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The American empire is over: Afghanistan, China and our new bystander status
After a decade plus of war, the U.S. can only watch as China brokers Afghan peace. Here's where we went so wrong

Call it an irony, if you will, but as the Obama administration struggles to slow down or halt its scheduled withdrawal from Afghanistan, newly elected Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is performing a withdrawal operation of his own. He seems to be in the process of trying to sideline the country’s major patron of the last 13 years — and as happened in Iraq after the American invasion and occupation there, Chinese resource companies are again picking up the pieces.

In the nineteenth century, Afghanistan was the focus of “the Great Game” between the imperial powers of that era, Britain and Czarist Russia, and so it is again.  Washington, the planet’s “sole superpower,” having spent an estimated $1 trillion and sacrificed the lives of 2,150 soldiers fighting the Taliban in the longest overseas war in its history, finds itself increasingly and embarrassingly consigned to observer status in the region, even while its soldiers and contractors still occupy Afghan bases, train Afghan forces, and organize night raids against the Taliban.

In the new foreign policy that Ghani recently outlined, the United States finds itself consigned to the third of the five circles of importance.  The first circle contains neighboring countries, including China with its common border with Afghanistan, and the second is restricted to the countries of the Islamic world.
In the new politics of Afghanistan under Ghani, as the chances for peace talks between his government and the unbeaten Taliban brighten, the Obama administration finds itself gradually but unmistakably being reduced to the status of bystander. Meanwhile, credit for those potential peace talks goes to the Chinese leadership, which has received a Taliban delegation in Beijing twice in recent months, and to Ghani, who has dulled the hostility of the rabidly anti-Indian Taliban by reversing the pro-India, anti-Pakistan policies of his predecessor, Hamid Karzai.

Senator Menendez indicted on corruption charges

United States Senator Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) has been indicted on federal corruption charges, federal authorities have announced, including eight counts of bribery. He denied any wrongdoing and insisted that he is not going anywhere.

Following news of the indictment, Senate aides told Reuters that Menendez will temoporarily step down as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Panel. He is set to appear in court in Newark on Thursday.

A spokesperson for the US Department of Justice said that Menendez, 61, and a Florida medical professional, Dr. Salomon Melgen, are both named in an indictment unsealed on Wednesday this week “in connection with a bribery scheme in which Menendez allegedly accepted gifts from Melgen in exchange for using the power of his Senate office to benefit Melgen's financial and personal interests.”

The two were each indicted on one count of violating the travel act, eight counts of bribery and three counts of honest services fraud. Additionally, Menendez was also charged with one count of making false statements, according to Peter Carr, the Justice Dept. spokesperson.

How Big Business Is Helping Expand NSA Surveillance, Snowden Be Damned

Since November 11, 2011, with the introduction of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, American spy agencies have been pushing laws to encourage corporations to share more customer information. They repeatedly failed, thanks in part to NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations of mass government surveillance. Then came Republican victories in last year’s midterm Congressional elections and a major push by corporate interests in favor of the legislation.

Today, the bill is back, largely unchanged, and if congressional insiders and the bill’s sponsors are to believed, the legislation could end up on President Obama’s desk as soon as this month. In another boon to the legislation, Obama is expected to reverse his past opposition and sign it, albeit in an amended and renamed form (CISPA is now CISA, the “Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act”). The reversal comes in the wake of high-profile hacks on JPMorgan Chase and Sony Pictures Entertainment. The bill has also benefitted greatly from lobbying by big business, which sees it as a way to cut costs and to shift some anti-hacking defenses onto the government.

For all its appeal to corporations, CISA represents a major new privacy threat to individual citizens. It lays the groundwork for corporations to feed massive amounts of communications to private consortiums and the federal government, a scale of cooperation even greater than that revealed by Snowden. The law also breaks new ground in suppressing pushback against privacy invasions; in exchange for channeling data to the government, businesses are granted broad legal immunity from privacy lawsuits — potentially leaving consumers without protection if companies break privacy promises that would otherwise keep information out of the hands of authorities.

Ostensibly, CISA is supposed to help businesses guard against cyberattacks by sharing information on threats with one another and with the government. Attempts must be made to filter personal information out of the pool of data that is shared. But the legislation — at least as marked up by the Senate Intelligence Committee — provides an expansive definition of what can be construed as a cybersecurity threat, including any information for responding to or mitigating “an imminent threat of death, serious bodily harm, or serious economic harm,” or information that is potentially related to threats relating to weapons of mass destruction, threats to minors, identity theft, espionage, protection of trade secrets, and other possible offenses. Asked at a hearing in February how quickly such information could be shared with the FBI, CIA, or NSA, Deputy Undersecretary for Cybersecurity Phyllis Schneck replied, “fractions of a second.”

Leaked TPP Investment Chapter Reveals Serious Threat to User Safeguards

A newly leaked chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement from Wikileaks has confirmed some of our worst fears about the agreement. The latest provisions would enable multinational corporations to undermine public interest rules through an international tribunal process called investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). Under this process, foreign companies can challenge any new law or government action at the federal, state, or local level, in a country that is a signatory to the agreement. Companies can file such lawsuits based upon their claim that the law or action harms their present or future profits. If they win, there are no monetary limits to the potential award.

This type of tribunal process is not entirely new—similar provisions in other international agreements have been used to undermine laws regarding the environment, health, and other regulatory areas. However, this new leaked text has revealed how these investor-state provisions could also be used to undermine user protections built into digital regulations, including copyright rules.

The TPP Investment chapter encompasses intellectual property in its definition of foreign investment, including all "other tangible or intangible, movable or immovable property." In this way, it is similar to ISDS provisions in other trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Under NAFTA, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lily, took advantage of this broad definition to target a Canadian court ruling that found one of its patents invalid. They are demanding Canada give them $500 million in damages, claiming that Canada has "expropriated" their property through this decision. This is one of the few, if only, known cases where an investor-state case has been filed over a patent issue. Since policymakers now always seem to group together patents, copyrights, trademarks, and other kinds of intangible "property" together, it is not a far leap for Big Content companies to feel emboldened by this patent case to begin undermining user rights in copyright law as well.