Monthly Archives: March 2014

Is Syria becoming Iran’s Vietnam?

Syria

Deborah Amos reports: [I]n Iran, discussions about Syria are surprisingly frank, complex and demonstrate growing divisions over how to handle a costly war that has no end in sight.

At Tehran University, students of international relations study the Syria-Iran alliance, one of the most enduring in the region. Yet there are now more questions about Iran’s recent role in the Syrian bloodshed.

“What is happening in Syria, it’s related to us; it is an obvious catastrophe,” says one student in a discussion on campus. He didn’t give his name because discussing Syria is sensitive.

Iran is reportedly spending billions to prop up Syrian President Bashar Assad. Saudi Arabia backs the rebels. The student believes Syrian civilians are paying the price. Innocent children are dying, he says, his voice rising. “But nothing is being declared as a solution,” he says, “because of the balance of power.”

Another student, Masa, 23, says she follows the news of the Syrian uprising on Iranian television. When it comes to insurgents, she says, “For me, I think they are just people, but Iran TV wants to show them as terrorists. Our media is not neutral.”

Iranian student activists launched a website and a Facebook page in Farsi and English last month to promote news from Syria for Iranians.

“The Iranian regime is supporting a dictator hated by most Syrians,” reads the founding statement on the site, “and is wasting economic resources desperately needed by Iranians at home.”

The regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran is now at the core of the Syrian conflict, says New York University academic Mohamad Bazzi, who is writing about the war. The Iranians have put money and manpower behind the Assad regime, he says.

“The Iranians are helping the regime survive day to day,” he adds.

But Iran’s investment has come with unexpected costs. The war has destabilized Iraq and Lebanon, where Tehran has allies and interests; and Tehran’s image has been tarnished in the Arab world. [Continue reading…]

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Syria: Does the ‘Southern Front’ really exist?

Aron Lund writes: In mid-February, opposition websites circulated a statement signed by 49 different rebel factions in southern Syria. Banding together as the “Southern Front,” they declared themselves to be “the moderate voice and the strong arm of the Syrian people.”

It was no ordinary rebel statement. Most armed factions have adopted Islamist and often Sunni-sectarian rhetoric, but the Southern Front’s communiqué was different: it made little reference to religion and was couched in nationalist and democratic language, reminiscent of the revolutionary slogans of early 2011:

We are the farmers, the teachers, and the workers that you see every day. Many of us were among the soldiers who defected from a corrupt regime that had turned its weapons around to fight its own countrymen. We represent many classes but our goal is one: to topple the Assad regime and give Syria a chance at a better future. There is no room for sectarianism and extremism in our society, and they will find no room in Syria’s future. The Syrian people deserve the freedom to express their opinions and to work toward a better future. We are striving to create in Syria a government that represents the people and works for their interest. We are the Southern Front.

According to the statement, these 49 signatory factions (some sources put the number at 56 factions) add up to some 30,000 fighters and are spread across the southern border governorates of Quneitra, Daraa, and Sweida, as well as in and around Damascus. Certainly, the numbers are likely to be exaggerated, but the list of signatories did actually include some influential southern groups.

For example, Bashar al-Zoubi’s Yarmouk Brigade has often been mentioned as one of the most powerful groups in the Daraa region. A former travel agent turned rebel commander, Zoubi claimed in August 2013 to control some 4,000–5,000 fighters. He was appointed by the opposition Free Syrian Army’s Supreme Military Council as head of the local front and has long been viewed as a key conduit for foreign support.

Another example is the Syria Revolutionaries’ Front. This group was created only in December 2013, after an injection of Saudi money. Most commanders are in northwest Syria, like its best-known leader, Jamal Maarouf. But the Syria Revolutionaries’ Front does have member factions in the south, after absorbing units from a now-defunct alliance known as Ahfad al-Rasoul. Among these groups, we find Captain Qais Qatana’s Omari Brigades, which was one of the original Free Syrian Army units from 2011.

So, have powerful southern Syrian rebel groups joined in a non-Islamist, democratic alliance? For many Syrians, that must sound too good to be true—and it probably was just that. [Continue reading…]

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When it comes to sharing a planet, we are the neighbours from hell

Robin McKie reviews The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert: Brown tree snakes come from Papua New Guinea and Australia, where they survive on diets of lizards, bats and rats. They were considered unremarkable until the 1940s when some found their way to Guam, probably on a military ship.

The impact of Boiga irregularis was staggering. The little Pacific island’s only indigenous snake was a sightless creature the size of a worm. As a result, Guam’s fauna were unprepared for the predatory brown tree snake that began to eat its way through the island’s native birds, including the Guam flycatcher and the Mariana fruit-dove, as well as its three native mammals, all bats. Only one of the latter survives: the Marianas flying fox, which is now considered highly endangered.

It is a sad, familiar story. In colonising our planet’s nooks and crannies, most new species that we have encountered have either been wiped out directly – like the mastodons, mammoths and Neanderthals laid low by our stone age ancestors – or indirectly by the pests we introduced in our wake, like the brown tree snake or the Central American wolfsnail, introduced to Hawaii in the 1950s, which has since killed off around 90% of the islands’ 700 native snail species.

Then there are the coral reefs, homes to vast numbers of marine animals, that have been dynamited by fishermen and bleached by our acidifying oceans. Or consider the swaths of the Amazon basin ploughed up for farming, thus destroying the homes of countless rainforest denizens. And for good measure, there are the fungal diseases, spread by humans, that now threaten every bat species in America and every amphibian species on the planet. When it comes to sharing a planet, we are the neighbours from hell.

“One-third of all reef-building corals, a third of all fresh-water molluscs, a third of sharks and rays, a quarter of all mammals, a fifth of all reptiles, and a sixth of all birds are headed toward oblivion,” states Elizabeth Kolbert in this compelling account of human-inspired devastation. “And the losses are occurring all over: in the South Pacific, in the North Atlantic, in the Arctic and in the Sahel, in lakes and on islands, on mountaintops and in valleys.” [Continue reading…]

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How are IPCC reports written?

David Karoly writes: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established in 1988 to undertake comprehensive assessments of the scientific basis of climate change and the impacts and future risks to different sectors and regions. It also assesses the options for adapting to these impacts, and opportunities to mitigate climate change.

The IPCC is the accepted global authority on climate change. A recent explainer on The Conversation has described the structure of the IPCC and how it works.

It has three “Working Groups”: one on Climate Change Science; one on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability; and one that deals with Mitigation of Climate Change. They work together to prepare comprehensive Assessment Reports roughly once every six years. The IPCC Third Assessment Report was released in 2001 and the Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.

Now we are in the middle of the release of the various parts of the Fifth Assessment Report, one from each Working Group and finally the Synthesis Report, to be released later this year.

The IPCC assessments are written by hundreds of leading scientists who volunteer their time. They undertake comprehensive assessments of the scientific literature across a very wide range of topics relevant to climate change. The reports are required to present policy-relevant information, but it must be presented in a policy-neutral manner, so there are no recommendations in any IPCC assessment.

Each part of the report goes through three stages of drafting and review by experts and governments. All review comments and the responses from the authors on how they addressed the comments are made public. This review process is more open and comprehensive than for any other scientific publication or assessment, including the peer-reviewed science publications on which the reports are based. [Continue reading…]

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Kerry, Russian counterpart meet on Ukraine crisis

The Associated Press reports: Russia on Sunday set out demands for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis in Ukraine, saying the former Soviet republic should be unified in a federation allowing wide autonomy to its various regions as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met in Paris in another bid to calm tensions.

After a brief call on French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, Kerry sat down with Lavrov at the residence of the Russian ambassador to France to go over Moscow’s response to a U.S. plan to de-escalate the situation as Russian troops continue to mass along the Ukrainian border.

The men said nothing of substance as they shook hands, although after Kerry ended the photo op by thanking assembled journalists, Lavrov cryptically added in English: “Good luck, and good night.”

Appearing on Russian television ahead of his talks with Kerry, Lavrov rejected suspicions that the deployment of tens of thousands of Russian troops near Ukraine is a sign Moscow plans to invade the country following its annexation of the strategic Crimean peninsula.

“We have absolutely no intention of, or interest in, crossing Ukraine’s borders,” Lavrov said.

Russia says the troops near the border are there for military exercises and that they have no plans to invade, but U.S. and European officials say the numbers and locations of the troops suggest something more than exercises.

And, despite the Russian assurances, U.S., European and Ukrainian officials are deeply concerned about the buildup, which they fear could be a prelude to an invasion or intimidation to compel Kiev to accept Moscow’s demands. [Continue reading…]

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GCHQ and NSA targeted private German companies

Der Spiegel reports: Documents show that Britain’s GCHQ intelligence service infiltrated German Internet firms and America’s NSA obtained a court order to spy on Germany and collected information about the chancellor in a special database. Is it time for the country to open a formal espionage investigation?

The headquarters of Stellar, a company based in the town of Hürth near Cologne, are visible from a distance. Seventy-five white antennas dominate the landscape. The biggest are 16 meters (52 feet) tall and kept in place by steel anchors. It is an impressive sight and serves as a popular backdrop for scenes in TV shows, including the German action series “Cobra 11.”

Stellar operates a satellite ground station in Hürth, a so-called “teleport.” Its services are used by companies and institutions; Stellar’s customers include Internet providers, telecommunications companies and even a few governments. “The world is our market,” is the high-tech company’s slogan.

Using their ground stations and leased capacities from satellites, firms like Stellar — or competitors like Cetel in the nearby village of Ruppichteroth or IABG, which is headquartered in Ottobrunn near Munich — can provide Internet and telephone services in even the most remote areas. They provide communications links to places like oil drilling platforms, diamond mines, refugee camps and foreign outposts of multinational corporations and international organizations.

Super high-speed Internet connections are required at the ground stations in Germany in order to ensure the highest levels of service possible. Most are connected to major European Internet backbones that offer particularly high bandwidth.

The service they offer isn’t just attractive to customers who want to improve their connectivity. It is also of interest to Britain’s GCHQ intelligence service, which has targeted the German companies. Top secret documents from the archive of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden viewed by SPIEGEL show that the British spies surveilled employees of several German companies, and have also infiltrated their networks. [Continue reading…]

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China seizes $14.5 billion assets from family, associates of ex-security chief

Reuters reports: Chinese authorities have seized assets worth at least 90 billion yuan ($14.5 billion) from family members and associates of retired domestic security tsar Zhou Yongkang, who is at the centre of China’s biggest corruption scandal in more than six decades, two sources said.

More than 300 of Zhou’s relatives, political allies, proteges and staff have also been taken into custody or questioned in the past four months, the sources, who have been briefed on the investigation, told Reuters.

The sheer size of the asset seizures and the scale of the investigations into the people around Zhou – both unreported until now – make the corruption probe unprecedented in modern China and would appear to show that President Xi Jinping is tackling graft at the highest levels.

But it may also be driven partly by political payback after Zhou angered leaders such as Xi by opposing the ouster of former high-flying politician Bo Xilai, who was jailed for life in September for corruption and abuse of power. [Continue reading…]

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IPCC report: climate change felt ‘on all continents and across the oceans’

n13-iconThe Guardian reports: Climate change has already left its mark “on all continents and across the oceans”, damaging food crops, spreading disease, and melting glaciers, according to the leaked text of a blockbuster UN climate science report due out on Monday.

Government officials and scientists are gathered in Yokohama this week to wrangle over every line of a summary of the report before the final wording is released on Monday – the first update in seven years.

Nearly 500 people must sign off on the exact wording of the summary, including the 66 expert authors, 271 officials from 115 countries, and 57 observers.

But governments have already signed off on the critical finding that climate change is already having an effect, and that even a small amount of warming in the future could lead to “abrupt and irreversible changes”, according to documents seen by the Guardian. [Continue reading…]

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No NSA reform can fix the American Islamophobic surveillance complex

o13-iconArun Kundnani writes: Better oversight of the sprawling American national security apparatus may finally be coming: President Obama and the House Intelligence Committee unveiled plans this week to reduce bulk collection of telephone records. The debate opened up by Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing is about to get even more legalistic than all the parsing of hops and stores and metadata.

These reforms may be reassuring, if sketchy. But for those living in so-called “suspect communities” – Muslim Americans, left-wing campaigners, “radical” journalists – the days of living on the receiving end of excessive spying won’t end there.

How come when we talk about spying we don’t talk about the lives of ordinary people being spied upon? While we have been rightly outraged at the government’s warehousing of troves of data, we have been less interested in the consequences of mass surveillance for those most affected by it – such as Muslim Americans. [Continue reading…]

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Beware the surveillance reform Trojan horse: what’s not in the new NSA laws?

o13-iconTrevor Timm writes: This week was undoubtedly a turning point in the NSA debate. Edward Snowden said it himself on Monday, as some of the NSA’s most ardent defenders, including the House Intelligence Committee and the White House, suddenly released similar proposals endorsing the end of the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records as we know it.

Stopping the government from holding onto of all Americans’ phone metadata would undoubtedly be a good thing for American privacy, but if you read between the legislative lines, the government might not be curtailing mass surveillance so much as permanently entrenching it in American law.

Rep Justin Amash, one of the NSA’s leading critics in the House, said of the Intelligence Committee bill: “It doesn’t end bulk collection but actually puts more Americans in danger of having their constitutionally protected rights violated.” While the Obama plan is undoubtedly more promising, with court requests and much more, Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union has several important questions about the proposal that need to be answered before anyone will really be able to judge. And the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez detailed why neither of these proposals are as good as the USA Freedom Act, which may now be getting boxed out. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. cyberwarfare force to grow significantly, defense secretary says

n13-iconThe Washington Post reports: The Pentagon is significantly growing the ranks of its cyberwarfare unit in an effort to deter and defend against foreign attacks on crucial U.S. networks, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Friday.

In his first major speech on cyber policy, Hagel sought to project strength but also to tame perceptions of the United States as an aggressor in computer warfare, stressing that the government “does not seek to militarize cyberspace.”

His remarks, delivered at the retirement ceremony of Gen. Keith Alexander, the outgoing director of the National Security Agency and Cyber Command, come in advance of Hagel’s trip to China next week, his first as defense secretary. The issues of cyberwarfare and cyber-espionage have been persistent sources of tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Hagel said that the fighting force at U.S. Cyber Command will number more than 6,000 people by 2016, making it one of the largest such ­forces in the world. The force will help expand the president’s options for responding to a crisis with “full-spectrum cyber capabilities,” Hagel said, a reference to cyber operations that can include destroying, damaging or sabotaging an adversary’s computer systems and that can complement other military operations.

But, Hagel said, the military’s first purpose is “to prevent and de-escalate conflict.” The Pentagon will maintain “an approach of restraint to any cyber operations outside of U.S. government networks.”

Although some U.S. adversaries, notably China and Russia, which also have formidable cyber capabilities, may view his remarks with skepticism, Hagel said the Pentagon is making an effort to be “open and transparent” about its cyber­forces and doctrine. The hope, senior officials said, is that transparency will lead to greater stability in cyberspace. [Continue reading…]

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How Google and Apple avoid ruinous competition

f13-iconMark Ames writes: [O]ne the most interesting misconceptions I’ve heard about the ‘Techtopus’ conspiracy [between tech giants in Silicon Valley] is that, while these secret deals to fix recruiting were bad (and illegal), they were also needed to protect innovation by keeping teams together while avoiding spiraling costs.

That was said to me, almost verbatim, over dinner by an industry insider, who quickly understood he’d said something wrong — “But of course, it’s illegal, so it’s wrong,” he corrected himself.

The view that whatever Jobs and Google did to deny workers wages and lock up talent was necessary for innovation is likely much more widely held than publicly uttered. And yet, all the evidence in the pre-trial demonstrates the very opposite: That the non-solicitations stifled innovation.

A perfect example of this can be found in emails (Update: embedded below) and deposition testimony which have emerged, and been reviewed by PandoDaily, in the run up to the trial. The episode occurs in the spring of 2006, just a year after Google and Apple first forged their core secret non-poaching agreements. [Continue reading…]

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Cahokia: North America’s first melting pot?

Christian Science Monitor: The first experiment in “melting pot” politics in North America appears to have emerged nearly 1,000 years ago in the bottom lands of the Mississippi River near today’s St. Louis, according to archaeologists piecing together the story of the rise and fall of the native American urban complex known as Cahokia.

During its heyday, Cahokia’s population reached an estimated 20,000 people – a level the continent north of the Rio Grande wouldn’t see again until the eve of the American Revolution and the growth of New York and Philadelphia.

Cahokia’s ceremonial center, seven miles northeast of St. Louis’s Gateway Arch, boasted 120 earthen mounds, including a broad, tiered mound some 10 stories high. In East St. Louis, one of two major satellites hosts another 50 earthen mounds, as well as residences. St. Louis hosted another 26 mounds and associated dwellings.

These are three of the four largest native-American mound centers known, “all within spitting distance of one another,” says Thomas Emerson, Illinois State Archaeologist and a member of a team testing the melting-pot idea. “That’s some kind of large, integrated complex to some degree.”

Where did all those people come from? Archaeologists have been debating that question for years, Dr. Emerson says. Unfortunately, the locals left no written record of the complex’s history. Artifacts such as pottery, tools, or body ornaments give an ambiguous answer.

Artifacts from Cahokia have been found in other native-American centers from Arkansas and northern Louisiana to Oklahoma, Iowa, and Wisconsin, just as artifacts from these areas appear in digs at Cahokia.

“Archaeologists are always struggling with this: Are artifacts moving, or are people moving?” Emerson says.

Emerson and two colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign tried to tackle the question using two radioactive forms of the element strontium found in human teeth. They discovered that throughout the 300 years that native Americans occupied Cahokia, the complex appeared to receive a steady stream of immigrants who stayed. [Continue reading…]

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Putin calls Obama to discuss Ukraine

n13-iconThe New York Times reports: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia reached out to President Obama on Friday to discuss ideas about how to peacefully resolve the international standoff over Ukraine, a surprise move by Moscow to pull back from the brink of an escalated confrontation that has put Europe and much of the world on edge.

After weeks of provocative moves punctuated by a menacing buildup of troops on Ukraine’s border, Mr. Putin’s unexpected telephone call to Mr. Obama offered a hint of a possible settlement. The two leaders agreed to have their top diplomats meet to discuss concrete proposals for defusing the crisis that has generated the most serious clash between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War.

But it remained uncertain whether Mr. Putin was seriously interested in a resolution that would go far enough to satisfy the United States, Ukraine and Europe, or instead was seeking a diplomatic advantage at a time when he has been isolated internationally. While the White House account of the call emphasized the possible diplomatic movement, the Kremlin’s version stressed Mr. Putin’s complaints about “extremists” in Ukraine and introduced into the mix of issues on the table the fate of Transnistria, another pro-Russian breakaway province outside his borders. [Continue reading…]

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Turkish security breach exposes Erdogan in power struggle

a13-iconReuters reports: Turkey’s spymaster discusses possible military intervention in Syria with army and civilian chiefs, and days later their words are broadcast on the internet for all the world to hear.

The breach appeared to highlight a disturbing truth for Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan: that Turkey can no longer keep even top-level security planning secret, despite his purge of thousands of officials to root out a covert network of enemies he accuses of trying to sabotage the state and topple him.

“This crisis is one of the biggest in Turkish history,” a senior government official, who declined to be named, told Reuters. “A serious concern has certainly emerged regarding what follows now…If a meeting such as this has been listened to, others may have. We do not know who is in possession of them.”

Erdogan was out of public action on Friday, resting his voice strained by campaigning for local elections this weekend – the first in a string that will decide the future of a man who has reformed Turkey fundamentally but is now accused by critics of authoritarian and divisive tendencies. [Continue reading…]

Reuters also reports: If Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is fighting the toughest battle of his political career as corruption allegations swirl and elections approach, Turkey’s conservative Anatolian heartlands appear to have his back.

Here, far from dividing his pious core supporters, the graft scandal and bitter power struggle with a U.S.-based cleric have served only to stir more devotion to a man they see as Turkey’s greatest modern leader, delivering hospitals and schools and breaking the grip of secular elites over the past decade.

The run-up to pivotal local elections on Sunday has been overshadowed by a corruption affair that has seen almost daily recordings published anonymously on social media claiming to show illicit dealings by Erdogan’s inner circle.

One senior official called the crisis “one of the biggest in Turkish history” and the government has responded by blocking Twitter and YouTube, drawing public anger and international condemnation.

But in Konya, a conservative city that gave Erdogan’s AK Party 70 percent of the vote in a 2011 general election, many see the scandal as the prime minister does: part of a “dirty plot” to unseat him by ruthless and immoral political enemies.

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