'No Nile, no Egypt', Cairo warns over Ethiopia dam

Egyptians youth dances and enjoy a Nile River cruise in Cairo June 6, 2013. Egypt will demand Ethiopia stop building a dam on one of the main tributaries of the Nile, a senior government aide said on Wednesday, ramping up a confrontation over the project that Egypt fears will affect its main source of water. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

By Shadia Nasralla

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's foreign minister, vowing not to give up "a single drop of water from the Nile", said on Sunday he would go to Addis Ababa to discuss a giant dam that Ethiopia has begun building in defiance of Cairo's objections.

Speaking to Egypt's state news agency MENA two days after the Ethiopian government flatly rejected a request from Cairo to halt the project, Mohamed Kamel Amr said Egyptians view any obstacle to the river's flow as a threat to national survival.

"No Nile - no Egypt," he said, highlighting the pressure on the Egyptian government, whose popularity is wilting in the face of economic troubles, to prevent the hydro power plant cutting already stretched water supplies for its 84 million people.

Last week, Ethiopia summoned the Egyptian ambassador after politicians in Cairo were shown on television suggesting military action or supporting Ethiopian rebels - a mark of the threat felt in Cairo from the plan to dam the Blue Nile, the tributary that supplies the bulk of water downstream in Egypt.

"Egypt won't give up on a single drop of water from the Nile or any part of what arrives into Egypt from this water in terms of quantity and quality," Amr told MENA, noting that Egypt has little rain and is effectively desert without its great river.

Speaking at a news conference, he declined to detail the action Egypt might take next but noted Ethiopian assurances that Africa's biggest hydro station would not cut water supplies.

"We have a plan for action, which will start soon," Amr said. "We'll talk to Ethiopia and we'll see what comes of it.

"Ethiopia has said it will not harm Egypt, not even by a liter of water. We are looking at ... this being implemented."

Countries that share the Nile have long argued over the use of its waters, repeatedly raising fears that the disputes could eventually boil over into war. Egypt, struggling with a shortage of cash and bitter internal political divisions following a 2011 revolution, called on Ethiopia to stop work after engineers began diverting the course of the Blue Nile late last month.

In Addis Ababa, a government spokesman called that request a "non-starter" and dismissed threats from Cairo of "sabotage" and "destabilization", saying attempts by Egypt under its previous military rulers to undermine Ethiopian leaders had failed.

The possible downstream effects of the $4.7-billion Grand Renaissance Dam, some 40 km (25 miles) from Ethiopia's border with Sudan, have been disputed and full details are unclear.

While letting water through such dams - of which Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia already have several - may not reduce its flow greatly, the filling of the reservoir behind any new dam means cutting the river's flow for a time. Evaporation from reservoirs can also permanently reduce water flowing downstream.

Now 21 percent complete, the new dam on the Blue Nile will eventually have capacity of 6,000 megawatts and is central to Ethiopia's plans to become Africa's leading exporter of power.

Sudan, which borders Egypt and Ethiopia and also gets much of its water from the Nile, said it supported the project.

"The Grand Renaissance Dam brings many benefits and blessings for us," Information Minister Ahmed Belal Osman told reporters in Khartoum.

He gave no details, but Sudanese officials have said the dam will enable Ethiopia to export power to Sudan, a country with frequent outages and one of its closest allies in Africa.

(Editing by Alastair Macdonald, Tom Pfeiffer and Kevin Liffey)

Israeli figures show spike in settlement starts

JERUSALEM (AP) — Official Israeli figures show housing starts in West Bank settlements rose significantly in the first three months of 2013 compared to the same period last year — numbers that are likely to cast a shadow on the upcoming visit of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

A document on housing starts released by the Central Bureau of Statistics showed that building in the West Bank jumped from 313 housing starts between January and March last year to 865 the same period this year.

The rise in building starts elicited criticism from the Palestinians, who insist they won't return to peace talks unless Israel halts all settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, areas they claim, along with the Gaza Strip, for a future state. Israel, which captured those areas in the 1967 Mideast war, says talks should resume without any conditions.

The statistics bureau's report detailed housing starts country-wide. The West Bank housing represents the highest relative spike since last year compared to other regions in Israel, but it made up the smallest portion of new building compared to overall construction around the country.

The report, released at the end of May, comes days before Kerry is set to arrive to Israel in his bid to persuade both sides to return to negotiations. Kerry has been shuttling between the sides in recent months in hopes of finding a formula to restart negotiations. He is expected in the region this week on what would be his fifth visit since becoming Secretary of State early this year.

The issue of Jewish settlements has been at the heart of a nearly five-year impasse in peace efforts. Negotiations broke down in late 2008 and have remained stalled since then. The Palestinians condemned the rise in housing starts.

"It's clear not only to us Palestinians but also to the American administration and John Kerry that the current Israeli government is not interested in the peace process," said Nimr Hamad, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. "The Palestinian position is clear. Israel has to be forced to stop the settlement activity."

An Israeli government official said the housing starts were in response to the Palestinian move last year to seek state recognition at the United Nations. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

Kerry will face several other challenges. On Sunday, a senior Israeli official said that the ruling Likud Party will not accept a Palestinian state with the borders favored by the Palestinians and the international community, presenting a new hurdle to Kerry's effort to restart peace talks.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved to distance himself from the comments by his deputy defense minister, Danny Danon.

In a TV interview, Danon said "there is certainly no majority" in the Likud for establishing aPalestinian state based on Israel's borders before the 1967 Mideast war.

"A Palestinian state on the 1967 lines is something dangerous for Israel, and therefore I oppose that idea," Danon told Channel 2 TV. He said it was possible that the broader coalition government, which includes other hard-line parties, also opposes a return to the 1967 lines.

Officials in Netanyahu's office said that Danon had stated a personal opinion, and his comments did not reflect government policy.

In a veiled reference to Danon, Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday "the government must function as one unit" in order to confront the many challenges facing the country.

Netanyahu linked the recent troubles along Israel's front with Syria to the Palestinian issue, telling his Cabinet that the planned withdrawal of Austrian peacekeepers from the Golan Heights shows that Israel cannot rely on others to protect its security. Austria announced the pullout from a U.N. peacekeeping force along the Israeli-Syrian frontier after rebels briefly overran a border crossing.

The incident "underscores the fact that Israel cannot depend on international forces for its security," Netanyahu said. "They can be part of the arrangements. They cannot be the basic foundation of Israel's security."

Israel's chief negotiator with the Palestinians, Tzipi Livni, said Sunday that she is working with the U.S to restart talks, despite those within the government that oppose it.

"It is true that within the Likud there are radical elements and within the government there are those that oppose an agreement," Livni told Israel Radio. "The prime minister is the one who will have to decide whether he surrenders to radical elements or will promote his policy that he declared," she said.

Livni said Danon's comments "look bad."

The top Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said Danon's remarks reflect Israel's policy. "I believe that a government that continues to tender settlements and rejects the two state solution will not go for peace," he said.

___

IRS manager: White House not involved in reviews

Stunning NSA Leaks: Is Daniel Ellsberg Back?

The headline-grabbing national security leaks in The Washington Post and The Guardian last week both were authored by board members of a little-known, six-month-old advocacy group that was formed to support groundbreaking reporting.

The organization, called the Freedom of the Press Foundation, has no offices and a shoestring budget, and according to the group's attorney, had no formal role in the drumbeat of published reports that have revealed the U.S. government's secret efforts to view the phone records and internet activity of millions of Americans and foreigners.

The foundation's board is led by one of the most famous whistleblowers in American history, Daniel Ellsberg, whose leak of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 exposed the secret history of the run-up to war in Vietnam on the front page of The New York Times.

Two of the group's board members now appear to be involved in a story that's following a similar model.

Glenn Greenwald, the author of reports in The Guardian about the National Security Agency'scollection of phone records and a follow-up scoop involving the leak of a secret document about U.S. cyber warfare efforts, is one of a handful of journalists who sit on the board alongside activists, Hollywood actors and other patrons. Laura Poitras, another board member, is a documentary filmmaker who shared a byline on The Washington Post report about a secret program to scour the Internet for clues about terrorist activities. She is reportedly in the midst of completing a film about the WikiLeaks scandal.

In the case of Greenwald's phone monitoring report, The Guardian published a Top Secret order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was extraordinary in part because it was the first known leak in the super secret court's 35-year history, according to insiders.

Greenwald, appearing on ABC News "This Week" Sunday, compared the leaked information and thegovernment's response to the Pentagon Papers and said to expect more reports on governmentprograms based on leaked information.

"I am not going to confirm that there is only one [source] -- there could be one or more than one," Greenwald said on "This Week." "[S]ince the government hides virtually everything that they do at the threat of criminal prosecution, the only way for us to learn about them is through these courageous whistle-blowers -- who deserve our praise and gratitude, and not imprisonment and prosecution."

Neither he nor Poitras responded to emailed questions asking if the reports were released in a coordinated fashion or if the foundation played any role in supporting their reporting.

Cindy Cohn, an attorney for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said she did not know if Greenwald and Poitras coordinated the timing of the publication of their articles, or if the leaked information came to each of them from the same source. But Cohn did not believe that the articles were part of an orchestrated campaign hatched by the foundation.

"I don't want to reveal the inner workings of the foundation, but I am not aware that they were involved," Cohn said.

More likely, Cohn said, the ties between the authors and the foundation may be due to the fact that they are part of a small circle of people who are passionate and active on national security, government secrecy, and the need to protect whistleblowers who expose government wrongdoing.

"They all know each other," Cohn said.

Cohn is one of several employees of another organization that fits in that category – the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) – which also has ties to the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Several employees of EFF founded the press freedom organization in December, and the two groups share a board member. In addition to representing the foundation, Cohn is the attorney of record in a lawsuit seeking to stop warrantless wiretapping and hold the government and government officials behind the program accountable.

Cohn said the foundation has not yet received nonprofit status from the IRS, and so is operating under the sponsorship of the left-leaning nonprofit media group Mother Jones.

Among those who are also working for EFF is Trevor Timm, the press foundation's executive director.

"I basically have two jobs now," Timm told ABC News.

"We've been involved in the lawsuit against the NSA for their warrantless surveillance program for years now and we just launched the Freedom of the Press Foundation about six months ago given that there was this climate of a crackdown on whistleblowers, and journalism seemed to be under threat," Timm said. "It just happens to be that two of our board members happen to be central to this story now and we couldn't be prouder of them."

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Transcripts from Bradley Manning's Trial

The US military has refused to release transcripts of Bradley Manning's trial. In addition, they've denied press passes to 270 out of the 350 media organizations that applied. Without public transcripts or a press pass, it's virtually impossible for media organizations to accurately cover the trial and for the public to know what the government is doing in its name.

In response, Freedom of the Press Foundation has crowd-sourced funding to place a professional stenographer in the media room covering the trial. We will post full transcripts shortly after each day's proceedings end. The morning session with be posted by 7 pm the same evening. The afternoon session will be posted by 9 am the next morning. The transcripts will be released under an Attribution 3.0 Unported Creative Commons license.

Depending on how long the trial lasts, transcriptions will cost between $60,000-120,000, so please help support this project by going here to donate.

Date	Transcript
June 3, 2013	06-03-13 AM session.pdf
June 3, 2013	06-03-13-PM-session.pdf
June 4, 2013	06-04-13-AM-session.pdf
June 4, 2013	06-04-13-PM-session.pdf
June 5, 2013	06-05-13-AM-session.pdf
June 5, 2013	06-05-13-PM-session.pdf

Quote:

Stunning NSA Leaks: Is Daniel Ellsberg Back?

By MATTHEW MOSK | ABC News – 4 hrs ago

ABC News - Stunning NSA Leaks: Is Daniel Ellsberg Back? (ABC News)

The headline-grabbing national security leaks in The Washington Post and The Guardian last week both were authored by board members of a little-known, six-month-old advocacy group that was formed to support groundbreaking reporting.

The organization, called the Freedom of the Press Foundation, has no offices and a shoestring budget, and according to the group's attorney, had no formal role in the drumbeat of published reports that have revealed the U.S. government's secret efforts to view the phone records and internet activity of millions of Americans and foreigners.

The foundation's board is led by one of the most famous whistleblowers in American history, Daniel Ellsberg, whose leak of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 exposed the secret history of the run-up to war in Vietnam on the front page of The New York Times.

Two of the group's board members now appear to be involved in a story that's following a similar model.

Glenn Greenwald, the author of reports in The Guardian about the National Security Agency'scollection of phone records and a follow-up scoop involving the leak of a secret document about U.S. cyber warfare efforts, is one of a handful of journalists who sit on the board alongside activists, Hollywood actors and other patrons. Laura Poitras, another board member, is a documentary filmmaker who shared a byline on The Washington Post report about a secret program to scour the Internet for clues about terrorist activities. She is reportedly in the midst of completing a film about the WikiLeaks scandal.

In the case of Greenwald's phone monitoring report, The Guardian published a Top Secret order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was extraordinary in part because it was the first known leak in the super secret court's 35-year history, according to insiders.

Greenwald, appearing on ABC News "This Week" Sunday, compared the leaked information and thegovernment's response to the Pentagon Papers and said to expect more reports on governmentprograms based on leaked information.

"I am not going to confirm that there is only one [source] -- there could be one or more than one," Greenwald said on "This Week." "[S]ince the government hides virtually everything that they do at the threat of criminal prosecution, the only way for us to learn about them is through these courageous whistle-blowers -- who deserve our praise and gratitude, and not imprisonment and prosecution."

Neither he nor Poitras responded to emailed questions asking if the reports were released in a coordinated fashion or if the foundation played any role in supporting their reporting.

Cindy Cohn, an attorney for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said she did not know if Greenwald and Poitras coordinated the timing of the publication of their articles, or if the leaked information came to each of them from the same source. But Cohn did not believe that the articles were part of an orchestrated campaign hatched by the foundation.

"I don't want to reveal the inner workings of the foundation, but I am not aware that they were involved," Cohn said.

More likely, Cohn said, the ties between the authors and the foundation may be due to the fact that they are part of a small circle of people who are passionate and active on national security, government secrecy, and the need to protect whistleblowers who expose government wrongdoing.

"They all know each other," Cohn said.

Cohn is one of several employees of another organization that fits in that category – the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) – which also has ties to the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Several employees of EFF founded the press freedom organization in December, and the two groups share a board member. In addition to representing the foundation, Cohn is the attorney of record in a lawsuit seeking to stop warrantless wiretapping and hold the government and government officials behind the program accountable.

Cohn said the foundation has not yet received nonprofit status from the IRS, and so is operating under the sponsorship of the left-leaning nonprofit media group Mother Jones.

Among those who are also working for EFF is Trevor Timm, the press foundation's executive director.

"I basically have two jobs now," Timm told ABC News.

"We've been involved in the lawsuit against the NSA for their warrantless surveillance program for years now and we just launched the Freedom of the Press Foundation about six months ago given that there was this climate of a crackdown on whistleblowers, and journalism seemed to be under threat," Timm said. "It just happens to be that two of our board members happen to be central to this story now and we couldn't be prouder of them."

Have a tip related to this or another investigation? CLICK HERE to send it in.

CLICK HERE to return to The Investigative Unit homepage.

Also Read