Author Archives: News Sources

Draft of arrest warrant for Argentine president found at dead prosecutor’s home

The New York Times reports: Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor whose mysterious death has gripped Argentina, had drafted a request for the arrest of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, accusing her of trying to shield Iranian officials from responsibility in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center here, the lead investigator into his death said Tuesday.

The 26-page document, which was found in the garbage at Mr. Nisman’s apartment, also sought the arrest of Héctor Timerman, Argentina’s foreign minister. Both Mrs. Kirchner and Mr. Timerman have repeatedly denied Mr. Nisman’s accusation that they tried to reach a secret deal with Iran to lift international arrest warrants for Iranian officials wanted in connection with the bombing.

The new revelation that Mr. Nisman had drafted documents seeking the arrest of the president and the foreign minister illustrates the heightened tensions between the prosecutor and the government before he was found dead on Jan. 18 at his apartment with a gunshot wound to his head. He had been scheduled the next day to provide details before Congress about his accusations against Mrs. Kirchner. [Continue reading…]

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Gaza suffers in growing isolation

Zvi Bar’el reports: “What do they give us here? Three pitas and a little food; it’s not enough even for a small child,” Alaa Kullab complained to the Palestinian news agency Safa. He said his eight-person family, which has been living in a school in Rafah ever since this summer’s war in the Gaza Strip, received only five beds.

“We have no heaters, and we’re forbidden to use hotplates,” added Kullab, who began a hunger strike along with another resident of the school a few days ago.

More than 20,000 of the 450,000 people displaced by the war still live in schools or other shelters arranged by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Last month, UNRWA announced that it would no longer pay displaced families’ rent or fund reconstruction of their houses, because it was out of money, having received only $135 million of the $725 million it needs.

“People come to our offices crying and threatening, but we have no way to help them,” an UNRWA employee told Haaretz. “Children are freezing cold, they suffer from malnutrition and even the little food they get is unsuitable.”

Next week, cleaning workers at Gaza’s hospitals are expected to strike again, since the Palestinian government hasn’t produced the back pay it promised to persuade them to end the last 16-day strike. Some 45,000 government employees in Gaza have yet to receive their January salaries, and they may get only 60 percent, as they did last month, because Israel has frozen tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority. The PA says the transfers amount to over half the costs of these salaries.

In October, a donor conference netted pledges of $5.4 billion for Gaza’s reconstruction, but only about 2 percent of this amount has arrived. Both the reconstruction and the reopening of the border crossings, especially with Egypt, depend on implementing a reconciliation deal between Fatah and Hamas, but due to disputes between the rival organizations, this still has not happened. [Continue reading…]

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Threat of violence silences Palestinian journalists

Asmaa al-Ghoul writes: How loud is the voice you hear when you sit down to write a press report? How small is the prison cell you imagine yourself ending up in once you publish your article? The man you imagine pointing a gun at your head, is he wearing a mask? These are thoughts that lead one to delete the most important and powerful piece of information from an article. Some thoughts even lead you to delete the article entirely.

A late 2014 study by the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms found that 80% of Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and Gaza practice self-censorship of their writing.

Journalist Ghazi Bani Odeh, who conducted the survey, “The Official Media and Freedom of Expression,” told Al-Monitor that attacks and harassment, and thus fear of them, are the main causes leading journalists to censor themselves. [Continue reading…]

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Pentagon loses track of weaponry sent to Yemen in recent years

The Guardian reports: Chaos in Yemen has left the US military unable to monitor the vast arsenal it has spent years providing to its Yemeni counterpart.

Yemen is now functionally leaderless after Houthi rebels took over the capital of Sana’a last month, prompting the resignation of President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The rebels are said to control the Yemeni military’s arms depots and bases, giving them effective control of US-provided and other heavy weaponry, including tanks and artillery.

The unrest has “limited our ability to conduct routine end-use monitoring checks and inspections we would normally perform”, a US defense official told the Guardian.

US military officials would not specify which military equipment it could no longer track, but in recent years the US has sold or leased equipment including helicopters, night-vision gear, surveillance equipment, military radios and transport aircraft to Yemen.

Since 2006, the US military has provided more than $400m to Yemen, according to research estimates prepared for Congress. [Continue reading…]

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Egypt turns to France for weapons with U.S. still wary of delivering military aid

Vice News: Speaking at a political conference Sunday in Cairo, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi unveiled a $1.31 billion budget for counterterrorism efforts in the eastern Sinai Peninsula, an area that has repeatedly been hit by militant attacks. Addressing politicians in the Egyptian capital, Sisi announced he is looking to France to supply Egypt with much-needed modern military equipment.

The US halted the delivery of 20 F-16 fighter jets, 125 M1-A1 battle tank kits, and 20 Harpoon cruise missiles to Egypt following the 2013 coup that ousted former President Mohammed Morsi, but 10 Apache helicopters included in the original deal were reportedly delivered last month. The US also suspended a portion of the $1.3 billion worth economic and military aid delivered annually to Egypt, though the withheld funds were released last June after Congress passed a law that requires the Egyptian government to take steps to improve human rights conditions in order to receive the aid.

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Moussaoui calls Saudi princes patrons of al Qaeda

The New York Times reports: In highly unusual testimony inside the federal supermax prison, a former operative for Al Qaeda has described prominent members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family as major donors to the terrorist network in the late 1990s and claimed that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

The Qaeda member, Zacarias Moussaoui, wrote last year to Judge George B. Daniels of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who is presiding over a lawsuit filed against Saudi Arabia by relatives of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He said he wanted to testify in the case, and after lengthy negotiations with Justice Department officials and the federal Bureau of Prisons, a team of lawyers was permitted to enter the prison and question him for two days last October.

In a statement Monday night, the Saudi Embassy said that the national Sept. 11 commission had rejected allegations that the Saudi government or Saudi officials had funded Al Qaeda. [Continue reading…]

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In the fight against terrorism, we are the only ones who can defeat ourselves

Yuval Noah Harari writes: As the literal meaning of the word indicates, terror is a military strategy that hopes to change the political situation by spreading fear rather than by causing material damage. This strategy is almost always adopted by very weak parties, who are unable to inflict much material damage on their enemies. Of course, every military action spreads fear. But in conventional warfare, fear is a byproduct of material losses, and is usually proportional to the force inflicting the losses. In terrorism, fear is the whole story, and there is an astounding disproportion between the actual strength of the terrorists and the fear they manage to inspire.

It is not easy to change the political situation through violence. On the first day of the battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, 19,000 members of the British army were killed and another 40,000 wounded. By the time the battle ended in November, both sides together had suffered more than a million casualties, which included 300,000 dead. Yet this unimaginable carnage hardly changed the political balance of power in Europe. It took another two years and millions of additional casualties for something finally to snap.

Compared to the Somme offensive, terrorism is a puny matter. Most terrorist attacks kill only a handful of people. In 2002, at the height of the Palestinian terror campaign against Israel, when buses and restaurants were hit every few days, the yearly toll reached 451 dead Israelis. In the same year, 542 Israelis were killed in car accidents. A few terrorist attacks, such as the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988, kill hundreds. The 9/11 attacks set a new record, killing nearly 3,000 people. Yet even this is dwarfed by conventional warfare: if you add all the people killed and wounded in Europe by terrorist attacks since 1945 – including victims of nationalist, religious, leftist and rightist groups – it will still represent many fewer casualties than in any number of obscure first world war battles, such as the third battle of the Aisne (250,000 casualties) or the 10th battle of the Isonzo (225,000 casualties). [Continue reading…]

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With global attention on ISIS, Assad’s barrel bombs slaughter Syrian civilians

Syria Deeply interviews Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch: You’ve tracked the use of barrel bombs, and prior to that the use of missiles on civilian areas. What’s the state of play now?

Roth: The barrel bombs are continuing and indeed they are the principal reason why civilians are dying in Syria today. Everybody is focused on ISIS. ISIS is terrible, civilians are suffering under ISIS, but if you stand back and say, what is the principal tool being used to slaughter civilians? It’s the barrel bomb. Initially, governments don’t really want to talk about this, because they are so focused on ISIS and don’t want to do anything that would undermine the Assad government’s ability to hang on and theoretically fight back against ISIS. People don’t seem to recognize that the barrel bomb is not a military weapon. It is so imprecise that the Syrian air force doesn’t dare drop it near the front line for fear of hitting its own troops.

Barrel bombs, for those who don’t know, are typically an oil drum or some large canister filled with explosives and metal fragments that serve as shrapnel. It is dumped from a helicopter hovering at a very high altitude to avoid anti-aircraft fire. From that altitude, it can’t be aimed with any precision whatsoever – it can simply be dumped into a neighborhood, and it is neighborhoods that barrel bombs are dumped on because of the need to stay away from the front line. If you ask what is enabling the pro-regime forces to hold on, it’s now the barrel bomb.

It is a terror and an anti-civilian tool. Part of Assad’s strategy is to make life as miserable as possible for the civilians living in opposition-held areas. It’s designed to kill many and terrify the rest so they will flee and gradually depopulate the area, to make it harder for the rebels to hang on.

Syria Deeply: What’s the size and scope of the problem? [Continue reading…]

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The ISIS cult — much harder to leave than to join

The Associated Press reports: The man stands furtively on a street corner, his face masked by a hoodie, his tense eyes scanning the crowd for any hint of Islamic State militants.

He was one of them before he left Syria a year ago, and he is afraid.

Now he chain-smokes as he describes the indiscriminate killing, the abuse of female recruits, the discomfort of a life where meals were little more than bread and cheese or oil. He recounts the knife held to his throat by fellow fighters who demanded he recite a particular Quranic verse on Islamic warfare to prove himself.

“It was totally different from what they said jihad would be like,” said the man, Ghaith, who asked to be identified by his first name only for fear of being killed. Ghaith eventually surrendered to Syrian soldiers.

While foreigners from across the world have joined the Islamic State militant group, some find day-to-day life in Iraq or Syria much more austere and violent than they had expected. These disillusioned new recruits also soon discover that it is a lot harder to leave than to join. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the Islamic State group has killed 120 of its own members in the past six months, most of them foreign fighters hoping to return home. [Continue reading…]

There’s been a lot of talk among government officials and counter-terrorism experts on the need to challenge the ISIS ideology — an exercise that seems to express about as much realism as evangelical campaigns in favor of abstinence.

What would be much more constructive would be international coordination on the construction of viable pathways out of ISIS.

Those who have the courage to leave, need to be able to have some confidence that they still have a future.

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Netanyahu’s invitation to address Congress raises eyebrows among some U.S. generals

Mark Perry writes: The uniformed leaders of the U.S. military have had a testy relationship with President Barack Obama since he took office in 2009, with a number of relatively public spats revealing discord over how his administration has approached the use of military force. So it might be assumed that when a politician confronts Obama, portraying his policies on threats overseas as naive, many in the senior uniformed ranks would nod in silent affirmation. But that’s not what has happened since House Speaker John Boehner invited Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Obama’s Iran policy in Congress. Instead the speech, planned for next month, has rallied senior military figures behind the president, with some warning that there’s a limit to what U.S. military officers consider acceptable criticism of the commander in chief.

Obama and his generals have clashed privately and publicly since 2009 over his plans to draw down troops and exit from Afghanistan, and a number of respected recently retired top commanders told Congress that what they called the administration’s piecemeal strategy against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq and Syria is destined to fail. Some have also publicly recorded misgivings about Obama’s Iran strategy. Still, Netanyahu’s planned speech has prompted a number of senior military men to rally around the office of a president whose policies they regularly, if privately, question.

Serving uniformed officers are loath to comment on an inflammatory political question — “You’re inviting me to end my career,” one senior Pentagon officer told me when asked to comment on Boehner’s invitation to Netanyahu, “but, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not.” But a senior Joint Chiefs of Staff officer who regularly briefs the U.S. high command was willing to speak bluntly in exchange for anonymity. “There’s always been a lot of support for Israel in the military,” the officer said, “but that’s significantly eroded over the last few years. This caps it. It’s one thing for Americans to criticize their president and another entirely for a foreign leader to do it. Netanyahu doesn’t get it. We’re not going to side with him against the commander in chief. Not ever.” [Continue reading…]

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White House seeks boost in spy agency funding

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Obama administration requested $53.9 billion for its spy agencies in the year beginning Oct. 1, up sharply from its request of $45.6 billion last year.

The money would be used to fund operations spread across six federal departments, as well as the Central Intelligence Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

While the budget proposal is sharply higher than the request last year, it would reflect a more measured increase over actual spending on these programs. That is because Congress recently has appropriated more money for spy agencies than the White House has requested.

Spending levels for the current fiscal year haven’t been disclosed.

The spy agency budgets are approved in secret during congressional deliberations, and the White House and congressional leaders often have different views about necessary budget levels for different programs. Congress and the White House are locked in a fight now about the scope of surveillance programs, with some warning that intelligence agencies need more funding to combat terrorist threats and others warning that certain data collection practices have grown too large and lack scrutiny.

The White House provided scant additional information about the budget request and didn’t give a detailed descriptions about how the money will be spent. [Continue reading…]

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Obama orders minor changes to surveillance on Americans and foreigners

The New York Times reports: A year after President Obama ordered modest changes in how the nation’s intelligence agencies collect and hold data on Americans and foreigners, the administration will announce new rules requiring intelligence analysts to delete private information they may incidentally collect about Americans that has no intelligence purpose, and to delete similar information about foreigners within five years.

The new rules to be announced Tuesday will also institutionalize a regular White House-led review of the National Security Agency’s monitoring of foreign leaders. Until the disclosures in the early summer of 2013 by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor whose trove of intelligence documents is still leaking into public view, there was no continuing White House assessment of whether the intelligence garnered from listening to scores of leaders around the world was worth the potential embarrassment if the programs became public.

Mr. Obama publicly ordered the end of the monitoring of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, saying he had known nothing about the effort — an admission that revealed the White House was not reviewing N.S.A. activities the way, for example, it annually reviews covert actions around the world by the C.I.A. The timing of the announcement about the new review process comes the week before Ms. Merkel is scheduled to visit the White House, where a long-debated arrangement for greater intelligence sharing between the countries is expected to be discussed.

Mr. Obama has never said whom, beyond Ms. Merkel, he took off the list of foreign leaders whose conversations are monitored, but it appeared that programs in Mexico and Brazil continued, while several dozen leaders have been removed. [Continue reading…]

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Departing CIA watchdog seen as lacking in aggression and independence

McClatchy reports: When word recently leaked that the CIA inspector general was preparing to step down, agency Director John Brennan issued a glowing statement about his watchdog’s work.

Left unsaid was the role CIA Inspector General David Buckley had in refereeing one of the most acrimonious disputes between a spy director and his congressional overseers in decades.

Only months before, Buckley’s office had found that CIA employees had improperly monitored Senate Intelligence Committee staffers’ work on their torture inquiry – contradicting Brennan’s previous denial.

On Friday, Buckley maintained to McClatchy that he hadn’t experienced any backlash from agency leadership.

“It’s not always pleasant, but they don’t shoot the messenger,” he said in a 20-minute interview at CIA headquarters as he headed to an undisclosed job in the private sector. “Doing this job is tough. But there has been no undue pressure or interference here.”

Multiple people who were familiar with his work offered a more complicated portrayal of his tenure, asserting he leaves behind an office roiling with dissent over how to watchdog the nation’s most powerful intelligence agency. Buckley’s own staff had filed formal complaints about his management, according to the people who spoke to McClatchy. [Continue reading…]

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A finance minister who doesn’t serve the banks

Simon Jenkins writes: A yawning gulf has opened in the world of financial diplomacy. It is not whether to bail out Greece yet again. It is how a Greek finance minister should dress when visiting a chancellor of the exchequer. Yanis Varoufakis arrived in Downing Street yesterday in black jeans, a mauve open-necked shirt that was not tucked in, and the sort of leather coat Putin might wear on a bear hunt. If George Osborne still didn’t get the point, Varoufakis had a No 1 haircut. What was going on?

What was going on was real life. If I were a banker and had seen Varoufakis arrive in the same dark suit as Osborne was wearing, what would I think? I would think here was a man eager to be accepted into the club. He dresses like a banker, therefore he thinks like a banker, which is how today’s finance ministers are supposed to think. I would be reassured.

We don’t want bankers to be reassured by Varoufakis just now. We want them to be terrified. Don’t mess with me, he is saying. I have a sovereign electorate behind me, and I have a bankrupt country. When your banks go bankrupt you bail them out. When your businesses go bankrupt you write off their debts and let them start again. Do the same to me. Your banks have lent my country crazy sums of money, way beyond the bounds of caution or common sense. Now you honestly think you will get it back. You can’t. Read my lips, look at my jeans, feel my stubble. You can’t. Get real. [Continue reading…]

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Hezbollah’s sectarian loyalties outweigh its commitment to the Palestinian cause

The Associated Press reports: Hezbollah’s ambitions are spreading far beyond its Lebanon home as the militant Shiite movement appears increasingly bent on taking on Sunni foes across the Middle East. It has sent thousands of its fighters into Syria and senior military advisers to Iraq, helped Shiite rebels rise to power in Yemen and threatened Bahrain over its abuse of the Shiite majority.

But the regional aspirations also are taking a heavy toll and threatening to undermine Hezbollah’s support at home. The group has suffered significant casualties, there is talk of becoming overstretched, and judging by the events of recent days, even a vague sense that the appetite for fighting the Israelis is waning.

In the recent confrontation, Israel struck first, purportedly destroying a Hezbollah unit near the front line of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Among the seven dead on Jan. 18 were an Iranian general, a top Hezbollah commander and the son of another former commander in chief. A heavy Hezbollah retaliation appeared inevitable.

Yet when it came last Wednesday, Hezbollah’s revenge was relatively modest: two Israeli soldiers dead, seven wounded. The choice of location — a disputed piece of land excluded from a U.N. resolution that ended the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel — suggested to some that Hezbollah’s mind remains focused on more distant fronts. [Continue reading…]

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What turned Erdogan against the West?

Mustafa Akyol writes: As any Turkey watcher would easily confirm, hostility to the West has increasingly marked the rhetoric of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his ruling Justice and Development (AKP) and pro-government media in the past two years. Especially since the Gezi Park protests in June 2013, the narrative of Erdogan and his entourage has revolved around Western “conspiracies” and a “national will” that is bravely fighting them.

Yet for those familiar with the AKP’s 14-year history, this may have come as a surprising turn. When the AKP was created in 2001, hostility to the West was not something with which it identified itself. On the contrary, party founders claimed to have disowned the Islamist, anti-Western “National View” tradition from which they came. Likewise, in the first years after the AKP came to power in 2002, Westernization (i.e., integration with the European Union) was the party’s prime objective. Back then, Europe was the source not of treacherous conspiracies that had to be thwarted, but of democratic criteria that had to be embraced.

Not surprisingly, the fiercest opposition to the AKP during that period from 2002 to 2010 was mounted by the anti-Western breed of Turkish secularists, known as neonationalists. This quarter — whose slogan is “Neither the US nor the EU, but a fully independent Turkey” — accused Erdogan’s government of “selling Turkey out to imperialism.” In 2007, one of Turkey’s best-selling books was nonsense titled “Moses’ Children,” which declared Erdogan to be a “crypto-Jew” colluding with the Elders of Zion. In the same era, the argument that Turkey should move closer to Russia instead of the EU was promoted by neonationalist generals, who would be implicated in the alleged Ergenekon coup plot to overthrow the AKP. [Continue reading…]

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Peter Greste is free but Egypt’s journalists remain muzzled

Wadah Khanfar writes: Peter Greste, of the al-Jazeera English television network, has been released after 400 days of detention in Egyptian prisons. I am delighted. The detention of the three al-Jazeera journalists is a blatant example of the deterioration of press freedom in the country.

They were arrested while conducting their professional duties, but the court imprisoned them for allegedly spreading lies and distorted the image of Egypt.

Our happiness following the news of Greste’s release, however, remains incomplete. The other two journalists are still in detention. It has been reported that Mohamed Fahmy, who has dual nationality, has been asked to denounce his Egyptian citizenship so he may be deported to Canada; the third journalist, Baher Mohamed, has no foreign nationality and has still been given no prospect of release.

The court’s discrimination in dealing with him was evident from the very beginning. While his two colleagues were sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment each, the court singled Mohamed out for 10 years. In fact, the detention of Egyptian journalists has now become customary – in a climate of repression and restrictions that did not exist even during the era of the former dictator Hosni Mubarak. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. military aid to Ukraine dangerous move, experts warn

AFP reports: Washington is once again mulling military support to Ukraine after fierce offensives by Kremlin-backed rebels, but experts fear it will only justify Russian conspiracy theories and drive East and West closer to full-blown war.

The recent rebel attacks across key parts of the frontline in eastern Ukraine may have been timed precisely out of fear the United States could soon get involved.

“One reason the rebels have intensified their offensive now is to make gains before potential US arms arrive,” said Andrew Wilson, author of “Ukraine Crisis: What it means for the West.”

“The US faces a moral dilemma: if it does not act now, the conflict could worsen. But there are big risks to getting involved.”

The White House is once again under pressure to up its involvement in the 10-month-old Ukraine conflict as ceasefire talks collapse and casualties soar.

The UN says 278 people were killed in the 12 days to January 21 alone as Russian-backed rebels sought to capture key transport and communication hubs.

An independent report released Monday by eight former senior American officials said it was time for Washington to provide $3 billion (2.7 billion euros) in military assistance to Ukraine.

“The West needs to bolster deterrence in Ukraine by raising the risks and costs to Russia of any renewed major offensive,” the report said. [Continue reading..]

Simon Tisdall writes: Washington’s threat risks turning what is currently a largely contained, internal insurrection into an international proxy war, pitting the US and Nato against Russia. In prospect now is the killing or maiming of Russians by American anti-tank missiles, a scenario not seen since the cold war-era occupation of Afghanistan by Soviet forces. The impact on wider European security could be deeply destabilising.

Tensions are already running high, not least with the increase in air and sea incidents involving the Russian military, such as last week’s provocative over-flight of the English channel. Nato’s decision to set up permanent military command centres in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and its creation of a 5,000-strong rapid response force are characterised by Putin as an attempt by the west to contain Russia.Last week, he ridiculed Ukraine’s army as Nato’s “foreign legion”.

Such an American escalation would probably deepen European divisions over Ukraine. Greece, heavily indebted, and Hungary, which has close economic links to Russia, take a very different line, for example, from that of the UK, which American reports suggest could follow any US lead in supplying weapons.

Uncertainty about Russian intentions has already caused a bad case of the jitters in Finland, Sweden and the Baltic republics. In the Czech Republic, the army chief of staff, General Petr Pavel, was quoted last week as predicting that an escalation in Ukraine would lead to the biggest military manoeuvres since 9/11, with troops being posted to the borders and to guard strategic plants. There are also wider European fears of mass refugee movements and manufactured unrest among expatriate ethnic Russian and Ukrainian minorities.

Judging by past performance, Putin is more likely to up the ante than back down if the US goes ahead.

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