Bradley Manning proved that massive amounts of the government’s most secret data was vulnerable to being dumped on the open Internet. A single individual achieved that unprecedented leak. According to the Washington Post, “An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.” And this week, we learned that the FBI, CIA and NSA were unable to protect some of their most closely held secrets from Glenn Greenwald, Richard Engel, Robert Windrem, Barton Gellman, and Laura Poitras. Those journalists, talented as they are, possess somewhat fewer resources than foreign governments! So I naturally started to think about all the data the NSA is storing.
In the wrong hands, it could enable blackmail on a massive scale, widespread manipulation of U.S. politics, industrial espionage against American businesses;,and other mischief I can’t even imagine.
The plan is apparently to store the data indefinitely, just in case the government needs it for future investigations. Don’t worry, national security officials tell us, we won’t ever look at most of it.
Do you trust the government to keep it secure, forever, if others try to look?
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-10 02:53:542013-06-10 02:53:54What if China, Russia or Iran Hacks the NSA’s Vast Surveillance Database?
China has been quietly taking steps to encircle the United States by arming western hemisphere states, seeking closer military, economic, and diplomatic ties to U.S. neighbors, and sailing warships into U.S. maritime zones.
The strategy is a Chinese version of what Beijing has charged is a U.S. strategy designed to encircle and “contain” China. It is also directed at countering the Obama administration’s new strategy called the pivot to Asia. The pivot calls for closer economic, diplomatic, and military ties to Asian states that are increasingly concerned about Chinese encroachment throughout that region.
“The Chinese are deftly parrying our ‘Pivot to the Pacific’ with their own elegant countermoves,” said John Tkacik, a former State Department Asia hand.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to question President Barack Obama about the U.S. pivot during the summit meeting set to begin Friday afternoon in California. Chinese state-run media have denounced the new U.S. policy as an effort to “contain” China and limit its growing power.
The Chinese strategy is highlighted by Xi’s current visit to Trinidad, Costa Rica, and Mexico where he announced major loans of hundreds of millions of dollars that analysts say is part of buying influence in the hemisphere.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-08 02:08:502013-06-08 02:08:50Rising Red tide: China Encircles U.S. by Sailing Warships in American Waters, Arming Neighbors
Nicaragua has awarded a Chinese company a 100-year concession to build an alternative to the Panama Canal, in a step that looks set to have profound geopolitical ramifications.
The president of the country’s national assembly, Rene Nuñez, announced the $40 billion project, which will reinforce Beijing’s growing influence on global trade and weaken US dominance over the key shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans . . .
Two former Colombian officials recently accused China of influencing the international court of justice to secure the territorial waters that Nicaragua needs for the project.
In an op-ed piece for the magazine Semana, Noemí Sanín, a former Colombian foreign secretary, and Miguel Ceballos, a former vice-minister of justice, said a Chinese judge had settled in Nicaragua’s favour on a 13-year-old dispute over 75,000 square kilometres of sea.
They said this took place soon after Nicaraguan officials signed a memorandum of understanding last September with Wang Jing, the chairman of Xinwei Telecom and president of the newly established Hong Kong firm HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company, to build and operate the canal.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-08 02:07:372013-06-08 02:07:37Nicaragua Gives China Rights to Build Alternative to Panama Canal; Columbia Accuses Nicaragua of Bribing International Court of Justice
Hackers, who penetrated the 2008 presidential campaigns of President Barack Obama and his GOP challenger Sen. John McCain, were not the work of a dirty tricks brigade, but rather sophisticated computer spies employed by the Chinese government.
NBC’s “Nightly News” reported the revelation on Thursday’s broadcast, including the fact that the McCain campaign had been “spooked” by a surprising call from a top Chinese diplomat at the time about a letter McCain had written on a campaign computer to the new president of Taiwan.
“The problem was that letter had not yet been delivered,” reported NBC’s Michael Isikoff.
Meanwhile, in Chicago at then Sen. Obama’s campaign headquarters, a “phony” meeting agenda email had been circulated among top campaign staffers with a hidden computer virus.
Obama told reporters at the time: “Hackers gained access to emails and a range of campaign files from policy position papers to travel plans.”
China is claiming control over the vast majority of the South China Sea in its latest effort to challenge U.S. authority, and President Obama must make it clear that cannot happen, warns retired U.S. Navy Admiral James “Ace” Lyons.
The New York Times recently reported that China is quietly distributing official maps to foreign diplomats showing it controls 80 percent of the South China Sea, considerably more than it has publicly claimed in the past. Six different nations have competing claims for various parts of the sea, which is rich in oil, gas and minerals. If China were recognized as controlling 80 percent of the sea, foreign planes and ships would have to seek permission to enter those critical waters.
Lyons, who served 36 years in the U.S. Navy and completed his career as commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, told WND this simply cannot be allowed to happen, and it’s incumbent upon President Obama to stop it.
“President Obama has to be very clear and let China know we will not tolerate their illegal claims to these vast ocean areas that have been recognized for centuries as international waters,” said Lyons, who argued that Obama has a golden opportunity to set things straight this week when he meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in California. “This will probably be one of the first issues discussed at the summit, and I’m sure that our allies will be watching carefully how President Obama handles this issue.”
According to Lyons, the U.S. Navy policy on the South China Sea has been consistent from the beginning of our nation, and he said China benefits from the longstanding policy as well.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-07 02:16:532013-06-07 02:16:53Admiral on China: ‘We’re in Another Cold War with Another Communist, Totalitarian Regime’
Deng’s economic reforms … opened China to foreign investment and freed thousands of Chinese students to travel abroad, exposing them to the subversive influence of Western ideas. Deng knew the risks he was taking, given the dramatic events unfolding in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Yet, he bravely pushed forward.
The Chinese people responded enthusiastically to Deng’s initiatives. In the spring of 1989, millions gathered peacefully to support his program and urge further political reforms. Led at first by students, the demonstrations soon drew in peasants, workers, professionals, people from across Chinese society. They called for evolutionary change, not political revolution.
But frightened Communist Party hardliners knew that real political reform would lead China inexorably along a democratic path and end their monopoly on power. The symbol the students erected in Tiananmen Square, the paper-mache Goddess of Democracy with torch held aloft, bore an unmistakable resemblance to America’s Statue of Liberty.
Deng was China’s paramount leader in name and in fact. He had bested the old-line Communists who opposed his economic reforms and was now at the peak of his popularity and power. As Party leader, he enjoyed the loyalty of the People’s Liberation Army. The entire nation was poised to take the next historic step with him.
But then Deng flinched, disastrously. He would not cross the democratic Rubicon, and ordered the People’s Army to violate its sacred tradition of never turning its guns on the Chinese people. The attacks in Tiananmen Square and in other cities killed thousands of demonstrators and denied subsequent generations of Chinese their long-sought chance for equal democratic citizenship in the international community.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-05 01:17:562013-06-05 01:17:56Struggle for China Continues
China Is Reaping Biggest Benefits of Iraq Oil Boom
By Tim Arango and Clifford Krauss. Since the American-led invasion of 2003, Iraq has become one of the world’s top oil producers, and China is now its biggest customer.
China already buys nearly half the oil that Iraq produces, nearly 1.5 million barrels a day, and is angling for an even bigger share, bidding for a stake now owned by Exxon Mobil in one of Iraq’s largest oil fields.
“The Chinese are the biggest beneficiary of this post-Saddam oil boom in Iraq,” said Denise Natali, a Middle East expert at the National Defense University in Washington. “They need energy, and they want to get into the market.”
Before the invasion, Iraq’s oil industry was sputtering, largely walled off from world markets by international sanctions against the government of Saddam Hussein, so his overthrow always carried the promise of renewed access to the country’s immense reserves. Chinese state-owned companies seized the opportunity, pouring more than $2 billion a year and hundreds of workers into Iraq, and just as important, showing a willingness to play by the new Iraqi government’s rules and to accept lower profits to win contracts.
“We lost out,” said Michael Makovsky, a former Defense Department official in the Bush administration who worked on Iraq oil policy. “The Chinese had nothing to do with the war, but from an economic standpoint they are benefiting from it, and our Fifth Fleet and air forces are helping to assure their supply.” Read more from this story HERE.
By Didi Kirsten Tatlow. When China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, told the United States late on Saturday that it should “correctly treat China’s development,” what did he mean?
The reprimand came after the U.S. State Department on Friday called on China to “fully account for those killed, detained or missing in the 1989 bloody military crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square,” The Associated Press reported. Mr. Hong also told the U.S. to “discard” its “political prejudice” toward China.
China often emphasizes that it seeks peaceful development. But the authors Heriberto Araújo and Juan Pablo Cardenal believe there is more to it.
In an opinion piece in The New York Times, they write that the state capitalist model behind China’s increasingly successful global push threatens the values of the established democracies. Read more from this story HERE.
By Courtney Coren. Donald Trump tore into President Barack Obama’s administration Monday for allowing China access to Iraqi oil while, he claimed, the United States gets “nothing” after it lost 4,500 troops in the war there.
“I’m not knocking China; I’m knocking our leadership,” the real estate millionaire said on Fox and Friends. “How can they allow this to happen? Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-04 01:07:212013-06-04 01:07:21US Military Freed, Protects Iraqi Oil Fields for … the Communist Chinese (+video)
The combination of a strong, rising China and economic stagnation in Europe and America is making the West increasingly uncomfortable. While China is not taking over the world militarily, it seems to be steadily taking it over commercially. In just the past week, Chinese companies and investors have sought to buy two iconic Western companies, Smithfield Foods, the American pork producer, and Club Med, the French resort company.
Europeans and Americans tend to fret over Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea, its territorial disputes with Japan, and cyberattacks on Western firms, but all of this is much less important than a phenomenon that is less visible but more disturbing: the aggressive worldwide push of Chinese state capitalism.
By buying companies, exploiting natural resources, building infrastructure and giving loans all over the world, China is pursuing a soft but unstoppable form of economic domination. Beijing’s essentially unlimited financial resources allow the country to be a game-changing force in both the developed and developing world, one that threatens to obliterate the competitive edge of Western firms, kill jobs in Europe and America and blunt criticism of human rights abuses in China.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-02 23:24:152013-06-02 23:24:15China Taking Over the World … Economically
Photo Credit: CCTVA bizarre but timely find saved the life of a baby boy in China. The dramatic rescue began after cries from a fourth floor apartment building toilet.
Alarmed neighbors saw a tiny foot and called the fire department. Unable to pull the baby out, rescuers went to the floor below and sawed away the entire section of sewer pipe.
But still, the baby remained wedged inside. So, sewer section and baby were taken to the local hospital where firefighters and surgeons, working together, carefully began removing the pipe piece by piece.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-28 02:31:382016-04-11 11:20:10Baby Survives Being Flushed Down the Toilet (+video)
Photo Credit: State DepartmentChina is one of several countries hoping to obtain a foothold in a grouping of nations with territory lying within the Arctic Circle, a resource-rich area of fast-growing economic and strategic significance.
Beijing’s application for observer status at the Arctic Council, which meets in northern Sweden on Wednesday, requires the approval of all eight current members of the intergovernmental body, and some analysts are urging the United States to block it, pointing to China’s territorial disputes with neighboring countries and some of its policies at home.
The rising importance of the Arctic lies in its huge oil and gas potential, and experts predict virtually ice-free summers in the coming decades, making the region more accessible and navigable, and triggering concerns about potential harm to sensitive ecosystems.
A much-cited U.S. Geological Survey study in 2008 found that “the Arctic accounts for about 13 percent of the undiscovered oil, 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas, and 20 percent of the undiscovered natural gas liquids in the world.”
Geopolitical competition among Arctic nations has been heating up in recent years, and a Russian security strategy released in 2009 warned of the possibility of military conflict over the region’s resources.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-16 03:15:202016-04-11 11:21:13China Seeks Foothold in Arctic Group As Competition Heats Up for Region’s Resources
