Seumas Milne's Blog, page 5
February 24, 2015
The unglamorous life of a modern spy in the new ‘El Dorado of espionage’
The man’s behaviour was certainly odd. When driving, he would vary his car speed between 30km an hour and 90km, pulling up occasionally by the side of the road for several minutes for no apparent reason. When he put his rubbish out, he would first cut the bottom of the bags so the contents would spill if anyone tried to rummage through them. Leaving his office, he would walk once around the block before heading off in the direction he wanted to go.
The man under surveillance by South African intelligence was one of scores of foreign intelligence officers who have flocked to the new “El Dorado” of global espionage in recent years.
Related: Africa is new ‘El Dorado of espionage’, leaked intelligence files reveal
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Africa is new ‘El Dorado of espionage’, leaked intelligence files reveal
Continent emerges as the focus of international spying, with South Africa becoming a regional powerhouse and communications hub
• Read the leaked document here
Africa emerges as the 21st century theatre of espionage, with South Africa as its gateway, in the cache of secret intelligence documents and cables seen by the Guardian. “Africa is now the El Dorado of espionage,” said one serving foreign intelligence officer.
The continent has increasingly become the focus of international spying as the battle for its resources has intensified, China’s economic role has grown dramatically, and the US and other western states have rapidly expanded their military presence and operations in a new international struggle for Africa.
Related: The unglamorous life of a modern spy in the new ‘El Dorado of espionage’
Continue reading...February 23, 2015
Netanyahu’s Iran bomb claim contradicted by Mossad, leaked spy cables show – video
CIA attempted to contact Hamas despite official US ban, spy cables reveal
Leaked files show US ‘desperate to make inroads’ into Gaza as well as Barack Obama’s alleged threat to Palestinians over statehood
• Read report 1, report 2, report 3
The CIA tried to gain access to Hamas through backchannels despite a US government ban on contact with the Palestinian Islamist movement, the spy cables show.
They suggest US intelligence has been anxious to make inroads with Hamas, or recruit agents, inside the Gaza Strip. The US designated Hamas, which won the last Palestinian election in 2006 and now runs Gaza, as a terrorist group in 1997. When Barack Obama became president in 2008, there was speculation that he might seek to establish contact, but this proved short-lived.
Continue reading...Spy cables: MI6 intervened to halt South African firm’s deal with Iranian client
Furnace maker was ‘advised most strongly’ to end contract with company suspected of being involved in weapons manufacturing
British intelligence officials helped block the sale of equipment by a South African company to an Iranian firm suspected of being involved in a ballistic missile programme, according to leaked spy files.
It shows how MI6, along with the US and other allies, works to hamper what it claims is Iran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programme.
Continue reading...South Africa monitored Iranian agents under US pressure, spy cables show
Lives of Pretoria embassy staff scrutinised despite intelligence service stating repeatedly that Iran poses no threat to the country
• Read the document: Iranian Intelligence Activities in Africa
• Read the document: South Africa Operational Target Analysis of Iran
The US’s covert war with Iran is being fought across the globe, with countries such as South Africa dragged in despite being bystanders. The leaked spy cables offer a glimpse into US efforts – often undeclared and unreported – to tighten sanctions and hamper Iran’s nuclear progress, including blocking access to scarce mineral resources in Africa.
The world’s foremost superpower and its allies are trying to force Iran to reach a deal on its nuclear programme. The US, Britain and Israel say Tehran is seeking a nuclear weapons capability while the Islamic republic insists it wants to use nuclear energy solely for civilian purposes.
One suspect … 'under the influence of liquor acknowledged he was a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards'
Continue reading...Leaked cables show Netanyahu’s Iran bomb claim contradicted by Mossad
Gulf between Israeli secret service and PM revealed in documents shared with the Guardian along with other secrets including CIA bids to contact Hamas
• Read the leaked document here
Binyamin Netanyahu’s dramatic declaration to world leaders in 2012 that Iran was about a year away from making a nuclear bomb was contradicted by his own secret service, according to a top-secret Mossad document.
It is part of a cache of hundreds of dossiers, files and cables from the world’s major intelligence services – one of the biggest spy leaks in recent times.
Continue reading...February 4, 2015
Labour will have to move to the left – or lose the election | Seumas Milne
The way the corporate barons are carrying on, you’d think Ed Miliband was planning to do something terrifying to them. Day after day they’ve issued blood-curdling warnings about the catastrophe that would be unleashed by “Red Ed’s anti-business policies”.
The onslaught was kicked off by the Monaco-based chairman of Boots, Stefano Pessina, a man who even “disappointed” Boris Johnson by moving his headquarters to Switzerland to dodge tax. When the Labour leader hit back, saying people would take no lectures on voting from “someone who’s avoiding his taxes”, the floodgates opened.
Related: Scotland poll shows a nation on the verge of abandoning Labour
Related: Labour not seeking confrontation with business, says Chuka Umunna
Continue reading...January 21, 2015
The Davos oligarchs are right to fear the world they’ve made | Seumas Milne
The billionaires and corporate oligarchs meeting in Davos this week are getting worried about inequality. It might be hard to stomach that the overlords of a system that has delivered the widest global economic gulf in human history should be handwringing about the consequences of their own actions.
But even the architects of the crisis-ridden international economic order are starting to see the dangers. It’s not just the maverick hedge-funder George Soros, who likes to describe himself as a class traitor. Paul Polman, Unilever chief executive, frets about the “capitalist threat to capitalism”. Christine Lagarde, the IMF managing director, fears capitalism might indeed carry Marx’s “seeds of its own destruction” and warns that something needs to be done.
Continue reading...January 14, 2015
Paris is a warning: there is no insulation from our wars | Seumas Milne
The official response to every jihadist-inspired terrorist attack in the west since 2001 has been to pour petrol on the flames. That was true after 9/11 when George Bush launched his war on terror, laying waste to countries and spreading terror on a global scale. It was true in Britain after the 2005 London bombings, when Tony Blair ripped up civil liberties and sent thousands of British troops on a disastrous mission to Afghanistan. And it’s been true in the aftermath of last week’s horrific killings at Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris.
In an echo of Bush’s rhetoric, the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy declared a “war of civilisations” in response to attacks on “our freedoms”. Instead of simply standing with the victims – and, say, the vastly larger numbers killed by Boko Haram in Nigeria – the satirical magazine and its depictions of the prophet Muhammad have been elevated into a sacred principle of western liberty. The production on Wednesday of a state-sponsored edition of Charlie Hebdo became the latest test of a “with us or against us” commitment to “our values”, as French MPs voted by 488 votes to one to press on with the military campaign in Iraq. To judge by the record of the past 13 years, it will prove a poisonous combination, and not just for France.
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