'The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos' by Primitivo Mijares had been sold out and was reprinted due to popular demand at the Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Filipinos are buying books to preserve the truth about the Marcos regime

By Kathleen Magramo, CNN

Updated 8:44 PM ET, Sat July 16, 2022

Hong Kong (CNN)Filipinos living abroad are snapping up books about the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, not just to read about history but to preserve it.

The rush to buy books documenting Marcos' destructive 21-year reign comes as his son, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr., assumes office after a landslide election victory in May.

Marcos Jr. has never publicly acknowledged or apologized for the human rights abuses, corruption and theft that historians say took place under his father's leadership.

And there are fears that now he is in power, he will try to rewrite history.

Journalist Raissa Robles, the author of "Marcos Martial Law: Never Again," said after Marcos Jr.'s win she received emails from readers all over the world with requests to reprint the detailed dive on the victims of martial law.

"The book price had nearly doubled and yet the people were buying the book by batches. They weren't just buying one or two. They were buying five or 10 at a time," Robles said.

Author Raissa Robles saw a surge of interest in her book about the Marcos regime.

The main cause for concern came from the president himself.

Back in 2020, when Marcos Jr. was preparing to run for president, he made clear a desire to revise textbooks that documented his parent's corrupt and brutal regime.

"We have been calling for that for years," Marco Jr. said in a forum hosted by the National Press Club, as he accused those in power since his father's demise of "teaching children lies."

Human rights groups say during the Marcos regime from 1965 to 1986 tens of thousands of people were imprisoned, tortured or killed for perceived or real criticism of the government. Marcos Sr., who died in exile in 1989, and his wife, Imelda, 93, were also found guilty of widespread corruption including stealing an estimated $10 billion of public money.

The family has repeatedly denied using state funds for their personal use -- a claim challenged in multiple court cases.

CNN reached out to the new Marcos government for comment but has not received a response.

Demand surges for books on the Marcos regime

Marcos Jr. has previously asked "the world" to judge him by his actions, not by his family's past. But during his inauguration speech on June 30, he praised his father, the late dictator, saying he had achieved much more than previous administrations since gaining independence in 1946.

"He got it done. Sometimes with needed support, sometimes without. So will it be with his son -- you will get no excuses from me," he said.

During his speech, he also touched on the issue of revising learning materials in schools, but said he wasn't talking about history.

Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. takes the oath as the new President of the Philippines on June 30, 2022.

"What we teach in our schools, the materials used, must be retaught. I am not talking about history, I am talking about the basics, the sciences, sharpening theoretical aptitude and imparting vocational skills," he said.

But those assurances ring hollow for people who suffered under his father's dictatorship, and others who are skeptical of the new Marcos leadership.

One indication of that is through book sales.

Almira Manduriao, head of marketing at the Ateneo de Manila University's publishing press, said the rush for Philippine history books began soon after Marcos Jr. won the May 9 election.

"People were suddenly fearful that literature critical of the dictatorship would be banned," Manduriao said. "Hence, the need to buy and safeguard the books (when) they still can."

At least 10 titles covering martial law and the dark past of the Marcos dictatorship remain sold out at the university press, according to Manduriao.

Some of the bestsellers at the campus bookshop were in reprint -- namely "Some Are Smarter than Others: The History of Marcos' Crony Capitalism" by Ricardo Manapat, "The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos" by Primitivo Mijares and "Canal de la Reina" by Liwayway Arceo Bautista.

The book 'Some Are Smarter than Others: The History of Marcos' Crony Capitalism' by Ricardo Manapat is among the popular titles at the Ateneo de Manila University Press.

On May 11, Adarna House, a publishing house founded by Philippine artist Virgilo Almario, offered a 20% discount on a #NeverAgain Bundle of five book titles about the Marcos regime.

In the days that followed, sales went through the roof and the pre-order waitlist grew, and the company announced it might take as much as eight weeks for orders to be delivered.

The offer was a hit with customers, but it also attracted the attention of the government.

Alex Paul Monteagudo, director general of the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency, accused Adarna House of "radicalizing Filipino children."

"The Adarna Publishing House published these books and they are now on sale to subtly radicalize the Filipino children against our government, now!" he wrote on his official Facebook page on May 17.

Monteagudo said in the post that when topics such as martial law and the People Power revolution -- a nationwide uprising that overthrew the Marcos regime in 1986 -- are taught in schools, it will "plant seeds of hatred and dissent in the minds of these children."

The People Power revolution ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1986.

Adarna House declined CNN's request for comment on the claims.

One of Adarna's customers, Vanessa Louie Cabacungan-Samaniego, who lives and works in Hong Kong, put in a group order for around a dozen Filipinos in the city for books on the Marcos dictatorship.

She told CNN she worries the election will allow the Marcos political clan to "work to clear their name and revise history books or target the media."

"Buying books to educate ourselves and the next generation is just our small way to fight against injustices," she said, when the first batch of orders was delivered in June.

Preserving the truth

In recent years, politicians and government officials have demonized publishers and journalists, denouncing their credibility on social media and in public statements.

The day before Marcos Jr. took office, Nobel laureate Maria Ressa said the government had ordered her news organization, Rappler, to shut down.

She said she'd been repeatedly harassed over the past six years and targeted by legal action over alleged libel, tax evasion and violation of foreign media ownership rules.

"This is intimidation. These are political tactics. We refuse to succumb to them," she said.

Maria Ressa, journalist, at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn, Germany, in June 2022.

Michael Pante, a history professor at the Ateneo de Manila University, said he feared Marcos Jr. would continue former President Rodrigo Duterte's campaign to delegitimize the work of historians, academics and journalists -- and potentially move to rewrite history books.

Reporters Without Borders said that since Duterte's election in 2016, media have been subjected to verbal and judicial intimidation for work deemed overly critical of the government.

"The demonization of historians, academics (and journalists) will continue," Pante said. "And the dismissive attitude (toward them) will be enough to generate fear of speaking up and getting arrested or censored.

Filipino archivist Carmelo Crisanto, who leads the Human Rights Violations Victims' Memorial Commission, is racing to digitize case files and testimonies of 11,103 survivors of the dictatorship, in time for the 50th anniversary of the declaration of martial law in September.

Filipino archivist Carmelo Crisanto, who runs the Human Rights Violations Victims' Memorial Commission, is hoping to digitize the account of martial law survivors. (Source: Human Rights Violations Victims's Memorial Museum)

He fears that if the stories of martial law survivors are forgotten, people will be once again susceptible to political violence.

His team of about 30 people plus 1,500 university student volunteers -- most of them are half his age and have not lived through martial law themselves -- was chosen to protect the truth for the next generation.

"I want to have part of this digital archive available to the public, in a way that (can be) easily accessible, to be sent to colleges here in the country and also some partner institutions abroad, so that the memory and evidence will never be lost," he said.

"If there's one lesson state authorities learned from the martial law period, it's that no one (has to) go to jail, even if they commit gross human rights violations," he said.

Robles, the author, said people had told her they wanted to give copies of her books to relatives, while others wanted to stash away a supply in case the new government bans reprints.

"They said they want to hide it so that after the Marcos presidency, then they can bring it out and keep the memory alive," she said.

Robles said she is determined to keep writing and critiquing the nation's political landscape, despite fears of censorship -- but she admits, "I'm not just afraid of censorship, I'm afraid of being arrested."

Uvalde officials sought favorable account, report says

California’s Portuguese community keeps bullfighting alive without bloodshed


By AFP
Published July 16, 2022


At Californian bullfights, a small velcro-padded spear sticks to a cushion attached to the bull's back - Copyright POOL/AFP SONNY TUMBELAKA

Laurent BANGUET

Just like any other Portuguese bullfight, the elegant rider deftly guides his horse around the charging bull’s horns, before bending down to plant a bandarilha in its spine.

Except that no blood is spilled — the small spear is velcro-padded, and sticks to a cushion attached to the bull’s back — and most of the spectators’ cheers are in English.

The scene takes place in Turlock, a small town in the heart of rural California, where tens of thousands of Portuguese-Americans have lived for decades, keeping the traditions of their ancestral homeland alive, not least bullfighting.

But due to Californian law, there can be no bloodshed.

“The first time I came here in California, 15 years ago, it was like ‘woah, amazing’ because they have everything like Portugal,” said Joao Soller Garcia, a “cavaleiro” or horse rider, who travelled from Lisbon to take part in the bullfight.

“Go to a bullfight in Portugal and it’s the same thing,” he said shortly before entering the arena to be applauded by some 4,000 spectators.

The majority of the crowd are of Portuguese descent — mainly immigrants from the Azores islands, who began to settle this agricultural area in the early 20th century.

The community has been growing ever since, with its own newspapers, radio stations and associations.

– ‘Our lifestyle’ –

Some 350,000 Californians proudly claim Portuguese heritage, and often remain fiercely attached to their culture and language.

This is the case for Jose, 30, who came to watch the bullfight with friends.

Born in California, he switches from English to Portuguese seemingly without noticing.

“It comes naturally to me. A lot of people here speak Portuguese in their daily life, even the younger ones, ” he said.

“Sometimes it is easier for me to express my feelings or to joke in Portuguese. Portuguese is a very emotional language,” he added.

Above the arena, the Portuguese flag flies alongside the American flag, and the Portuguese national anthem strikes up before its US counterpart.

The bullfight itself is organized by a religious group, led by Antonio Mendes, a cattle breeder in his 70s who revived the tradition in 1993.

“We’re Portuguese and that’s part of our lifestyle, especially the island that I’m from — it’s just rooted,” he said.

– Grab by the horns –

Portuguese bullfights differ from the Spanish style, in that the animal is never killed in the arena.

But in traditional Portuguese events, the bull has been weakened by several bandarilha strikes by the time the “forcados” — eight men with no horses or protection — enter the arena to tackle the animal with their bare hands.

Because the bulls in Turlock are not hurt, breeders like Mendes have created a bloodline which is just as combative, but less heavy.

“Here the bulls weigh about 900 to 1000 pounds, because it’s bloodless. In Portugal, they are 1300, 1400 pounds. Big bulls,” said George Martins, a “forcado” captain.

Teams like Martins’ are often dubbed “suicide squads” for a reason — one of them literally has the task of grabbing the bull by the horns, suffering powerful headbutts to the stomach as his companions wrestle with the animal.

“It’s not just brute strength… it takes a lot of technique,” he said.

– ‘It sucks!’ –

Joao Soller Garcia, the “cavaleiro,” enjoys both the classic Portuguese style and its Californian adaptation.

“Compared to Portugal, it is a little bit more danger because the bull is not hurt,” he said.

“It’s completely bloodless and we have to be more careful… the bull is at full strength.”

But for Maxine Sousa-Correia, from a family of cattle breeders who have produced bulls for Californian fights since the 1970s, the use of velcro bandarilhas diminishes the spectacle.

“Unfortunately, this is a mere imitation… We invented the velcro pad and the Velcro on the end of the stick just so that it would at least add some color and some pageantry,” she said.

“But at the same time, we’re not doing justice to this animal, because this is what this breed is all is for.

Her husband Frank Correia added: “I think it sucks!”

“It should be done the way it is in Portugal. But we can’t because we’re in the United States of America and, you know, they don’t appreciate the art.”

The dangers of US support for a Gulf-Israeli defense pact

The military alignment risks heightened conflict in the Middle East — without weakening Iran’s geopolitical position or nuclear program.

JULY 16, 2022

Written by
Cinzia Bianco, Ellie Geranmayeh and Hugh Lovatt

During his visit to Israel and Saudi Arabia this week, President Joe Biden is widely expected to offer US political and military support for the development of a regional security partnership between Israel and Arab countries. But there is a risk that – rather than strengthening regional security, which Biden claims is the goal of his trip – further militarisation of the Israeli-Arab relationship, with the explicit aim of countering Iran, will lead to new violence in the Middle East.

This comes at a risky moment, as talks with Iran over its nuclear programme are on the verge of collapse, and Israel is reportedly intensifying its clandestine operations inside Iran. Although Middle Eastern states have engaged in a new dialogue with one another in the past year, US policy could now prompt them to pivot back towards dangerous confrontation. This could reignite conflict in Yemen and Iraq, while causing leaders in Tehran to accelerate their country’s nuclear programme and launch new military ventures elsewhere. Instead of following Washington’s lead, Europeans should continue to support efforts at regional de-escalation. This offers the best prospect of safeguarding Europe’s core interests linked to regional stabilisation and, against the backdrop of Russia’s war on Ukraine, its growing reliance on Middle Eastern energy.

That conflict has forced the Biden administration to change its approach to the Middle East and its leaders. With mid-term elections just around the corner, his administration has a political imperative to reduce gas prices and inflation. This has given Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, greater leverage over the United States. Top of Riyadh’s list of demands in exchange for support in the oil market is the full political rehabilitation of Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman – whom Biden vowed to treat as an international pariah over his alleged involvement in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Riyadh also wants tangible US security guarantees against Iran and the resumption of full military and security cooperation – which the Biden administration scaled back due to the Saudi military intervention in Yemen.

Biden’s U-turn has attracted criticism from Democrats. He has responded by framing renewed engagement with Saudia Arabia as a means of deepening Israel’s integration into the region as part of the 2020 Abraham Accords – which have strong bipartisan support in Washington.
After the Abraham Accords

The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco have used the accords to swiftly normalise their relations with Israel. Although Riyadh has refused to follow suit so far, it appears to be quietly gearing up to do so. In parallel to deepening these bilateral relationships, Israel has focused on turning the Abraham Accords into a multilateral framework. These efforts underpinned the creation of the Negev Forum in June, bringing together Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, the US, and Egypt through cooperation on issues ranging from regional security to clean energy and tourism. Israel has touted this as the start of a new common defence architecture (a kind of Middle Eastern NATO) to counter Iran’s regional influence and nuclear programme – which it sees as existential threats.

Although Gulf states and Israel initiated this front, US support will be decisive in the endeavour. Israeli officials believe that, with US backing, this multilateral security framework can also deepen its relationships in the region – not least by persuading wavering leaders such as those in Saudi Arabia to support normalisation. And it could. As a result of growing distrust in the US as a security guarantor, Gulf Arab states are seeking to diversify their security partnerships even as they look for ways to secure new commitments from Washington.

Israel announced last month that it was building a “US-sponsored regional air defense alliance”. The so-called Middle East Air Defense Alliance (MEAD) would likely include the UAE and Bahrain, and could even extend to Saudi Arabia. This would see the deployment of Israeli early-warning radars to the Arabian Peninsula and the synchronisation of regional air defence systems, with the aim of countering possible missile attacks by Iran and its allies. Security officials from Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar reportedly discussed the MEAD proposal in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh in March 2022.

In public, Riyadh and other Gulf Arab capitals have downplayed the prospects of a regional security organisation aimed at countering Iran. But they see Israel as an important partner in stemming the repeated drone and missile attacks on their countries from Iran’s allies in Yemen and Iraq. Many Arab leaders believe Tehran is intent on escalating such attacks, especially if there is no return to the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have reportedly already benefited from Israel’s high-tech capabilities, receiving an early warning that allowed them to intercept some of the missiles and drones directed at them in early 2022.[1] Both see clear advantages in strengthening their air defence capabilities through the acquisition of Israel’s cyber warfare technology and advanced missile defence systems such as David’s Sling and the new Iron Beam – both of which have been jointly developed with the US and require American authorisation to be transferred to third countries. The Gulf monarchies also need Israeli consent to procure more advanced American weapons, given the US commitment to preserving Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in the region.

Biden is widely expected to give this security initiative a further push when he attends a regional summit in Jeddah on 16 July with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, as well as Iraq, Egypt, and Jordan. Israel is encouraging the Biden administration to tie new security guarantees to the creation of this regional bloc, modelled on an expanded version of the Negev Forum, rather than accede to Saudi Arabia’s request for bilateral security commitments with the US.
Dangers and limitations

Despite the frenzied speculation around a formal military pact between Israel and Gulf Arab states, this initiative could suffer the same fate as the Trump administration’s failed plans to create a Middle East Strategic Alliance. While prospective members of this alliance will welcome enhanced regional security cooperation, their diverging threat perceptions and priorities regarding Iran are likely to impede effective coordination between them.

Not all GCC countries regard Iran as an existential threat. Even those that do, such as Saudi Arabia and UAE, have recently sought to ease tensions with Iran through diplomatic engagement and, in the UAE’s case, growing economic ties.

Jordan, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, is primarily concerned about regime security and the Abraham Accords’ potential to undermine a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians – which it views as key to its domestic stability, given its large Palestinian population. Egypt, too, has refused to back any anti-Iran security venture, even rejecting Saudi requests for support in Yemen. Morocco, an enthusiastic member of the Negev Forum, sees its security through the prism of its rivalry with Algeria rather than a distant Iran.

Even the more modest idea of a regionally integrated air defence system will be tricky to pull off in a multilateral format. The US has promoted the idea of an integrated GCC missile defence architecture for more than a decade, but Gulf Arab leaders’ deep reluctance to share sensitive military data with one another has prevented this effort from moving forward. However, Israel’s recent successes in developing security ties with Saudi Arabia and the UAE indicate that it could establish a less formal security network underpinned by a ‘hub and spoke’ network of bilateral agreements.

An effort to increase Gulf monarchies’ defensive capabilities is not a bad thing in itself, especially if it provides them with enhanced security reassurances (regardless of whether there is a nuclear deal with Iran). But it will be difficult to ensure that this security cooperation does not evolve into – or assume the appearance of – an offensive alliance against Iran. Tehran will certainly view it in this light, given Israel’s leadership role and its clear focus on Iran.

Far from weakening Iran’s regional position and nuclear programme, military alignment between Israel and Gulf Arab states could heighten tensions in the Middle East. Tehran would see a severe threat in efforts to create military infrastructure on the Arabian Peninsula from which Israel could launch a direct attack. Iran would likely retaliate by accelerating its nuclear programme and escalating its own military operations, including in a manner that could target Western interests such as tankers transporting energy to Europe.

All this would be a major setback for the sensitive regional dialogue now under way – namely, bilateral Saudi and Emirati tracks with Iran. The Iraqi-mediated discussion between Saudi Arabia and Iran has only had limited success so far, but it has noticeably eased regional tensions and helped produce a months-long truce in Yemen. If this dialogue continues, Iran and Saudi Arabia could agree on a more permanent solution to the Yemen conflict – raising the prospect of broader regional de-escalation. Meanwhile, the UAE is keen to avoid being drawn into a new wave of US sanctions and pressure on Iran – both because it fears military escalation by Tehran and because it is ideally placed to become a hub for expanded trade with the country. Qatar, for its part, has actively supported the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme and may be open to cooperating with Tehran on further development of their shared gas field.

However, these tracks could collapse as a result of a US-supported shift towards increased militarisation. In response to a perceived loss of US security guarantees, Middle Eastern leaders have sought to maintain channels for de-escalation with Iran even as they have built security relations with Israel. A renewed US security push could upend this balance, especially if it was accompanied by US calls to tighten pressure on Iran following a collapse of the nuclear negotiations. In this scenario, Israel and Gulf Arab states would feel emboldened to pursue a more confrontational position against Iran that would curtail regional dialogue and feed dangerous escalation.
An alternative path to regional stability

European capitals are keen to support the Abraham Accords, aiming to integrate Israel into the region and increase their economic cooperation with Middle Eastern states, especially in relation to energy production and connectivity. But a US-backed push for a heightened Israeli-Gulf Arab front against Iran is likely to directly undermine these ambitions. Moreover, even if the US persuades Saudi Arabia to increase oil production, regional escalation will threaten global energy flows in ways that would push prices back up and further disrupt global supply chains.

In this context, Europeans should urgently discuss how they will deal with the possible collapse of the Iran nuclear deal. They should urge the Biden administration to remain focused on supporting diplomatic pathways to improve regional security and revive nuclear negotiations. To be sure, Western states will want to increase pressure on Iran to return to nuclear negotiations, but this should not come at the cost of regional diplomacy and stability.

The European Union should throw its full institutional weight behind continued regional dialogue and quickly appoint a high-level, politically connected special representative for the Gulf region – as it recently proposed in the Joint Communication on a “Strategic Partnership with the Gulf”. The special representative should press the US, Iraq, Iran, and GCC countries to maintain avenues for diplomacy. Europeans should also look to support Middle Eastern-led platforms that promote de-escalation by focusing on non-military issues of concern to Iran and Gulf Arab states, such as food and water security. This is an area in which Europeans could offer valuable support, and could build on the Baghdad Conference for Cooperation and Partnership, co-sponsored by France.

Ultimately, an inclusive political dialogue will protect European interests far better than a military framework between regional players ever could.

[1] Author’s interview with a UAE official, Abu Dhabi, May 2022.

This article was republished with permission from the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Biden’s words make war with Iran more likely

Joe Biden's chilling statements to an Israeli TV interviewer, including that he is prepared to use military force against Iran, present a grim outlook for reviving the Iran deal.

BY MITCHELL PLITNICK

MONDOWEISS

JULY 16, 2022

SCREENSHOT FROM JOE BIDEN’S INTERVIEW WITH ISRAELI CHANNEL 12 NEWS ANCHOR YONIT LEVI

Joe Biden sat down for a wide-ranging interview with an Israeli television station. In it, there were two chilling statements regarding Iran. When asked if he was prepared to walk away from the Iran nuclear deal (or JCPOA) if the only way to close the deal was to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) he said, simply, “Yes.” And when asked if he was prepared to use military force against Iran, he responded, “As a last resort, yes.”

That was not good enough for Acting Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, but it was a very grim assessment of the chances of reaching a deal with Iran.

JOE BIDEN’S FULL INTERVIEW WITH ISRAELI CHANNEL 12 NEWS ANCHOR YONIT LEVI



Lapid, speaking at a joint press conference with Biden in Jerusalem on Thursday, said “Words will not stop them, Mr. President. Diplomacy will not stop them. The only thing that will stop Iran is knowing that if they continue to develop their nuclear program, the free world will use force. The only way to stop them is to put a credible military threat on the table. It should not be a bluff, but the real thing. The Iranian regime must know that if they continue to deceive the world, they will pay a heavy price.”

Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu had much the same message for Biden. “We’ve been friends for 40 years,” he said, “but to ensure the next 40 years, we must deal with the Iranian threat. There must be a credible offensive military option. I told him the [JCPOA] deal is lousy. He knows my position… I told him that with no credible military option, Iran won’t be stopped. If Iran isn’t deterred, that military option has to be used.”

Biden continued to say that he preferred a diplomatic resolution. “I continue to believe that diplomacy is the best way to achieve this outcome,” he said. He would be well advised to remember that the events of the past seven years have proven that diplomacy does work, while belligerence produces exactly the opposite effect.

But Biden’s policies and his approach to the entire question of the Iran deal have not reflected any such understanding. While his administration has been engaging in discussions with Iran and the P5+1 (the group that negotiated the JCPOA in 2015, which consists of the U.S., UK, France, China, Russia, and Germany) from the beginning of his term, there was a distinct lack of urgency. As a result, the window of opportunity to strike a deal with the relatively friendly government of Mohammed Khatami slipped away.

The new hardline Iranian government of Ebrahim Raisi needed to show that they were holding a stronger line with the United States than their predecessors, but on the whole, their demands didn’t change much in the early days. They gradually advanced their defiance of the JCPOA, entirely in response to the United States abrogating it. But unlike the U.S. they never formally left the agreement, merely countered the sanctions and aggression by the United States by moving further with their nuclear work and reducing their cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

As time dragged on, Iran became increasingly reluctant to re-enter the JCPOA. Perhaps the greatest obstacle has been that Iran has no reason to believe that the U.S. would honor a deal struck by Biden should Republicans win back control of Congress in the midterms, or worse, the White House in 2024.

Still, the Raisi government continued the difficult, often strained, talks. Eventually, one proposal was that the Biden administration remove the IRGC from the State department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list.

In practice, removing the IRGC from the FTO would have virtually no impact. There are enough other sanctions in place to ensure that nothing would change with the removal, just as nothing changed when Trump put Iran on the list in 2019. But removing Iran creates significant problems politically, and this was the point of Trump’s move; to plant a “poison pill” for any future administrations that might want to negotiate with Iran.

Even for those U.S. officials who thought listing the IRGC was a mistake, it is an entirely different matter, politically, to remove them from the list. Such removal will be attacked, however disingenuously, both domestically and by U.S. Mideast allies like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, as another example of U.S. unreliability. And, given the very negative reputation the IRGC has, it will certainly be a criticism that hits the Biden administration hard.

Trump’s poison pill is working exactly as intended. The Biden administration sees Iran’s demand to de-list the IRGC as being disconnected from the nuclear issue. Iran correctly understands that the listing was done to prevent progress on the nuclear issue. Biden understands, correctly, that he will face intense backlash if he de-lists the IRGC, further complicating the already fraught politics around Iran.

Biden’s decision to reject de-listing the IRGC, though, is just one more step in what has been a bungled process from the beginning. Biden’s whole approach to the talks has been about Iran proving itself. This is foolhardy; even Trump’s own people acknowledged, when Trump broke the deal, that Iran had been in compliance.

Indeed, it was the U.S. that never fully complied with the deal, even under Obama. Part of the U.S. commitment was to encourage investment, and certainly to refrain from discouraging it, in Iran. Yet, from the moment the deal was struck, U.S. leaders discouraged investment in Iran, a direct violation of the agreement. Indeed, all a bank president or corporate CEO had to do was see the furious debate that lingered after the deal was struck to be put off from dealing with Iran, lest sanctions be put back in place, as they were.

Thanks to the abrogation of the JCPOA by Trump, Iran is closer to a nuclear device than it has ever been. That was inevitable, and the known consequence of leaving the deal. The inescapable conclusion is that the anti-Iran hawks, whether in Washington, Riyadh, or Jerusalem, want a war of regime change, not a viable, functional nuclear deal. Biden isn’t part of that group, but he has fallen almost deliberately into their traps and, with his declaration that he will go to war if diplomacy fails, he is furthering their cause.

It’s also important to note that, despite western rhetoric, it remains unclear that Iran actually wants a nuclear weapon. They had not been developing one since 2003, and even now, and have proceeded toward one only in response to the “maximum pressure” campaign that the Trump administration began and the Biden administration has continued without interruption or mitigation.

On Iran’s side, despite their efforts, they may not actually want a nuclear weapon, but rather the capacity to build one. So-called nuclear latent states are states that can produce a nuclear weapon in a relatively short time. Given that Iran’s two main adversaries—the United States and Israel—are both nuclear powers, it’s hard to argue that such a desire is irrational.

While Israel is pushing Biden toward war, the Saudis have been more reserved. Although they, too, bitterly opposed the JCPOA, they were less enthusiastic than Israel about Trump breaking it. Since April 2021, Iraq has been facilitating talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia, with an eye toward rapprochement between the two oil-producing adversaries. The process has been slow, but steady. While Riyadh would surely still like to see a widespread change in Iran, they would suffer far more than Israel or the U.S. in a war. They’re clearly not opposed to American and Israeli belligerence toward Iran, but they are not as enthusiastic about war, especially since they can’t be sure how much the U.S. and Israel would look after Saudi interests.

All of this leaves us right where Biden described it to Israel’s Channel 12. The U.S. is not going to take the steps it needs to for the JCPOA to advance, and Iran is very wary of re-entering the deal without some way to ensure the U.S. won’t break it again. Iran will not push for a war that would cost them enormously and that they would be unlikely to win. But they are also unwilling to accept American diktats and have every reason to want a deterrent against two nuclear-armed foes who both talk about attacks on the Islamic Republic.

A president with any courage, a clear-eyed assessment of global needs, and who would treat war in the Persian Gulf as a red line they would not want to cross could find the diplomatic solution Biden seems to prefer. But Biden fails on every count of being that president, as his Mideast trip conclusively proved. That means a grim outlook for reviving the Iran deal.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

56% of K-12 schools worldwide report ransomware attacks in past year

Among respondents in a Sophos survey, 47% reported an increase in volume of cyberattacks and 50% saw an increase in complexity.

Published July 15, 2022

Roger RiddellSenior Editor

The education sector is an increasingly popular target for cybercriminals, who see a lack of defenses and wealth of personal data as low-hanging fruit. South_agency via Getty Images

Ransomware attacks targeting the education sector have risen sharply worldwide.

Globally, 56% of K-12 schools and 64% of colleges and universities report being hit by an attack in the past year, according to an independent survey of 5,600 IT professionals in 31 countries by British security software and hardware company Sophos.

In 2021, the survey found 44% of respondents across both sectors reporting an attack.

Of this year’s respondents, 320 were from lower education organizations — which include primary, secondary, elementary, high school and K-12 institutions — and 410 were in higher education.

Among lower education respondents, 47% reported an increase in volume of cyberattacks, 50% reported an increase in complexity, and 49% reported an increase in impact. Regarding ransomware attacks in particular, 72% of lower education respondents said data was encrypted during the attack, compared to an average of 65% across all sectors, suggesting that education is underprepared for these cyberattacks and lacks necessary defenses.

While 99% of lower education organizations reported getting some encrypted data back following a ransomware attack, only an average of 62% of data was restored after a ransom was paid. Just 2% of respondents reported getting all encrypted data back following a ransom payment.

Education is a target

In the U.S., cybersecurity experts have warned over the past decade that K-12 is an increasingly popular target for ransomware, as the combination of lagging progress on cybersecurity measures and the wealth of student and employee personal data necessary for operations have made the sector low-hanging fruit for cybercriminals. 

Last year’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allocated $1 billion in federal grants to improve state and local government cybersecurity between 2022 and 2025. States are required to match a certain percentage of the grants, and to secure funds, they must submit a plan to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency with a statewide planning committee. 

In November, a Government Accountability Office report called on the U.S. Department of Education to update its 2010 plan for addressing cyber risks to schools and to consider whether more specific guidance is needed for K-12. The report demanded decisiveness on whether sector-specific guidance is needed on current cyber risks, identifying education as one of the nation’s “critical infrastructure” subsectors.

A variety of cybersecurity programs, services and support are available to K-12 via the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Secure Schools, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. These include incident response assistance, network monitoring tools and cybersafety guidance for parents and students.

Defending against these risks isn’t just incumbent upon districts themselves, but also the ed tech vendors they choose to procure products and services from. According to the fourth annual report on The State of K-12 Cybersecurity from nonprofit K12 Security Information Exchange, vendors were an entry point for 55% of K-12 data breaches between 2016 and 2021.

In recent months, high-profile vendor-related data breaches have impacted hundreds of thousands of students across the U.S., including all three of the nation’s largest school systems: New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Cryptocurrency crash triggers crisis for dark web exchanges

15Jul2022 OODA Analyst

The decline in the value of cryptocurrencies has created a cash rush that is pushing many underground exchanges to their breaking point. According to research from security company Cybersixgill, cybercriminals are looking to protect their pilfered funds by moving them from cryptocurrencies to fiat currencies, forcing some prominent underground exchanges toward bankruptcy. Operating on the dark web away from the prying eyes of law enforcement, the exchanges allow criminals to make transactions and potentially launder their ill-gotten gains by shifting the stolen funds from fiat cash to various cryptocurrencies — while paying the exchanges steep transaction fees for their discretion. Ideally, the exchanges retain a healthy mixture of cryptocurrency and fiat money, without either being too heavily in demand. That, however, has changed amid the larger crash in cryptocurrency prices. “As crypto prices fell, actors turned to these exchanges to dump it for fiat,” explained Dov Lerner, security research lead at Cybersixgill, in a blog post Thursday. “They quickly ran out of their dollar reserves (or their operators also feared losses from buying more crypto), and they ended operations.”

Spyware threatens everyone’s right to free expression

International|Free Expression & the Law
ARTICLE 19
16 July 2022

Relatives of the 43 abducted students from the Ayotzinapa Rural College take part in a demonstration calling for justice for the crime, Mexico City, Mexico, 26 September 2021; the families of those who disappeared are among those who have been targeted by Pegasus spyware. 

Luis Barron / Eyepix Group/Future Publishing via Getty Images

The use of spyware and surveillance tools has been described as 'the most serious crisis in civil society'. Jo Glanville explains why these technologies not only threaten the journalists, activists, politicians, and lawyers who are targeted, but has an impact on everyone’s right to free expression.

This statement was originally published on article19.org on 14 June 2022.

By Jo Glanville

The use of spyware and surveillance tools has been described as ‘the most serious crisis in civil society’. As part of the ARTICLE 19’s Boundaries of Expression series, Jo Glanville explains why these technologies not only threaten the journalists, activists, politicians, and lawyers who are targeted, it has an impact on everyone’s right to free expression.

In 2016, Ahmed Mansoor, a highly respected human rights defender, received suspicious text messages on his phone. The texts offered information about detainees tortured in prison in the United Arab Emirates, where Mansoor is based, and contained a hyperlink to a website. Mansoor was suspicious. He had already been targeted on a number of occasions by surveillance software and forwarded the texts to Citizen Lab, a leading research centre in Toronto that specialises in investigating digital espionage against civil society. Mansoor had been targeted by Pegasus, spyware developed by NSO Group in Israel. Citizen Lab had been investigating NSO Group for a while. But this was the first time its researchers, Bill Marczak and John Scott-Railton, in collaboration with Lookout Security, were able to identify how Pegasus operated. It was a new level of sophistication in surveillance never seen before, described as a ‘remote jailbreak’, that enables the spyware to bypass iPhone security measures and take control of the phone. If Mansoor had clicked on the link, the spyware would have been able to use his iPhone’s camera and microphone to follow his activities, record his calls and track his movements.

Pegasus’s reach and impact is now infamous, and Citizen Lab has remained at the forefront in investigating its use and abuse. Last year, the Pegasus Project, a consortium of media partners in partnership with Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International, exposed the scale of Pegasus’s operations in a leak of more than 50,000 phone numbers that had been targeted for surveillance by clients of NSO Group. Citizen Lab’s latest revelations in April led to the sacking of Spain’s intelligence chief: more than 60 Catalan politicians, lawyers and activists had been targeted by Pegasus. It later emerged that the prime minister, interior minister and defence minister of Spain had also been victims. Ronald Deibert, director of Citizen Lab, describes the impact of Pegasus, and other spyware as, ‘the most serious crisis in civil society’.

‘We’re seeing a real chilling effect,’ he says. ‘People are fearful they don’t know whether they can trust their device that’s in their hand. There’s somebody watching, listening in on them. This is like putting sand in the machinery of civil society, slowing everything down, confusing people, spreading fear and paranoia. We’re seeing every sector of civil society, lawyers, journalists, human rights defenders, environmental activists being targeted by their adversaries using these techniques.’

One of Citizen Lab’s own researchers, Elies Campo, was targeted. When it proved impossible to infect his phone, his parents were targeted instead – both eminent doctors in Spain, with highly confidential and sensitive information on their phones.
Protection against surveillance has an impact on us all

The impact of Pegasus, and other spyware, affects all of us – even if we are not doing work that depends on the protection of confidentiality where lives may be at risk. The philosopher Quentin Skinner observed nearly ten years ago that the very existence of surveillance deprives us of our liberty, because we are all ‘at the mercy of arbitrary power’ and may censor our communications in fear of being hacked.

The leak last year revealed Mexico as the most significant target, with 15,000 numbers selected for surveillance. The numbers belonged to human rights defenders, relatives of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa Rural School who were disappeared and shockingly murdered in 2014, researchers from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights working on the Ayotzinapa investigation and more than 25 journalists. Five years ago, there had been a national scandal when Citizen Lab published an investigation, in collaboration with ARTICLE 19, R3D and SocialTIC, revealing that lawyers, activists, journalists and politicians had been targeted by Pegasus. So far there has been just one arrest, despite a long-running investigation. ARTICLE 19 has criticised the lack of significant advances in the case. The human rights group is calling for a renewed independent investigation, for the contracts and information relating to surveillance to be made transparent and for a reform agenda to establish democratic controls.

Vladimir Cortés, digital rights programme officer at ARTICLE 19 in Mexico, points out that surveillance has an insidious personal cost, as well as being a threat to the individual’s communications, including their confidential sources and contacts. ‘Being spied on or knowing you have been spied on is shocking,’ he says, ‘because they are accessing your whole life, your intimate space, your private space regarding your family in terms of all the things you are as a human being.’

Following the data leak last year, Mexico’s Public Security Ministry revealed that the governments of Enrique Peña Nieto and Felipe Calderón had signed 31 contracts for Pegasus totalling $61m. Vladimir Cortés believes that the admissions do not go far enough. ‘They revealed part of the information,’ he says. ‘There is still information regarding the army and intelligence which we don’t have. It was significant and important, but in the end why are they not providing the rest and in particular in regards to the army, which for a long time has been pointed to as deploying and using [Pegasus]?’
A ‘pioneering approach’ to undermining rights?

NSO Group claims that Pegasus is used exclusively by government intelligence and law enforcement agencies to fight crime and terror. On its website, it states that it takes ‘a pioneering approach to applying rigorous, ethical standards to everything we do’. It also claims to have a strict licensing process and an in-depth, internal review under its human rights policy.

‘Clearly they’re not doing what they say they’re doing,’ says Ronald Deibert. ‘And then this argument that they only sell to governments to investigate matters of crime and terrorism is faulty logic, because for the government of the United Arab Emirates Ahmed Mansoor is a terrorist. Anyone who’s expressing their political will in Catalonia is a seditionist. So the problem is that these terms sound on the face of it to be reasonable limitations, but in practice they’re usually employed in such a broad manner to include journalists, human rights defenders, activists and the political opposition.’

In 2019, David Kaye, then UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, called for tighter regulation of surveillance exports and restrictions on their use and an immediate moratorium on the global sale and transfer of the tools of the private surveillance industry until rigorous human rights safeguards are put in place. He noted that a comprehensive system for control and use of targeted surveillance technologies ‘hardly exists’ and advised that states limit the uses of surveillance technologies to lawful ones only, requiring the private sector to comply with human rights norms.

Following the data leak last year, there has been some progress. Ronald Deibert believes that governments are now recognising that it’s not just a human rights problem, it’s a national security issue too – the mobile numbers of President Macron and most of his cabinet were included in the leak. So the crisis is now being given a level of attention it hadn’t received before and which is long overdue. In December, Australia, Denmark, Norway, and the United States committed to setting up a code of conduct to use export control tools to prevent the proliferation of software and other technologies used to enable serious human rights abuses. In the US, the Commerce Department has blacklisted NSO Group, and other spyware firms, preventing them from purchasing technology from American companies without a licence. The FT has described this as a ‘crippling blow’, since the company’s operations depend on US technology. In April, the European Parliament began an investigation into Pegasus. Meta and Apple are both suing NSO Group, alleging that its spyware hacked their users.

The threats from spyware have become even more deeply chilling. It is now possible to take control of devices without any interaction from the victim who has been targeted. ‘There’s no visible indication of tampering so a government client using this can simply point their spyware at any phone in the world hypothetically and take it over without the user even knowing,’ says Ronald Deibert. ‘So that’s like a nuclear version of spyware.’

As Citizen Lab has pointed out, spyware like Pegasus is often developed in democracies, which are not only exporting it to countries with a history of human rights abuse but using it themselves, an unprecedented intrusion that uniquely exposes almost every detail of our lives, shattering the possibility of confidentiality. We are all potential victims of a tool that was once a mark of totalitarianism. It is one of the greatest challenges to our essential rights to privacy and freedom of expression.

Jo Glanville is a journalist and editor. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, London Review of Books and the Observer, among other publications. She is editor of Looking For An Enemy: eight essays on antisemitism (Short Books, UK; WW Norton, US, August 2022).