Author Archives: News Sources

Libya’s first suicide attack kills seven near Benghazi

BBC News reports: Seven people have been killed at a security checkpoint near Benghazi in the first known suicide bomb attack in Libya since the fall of Col Gaddafi.

The attacker targeted the checkpoint in the village of Aguiria, some 50km (30 miles) east of Libya’s second city.

At least eight people, including soldiers and civilians, were wounded.

The security situation in and around Benghazi has been worsening in recent months, with extremist militia blamed for almost daily attacks.

This latest incident reveals a shift in tactics away from the bombings and assassinations that have mainly targeted the security services, the BBC’s Rana Jawad reports from Tripoli.

Unlike the rest of the country, many of the militias in the Eastern region are ideologically driven, she notes. [Continue reading…]

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Is revolution the only way to tackle climate change?

Eric Holthaus writes: So it’s come to this.

Last year, a researcher presented a paper on climate change at the American Geophysical Union’s meeting entitled ”Is Earth F**ked?” which advocated “environmental direct action, resistance taken from outside the dominant culture, as in protests, blockades and sabotage by indigenous peoples, workers, anarchists and other activist groups.”

Last month, the Philippines climate commissioner and self-styled revolutionary Naderev “Yeb” Saño held a 13-day fast in the midst of an international climate summit, just hours after Typhoon Haiyan ravaged his home country. In a tearful speech quoting Gandhi, he said: “We cannot sit and stay helpless staring at this international climate stalemate. It is now time to take action. We need an emergency climate pathway.”

And only last week, a conference of climate scientists in London explored the theme of “radical emissions reduction” after noting that “nothing that we’ve said or done to date about climate change has made any detectable dip whatsoever”. Via a weblink, author Naomi Klein compared the fight against climate change with the struggle against South African apartheid, and said, “an agenda capable of delivering radical emissions reductions will only advance if accompanied by a radical movement.”

Fed up with slow (or in some cases, backwards) progress on climate change, environmental advocates are mulling desperate measures. Emerging at the head of this pack is arguably the world’s most prominent climate scientist: James Hansen, a former NASA researcher turned activist.

In a provocative study published earlier this month, Hansen and a group of colleagues make the case for why radical action is needed. [Continue reading…]

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Syria ‘abducting civilians to spread terror’, UN says

BBC News reports: UN human rights investigators say the Syrian government is using what they call “enforced disappearances” as part of a widespread campaign of terror against civilians.

Thousands of people have been taken away, with most never seen again, their report says.

Disappearances on such a scale could be a crime against humanity, it adds.

It notes that some opposition groups have begun taking hostages – which also constitutes a human rights violation.

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Bashar al Assad’s talent for survival

Annia Ciezadlo writes: If there’s one thing those who know him agree on, it’s that Bashar Al Assad is awfully eager to please. Friends and even some enemies portray the Syrian president as a kind and generous man, always ready to use his connections to provide a favor: for a job, a heart operation, or just the permit the government has required, under Syria’s authoritarian form of socialism, to buy a tank of propane gas for cooking food. “Easygoing,” say diplomats who have faced him in negotiations. “I would have described him as a real gentleman, before this,” says a Damascene businessman who was part of Assad’s social circle and has now fled the country to escape its ongoing civil war.

The subtext here is that Assad is weak; the polite phrasing, among educated Syrians, has always been that he “does not have the qualities of a leader.” That is to say, he does not have the gravitas of his ruthless, gnomic father, Hafez Al Assad, who ruled the country from 1970 until June 2000. Other Syrians put it less delicately. They call him donkey, giraffe, taweel wa habeel — a Levantine putdown for a big, bumbling doofus. Diplomats, analysts, and a few heads of state have been just as harsh, predicting his imminent downfall since the day he took power.

Two-thousand thirteen was the year when it seemed as if those predictions would finally come true. As the uprising against him ground into its third summer, his regime lost territory and international legitimacy. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states lavished cash and weaponry on rebel fighters. Even the United States was reluctantly edging closer to supporting the revolution with something more than words. Then, on August 21, Assad’s regime used the nerve gas sarin to kill hundreds of Syrian civilians, crossing the “red line” that Barack Obama had said would prompt a U.S. military response. It looked like the end. If a formerly untouchable military dictator like Hosni Mubarak could go down in Egypt, then why not Syria’s lanky, lisping president?

What outsiders have been slow to realize is that in the game Assad is playing, a weak man (or one perceived that way) can cling to his throne just as tenaciously, and violently, as a strongman. Over the course of his reign, he has learned how to turn his biggest shortcomings—his desire for approval, his tendency toward prevarication—into his greatest assets. The world wants him to give up the chemical munitions he used against his own citizens, and he has begun to do that. The world wants an end to the conflict that has killed more than 100,000 Syrians and displaced millions more; his government is now willing to participate in peace talks. This nebbishy second son, who was never meant to inherit the family regime, has proved exceptionally talented in the art of self-preservation. [Continue reading…]

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Syria: Are ‘extremists’ and ‘al Qa’eda’ taking over towns in the North?

Scott Lucas writes: For several months, EA’s analysts have argued against a simplistic reduction of Syria’s conflict to a takeover by “extremists” and “jihadists”.

It appears to have been a futile effort, at least with respect to most leading Western media. Headlines proclaim the takeover of much of northern Syria by the Islamic State of Iraq and as-Sham, even though the group has only a fraction of the fighters in the insurgency and is being challenged by other leading factions. They dwell on the phrase “Al Qa’eda-linked”, even with insurgents who have no such connection. A cartoon in The Economist shows the genie of a menacing, bearded man — holding a sub-machine gun and a blood-stained knife — emerging from a bottle to face President Assad.

The repetition of images like these has intersected with — and may have even fed — a shift among some Western governments to consider Assad’s stay in power, fearing the supposedly lone alternative of “extremist” rule of Syria.

Yet, occasionally, a reporter or analyst offers a detailed examination of the situation in Syria’s northern towns that returns to our argument: the political picture is far more complex than these easy, scary headlines.

On Wednesday, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi wrote for the Brown Moses blog about the town of Al-Bukamal in Deir Ez Zor Province near the border with Iraq, captured by insurgents last year.

Asking the question, “Who exactly controls or is present in the town?”, al-Tamimi finds no less than six groups: Kata’ib Junud al-Haq, Katiba Bayariq al-Sunna, Kata’ib Allahu Akbar, Liwa Allahu Akbar, Liwa al-Mujahid Omar al-Mukhtar, and Liwa al-Qadisiya al-Islamiya.

None of these groups has received the media attention given to the Islamic State of Iraq and as-Sham, although Kata’ib Junud al-Haq is the local affiliate of another bogeyman, the “terrorist”/”Al Qa’eda-linked” Jabhat al_Nusra. So, to answer his question, al-Tamimi goes through a granular examination of evidence from websites and social media.

He finds stories of shifting alliances: for example, Kata’ib Junud al-Haq sided with the Islamic State of Iraq and as-Sham this spring but switched to ISIS’s rival Jabhat al-Nusra. Other groups are affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, or with factions of the Islamic Front.

He finds clashes between groups, followed by cease-fires, most recently in September.

In the main, he finds that almost all the groups are made up of Syrians rather than foreign “extremists”, moving outside Al-Bukamal to fight throughout Deir Ez Zor Province. [Continue reading…]

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UN envoy says Iran could attend Syria talks

Al Jazeera reports: Whether or not Iran will be among the nations invited to attend Syrian peace talks in Switzerland is still a source of disagreement between the UN and the United States, peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has said.

Speaking at a news conference in Geneva on Friday, Brahimi underlined that Tehran was not completely off the list of those who would attend Geneva 2, despite US objections.

“On Iran, we haven’t agreed yet. It’s no secret that we in the United Nations welcome the participation of Iran, but our partners in the United States are still not convinced that Iran’s participation would be the right thing,” Brahimi told reporters after talks with US and Russian officials.

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U.S. nuclear weapon plans to cost $355 billion over a decade

Reuters reports: The Obama administration’s plans for the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, including modernization of bombs, delivery systems and laboratories, will cost the country about $355 billion over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office said on Friday.

That is nearly $150 billion more than administration’s $208.5 billion estimate in a report to Congress last year, an analyst at an arms control group said, and since the modernization effort is just beginning, costs are expected to greatly increase after 2023.

The budget office said President Barack Obama had requested $23.1 billion for U.S. nuclear forces in the 2014 fiscal year, including $18 billion to maintain the weapons and supporting laboratories as well as the submarines, bombers and missiles to deliver the weapons.

The Washington Post reports: An Air Force general in charge of nuclear weapons repeatedly drank too much and behaved like a boor last summer during an official trip to Moscow, where he insulted his Russian hosts and hung out with two suspicious women he met at a hotel bar, according to an investigative report released Thursday.

Maj. Gen. Michael Carey, who was commander of the Air Force’s arsenal of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, “acted in a manner that exceeded the limits of accepted standards of good conduct” during a four-day visit to Moscow in July, according to an investigation conducted by the Air Force inspector general.

Carey’s behavior stunned his aides and other colleagues traveling with him for a nuclear security exercise and meetings with Russian officials. They said he started drinking during a stopover in Zurich and kept it up during three days in Moscow, causing a string of gaffes and embarrassments that led Air Force officials to relieve him of his command.

Carey was fired in October from his job as commander of the 20th Air Force, which is responsible for maintaining and operating the country’s intercontinental ballistic missiles. At the time, Air Force leaders said he was under investigation for “personal misbehavior” but divulged few details because the case was pending.

The Air Force released the partly redacted 44-page investigative report Thursday in response to requests filed by reporters under the Freedom of Information Act. [Continue reading…]

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$10m NSA contract with security firm RSA led to encryption ‘back door’

Reuters reports: As a key part of a campaign to embed encryption software that it could crack into widely used computer products, the National Security Agency arranged a secret $10m contract with RSA, one of the most influential firms in the computer security industry, Reuters has learned.

Documents leaked by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that the NSA created and promulgated a flawed formula for generating random numbers, to create a “back door” in encryption products, the New York Times reported in September. Reuters later reported that RSA became the most important distributor of that formula by rolling it into a software tool called Bsafe that is used to enhance security in personal computers and many other products.

Undisclosed until now was that RSA received $10m in a deal that set the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation in the BSafe software, according to two sources familiar with the contract. Although that sum might seem paltry, it represented more than a third of the revenue that the relevant division at RSA had taken in during the entire previous year, securities filings show.

The earlier disclosures of RSA’s entanglement with the NSA already had shocked some in the close-knit world of computer security experts. The company had a long history of championing privacy and security, and it played a leading role in blocking a 1990s effort by the NSA to require a special chip to enable spying on a wide range of computer and communications products. RSA, which is now a subsidiary of the computer storage giant EMC Corp , urged customers to stop using the NSA formula after the Snowden disclosures revealed its weakness. [Continue reading…]

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The United States: #1 in prisoners and military spending — but not #1 in freedom

The Skeptical Libertarian Blog: It is a comforting story people in the United States tell ourselves when we feel our position in the world challenged, or when chest-thumping nationalists mount the platform to brag about “American exceptionalism”, or when we need to excuse our behavior internationally.

But is it true? How does the United States stack up against other countries in terms of human freedom? [Continue reading…]

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Turkish PM Erdogan faces biggest threat of his rule

Reuters reports: Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s purge of the police command spread to other state institutions on Friday, widening a crackdown on what he described as a foreign-backed conspiracy to undermine him and create a “state within a state”.

The crisis, Erdogan’s biggest challenge in 11 years as Turkey’s leader, raised fears of damage to the Turkish economy and a fracturing in his AK Party, helping drive the lira to a historic low.

Erdogan ordered at least 14 senior police officers removed on Friday after the police launched a series of anti-corruption raids and detained senior businessmen close to Erdogan as well as the sons of three cabinet ministers.

The powerful Istanbul chief was sacked on Thursday following the dismissal of dozens of unit chiefs.

The vice chairman of the financial crimes investigation board, a unit of the finance ministry, was also removed on Friday, local media reported, as well as the editor-in-chief and news channel coordinator of state-owned TV channel TRT.

Erdogan has refrained from naming U.S.-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, a man with strong influence in the police and judiciary, as the hand behind the raids which shook the political elite. But Gulen’s Hizmet (or Service) movement has been increasingly at odds with Erdogan in recent months. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Mr. Gulen left Turkey in 1999 after being accused by the then-secular government of plotting to establish an Islamic state. He has since been exonerated of that charge and is free to return to Turkey, but never has. He lives quietly in Pennsylvania, though his followers are involved in an array of businesses and organizations in the United States and abroad, and some of them helped start a collection of charter schools in Texas and other states. He rarely gives interviews, and a spokesman recently said he was too ill to meet with a reporter.

But a lawyer for Mr. Gulen, Orhan Erdemli, said in a statement released to the Turkish news media and shared by Mr. Gulen on Twitter that “the honorable Gulen has nothing to do with and has no information about the investigations or the public officials running them.”

Huseyin Gulerce, who is personally close to Mr. Gulen and is a writer for a Gulen-affiliated newspaper, said Mr. Gulen’s followers have many of the same complaints about Mr. Erdogan that the protesters had this summer. They believe that Mr. Erdogan has become too powerful, too authoritarian in his ways, and has abandoned his earlier platform of democratic overhauls and pursuit of membership in the European Union. “This is not a group that Mr. Erdogan is not familiar with,” Mr. Gulerce said. “He knows all of us personally, from the time he was mayor of Istanbul. He has known Mr. Gulen personally for 20 years.”

“It was the Mavi Marmara crisis that created the first cracks,” in their relationship, Mr. Gulerce said. “Mr. Gulen’s attitude was very clear, as he always suggested that Turkey should not be adventurous in its foreign policy and stay oriented to the West, and that it should resolve its foreign policy issues through dialogue.”

Now, he suggested, their estrangement may be beyond repair.

As Mr. Erdogan has tried to contain the fallout, he is blaming domestic conspirators and foreign meddlers, just as he did during last summer’s protests, which began over plans to raze Gezi Park in central Istanbul and convert it into a shopping mall.

“Such accusations are only absurd speculations,” said Ersin Kalaycioglu, a political science professor at Sabanci University in Istanbul. “In Gezi, he accused the Alevis, interest rate lobbies, opposition powers and international power groups for organizing the protests. And now, he’s trying to build the same links with this corruption investigation. What kind of twisted logic is that?”

Hours after a series of dawn raids unfolded at the offices of several businessmen on Tuesday, Mr. Erdogan appeared before a crowd in Konya, a conservative town in the country’s heartland where he draws many supporters. “Some people have guns and weapons, tricks and traps,” he said, “but we have our God and that is enough for us.” [Continue reading…]

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Latest Snowden revelations spark anger at European commission

The Guardian reports: The latest disclosures from the Snowden files provoked exasperation at the European commission, with officials saying they intended to press the British and American governments for answers about the targeting of one its most senior officials.

Reacting shortly after an EU summit had finished in Brussels, the commission said disclosures about the targeting of Joaquín Almunia, a vice-president with responsibility for competition policy, was “not the type of behaviour that we expect from strategic partners, let alone from our own member states”.

A spokesman added: “This piece of news follows a series of other revelations which, as we clearly stated in the past, if proven true, are unacceptable and deserve our strongest condemnation.”

In Britain, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the chair of the parliamentary committee that provides oversight of GCHQ, said he was “disturbed by these allegations.” He added he could be “examining them in due course as part of the intelligence and security committee’s wider investigation into the interception of communications.”

A prominent German MP, Hans-Christian Ströbele, who met Edward Snowden in Moscow in October, told the Guardian it was becoming “increasingly clear that Britain has been more than the US’ stooge in this surveillance scandal”. He suggested the snooping by GCHQ on German government buildings and embassies was unacceptable.

“Great Britain is not just any country. It is a country that we are supposed to be in a union with. It’s incredible for one member of the European Union to spy on another – it’s like members of a family spying on each other. The German government will need to raise this with the British government directly and ask tough questions about the victims, and that is the right word, of this affair.”

The Liberal Democrats have been inching towards calling for an independent commission to investigate the activities of Britain’s spy agencies and the party president, Tim Farron, said that “spying on friendly governments like this is not only bad politics, it is bad foreign policy”.

“These nations are our allies and we should work together on issues from terrorism to Iran and climate change,” he said. “But we seem to be spying on them in conjunction with the NSA in what seems like an industrial basis.” [Continue reading…]

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GCHQ and NSA targeted charities, Germans, Israeli PM and EU chief

The Guardian reports: British and American intelligence agencies had a comprehensive list of surveillance targets that included the EU’s competition commissioner, German government buildings in Berlin and overseas, and the heads of institutions that provide humanitarian and financial help to Africa, top-secret documents reveal.

The papers show GCHQ, in collaboration with America’s National Security Agency (NSA), was targeting organisations such as the United Nations development programme, the UN’s children’s charity Unicef and Médecins du Monde, a French organisation that provides doctors and medical volunteers to conflict zones. The head of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) also appears in the documents, along with text messages he sent to colleagues.

The latest disclosures will add to Washington’s embarrassment after the heavy criticism of the NSA when it emerged that it had been tapping the mobile phone of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

One GCHQ document, drafted in January 2009, makes clear that the agencies were targeting an email address listed as belonging to another important American ally – the “Israeli prime minister”. Ehud Olmert was in office at the time.

Three further Israeli targets appeared on GCHQ documents, including another email address understood to have been used to send messages between the then Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, and his chief of staff, Yoni Koren.

Prominent names that appear in the GCHQ documents include Joaquín Almunia, a Spaniard who is vice-president of the European commission with responsibility for competition policy.

Britain’s targeting of Germany may also prove awkward for the prime minister, David Cameron: in October, he endorsed an EU statement condemning NSA spying on world leaders, including Merkel.

They have both been in Brussels, attending an EU summit that concludes on Friday.

The names and details are the latest revelations to come from documents leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. They provoked a furious reaction from the European commission, Almunia and others on the target lists.

• The commission said the disclosures “are unacceptable and deserve our strongest condemnation. This is not the type of behaviour that we expect from strategic partners, let alone from our own member states.” Almunia said he was “very upset” to discover his name was on GCHQ documents.

• Leigh Daynes, UK executive director of Médecins du Monde, said he was “bewildered by these extraordinary allegations of secret surveillance. Our doctors, nurses and midwives are not a threat to national security. There is absolutely no reason for our operations to be secretly monitored.”

• Another target, Nicolas Imboden, the head of an NGO that provides help to African countries, said the spying on him was “clearly economic espionage and politically motivated”.

• Human Rights Watch, Privacy International and Big Brother Watch condemned the targeting.

• Labour said the committee that oversees GCHQ should be given extra powers.

The disclosures reflect the breadth of targets sought by the agencies, which goes far beyond the desire to intercept the communications of potential terrorists and criminals, or diplomats and officials from hostile countries. [Continue reading…]

Pro forma denials from GCHQ and the NSA that they are engaged in economic espionage are to be expected. But agencies that don’t provide clear explanations about what they are doing, can hardly be expected to have such denials accepted without question.

The targeting of NGOs will probably heighten suspicions that these organizations are being used to provide cover for intelligence agencies and that in turn will undermine relief and development work in countries where populations are in need but their governments feel easily threatened.

The New York Times reports: The reports show that spies monitored the email traffic of several Israeli officials, including one target identified as “Israeli prime minister,” followed by an email address. The prime minister at the time of the interception, in January 2009, was Ehud Olmert. The following month, spies intercepted the email traffic of the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, according to another report. Two Israeli embassies also appear on the target lists.

Mr. Olmert said in a telephone interview Friday that the email address was used for correspondence with his office, which he said staff members often handled. He added that it was unlikely that any secrets could have been compromised.

“This was an unimpressive target,” Mr. Olmert said. He noted, for example, that his most sensitive discussions with President George W. Bush took place in private. “I would be surprised if there was any attempt by American intelligence in Israel to listen to the prime minister’s lines,” he said.

Mr. Barak, who declined to comment, has said publicly that he used to take it for granted that he was under surveillance.

Despite the close ties between the United States and Israel, the record of mutual spying is long: Israeli spies, including Jonathan Jay Pollard, who was sentenced in 1987 to life in prison for passing intelligence information to Israel, have often operated in the United States, and the United States has often turned the capabilities of the N.S.A. against Israel.

The interception of Mr. Olmert’s office email occurred while he was dealing with fallout from Israel’s military response to rocket attacks from Gaza, but also at a particularly tense time in relations with the United States. The two countries were simultaneously at odds on Israeli preparations to attack Iran’s nuclear program and cooperating on a wave of cyberattacks on Iran’s major nuclear enrichment facility.

A year before the interception of Mr. Olmert’s office email, the documents listed another target, the Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an internationally recognized center for research in atomic and nuclear physics. [Continue reading…]

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Why Snowden should be given amnesty

Former CIA Director James Woolsey had harsh words on Tuesday for anyone thinking about giving Edward Snowden amnesty.

“I think giving him amnesty is idiotic,” Woolsey said. “He should be prosecuted for treason. If convicted by a jury of his peers, he should be hanged by his neck until he is dead.”

Amy Davidson explains why Snowden deserves amnesty.

Why should Edward Snowden be given amnesty? The question keeps coming up, though it can be hard to hear the answers amid the outbursts it provokes. That is a shame, because there are really two separate cases for why Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who passed a huge stash of secret documents to reporters, should be allowed to come back to America from Russia, where he has been since the summer, without facing time in jail. The first might be summed up as the good he has done for America; the second as the benefits he can still offer the government. A problem is that those who support one case may be put off, or even enraged, by the other. But, between them, they ought to be enough to get Snowden home safely.

First, those on the government side have to calm down, and also have to be truthful about what their interest in prosecuting Snowden — who has already been charged under the Espionage Act — or not might be. On Sunday, “60 Minutes” broadcast an interview in which Rick Ledgett, the N.S.A. official leading the task forces doing a damage assessment of Snowden’s leaks, said that “my personal view is, yes, it’s worth having a conversation” about amnesty. As for why, when he had just gone on at some length about how much harm Snowden had done, Ledgett suggested that it would be worth it if Snowden could stop any more secrets from coming out: “I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured, and my bar for those assurances would be very high.”

That explanation is either dishonest or deluded. Snowden has said that he doesn’t have “the data” anymore; whether or not the government believes that, and even if there is also some insurance file in the cloud, it is well established that a number of journalists do have the data. Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, has testified before a parliamentary committee that the paper has published only one per cent of what it has. And, as Rusbridger tried to explain when some officials from British intelligence came to the newspaper’s office to oversee the smashing up of various drives and other computer components, there are a number of copies, including in the Guardian’s American bureau. [Continue reading…]

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Officials’ defenses of NSA phone program may be unraveling

The Washington Post reports: From the moment the government’s massive database of citizens’ call records was exposed this year, U.S. officials have clung to two main lines of defense: The secret surveillance program was constitutional and critical to keeping the nation safe.

But six months into the controversy triggered by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the viability of those claims is no longer clear.

In a three-day span, those rationales were upended by a federal judge who declared that the program was probably unconstitutional and the release of a report by a White House panel utterly unconvinced that stockpiling such data had played any meaningful role in preventing terrorist attacks.

Either of those developments would have been enough to ratchet up the pressure on President Obama, who must decide whether to stand behind the sweeping collection or dismantle it and risk blame if there is a terrorist attack.

Beyond that dilemma for the president, the decision by U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon and the recommendations from the review panel shifted the footing of almost every major player in the surveillance debate.

NSA officials, who rarely miss a chance to cite Snowden’s status as a fugitive from the law, now stand accused of presiding over a program whose capabilities were deemed by the judge to be “Orwellian” and likely illegal. Snowden’s defenders, on the other hand, have new ammunition to argue that he is more whistleblower than traitor.

Similarly, U.S. officials who have dismissed NSA critics as naive about the true nature of the terrorist threat now face the findings of a panel handpicked by Obama and with access to classified files. Among its members were former deputy CIA director Michael J. Morrell and former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard A. Clarke, both of whom spent years immersed in intelligence reports on al-Qaeda. [Continue reading…]

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Government requests to remove online material increase at Google

Claire Cain Miller writes: Governments, led by the United States, are increasingly demanding that Google remove information from the Web.

The company received 3,846 such requests to remove 24,737 items in the first half of 2013, an increase of 68 percent over the second half of 2012, according to an update to Google’s transparency report released on Thursday. Google complied with more than a third of all requests.

Often, the requests come from judges, police officers and politicians trying to hide information that is critical of them. The most common request cites defamation, often of officials. Others cite local laws governing religion or hate speech, for instance, as when YouTube received requests to remove the “Innocence of Muslims” video clips.

“Over the past four years, one worrying trend has remained consistent: governments continue to ask us to remove political content,” Susan Infantino, a legal director at Google, wrote in a company blog post. [Continue reading…]

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MI6 ‘turned blind eye’ to torture of rendered detainees

The Guardian reports: MI6 officers were under no obligation to report breaches of the Geneva conventions and turned a “blind eye” to the torture of detainees in foreign jails, according to the report into Britain’s involvement in the rendition of terror suspects.

Even when individual MI6 and MI5 officers expressed concerns about the abuse of detainees they did not pass on their thoughts for fear of offending the US, Britain’s closest intelligence partner.

British officials were reluctant to question sleep deprivation, hooding, and waterboarding for “fear of damaging liaison relationships” – an unmistakable reference to the CIA.

This is the message of the 115-page report by a panel led by Sir Peter Gibson, the former appeal court judge, into Britain’s involvement in the extra-judicial abduction of terror suspects who were flown in secret to prisons where they were ill treated. [Continue reading…]

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Poll: Majority of Americans say Afghan war has not been worth fighting

The Washington Post reports: Americans express near-record discontent and regret over the 13-year war in Afghanistan, during which 2,289 U.S. troops have died and more than 19,000 have been wounded, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Fully 66 percent of Americans say the battle, which began with nearly unanimous support, has not been worth fighting. A majority of respondents have doubted the war’s value in each Post-ABC poll since 2010, with current disapproval only one percentage point below July’s record mark. A record 50 percent now “strongly” believe the war is not worth its costs.

Despite the skepticism, a 55 percent majority favors keeping some U.S. forces in Afghanistan for anti-insurgency operations and training, while just over four in 10 prefer removing all troops. [Continue reading…]

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Hexamine may be the smoking gun implicating the Assad regime in the Ghouta chemical attacks

The New York Times reports: Buried in the annex of a United Nations inquiry into chemical weapons use in Syria is information that some outside analysts say could further implicate the government of Syria in the deadliest of the five confirmed attacks.

The investigators, who released their final report last week, said they had found a chemical called hexamethylenetetramine from environmental samples in Ghouta, the Damascus suburb that was the site of the deadliest attack, on Aug. 21. Hexamine, as the chemical is also known, can be used as an additive in the production of chemical weapons using sarin, the nerve agent, according to analysts, along with other commercial uses. The Syrian government happens to have a stockpile of hexamine; it is part of a list of chemicals scheduled to be destroyed as part of the deal to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons program.

United Nations investigators who conducted the inquiry pointedly steered clear of assigning blame for any of the attacks. The investigators have declined to explain Syria’s purpose in amassing the hexamine, a common commercial chemical.

But some experts who reviewed the panel’s final report said the presence of hexamine at Ghouta was in some ways akin to the police finding red lipstick in a woman’s purse that matches collar stains on a murder victim. While considered circumstantial evidence, it added to information in the panel’s interim report on Ghouta released in September, on the type of projectiles used that appeared to implicate the Syrian government.

The hexamine connection was pointed out last week by Dan Kaszeta, an independent security consultant and former officer in the United States Army’s Chemical Corps. He argued that the presence of hexamine pointed to the involvement of the government in the attack on Ghouta. [Continue reading…]

Among the commentators trying to make sense of this issue, Kaszeta is probably the only chemical weapons expert whose knowledge of sarin is not only technical but also includes direct experience in handling the material. He says he “spent weeks debriefing guys who used to make the stuff back in the 1950s.”

In his preliminary analysis of the findings presented by the UN, he writes:

Hexamine was discovered in a wide variety of the environmental samples. Hexamine also appears in the declared inventory of significant chemicals reported by the OPCW after disclosure and inspections subsequent to Syria’s accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention. It would have been informative if the UN and OPCW had explained why they considered hexamethylenetetramine (‘hexamine’) to be considered as a chemical of significance to this investigation. I do not think that hexamine’s normal uses as a heating fuel and component of some conventional explosives do not merit its inclusion as a chemical of concern by the OPCW, nor would it merit inclusion in the declared stockpile that needs to be destroyed.

However, based on numerous sources of information I have deduced the chemical warfare significance of hexamine, both in the numerous environmental samples and in the declared chemical inventory. Hexamine is apparently being used by the Syrian government as an additive to binary Sarin. The inspections subsequent to the UN/OPCW investigation covered by this report reveal that the Syrian concept of operations was to employ binary chemical weapons.

Binary Sarin weapon systems combine methylphosphonic difluoride, also known as DF, with isopropyl alcohol to form Sarin. The resulting mixture has a lot of residual acid in it, in the form of hydrogen fluoride (HF), which is highly destructive, possibly to the point of ruining the weapon system. The US Army’s cold war era Sarin program used isopropylamine to reduce this excess HF. Several chemists and engineers knowledgeable in the matter have confirmed to me that hexamine is useful as a Sarin additive for the same reason. One hexamine molecule can bind to as many as four HF molecules. This would explain the declared Syrian stockpile of 80 tons of hexamine. Interestingly, the same stockpile contains 40 tons of isopropylamine as well.

I consider the presence of hexamine both in the field samples and in the official stockpile of the Syrian government to be very damning evidence of government culpability in the Ghouta attacks. 7 weeks of research on this subject reveal no public domain evidence of hexamine being used in this way in other Sarin programs. The likelihood of both a Syrian government research and development program AND a non-state actor both coming up with the same innovation seems negligible to me. It seems improbable that some other actor wanting to plant evidence would know to freely spread hexamine around the target areas.

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