Monthly Archives: May 2012

How Obama is helping al Qaeda

In the early years of George Bush’s presidency when it was easy to question the intellectual abilities of a commander in chief who so frequently mangled his sentences, his neoconservative advisers often attributed to Bush a key “insight” that he had immediately after the 9/11 attacks: that America was at war. The neocons’ rather transparent aim was to portray Bush as an astute wartime leader rather than a dumb neocon puppet.

As Barack Obama ran to replace Bush, he had his own “insight”: that the ill-defined war on terrorism could be won if narrowed to the more specific goal of defeating al Qaeda. Moreover, defeating al Qaeda, as far as Obama was concerned, had less to do with winning an ideological struggle for hearts and minds. Al Qaeda could be defeated simply by systematically assassinating its leaders and upper ranks. And although Obama had the political sophistication not to employ a clownish gimmick as had Bush with his set of most-wanted playing cards for identifying Iraq’s Baathist regime, Obama seems to have shared Bush’s view that his enemies were finite in number and could be defeated through a process of elimination.

Obama does not seem to be troubled by the question that Donald Rumsfeld famously and sensibly posed: “Are we creating more terrorists than we’re killing?”

When Obama started implementing his strategy of eliminating al Qaeda, relying principally on drone missile attacks, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula barely existed. But as Obama’s drone war has expanded from Pakistan to Yemen, AQAP has not only grown but in size as a militant fighting force but it now also controls significant areas of territory. And it isn’t just winning in the battlefield but also winning popular support.

If Obama sticks to his strategy of trying to kill his way to victory, he may eventually feel forced to adopt a tactic that would be impossible to justify politically or ethically: large-scale bombing of al Qaeda-controlled cities.

The Washington Post reports:

Across the vast, rugged terrain of southern Yemen, an escalating campaign of U.S. drone strikes is stirring increasing sympathy for al-Qaeda-linked militants and driving tribesmen to join a network linked to terrorist plots against the United States.

After recent U.S. missile strikes, mostly from unmanned aircraft, the Yemeni government and the United States have reported that the attacks killed only suspected al-Qaeda members. But civilians have also died in the attacks, said tribal leaders, victims’ relatives and human rights activists.

“These attacks are making people say, ‘We believe now that al-Qaeda is on the right side,’ ” said businessman Salim al-Barakani, adding that his two brothers — one a teacher, the other a cellphone repairman — were killed in a U.S. strike in March.

Since January, as many as 21 missile attacks have targeted suspected al-Qaeda operatives in southern Yemen, reflecting a sharp shift in a secret war carried out by the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command that had focused on Pakistan.

But as in the tribal areas of Pakistan, where U.S. drone strikes have significantly weakened al-Qaeda’s capabilities, an unintended consequence of the attacks has been a marked radicalization of the local population.

The evidence of radicalization emerged in more than 20 interviews with tribal leaders, victims’ relatives, human rights activists and officials from four provinces in southern Yemen where U.S. strikes have targeted suspected militants. They described a strong shift in sentiment toward militants affiliated with the transnational network’s most active wing, al-Qaeda in the ­Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.

“The drone strikes have not helped either the United States or Yemen,” said Sultan al-Barakani, who was a top adviser to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. “Yemen is paying a heavy price, losing its sons. But the Americans are not paying the same price.”

In 2009, when President Obama was first known to have authorized a missile strike on Yemen, U.S. officials said there were no more than 300 core AQAP members. That number has grown in recent years to 700 or more, Yemeni officials and tribal leaders say. In addition, hundreds of tribesmen have joined AQAP in the fight against the U.S.-backed Yemeni government.

As AQAP’s numbers and capabilities have grown, so has its reach and determination. That was reflected in a suicide bombing last week in the capital, Sanaa, that killed more than 100 people, mostly Yemeni soldiers.

On their Web sites, on their Facebook pages and in their videos, militants who had been focused on their fight against the Yemeni government now portray the war in the south as a jihad against the United States, which could attract more recruits and financing from across the Muslim world. Yemeni tribal Web sites are filled with al-Qaeda propaganda, including some that brag about killing Americans.

“Every time the American attacks increase, they increase the rage of the Yemeni people, especially in al-Qaeda-controlled areas,” said Mohammed al-Ahmadi, legal coordinator for Karama, a local human rights group. “The drones are killing al-Qaeda leaders, but they are also turning them into heroes.”

In a PBS Frontline report which first aired last night, the intrepid reporter Ghaith Abdul-Ahad ventured into al Qaeda territory.

Watch Al Qaeda in Yemen on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Is AQAP destined to self destruct in a similar way that al Qaeda in Iraq ended up defeating itself, as David Ignatius suggests?

Yemen’s own secular militants who have been leading a separatist movement do not see AQAP’s support diminishing. Indeed, Jemajem, a militant leader with nom de guerre of “the Guevara of south Yemen,” predicts that it won’t be long before al Qaeda gains control of Aden — a strategically placed port city with one million residents.

Earlier this month, Abdul-Ahad described how Jemajem recently counseled fellow fighters.

“Look at our brothers the mujahideen in Ja’ar,” he said to the group gathered in Aden. “They carried weapons and liberated their lands and they have created order. They created something out of nothing. Do you know how? Because the youth of al-Qaida fight for a cause while we in the Hirak haven’t put our beliefs in our hearts. We have to sacrifice and die.”

At this, some of the assembled young revolutionaries rolled their eyes: most are secular activists who chew qat and smoke, and have little to do with religion.

“Do you want a sharia state?” asked one. “We are fighting for a civil state here. The jihadis won’t bring us that.”

“I don’t want an Islamic state but the jihadis are coming,” said Jemajem. He drew a circle on a cushion. “Look, the jihadis are surrounding Aden, they have taken the east [Zanjibar and Ja’ar] and are now attacking checkpoints in the north. Some of their men are already inside the city.”

The battle for Aden was coming soon, Jemajem said, and the separatists would be making a mistake to resist them.

“I told our leaders that when the jihadis take Aden, I won’t send my men to die fighting them,” he said.

“If young men lose hope in our cause they will be looking for an alternative. And our hopeless young men are joining al-Qaida.”

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Julian Assange loses appeal against extradition

The Guardian reports: Julian Assange has lost his appeal against extradition to Sweden at the supreme court.

By a majority of five to two, the justices decided that a public prosecutor was “judicial authority” and that therefore his arrest warrant had been lawfully issued.

But lawyers for the WikiLeaks founder submitted an urgent request to the supreme court asking for permission to challenge one of the points made in the judgment.

Assange, who is facing charges of sexual assault and rape, was not in court. There was no legal requirement for him to be present. According to his solicitor, Gareth Peirce, he was stuck in traffic.

The court granted Assange’s lawyers 14 days to present their arguments that crucial issues related to Article 31 of the Vienna convention, on which the majority of the justices based their decision, were not raised during the hearing.

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Tony Blair and the Murdochs: a family affair

Michael Wolff writes: I can connect a few more Blair-Murdoch dots, beyond what Blair offered this week to the Leveson inquiry.

By the time Tony Blair flew out to Hyman Island in 1995 to address a News Corp conference, Murdoch was sick of the Tories. He believed that he had lost his preferential position with John Major’s government – so assiduously courted with Margaret Thatcher – that he was condescended to, and wasn’t taken seriously.

Blair was right in his testimony: Murdoch isn’t out to cut deals with his political allies. He’s not lobbying. Yes, he’ll expect to be able to call on you if need be (for a deal as big as BSkyB, for instance), but mostly, he’s looking for a much more pervasive sense of comfort and confidence. What he wants is: 1) access – a near-constant availability to him, his executives, and his editors; 2) receptivity – you’ve got to take the Murdoch worldview into account; treat it seriously; cross it cautiously; and understand the power behind it.

The Blair gambit – perhaps, the key gambit of his career – was to try to offer this to Murdoch. [Continue reading…]

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MEK: Terrorists? Us?

Owen Bennett-Jones writes: The story of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, also known as the Mujahedin e Khalq (MEK), is all about the way image management can enable a diehard enemy to become a cherished ally. The MEK is currently campaigning to be officially delisted in the US as a terrorist organisation. Once off the list it will be free to make use of its support on Capitol Hill in order to become America’s most favoured, and no doubt best funded, Iranian opposition group.

The last outfit to achieve something similar was the Iraqi National Congress, the lobby group led by Ahmed Chalabi that talked of democracy and paved the way for the US invasion of Iraq by presenting Washington with highly questionable ‘evidence’ of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s links with al-Qaida. Then, as George Bush took the US to war, all that remained for the INC and its leaders was to sit back and prepare for government. Many in Washington believe that, for better or worse, the US will go to war with Iran and that the MEK will have a role to play. But first they will have to persuade Hillary Clinton to take the group off the US’s official terrorist list. Some of Clinton’s officials are urging her to keep the MEK on it but some of the big beasts in Washington are angrily demanding that she delist. After an exhaustive inter-agency process the MEK file is now in her in-tray. Recent State Department statements indicate that she is likely to delist the group.

Formed in the 1960s as an anti-imperialist, Islamist organisation with socialist leanings, dedicated to the overthrow of the shah, the MEK originally stood not only for Islamic revolution but also for such causes as women’s rights – an appealing combination on Iran’s university campuses. It went on to build a genuine popular base and played a significant role in overthrowing the shah in 1979. It was popular enough for Ayatollah Khomeini to feel he had to destroy it; throughout the 1980s he instigated show trials and public executions of its members. The MEK retaliated with attacks on senior clerical leaders inside Iran.

Fearing for their lives, MEK members fled first to Paris and later to Iraq, where Saddam Hussein, desperate for allies in the war with Iran, provided them with millions of dollars of funding as well as tanks, artillery pieces and other weapons. He also made land available to them. Camp Ashraf became their home, a citadel in the desert, 80 kilometres north of Baghdad and an hour’s drive from the Iranian border. Since the 1970s, the MEK’s rhetoric has changed from Islamist to secular, from socialist to capitalist, from pro-revolution to anti-revolution. And since Saddam’s fall it has portrayed itself as pro-American, peaceful and dedicated to democracy and human rights. Continual reinvention can be dangerous, however, and the new, pro-Iranian Iraqi government is under pressure from Tehran to close down Camp Ashraf, which has grown over three decades to the size of a small town. And it’s not just Iran. Many Iraqis too bear grudges against the MEK, not only for having worked alongside Saddam Hussein but also for having taken part in his violent suppression of the Kurds and Shias. [Continue reading…]

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The face of collateral damage

Jefferson Morley writes: Around midnight on May 21, 2010, a girl named Fatima was killed when a succession of U.S.-made Hellfire missiles, each of them five-feet long and traveling at close to 1,000 miles per hour, smashed a compound of houses in a mountain village of Mohammed Khel in North Waziristan along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Wounded in the explosions, which killed a half dozen men, Fatima and two other children were taken to a nearby hospital, where they died a few hours later.

Behram Noor, a Pakistani journalist, went to the hospital and took a picture of Fatima shortly before her death. Then, he went back to the scene of the explosions looking for evidence that might show who was responsible for the attack. In the rubble, he found a mechanism from a U.S.-made Hellfire missile and gave it to Reprieve, a British organization opposed to capital punishment, which shared photographs of the material with Salon. Reprieve executive director Clive Stafford Smith alluded to the missile fragments in an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times last fall. They have also been displayed in England.

“Forensically, it is important to show how the crime of murder happened (which is what it is here),” said Stafford Smith in an email. “One almost always uses the murder weapon in a case. But perhaps more important, I think this physical proof — this missile killed this child — is important to have people take it seriously.”

In the religious rhetoric used by al-Qaida’s online allies, Fatima was a “martyr.” In a statement quoted by Long War Journal, the al-Ansara forum said the senior al-Qaida commander Mustafa Abu Yazid had been killed in a “convoy of martyrs on the road with his wife and three daughters and his granddaughter; men, women and children; neighbors and loved ones.” But Fatima was not Yazid’s daughter, according to Noor, who reported from the scene. She was the daughter of another man who lost two wives and three children in the barrage.

In the euphemistic jargon of Washington, Fatima was “collateral damage” in the successful effort to assassinate Yazid, an Egyptian jihadist also known as Saeed al-Masri. In disregard for the official secrecy that envelops the drone war, U.S. intelligence officials leaked the classified details of the attack, telling the New York Times that they considered Yazid to be al-Qaida’s “No. 3 leader.” Relying on similar sources, the Washington Post said that al-Masri was the group’s “chief organizational manager.” Unlike other news organizations reporting on the attack, neither the Post nor the Times mentioned that women and children had been killed in the attack. [Continue reading…]

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Why Obama finds it easy to kill people

First the headline. If I propose to explain why President Obama finds it easy to kill people, don’t I first need to substantiate the assertion that he does indeed find it easy to kill people?

The New York Times provides the evidence and a direct quote: William M Daley, Obama’s chief of staff in 2011, says that Obama described his decision to kill the American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki as “an easy one.”

Given the number of times Obama has authorized people to be killed — some whose names were known yet many unidentified, including women and children — it’s reasonable to infer that Awlaki’s was not the only “easy” killing.

The Times‘ detailed report on the development of Obama’s counterterrorism policy highlights his direct control of the administration’s hit list where he leads weekly meetings to consider who he and his team want to kill next. The president and his advisers understand that they cannot forever keep adding new names to the list. “What remains unanswered is how much killing will be enough.”

Lest there be any doubt that killing is central to Obama’s policy, the report mentions the misgivings of a few.

Obama’s ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron P. Munter, has complained to colleagues that the C.I.A.’s strikes drive American policy there, saying “he didn’t realize his main job was to kill people,” a colleague said.

Dennis C. Blair, former director of national intelligence, points to the underlying cynicism in Obama’s approach and says the strike campaign is dangerously seductive.

“It is the politically advantageous thing to do — low cost, no U.S. casualties, gives the appearance of toughness,” he said. “It plays well domestically, and it is unpopular only in other countries. Any damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long term.”

In other words, this is a policy that serves Obama’s self interest.

At some point — and we’ll very likely never know when or exactly what he was thinking — Barack Obama must have asked himself whether he was willing to kill people. It’s a question that anyone running to become president of the United States — especially in this era — must pause to consider. But whenever Obama asked himself this question, there is little evidence that he found it difficult to answer. In his mind, it would seem, killing was part of the job.

We are now told Obama “approves lethal action without hand-wringing,” and that when “he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda”.

[T]he control he exercises also appears to reflect Mr. Obama’s striking self-confidence: he believes, according to several people who have worked closely with him, that his own judgment should be brought to bear on strikes.

Asked what surprised him most about Mr. Obama, Mr. Donilon, the national security adviser, answered immediately: “He’s a president who is quite comfortable with the use of force on behalf of the United States.”

Every president comes into office with his own conception of presidential power. In his dealings with Congress and with powerful interest groups, repeatedly Obama’s own sense of impotence has been transparent. Rarely, it seems, is there any kind of political pressure to which he is unwilling to yield.

In one telling passage of the Times report we learn that this president has a kind of naive make-it-so view of his own power.

Having decided to shut down Guantánamo, Obama failed to develop a political strategy to win Congressional support. After giving a speech defending his policy:

…the president turned to his national security adviser at the time, Gen. James L. Jones, and admitted that he had never devised a plan to persuade Congress to shut down the prison.

“We’re never going to make that mistake again,” Mr. Obama told the retired Marine general.

General Jones said the president and his aides had assumed that closing the prison was “a no-brainer — the United States will look good around the world.” The trouble was, he added, “nobody asked, ‘O.K., let’s assume it’s a good idea, how are you going to do this?’”

It was not only Mr. Obama’s distaste for legislative backslapping and arm-twisting, but also part of a deeper pattern, said an administration official who has watched him closely: the president seemed to have “a sense that if he sketches a vision, it will happen — without his really having thought through the mechanism by which it will happen.”

If the intrinsic power of office has for Obama so often failed to translate into real political power, there has been one exception: that when orders a killing, death follows.

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Europe and the Greeks: Save us from the saviours

Slavoj Žižek writes: Imagine a scene from a dystopian movie that depicts our society in the near future. Uniformed guards patrol half-empty downtown streets at night, on the prowl for immigrants, criminals and vagrants. Those they find are brutalised. What seems like a fanciful Hollywood image is a reality in today’s Greece. At night, black-shirted vigilantes from the Holocaust-denying ne0-fascist Golden Dawn movement – which won 7 per cent of the vote in the last round of elections, and had the support, it’s said, of 50 per cent of the Athenian police – have been patrolling the street and beating up all the immigrants they can find: Afghans, Pakistanis, Algerians. So this is how Europe is defended in the spring of 2012.

The trouble with defending European civilisation against the immigrant threat is that the ferocity of the defence is more of a threat to ‘civilisation’ than any number of Muslims. With friendly defenders like this, Europe needs no enemies. A hundred years ago, G.K. Chesterton articulated the deadlock in which critics of religion find themselves: ‘Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church … The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them.’ Many liberal warriors are so eager to fight anti-democratic fundamentalism that they end up dispensing with freedom and democracy if only they may fight terror. If the ‘terrorists’ are ready to wreck this world for love of another, our warriors against terror are ready to wreck democracy out of hatred for the Muslim other. Some of them love human dignity so much that they are ready to legalise torture to defend it. It’s an inversion of the process by which fanatical defenders of religion start out by attacking contemporary secular culture and end up sacrificing their own religious credentials in their eagerness to eradicate the aspects of secularism they hate.

But Greece’s anti-immigrant defenders aren’t the principal danger: they are just a by-product of the true threat, the politics of austerity that have caused Greece’s predicament. The next round of Greek elections will be held on 17 June. The European establishment warns us that these elections are crucial: not only the fate of Greece, but maybe the fate of the whole of Europe is in the balance. One outcome – the right one, they argue – would allow the painful but necessary process of recovery through austerity to continue. The alternative – if the ‘extreme leftist’ Syriza party wins – would be a vote for chaos, the end of the (European) world as we know it.

The prophets of doom are right, but not in the way they intend. [Continue reading…]

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Most Houla massacre victims executed says U.N.; Western states expel Syrian diplomats

Al Arabiya reports: Fewer than 20 of the 108 people confirmed as having been killed in the “appalling massacre” in the Syrian town of al-Houla died from artillery and tank fire, the United Nations human rights office said on Tuesday, as each of France and Australia announced expelling the Syrian envoys over the massacre.

Survivors have told U.N. investigators that most of the other victims died in two bouts of summary executions carried out by pro-government Shabbiha militia in the nearby village of Taldaou, U.N. rights spokesman Rupert Colville said, according to Reuters.

“I believe at this point, and I would stress we are at very preliminary stages, that under 20 of the 108 can be attributed to artillery and tank fire,” he told a news briefing in Geneva, adding that 49 children and 34 women were among the victims.

Colville told reporters that most of the other victims were summarily executed in two separate incidents. He said the conclusions of the U.N. monitors are corroborated by other sources, The Associated Press reported.

Bloomberg reports: Western governments today announced the expulsion of top Syrian diplomats as United Nations envoy Kofi Annan met President Bashar al-Assad to express horror at the massacre of more than 100 people in Houla.

French President Francois Hollande said the Syrian ambassador was to be expelled, hours after Australia announced a similar move, citing the May 25 killings in Houla. Britain is sending home the most senior Syrian diplomat in London, the Press Association reported, while Germany and Italy are planning the same step, Sueddeutsche Zeitung said. Spain is withdrawing the credentials of the Syrian ambassador, DPA reported, while Canada said all remaining diplomats are being told to leave.

The Guardian reports: An 11-year old boy has described how he smeared himself in the blood of his slain brother and played dead as loyalist gunmen burst into his home and killed six members of his family during the start of a massacre in Houla, central Syria.

The young survivor’s chilling account emerged as Russia continued to blame both Syrian troops and opposition militias for the weekend rampage in the town that left at least 116 people dead and prompted fresh outrage against the regime’s crackdown.

It comes on the eve of Kofi Annan’s scheduled meeting on Tuesday in Damascus with Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, which is seen as the last hope of salvaging the UN special envoy’s failed peace plan.

Speaking to the Guardian, the young survivor said government troops arrived in his district at around 3am on Saturday, several hours after shells started falling on Houla.

“They came in armoured vehicles and there were some tanks,” said the boy. “They shot five bullets through the door of our house. They said they wanted Aref and Shawki, my father and my brother. They then asked about my uncle, Abu Haidar. They also knew his name.”

Shivering with fear, the boy stood towards the back of the entrance to his family home as gunmen then shot dead every family member in front of him.

“My mum yelled at them,” said the boy. “She asked: ‘What do you want from my husband and son?’ A bald man with a beard shot her with a machine gun from the neck down. Then they killed my sister, Rasha, with the same gun. She was five years old. Then they shot my brother Nader in the head and in the back. I saw his soul leave his body in front of me.

“They shot at me, but the bullet passed me and I wasn’t hit. I was shaking so much I thought they would notice me. I put blood on my face to make them think I’m dead.”

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In Egypt, a revolution at the crossroads

Omar Ashour writes: Everything about Egypt’s revolution has been unexpected, and the first-round results in the country’s first-ever competitive presidential election are no different. The rise of former president Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister, General Ahmad Shafiq, who will enter the presidential runoff alongside the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi, has raised eyebrows across the political spectrum. So did the meteoric rise of the Nasserist candidate Hamdin Sabbahi to third place, and the fourth-place finish of Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, who was backed by liberals and hard-line Salafi Islamists alike.

Egypt’s voters overwhelmingly chose the revolution over the old regime and shattered the myth that the push for change is an urban, middle-class, Cairo-based phenomenon: The eight revolutionary candidates received more than 16.4 million votes. But their failure to unite on a single platform directly benefited Gen. Shafiq, who unexpectedly won 5.9 million votes (assuming no election-rigging).

Gen. Shafiq’s success shocked many revolutionaries. “He is a murderer. His place is in jail, not on top of Egypt after the revolution,” said one activist. Indeed, Gen. Shafiq has been linked to multiple cases of corruption and repression, including the “battle of the camels” on Feb. 2, 2011, when Mr. Mubarak’s henchmen attacked Tahrir Square, killing and wounding protesters.

The rise of Gen. Shafiq is explainable in some areas. In Upper Egypt, “more than 60% of Copts voted for him,” a source close to the Coptic Orthodox Church said, and in Coptic-majority areas the pro-Shafiq vote exceeded 95% because he is widely perceived as a bulwark against Islamism.

Moreover, many state employees (around 5.1 million of them are eligible to vote) and their families supported Gen. Shafiq, owing either to direct instructions from their bosses or to the perceived threat of creeping Muslim Brotherhood influence on government bureaucracies. And Gen. Shafiq received financing and support from Mr. Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP), as well as from business and security interests that benefit from the status quo.

But this was not enough to explain Mr. Morsi’s defeat in the Muslim Brotherhood’s traditional strongholds. In Sharqiya, a bastion of hard-core Muslim Brotherhood support with 3.5 million voters, Gen. Shafiq defeated Mr. Morsi by more than 90,000 votes. In Gharbiya governorate, another Muslim Brotherhood stronghold, he beat Mr. Morsi by more than 200,000 votes. [Continue reading…]

Meanwhile, Reuters reports: A group of Egyptian protesters set fire to the campaign headquarters of presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq in Cairo on Monday, the state news agency reported, after the ex-prime minister made it into the second round of the vote.

The privately-owned Al-Hayat channel broadcast images of a the fire at Shafiq’s campaign office in the Cairo district of Dokki, saying it had been caused by a group of protesters. It said there were no injuries.

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How can a better understanding of sacred values help us resolve intergroup conflicts?

Scott Atran writes: Humans define the groups to which they belong in abstract terms. Often they strive for lasting intellectual and emotional bonding with anonymous others, and make their greatest exertions in killing and dying not to preserve their own lives or to defend their families and friends, but for the sake of an idea—the transcendent moral conception they form of themselves, of “who we are.” This is the “the privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only’” of which Hobbes wrote in Leviathan. In The Descent of Man, Darwin cast it as the virtue of “morality … the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy” with which winning groups are better endowed in history’s spiraling competition for survival and dominance. Across cultures, primary group identity is bounded by sacred values, often in the form of religious beliefs or transcendental ideologies, which lead some groups to triumph over others because of non-rational commitment from at least some of its members to actions that drive success independent, or all out of proportion, from expected rational outcomes.

For Darwin himself, moral virtue was most clearly associated not with intuitions, beliefs, and behaviors about fairness and reciprocity, emotionally supported by empathy and consolation—which constitute nearly the entire subject matter of recent work in the philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience of morality—but with a propensity to what we nowadays call “parochial altruism”: especially extreme self-sacrifice in war and other intense forms of human conflict, where likely prospects for individual and even group survival had very low initial probability. Heroism, martyrdom, and other forms of self-sacrifice for the group appear to go beyond the mutualistic principles of fairness and reciprocity.

Whether for cooperation or conflict, sacred values, like devotion to God or a collective cause, signal group identity and operate as moral imperatives that inspire non-rational exertions independent of likely outcomes. In interviews, experiments, and surveys with Palestinians, Israelis, Indonesians, Indians, Afghans, and Iranians, my research with psychologists Jeremy Ginges and Douglas Medin finds that offering people material incentives (large amounts of money, guarantees for a life free of political violence) to compromise sacred values can backfire, increasing stated willingness to use violence toward compromise. This research, supported by the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation, shows that backfire effects occur both for sacred values with clear religious investment (Jerusalem, Shariah law) and those with initially none (Iran’s right to nuclear capability, Palestinian refugees’ right of return). [Continue reading…]

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A tall tale about U.S. commandos parachuting into North Korea

Here’s how the story began yesterday.

Reporting for The Diplomat, David Axe wrote: U.S. Special Forces have been parachuting into North Korea to spy on Pyongyang’s extensive network of underground military facilities. That surprising disclosure, by a top U.S. commando officer, is a reminder of America’s continuing involvement in the “cold war” on the Korean peninsula – and of North Korea’s extensive preparations for the conflict turning hot.

In the decades since the end of the Korean War, Pyongyang has constructed thousands of tunnels, Army Brig. Gen. Neil Tolley, commander of U.S. Special Operations Forces in South Korea, said at a conference in Florida last week. Tolley said the tunnels include 20 partially subterranean airfields, thousands of underground artillery positions and at least four tunnels underneath the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas. “We don’t know how many we don’t know about,” Tolley said.

“The entire tunnel infrastructure is hidden from our satellites,” Tolley added. “So we send [Republic of Korea] soldiers and U.S. soldiers to the North to do special reconnaissance.” Tolley said the commandos parachute in with minimal supplies in order to watch the tunnels without being detected themselves.

U.S. forces on the ground north of the DMZ conducting clandestine operations — that’s what I’d call a major story, so why isn’t this headline news in all the major newspapers?

It’s unfortunate that one of the effects of the justifiable cynicism that a lot of people have about the mainstream media is that if it ignores a story then that sometimes boosts the credibility of the story. The problem is, this overlooks the more obvious explanation as to why many stories get ignored: they aren’t true.

In this instance, a number of outlets opted for the cheap headline: add the caveat “report” to a story that otherwise sounded hard to believe.

The Diplomat has now posted this clarification and pulled down the original story:

In response to the controversy that has attended yesterday’s story on North Korea, The Diplomat has sought corroboration. While the author strongly disputes the contention that any quote was fabricated, we acknowledge the possibility that Brig. Gen. Tolley was speaking hypothetically, about future war plans rather than current operations. The author insists he heard no such qualification, but if there has been a misunderstanding then we regret any confusion.

Voice of America reports:

The author of the report in The Diplomat, David Axe, rejected suggestions he fabricated the quotes attributed to the general. He said if the general was speaking hypothetically, “he did not say so” and that “he spoke in the present tense” and “at length.”

Sorry, but a report shouldn’t run just because the reporter is confident about the grammatical accuracy of his note-taking. Even if the general said in the present tense that U.S. special forces were being sent into North Korea, this statement demanded some follow-up questions and corroboration. Too often, journalists end up chasing quotes instead of gathering facts.

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Wall Street ditches Obama, backs Romney

CNN reports: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned — but what about a Wall Street titan?

Deep-pocketed financiers have abandoned President Obama and are flocking to Mitt Romney in droves, providing more donations to his campaign than any other industry except retired workers. (And that’s not really an industry.)

Individuals who work in the securities and investment industry have given the Romney campaign $8.5 million through the end of April, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Over the same time period, Obama has brought in only $3 million from securities and investment workers, and the industry is only the campaign’s fifth largest source of funds.

“They have basically ditched Obama,” said John Dunbar, the managing editor for politics at the Center for Public Integrity. “Romney is just a much friendlier candidate if you are a banker.”

The absence of Wall Street love is a departure from the norm for the Obama campaign. In 2008, then-Senator Obama raised almost $16 million from Wall Street. John McCain, the Republican nominee, received donations totaling only $9 million.

No doubt the Obama campaign will play this to their advantage, casting Romney as the banksters’ candidate — ignoring the fact that Obama has been a very banker-friendly president.

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Researchers find vulnerability that could allow spying in Chinese chips used by U.S. army

Update below.

The Next Web reports: A team of researchers from Cambridge University say they have found evidence that a Chinese-manufactured chip used by US armed forces contains a secret access point that could leave it vulnerable to third party tampering.

The researchers tested an unspecified US military chip — used in weapons, nuclear power plants to public transport – and found that a previously unknown ‘backdoor’ access point had been added, making systems and hardware open to attack, the team says.

Cambridge University researcher, Sergei Skorobogatov, explains:

We scanned the silicon chip in an affordable time and found a previously unknown backdoor inserted by the manufacturer. This backdoor has a key, which we were able to extract. If you use this key you can disable the chip or reprogram it at will, even if locked by the user with their own key.

This particular chip is prevalent in many systems from weapons, nuclear power plants to public transport. In other words, this backdoor access could be turned into an advanced Stuxnet weapon to attack potentially millions of systems. The scale and range of possible attacks has huge implications for National Security and public infrastructure.

While the initial research is a concern, a number of question marks remain over the findings before further conclusions can be drawn.

It is unclear if the access point is isolated to the chip that was tested or whether Skorobogatov and his colleagues have stumbled upon a larger trend. Likewise, it remains possible that the modified back door access could have been created by the US armed forces themselves.

Update: Robert David Graham says that while the Cambridge researchers “did find a backdoor in a popular FPGA chip, there is no evidence the Chinese put it there, or even that it was intentionally malicious.” He provides a detailed technical analysis explaining how he reaches this conclusion.

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Meet ‘Flame’, the massive spy malware infiltrating Iranian computers

Wired reports: A massive, highly sophisticated piece of malware has been newly found infecting systems in Iran and elsewhere and is believed to be part of a well-coordinated, ongoing, state-run cyberespionage operation.

The malware, discovered by Russia-based anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab, is an espionage toolkit that has been infecting targeted systems in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, the Israeli Occupied Territories and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa for at least two years.

Dubbed “Flame” by Kaspersky, the malicious code dwarfs Stuxnet in size – the groundbreaking infrastructure-sabotaging malware that is believed to have wreaked havoc on Iran’s nuclear program in 2009 and 2010. Although Flame has both a different purpose and composition than Stuxnet, and appears to have been written by different programmers, its complexity, the geographic scope of its infections and its behavior indicate strongly that a nation-state is behind Flame, rather than common cyber-criminals — marking it as yet another tool in the growing arsenal of cyberweaponry.

The researchers say that Flame may be part of a parallel project created by contractors who were hired by the same nation-state team that was behind Stuxnet and its sister malware, DuQu.

“Stuxnet and Duqu belonged to a single chain of attacks, which raised cyberwar-related concerns worldwide,” said Eugene Kaspersky, CEO and co-founder of Kaspersky Lab, in a statement. “The Flame malware looks to be another phase in this war, and it’s important to understand that such cyber weapons can easily be used against any country.”

Early analysis of Flame by the Lab indicates that it’s designed primarily to spy on the users of infected computers and steal data from them, including documents, recorded conversations and keystrokes. It also opens a backdoor to infected systems to allow the attackers to tweak the toolkit and add new functionality.

The malware, which is 20 megabytes when all of its modules are installed, contains multiple libraries, SQLite3 databases, various levels of encryption — some strong, some weak — and 20 plug-ins that can be swapped in and out to provide various functionality for the attackers. It even contains some code that is written in the LUA programming language — an uncommon choice for malware.

Kaspersky Lab is calling it “one of the most complex threats ever discovered.”

“It’s pretty fantastic and incredible in complexity,” said Alexander Gostev, chief security expert at Kaspersky Lab.

Flame appears to have been operating in the wild as early as March 2010, though it remained undetected by antivirus companies. [Continue reading…]

Symantec adds: Based on the number of compromised computers, the primary targets of this threat are located in the Palestinian West Bank, Hungary, Iran, and Lebanon. However, we have additional reports in Austria, Russia, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates. These additional reports may represent a targeted computer that was temporarily taken to another region–for example, a laptop. Interestingly, in addition to particular organizations being targeted, many of the compromised computers appear to be personal computers being used from home Internet connections.

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