Truthdig: Juan Cole's Columns

On Syria: The U.S. Is No Lone Ranger and Should Put That Six Shooter Away

Posted on Sep 2, 2013

AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

By Juan Cole

The odd discourse in Washington around President Barack Obama’s determination to bomb Syria over the country’s use of chemical weapons assumes a moral superiority on the part of the United States and its allies on this issue that can only astonish anyone who knows the history. At the same time, the most propagandistic allegations are being made about Iran. The creation of a fetish around some sorts of weapons (i.e., chemical ones) takes the focus off others that are just as deadly to innocents. The U.S. has had a checkered history in the use of unconventional arms, and is still among the most dedicated to retaining the ability to make, stockpile and use weapons that indiscriminately kill innocent noncombatants.

The British government as recently as 2012 licensed its firms to sell chemical agents that can be used as poison gas precursors to the Baath government of Syria. Although critics of Prime Minister David Cameron used phrases such as “astonishingly lax” to describe British government policy in this regard, it seems clear that Western governments value profits over morality when it comes to providing such material to seedy dictatorships. Most of Syria’s chemical weapons production technology came from “large chemical brokerage houses in Holland, Switzerland, France, Austria and Germany,” according to security information provider GlobalSecurity.org. Russia may have played a later role, though I find Western charges of Iranian involvement unlikely for reasons I’ll get to later.

Nor are U.S. hands clean with regard to chemical weapons use by allies. In the Iraq-Iran War of 1980-1988, the Baath regime of Saddam Hussein deployed chemical weapons against Iranian troops at the front. Iran had a three-to-one manpower advantage over Iraq, and Hussein sought to level the playing field with gas.

Notoriously, his regime also deployed poison gas against separatist Iraqi Kurds, whom he accused of allying with the enemy, Iran, during wartime. As I showed in the early days of Truthdig, the Reagan administration knew about the chemical weapons use. It nevertheless sought an alliance with the Iraqi government via Donald Rumsfeld, then-Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East. High administration officials deflected Iran’s complaint against Iraq at the United Nations Security Council. The United States did not just ignore Iraqi use of gas. It actively protected Baghdad from international sanctions for it. At the same time, the Reagan administration licensed U.S. firms to provide deadly agents such as anthrax to Saddam Hussein. At the very least, President Obama should acknowledge the Reagan administration’s actions and apologize for them to the people of Iran (where many veterans still suffer from burned lungs) before he strikes an outraged pose toward Syria and Russia. The U.S. has committed to destroying its own once-extensive arsenal of chemical weapons, but 10 percent remain and their final disposal keeps slipping into the next decade.

That Iran suffered so badly from U.S.-backed Iraqi chemical weapons use makes it especially weird that American pundits and politicians should be citing a need to deter Iran by bombing Syria. The Iranian political elite refused to deploy chemical weapons against Iraq, and its religious leader, Ali Khamenei, has condemned making, stockpiling and using weapons that kill innocent noncombatants, including nuclear arms. The U.S. and Israeli case that Iran has a militarized nuclear weapons program that seeks a warhead has never been backed by any convincing proof, and so far resembles their similar case against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which was groundless. That both countries have big nuclear weapons stockpiles of their own also makes their demand that Iran be sanctioned hypocritical at the least.

Although he later had to walk it back, former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani deplored the Syrian government’s use of gas against its own people, and Tehran-watchers are convinced that the Baath army’s action has provoked a heated debate within the closed Iranian elite.

Current Iranian President Hasan Rouhani has condemned all chemical weapons use. Because Tehran backs the Syrian Baath government, it has publicly taken the same position as Russia, that the rebels gassed themselves. That allegation is not plausible, and it is clear that even some high ranking Iranian political figures have difficulty saying it with a straight face.

Short of weapons of mass destruction, the United States has a rather sick attachment to land mines and cluster munitions. Washington used land mines in World War II, and for decades after civilians in countries such as Tunisia were still being killed by them on occasion. In Cambodia and Laos, bomb disposal teams continue the tedious and deadly work of removing munitions dropped during the Vietnam War some 40 years prior. The United States placed tens of thousands of land mines between North and South Korea, though control of them has now been given to Seoul. U.S. allies in Afghanistan also laid thousands of land mines, and years later Afghans were still losing their feet to them. The 2001 Iranian film “Kandahar” showed a gaggle of Afghans hopping on one foot. The U.S. has refused to sign the international convention against land mines, and insists that it now has “non-persistent” land mines that can be deployed and then remotely destroyed. This theory of civilian-safe land mines remains untested and seems implausible on the face of it.


The U.S. makes, stockpiles and sells cluster munitions, which deploy thousands of “bomblets.” These weapons sometimes do not explode, and form a persistent danger to civilian populations in the aftermath. They are inevitably indiscriminate in their impact on noncombatants and have no place in contemporary warfare. Often children will pick them up and play with them, with fatal results. Some 83 countries have banned them, and 31 are currently suffering from the aftereffects of their use. As the 2006 Lebanon War was winding down, the Israeli military used American-supplied cluster munitions on southern Lebanon, dropping an estimated 4 million bomblets. This action was certainly a war crime, since the U.N. Security Council had already called for a cease-fire, which everyone knew would end the war shortly. The bombs had no conceivable military use. They were intended to make it dangerous for Shiite farmers to return to their homes just north of Israel. That is, they were aimed at the civilian population. Some 40 percent of the bomblets failed to explode immediately.

In the year after the war ended, some 200 Lebanese noncombatants were killed by Israeli cluster bombs in south Lebanon. The United States imposed no penalties on Israel for this action, despite its own laws that forbid indiscriminate use of U.S.-supplied cluster bombs. Just this summer, the U.S. announced the sale of $630 million worth of cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia. That country and Israel are among the most vigorous proponents of an attack on Syria because of its deployment of a weapon that indiscriminately killed noncombatants. They have also condemned Damascus for using cluster munitions.

I am not arguing that because the United States and its allies have indiscriminately killed large numbers of innocent noncombatants in the past, the Syrian government should be held harmless for its own gas attack at Ghouta, which killed hundreds of innocent civilians. Two wrongs never make a right. I am arguing that the United States is in no moral or legal position to play the Lone Ranger here. The first steps Washington should take are to acknowledge its own implication in such atrocities and to finish destroying its chemical stockpiles and join the ban on land mines and cluster bombs.

Now that we’re in the 21st century, moreover, it is time to cease using the supposedly macho language of violence in response to political challenges. Tossing a couple of Tomahawk cruise missiles on a few government facilities in Damascus is not going to deter the Syrian government from using chemical weapons, and it will not affect the course of the war. Sonni Efron, a former State Department official and now a senior government fellow at Human Rights First, has argued that the United States and Europe could have a much more effective impact by announcing that in response to the Baath provocation they were going to close the loopholes that allow Syrian banks to continue to interface with world financial institutions. This strategy would involve threatening third-party sanctions on Russian banks that provide Damascus with a financial backdoor. A united U.S.-EU push on this front would be far more consequential for the Syrian government than a limited military strike.


Indeed, the Syrian regime will almost certainly welcome the cruise missiles. In the aftermath, Syria can portray itself as a hero of Arab nationalism, standing up to a bullying, imperialist West. Pro-regime demonstrations are already being planned in Iraq, Egypt and Tunisia. Domestically, President Bashar al-Assad portrays his foes as al-Qaida cadres trained and paid for by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States. (Although there are al-Qaida affiliates among the rebels, the vast majority of the demonstrators and rebels are ordinary Syrians tired of the regime’s tyranny and economic stagnation). Assad will be in a better position to make this argument after the Tomahawks land, and some Syrians who have been on the fence may well declare for the regime for nationalist reasons. In 1998, then-President Bill Clinton fired cruise missiles at the Sudan of President Omar al-Bashir. If you don’t know, do a quick Google search for whom the sitting president of the Sudan is now. Bombs are seldom the answer to geopolitical problems.

British man 'fathered 600 children' at own fertility clinic

A British man may have fathered 600 children by repeatedly using his own sperm in a fertility clinic he ran, it has emerged.

By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor

 9:38PM BST 08 Apr 2012 |www.telegraph.co.uk

Bertold Wiesner and his wife Mary Barton founded a fertility clinic in London in the 1940s and helped women conceive 1,500 babies.

It was thought that the clinic used a small number of highly intelligent friends as sperm donors but it has now emerged that around 600 of the babies were conceived using sperm from Mr Wiesner himself.

Two men conceived at the clinic, Barry Stevens a film-maker from Canada and David Gollancz, a barrister in London, have researched the centre and DNA tests suggest Mr Wiesner, an Austrian biologist, provided two thirds of the donated sperm.
Such a practice is outlawed now but at the time it was not known that Mr Wiesner was providing the majority of the samples.

The same sperm donor should not be used to create so many children because of the risk that two of the offpsring will unwittingly meet and start a family of their own, which could cause serious genetic problems in their children.

DNA tests were conducted on 18 people conceived at the clinic between 1943 and 1962. The results showed that two thirds of them were fathered by Mr Wiesner.

Extrapolating this to the rest of the children conceived at the clinic it would suggest around 600 of the children were Mr Wiesner’s.

Mr Gollancz told the Sunday Times: “A conservative estimate is that he would have been making 20 donations a year.

“Using standard figures for the number of live births which result, including allowances for twins and miscarriages, I estimate that he is responsible for between 300 and 600 children.”

Allan Pacey, chairman of the British Fertility Society and expert in male fertility, said a healthy man could make that many donations a year if it were legal.

In 1990 the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act set up a regulator of fertility clinics and limits were set on the number of families a sperm or egg donor could provide.

Sperm donors can provide samples for the creation of up to ten families.

The limit is set as families, rather than the number of children, so parents can choose the same donor for a second or third sibling without being told that donor has reached his limit.

Around 2,000 children are born every year in Britain using donated eggs, sperm or embryos.

All sperm donors used by regulated clinics should be between the age of 18 and 41 and all samples are tested for diseases.

Information about the donor is kept so the children can apply to find out the identity of their biological father and any half brothers or sisters once they turn 18.

Hyon Song Wol, Kim Jong Un's Ex-Girlfriend, Reportedly Executed For Making Sex Tape

Hyon Song-wol

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hyon Song-wol (Chosŏn'gŭl: 현송월; Hancha: 玄松月; MR: Hyŏn Song-wŏl; allegedly died August 20, 2013) was a North Korean pop singer who was formerly the vocalist for the Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble, a pop group which became well known in North Korea in the early 2000s.^[1] Her better-known songs include the numbers "Footsteps of Soldiers", "I Love Pyongyang", "She is a Discharged Soldier" and "We are Troops of the Party".^[2]

 Life and career

Her biggest hit was the song "Excellent Horse-Like Lady" (Chosŏn'gŭl: 준마처녀; Hancha: 駿馬處女; MR: Chunma Ch'eonyeo) a 2005 song extolling the virtues of a Stakhanovite textile factory worker. The accompanying music video stars Hyon in the role of the Girl In The Saddle Of A Steed, "dashing around a sparkling factory with a beatific smile, distributing bobbins and collecting swatches of cloth at top speed."^[1] The lyrics include:

Our factory comrades say in jest,

Why, they tell me I am a virgin on a stallion,

After a full day's work I still have energy left...

They say I am a virgin on a stallion,

Mounting a stallion my Dear Leader gave me.

All my life I will live to uphold his name!^[2]

Hyon disappeared from public view in 2006 when, according to reports in the Japanese media, she married a North Korean army officer with whom she had a child.^[2] She was reported to have known Kim Jong-un, the youngest son of former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, since they were both teenagers. South Korean government sources told the media that Hyon and Kim Jong-un had been romantically involved in the early 2000s after he returned to North Korea from his studies at a private school in Switzerland. His father reportedly disapproved of the relationship and the younger Kim and Hyon broke it off.

Following Kim Jong-il's death in December 2011, Kim Jong-un was thought to have resumed the relationship. According to South Korean intelligence sources, "rumors about the two having an affair have been circulating among Pyongyang’s top elite."^[3]

In March 2012, Hyon made her first public appearance in six years when she performed, while heavily pregnant, in an event in Pyongyang to mark International Women’s Day. Fresh interest in Hyon was kindled in July 2012 when she was misidentified in footage taken by the North Korean state television station showing a dark-haired woman sitting next to Kim Jong-un at a musical performance. It was thought at first that she might have been a previously undisclosed wife of Kim or his younger sister, but South Korean intelligence officials identified her as Hyon. Some suggested that she may have been given the job of running the state art troupe.

However, North Korean television announced that the woman was in fact Kim Jong-un's wife, Ri Sol-ju, and not Hyon.^[3]

Execution

On August 29, 2013, The Chosun Ilbo reported that Hyon had been executed by firing squad on the orders of Kim Jong-un along with eleven other performers who had allegedly made illegal pornographic videos. According to a source quoted by the newspaper, "They were executed with machine guns while the key members of the Unhasu Orchestra, Wangjaesan Light Music Band and Moranbong Band as well as the families of the victims looked on."^[4][5]

The reported reasons for the executions have been questioned by Professor Toshimitsu Shigemura of Tokyo's Waseda University, an authority on North Korean affairs, who comments, "if these people had only made pornographic videos, then it is simply not believable that their punishment was execution." He suggests that they were killed for political reasons, perhaps related to factional conflicts in the North Korean elite, or simply as a result of a grudge: "as Kim's wife (Ri Sol-ju) once belonged to the same group, it is possible that these executions are more about Kim's wife."^[6]

Black France

A three-part series looking at the history of France's black community and their long struggle for recognition. Special series Aljaazera 30 Aug 2013 06:34 In May 2013, France’s National Assembly successfully voted on a bill to remove the words 'race' and 'racial' from the country’s penal code. French President Francois Hollande ran on a platform promising to eliminate the word 'race' from France’s constitution. But critics were quick to point out the disparity between constitutional reform and actual practice. Between one and five million French citizens claim African or Caribbean heritage. These numbers are, however, estimates, as population censuses do not recognise race. For over a century, black immigrants, though never officially identified as different, were treated as 'others'. Even today, of France’s 577 members of parliament, only five are black. This three-part series tells the story of blacks in France - a long history of segregation, racism, protest, violence, culture and community building - from the turn of the 20th century until the present day.   Episode 1: Conflicting identities The first episode of this three-part series looks back on what it meant to be both black and French in the decades before France’s African colonies achieved independence. "The colonial empire is in black and white. It’s an empire where the slaves, subjects or natives are black, and the master is white." Christiane Taubira, French Justice Minister  The first generations of African immigrants pioneered the fight for rights in France during the latter part of the 18th century. They were mocked with racist caricatures and campaigns depicting them as savages in need of civilising. Black people became quite a spectacle in white France. They were paraded around the country in shows for whites to marvel at. And 'Chocolate the black clown', who was kicked when he misbehaved, became a popular symbol of colonialism. For some, France meant freedom. African-American athletes, like cyclist Major Taylor and boxer Jack Johnson, competed in Paris because segregation in the US prevented them from doing so at home. But for others, it was a death sentence. When World War I broke out, France needed the support of African soldiers. Hundreds of thousands of black men joined France’s war efforts by working in factories and on the frontlines - thousands died after being promised French citizenship. But when the war ended, blacks were excluded from peace negotiations. And black people living in France fought for decades to be both black and French. This episode can be seen from Thursday, August 29. Episode 2: The battle for social justice The second episode of this series reveals the ongoing struggles of immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean to achieve rights, form communities and have their contributions to French society recognised. "When you leave the Caribbean, there’s no doubt in your mind that you’re French. But when you arrive in Paris you’re not French anymore; you’re black." Lilian Thuram, former professional football player During World War II, Africa once again answered France’s call to battle, but this time the motivation was different. Black soldiers were not just fighting for France; they were combating the racist ideologies of Nazi Germany. But while France and the allies defeated the Axis with the help of black soldiers, the war for social justice was only gearing up across the French colonial empire. In 1945, during France’s post-war elections, blacks saw their first major victory. More than 60 overseas deputies were sworn into France's National Assembly. One year later, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Reunion and French Guiana became French departments following 300 years of colonial rule. Departmentalisation, and then President Georges Pompidou’s decision to establish the Office for the Promotion of Migration in the early 1960s, opened a door between France and its departments. Almost 200,000 blacks immigrated to French cities in search of education and work. But they faced poverty, racism and segregation. And they struggled to gain acceptance in cultural, academic and social realms of French society. This episode can be seen from Thursday, September 5.  Episode 3: The immigration problem The last episode of this series focuses on the extreme racism and discrimination black immigrants faced during times of economic hardship and through political shifts in post-World War II France. "There’s the reality of people who have a hard time imagining that blacks and Arabs are citizens in their own right." Rokhaya Diallo, writer and campaigner  The 1973 oil crisis quadrupled the price of oil. The Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) embargoed oil exports to countries that supported Israel in the War of Yom Kippur. France, like many other western nations, was hit hard by the price increase and plummeted into a recession. Immigrants became the band-aid solution to France’s economic problems. The government set a goal to encourage 500,000 foreigners to return to their countries. African immigrants who stayed were forced from slums into hostels where they were further segregated and ghettoised. Opposition to immigrants festered and, by 1977, more than half of France’s citizens said they wanted to see immigration numbers decrease. But Africans joined workers of other nationalities in protest. A four-year rent strike spread across the country’s hostels. And then in 1981, the newly elected President Francois Mitterrand promised to regularise 130,000 undocumented workers. The government shifted its focus from mass migration of unskilled labour to skills training in the former colonies. But many questioned France’s paternalistic attitude towards the independent African nations. And despite some change, racism and hate crimes against black people escalated. From protests and marches to music and dance, this is the story of how black people born in France fought for equality in the face of discrimination and how they used culture as a tool to empower generations. This episode can be seen from Thursday, September 12.  Black France can be seen each week at the following times GMT: Thursday: 2000; Friday: 1200; Saturday: 0100; Sunday: 0600; Monday: 2000; Tuesday: 1200; Wednesday: 0100; Thursday: 0600.

“Sin Confucio ni Mao, no quedó nada más que el dinero”

Clarin.com | 18/08/13 

Por Horacio Bilbao

“Fue culpa mía, el chef no era chino”, dice el escritor Qiu Xiaolong (Shangai, 1953) sobre su malograda experiencia en un restaurante oriental porteño. Por suerte, se desquitó con los churros. “Son parecidos a los nuestros, me gustaban mucho de chico”, recuerda. Poeta, traductor y amante de la buena cocina, como su personaje el inspector jefe Chen Cao, el escritor dice que en comida china no pasamos de lo que para ellos es fast food. Xiaolong vive en los Estados Unidos, donde emigró tras la masacre de Tiananmen, aprovechando una beca para estudiar a T. S. Eliot. Aún así, y siendo un aplomado crítico de la realidad socio política de su país, vuelve a China un par de veces al año. Lo dejan. Allí, sus libros llegan censurados, sin fechas, nombres ni contextos precisos, pero mantienen el tono de oscuro retrato sobre la acelerada transición político económica de la segunda potencia mundial. Habla del pasado, sufre y analiza la Revolución cultural (impulsada por Mao en 1966) que signó la persecución de su familia, pero sobre todo, marca las contradicciones de una economía de mercado imparable en un sistema unipartidista cuyos crujidos son minimizados por el trepidante crecimiento económico. Devenido en una de las estrellas del festival de novela policial BAN! Xiaolong, dio charlas y presentó su última novela traducida al español, El crimen del lago (Tusquets), que se suma a títulos como El caso Mao o Muerte de una heroína roja, policiales sociológicos con el tono particular de un poeta que cruza a Confucio con sus versos modernos. 

-¿Se considera un escritor americano?

-Chino y americano, pero ni lo uno ni lo otro. 

-Como usted, el protagonista de sus novelas es poeta y traductor, pero trabaja de policía. Muestra su insatisfacción discursivamente, pero al actuar no se aparta del sistema, ¿sufrió usted esa misma contradicción?

-Sí, antes de irme a EE.UU. soñaba con la posibilidad de hacer algo en China para quedarme en el sistema, cambiarlo desde adentro. Creí eso un tiempo, pero luego entendí que en China son otros quienes lo hacen todo, y a veces tienes que comprometerte, moverte en un área gris. Quería que mi personaje hiciera algo y al mismo tiempo que sobreviviera, por eso es un anti héroe. 

-Sobrevive porque siempre evalúa los riesgos, pero usted los cuenta, y va más allá…

-Hasta hace unos años, cuando iba a China, tenía sentimientos encontrados. Veía todos los problemas, pero por otro lado, veía la mejora económica. En la ciudad de Shangai, cada año ves nuevas autopistas, y las condiciones de vida mejoran para la mayoría de la gente. Muchos intelectuales chinos veíamos esa dualidad. Pero un intelectual debería ser más cínico, más pesimista, descreer de esta clase de futuro. La parte económica va bien, pero los problemas políticos y sociales cada vez son más.

-Por las tradiciones de una sociedad milenaria, ¿el capitalismo chino podría ser distinto al estadounidense?

-Sí, es diferente. Hay una expresión oficial usada en los diarios, dicen que es capitalismo primitivo, eso significa que no es materialista, y también que es menos humano. En este país, puedes hacer cualquier cosa con tal de obtener beneficios. Pero eso no es todo, en términos de ideología política no tenemos un sistema legal confiable, eso es un problema, porque acá o en EE.UU. el sistema es legalmente confiable, al menos puedes ver algo de justicia. Pero en China, si algo envuelve al partido comunista, si amenaza su posibilidad de mantenerse en el poder, es un secreto a voces que no pasará de ahí. 

-Es paradójico. China es un país comunista amenazado por la lucha de clases, dicho en términos marxistas…

-Gran paradoja. 

-¿Cómo se puede resolver esa contradicción?

-Esa es una buena pregunta. Están resucitando las ideas de Mao, alguna gente incluso dice: “La Revolución cultural, bien!”. Y con Mao, todo el país era pobre. 

-Sus novelas son críticas con la revolución cultural, pero nostálgicas de los primeros tiempos del comunismo, ¿es una idea mía?

-Creo que tienes razón, pero no se trata exactamente de nostalgia. Durante muchos años el pueblo chino creyó en Confucio. Había algo en qué creer y eso le daba un sentido a todo lo que hacías. Después de que el Partido Comunista tomara el poder en 1949 la gente creyó en Mao, en Marx, y otra vez, no importaba si estaba bien o mal, pero al menos creías en algo. Tras la revolución cultural ¿en qué se podía creer? Sin Confucio ni Mao, no quedó nada más que el dinero. Creo que la gente debería creer en algo, uno debería tener algún tipo de sistema de valores, pero en China todo corre al ritmo del dinero y el beneficio.

-En sus libros esa oscuridad es evidente, ¿qué le dicen los lectores chinos?

Primero, no tienen acceso a las versiones sin censurar de mis libros; segundo, soy consciente de que hay un cambio entre los lectores. Cuando mi primer libro fue traducido al chino, hace como diez años, muchos se enojaron, pensaron que solo escribía sobre las partes oscuras de la sociedad, que debería escribir de todos los logros obtenidos por China, pero este tipo de opiniones cada vez son menos, y ahora me dicen que hice un trabajo muy honesto, así es como la gente empieza a cambiar, es algo, y me gusta.

- Después de la Revolución cultural, Deng Xiaoping introdujo la economía de mercado en un marco ideológico comunista… -Xiaoping introdujo el mercado. Cuando yo era chico, los libros de la escuela contaban que eso era la explotación de la clase obrera, y ahora es simplemente algo más. En tiempos de Mao todo era del Estado, ahora es como acá, hay compañías del estado, compañías privadas… y tienes tu propia casa o departamento, muchas cosas son incluso más capitalistas que en los Estados Unidos. Pero ideológicamente aún hay un sistema unipartidista que controla todo. Sucede con los medios, no puede haber otras voces. 

-Pero el sistema no puede controlar Internet

Exacto, aunque el gobierno chino pone mucho dinero para hacerlo. El título en francés de mi nuevo libro de esta serie (sin traducción al español) es Cyber China. La gente toma de Internet la información pese a las trabas del gobierno, que en cierto modo, son efectivas. Voy a China una o dos veces por año y no puedo usar Google o Facebook, no te lo permiten. Claro que hay gente que igual accede, los hackers, si lo necesitas, pero tengo que ser muy precavido, así que no los uso.

SINISTER MINDS: ARE LEFT-HANDED PEOPLE SMARTER?

The Newyorker - AUGUST 22, 2013
 POSTED BY MARIA KONNIKOVA

Cesare Lombroso, the father of modern criminology, owes his career to a human skull. In 1871, as a young doctor at a mental asylum in Pavia, Italy, he autopsied the brain of Giuseppe Villela, a Calabrese peasant turned criminal, who has been described as an Italian Jack the Ripper. “At the sight of that skull,” Lombrososaid, “I seemed to see all at once, standing out clearly illuminated as in a vast plain under a flaming sky, the problem of the nature of the criminal, who reproduces in civilised times characteristics, not only of primitive savages, but of still lower types as far back as the carnivora.”

Lombroso would go on to argue that the key to understanding the essence of criminality lay in organic, physical, and constitutional features—each defect being a throwback to a more primitive and bestial psyche. And while his original insight had come from a skull, certain telltale signs, he believed, could be discerned long before an autopsy. Chief among these was left-handedness.

In 1903, Lombroso summarized his views on the left-handed of the world. “What is sure,” he wrote, “is, that criminals are more often left-handed than honest men, and lunatics are more sensitively left-sided than either of the other two.” Left-handers were more than three times as common in criminal populations as they were in everyday life, he found. The prevalence among swindlers was even higher: up to thirty-three per cent were left-handed—in contrast to the four per cent Lombroso found within the normal population. He ended on a conciliatory note. “I do not dream at all of saying that all left-handed people are wicked, but that left-handedness, united to many other traits, may contribute to form one of the worst characters among the human species.”

Though Lombroso’s science may seem suspect to a modern eye, less-than-favorable views of the left-handed have persisted. In 1977, the psychologist Theodore Blau argued that left-handed children were over-represented among the academically and behaviorally challenged, and were more vulnerable to mental diseases like schizophrenia. “Sinister children,” he called them. The psychologist Stanley Coren, throughout the eighties and nineties, presented evidence that the left-handed lived shorter, more impoverished lives, and that they were more likely to experience delays in mental and physical maturity, among other signs of “neurological insult or physical malfunctioning.” Toward the end of his career, the Harvard University neurologist Norman Geschwind implicated left-handedness in a range of problematic conditions, including migraines, diseases of the immune system, and learning disorders. He attributed the phenomenon, and the related susceptibilities, to higher levels of testosterone in utero, which, he argued, slowed down the development of the brain’s left hemisphere (the one responsible for the right side of the body).

But over the past two decades, the data that seemed compelling have largely been discredited. In 1993, the psychologist Marian Annett, who has spent half a century researching “handedness,” as it is known, challenged the basic foundation of Coren’s findings. The data, she argued, were fundamentally flawed: it wasn’t the case that left-handers led shorter lives. Rather, the older you were, the more likely it was that you had been forced to use your right hand as a young child. The mental-health data have also withered: a 2010 analysis of close to fifteen hundred individuals that included schizophrenic patients and their non-affected siblings found that being left-handed neither increased the risk of developing schizophrenia nor predicted any other cognitive or neural disadvantage. And when a group of neurologists scanned the brains of four hundred and sixty-five adults, they found no effect of handedness on either grey or white matter volume or concentration, either globally or regionally.

Left-handers may, in fact, even derive certain cognitive benefits from their preference. This spring, a group of psychiatrists from the University of Athens invited a hundred university students and graduates—half left-handed and half right—to complete two tests of cognitive ability. In the Trail Making Test, participants had to find a path through a batch of circles as quickly as possible. In the hard version of the test, the circles contain numbers and letters, and participants must move in ascending order while alternating between the two as fast as possible. In the second test, Letter-Number Sequencing, participants hear a group of numbers and letters and must then repeat the whole group, but with numbers in ascending order and letters organized alphabetically. Lefties performed better on both the complex version of the T.M.T.—demonstrating faster and more accurate spatial skills, along with strong executive control and mental flexibility—and on the L.N.S., demonstrating enhanced working memory. And the more intensely they preferred their left hand for tasks, the stronger the effect.

The Athens study points to a specific kind of cognitive benefit, since both the T.M.T. and the L.N.S. are thought to engage, to a large extent, the right hemisphere of the brain. But a growing body of research suggests another, broader benefit: a boost in a specific kind of creativity—namely, divergent thinking, or the ability to generate new ideas from a single principle quickly and effectively. In one demonstration, researchers found that the more marked the left-handed preference in a group of males, the better they were at tests of divergent thought. (The demonstration was led by the very Coren who had originally argued for the left-handers’ increased susceptibility to mental illness.) Left-handers were more adept, for instance, at combining two common objects in novel ways to form a third—for example, using a pole and a tin can to make a birdhouse. They also excelled at grouping lists of words into as many alternate categories as possible. Another recent study has demonstrated an increased cognitive flexibility among the ambidextrous and the left-handed—and lefties have been found to be over-represented among architects, musicians, and art and music students (as compared to those studying science).

Part of the explanation for this creative edge may lie in the greater connectivity of the left-handed brain. In a meta-analysis of forty-three studies, the neurologist Naomi Driesen and the cognitive neuroscientist Naftali Raz concluded that the corpus callosum—the bundle of fibers that connects the brain’s hemispheres—was slightly but significantly larger in left-handers than in right-handers. The explanation could also be a much more prosaic one: in 1989, a group of Connecticut College psychologists suggested that the creativity boost was a result of the environment, since left-handers had to constantly improvise to deal with a world designed for right-handers. In a 2013 review of research into handedness and cognition, a group of psychologists found that the main predictor of cognitive performance wasn’t whether an individual was left-handed or right-handed, but rather how strongly they preferred one hand over another. Strongly handed individuals, both right and left, were at a slight disadvantage compared to those who occupied the middle ground—both the ambidextrous and the left-handed who, through years of practice, had been forced to develop their non-dominant right hand. In those less clear-cut cases, the brain’s hemispheres interacted more and overall performance improved, indicating there may something to left-handed brains being pushed in a way that a right-handed one never is.

Whatever the ultimate explanation may be, the advantage appears to extend to other types of thinking, too. In a 1986 study of students who had scored in the top of their age group on either the math or the verbal sections of the S.A.T., the prevalence of left-handers among the high achievers—over fifteen per cent, as compared to the roughly ten percent found in the general population—was higher than in any comparison groups, which included their siblings and parents. Among those who had scored in the top in both the verbal and math sections, the percentage of left-handers jumped to nearly seventeen per cent, for males, and twenty per cent, for females. That advantage echoes an earlier sample of elementary-school children, which found increased left-handedness among children with I.Q. scores above a hundred and thirty-one.

Lombroso’s scientific conclusions about criminal physiology may be closer to Franz Joseph Gall’s phrenology than to any modern understanding of the brain. But he might not have been so far off the mark when he hypothesized that by looking at someone’s hands, we could learn something about the inner workings of their minds—though those workings have more to do with cognitive achievement than any inclination to commit highway robbery. Michelangelo and da Vinci were left-handed, after all. As were three of the last four occupants of the White House; the only right-handed President since the end of the Cold War has been George W. Bush.

Maria Konnikova is the author of the New York Times best-seller “Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes.” She has a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University.

Earth Overshoot Day

www.footprintnetwork.org

In 8 Months, Humanity Exhausts Earth's Budget for the Year

August 20 is Earth Overshoot Day 2013, marking the date when humanity exhausted nature’s budget for the year. We are now operating in overdraft. For the rest of the year, we will maintain our ecological deficit by drawing down local resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Just as a bank statement tracks income against expenditures, Global Footprint Network measures humanity’s demand for and supply of natural resources and ecological services. And the data is sobering. Global Footprint Network estimates that in approximately eight months, we demand more renewable resources and C0₂ sequestration than what the planet can provide for an entire year.

In 1993, Earth Overshoot Day—the approximate date our resource consumption for a given year exceeds the planet’s ability to replenish—fell on October 21. In 2003, Overshoot Day was on September 22. Given current trends in consumption, one thing is clear: Earth Overshoot Day arrives a few days earlier each year.

Earth Overshoot Day, a concept originally developed by Global Footprint Network partner and U.K. think tank new economics foundation, is the annual marker of when we begin living beyond our means in a given year.

While only a rough estimate of time and resource trends, Earth Overshoot Day is as close as science can be to measuring the gap between our demand for ecological resources and services, and how much the planet can provide.

The Cost of Ecological Overspending

Throughout most of history, humanity has used nature’s resources to build cities and roads, to provide food and create products, and to absorb our carbon dioxide at a rate that was well within Earth’s budget. But in the mid-1970s, we crossed a critical threshold: Human consumption began outstripping what the planet could reproduce.

According to Global Footprint Network’s calculations, our demand for renewable ecological resources and the services they provide is now equivalent to that of more than 1.5 Earths. The data shows us on track to require the resources of two planets well before mid-century.

The fact that we are using, or “spending,” our natural capital faster than it can replenish is similar to having expenditures that continuously exceed income. In planetary terms, the costs of our ecological overspending are becoming more evident by the day. Climate change—a result of greenhouse gases being emitted faster than they can be absorbed by forests and oceans—is the most obvious and arguably pressing result. But there are others—shrinking forests, species loss, fisheries collapse, higher commodity prices and civil unrest, to name a few. The environmental and economic crises we are experiencing are symptoms of looming catastrophe. Humanity is simply using more than what the planet can provide.

Methodology and Projections

In 2011, Earth Overshoot Day came a few weeks later than it did in 2010. Does this mean we reduced global overshoot? The answer, unfortunately, is no.

Earth Overshoot Day is an estimate, not an exact date. It’s not possible to determine with 100 percent accuracy the day we bust our ecological budget. Adjustments of the date that we go into overshoot are due to revised calculations, not ecological advances on the part of humanity. Based on current assumptions, Global Footprint Network data now suggests that since 2001, Earth Overshoot Day has been moving three days earlier each year.

As Global Footprint Network methodology changes, projections will continue to shift. But every scientific model used to account for human demand and nature’s supply shows a consistent trend: We are well over budget, and that debt is compounding. It is an ecological debt, and the interest we are paying on that mounting debt—food shortages, soil erosion, and the build-up of CO₂ in our atmosphere—comes with devastating human and monetary costs.

Is your country an ecological creditor or debtor? Check out Global Footprint Network and ESRI’s interactive story map of ecological creditors and debtors

For media inquiries, contact Senior Communications Manager Scott Mattoon or Communications Associate Haley Smith Kingsland.

Obama promete dar explicaciones sobre programas de vigilancia a líderes europeos

El mandatario estadounidense encargó a su equipo y a la Agencia Nacional de Seguridad de EEUU que evalúen todo lo que se afirma respecto de los programas de vigilancia aplicados a la UE y la ONU.

http://www.latercera.com por Agencias - 01/07/2013 - 12:45

El presidente de Estados Unidos, Barack Obama, prometió hoy a los líderes europeos que les ofrecerá explicaciones sobre el presunto espionaje masivo por parte de agencias de inteligencia estadounidenses a autoridades de la Unión Europea en cuanto su equipo haya examinado las alegaciones.

"Le he pedido a mi equipo y a la Agencia Nacional de Seguridad (NSA) que evalúen todo lo que se afirma", dijo Obama en referencia al artículo del semanario alemán "Der Spiegel" que reveló el nuevo escándalo de escuchas.

"Cuando tengamos una respuesta, nos aseguraremos de proporcionar toda la información que quieren nuestros aliados acerca de lo que se alega exactamente", aseguró el mandatario estadounidense en Dar es Salam, Tanzania.

"Der Spiegel" afirmó este fin de semana en base a documentos del informante estadounidense Edward Snowden que la NSA ha estado espiando también a la UE, llegando a instalar micrófonos secretos en las representaciones diplomáticas europeas en Washington y en la sede de las Naciones Unidas en Nueva York, además de infiltrar la red de computadoras de ambas instituciones.

Obama puntualizó que su equipo sigue aún revisando exactamente a qué programas secretos se refiere el artículo y pidió que no se apresuren los juicios de valor sobre el trabajo que realizan las agencias de inteligencia, subrayó, de todo el mundo.

"Creo que deberíamos dejar claro que todos los servicios de inteligencia, no sólo los nuestros (...) tienen una tarea: intentan comprender el mundo mejor y qué está sucediendo en las capitales del mundo a partir de fuentes que no están disponibles a través del 'New York Times' o NBC News, que están buscando información adicional más allá de lo que es accesible a través de fuentes abiertas", señaló.

"Y les garantizo que en las capitales europeas hay gente interesada en saber, si no lo que desayuné, al menos sí cuáles podrían ser mis argumentos cuando me reúna con sus líderes. Así es como operan los servicios de inteligencia", agregó.

Asimismo, Obama rechazó que el seguimiento de las agencias de inteligencia tuviera como fin espiar a sus colegas europeos.

"Si yo quiero saber lo que la canciller Merkel está pensando, llamaré a la canciller merkel. Si quiero saber lo que el presidente Hollande está pensando sobre un tema particular, llamaré al presidente Hollande", replicó Obama ante las iracundas demandas de explicaciones de los dirigentes de Alemania y Francia.
En tanto, el presidente del Parlamento Europeo (PE), Martin Schulz, dijo a las autoridades de Estados Unidos que "no cree" que en los edificios de las instituciones europeas "se planeen atentados terroristas".

"Comprendo que se tomen medidas preventivas de seguridad para detectar posibles actuaciones terroristas, pero no creo que en las instituciones de la UE se planeen atentados", señaló Schulz ante los eurodiputados, que recibieron con un aplauso general sus palabras.

"Estoy consternado por si es cierto el supuesto espionaje, pues sería un golpe durísimo para las relaciones entre Bruselas y Washington", afirmó.

El presidente de la Eurocámara señaló que hoy mismo habló por teléfono con el embajador de Estados Unidos ante la UE, William Kennard, a quien exigió que le informe "de forma rápida y concreta de cualquier tipo de información sobre el caso".

Michoacán, autodefensas, delincuencia y vacío de poder

Por Enrique Pérez Quintana | Blog de Noticias – mar, 30 jul 2013

Indígenas purépechas enmascarados de un grupo de autodefensa de la población Los Reyes, Michoacán. (AP Foto/Gabriela … 

Un miembro de la llamada "autodefensa" durante una ronda de seguridad en el pueblo de Aguililla. (AFP | ronaldo …Las autodefensas se han convertido en el peor enemigo de los narcos. (Cuartoscuro)Hace seis años inició la acción de la Federación en contra de la delincuencia organizada en Michoacán, desde entonces ha avanzado de manera consistente el poder de los grupos que en esta entidad se dedican a traficar con las drogas que producen, extorsionar a comerciantes, ganaderos, agricultores y particulares; también a secuestrar y desde luego que siendo insuficiente la fuerza del Estado, asesinan, levantan y torturan.

En Michoacán es evidente el vacío de poder. Un gobernador enfermo y con licencia, un gobernador interino, la federación a la expectativa y la delincuencia organizada en proceso de consolidación de su dominio en diversos municipios. Se disputan el territorio La Familia Michoacana y Los Caballeros Templarios que ante el deterioro de la economía nacional y estatal se han convertido en la alternativa para la subsistencia de muchos grupos que son reclutados por su voluntad, por presión o por el miedo que les da mantenerse al margen.

Algunos municipios se sienten abandonados por el Gobierno en sus tres niveles y por ello, siguiendo el modelo del estado de Guerrero, comenzaron a organizarse y surgieron los grupos de autodefensa en un intento por neutralizar la violencia de la delincuencia organizada. El resultado es de enfrentamientos armados entre las comunidades organizadas para su autodefensa y seguridad y la delincuencia organizada que no está dispuesta a ceder el dominio sobre las comunidades que hoy se rebelan en un intento por salvarse de la violencia.

En diversos municipios de Michoacán la economía se ha detenido debido a que los pueblos organizados para su autodefensa han sido bloqueados por la delincuencia organizada que impide a los agricultores sacar sus productos al mercado. Algunas de estas comunidades no han logrado vender su limón, ni su aguacate, además la delincuencia impide que sea abastecida la gasolina de manera que el transporte ha sido paralizado.

Tampoco se permite la entrada de mercancías a estas comunidades. No se da acceso a los comerciantes que abastecen a los pueblos de productos básicos. Diversas empresas cancelaron la distribución de productos por las amenazas que han sufrido sus trabajadores de parte de la delincuencia organizada.

Javier González Franco, director general de Bimbo, comentó que hay desabastecimiento de alimentos en algunos poblados de Michoacán por las restricciones que imponen los grupos del crimen organizado. “No nos gusta arriesgar a nuestra gente y ellos lo saben”.

Todo esto pasa en algunas regiones de la entidad sin que las autoridades municipales, estatales y federales hicieran algo por impedir las acciones de la delincuencia organizada y promover el retorno a la normalidad.

Como parte de una nueva estrategia de seguridad para Michoacán, Alberto Reyes Vaca, general de División Diplomado del Estado Mayor Presidencial, asumió la coordinación general de las fuerzas policiales y castrenses que pretenden rescatar a la entidad de la violencia e inseguridad. Su nombramiento implica el inicio del mando único en los cuerpos de seguridad y será una especie de ensayo que podría aplicarse en otras entidades con problemáticas de seguridad similares.

Con el mando único se llevarán a cabo acciones de seguridad para enfrentar la situación de violencia que enfrenta Michoacán, sobre todo en las regiones de Tierra Caliente y la Meseta Purépecha, donde ha proliferado el surgimiento de grupos que se autonombran policías comunitarias, recientemente se ha reportado la aparición de estos grupos en Ario de Rosales, Los Reyes y Coalcomán, en esta zona del estado se manifiestan las protestas de los estudiantes normalistas.

Los grupos de autodefensa en Michoacán se han convertido en el mayor enemigo de Los Caballeros Templarios que han tratado de presentar a los grupos de autodefensa como instrumentos de sus rivales del cártel de Jalisco-Nueva Generación. El líder de Los Caballeros Templarios, Servando Gómez Martínez “La Tuta”, divulgó un mensaje por video en el que pidió al gobierno que pusiera límites a la operación de las “policías comunitarias”.

El presidente de la Comisión de Gobernación y Puntos Constitucionales del Senado de la República, Jorge Luis Preciado, comentó que “ante la ingobernabilidad en Michoacán, por lo difícil que es vivir para los michoacanos, no hay otra salida sino la militarización, la desaparición de poderes en la entidad, prevista en la Constitución general de la República y que sean las fuerzas armadas las que restituyan la paz social”.

Comentó el senador Preciado que “muchos michoacanos no pueden salir de sus poblaciones, ni tampoco entrar, no les llega alimentos, medicinas, ni los más elementales servicios básicos y se llega al extremo que mucha gente  no puede acceder a médicos o tratamiento de sus enfermedades porque los especialistas han huido o son repelidos”.

Lo que vive hoy Michoacán es una situación de vacío de poder que pone en evidencia que el Estado ha fallado en el cumplimiento básico de garantizar la seguridad de la vida y los bienes de los ciudadanos, pero debemos ser congruentes en el juicio, la entidad atraviesa por una situación de abandono que empezó hace más de 25 años, cuando Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas fue gobernador, da la impresión de que la entidad fue castigada por los políticos del centro que fue dejada al mando de nadie como para que la impunidad creciera para dar paso al neocaudillismo que caracteriza al liderazgo de la delincuencia organizada retadora del poder de la Federación y demás. El restablecimiento de la paz social no será fácil y el deseo genuino es que no sea a costa de sangre, menos si es de gente inocente.

Freedom in the Cloud

In This Times// Features » August 13, 2013

Assange, Manning and Snowden are the new heroes of the era of digitalized control.

BY Slavoj Žižek

Radomes at an operating facility of the BND, the main German foreign intelligence gathering agency, near Bad Aibling, Germany. The German government recently confirmed that the BND shares large amounts of data with the NSA, and according to NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, NSA operatives work at the Bad Aibling facility. (Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images)

We need more Mannings and Snowdens—in China, in Russia, everywhere. There are states much more oppressive than the United States—just imagine what would have happened to someone like Manning in a Russian or Chinese court (in all probability there would be no public trial!) However, one should not exaggerate the softness of the United States.

We all remember President Obama's smiling face, full of hope and trust, when he repeatedly delivered the motto of his first campaign, “Yes, we can!”—we can get rid of the cynicism of the Bush era and bring justice and welfare to the American people.
Now that the United States continues with covert operations and expands its intelligence network, spying even on their allies, we can imagine protesters shouting at Obama: “How can you use drones for killing? How can you spy even our allies?” Obama looks back at them and murmurs with a mockingly evil smile: “Yes we can…”

However, such simple personalization misses the point: The threat to our freedom disclosed by whistle-blowers has much deeper systemic roots. Edward Snowden should be defended not only because his acts annoyed and embarrassed the U.S. secret services. Their lesson is global; it reaches far beyond the standard U.S. bashing. What he revealed is something that not only the United States but also all the other great (and not so great) powers—from China to Russia, from Germany to Israel—are doing, to the extent they are technologically able to do it. His acts thus provide a factual foundation to our premonitions of how much we are all monitored and controlled. We didn’t really learn from Snowden (or from Manning) anything we didn’t already presume to be true—but it is one thing to know it in general, and another to get concrete data. It is a little bit like knowing that one’s sexual partner is playing around—one can accept the abstract knowledge of it, but pain arises when one learns the steamy details, when one gets pictures of what they were doing.

Back in 1843, the young Karl Marx claimed that the German ancien regime “only imagines that it believes in itself and demands that the world should imagine the same thing.” In such a situation, to put shame on those in power becomes a weapon—or, as Marx goes on: “The actual pressure must be made more pressing by adding to it consciousness of pressure, the shame must be made more shameful by publicizing it.” And this, exactly, is our situation today: we are facing the shameless cynicism of the representatives of the existing global order who only imagine that they believe in their ideas of democracy, human rights, etc. What happens in Wikileaks disclosures is that the shame, theirs and ours for tolerating such power over us, is made more shameful by publicizing it.

What we should be ashamed of is the worldwide process of the gradual narrowing of the space for what Immanuel Kant called the “public use of reason.” In his classic text What is Enlightenment?, Kant opposes “public” and “private” use of reason: “private” is for Kant the communal-institutional order in which we dwell (our state, our nation…), while “public” is the trans-national universality of the exercise of one’s Reason:

The public use of one’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men. The private use of one’s reason, on the other hand, may often be very narrowly restricted without particularly hindering the progress of enlightenment. By public use of one’s reason I understand the use which a person makes of it as a scholar before the reading public. Private use I call that which one may make of it in a particular civil post or office which is entrusted to him.

We see where Kant parts with our liberal common sense: The domain of State is “private,” constrained by particular interests, while individuals reflecting on general issues use reason in a “public” way. This Kantian distinction is especially pertinent with the Internet and other new media torn between their free “public use” and their growing “private” control. In our era of cloud computing, we no longer need strong individual computers: Software and information are available on demand, and users can access web-based tools or applications through browsers as if they were programs installed on their own computer.

Once we chose to follow the path of state secrets, we sooner or later reach the fateful point at which the very legal regulations prescribing what is secret become secret. Kant formulated the basic axiom of the public law: “All actions relating to the right of other men are unjust if their maxim is not consistent with publicity.” A secret law, a law unknown to its subjects, legitimizes the arbitrary despotism of those who exercise it, as indicated in the title of a recent report on China: “Even what’s secret is a secret in China.” Troublesome intellectuals who reported on China's political oppression, ecological catastrophes, rural poverty, etc., got years of prison for betraying state secrets, and the catch is that many of the laws and regulations that made up the state-secret regime are themselves classified, making it difficult for individuals to know how and when they’re in violation.
What makes the all-encompassing control of our lives so dangerous is not that we lose our privacy and all our intimate secrets are exposed to the view of the Big Brother. There is no state agency that is able to exert such control—not because they don’t know enough, but because they know too much. The sheer size of data is too large, and in spite of all intricate programs for detecting suspicious messages, computers which register billions of data are too stupid to interpret and evaluate them properly, yielding ridiculous and unnecessary mistakes whereby innocent bystanders are listed as potential terrorists—and this makes state control of our communications even more dangerous. Without knowing why, without doing anything illegal, we can all of a sudden find ourselves on a list of potential terrorists.

Recall the legendary answer of a Hearst newspaper editor to Hearst’s inquiry as to why he doesn't want to take a long-deserved holiday: “I am afraid that if I go, there will be chaos, everything will fall apart—but I am even more afraid to discover that, if I go, things will just go on as normal without me, a proof that I am not really needed!” Something similar can be said about the state control of our communications: We should fear that we have no secrets, that secret state agencies know everything, but we should fear even more that they fail in this endeavor.

This is why whistle-blowers play a crucial role in keeping the “public reason” alive. Assange, Manning, Snowden… these are our new heroes, exemplary cases of the new ethics that befits our era of digitalized control. They are no longer just whistle-blowers who denounce illegal practices of private companies (banks, tobacco and oil firms) to the public authorities; they denounce these public authorities themselves when they engage in “private use of reason.”

We need more Mannings and Snowdens—in China, in Russia, everywhere. There are states much more oppressive than the United States—just imagine what would have happened to someone like Manning in a Russian or Chinese court (in all probability there would be no public trial!) However, one should not exaggerate the softness of the United States. True, the United States doesn’t treat prisoners as brutally as China or Russia—because of their technological priority, they simply do not need the openly brutal approach (which they are more than ready to apply when it is needed)—the invisible digital control can do well enough. In this sense, the United States is even more dangerous than China insofar as their measures of control are not perceived as such, while Chinese brutality is openly displayed.

It is therefore not enough to play one state against the other (as Snowden did, when he used Russia against the United States). We need a new International—an international network to organize the protection of whistle-blowers and the dissemination of their message. Whistle-blowers are our heroes because they prove that if those in power can do their job of controlling us, we can also fight back and throw them into a panic.

ABOUT THIS AUTHOR

Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, is a senior researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, in Essen, Germany. He has also been a visiting professor at more than 10 universities around the world. Žižek is the author of many other books, including Living in the End Times, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce, The Fragile Absolute and Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? He lives in London.

More information about Slavoj Žižek

Exclusive: NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ

• Secret payments revealed in leaks by Edward Snowden
• GCHQ expected to 'pull its weight' for Americans
• Weaker regulation of British spies 'a selling point' for NSA

Nick Hopkins and Julian Borger

The Guardian, Thursday 1 August 2013 16.04 BST

The NSA paid £15.5m towards redevelopments at GCHQ’s site in Bude, north Cornwall, which intercepts communications from the transatlantic cables that carry internet traffic. Photograph: Kieran Doherty/Reuters.

The US government has paid at least £100m to the UK spy agency GCHQ over the last three years to secure access to and influence over Britain's intelligence gathering programmes.

The top secret payments are set out in documents which make clear that the Americans expect a return on the investment, and that GCHQ has to work hard to meet their demands. "GCHQ must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight," a GCHQ strategy briefing said.

The funding underlines the closeness of the relationship between GCHQ and its US equivalent, the National Security Agency. But it will raise fears about the hold Washington has over the UK's biggest and most important intelligence agency, and whether Britain's dependency on the NSA has become too great.

In one revealing document from 2010, GCHQ acknowledged that the US had "raised a number of issues with regards to meeting NSA's minimum expectations". It said GCHQ "still remains short of the full NSA ask".

Ministers have denied that GCHQ does the NSA's "dirty work", but in the documents GCHQ describes Britain's surveillance laws and regulatory regime as a "selling point" for the Americans.

The papers are the latest to emerge from the cache leaked by the American whistleblower Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who has railed at the reach of the US and UK intelligence agencies.

Snowden warned about the relationship between the NSA and GCHQ, saying the organisations have been jointly responsible for developing techniques that allow the mass harvesting and analysis of internet traffic. "It's not just a US problem," he said. "They are worse than the US."

As well as the payments, the documents seen by the Guardian reveal:

• GCHQ is pouring money into efforts to gather personal information from mobile phones and apps, and has said it wants to be able to "exploit any phone, anywhere, any time".

• Some GCHQ staff working on one sensitive programme expressed concern about "the morality and ethics of their operational work, particularly given the level of deception involved".

• The amount of personal data available to GCHQ from internet and mobile traffic has increased by 7,000% in the past five years – but 60% of all Britain's refined intelligence still appears to come from the NSA.
 • GCHQ blames China and Russia for the vast majority of cyber-attacks against the UK and is now working with the NSA to provide the British and US militaries with a cyberwarfare capability.

The details of the NSA payments, and the influence the US has over Britain, are set out in GCHQ's annual "investment portfolios". The papers show that the NSA gave GCHQ £22.9m in 2009. The following year the NSA's contribution increased to £39.9m, which included £4m to support GCHQ's work for Nato forces in Afghanistan, and £17.2m for the agency's Mastering the Internet project, which gathers and stores vast amounts of "raw" information ready for analysis.

The NSA also paid £15.5m towards redevelopments at GCHQ's sister site in Bude, north Cornwall, which intercepts communications from the transatlantic cables that carry internet traffic. "Securing external NSA funding for Bude has protected (GCHQ's core) budget," the paper said.

In 2011/12 the NSA paid another £34.7m to GCHQ.

The papers show the NSA pays half the costs of one of the UK's main eavesdropping capabilities in Cyprus. In turn, GCHQ has to take the American view into account when deciding what to prioritise.

A document setting out GCHQ's spending plans for 2010/11 stated: "The portfolio will spend money supplied by the NSA and UK government departments against agreed requirements."

Other documents say the agency must ensure there has been "an appropriate level of contribution … from the NSA perspective".

The leaked papers reveal that the UK's biggest fear is that "US perceptions of the … partnership diminish, leading to loss of access, and/or reduction in investment … to the UK".

When GCHQ does supply the US with valuable intelligence, the agency boasts about it. In one review, GCHQ boasted that it had supplied "unique contributions" to the NSA during its investigation of the American citizen responsible for an attempted car bomb attack in Times Square, New York City, in 2010.

No other detail is provided – but it raises the possibility that GCHQ might have been spying on an American living in the US. The NSA is prohibited from doing this by US law.

Asked about the payments, a Cabinet Office spokesman said: "In a 60-year alliance it is entirely unsurprising that there are joint projects in which resources and expertise are pooled, but the benefits flow in both directions."

A senior security source in Whitehall added: "The fact is there is a close intelligence relationship between the UK and US and a number of other countries including Australia and Canada. There's no automaticity, not everything is shared. A sentient human being takes decisions."

Although the sums represent only a small percentage of the agencies' budgets, the money has been an important source of income for GCHQ. The cash came during a period of cost-cutting at the agency that led to staff numbers being slashed from 6,485 in 2009 to 6,132 last year.

GCHQ seems desperate to please its American benefactor and the NSA does not hold back when it fails to get what it wants. On one project, GCHQ feared if it failed to deliver it would "diminish NSA's confidence in GCHQ's ability to meet minimum NSA requirements". Another document warned: "The NSA ask is not static and retaining 'equability' will remain a challenge for the near future."

In November 2011, a senior GCHQ manager working in Cyprus bemoaned the lack of staff devoted to one eavesdropping programme, saying: "This is not sustainable if numbers reduce further and reflects badly on our commitments to the NSA."

The overriding necessity to keep on the right side of the US was revealed in a UK government paper that set out the views of GCHQ in the wake of the 2010 strategic defence and security review. The document was called: "GCHQ's international alliances and partnerships: helping to maintain Britain's standing and influence in the world." It said: "Our key partnership is with the US. We need to keep this relationship healthy. The relationship remains strong but is not sentimental. GCHQ must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight."

Astonishingly, the document admitted that 60% of the UK's high-value intelligence "is based on either NSA end-product or derived from NSA collection". End product means official reports that are distillations of the best raw intelligence.

Another pitch to keep the US happy involves reminding Washington that the UK is less regulated than the US. The British agency described this as one of its key "selling points". This was made explicit two years ago when GCHQ set out its priorities for the coming years.

"We both accept and accommodate NSA's different way of working," the document said. "We are less constrained by NSA's concerns about compliance."

GCHQ said that by 2013 it hoped to have "exploited to the full our unique selling points of geography, partnerships [and] the UK's legal regime".

However, there are indications from within GCHQ that senior staff are not at ease with the rate and pace of change. The head of one of its programmes warned the agency was now receiving so much new intelligence that its "mission management … is no longer fit for purpose".

In June, the government announced that the "single intelligence account" fund that pays for GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 would be increased by 3.4% in 2015/16. This comes after three years in which the SIA has been cut from £1.92bn to £1.88bn. The agencies have also been told to make £220m savings on existing programmes.

The parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) has questioned whether the agencies were making the claimed savings and said their budgets should be more rigorously scrutinised to ensure efficiencies were "independently verifiable and/or sustainable".

The Snowden documents show GCHQ has become increasingly reliant on money from "external" sources. In 2006 it received the vast majority of its funding directly from Whitehall, with only £14m from "external" funding. In 2010 that rose to £118m and by 2011/12 it had reached £151m. Most of this comes from the Home Office.