On July 8, 29 countries—the U.S. plus 28 countries of the EU—will begin negotiating The Biggest Trade Deal Ever. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership will affect 30 percent of global commerce, eliminate $10.5 billion in tariffs, and boost trade by an estimated $280 billion a year. Read Here – Businessweek
President Vladimir Putin‘s improbable rise to the pinnacle of Russian power in 1999-2000 was partly the result of an elite consensus about the importance of restoring order to the Russian state after a decade of domestic crisis and international humiliation. Read Here – Moscow Times
America’s chief intelligence officers have a longstanding history of untruthiness — testifying falsely and fearlessly. They are caught in a dilemma — sworn to secrecy yet sworn to tell the truth. Sometimes they get their facts wrong; that’s human error. But sometimes their untruths are conscious. Soldiers can die as a consequence. Read Here – Bloomberg
New Delhi’s undignified response to revelations that the U.S. spied on it is in sharp contrast to its stand on the same issue in the 1950s. Read Here – The Hindu
There is no doubt that Mr. Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who has leaked voluminous documents about U.S. programs to monitor communications, has damaged the United States, but not in the ways that he had anticipated. Read Here – Japan Times
Germany‘s Federal Prosecutors’ Office confirmed to SPIEGEL on Sunday that it is looking into whether systematic data spying against the country conducted by America’s National Security Agency violated laws aimed at protecting German citizens. Read Here – Der Spiegel America’s National Security Agency (NSA) is apparently spying on Germany more than previously believed. Secret documents […]
If the case of Edward Snowden — the former contractor for the National Security Agency who smuggled classified information out of his workplace and provided it to news organizations — has revealed anything, it is that the U.S. intelligence services made mistakes as they reformed after 9/11 and the Iraq war. Here is how to […]
The Chinese and U.S. approaches to surveillance and how each of their security apparatuses go about organizing and carrying out such activities are fundamentally different in nature. It might be useful to label them into two distinct models: the U.S. approach can be described as the democratic security state model and the Chinese version is […]
One of wisest responses to the revelations by Edward Snowden, the whistle-blower who detailed the US government‘s snooping on online communications, came from one of America‘s leading academic bloggers: “Has the deadline for having a firm opinion about Snowden expired?” asked Daniel Drezner of Tufts University. “If so, I need an extension.” Read Here – The […]
Secrecy is only supposed to work for the strong against the weak. Right now Edward Snowden, the former CIA technical operative who leaked data exposing the extent of Anglo-American state internet surveillance to the world, is in hiding in Hong Kong. Snowden, 29, sacrificed everything to tell the world. Read Here – New Statesman
looking beyond borders 