Monthly Archives: November 2014

EU Parliament, in nonbinding measure, calls for breaking up Google

The New York Times reports: The European Parliament on Thursday approved a nonbinding resolution for Google to be broken up into separate companies.

There is no immediate threat to Google from the vote, which amounts to little more than political posturing because the Parliament has no formal power over antitrust policy in the 28-member trade bloc.

But the vote signifies the increasing trans-Atlantic tensions over the dominant role that Google, an American technology titan, plays in Europe. The vote followed a separate move on Wednesday to rein in the company by a European regulatory body that aims to protect the electronic privacy of European citizens.

Thursday’s vote could also raise pressure on Margrethe Vestager, the bloc’s recently installed competition commissioner, to speed up a decision on whether to bring formal antitrust charges against Google in a long-running investigation. That inquiry, begun in 2010, involves Google’s dominant position in Europe’s Internet search business, and asks whether the company’s search results favor other Google-related services and whether Google impedes its competitors’ search-advertising platforms. [Continue reading…]

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Refugees from the world’s worst conflicts struggle to reach Britain

The Washington Post reports: Ibrahim’s odyssey has taken him over the hot sands of the Sahara and across the vast Mediterranean in a death-defying, thousands-of-miles-long quest.

Now the 21-year-old from the Sudanese region of Darfur is so close to his destination that he can see it shimmering on the horizon — his dream, his salvation, his England.

It beckons to him, and it taunts him.

If Ibrahim were a day-tripping tourist, a jaunt from this French port city across the English Channel would take 35 minutes in an underwater train. But because he’s an asylum-seeking refugee, getting to Britain means braving coils of barbed wire, clouds of tear gas and an illicit journey wedged between a truck’s axle and the racing pavement.

“It’s very dangerous,” Ibrahim said softly as he prepared for his latest attempt to cross. “Maybe I’m going to die.”

Whatever the risk, it has not deterred Ibrahim or the more than 2,500 other refugees who have made Calais their temporary home. Drawn from the world’s worst crisis zones, they are contributing to a new crisis in the heart of Europe, on the watery border between two of the planet’s most affluent nations. [Continue reading…]

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U.K. blamed Facebook to cover up the incompetence of its own intelligence services

Seumas Milne writes: It takes some mastery of spin to turn the litany of intelligence failures over last year’s butchery of the off-duty soldier Lee Rigby into a campaign against Facebook. But that’s exactly how David Cameron’s government and a pliant media have disposed of the report by Westminster’s committee of intelligence trusties.

You might have expected Whitehall’s security machine to be in the frame for its spectacular incompetence in spying on the two killers: from filling out surveillance applications wrongly and losing one suspect’s house number, to closing down the surveillance of another – just as the pair were preparing the Woolwich attack.

Centre stage might have been the admission that British intelligence could have been “complicit” in Michael Adebolajo’s torture in Kenya, and tried to cover that up. There is evidence that MI5’s attempts to recruit the Muslim convert on his return to Britain played a part in triggering the killing – though the trusties thought better than to inquire too closely into the matter.

Instead it was the US internet giant, Britain’s prime minister insisted, that was really to blame. Facebook had “blood on their hands”, the Sun declared, as the Daily Mail denounced the Mark Zuckerberg corporation’s “twisted libertarian ideology”.

It’s nonsense, of course, but it gets the authorities off the hook. [Continue reading…]

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Surviving the horrors of a war-torn Syria

Lina Sergie Attar writes: Tucked outside the walls of the old city of Aleppo, there is a hidden 800-year-old Ayyubid stone building called Madraset al-Firdaws, or the School of Paradise. The small architectural gem was the vision of Dayfa Khatoun, the Kurdish-Syrian niece of Saladin, who ruled Aleppo for seven years in the 13th century. She envisioned a modern complex dedicated to the study of Sufi Islam. Every element in the complex followed the ancient and strict “golden proportion,” from the overall floor plan to the smallest details on the ornamental columns with muqarnas capitals. The building with its 11 domes was designed — from concept to execution — to stand apart from the dozens of other religious monuments in Aleppo. It was built to be perfect.

I visited Madrasat al-Firdows in June 2011 during my last visit to Aleppo. At that time, the people of the city were still safe, far from the turmoil erupting across Syria. Protests raged outside Aleppo’s borders, but absolute stillness occupied the courtyard as it had for centuries.

It is no longer so. The cobblestoned streets of old Aleppo have been torn into piles of rubble. War has lodged itself in the heart of the city for over two years now, splitting it literally in half between rebel and regime forces. Now ISIL fighters encircle what remains of Free Syrian Army territory as the city’s fate hangs in the balance. Many of Aleppo’s ancient artifacts have been destroyed—burned, bombed, looted. The city that was once home to over four million people, is now ravaged by over two years of indiscriminate shelling and constant barrel bombs launched by the Assad regime that killed, injured, and displaced thousands of innocents along with their precious cultural heritage. Rebels on the front line retaliate with haphazard shells of their own that strike both army forces and civilian bystanders.

Miraculously, Madraset al-Firdows still stands intact although devastating loss surrounds it.

Loss permeates every Syrian family. Three and a half bloody years of conflict has taken over 200,000 lives and displaced millions. Loss is a word that defines Syria today. [Continue reading…]

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Probe into 2005 assassination of Lebanon’s Hariri to focus on Assad

The National reports: Prosecutors at a UN-backed tribunal have started presenting evidence that may point to Syrian complicity in the assassination of Lebanon’s top Sunni statesman.

The trial chamber of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) decided this month to hear the testimony of more than a dozen political witnesses.

They include politicians, journalists and advisers close to Rafik Hariri who will speak about how relations broke down between the former premier and Syrian president Bashar Al Assad in the months before the assassination.

“Let us not be coy about it: the prosecutor now is putting his case on the basis of Syria being behind the assassination of Rafik Hariri,” defence lawyer Iain Edwards told the court before the judges agreed to include the evidence. “Is Bashar Assad going to be formally named as a co-conspirator in the killing of Rafik Hariri? Rustom Ghazaleh? Are they going to be added to the indictment?” he asked, referring to Syria’s intelligence chief in Lebanon at the time of Hariri’s killing. “We are entitled to know.”

The tribunal is trying in absentia five members of Hizbollah accused of complicity in the 2005 bombing that killed Lebanon’s charismatic billionaire former prime minister.

The fresh focus on Syria comes after the investigation has for years stayed away from the involvement of Damascus in the attack that killed Hariri and 21 others. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. sending A-10 ‘Warthogs’ to attack ISIS

Stars and Stripes reports: An attack aircraft that the Pentagon is trying to get rid of has been deployed to the Middle East to take on the Islamic State.

A squadron-sized element of A-10 Thunderbolts arrived in the region during the week of Nov. 17-21, according to the Air Force. The aircraft were previously being used in Afghanistan.

The move marks the first time the ugly but battle-proven jet, also known as the “Warthog,” has been thrown into the fight against Islamic State, which controls much of Iraq and Syria. The A-10 is a slow, low-flying plane that can unleash massive amounts of firepower against enemy ground forces while conducting close-air-support missions.

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ISIS ‘outbidding’ al Qaeda in South Asia

Karl Kaltenthaler writes: The landscape of violent extremist Islamism is changing in Asia. Al-Qaida, once a growing and potent threat, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is now a shadow of its former self.

In the late 1990s, al-Qaida co-ran Afghanistan with the Taliban. It also had a strong presence in Pakistan and close ties with many of that country’s myriad jihadi groups. Now al-Qaida’s core group is down to a few dozen members. Security operations against the group in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere have cut its numbers and operational capacity substantially. The organization is fighting for survival in Pakistan, its last real refuge in Asia.

The same cannot be said of the Islamic State group. The militant group, which has had spectacular success in Syria and Iraq, is now making inroads in many parts of Asia, but particularly in Pakistan and Afghanistan. [Continue reading…]

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Polar bears facing ‘worst-case trajectory’ because of climate change

The Toronto Star reports: Even the High Arctic won’t remain a haven for polar bears if the Earth continues to warm at the current pace, says an alarming new study.

Published in PLOS One, an online science journal on Wednesday, the study warns that all regions of Canada’s Arctic islands could potentially be ice-free for two to five months every year by the end of the century, triggering starvation and reproductive failure for polar bears.

Conditions outside the islands could be worse for the bears.

“It doesn’t look too good,” said Andrew Derocher of the University of Alberta in Edmonton and one of the authors of the study.

Using a regionally focussed climate model, the researchers projected that sea ice in the Canadian Arctic islands will decline remarkably, leaving long periods each year when there isn’t any ice. That would force pregnant females on to land earlier than usual and could interfere with successful births, the study said. The rest of the sea ice may not persist long enough to allow bears enough time to hunt and store energy. [Continue reading…]

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Subcontracting repression in the West Bank and Gaza

Sabrien Amrov and Alaa Tartir write: Jerusalem is aflame with what the Israeli writer Uri Avnery has called an “intifada of individuals,” as outbreaks of deadly violence have followed what began with Palestinian protests over fears of encroachment by Jewish extremists on the site in the Old City known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. Five Israelis were killed last week in an attack on a synagogue. Palestinian citizens of Israel, meanwhile, are in turmoil over the Nov. 8 police shooting in northern Israel of a 22-year-old protester, which was caught on videotape.

Yet the occupied West Bank shows no signs of an uprising, and the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, has declared that there will be no third intifada. Under Mr. Abbas’s increasingly authoritarian rule, this guarantee is based largely on the authority’s close security collaboration with Israel.

The Palestinian security forces were created under the Oslo Accords, ostensibly to support the Palestinian state-building project. Initially, those forces were understood by the population to exist for its defense. During the second intifada in 2002, Palestinian security forces confronted the Israeli Army using their light weapons. Israel responded by largely destroying the Palestinian Authority’s security infrastructure. [Continue reading…]

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Swing sets and death in Syria: A visit to an Aleppo playground

Christoph Reuter reports: Every day, children from the Salaheddin district of Aleppo meet at the local playground. They play war as the real one rages just a few meters away. But the graves are slowly encroaching.

Majid, what are you doing? “I’m watering mommy.” Majid drags a large, blue bucket — so full that he can hardly carry it — across the withered grass. But why are you watering your mother?

The 13-year-old looks puzzled, as though it were the kind of idiotic question that only outsiders might ask. “Because she’s right here,” he says and pours the water onto a mound surrounded by a few stones meant to mark the site as a grave. An old pine tree offers a bit of shade, but so far, nothing seems to have taken root at the place where Majid’s mother is buried. “I have to water it. Then something will grow for sure,” he says with a steady voice as he heads back to refill his bucket.

Majid’s mother died in the summer, but nobody in the family had enough money for a proper gravestone or even a border for the site. She died “because of her heart,” Majid says “in her mid-30s.” He can’t be more precise than that; nobody in Aleppo really asks anymore why someone is dead. Majid drags a third bucket-full to the grave, as though seeking to atone for something he played no part in, as if he could score a tiny victory against all the dying. [Continue reading…]

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In Mosul, ISIS struggles to govern

The Washington Post reports: After storming the Iraqi city of Mosul in June, the brutal Islamic State quickly solidified its control. Gunmen enforced its laws, and supportive imams preached at the mosques.

But the jihadists were missing something — doctors. So last month, the Islamic State issued an ultimatum to physicians who had fled: Return to work, or we’ll seize your property and you can never come back.

The Islamic State’s efforts to run Mosul’s health-care system provide a glimpse into its efforts to build a caliphate, or Islamic state, in Iraq and Syria. Despite their victories on the battlefield, the jihadists have struggled as everyday administrators in Mosul, with the city’s hospitals grappling with daily power outages and shortages of medicine. The Sunni fighters have also imposed measures that have alienated staff and compromised the lives of patients, doctors say.

The Islamic State’s rigidity and inexperience may ultimately cost it support in areas where some Sunni residents initially welcomed the group as an alternative to the Shiite-led central government. Already, the Islamic State has been forced to give ground on some of its stringent policies, such as barring male and female doctors from working together. [Continue reading…]

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Putin suspected of investing in Europe’s far-right populist parties

The Independent reports: President Vladimir Putin is widely suspected of being behind an extraordinary Russian cash and charm offensive that is reported to be trying to woo Europe’s far-right populist parties in order to strengthen the Kremlin’s political influence within the European Union.

In recent weeks, the Kremlin’s targets have included France’s xenophobic Front National (FN) party, and politicians from three German parties including the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), the Eurosceptic Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Social Democrats (SPD).

Marine Le Pen’s Front National was recently granted a €9m (£7m) loan by a small financial institution called the First Czech-Russian Bank. The cash will be used to fund the party’s campaign for next year’s regional elections.

French banks were unwilling to fund the FN. “We cast our the net wide: in Spain, in Italy, in Asia and in Russia,” Ms Le Pen told Le Monde. “We have signed with the first catch and we are very happy.” In the past, Ms Le Pen has made no secret of her support for Mr Putin.

The FN’s bank loan was followed this week by the release of details from a leaked Moscow strategy paper that suggests Mr Putin has been advised to try to influence European politics by such wooing. [Continue reading…]

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The refusal to talk to hostage-takers has sucked the U.S. and U.K. into war

Jonathan Littell writes: A few months ago, the New York Times published a lengthy piece of investigative journalism detailing different countries’ policies on paying ransoms for journalists, aid workers or ordinary citizens taken hostage throughout the world, in particular by Islamist militant groups. The article pressed the case for the US and British policy of never – ever – negotiating for hostages, while presenting the covert European policy of paying ransoms as perverse, self-defeating and possibly even criminal. Its headline made this conclusion clear: “By paying ransoms, Europe bankrolls Qaeda terror.”

The article was, of course, researched and written before James Foley, and after him Steven Sotloff, David Haines, Alan Henning and Peter Kassig – four other US and British citizens their governments refused to negotiate for – had their heads sawn off in front of a video camera by a masked goon claiming allegiance to the so-called Islamic State (Isis), thereby provoking the US to lead a major military intervention against the group.

France and several other countries who did negotiate on behalf of their hostages, and obtained their safe return home, have now also joined the coalition against Isis. These countries obviously believe, unlike the US and the UK, that they have a moral duty to protect their citizens, and that this principle on occasion can lead to unpleasant compromises (it might be added that Israel, a country no one would even remotely consider weak or soft on terrorism, adheres to a similar principle). However, what might be called their hostage “non-policy” (in most cases, paying ransoms and then denying it) has made it impossible for them to debate the matter constructively. While I would never advocate the systematic paying of ransoms, I feel it might be time to bring some nuance to the discussion: things are not simply black and white. [Continue reading…]

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U.S.-led raid rescues eight held in Yemen

The New York Times reports: In a predawn raid on Tuesday, United States Special Operations commandos and Yemeni troops rescued eight hostages being held in a cave in a remote part of eastern Yemen by Al Qaeda’s affiliate there, officials from both countries said.

The freed captives were six Yemeni citizens, a Saudi and an Ethiopian, who were unharmed, Yemeni officials said in a statement. Earlier reports that an American hostage was freed were incorrect, according to Yemeni and American officials.

About two dozen United States commandos, joined by a small number of American-trained Yemeni counterterrorism troops flew secretly by helicopter to a location in Hadhramaut Province near the Saudi border, according to American and Yemeni officials. The commandos then hiked some distance in the dark to a mountainside cave, where they surprised the militants holding the captives.

An ensuing shootout left seven of the Qaeda militants dead, the officials said. The hostages were then evacuated in helicopters.

The rare and risky dash into Qaeda-infested territory was organized fairly quickly, within two weeks of a request from President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi of Yemen to help rescue the captives, one American official said.

The operation appeared to be at least partly an attempt to bolster the stature of Mr. Hadi, a committed but wobbling United States ally whose authority was badly undermined when a rebel group suddenly seized control of Yemen’s capital in September.

In an apparent effort to play down the leading American role in the clandestine operation, the Pentagon referred questions about what had happened to the Yemeni government. [Continue reading…]

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UK inquiry criticizes U.S. tech companies for failing to engage in counter-terrorism surveilance

Wired reports: GCHQ has direct access to “major internet cables” and has systems to monitor communications as they “traverse the internet” an official government report has revealed. The spy agency, which has been heavily criticised in the wake of the Snowden leaks, also admits that it has more data than it can handle. Despite these capabilities the government is being urged to massively expand its surveillance powers.

The details come from the Intelligence Security Committee’s inquiry (PDF) into the murder of the fusilier Lee Rigby by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale in Woolwich, London in 2013. While crucial details have been redacted for security reasons, the report still reveals the scale of the surveillance powers at GCHQ’s disposal.

Detailing GCHQ’s capabilities it notes that the spy agency has access to around “*** percent of global internet traffic and approximately *** percent of internet traffic entering or leaving the UK”. Despite the redactions the report does reveal that GCHQ is currently overwhelmed by the amount of data it has to process:

“The resources required to process the vast quantity of data involved mean that, at any one time, GCHQ can only process approximately *** of what they can access.”

The inquiry, which was set up to investigate what could have prevented Rigby’s murder, clears both M15 and M16 of any fault. It reveals that both Adebolajo and Adebowale were known to British security agencies, but that no action was taken. As both men were seen as low priority targets they were not subject to any specialist surveillance by GCHQ or any other agency.

The committee was far more damning in its assessment of an as-yet-unnamed US internet company. In December 2012 an exchange between Adebowale and an individual overseas revealed his intention to murder a soldier. The exchange was not seen by UK security services until after the attack. The report intimates that all overseas internet companies risk becoming a “safe haven for terrorists”.

“This company does not appear to regard itself as under any obligation to ensure that its systems identify such exchanges, or to take action or notify the authorities when its communications services appear to be used by terrorists.”

The Guardian identifies this company as Facebook.

The Wired report continues: “When the intelligence services are gathering data about everyone of us but failing to act on intelligence about individuals, they need to get back to basics, and look at the way they conduct targeted investigations,” said Jim Killock, executive director of online privacy advocates the Open Rights Group.

“The committee is particularly misleading when it implies that US companies do not cooperate, and it is quite extraordinary to demand that companies pro-actively monitor email content for suspicious material. Internet companies cannot and must not become an arm of the surveillance state.”

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What is it like to be a bee?

honey-bee

In the minds of many humans, empathy is the signature of humanity and yet if this empathy extends further and includes non-humans we may be suspected of indulging in anthropomorphism — a sentimental projection of our own feelings into places where similar feelings supposedly cannot exist.

But the concept of anthropomorphism is itself a strange idea since it seems to invalidate what should be one of the most basic assumptions we can reasonably make about living creatures: that without the capacity to suffer, nothing would survive.

Just as the deadening of sensation makes people more susceptible to injury, an inability to feel pain would impede any creature’s need to avoid harm.

The seemingly suicidal draw of the moth to a flame is the exception rather than the rule. Moreover the insect is driven by a mistake, not a death wish. It is drawn towards the light, not the heat, oblivious that the two are one.

If humans indulge in projections about the feelings of others — human and non-human — perhaps we more commonly engage in negative projections: choosing to assume that feelings are absent where it would cause us discomfort to be attuned to their presence.

Our inclination is to avoid feeling too much and thus we construct neat enclosures for our concerns.

These enclosures shut out the feelings of strangers and then by extension seal away boundless life from which we have become even more estranged.

Heather Swan writes: It was a warm day in early spring when I had my first long conversation with the entomologist and science studies scholar Sainath Suryanarayanan. We met over a couple of hives I had recently inherited. One was thriving. Piles of dead bees filled the other. Parts of the comb were covered with mould and oozing something that looked like molasses.

Having recently attended a class for hobby beekeepers with Marla Spivak, an entomologist at the University of Minnesota, I was aware of the many different diseases to which bees are susceptible. American foulbrood, which was a mean one, concerned me most. Beekeepers recommended burning all of your equipment if you discovered it in your hives. Some of these bees were alive, but obviously in low spirits, and I didn’t want to destroy them unnecessarily. I called Sainath because I thought he could help me with the diagnosis.

Beekeeping, these days, is riddled with risks. New viruses, habitat loss, pesticides and mites all contribute to creating a deadly labyrinth through which nearly every bee must travel. Additionally, in 2004, mysterious bee disappearances began to plague thousands of beekeepers. Seemingly healthy bees started abandoning their homes. This strange disappearing act became known as colony collapse disorder (CCD).

Since then, the world has seen the decline of many other pollinating species, too. Because honeybees and other pollinators are responsible for pollinating at least one-third of all the food we eat, this is a serious problem globally. Diagnosing bee problems is not simple, but some answers are emerging. A ubiquitous class of pesticides called neonicotinoids have been implicated in pollinator decline, which has fuelled conversations among beekeepers, scientists, policy-makers and growers. A beekeeper facing a failing hive now has to consider not only the health of the hive itself, but also the health of the landscape around the hive. Dead bees lead beekeepers down a path of many questions. And some beekeepers have lost so many hives, they feel like giving up.

When we met at my troubled hives, Sainath brought his own hive tool and veil. He had already been down a path of many questions about bee deaths, one that started in his youth with a fascination for observing insects. When he was 14, he began his ‘Amateur Entomologist’s Record’, where he kept taxonomic notes on such things as wing textures, body shapes, colour patterns and behaviours. But the young scientist’s approach occasionally slipped to include his exuberance, describing one moment as ‘a stupefying experience!’ All this led him to study biology and chemistry in college, then to work on the behavioural ecology of paper wasps during his doctoral studies, and eventually to Minnesota to help Spivak investigate the role of pesticides in CCD.

Sainath had spent several years doing lab and field experiments with wasps and bees, but ultimately wanted to shift from traditional practices in entomology to research that included human/insect relationships. It was Sainath who made me wonder about the role of emotion in science – both in the scientists themselves and in the subjects of their experiments. I had always thought of emotion as something excised from science, but this was impossible for some scientists. What was the role of empathy in experimentation? How do we, with our human limitations, understand something as radically different from us as the honeybee? Did bees have feelings, too? If so, what did that mean for the scientist? For the science? [Continue reading…]

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