Author Archives: News Sources

Predator drone strikes: A cure worse than the disease

Bruce Fein writes: Something is rotten in President Barack Obama’s classified, programmatic use of predator drones to target suspected international terrorists for death anywhere on the planet.

The targeting intelligence is suspect.

The program is secret, lawless, and unaccountable to Congress, the Supreme Court, and the American people.

The killings pivot on a principle that will haunt the United States in the future as predator drone capability spreads to China, Russia or otherwise.

And the program is compounding rather than diminishing the international terrorist threat against the United States by creating more revenge-motivated terrorists than are being killing; and, by serving as a calling card for international terrorist recruitment. That explains why high level military and intelligence officials in the Obama administration concede that 14 years after 9/11 the United States is more imperiled by international terrorism than ever before.

Depend upon it. If the predator drone program were suspended for six months on a trial basis, international terrorism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia aimed at the United States would contract. The foundation would be laid for terminating the entire program and making the United States safer. [Continue reading…]

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Putin needs neither war nor peace in Ukraine

Leonid Bershidsky writes: Russia’s toxicity for investors is suddenly so 2014. Western money is returning to Moscow’s equity and bond markets, and private Russian companies are again able to borrow, albeit at a premium to Western peers.

The main cause for this reversal of fortunes is the cease-fire in Ukraine, even though it isn’t really holding militarily or moving forward politically. That’s a paradox that may shed light on how events in eastern Ukraine will develop.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that “investors have taken Russia out of the penalty box.” According to the global fund tracker EPFR, the influx of cash into mutual and exchange-traded funds targeting Russian securities so far this year has almost wiped out last year’s outflow. Indeed, the rebound in the Russian stock and bond markets since December’s panic over a free-falling ruble has been spectacular: [Continue reading…]

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U.S. now sees Russia directing Ukraine’s rebels

The Associated Press: The United States now sees the Ukrainian rebels as a Russian force.

American officials briefed on intelligence from the region say Russia has significantly deepened its command and control of the militants in eastern Ukraine in recent months, leading the U.S. to quietly introduce a new term: “combined Russian-separatist forces.” The State Department used the expression three times in a single statement last week, lambasting Moscow and the insurgents for a series of cease-fire violations in Ukraine.

The shift in U.S. perceptions could have wide-ranging ramifications, even if the Obama administration has cited close linkages between the pro-Russian separatists and President Vladimir Putin’s government in Moscow since violence flared up in Ukraine a year ago.

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Cleaning up Buddhism in Thailand

The Washington Post reports: Think Buddhist monk, and bodyguards and bomb threats probably don’t spring to mind. But that’s exactly what Phra Buddha Issara is dealing with as he mounts a campaign to overhaul Thailand’s religious institutions.

The activist monk has earned plenty of enemies since he launched a campaign to clean up Buddhism in Thailand, urging the country’s 300,000 monks to be more transparent in their financial dealings and the religion’s governing body, the Supreme Sangha Council, to crack down on wrongdoing.

Thai Buddhism, much like Thai democracy, is in a state of upheaval.

“There is more open crisis in the Sangha than has been seen in living memory,” said Michael Montesano, a Thailand expert at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. “This is a crisis in yet another Thai institution.”

Monks have long been revered here, in a country where 95 percent of the population is Buddhist. They have their own fast-track lane at the airport and designated priority seats on the metro.

But in recent months, there have been tales of monastic misbehavior that would seem to belong in the most gossipy tabloids.

There have been monks with girlfriends (and boyfriends), drunk monks crashing cars, monks pocketing wads of cash meant for funerals or playing the stock market. And that’s not even mentioning the monks-on-meth or the selfie-snapping, Louis Vuitton bag-wielding, private jet-taking monk scandals of 2013. [Continue reading…]

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Syria’s revitalized rebels make big gains in Assad’s heartland

Hassan Hassan writes: The Syrian rebels are on a roll. Over the past four months, anti-government forces have made sweeping gains that may redraw the conflict map and shake President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The gains have come on both the war’s northern and southern fronts. On Dec. 15, the rebels took Wadi al-Dhaif, one of the country’s largest military encampments in the north. On Mar. 28, the regime lost the northern city of Idlib, only the second provincial capital to fall to the rebels. The gains continued last week, as rebel forces took the key town of Jisr al-Shugour, southeast of Idlib city, and then pushed further south to capture several villages in Hama province’s al-Ghab plain. On Monday, they seized the “Brick Factory,” one of the last remaining regime strongholds in Idlib province. The gains in the south have been equally impressive: Rebels overran the town of Busra al-Sham in the same week that they took Idlib, and managed to seize the Nassib crossing with Jordan in the following week.

The recent offensives in Idlib have been strikingly swift — thanks in large part to suicide bombers and American anti-tank TOW missiles. In most cases, regime forces have only held out for hours or a few days before retreating. The rebels have also fought with rare harmony under the banner of Jaish al-Fateh (“the Army of Conquest”), a coalition made up of mostly Islamist forces led by Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra.

For the first time since the conflict began, Assad’s heartlands in the western region seem exposed. Jisr al-Shugour lies roughly 45 miles to the northeast of the port city of Latakia, one of the keys to Assad’s strength; it is even closer to villages in Hama and Latakia that rebels often describe as “human reservoirs of shabiha,” referring to the high number of residents who join the pro-regime militias. This could be a game changer: As rebels edge closer to Assad’s heartlands, the regime will be forced to rely more heavily on local militias than on the army. Even though local militiamen tend to fight more fiercely than soldiers dispatched outside their areas, the toll of the conflict will likely increase anger against Assad as casualties rise.

These developments do not necessarily mean Assad is in serious trouble yet. His regime is still secure in Damascus; the urban centers of Homs, Hama, and Sweida; and the coastal areas. Even in the northwest, where the rebels are now better positioned than ever to drive out the government forces, the regime army can still put up a serious fight in Aleppo. The city of Hama will prove even tougher ground for the rebels, especially if find themselves fighting against both the regime and the Islamic State, which controls significant parts of the eastern countryside.

But even if the regime remains secure, these developments are shifting the conflict’s dynamics and heralding a new chapter in the country’s civil war. [Continue reading…]

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As Assad’s power dwindles, Iran creates a state within a state in Syria

The New York Times reports: Four years ago, Syria’s army had 250,000 soldiers; now, because of casualties and desertions, it has 125,000 regulars, alongside 125,000 pro-government militia members, including Iranian-trained Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghan Hazaras, according to the senior American official in Washington.

And Syrians are not always in charge, especially where Hezbollah, the best trained and equipped of the foreign militias, is involved.

“Every area where there is Hezbollah, the command is in their hands,” said the Syrian with security connections. “You do something, you have to ask their permission.”

That, he said, rankled senior security officials who recalled the rule of Mr. Assad’s father, Hafez, in the 1980s, when Hezbollah’s patron Iran was the junior partner in the alliance with Syria.

American officials are exploring how to exploit resulting tensions between Syrian and Hezbollah commanders, said the senior American official.

An official in the region sympathetic to Hezbollah said that enemies were trying to exploit natural tensions that “happen between allies, and between brothers and sisters in the same house,” but would not succeed.

“Even if Hezbollah does battle alone, it is with Syrian approval,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “Hezbollah is only a stone that helps the builder.”

But others see a loss of Syrian sovereignty to Iran, which needs Syria as a conduit to arm Hezbollah. Charles Lister, a Syria expert at the Brookings Doha Center in Doha, Qatar, said Iran with the help of Hezbollah and other militias is building “a state within a state in Syria — an insurance policy to protect itself against any future Assad demise.”

Ali, 23, a soldier on leave in Damascus from the southern front, said one of his officers, a major, had complained that any Hezbollah fighter was “more important than a Syrian general.”

Then there is simple jealousy. Hezbollah fighters are paid in dollars, while Syrian soldiers get depreciating Syrian pounds. Hezbollah fighters get new black cars and meat with rice, Ali said, while Syrian soldiers make do with dented Russian trucks and stale bread.

A student who recently fled Damascus after being constantly stopped at checkpoints to prove he is not a deserter said that Hezbollah now runs his neighborhood in the old city and once helped him solve a problem between his brother and security forces. (Syrian police, he said, are so little seen that people now smoke hashish openly.)

“If you have Hezbollah wasta,” or connections, he said, “your problems will be solved.” The student identified himself only as Hamed Al Adem, a name he uses as a performance artist, to protect family members still in Damascus.

Even so, Hezbollah is not in a position to bail out Mr. Assad the way it did in 2013, when it sent hundreds of fighters to crush the insurgent hub of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border.

Hezbollah now has more fighters and advisers in Syria than ever, about 5,000, American intelligence officials said. But, said the Syrian with security connections, they “only interfere in areas that are in their own interests.”

The official sympathetic to Hezbollah said it has “maybe thousands” of fighters along the Lebanese border, hundreds in the south, bordering Israel, and only dozens around divided Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.

It had none in Idlib city, which he said may have fallen because some Syrian officers failed to correctly assess threats.

The Syrian with security ties said the leadership had not made a priority of defending Idlib. Many government troops, he said, fled after insurgents knocked out their communications network and called “God is Great” from the mosques.

“Damascus and the Syrian coast, other than this nothing is important. Nothing,” he said, adding of Mr. Assad: “He doesn’t give a damn if Syria is destroyed.” [Continue reading…]

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Reports of Assad’s (pending) demise may be greatly exaggerated

Lionel Beehner writes: The tell-tale signs that regime change might be imminent are manifold: First, Iran would have to reckon that Assad may be expendable. That is the hunch of Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group, who believes that Iran might cut a deal so long as it retains a transit corridor thru Syria to its proxies in Lebanon. Were Russia and Iran to abandon Assad, the house of cards in Damascus would collapse. Second, a ramping up of U.S.-led military pressure might signal to regime supporters that the end is near. This does not require sending in the Fifth Fleet, but might entail boosting offensive military aid to the opposition – let’s scrap this notion of only supporting the vetted “moderate” opposition, which is a meaningless term during times of war – an air campaign against regime targets closer to Damascus, and potentially a de facto no-fly zone and humanitarian corridor in the north. Finally, the rebels would have to seize cities further south, such as Hama, Homs, or Latakia.

Yet none of the above appears likely, given distractions elsewhere (in Yemen, Ukraine, and so forth). As such, the war is at a stalemate. ISIS, despite losing Kobane to US-backed Kurdish forces, still controls large swaths of territory. US-led airpower has been unable to dislodge its gains. On the flipside, the Assad regime can safely portray the war as going its way. Its military has focused mostly on the strategic belt of land that stretches from Dara in the south to Aleppo in the north, ceding large chunks of (mostly unpopulated) territory near Raqqa and Deir Ezzor to ISIS forces. Its forces are stretched too thin, even despite reinforcements from Iran and Lebanon, to control the whole country. In other words, neither side can credibly defeat the other side at this stage in the conflict, yet nor can they credibly accept a peace plan or amnesty, as Assad offered in his Foreign Affairs interview. This is what the scholar Nazih Richani calls a “comfortable impasse” – both sides can withstand untold levels of violence and keep fighting because time remains their most precious asset. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian insurgent gains expose Assad weaknesses

The Associated Press reports: In the span of a month, Syrian insurgents have routed government forces across the country’s northwest, flushing them out of strongholds in a string of embarrassing defeats for President Bashar Assad.

The first to go was the city of Idlib, which fell to opposition fighters at the end of March, followed by the strategic town of Jisr al-Shughour last week and the Qarmeed military base on Monday. Troops are now under fire at the few remaining outposts still in government hands.

The disintegration of government forces in Idlib province, coupled with recent losses in southern Syria, has punctured the notion that Assad is on his way to defeating the four-year-old rebellion and undermined his claim to be a bulwark against the Islamic State group, which had eclipsed the rebels over the past year.

The campaign also points to a new unity and assertiveness within the constellation of opposition forces, which has long been riven by infighting. And it has exposed the government’s fundamental weaknesses — including lack of manpower, battle fatigue and a heavy reliance on Iran and other allies.

“It’s really indicative of some huge problems the regime has,” said Noah Bonsey, a Syria analyst for the International Crisis group. “What we’re seeing now is the best evidence yet of a trend we’ve already known about: the regime’s attrition rate is quite high and it can’t replace the soldiers and militiamen that it loses with equally effective Syrian manpower.” [Continue reading…]

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The underappreciated power of framing climate change as a moral crisis

David Roberts writes: The Pope plans on delivering an encyclical on climate change this summer and it has American conservatives freaking out. The Heartland Institute, Washington’s leading anti-environmental “think tank,” has even dispatched a crack team of deniers to Rome to dissuade His Holiness.

Why the agita from the right? After all, similar statements of climate concern have been issued by virtually every major government, international development organization, and national science council in the world. It’s not like the Pope is spilling the beans on a well-kept secret.

But as Heartland clearly recognizes, the Pope’s statement carries unique significance for the simple reason that he has unquestioned moral authority for millions of people. He threatens to situate the fight against climate change as a deeply moral issue, a matter of God’s work on earth. Once it is so situated, it will slowly and inexorably drag culture and politics along in its wake.

The right, which is entirely comfortable deploying moral arguments, understands this better than the mainstream, center-left environmental establishment. Large swathes of the center-left establishment (especially among the foundations that fund things) are besotted with dreams of technocracy and bipartisan civility — so much so that in 2009 Matt Yglesias pleaded with greens to “put the plodding moralism back in.”

Especially among young greens, that technocratic attitude is on the wane, especially in the wake of the 2010 cap-and-trade defeat, a decisive failure for the top-down, technocratic approach. Nowadays, activists are trying to put the plodding moralism back in, particularly through the fossil-fuel divestment movement, which calls on institutions to cease all investments in the fossil fuel sector.

Nobody thinks the divestment movement can hurt fossil-fuel companies in any direct financial way, but that’s not what it seeks to do. Rather, it seeks to put mainstream institutions on record defining climate mitigation as a moral imperative, to create social consensus that inaction is not neutral — it is immoral. [Continue reading…]

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In a surprise move, Saudi Arabia’s king shakes up line of succession

The Washington Post reports: Saudi Arabia’s new monarch, King Salman, announced a major overhaul within the nation’s royal family Wednesday, replacing his anointed heir with his nephew and naming his own son as deputy in line to the throne.

In a series of early morning royal decrees read on national television, Salman promoted his nephew, Mohammed bin Nayef, 55, from deputy crown prince to crown prince, meaning that Nayef will become king when Salman dies.

He named his son, Mohammed bin Salman, as deputy crown prince, putting him second in line to inherit the throne and thereby ensuring that the succession will pass through his own branch of the kingdom’s extensive royal family. Mohammed bin Salman’s exact age is not known, but he is believed to be about 30.

The decrees thrust a new, younger generation of Saudi princes into the line of succession, which could spell a more assertive Saudi foreign policy in the Middle East.

The move squeezes out the late King Abdullah’s choice of Prince Muqrin to succeed Salman. Abdullah had named Muqrin, his younger half-brother, as deputy crown prince two years ago, in what was widely seen at the time as an effort to secure the crown for an ally of his own sons.

The moves represented the clearest indicator yet of how the succession will likely proceed as the sons of the founder of the Saudi state, King Abdulaziz, age and die. [Continue reading…]

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Why Russia and China may fear the nuclear deal with Iran

Melik Kaylan writes: Today’s news that Iran’s navy impounded a Western ship illustrates the severe impediments to a nuke deal. With so much going against it, the most powerful argument for completing the agreement still hasn’t been uttered by anyone. Astonishing, you might think. Not really. The central figure on whose shoulders falls the task of selling it to Americans — President Obama — will not tell you. Arguably, he cannot. Meanwhile, his initiative has to survive incessant media barracking about centrifuge numbers, breakout thresholds, regional proliferation, threats to Israel, plausible monitoring and much else.

Even George W. Bush came out of obscurity this weekend to lend his threadbare authority to the naysaying chorus. He added, for good measure, that withdrawing from Iraq was a strategic mistake. It didn’t take long for the Twitterverse to respond that invading in the first place was the greater mistake. We won’t get into that here. Suffice to say that on George W.’s watch, Putin invaded Georgia, China became a global superpower, and Venezuela’s Chavez got a guarantee of security from the US in exchange for uninterrupted oil supplies. Obama’s soft approach to world affairs hasn’t righted things. But the proposed nuclear framework agreement with Iran may be his first big venture to do just that.

The clue — overwhelmingly conspicuous yet everyone ignores it — comes in the form of Russia and China’s reaction. I know something about this having published a book in September entitled “The Russia-China Axis.” When the preliminary stage of talks concluded positively, Moscow immediately announced an agreement to build 50 more nuclear power stations for Iran. This time around, they announced the sale of S-300 missiles.

As for China, here’s a statement by Iran’s official news agency about Beijing ramping up massive investments in Iranian oilfield development and the like. Subtract the propaganda and hyperbole and you still get a clear enough picture. China never abided by the sanctions, becoming Teheran’s main trading partner in recent years. In essence, the sanctions gave China exclusive access to cheap Iranian oil. Iran was among the first nations to join the Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. And now as a possible lifting of sanctions looms, the Chinese are piling it on. [Continue reading…]

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European Jews have no intention of fleeing their homelands

Anshel Pfeffer reports: ‘The Cossacks aren’t coming’ – a series of dispatches from Jewish communities across Europe – was born from a feeling that the true story of Jewish life in Europe is not being told.

It is obscured in both Israeli and international media due to a, perhaps understandable, focus on terror attacks and perception of a rising tide of anti-Semitism washing over the continent. The narrative which has emerged in recent years, to an increasing degree since last summer’s conflict in Gaza and in the wake of the Paris killings in January, has been one of fearful and endangered Jews on the brink of tragedy – that can only be averted by mass emigration to safer shores.

Much of the reporting on European Jewry in recent months has been tinged with disbelief: Who are these foolhardy Jews that have failed to learn the lesson of the Holocaust and are once again ignoring the coming storm in this cursed continent?

It fails to take into account that for a million and a half Jews across Europe, this is home. They are part of the social fabric and national identity of the countries where they were born and continue choosing to live their lives. While thousands of communities were wiped out in the Holocaust and many others have since drastically dwindled in numbers, Jews still live openly throughout Europe, both carrying on traditions and creatively innovating new and fascinating Jewish experiences.

Very little of this has been reported, and the complex challenges the Jews do face, are routinely reduced to the simplistic formulations of physical threat from the new Islamization and a resurgence of old anti-Semitism. Most of the coverage has also disregarded how in the wider upheaval occurring now in Europe, the Jews are not victims of change, but also have a key role to play in the continent’s future.

Ten features cannot provide a broad picture of such a wide range of communities, each facing its own particular set of circumstances and carving out a unique place in wider national identities. It is intended to present a series of snapshots, illustrating how the Jews of Europe are not only responding to tragedy and intimidation, but also busy building a future. In addition to my research in five countries, chosen to give a cross-section of regions and Jewish populations of different size and temperament, the insights are informed by my reporting for Haaretz over the last eight years from all the major Jewish communities in Europe and many of the smaller ones as well.
The Jewish cemetary in Krakow. Photo by Moshe Gilad

It is an attempt at a clear-eyed appraisal of the dangers facing Europe’s Jews but also an optimistic view of their future; which is why my journey began down the road from Auschwitz, at the bright and new Jewish Community Center in Krakow. [Continue reading parts 1-10…]

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Why the New York Times named names in CIA drone story

Michael Calderone reports: The New York Times reported across the top of Sunday’s front page that Congress is doing little to oversee the CIA’s targeted killing program. In the process, the paper identified three high-ranking CIA officials with key roles in secret drone operations.

The CIA asked the Times to withhold the names in its report, a request that executive editor Dean Baquet told The Huffington Post on Monday that he took seriously, but decided not to honor.

Baquet said the officials are not undercover agents carrying out clandestine operations in the field, but rather figures with significant roles in “one of the major issues in modern American warfare.” The CIA is now playing a “quasi-military role” through the drone program, a departure from its traditional functions that deserves scrutiny. In order to debate the program, he said, the public needs to know who is making key decisions. In addition, as the Times wrote in its article, the CIA officials’ “roles are known to foreign governments and many others.”

“It would have been weird to not name the guys who run it,” Baquet said. “They’re not undercover. They’re not unknown. They’re sort of widely known.”

A CIA spokesman declined to comment to The Huffington Post.

Baquet’s decision shows the news organization’s increasing willingness to push back against government requests to withhold information, unless officials provide specific reasons why doing so may damage national security. [Continue reading…]

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How candidate of hope and change became president of kill lists, drone strikes, and immunity for torturers

Gregory D. Johnsen writes: Shortly before 9 a.m. on March 11, 2014, Dianne Feinstein, the 80-year-old chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, walked into the Senate chamber with a thick stack of papers and a glass of water. The Senate had just finished a rare all-night session a few minutes earlier, and only a handful of staffers were left in the room. Feinstein had given thousands of speeches over her career, but none quite like this.

“Let me say up front that I come to the Senate floor reluctantly,” she said, as she poked at the corners of her notes. The last two months had been an exhausting mix of meetings and legal wrangling, all in an attempt to avoid this exact moment. But none of it had worked. And now Feinstein was ready to go public and tell the country what she knew: The CIA had broken the law and violated the Constitution. It had spied on the Senate.

“This is a defining moment for the oversight of our intelligence community,” Feinstein said nearly 40 minutes later, as she drew to a close. This will show whether the Senate “can be effective in monitoring and investigating our nation’s intelligence activities, or whether our work can be thwarted by those we oversee.”

Two hours later and a few miles away at a Council on Foreign Relations event near downtown Washington, the CIA responded. “As far as the allegations of, you know, CIA hacking into Senate computers,” CIA Director John Brennan told Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, shaking his head and rolling his eyes to demonstrate the ridiculousness of the charges, “nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn’t do that.”

Brennan was 58, but that morning he looked much older. He’d hobbled into the room on a cane following yet another hip fracture, and after some brief remarks he eased himself into a chair with obvious discomfort. Two years earlier in a commencement address at Fordham University, his alma mater, Brennan had rattled off a litany of injuries and ailments: In addition to his hip problems, he’d also had major knee, back, and shoulder surgeries as well as “a bout of cancer.” Years of desk work had resulted in extra weight and the sort of bureaucrat’s body that caused his suits to slope down and out toward his belt. “I referred the matter myself to the CIA inspector general to make sure that he was able to look honestly and objectively at what the CIA did there,” Brennan said. “And, you know, when the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong.”

Mitchell, who had already asked him two questions about the allegations, pressed again. “If it is proved that the CIA did do this, would you feel that you had to step down?”

Brennan chuckled and stuttered as he tried to form an answer. Two weeks earlier, he had told a dinner at the University of Oklahoma that “intelligence work had gotten in my blood.” The CIA wasn’t just what he did; it was his “identity.” He had worked too hard to become director to give up without a fight. “If I did something wrong,” Brennan eventually told Mitchell, “I will go to the president, and I will explain to him exactly what I did, and what the findings were. And he is the one who can ask me to stay or to go.”

But Obama was never going to ask for his resignation. Not then, and not months later when the CIA inspector general’s report came back, showing that the agency had done what Feinstein claimed. Brennan was Obama’s man. His conscience on national security, and the CIA director he’d wanted from the very beginning. Not even a chorus of pleas from Democratic senators, members of Obama’s own party, made any difference. John Brennan would stay, the untouchable head of America’s most powerful intelligence agency. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. court lets border patrol agents murder Mexicans with impunity

Guinevere E. Moore writes: A United States court has all but declared open season on Mexican nationals along the US-Mexico border. Border patrol agents may shoot foreign nationals in Mexico with impunity – provided that those at whom they aim are standing within feet of US territory.

According to a ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit last week, agents who shoot and kill people in Mexico while standing on US soil will never be held to account, except before their administrative agencies. No court will ever review these actions and the families of the victims will be left with no avenue for justice. An agent’s actions will not be governed or restrained by the constitution nor subject to review by US courts.

This isn’t a hypothetic situtation: all of this has already happened.

On 7 June, 2010, a US border patrol agent shot and killed a 15-year-old Mexican boy, Sergio Hernandez, who was standing on the Mexican side of the border. The border patrol agent who drew his firearm and shot Hernandez twice, including a fatal shot to the head, alleged that the boy had been throwing rocks.

After three days on administrative leave and an administrative review of his actions, the agent returned to his duties. No criminal charges were filed, and the United States has refused to extradite the agent to stand trial for murder in Mexico. [Continue reading…]

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EU policies worsen an already deadly situation for immigrants

Der Spiegel reports: The images and words are so very similar. Back then, the German chancellor said she was “deeply upset” — today she is “appalled.” Back then, the president of the European Commission said he would never forget the dead, and that something had to change — today he claims: “The status quo is not an option.” Back then, Europe’s interior ministers spoke of a horrific event — today it’s an “utter horror.'” The gap between then and now is 19 months. And several thousands of dead in the Mediterranean.

Then was the night of Oct. 3, 2013. A fire broke out on an old cutter that had set out from the Libyan city of Misrata. Near the small Italian island of Lampedusa, more than 500 people went overboard, most of them from Somalia or Eritrea. Not even one-third survived. The coffins in Lampedusa’s airport hangar became a symbol for Europe’s “shame,” as Pope Francis put it.

At a meeting in Luxembourg held after the disaster, EU interior ministers spoke of a “wake-up call” and immediately established a working group. European Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström argued that Lampedusa was an “image of the Union that we do not want.” In Berlin, the German government declared that “given a human catastrophe of this size,” it was self-evident that current refugee policies should reexamined. Shortly thereafter, German Chancellor Angela Merkel traveled to a summit of EU heads of government in Brussels, where “decisive measures” were promised to avoid a repeat of the catastrophe.

And then? Then the catastrophe repeated itself. A dozen times. Between then and now. In the space of a few days in April, 400 people traveling from Africa to Europe drowned in the Mediterranean, then a boat with over 800 refugees capsized — and only 28 survived.

Interior and foreign ministers of the EU member states met once again in Luxembourg this week. But they didn’t create a new working group — after all, they already have one. The president of the European Council convened a special summit that met on Thursday. In Berlin, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière promised that, given recent events, the EU couldn’t simply return to the regular order of business.

The words and images are so very similar. And if you listen to what people are saying, you could be excused for thinking there was no “then.”

Wars, famines, poverty, unscrupulous human traffickers and borders on lock-down — the refugee drama has many sides. It’s not easy to determine who is responsible for the death of so many people and who carries what share of the blame. But any investigation would lead to the capital cities of Europe.

There’s plenty of blame to go around here. People are in dire need, but politicians are instead pulling the brakes on effective measures to help them or, worse, are involved in political deal-making at their expense. Borders have been drawn firmer than ever. And even initiatives with the best intentions have been allowed to peter out. At times it feels as though European governments have simply accepted the fact that Lampedusa will be repeated.

Through their reporting in Brussels and Berlin, the analysis of internal transcripts and interviews with diplomats and government representatives, SPIEGEL’s journalists reconstructed a timeline of policy developments dating from the 2013 Lampedusa tragedy to the most recent catastrophe. [Continue reading…]

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European gateways to extremism

Lorenzo Vidino writes: Since the early 2000s, countless theories have sought to analyze radicalization processes among Western Muslims. Studies have dissected the many internal and external factors that, operating concurrently, lead some young European, North American and Australian Muslims to join violent groups like al Qaeda or, more recently, the Islamic State. One relatively understudied aspect is the role of extremist but not directly violent Islamist organizations in this process. Particularly over the last few years, in fact, it has become apparent that in most (but not all) Western countries a large and growing percentage of individuals who engaged in violent jihadist activities have been involved in groups like al Muhajiroun or the Sharia4 global movement before making the leap into violence.

These groups are complex and difficult to categorize entities, epitomizing the heterogeneity of Islamism in the West. They adopt unquestionably radical positions, often engaging in highly controversial rhetoric and actions to attract attention and create tension while straddling the line between legally allowed stunts and illegal behaviors. Yet, despite endorsing the worldview and actions of militant jihadist groups, most of their activities tend to be non-violent or, at worst, entail scuffles with police or intimidation of adversaries. At the same time, the cases of individuals that, with varying degrees of intensity, gravitated around these organizations and subsequently engaged in terrorist activities are plentiful. And, in some recent cases, there are indications that the leadership of some of these organizations have transformed from headline-grabbing agitators (dismissed by most as buffoons) into full-fledged jihadists actively involved in combat in Syria and Iraq.

Given these dynamics, it is not surprising that these organizations have often been at the center of heated debates. One argument—an academic one, but with important practical implications–is related to the role they play in the radicalization process. While some scholars and policymakers consider them as “conveyor belts” facilitating and expediting radicalization towards violence, others have challenged this analysis. A related and equally controversial topic of discussion revolves around the necessity, legal feasibility and practical effectiveness of banning these organizations.

This article seeks to explore these and other aspects. It aims to look at the history, ideology and tactics of various organizations (each of which, to be clear, has its own peculiarities) that have operated in various Western European countries over the last twenty years. It then devotes a particular focus to their complex relationship with violence. Finally, it also looks at how European authorities have dealt with these groups over time. [Continue reading…]

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Federal government fails basic openness test

Scott Martelle writes: You’d think that if you were going to get a timely and adequate response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the federal government, it would be from the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy, which oversees the government’s compliance with FOIA requests.

But if you thought that, you’d be wrong.

According to the FOIA Project, operated by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, the Office of Information Policy was one of 10 agencies that failed to adequately respond to a basic FOIA request, a remarkable failure rate — that’s nearly half of the 21 agencies queried. Only seven of the agencies fully complied in a timely manner.

And what information was sought in those FOIA requests? “We asked for copies of the electronic files the FOIA offices themselves use to keep track of FOIA requests,” according to the FOIA Project’s website. Each agency got the same request, all submitted via the method each agency said it preferred (email, fax, or an online system).

The CIA flat out rejected the request it received, arguing that it would require an “unreasonable effort” because it would require “creation of a new record.” When the FOIA Project pointed out that federal law says electronic data is a record, the CIA still rejected the request, which the project is appealing.

The most responsive departments were the Army, Bureau of Land Management, Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and its Management Division, Fish and Wildlife and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Three agencies never responded at all: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and two Justice Department offices, the Executive Office for United States Attorneys and the National Security Division. [Continue reading…]

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