks strikes again: Leaked TISA docs expose corporate plan for reshaping global economy

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Leaked Docs reveal that little-known corporate treaty poised to privatize and deregulate public services across globe

"It’s a dark day for democracy when we are dependent on leaks like this for the general public to be informed of the radical restructuring of regulatory frameworks that our governments are proposing," said Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now. (Image created by Common Dreams)

“It’s a dark day for democracy when we are dependent on leaks like this for the general public to be informed of the radical restructuring of regulatory frameworks that our governments are proposing,” said Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now. (Image created by Common Dreams)

by Sarah Lazare, Common Dreams

An enormous corporate-friendly treaty that many people haven’t heard of was thrust into the public limelight Wednesday when famed publisher of government and corporate secrets, WikiLeaks, released 17 documents from closed-door negotiations between countries that together comprise two-thirds of the word’s economy.

Analysts warn that preliminary review shows that the pact, known as the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), is aimed at further privatizing and deregulating vital services, from transportation to healthcare, with a potentially devastating impact for people of the countries involved in the deal, and the world more broadly.

“This TISA text again favors privatization over public services, limits governmental action on issues ranging from safety to the environment using trade as a smokescreen to limit citizen rights,” said Larry Cohen, president of Communications Workers of America, in a statement released Wednesday.

Under secret negotiation by 50 countries for roughly two years, the pact includes the United States, European Union, and 23 other countries—including Israel, Turkey, and Colombia. Notably, the BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—are excluded from the talks.

Along with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations, which are also currently being negotiated, TISA is part of  what WikiLeaks calls the “T-treaty trinity.” Like the TTP and TTIP, it would fall “under consideration for collective ‘Fast-Track’ authority in Congress this month,” WikiLeaks noted in a statement issued Wednesday.

However, TISA stands out from this trio as being the most secretive and least understood of all, with its negotiating sessions not even announced to the public.

Wednesday’s leak provides the largest window yet into TISA and comes on the heels of two other leaks about the accord last year, the first from WikiLeaks and the other from the Associated Whistleblowing Press, a non-profit organization with local platforms in Iceland and Spain.

While analysts are still poring over the contents of the new revelations, civil society organizations released some preliminary analysis of the accord’s potential implications for transportation, communication, democratic controls, and non-participating nations:

  • Telecommunications: “The leaked telecommunications annex, among others, demonstrate potentially grave impacts for deregulation of state owned enterprises like their national telephone company,” wrote the global network Our World Is Not for Sale (OWINFS) in a statement issued Wednesday.
  • Transportation: The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), comprised of roughly 700 unions from more than 150 countries, warned on Wednesday that the just-published documents “foresee consolidated power for big transport industry players and threaten the public interest, jobs and a voice for workers.” ITF president Paddy Crumlin said: “This text would supercharge the most powerful companies in the transport industry, giving them preferential treatment. What’s missing from this equation is any value at all for workers and citizens.”
  • Bypassing democratic regulations: “Preliminary analysis notes that the goal of domestic regulation texts is to remove domestic policies, laws and regulations that make it harder for transnational corporations to sell their services in other countries (actually or virtually), to dominate their local suppliers, and to maximize their profits and withdraw their investment, services and profits at will,” writes OWINFS. “Since this requires restricting the right of governments to regulate in the public interest, the corporate lobby is using TISA to bypass elected officials in order to apply a set of across-the-board rules that would never be approved on their own by democratic governments.”
  • Broad impact: “The documents show that the TISA will impact even non-participating countries,” wrote OWINFS. “The TISA is exposed as a developed countries’ corporate wish lists for services which seeks to bypass resistance from the global South to this agenda inside the WTO, and to secure and agreement on servcies without confronting the continued inequities on agriculture, intellectual property, cotton subsidies, and many other issues.”

The warnings follow concerns, based on previous leaks, that TISA poses a threat to net neutrality, internet freedoms, and privacy.

Moreover, global social movements charge that the deal poses a threat to democracy itself.

In a letter released in September 2013, 241 civil society groups from around the world aired concerns about the TISA deal: “Democracy is eroded when decision-making about important sectors– such as financial services (including banking, securities trading, accounting, insurance, etc.), energy, education, healthcare, retail, shipping, telecommunications, legal services, transportation, and tourism– is transferred from citizens, local oversight boards, and local or provincial/state jurisdiction to unaccountable trade’ negotiators who have shown a clear proclivity for curtailing regulation and prioritizing corporate profits.”

Analysts note that the leak underscores the intense secretiveness of the talks, whose texts are supposed to be kept completely secret for five years following the reaching of a deal or abandonment of the process.

“That the negotiating texts say they are supposed to stay secret for five years is quite shocking, and therefore it is really important that the text is made public,” Melinda St. Louis, international campaigns director for Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, toldCommon Dreams.

“It’s a dark day for democracy when we are dependent on leaks like this for the general public to be informed of the radical restructuring of regulatory frameworks that our governments are proposing,” said Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, in a statement released Wednesday.


Canadian government charged with 'cultural genocide' over indigenous schools

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Truth and Reconciliation Commission report says historic government program was central in plan to ‘eliminate aboriginal people as distinct peoples’

Residential school children students in a typical classroom. An estimated 6,0000 of Canada’s indigenous children died in residential schools that failed to keep them safe from fires, protected from abusers, and healthy from deadly disease, a Commission report found. (Photo: Anglican Church Archives)

Residential school children students in a typical classroom. An estimated 6,0000 of Canada’s indigenous children died in residential schools that failed to keep them safe from fires, protected from abusers, and healthy from deadly disease, a Commission report found. (Photo: Anglican Church Archives)

by Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams

The Canadian government’s historic practice of forcibly removing Indigenous youth from their homes and sending them to “residential schools”—where tens of thousands were subjected to abuse, malnutrition, substandard education, illness, and often death—amounts to nothing short of “cultural genocide,” charged the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which on Tuesday released its years-long investigation into the program.

The culmination of six years of research and 6,750 survivor and witness statements, the report argues that the Canadian government operated the school program with the explicit purpose of breaking children’s link “to their culture and identity,” and describes a “lonely and alien” existence, where students’ native languages and practices were suppressed and neglect and abuse were common.According to the report:

Buildings were poorly located, poorly built, and poorly maintained. The staff was limited in numbers, often poorly trained, and not adequately supervised. Many schools were poorly heated and poorly ventilated, and the diet was meager and of poor quality. Discipline was harsh, and daily life was highly regimented. Aboriginal languages and cultures were denigrated and suppressed. The educational goals of the schools were limited and confused, and usually reflected a low regard for the intellectual capabilities of Aboriginal people. For the students, education and technical training too often gave way to the drudgery of doing the chores necessary to make the schools self-sustaining. Child neglect was institutionalized, and the lack of supervision created situations where students were prey to sexual and physical abusers.

“These measures were part of a coherent policy to eliminate Aboriginal people as distinct peoples and to assimilate them into the Canadian mainstream against their will,” the report states. Further, the Commission argues that the government “pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources.”

Over the course of 150 years, an estimated 150,000 Indigenous children spent time in roughly 80 residential schools throughout the country. Approximately 80,000 survivors are still alive today.

The Commission lays out 94 calls for action, which it says are the “first steps” toward addressing the legacy of injustice and advancing the process of reconciliation.

Among the recommendations are efforts to protect child welfare, preserve language and culture, promote legal equity, and strengthen information on missing children. The report also emphasizes the important role that education can have in the healing process and calls for Canadian governments to work towards eliminating the education gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children, as well as develop curriculum on residential schools.

“The children who attended these schools were severely punished for practicing their cultural ceremonies, for speaking their family’s language,” said TRC Commissioner Dr. Marie Wilson. “Reconciliation rests on building aboriginal culture back up, and preserving the languages and ceremonies that the schools tried to eliminate.”

The report also calls on governments across Canada to adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (pdf), which the Commission says will also help achieve successful reconciliation.

“One hundred years from now, our children’s children and their children must know and still remember this history, because they will inherit from us the responsibility of ensuring that it never happens again,” the report says.

The TRC was established in 2007 as a result of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.

'He should get the Nobel Peace Prize': Ellsberg champions Snowden's profound impact

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“[T]he first time…this mass surveillance that’s been going on is subjected to a genuine debate, it didn’t stand up.”

Renowned whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg spoke with The Guardian about the changing landscape of U.S. surveillance. (Photo: Steve Rhodes/flickr/cc)

Renowned whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg spoke with The Guardian about the changing landscape of U.S. surveillance. (Photo: Steve Rhodes/flickr/cc)

by Nadia Prupis, Common Dreams

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden should be credited with helping change U.S. surveillance law, Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, said Monday in an interview with The Guardian.

“It’s interesting to see that the first time… this mass surveillance that’s been going on is subjected to a genuine debate, it didn’t stand up,” he said.

Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act for disclosing secret U.S. military documents related to the Vietnam War in 1971. Snowden, who leaked a trove of classified NSA documents in 2013 and has been living in political asylum in Russia for the past three years, also faces prosecution under the Espionage Act.

Asked what should happen to Snowden, Ellsberg replied, “He should get the Nobel peace prize and he should get asylum in a west European country.”

Although “there is much more support for him month by month as people come to realise how little substance in the charges that he caused harm to us…that does not mean the intelligence community will ever forgive him for having exposed what they were doing,” Ellsberg continued.

Ellsberg is currently on a week-long European speaking tour with several other renowned U.S. whistleblowers, including Thomas Drake, who helped expose fraud and abuse in the NSA’s Trailblazer program; Coleen Rowley, who testified about the FBI’s mishandling of information related to the September 11 attacks; and Jesselyn Radack, who disclosed ethics violations committed by the FBI and currently serves as the director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project.

Although the sunset of the Patriot Act on Sunday has forced the NSA to end its domestic phone records collection program, the agency will likely retain much of its surveillance power with the expected passage of the USA Freedom Act, a “compromise” bill which would renew modified versions of Section 215 and other provisions.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that the NSA’s bulk phone records collection program “exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized” under the Patriot Act. Referring to that decision, Ellsberg said Monday that “even the USA Freedom Act, which is better than the Patriot Act, still doesn’t really reflect the full weight of the circuit court opinion that these provisions have been unconstitutional from their beginning and what the government has been doing is illegal.”

Drake also spoke to The Guardian on Monday, stating, “This is the first time in almost 14 years that we stopped certain provisions… The national security mindset was unable to prevail.”

The USA Freedom Act, meanwhile, “effectively codifies all the secret interpretations, a lot of the other authorities they claimed were enabled by the previous legislation, including the Patriot Act,” Drake continued.

In a press briefing on Monday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that despite the sunset of the Patriot Act, the Obama administration would not change its view that Snowden “committed very serious crimes.”

But the importance of the Senate’s rejection of the legislation cannot be discounted, said Ellsberg, and Snowden’s influence on the changing political landscape in the U.S. deserves credit.

“This is the first time, thanks to Snowden, that the Senate really stood up and realized they have been complicit in the violation of our rights all along—unconstitutional action,” Ellsberg said. “The Senate and the House have been passive up until now and derelict in their responsibilities. At last there was opposition.”

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