Olympics: Armbands too political?

• Amy Bass: IOC mulled letting Ukraine athletes wear black armbands


• IOC said politics not allowed at Olympics, but Bass says history shows otherwise


• She says Olympics inherently political and IOC has taken contradictory stands many times


• Bass: Yes, Olympic truce is central to Games, but it doesn’t mean politics have no place

Editor’s note: Amy Bass, a professor of history at the College of New Rochelle, has written widely on the cultural history of sports, including the book “Not the Triumph but the Struggle: The 1968 Olympics and the Making of the Black Athlete.”She is a veteran of eight Olympics as the supervisor of NBC’s Research Room, for which she won an Emmy in 2012. Follow her on Twitter @bassab1.

(CNN) — As the Russian hockey team imploded, Kiev exploded.

Protests against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration had turned deadly, and Ukrainian athletes at the Olympics in Sochi, Russia, wanted to wear black armbands to commemorate the dead. Initial reports indicated the International Olympic Committee declined the request.

Later, when a few Ukrainian athletes indicated they were leaving Sochi in solidarity with the protesters, IOC spokesman Mark Adams told reporters the decision against the armbands had been mutual, and the Ukrainians instead opted to observe a moment of silence in the Olympic Village: “They weren’t forbidden to wear armbands. … They discussed what should be done, and they reached the conclusion there were other ways of marking this moment.”

The muddled situation is par for the course when it comes to politics and the Olympics, where the positions of the Olympic committee are often contradictory. Already in Sochi, the IOC told skiers they could not wear helmet stickers honoring the late Canadian halfpipe skier Sarah Burke, and Norway could not wear black armbands to memorialize an athlete’s brother who had trained with the team. To support such decisions, the IOC trots out Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter: “No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted.”

And in 2012, the IOC denied the Israeli delegation’s request for a moment of silence in the opening ceremony to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the massacre in Munich, substituting instead a private ceremony — but it had allowed a tribute in the ceremony to the victims of the London bombing attacks in 2005. And at the last Winter Games in Vancouver, the Georgian delegation was allowed to wear black armbands in the opening ceremony to honor luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, who had died that day in a training run.

Despite the IOC’s nagging insistence it is apolitical, the Olympics have been fraught with politics since their inception. Avery Brundage, the only American ever to head the IOC, opposed a U.S. boycott of the Berlin Olympics in 1936 because “the Olympic Games belong to the athletes and not to the politicians.” But as the entry to competition is based on national identity, the Olympics are inherently political.

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Protesters: 100 dead in Ukraine

The Cold War magnified their political potential, providing a battlefield for the superpower struggle between communism and democracy to take place over medals, such as the controversial basketball final in Munich in 1972 in which the Soviets were given no less than three chances to make the game-winning basket over the United States, and the “Miracle on Ice” in 1980 when the United States defeated the Soviet Union in hockey.

Sochi was ripe with politics in the months leading up to the Olympics, with controversies regarding the environment, corrupt budgets and stray dogs. Political oppression stood front and center, particularly in the imprisonment of members the women’s punk band Pussy Riot and the anti-gay legislation that had made Russia a dangerous place for many. Some called for a boycott of these Olympics, while others agreed that it would be for the athletes to take a stand once there.

With the Ukrainian situation, Sochi has become even more political, but not for the reasons anticipated. While transgender Italian activist Vladimir Luxuria has been detained in Olympic Park for her flags and rainbow attire, the athletes have mostly kept quiet. Early on, pictures of Alexey Sobolev’s snowboard, adorned with the likeness of Pussy Riot, gave Bob Costas something political to talk about, while ski jumper Daniela Iraschko-Stolz, the first “out” athlete to win a medal in Sochi, expressed her disapproval of Russia’s anti-gay laws. This past week, snowboarder Michael Lambert also chimed in, deeming Russia a problematic host because it “has people suffer, shuts people up.” He speculated that perhaps only Scandinavia had the potential for a “perfect” Games.

Above all, through the scandals, conflicts and corruption, the IOC sees itself as a peacemaker. But there are inconsistencies. In 1968, it pressured the U.S. Olympic Committee to take action against sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos after the duo raised black gloved fists during the victory ceremony of the men’s 200-meter race to protest racial oppression. Four years later in Munich, the IOC did not wait for the U.S. Olympic Committee to take action, banning U.S. sprinters Wayne Collett and Vince Matthews for their “disrespectful” behavior on the podium.

In Athens in 2004, the IOC failed to censure world champion Iranian judoka Arash Miresmaeili, who carried his country’s flag in the Parade of Nations and then withdrew from competition after drawing an Israeli opponent. Yet it banned South Africa in its apartheid era and Afghanistan when the Taliban took power,pressured Saudi Arabia to field female athletes and has long recognized teams from Puerto Rico and East Timor and Palestinian territories as independent national delegations.

In Sochi, IOC President Thomas Bach urged the Ukrainians to demonstrate how “sport can build bridges and help to bring people from different backgrounds together in peace.” IOC member Sergey Bubka, the great pole vaulter who represented both the Soviet Union and his native Ukraine in competition, echoed Bach’s sentiments on Twitter, urging his compatriots to remember the Olympic truce and lay down their weapons. Canada’s Globe and Mail agreed, running the headline, “Shadow cast over Sochi as Ukraine violence shatters Olympic truce.”

What is confounding is the impression that until the most recent outbreak of violence in Ukraine, the Olympic truce was intact in these Games. The ancient Greeks invested in the Olympics as a diplomatic tool, as the spirit of

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Detained journalists in Egypt court

• Three detained Al Jazeera journalists appear in court as their trial opens in Cairo


• No evidence is presented in court; the trial is adjourned until March 5


• Peter Greste, Mohammed Fahmy and Baher Mohammed are among 20 accused


• Authorities say they have ties to the banned Muslim Brotherhood organization

Cairo (CNN) — Three Al Jazeera journalists were among eight whoappeared at a hearing in a Cairo prison court Thursday, accused along with 17 other defendants of spreading “false news” and having links to the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt declared a terrorist organization in December.

“Tell her I love her. Big wedding when I get out,” Al Jazeera English journalist Mohamed Fahmy told journalists in a message to his fiancee, appearing in high spirits on the first day of his trial, despite a worsening shoulder injury.

Fahmy, a former CNN freelance producer, is accused of being a member of a terrorist group and airing false news about Egypt to give the impression of a civil war. A prosecutor has also charged Al Jazeera English correspondent Peter Greste, producer Baher Mohammed and 17 others. Al Jazeera said nine on the list were on its staff.

The charges were read out Thursday as the case opened, but no evidence was read in open court. The prosecution had been expected to outline the evidence supporting the charges.

Egypt’s crackdown on journalists

Video shows journalists getting arrested

Journalists stand with imprisoned peers

The case against the journalists comes amid a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood after the ouster of the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsy. The accused have denied the allegations against them, with the journalists saying they were simply doing their jobs.

On the stand at the police academy in the Tora Prison complex, Fahmy, Greste and Mohammed appeared with five others. “We didn’t even know their names until we met them here,” Fahmy told reporters asking about their relationship with the other defendants.

They include Anas El Beltagy, son of jailed Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed El Beltagy. His mother, Sanaa Abdel Gawad — standing outside the court wearing a badge with a picture of his sister, who was killed in August — said their arrest was “a vendetta against his father.”

Sohaib Saad, a student defendant claiming no relation to Al Jazeera, told reporters he was receiving “repressive treatment” at the Aqrab (Scorpion) Maximum Security Prison, including a ban on food and visits.

Fahmy and Mohammed were originally in solitary confinement in that prison. In their new prison, the Tora Farm Annex, they share a cell with Greste, allowed one hour of outdoor time a day and no books.

They complained that conditions inside are “psychologically unbearable,” but they remained defiant. “If justice happens, we will be free soon,” Greste said. Speaking in a metal cage and separated from journalists by rows of wooden benches and a line of police conscripts, his voice was barely audible.

“We need everyone’s support,” he said.

Fahmy had to repeat his words in a louder voice. “Tell my parents I love them,” he said.

Mohammed told journalists to tell his wife to stay away because she’s pregnant. Along with other relatives of the defendants and other reporters, she stood outside the prison complex early Thursday morning with their two children. She and Fahmy’s family couldn’t get inside.

‘It’s just ridiculous’

In an interview, Andrew Greste told CNN how he had visited his brother Peter in Egypt’s notorious Tora prison.

“There was the ability to communicate,” he said. “I guess that’s the only way we feel we can get through this: is trying not to get too bogged down in the emotions and the conditions that Peter is enduring, because that becomes paralyzing for us.”

The family was shocked by what has happened, Andrew Greste said. “I mean, a journalist of Peter’s credibility, it’s just ridiculous,” he said.

He said he had taken food and clothing into prison for his brother, since it was not provided by the state.

Peter Greste, an award-winning journalist, was in Egypt only to cover for a colleague, his brother added.

The Egyptian government has faced a tide of criticism about the case, from professional journalism organizations and human rights groups.

Salil Shetty, secretary general of Amnesty International, last month described the prosecution as a “major setback for media freedom in Egypt.”

He added, “The move sends the chilling message that only one narrative is acceptable in Egypt today — that which is sanctioned by the Egyptian authorities.”

Apparent mix-up

The case relies on simmering sentiment against Al Jazeera TV, deemed biased to the Muslim Brotherhood. One lawyer told the court that there is a mix-up in investigations and other case documents between the Jazeera Mubasher Masr, banned by Egypt, and Al Jazeera English.

“Which Jazeera?” the judge asked before taking notes.

“We believe that we have not been distorting Egypt’s image at all,” said Heather Allan, head of Al Jazeera English newsgathering, before the trial started.

“They said we fabricated footage before they even looked at my camera,” Fahmy said.

‘It is a matter of breaking the law’

Salah El-Sadek, chairman of Egypt’s State Information Service, said the Al Jazeera journalists did not have the proper legal documents to work in Egypt, creating suspicion about their activities — although their reports aired nightly on TV.

“We have 1,100 correspondents and journalists accredited here, legally representing 200 agencies in this country,” he told CNN. “None of them have been exposed to that because none of them have broken the law. So it’s not a matter of freedom of speech in this case. It is a matter of breaking the law.”

The Al Jazeera network has said its employees were not accredited in the country but argues that is no excuse for imprisoning them.

“Lack of credentials is not a criminal offense. … Usually you get a slap on the wrist and a walk to the airport,” Allan said.

Criticism from journalists

The case has put Egypt in the spotlight, further fueling criticism about freedom of expression and the challenges facing journalists.

“Egyptian authorities in recent months have demonstrated almost zero tolerance for any form of dissent, arresting and prosecuting journalists, demonstrators and academics for peacefully expressing their views,” Human Rights Watch said in a prepared statement released Wednesday.

The Committee to protect Journalists listed Egypt as third deadliest country for journalists in 2013. Journalists face deadly police force and violence by mobs on the street.

“Things are getting worse on so many levels,” said Lina Attalah, chief editor of Mada Masr, which describes itself as an independent Egyptian news website.

“On a practical level, we are not able to do the job. But also on a formal censorship level, with the prosecutions that are politically motivated as we all know. It just makes us think that we can be targeted from any side and by any means.”

The journalists’ trial was a reminder of what awaits dissent or different voices, Attalah explained, and it has become an “embarrassment” to the state and the judiciary.

But the chairman of Egypt’s State Information Service disagrees about such a crackdown on dissent. “Who said they are punished for criticizing the government? If you watch the private and even the formal or the governmental channels, you will find criticism that has been said about the government and its actions and it was way of running things more than we’ve ever had in our whole life,” El-Sadek said.

For others, the media has been almost unanimous in its support of the current military-led government, which is often blamed for fueling xenophobia and polarization to violent levels.

International support

The trial has also garnered international solidarity with protests in Nairobi, London and other cities in support of Egypt’s arrested journalists, not all of whom are included in this trial.

Greste, Fahmy and Mohammed were happy to hear the news of such demonstrations. Fahmy raised his fist in the air in excitement. “Wait until I get out,” he shouted. The three have been in detention for more than 50 days.

The procedural hearing was adjourned to March 5, to bring in prosecution witnesses, provide a translator for Greste and allow lawyers to acquire case documents. Evidence will be examined at the March hearing, and lawyers have requested an independent expert to examine the footage the prosecution said was edited to portray a false image.

They praised the work of the Canadian and Australian embassies in Cairo but wanted the governments of these two countries to do more.

‘They want to shut us up’

Besides the three detained on December 29, a number of Al Jazeera journalists were charged in absentia. Among them is Briton Sue Turton, who has previously worked for Britain’s Sky News, ITN and Channel 4.

Speaking at a protest against her colleagues’ detention in London, she said the Egyptian authorities’ actions were an attempt to silence reporting of views opposed to theirs.

“Certainly we are one of the only channels in Egypt that’s watched widely that gives very much an opposing view to the military-backed government,” Turton said.

“The domestic media doesn’t, the domestic press and TV doesn’t. They want to shut us up, and the best way to do that is to arrest some of our people in the hope that that will stop others from reporting from there.”

CNN is among the journalistic organizations that have signed a petition asking for the release of the Al Jazeera journalists, two of whom have worked for CNN.

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Iran agrees on nuke talks framework

• NEW: “We have identified all of the issues we need to address” for final deal, says Ashton


• NEW: The next round of talks will begin on March 17, EU foreign policy chief says


• U.S. State Department spokeswoman says talks have been “constructive and useful”


• Western powers suspect Iran wants to develop a nuclear weapon, a claim it denies

(CNN) — Six world powers and Iran have reached a deal on the framework for comprehensive negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Thursday.

“We have identified all of the issues we need to address in reaching a comprehensive and final agreement,” Ashton said, speaking alongside Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, in Vienna, Austria.

“There is a lot to do. It won’t be easy, but we’ve made a good start” following “three very productive days” of talks, Ashton added.

In addition to political discussions, the two sides have started technical work, Ashton said, and have set a timetable for meetings over the next four months, with a framework for further deliberations.

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Technical experts will meet in early March, she said, and the next round of talks between the so-called P5+1 — the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany — and Iran will start March 17.

Zarif then delivered the same statement in Persian.

The latest talks began Tuesday.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Wednesday the meetings had been “constructive and useful.”

Interim deal

The latest talks come after an interim deal was forged in November, under which Iran agreed to roll back parts of its nuclear program in return for relief from some sanctions. That agreement came into effect in January.

The challenge now is to reach a permanent deal acceptable to all sides.

The United States and its allies believe Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon, while Tehran has said its atomic efforts are peaceful.

Wendy Sherman, a senior State Department official and lead negotiator for the United States on the interim deal, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer from Vienna this week that any final agreement will be contingent on Iran taking “concrete” verifiable steps that prevent it from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi insisted Tuesday that the “halting of Iran’s (nuclear) program and dismantling Iran’s nuclear facilities are not on the agenda,” the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

Harf said specific issues such as dismantlement would be on the table in later discussions.

“We know both sides come to the negotiating table with certain positions in mind, clearly, but we do think that we have made some progress over these last few days and, hopefully, can continue to build on that going forward,” she told reporters in Washington.

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Pakistan airstrikes kill 15 militants

North Waziristan is one of seven districts in Pakistan’s tribal region along the Afghan border.

• The strikes target an area near the Afghan border known as a Pakistani Taliban stronghold


• The Pakistani government suspended peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban this week

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) — The Pakistani Army carried out airstrikes late Wednesday that targeted militant hideouts in the country’s volatile northwest, killing 15 people, the military said.

“Foreign fighters” were among those killed in the strikes in North Waziristan Agency, according to a statement Thursday from the military.

North Waziristan is a Pakistani Taliban stronghold in Pakistan’s loosely governed tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. The area is dangerous and hard for journalists to reach, making it difficult to independently verify the military’s account.

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Mir Ali, where the strikes took place, is one of the biggest towns in North Waziristan. Attempts to reach people living in the area were not immediately successful Thursday.

The strikes destroyed a large cache of arms and ammunition, the military said.

The Pakistani government said this week that it had suspended peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban. The talks lasted for about 13 days, but the militant group carried out several deadly attacks during that time, the government said.

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Economic stimulus 'too small'

A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

• Dean Baker: When stimulus began five years ago, we were losing 700,000 jobs a month


• Baker: Underlying cause of the recession was the utter collapse of the housing bubble


• He says economy lost $ 8 trillion in housing equity as well as construction jobs, tax revenue


• Baker: $ 300 billion a year stimulus is pittance against loss of $ 1.4 trillion in annual demand

Editor’s note: Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He is a co-author of “Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People.” He also has a blog, Beat the Press, where he discusses the media’s coverage of economic issues. Follow him on Twitter @deanbaker13.

(CNN) — When President Obama proposed his stimulus in January 2009, the economy was in a freefall, losing more than 700,000 jobs a month. The immediate cause of the plunge was the freezing up of the financial system after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, but the deeper cause was the loss of demand after the collapse of the housing bubble.

The bubble had been driving the economy both directly and indirectly. The unprecedented run-up in house prices led to a record rate of construction, with about 2 million homes built at the peak in 2005.

In addition, the $ 8 trillion in housing equity created by the bubble led to an enormous consumption boom. People saw little reason to save for retirement when their home was doing it for them. The banks also made it very easy to borrow against bubble-generated equity, which many people did. As a result, the personal saving rate fell to 3% in the years 2002-07.

The bubble also indirectly enriched state and local governments with higher tax revenue. And there was a mini-bubble in nonresidential real estate, but that came to an end in 2008 as well.

The economy had already been in recession for nine months before the collapse of Lehman because the bubble was deflating, but the Lehman bankruptcy hugely accelerated the pace of decline. This was the context in which Obama planned his stimulus package before he even entered the White House.

At that point, most economists still did not recognize the severity of the downturn, just as they had not seen the dangers of the housing bubble that had been building over the previous six years.

The Congressional Budget Office projections, which were very much in the mainstream of the economics profession, showed a combined drop in GDP for 2008 and 2009 of 1%, before the economy resumed growth again in 2010. This is with no stimulus. By contrast, the economy actually shrank by 3.1% in those years, even with the stimulus beginning to kick in by the spring of 2009.

Given this background, it was easy to see that the stimulus was far too small. It was designed to create about 3 million jobs, which might have been adequate given the Budget Office projections. Since the package Congress approved was considerably smaller than the one requested, the final version probably created about 2 million jobs. This was a very important boost to the economy at the time, but we needed 10 million to 12 million jobs to make up for jobs lost to the collapse of the bubble.

The arithmetic on this is straightforward. With the collapse of the bubble, we suddenly had a huge glut of unsold homes. As a result, housing construction plunged from record highs to 50-year lows. The loss in annual construction demand was more than $ 600 billion. Similarly, the loss of $ 8 trillion in housing equity sent consumption plunging. People no longer had equity in their homes against which to borrow, and even the people who did would face considerably tougher lending conditions. The drop in annual consumption was on the order of $ 500 billion.

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The collapse of the bubble in nonresidential real estate cost the economy another $ 150 billion in annual demand, as did the cutbacks in state and local government spending as a result of lost tax revenue. This brings the loss in annual demand as a result of the collapse of the bubble to $ 1.4 trillion.

Compared with this loss of private sector demand, the stimulus was about $ 700 billion, excluding some technical tax fixes that are done every year and have nothing to do with stimulus. Roughly $ 300 billion of this was for 2009 and another $ 300 billion for 2010, with the rest of the spending spread over later years.

In other words, we were trying offset a loss of $ 1.4 trillion in annual demand with a stimulus package of $ 300 billion a year. Surprise! This was not enough.

That is not 20/20 hindsight; some of us were yelling this as loudly as we could at the time. It was easy to see that the stimulus package was not large enough to make up for the massive shortfall in private sector demand. It was going to leave millions unemployed and an economy still operating far below its potential level of output.

We are still facing the consequences of an inadequate stimulus. The reality is that we have no simple formula for getting the private sector to replace the demand lost from the collapse of the bubble.

Contrary to what Republican politicians tell us, private businesses don’t run out and create jobs just because we throw tax breaks at them and profess our love. If the government doesn’t create demand, then we will be doomed to a long period of high unemployment — just as we saw in the Great Depression. The government could fill the demand gap by spending on infrastructure, education and other areas, but in a political world where higher spending is strictly verboten, that doesn’t seem likely.

The one alternative, which has been successfully pursued by Germany, is to reduce the supply of labor through work sharing. Companies reduce all their employees’ hours and pay so everyone keeps their jobs. The government then pays the workers part-time unemployment benefits — cheaper than paying someone full-time unemployment.

Germans have used this route to lower their unemployment rate to 5.2%, even though their nation’s growth has been slower than ours.

Some bipartisan baby steps have been taken in this direction; we will need much more if we are to get back to near full employment any time soon. In a world where politics makes further stimulus impossible, work sharing is our best hope.

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Stars back 'Robin Hood' tax on rich

Actors Heike Makatsch, Javier Camara, Clemence Poesy, Andrew Lincoln and Bill Nighy support the campaign.

• Eleven European countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain are signed up to a Financial Transaction Tax


• Campaigner Simon Chouffot says FTT could help deal with the devastation wreaked by the financial crisis


• Harry Potter director David Yates directs the campaign’s spot staring Bill Nighy and Clemence Poesy

Editor’s note: Simon Chouffot is spokesperson for the Robin Hood Tax Campaign, which pushes for the introduction of the Financial Transaction Tax and asks revenue from the tax is used to tackle poverty and climate change. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely his. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande and their respective cabinets meet in Paris to discuss the details of the trading tax on Wednesday.

(CNN) — Bankers get a bad press. If they are not in news studios trying to defend their annual bonus being more than most people earn in a lifetime, they are attempting to brush off the latest multi-million pound fine they received for ripping off the public.

Not so in the latest edition of the Global Talk Finance program. Representatives from the banking sector talk enthusiastically about how they’ve reformed their risky business practices and raised billions to fight against poverty and climate change. They herald the introduction of a “Robin Hood” tax, where speculators pay around a 0.1% tax on their financial transactions, as a “triumph.”

Ok, so it may not strictly be real life. The news anchor is played by “Walking Dead” star Andrew Lincoln, he quizzes characters played by some of Europe’s biggest stars — Bill Nighy, Clemence Poesy, Javier Camara and Heike Makatsch who says the tax was “a profoundly important moment — it’s been good for business and it’s brought billions for jobs in Europe.”

Yet fiction is not so far away from reality. Eleven European countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain are signed up to a Financial Transaction Tax which could raise up to 30 billion pounds annually and be implemented as early as next year. It is the best chance we have of ensuring those responsible for the crisis pay their fair share to put things right.

Unfortunately the UK is refusing to join in, even attempting to block the proposal with a groundless legal challenge in the European Courts of Justice. As Bill Nighy’s character demonstrates masterfully as he squirms out of questions over how the money could help stop cuts to public services, it means the UK will also lose out on the benefits.

This tax on the financial sector has the power to raise hundreds of billions every year globally
Robin Hood Tax Campaign

Bill Nighy has been involved with the “Robin Hood” tax campaign since its inception in 2010. He came with us to see first-hand the impact of the financial crisis only a few miles away from its epicenter in the City of London.

A food bank in the London borough of Putney, where emergency food parcels are given out to those in the most dire need, had seen numbers increase 50% in a year. There are now over 350 Trussell Trust food banks across the UK, at one point opening at the rate of one a week, as people struggle to make ends meet in a perfect storm of public service cuts and decreasing standards of living.

Yet the devastation wreaked by the crisis rippled out far beyond national borders. Oxfam estimates it left a $ 65 billion dollar hole in the budgets of the world’s poorest countries — the people least responsible for the crisis are paying the heaviest price.

Meanwhile back in the financial sectors of London and New York, bankers were cushioned from impacts of their own actions — public money bailed them out and continues to subsidize them today. But it’s not just about ensuring banks give something back, it’s about refocusing our economy away from the fool’s gold of financial sector riches.

Pros and cons of a transaction tax

Financial products such as derivatives can be useful for the economy — they allow a haulage company, for example, to buy a petroleum future, meaning their costs are predictable over time. But all sense of proportion has been lost, the market in derivatives is now a mind-boggling 70 times the size of global GDP.

This frenetic swarm of speculative trades may earn a small cabal of the super-rich ever more money, but it brings with it huge risks and when things go wrong, as they did so spectacularly five years, ago billions can be wiped from the real economy. The low rate of the tax would help curb these speculative trades whilst avoiding impacting on people’s pensions and savings.

As the film’s director David Yates, best known for directing the final four films in the Harry Potter series, said: “I agreed to direct the film because the “Robin Hood” tax is a simple yet brilliant idea. We need to learn the lessons of the financial crisis and ensure that banks and hedge funds work in the interests of society not the other way around.”

He’s not wrong. As France and Germany are due to make an announcement on the tax and countries will agree the details in coming weeks. Let’s hope they agree the best possible tax that raises the most money — it will help create a financial sector we can all be proud of.

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Thai protesters gather at PM's office

• NEW: Demonstrators assemble outside the Prime Minister’s temporary office


• NEW: Thousands of them arrive on foot, on bikes and in pick-up trucks


• Clashes between demonstrators and police left five people dead on Tuesday


• The protesters have been campaigning against Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra

Editor’s note: iReport: Are you there? Share your photos and videos, but please stay safe.

Bangkok, Thailand (CNN) — Thai anti-government demonstrators massed Wednesday outside the Prime Minister’s makeshift office, a day after clashes with police in the streets of Bangkok killed five people.

The protesters have been rallying in the city for months, demanding that Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra step down.

Their long-running campaign has deepened political divisions in Thailand, undermined the functioning of the national government and stirred outbreaks of deadly violence.

The demonstrators want to rid the country of the influence of Yingluck and her older brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who they say controls the government from self-imposed exile. They are calling for the creation of an unelected “people’s council” to oversee electoral and political changes.

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Deadly clashes

With Thailand still scarred by a severe bout of civil unrest in 2010 — in which a crackdown on pro-Thaksin protesters by security forces left scores of people dead — police had until recently largely refrained from using force on the current demonstrations.

But last week, police began attempts to clear sites occupied by protesters for months. Government officials said the protesters’ actions were blocking public access to government services.

The police measures encountered strong resistance from protesters in central Bangkok on Tuesday, and clashes between the two sides erupted into gun fire. Five people, including a police officer, died in the violence, and more than 70 were wounded.

Police have suspended efforts to seize the protest sites for the time being, said Lt. Gen. Paradon Patthanathabut, the national security chief.

Protesters gather

The anti-government protesters, meanwhile, are trying to keep up the pressure on Yingluck by gathering Wednesday outside Defense Secretariat offices in the suburbs of Bangkok where the Prime Minister has set up a temporary office.

She has had to relocate there after the demonstrators blocked access to Government House, the office of the Prime Minister and appointed cabinet ministers in central Bangkok.

Thousands of demonstrators assembled near the Defense Secretariat compound, arriving by foot, on bikes and in pick-up trucks. Some of them waved flags and others blew whistles, a trademark of their movement.

About 1,000 police officers in riot gear were positioned outside the compound.

It wasn’t immediately unclear whether Yingluck was inside the offices Wednesday. She gave a televised speech from there on Tuesday.

Political uncertainty

The Prime Minister is also facing difficulties over her government’s controversial rice subsidy program. Thailand’s anti-corruption commission said Tuesday it was bringing charges against Yingluck over allegations she failed to act on warnings of corruption in the program, which paid farmers well above the market rate for their rice but has run into financial problems.

Yingluck said Tuesday that the program had been successful and that there was “no conspiracy to corrupt.”

The current protests in Bangkok were sparked in November by Yingluck’s government’s botched attempt to pass an amnesty bill that would have paved the way for her brother’s return to the political fray in earnest.

Yingluck called elections in December in the hope that they wcould help ease tensions. But the main opposition party boycotted the vote earlier this month, and protesters caused widespread disruption, making the outcome of the election inconclusive. That has left Yingluck’s caretaker administration unable to operate fully.

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It's time to break up the NSA

• Director of national intelligence said U.S. should have acknowledged surveillance


• Bruce Schneier: NSA is too big and powerful; it’s time to break up the agency


• He says all bulk surveillance of Americans should be moved to the FBI


• Schneier: Instead of working to weaken security, NSA should try to improve security for all

Editor’s note: Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and author of “Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust Society Needs to Thrive.”

(CNN) — The NSA has become too big and too powerful. What was supposed to be a single agency with a dual mission — protecting the security of U.S. communications and eavesdropping on the communications of our enemies — has become unbalanced in the post-Cold War, all-terrorism-all-the-time era.

Putting the U.S. Cyber Command, the military’s cyberwar wing, in the same location and under the same commander, expanded the NSA’s power. The result is an agency that prioritizes intelligence gathering over security, and that’s increasingly putting us all at risk. It’s time we thought about breaking up the National Security Agency.

Broadly speaking, three types of NSA surveillance programs were exposed by the documents released by Edward Snowden. And while the media tends to lump them together, understanding their differences is critical to understanding how to divide up the NSA’s missions.

The first is targeted surveillance.

This is best illustrated by the work of the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group, including its catalog of hardware and software “implants” designed to be surreptitiously installed onto the enemy’s computers. This sort of thing represents the best of the NSA and is exactly what we want it to do. That the United States has these capabilities, as scary as they might be, is cause for gratification.

The second is bulk surveillance, the NSA’s collection of everything it can obtain on every communications channel to which it can get access. This includes things such as the NSA’s bulk collection of call records, location data, e-mail messages and text messages.

This is where the NSA overreaches: collecting data on innocent Americans either incidentally or deliberately, and data on foreign citizens indiscriminately. It doesn’t make us any safer, and it is liable to be abused. Even the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, acknowledged that the collection and storage of data was kept a secret for too long.

Sen. Paul: NSA lawsuit not a stunt

Greenwald: I will definitely come back

The third is the deliberate sabotaging of security. The primary example we have of this is the NSA’s BULLRUN program, which tries to “insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks and endpoint communication devices.” This is the worst of the NSA’s excesses, because it destroys our trust in the Internet, weakens the security all of us rely on and makes us more vulnerable to attackers worldwide.

That’s the three: good, bad, very bad. Reorganizing the U.S. intelligence apparatus so it concentrates on our enemies requires breaking up the NSA along those functions.

First, TAO and its targeted surveillance mission should be moved under the control of U.S. Cyber Command, and Cyber Command should be completely separated from the NSA. Actively attacking enemy networks is an offensive military operation, and should be part of an offensive military unit.

Whatever rules of engagement Cyber Command operates under should apply equally to active operations such as sabotaging the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility in Iran and hacking a Belgian telephone company. If we’re going to attack the infrastructure of a foreign nation, let it be a clear military operation.

Second, all bulk surveillance of Americans should be moved to the FBI.

The FBI is charged with counterterrorism in the United States, and it needs to play that role. Any operations focused against U.S. citizens need to be subject to U.S. law, and the FBI is the best place to apply that law. That the NSA can, in the view of many, do an end-run around congressional oversight, legal due process and domestic laws is an affront to our Constitution and a danger to our society. The NSA’s mission should be focused outside the United States — for real, not just for show.

And third, the remainder of the NSA needs to be rebalanced so COMSEC (communications security) has priority over SIGINT (signals intelligence). Instead of working to deliberately weaken security for everyone, the NSA should work to improve security for everyone.

Computer and network security is hard, and we need the NSA’s expertise to secure our social networks, business systems, computers, phones and critical infrastructure. Just recall the recent incidents of hacked accounts — from Target to Kickstarter. What once seemed occasional now seems routine. Any NSA work to secure our networks and infrastructure can be done openly — no secrecy required.

This is a radical solution, but the

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It's time to break up the NSA
break, It's, time

{ Read More }

It's time to break up the NSA

• Director of national intelligence said U.S. should have acknowledged surveillance


• Bruce Schneier: NSA is too big and powerful; it’s time to break up the agency


• He says all bulk surveillance of Americans should be moved to the FBI


• Schneier: Instead of working to weaken security, NSA should try to improve security for all

Editor’s note: Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and author of “Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust Society Needs to Thrive.”

(CNN) — The NSA has become too big and too powerful. What was supposed to be a single agency with a dual mission — protecting the security of U.S. communications and eavesdropping on the communications of our enemies — has become unbalanced in the post-Cold War, all-terrorism-all-the-time era.

Putting the U.S. Cyber Command, the military’s cyberwar wing, in the same location and under the same commander, expanded the NSA’s power. The result is an agency that prioritizes intelligence gathering over security, and that’s increasingly putting us all at risk. It’s time we thought about breaking up the National Security Agency.

Broadly speaking, three types of NSA surveillance programs were exposed by the documents released by Edward Snowden. And while the media tends to lump them together, understanding their differences is critical to understanding how to divide up the NSA’s missions.

The first is targeted surveillance.

This is best illustrated by the work of the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group, including its catalog of hardware and software “implants” designed to be surreptitiously installed onto the enemy’s computers. This sort of thing represents the best of the NSA and is exactly what we want it to do. That the United States has these capabilities, as scary as they might be, is cause for gratification.

The second is bulk surveillance, the NSA’s collection of everything it can obtain on every communications channel to which it can get access. This includes things such as the NSA’s bulk collection of call records, location data, e-mail messages and text messages.

This is where the NSA overreaches: collecting data on innocent Americans either incidentally or deliberately, and data on foreign citizens indiscriminately. It doesn’t make us any safer, and it is liable to be abused. Even the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, acknowledged that the collection and storage of data was kept a secret for too long.

Sen. Paul: NSA lawsuit not a stunt

Greenwald: I will definitely come back

The third is the deliberate sabotaging of security. The primary example we have of this is the NSA’s BULLRUN program, which tries to “insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks and endpoint communication devices.” This is the worst of the NSA’s excesses, because it destroys our trust in the Internet, weakens the security all of us rely on and makes us more vulnerable to attackers worldwide.

That’s the three: good, bad, very bad. Reorganizing the U.S. intelligence apparatus so it concentrates on our enemies requires breaking up the NSA along those functions.

First, TAO and its targeted surveillance mission should be moved under the control of U.S. Cyber Command, and Cyber Command should be completely separated from the NSA. Actively attacking enemy networks is an offensive military operation, and should be part of an offensive military unit.

Whatever rules of engagement Cyber Command operates under should apply equally to active operations such as sabotaging the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility in Iran and hacking a Belgian telephone company. If we’re going to attack the infrastructure of a foreign nation, let it be a clear military operation.

Second, all bulk surveillance of Americans should be moved to the FBI.

The FBI is charged with counterterrorism in the United States, and it needs to play that role. Any operations focused against U.S. citizens need to be subject to U.S. law, and the FBI is the best place to apply that law. That the NSA can, in the view of many, do an end-run around congressional oversight, legal due process and domestic laws is an affront to our Constitution and a danger to our society. The NSA’s mission should be focused outside the United States — for real, not just for show.

And third, the remainder of the NSA needs to be rebalanced so COMSEC (communications security) has priority over SIGINT (signals intelligence). Instead of working to deliberately weaken security for everyone, the NSA should work to improve security for everyone.

Computer and network security is hard, and we need the NSA’s expertise to secure our social networks, business systems, computers, phones and critical infrastructure. Just recall the recent incidents of hacked accounts — from Target to Kickstarter. What once seemed occasional now seems routine. Any NSA work to secure our networks and infrastructure can be done openly — no secrecy required.

This is a radical solution, but the

Incoming Search Terms:
It's time to break up the NSA
break, It's, time

{ Read More }