Some Good News Out of Madrid

Spain has excluded Palantir from public contracts.

What a surprise.  It's in the pocket of the US State Security Apparatus, its founder is a literal vampire, its CEO is increasingly unhinged, and it's f%$#ing evil.

Spain just told Palantir to pack its bags. Or at least, to stop unpacking new ones.

On July 1, the Spanish government issued a directive through SEPI, the state holding company that oversees the country’s publicly owned enterprises, instructing its portfolio companies to avoid entering new contracts with Palantir Technologies. The reason: concerns over classified national security information and what officials see as risks to national sovereignty.

The directive targets firms operating in defense, communications, and infrastructure. We’re talking about heavyweights like Telefónica, defense contractor Indra, and naval shipbuilder Navantia

………

Spain isn’t acting in isolation. France announced similar restrictions on June 10, specifically linked to Palantir’s operations. Germany has been having its own version of this conversation.

The concept driving all of this is “digital sovereignty.” The basic idea is that nations should control their own critical data infrastructure rather than outsourcing it to foreign companies, particularly ones whose other clients include the CIA and the Pentagon.

Toxic assholes should not handle sensitive data.  Musk and DOGE demonstrated this quite clearly.

Eric Arthur Blair ⃰ Is Spinning in His Grave Fast Enough to Power All of Dubuque, Iowa

At the latest reporting of (obscene) profits for the cyber-stalking as a service company Palantir, its CEO declared the company a, "Guardian of Americans' rights."

Mad as a Panrovian monk, he is.

Palantir had a whopper of a Q4, showing accelerating revenue growth, beating Wall Street's profit estimates, and enjoying a share price jump of as much as 11% during pre-market trading on Tuesday before coming back down to earth.

At such a triumphal moment, it was striking that the company was forced on the defensive, not least for its involvement with the controversial US agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which began in 2011. ICE has drawn criticism for its activities in Minnesota over the last month after its agents shot and killed two American citizens while bystanders captured the events on video.

As it announced its booming financial results, Palantir was prepared. CEO Alex Karp told CNBC: "If you are critical of ICE, you should be out there protesting for more Palantir. Our product, actually, in its core, requires people to conform with Fourth Amendment data protection."

The technical term for the above term is bullsh%$.  (I miss January so much right now)

………

On an earnings call, Karp said the company's software inherently instills the protection of individual rights.

"From the beginning, we have stuck to our very strong values of expanding what we believe is the noble side of the West ... meaning domestic institutions, intelligence institutions [are] essentially taking an incatenation of the Fourth Amendment, which is completely represented by our pipelining, Foundry, and impregnating institutions with it so that every institution that uses our product is doing it within conformity of the law and the ethics of America," he said.

………

"The construction of such a platform, one that reflects our ethical commitments, should, of course, be a rallying cry for progressives and critical thinkers across the political spectrum who profess to be interested in advancing the values of the Fourth Amendment," he said.

To correct the late, great, Douglas Adams, the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as “a bunch of mindless jerks will not be the first against the wall when the revolution comes, they have to wait in line until this guy is done.

 

^*Better known by his pen name, George Orwell.

54°40' or Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Seriously, the fact that senior members of the Trump administration are having secret conversations with representatives of radical Albertan separatist organizations, with the quite obvious goal of creating civil disorder in Canada is a complete mind-fuck.

I guess that Trump was serious about wanting Canada, or at least the oil rich parts of it. 

The Trump administration has held covert meetings with fringe separatists from Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta as a rift deepens between Washington and Ottawa.

Leaders of the Alberta Prosperity Project, a group of far-right separatists who want the western province to become independent, met US state department officials in Washington three times since April last year, according to people familiar with the talks.

They are seeking another meeting next month with state and Treasury officials to ask for a $500bn credit facility to help bankroll the province if an independence referendum — yet to be called — is passed.

“The US is extremely enthusiastic about a free and independent Alberta,” Jeff Rath, APP legal counsel, who attended the meetings, told the FT.

He claimed he had a “much stronger relationship” with the Trump administration than Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

………

British Columbia premier David Eby described the FT’s report of the meeting as alarming because Trump is “not particularly respectful to Canada’s sovereignty”.

“To go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada, there’s an old-fashioned word for that. And that word is treason,” he told reporters in Ottawa on Thursday.

Seriously, these jamokes make the Bay of Pigs invasion look like an episode of Mission Impossible.

Some Good News, Though

A federal court has ruled that the abuse of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is unconstitutional.

The court actually ruled in December, but it's only now being made public:

It's official: The FBI's warrantless searches of communications seized to protect US national security have at last been ruled unconstitutional and in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

In a major December ruling made public this week, US District Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall settled one of the biggest debates about feared government overreach that has prompted calls to reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for more than a decade.

Critics' primary concern was whether the FBI needed a warrant to search and query Americans' communications that are often incidentally, inadvertently, or mistakenly seized during investigations of suspected foreign terrorists.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights group that has long said a warrant is needed to conduct such invasive searches, celebrated the ruling as "better late than never." The EFF noted that the FBI conducted 3.4 million warrantless searches of US persons' 702 data in 2021, describing it as a "routine practice" and calling out Section 702 as a "finders keepers" rule that for years has seemingly given feds' unfettered access to many Americans' private and sensitive communication data.

DeArcy Hall agreed with an appeals court that ruled that "the government cannot circumvent application of the warrant requirement simply because queried information is already collected and held by the government," as the US unsuccessfully tried to argue.

I expect this to go all the way to the US Supreme Court, and I have no fucking clue as to how they would rule.

It is clear that the FBI has been abusing the process, which is not a surprise.

It's what cops do.

Walkie Talkies Now?

Yesterday, it was pagers, todays, it's Walkie-Talkies detonating.

 As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

I hate reruns:

Hezbollah was hit Wednesday by another wave of exploding devices, as Israel signaled it was moving toward more aggressive military action against the Lebanese militant group.

Walkie-talkies used by the group blew up in homes, cars and in operatives’ hands across the country, people familiar with the matter said, just a day after thousands of pagers carried by Hezbollah members exploded at roughly the same time. The new attack killed 20 people and injured more than 450, after Tuesday’s bombings killed 12 and injured more than 2,800 people, according to Lebanon’s government, which blamed Israel.

The militant group was scrambling to assess the extent of the two days of explosions. Details emerging from investigations into Tuesday’s massive attack pointed to a complex plan carried out by Israel, in which explosives were planted in thousands of devices destined for Hezbollah members and then detonated by a remote signal.

………

Wednesday’s blasts widened the scale of an already unprecedented attack. Israel has faced criticism for triggering a wave of untargeted explosions that put civilians at risk. Tuesday’s attack filled many hospital emergency rooms to capacity and left two children among the dead.

Hezbollah members said some explosions on Wednesday were stronger than those in the pager attack, which left victims with severed hands, damaged eyes or gashes in their hips and sides.

………

Senior officials from the militant group ordered an immediate, broad investigation to identify how the attack happened and understand its implications. Hezbollah was also looking at the possibility of insider collaborators who might have leaked information about the procurement of the pagers.

It was the General Secretary of Hamas, Hassan Nasrallah, who publicly announced this earlier this year.

Solved it for you.

One major concern for Hezbollah is that the attack has exposed the identities of many of their operatives and commanders. The group has been struggling with information leaks and informants on the ground, a security gap that has helped Israel kill hundreds of Hezbollah militants since exchanges of fire began last October.

I am worried about the conflict across Israel's northern border further escalating.

That being said, the fact that Hezbollah's operations and communications have been profoundly and deeply and disrupted does not worry me at all.

Trump was Arraigned Today

I am not optimistic about this.

Between Republican rat-f%$#ery, and Democratic timidity, I am not ready to celebrate.

Once he is in a non-Photoshop jump suit, I'll drink a toast.

Not Celebrating until the Yellow Jumpsuit Is Not a Photoshop

Trump has been indicted on 7 counts by a grand jury in Florida, including violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy.

There may be more counts coming, both from the Florida and the Washington, DC grand juries.

Full details of the indictments have not been forthcoming, so I don't have much to sa.

I hope that this sticks, but I would not bet on it.

Don't Get Your Hopes Up

Thanks, Keith, for the Heads Up

I am referring, of course to allegations that Trump was caught on tape discussing non-imminent US plans to invade Iran.

Apparently, he was having a conversation with some ghost writers, probably for Mark Meadows.

Claiming that he had the document, where then Chairman of the JCS Mark Milly had given him a document of the plans to invade Iran.

Apparently, it was a massive affair involving huge numbers of troops.

It is reported that Trump bragged about how secret the documents were, and he may have waved the papers in front of his face.

Technically, even the existence of such a document is a serious state secret.

In reality, that there is an office in the Pentagon that plans, and routinely updates, plans to invade Iran, the DPRK, Venezuela, and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick is known.

If the description of the tape is real, it does show that Trump knew that he was handling classified documents, which goes to prove intent, but I still don't think that it's enough for the DoJ to invoke the Espionage Act.

Federal prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.

The recording indicates Trump understood he retained classified material after leaving the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. On the recording, Trump’s comments suggest he would like to share the information but he’s aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records, two of the sources said.

CNN has not listened to the recording, but multiple sources described it. One source said the relevant portion on the Iran document is about two minutes long, and another source said the discussion is a small part of a much longer meeting.

………

Prosecutors have asked witnesses about the recording and the document before a federal grand jury. The episode has generated enough interest for investigators to have questioned Gen. Mark Milley, one of the highest-ranking Trump-era national security officials, about the incident.

The July 2021 meeting was held at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with two people working on the autobiography of Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows as well as aides employed by the former president, including communications specialist Margo Martin. The attendees, sources said, did not have security clearances that would allow them access to classified information. Meadows didn’t attend the meeting, sources said.

If this happened at Bedminster, I would suggest that they pick up the phone and talk to Niitek in Dulles, Virginia.

They have some remarkably advanced ground penetrating radars.  Just the thing to scan Ivana Trump's grave.  (Also, who the f%$# buries their ex wife on a golf course unless the coffin includes incriminating evidence)

Meadows’ autobiography includes an account of what appears to be the same meeting, during which Trump “recalls a four-page report typed up by (Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Mark Milley himself. It contained the general’s own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency.”

The document Trump references was not produced by Milley, CNN was told.

I get it.  If Trump were just some schmoe, he'd already be sitting in a SuperMax cell awaiting trial.

But we are dealing with a DoJ, and an administration, who are obsessed with a return to normalcy and the, "Norms," so I do not expect to see him in the dock for the foreseeable future.

I would be delighted to be wrong, but I think that the powers that be are too invested in the precedent of Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon to allow this to happen.

This Story is From July of Last Year

It's about the United States military deploying balloons to spy on China and Russia.

In July, of last year: 

The Pentagon is working on a new plan to rise above competition from China and Russia: balloons.

The high-altitude inflatables, flying at between 60,000 and 90,000 feet, would be added to the Pentagon’s extensive surveillance network and could eventually be used to track hypersonic weapons.

………

Over the past two years, the Pentagon has spent about $3.8 million on balloon projects, and plans to spend $27.1 million in fiscal year 2023 to continue work on multiple efforts, according to budget documents.

Now there's some interesting context.

Not a Surprise

An inspection of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, show signs of explosions.

This is just confirming what is already known:

A crime scene investigation of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines from Russia to Europe found evidence of detonations, strengthening suspicions of "gross sabotage", Sweden's Security Service said on Thursday.

Swedish and Danish authorities have been investigating four leaks after the pipelines, which link Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea and have become a flashpoint in the Ukraine crisis, were damaged at the start of last week.

When the ruptures generate shock waves that can be picked up on, and located by, seismographs, it's kind of a dead nuts certainty that it was some sort of bomb.

No Accountability

We now have testimoney that Gina Haspel personally supervised torture at CIA black sites.

She was director of the CIA for 3 years after this, and probably still has the highest level security clearance. 

The fact that there are never any consequences for the our elites is corrosive to our society:

During Gina Haspel’s confirmation hearing to become director of the C.I.A. in 2018, Senator Dianne Feinstein asked her if she had overseen the interrogations of a Saudi prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, which included the use of a waterboard.

Ms. Haspel declined to answer, saying it was part of her classified career.

While there has been reporting about her oversight of a C.I.A. black site in Thailand where Mr. Nashiri was waterboarded, and where Ms. Haspel wrote or authorized memos about his torture, the precise details of her work as the chief of base, the C.I.A. officer who oversaw the prison, have been shrouded in official secrecy.

But testimony at a hearing last month in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, included a revelation about the former C.I.A. director’s long and secretive career. James E. Mitchell, a psychologist who helped develop the agency’s interrogation program, testified that the chief of base at the time, whom he referred to as Z9A in accordance with court rules, watched while he and a teammate subjected Mr. Nashiri to “enhanced interrogation” that included waterboarding at the black site.

Z9A is the code name used in court for Ms. Haspel.

………

Defense teams have been asking military judges to exclude certain evidence from the war crimes trials of accused Qaeda operatives as tainted by not just torture but also cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. In May, that meant revisiting what happened nearly 20 years ago at the secret prison in Thailand.

………

It was previously known that by the time Mr. Nashiri was waterboarded in late 2002, Ms. Haspel had taken over as the chief of base at the secret prison in Thailand. It has also been reported that she drafted cables relating what happened to Mr. Nashiri and what was learned during his interrogations and debriefings.

But Dr. Mitchell’s testimony went further. He testified that the chief of base observed the sessions, though she did not participate in them.

The law firm that employs Ms. Haspel, King & Spalding L.L.P., declined to comment and referred questions to the C.I.A., which also declined to comment.

………

And although Ms. Haspel’s role as chief of base at the black site in Thailand is widely known, it is still considered a state secret.

………

At her confirmation hearing, Ms. Haspel pledged not to set up any similar interrogation programs.

Yeah, I guess that THAT makes everything OK.  (Not)

She should be in jail, not earning some obscene pay from one of the largest law firms in the world.

The First Casualty of War

Is the truth.

The Wall Street Journal, with a tip from Bellingcat, the "Independent international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists," reported that members of the Ukrainian negotiating team were poisoned, and they pointed at Russia.

Well now, US intelligence sources are denying it.

My guess is that this is not the same people in US intelligence who are big on regime change in Russia, these people, are the ones feeding the "Collective" bullsh%$ about poisoning because they want to sabotage the negotiations.  (According to Bellingcat's "About" page, the group has received grants from the CIA cutout the National Endowment for Democracy.)

I'm not saying that the Bellingcat is a CIA cutout, but it's certainly CIA cutout adjacent:

A U.S. official said on Monday that intelligence suggests the sickening of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and Ukrainian peace negotiators was due to an environmental factor, not poisoning.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal and investigative outlet Bellingcat reported that Abramovich and the negotiators had suffered symptoms of suspecting poisoning earlier this month after a meeting in Kyiv.

While I am certain that there are elements of the US State Security Apparatus who are not insane, and so want the war to end as soon as possible, there are also elements of the US State Security Apparatus who are eager to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, even if this increases the risk of nuclear war.

Needless to say, the second group are completely insane.

Tweet of the Day

“It’s too soon to stop investigating the possibility of mass attack by undetectable brain-eating mystery lasers.” Signed, the Washington Post editorial board (our heads protected by metal pots) https://t.co/AsmCazk4aV

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 23, 2022

More adventures in the 2^nd worst OP/ED page in the nation, courtesy of Matt Taibbi.

It could be a change in cleaning products insecticide, it could be people made uncomfortable by frogs and crickets, (It happened to me on Grenada), or it could be mass psychosis, but the whole "Sooper Sekrit" annoying weapon has always been complete bullsh%$.

About F%$#ing Time

The US Commerce department has NSO Group over it's aggressively hawking its spying software to every despot in the world.

What took them so long?

The United States on Wednesday added the Israeli spyware company NSO Group to its “entity list,” a federal blacklist prohibiting the company from receiving American technologies, after determining that its phone-hacking tools had been used by foreign governments to “maliciously target” government officials, activists, journalists, academics and embassy workers around the world.

The move is a significant sanction against a company spotlighted in July in an investigation by the global Pegasus Project consortium, which includes The Washington Post and 16 other news organizations worldwide. The consortium published dozens of articles detailing how NSO customers had misused its powerful spyware, Pegasus.

The move could also raise tensions between the United States and Israel, where NSO is a prized technological powerhouse. Exports of NSO’s software are regulated by Israel’s Ministry of Defense, which must approve them as it would any weapons sale.

………

The Commerce Department said in a statement that the action is part of the Biden administration’s “efforts to put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy, including by working to stem the proliferation of digital tools used for repression.”

………

The company has consistently denied the findings of the Pegasus Project, which found that some of NSO’s dozens of law enforcement, military and intelligence customers in more than 40 countries target journalists, politicians and human rights workers on a routine basis with Pegasus, which can hack into cellphones. NSO has acknowledged problems with certain customers in the past.

The entity list designation prohibits export from the United States to NSO of any type of hardware or software, severing the company from a vital source of technology. It could also hinder future business arrangements and challenge the firm’s ability to work as an international company.

“The impact is broader than just the legal prohibition,” said Kevin Wolf, an international trade lawyer at the Akin Gump law firm who previously ran the entity list process. “It’s a huge red flag.”

It should be a huge red flag.

NSO helped the House of Saud assassinate Jamal Kashoggi, and aggressively markets itself to repressive governments throughout the world.

They should have a big scarlet "S" (for sanctioned) on their chest.  (It's a Hawthorne reference, not a Siegel and Shuster reference, you Philistines.)

Another CIA Operation Goes Pear Shaped

A court has overturned the patently bogus conviction of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which means that he can run for the Presidency of Brazil in the next election.

Given that he is the most popular politician in Brazil by a lot, he is very likely to win. 

The short version of the story is that the judge overseeing the trials colluded with prosecutors to convict da Silva of taking bribes to refurbish an apartment that he never lived in, and probably never owned.

One hopes that Lula has learned his lesson, and understands that so long as they remain in positions of power, his opponents will stop at nothing to destroy him, up to, and probably including violence and assassination against him, his family and his supporters.

They need to be turfed out, sooner rather than later:

Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva could be set for a sensational comeback attempt after a supreme court judge annulled a series of criminal convictions against the leftist icon and restored his political rights.

The ruling, which analysts called a political bombshell, means Lula is almost certain to challenge Brazil’s incumbent president, Jair Bolsonaro, in the 2022 presidential election.

………

Lula was president of Latin America’s largest economy for two terms, between 2003 and 2011, and oversaw a historic period of commodity-fuelled growth and poverty reduction. The Workers’ party (PT) politician, who is now 75, had hoped to seek a third term in 2018 but was sidelined after being jailed on disputed corruption charges, paving the way for Bolsonaro’s landslide victory.

Lula was released from prison in November 2019 after 580 days behind bars but remained unable to seek election after being stripped of his political rights.

The entire "Car Wash" affair, and the ascension of Bolsonaro that followed, is yet another indication of just how toxic US meddling in Latin America has been over the past 250 years.

I Need to Read His Books

I'm embarassed to admit that that I have never read a book by John le Carré. With the news of his death at age 89, I am feeling rather guilty about this. 

His spy novels were a marked contrast to the cartoonish James Bond:

John le Carré, who forged thrillers from equal parts of adventure, moral courage and literary flair, has died aged 89.

Le Carré explored the gap between the west’s high-flown rhetoric of freedom and the gritty reality of defending it, in novels such as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Night Manager, which gained him critical acclaim and made him a bestseller around the world.

On Sunday, his family confirmed he had died of pneumonia at the Royal Cornwall Hospital on Saturday night. “We all deeply grieve his passing,” they wrote in a statement.

Given the whole pandemic thing, I have some additional time to read.

Tweet of the Day

Vladimir Putin is personally directing a program of repeatedly using non-lethal doses of the world’s deadliest and unknown poisons on people, that are immediately taken up as causes célèbres by Western govs and media. Tight ship that guy runs.

— Denis Lavinski (@LavinskiDenis) December 15, 2020

Seriously.

This whole, "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be somewhat ill and become a major news story," thing is getting kind of old.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

It appears that multiple entities in the US State Security Apparatus tracked millions of people's phones without a warrant despite Supreme Court decisions requiring one:

The Secret Service paid for a product that gives the agency access to location data generated by ordinary apps installed on peoples' smartphones, an internal Secret Service document confirms.

The sale highlights the issue of law enforcement agencies buying information, and in particular location data, that they would ordinarily need a warrant or court order to obtain. This contract relates to the sale of Locate X, a product from a company called Babel Street.

In March, tech publication Protocol reported that multiple government agencies signed millions of dollars worth of deals with Babel Street after the company launched its Locate X product. Multiple sources told the site that Locate X tracks the location of devices anonymously, using data harvested by popular apps installed on peoples' phones.

Protocol found public records showed that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) purchased Locate X. One former Babel Street employee told the publication that the Secret Service used the technology. Now, the document obtained by Motherboard corroborates that finding.

………

“As part of my investigation into the sale of Americans’ private data, my office has pressed Babel Street for answers about where their data comes from, who they sell it to, and whether they respect mobile device opt-outs. Not only has Babel Street refused to answer questions over email, they won’t even put an employee on the phone,” Senator Ron Wyden told Motherboard in a statement.

………

Government agencies are increasingly at the end of that location data chain. In February The Wall Street Journal reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies bought an app-based location data product from a different firm called Venntel. Senator Wyden's office then found the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was also a Venntel customer.

Law enforcement agencies typically require a warrant or court order to compel a company to provide location data for an investigation. Many agencies have filed so-called reverse location warrants to ask Google to hand over information on what Android devices were in a particular area at a given time, for example. But an agency does not need to seek a warrant when it simply buys the data instead.

………

Senator Wyden is planning legislation that would block such purchases.

We should also forbid our intelligence agencies from having allies collect data that they are forbidden to collect, and the reverse for them.

The whole "Five Eyes" thing appears to be a way to allow intelligence agencies to spy on their own citizens by swapping who is looking at any given time.

Finally!

A group of free press organizations have signed a letter calling for the immediate release of Julian Assange, because his actions are archetypal examples of journalism:

Press freedom groups and journalist organisations are among 40 groups to today call for the British Government to release Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on his 49th birthday.

The International Federation of Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, Pen International and the National Union of Journalists are among those to sign the letter.

………

The co-signers write: “This [indictment] is an unprecedented escalation of an already disturbing assault on journalism in the US, where President Donald Trump has referred to the news media as the ‘enemy of the people’.

“Whereas previous presidents have prosecuted whistleblowers and other journalistic sources under the Espionage Act for leaking classified information, the Trump Administration has taken the further step of going after the publisher. ”

………

Full list of the groups calling for Julian Assange’s release

Nathan Fuller, Executive Director, Courage Foundation

Rebecca Vincent, Director of International Campaigns, Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
Adil Soz, International Foundation for Protection of Freedom of Speech
Anthony Bellanger, General Secretary – International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)
Archie Law, Chair Sydney Peace Foundation
Carles Torner, Executive Director, PEN International
Christine McKenzie, President, PEN Melbourne
Daniel Gorman, Director, English PEN
Kjersti Løken Stavrum, President, PEN Norway
Lasantha De Silva, Freed Media Movement
Marcus Strom, President, MEAA Media, Australia
Mark Isaacs, President of PEN International Sydney
Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary, National Union of Journalists (NUJ)
Mousa Rimawi, Director, MADA – the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms
Naomi Colvin, UK/Ireland Programme Director, Blueprint for Free Speech
Nora Wehofsits, Advocacy Officer, European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
Peter Tatchell, Peter Tatchell Foundation
Ralf Nestmeyer, Vice President, German PEN
Rev Tim Costello AO, Director of Ethical Voice
Robert Wood, Chair, PEN Perth
Ruth Smeeth, Chief Executive Officer, Index on Censorship
Sarah Clarke, Head of Europe and Central Asia, ARTICLE 19
Silkie Carlo, Director, Big Brother Watch
William Horsley, Media Freedom Representative, Association of European Journalists
Foundation for Press Freedom (Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa)
Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB)
Bytes for All (B4A)
Center for Media Freedom & Responsibility (CMFR)
The Center for Media Studies and Peacebuilding (CEMESP-Liberia)
The Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ)
Free Media Movement Sri Lanka
Freedom Forum Nepal
IFoX / Initiative for Freedom of Expression – Turkey
International Association of Democratic Lawyers
International Press Centre (IPC)
The International Press Institute (IPI)
Media Foundation for West Africa
Mediacentar Sarajevo
National Lawyers Guild International Committee
Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)
South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO)
World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC)

Meanwhile, the journalists who actually worked with him to break the story are studiously silent.

Weep for the Overpaid Executives

There are claims that Russia is trying to steal coronavirus vaccine research from the US, UK, and Canada.

The hand wringing over this is kind of silly for two reasons:

• The more people who have access to this research, the more chance there is for a successful vaccine to be developed and manufactured.
• The only people who could possibly be harmed are big-pharma profiteers.

I'm sorry, but, "Think of the overpaid pharmaceutical executives' bonuses," is just not something that inspires me to paroxysms of fear.