Category Archives: Lands

UN announces 72-hour ceasefire in Yemen starting Thursday

Middle East Eye reports: A 72-hour ceasefire in Yemen will go into effect starting Thursday, the United Nations announced on Monday.

A cessation of hostilities that first went into effect in April “will re-enter into force at 23:59 Yemen time on 19 October 2016, for an initial period of 72 hours, subject to renewal,” the UN’s special envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, said in a statement.

The ceasefire opens the door for negotiations to find a political solution to the conflict. April’s truce was followed by repeated rounds of talks in Kuwait between the warring sides, which did not come to fruition.

Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi had agreed to the truce earlier in the day. [Continue reading…]

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UK security agencies unlawfully collected data for 17 years, court rules

The Guardian reports: British security agencies have secretly and unlawfully collected massive volumes of confidential personal data, including financial information, on citizens for more than a decade, senior judges have ruled.

The investigatory powers tribunal, which is the only court that hears complaints against MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, said the security services operated an illegal regime to collect vast amounts of communications data, tracking individual phone and web use and other confidential personal information, without adequate safeguards or supervision for 17 years.

Privacy campaigners described the ruling as “one of the most significant indictments of the secret use of the government’s mass surveillance powers” since Edward Snowden first began exposing the extent of British and American state digital surveillance of citizens in 2013.

The tribunal said the regime governing the collection of bulk communications data (BCD) – the who, where, when and what of personal phone and web communications – failed to comply with article 8 protecting the right to privacy of the European convention of human rights (ECHR) between 1998, when it started, and 4 November 2015, when it was made public. [Continue reading…]

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Putin’s hope to ignite a Eurasia-style protest in the United States

Jackson Diehl writes: In the fall of 2004 Vladi­mir Putin suffered a blow he has never forgotten. The fraudulent election of a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian president, which Putin had directly and brazenly engineered, was overturned by a massive popular uprising. What came to be known as the “Orange Revolution” created a model for resistance to rigged elections in autocracies across Eurasia — in Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Azerbaijan and, in 2012, Russia itself.

Most of the rebellions didn’t succeed. But Putin developed an obsession with “color revolutions,” which he is convinced are neither spontaneous nor locally organized, but orchestrated by the United States — and in the case of the Moscow protests four years ago, by Hillary Clinton herself.

That’s the context in which Russia’s intervention in the 2016 U.S. presidential election must be understood. Putin is trying to deliver to the American political elite what he believes is a dose of its own medicine. He is attempting to ignite — with the help, unwitting or otherwise, of Donald Trump — a U.S. color revolution.

Let’s look at the way those revolts unfolded. In every case, they pitted an outsider political movement against an entrenched elite willing to employ fraud and force to remain in power. The outsiders mobilized their followers to collect evidence of rigging on election day and, when they could, conducted exit polls and “quick counts” to obtain vote totals they could contrast with official results. They disseminated their findings through satellite channels and other foreign media. When the inevitable victory of the ruling party was announced, they called their followers to the streets for mass protests they hoped would cause the regime to crumble — or at least discredit its phony election triumph.

Of course, Trump’s populist campaign is no more comparable to the pro-democracy insurgencies in formerly Soviet lands such as Ukraine and Belarus than Clinton’s administration-in-waiting is to the Putin regime. But Putin’s audacious goal is to create the illusion that they are. “He’s trying to establish that our system is just as bad, just as corrupt, as his,” says Brian Whitmore, a senior editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. [Continue reading…]

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Russia is building fallout shelters to prepare for a potential nuclear strike

Anna Nemtsova writes: Managers of the Zenit Arena, a giant half-built stadium in St. Petersburg, received an official letter from the Ministry of Emergency Situations last week demanding that they immediately create shelter facilities for wartime. The stadium, under construction for the upcoming World Cup 2018, is located outside of the city boundaries, the letter said, but in case of nuclear attack it is in the potential “zone of war destruction and radiation fallout.“

The last time Russians heard authorities talk like this about a potential mobilization for a nuclear strike was 20 years ago, and it all seemed highly improbable. Now, it appears, the Kremlin is not joking. Up to 40 million people participated in the recent civil defense exercises all across the country, learning about how to hide and where exactly to run to in case of a nuclear war.

But whether the motive behind this is self-defense, an implied threat to the West, a means to mobilize and control public opinion, or all of the above, is not entirely clear. [Continue reading…]

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A million refugees could make a Mosul victory look like defeat

The Daily Beast reports: In a shabby school building that has ceased to be a place of learning, families crowd the spaces that are shielded from the intense autumn sun. Women sit on pieces of cardboard to avoid the dirty floors of the school’s courtyard, corridors, and classrooms. Their children are clustered around them.

With little more than the clothes on their bodies, these families are recent arrivals at the Debaga displacement camp in Kurdish administered northern Iraq. They’ve walked through the dark of the night and the heat of the day to escape the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

These men, women, and children have staggered through the arid plains of Nineveh province, arriving here with fear and exhaustion etched on their faces. And every day more civilians seep through the front lines, a trickle expected to turn into a flood as Iraqi forces begin their assault on Mosul, the final ISIS stronghold in Iraq.

More than 100,000 people have fled the crumbling caliphate in the run-up to the battle, which could begin as soon as mid-October, and of those, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council, 62,000 fled Mosul and its environs. [Continue reading…]

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Is protecting Mosul minorities an excuse for partition?

The New York Times reports: Kurdish forces on Monday morning began advancing on a string of villages east of Mosul, the start of a long-awaited campaign to reclaim Iraq’s second-largest city from the Islamic State, which seized it more than two years ago, officials said.

About 4,000 Kurdish pesh merga troops are involved in the operation to retake 10 villages, the opening phase of a battle that could take weeks or months and could involve nearly 30,000 Iraqi and Kurdish troops, with American warplanes providing air support. Iraqi counterterrorism forces, which work closely with American Special Operations commandos in Iraq, are also expected to join the Kurdish forces in the coming days. [Continue reading…]

Beverley Milton-Edwards writes: As the military battle over ISIL-controlled Mosul and Nineveh has begun, questions over the future of this vital province of Iraq are flowing thick and fast.

While there is confidence that the new US-supported coalition can defeat ISIL (also known as ISIS), there are concerns that each faction holds contesting views about what comes after.

It is becoming apparent, for example, that a number of elements have well-vested interests in partitioning the province into a series of six to eight ethnic or sectarian cantons with independent rights and autonomy from Haider al-Abadi’s government in Baghdad.

Back in Washington and Congress there is some support for such solutions if they are seen as a way of protecting the rights of religious minorities such as Yazidis, Assyrians, and Chaldeans who have been mercilessly persecuted and ethnically cleansed from their ancient homelands by a genocidal ISIL.

A note of caution should be sounded at this point as such arrangements, while appearing attractive in the abstract, could make matters worse, not better. Partition can deepen schisms in fragile states.

While power-sharing in Mosul before ISIL took over in 2014 was far from perfect, it did represent forms of power-sharing which accommodated and balanced minority interests. The 2013 governorate elections returned a coalition of parties from the Kurdish KDP and PUK, Atheel al-Nujaifi’s tribal, Sunni-dominated al-Hadba coalition, and other tribal, Shabak, Yazidi, Chaldean, and nationalist parties, reflecting the possibilities of representation without territorial carve-ups. [Continue reading…]

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Syria talks conclude with agreement to carry on talking

The Washington Post reports: Talks in Switzerland on stemming the bloodshed in Syria resulted in no breakthrough Saturday, but the discussions did yield a decision to keep seeking ways to achieve a truce and resume negotiations.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who called the meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and diplomats from seven Middle Eastern countries, characterized the gathering that lasted more than four hours as a brainstorming session that brought some new ideas to the table. However, he declined to specify what those ideas were.

No date was set for another meeting of the foreign ministers who took part, but their staffs are expected to continue talking together about possible approaches. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS suffers major symbolic defeat with loss of Dabiq

Christian Science Monitor reports: The Islamic State has been dealt a major symbolic blow in the battle for its existence.

Turkish-backed rebels, reportedly supported by United States special forces, seized the Syrian town of Dabiq Sunday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. According to Islamic prophecies central to the Islamic State’s radical message, Dabiq is the site of an end-of-days battle that ushers in the apocalypse.

Now, having lost control of the town, the Islamic State must scramble to change a narrative that has been a core part of its appeal.

In the short term, the Islamic State can put a positive spin on losing the town of 3,500, which has little strategic value otherwise. Simply by bringing forces and foreign armies to Dabiq, the Islamic State can claim an ideological victory.

“No matter how the battle goes, the fact that they are fighting there is a justification that their entire reason for existence is correct and is fulfilling the words of the prophet,” says Malcolm Nance, terrorism expert and author of two books on the Islamic State. “In the near-term, they can spin this to boost the morale in Raqqa and Mosul and to boost recruitment.”

But longer-term, the group will struggle to reconcile the loss of Dabiq with nearly a decade-old narrative dating back to the group’s origins as Al Qaeda in Iraq.

“No matter how they try to spin it, the optics of a defeat in Dabiq are bad for ISIS,” says Mathew Lester, analyst at the Soufan Group, a New York-based strategic security firm. [Continue reading…]

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Rise of Saudi prince shatters decades of royal tradition

The New York Times reports: He has slashed the state budget, frozen government contracts and reduced the pay of civil employees, all part of drastic austerity measures as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is buffeted by low oil prices.

But last year, Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince, saw a yacht he couldn’t resist.

While vacationing in the south of France, Prince bin Salman spotted a 440-foot yacht floating off the coast. He dispatched an aide to buy the ship, the Serene, which was owned by Yuri Shefler, a Russian vodka tycoon. The deal was done within hours, at a price of approximately 500 million euros (roughly $550 million today), according to an associate of Mr. Shefler and a Saudi close to the royal family. The Russian moved off the yacht the same day.

It is the paradox of the brash, 31-year-old Prince bin Salman: a man who is trying to overturn tradition, reinvent the economy and consolidate power — while holding tight to his royal privilege. In less than two years, he has emerged as the most dynamic royal in the Arab world’s wealthiest nation, setting up a potential rivalry for the throne.

He has a hand in nearly all elements of Saudi policy — from a war in Yemen that has cost the kingdom billions of dollars and led to international criticism over civilian deaths, to a push domestically to restrain Saudi Arabia’s free-spending habits and to break its “addiction” to oil. He has begun to loosen social restrictions that grate on young people.

The rise of Prince bin Salman has shattered decades of tradition in the royal family, where respect for seniority and power-sharing among branches are time-honored traditions. Never before in Saudi history has so much power been wielded by the deputy crown prince, who is second in line to the throne. That centralization of authority has angered many of his relatives. [Continue reading…]

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In Somalia, U.S. escalates a shadow war

The New York Times reports: The Obama administration has intensified a clandestine war in Somalia over the past year, using Special Operations troops, airstrikes, private contractors and African allies in an escalating campaign against Islamist militants in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation.

Hundreds of American troops now rotate through makeshift bases in Somalia, the largest military presence since the United States pulled out of the country after the “Black Hawk Down” battle in 1993.

The Somalia campaign, as it is described by American and African officials and international monitors of the Somali conflict, is partly designed to avoid repeating that debacle, which led to the deaths of 18 American soldiers. But it carries enormous risks — including more American casualties, botched airstrikes that kill civilians and the potential for the United States to be drawn even more deeply into a troubled country that so far has stymied all efforts to fix it.

The Somalia campaign is a blueprint for warfare that President Obama has embraced and will pass along to his successor. It is a model the United States now employs across the Middle East and North Africa — from Syria to Libya — despite the president’s stated aversion to American “boots on the ground” in the world’s war zones. This year alone, the United States has carried out airstrikes in seven countries and conducted Special Operations missions in many more. [Continue reading…]

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Offshore secrets of Brexit backer Arron Banks revealed in Panama Papers

The Guardian reports: The network of offshore companies linked to the man who financed Britain’s campaign to quit the European Union has been revealed in previously unpublished documents from the Panama Papers.

The British Virgin Islands and Gibraltar emerge as key locations in the financial affairs of Arron Banks, who spent £7.5m funding Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU campaign group ahead of the Brexit referendum on 23 June. New details of Banks’s financial dealings are contained in the massive leaked database of the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca, which has revealed the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes.

Banks is a close friend of the Ukip leader, revealing last month that the two men went “skinny-dipping” in Bournemouth to celebrate Farage’s short-lived retirement from heading the party. Banks has also been at Farage’s side in America, where he has been supporting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. [Continue reading…]

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America is having another Anita Hill moment

Dahlia Lithwick writes: This past Tuesday marked the 25th anniversary of Anita Hill’s devastating Senate testimony accusing then–Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of workplace sexual harassment. In light of the most recent accusations against Donald Trump, it’s hard to miss the almost perfect synchronicity between these two October explosions of gender awareness. In a deeply personal and visceral way, America is having another Anita Hill moment.

In one sense it’s depressing: It’s been 25 years, and yet here we are, still talking about whether a man who allegedly treats women like lifelong party favors, should perhaps be disqualified from our highest governmental positions. But to despair that it’s gender Groundhog Day in America is to fundamentally miss the point: A lot has changed since October 1991, and American women are reaping the benefits of having gone through this looking glass once before. The nearly universal and instantaneous outrage at Trump’s comments and behavior — from the press, from GOP leaders, from really everyone outside of the Breitbart bubble? We have Anita Hill to thank for that.

It’s almost impossible for women like me, who came of age during the Thomas Senate battle, to miss the parallels between the two episodes. In both cases, powerful men allegedly mistreated and shamed women with less power than they had. In both cases these victims came forth reluctantly, and sometimes years later. In both instances, supporters of the man accused of misconduct argued that it was “just words,” or that it was all “years ago,” or that he was merely joking, or that it never happened at all. They argue that if the subordinate was soooo offended, why did she wait to complain? [Continue reading…]

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The strange sympathy of the Far Left for Putin

Gershom Gorenberg writes: Jeremy Corbyn, the grim, controversial, and recently re-elected leader of Britain’s Labour Party, rejects the idea of protesting outside Russia’s embassy in London against that country’s brutal bombing of Syria. “The focus on Russian atrocities or Syrian army atrocities,” said a Corbyn aide this week, distracts attention from “very large scale civilian casualties as a result of the U.S.-led coalition bombing.”

In case this is a bit obtuse, let’s go over to Britain’s Stop the War coalition, which Corbyn chaired before he was elected Labour leader. In a radio interview, current vice-chairman Chris Nineham said that protesting Russian atrocities would increase “hysteria and jingoism.” The way to end the Syria conflict, he said, was to “oppose the West.”

In another words, when we say we’re against war, we don’t mean Vladimir Putin’s war. We mean war waged by Western imperialists.

To fill in some dots: The idea of protesting outside Russian embassies, not just in London but around the world, reportedly came from Labour MP Ann Clwyd. It’s true that Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson endorsed the proposal. But ignoring Russian war crimes because Johnson opposes them is a bit like ignoring Donald Trump’s misogyny because some Republicans also object to it.

As for the equation of Russian and coalition actions, The Guardian did a fact-check with the monitoring group Airwars. The civilian death rate from Russian attacks, said the group’s director, “probably outpaces the coalition by a rate of eight to one.” The coalition tries to limit civilian deaths; the Russians deliberately target civilians, he said.

Predictably, lots of people in the riven Labour Party are outraged by Corbyn’s stance. It’s only the latest instance of Corbyn’s fossilized and one-dimensional anti-imperialism being an embarrassment for the left. In the United States, Putin’s most prominent fan is the embarrassment of the right.

Still, Corbyn has his American counterparts — starting with Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Until a few days ago, Stein had a statement on her website saying that the United States should end any military role in Syria, impose an arms embargo, and work “with Syria, Russia, and Iran to restore all of Syria to control by the government.” The “anti-war” candidate’s stance, in other words, was to let the war crimes continue until the Assad regime and its patrons massacre their way to victory. [Continue reading…]

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If they really wanted to Stop the War in Syria, they’d target Russia

Jonathan Freedland writes: Pity the luckless children of Aleppo. If only the bombs raining down on them, killing their parents, maiming their friends, destroying their hospitals – if only those bombs were British or, better still, American.

Then the streets of London would be jammed with protestors demanding an end to their agony. Trafalgar Square would ring loud with speeches from Tariq Ali, Ken Loach and Monsignor Bruce Kent. Whitehall would be a sea of placards, insisting that war crimes were being committed and that these crimes were Not in Our Name. Grosvenor Square would be packed with noisy protestors outside the US embassy, urging that Barack Obama be put on trial in The Hague. The protestors would wear Theresa May masks and paint their hands red. And they would be doing it all because, they’d say, they could not bear to see another child killed in Aleppo.

But that is not the good fortune of the luckless children of that benighted city. Their fate is to be terrorised by the wrong kind of bombs, the ones dropped by Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin. As such, they do not qualify for the activist sympathy of the movement that calls itself the Stop the War Coalition. Indeed, it’s deputy chair, Chris Nineham, told the Today programme that his organisation would not be organising or joining any protests outside the Russian embassy because that would merely fuel the “hysteria and the jingoism” currently being whipped up against Moscow. Stop the War would instead, explained Nineham in a moment of refreshing candour, be devoting its energies to its prime goal – “opposing the west”. [Continue reading…]

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Three Kansas men calling themselves ‘Crusaders’ charged in terror plot targeting Muslim immigrants

The Washington Post reports: Three Kansas men were accused of plotting a bomb attack targeting an apartment complex home to a mosque and many Muslim immigrants from Somalia, authorities said Friday.

Curtis Allen, Gavin Wright and Patrick Eugene Stein face federal charges of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, the Department of Justice announced Friday.

“These charges are based on eight months of investigation by the FBI that is alleged to have taken the investigators deep into a hidden culture of hatred and violence,” Acting U.S. Attorney Tom Beall said in a statement. “Many Kansans may find it as startling as I do that such things could happen here.”

According to the complaint, the investigation was prompted by a paid confidential informant who had attended meetings with a group of individuals calling themselves “the Crusaders,” and heard plans discussed plots to attack Muslims, whom they called “cockroaches.” [Continue reading…]

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From liberal beacon to a prop for Trump: What has happened to WikiLeaks?

The Guardian reports: How did WikiLeaks go from darling of the liberal left and scourge of American imperialism to apparent tool of Donald Trump’s divisive, incendiary presidential campaign?

Thursday brought another WikiLeaks dump of nearly 2,000 emails hacked from the Hillary Clinton campaign, allegedly by Russians. As usual, they were inside-the-beltway gossip rather than game-changing: the campaign tried to push back the Illinois primary, believing it would make life harder for moderate Republicans.

That has not stopped Trump trying to make hay from the leaked emails and deflect attention from allegations of sexual harassment against him. “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks,” he tweeted on Wednesday. “So dishonest! Rigged system!”

Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street banks were apparently revealed in an email dump last Friday, just minutes after the release of a video in which Trump was caught boasting about groping women – timing that many felt was more than just chance. This follows a hack in July designed to embarrass Clinton on the eve of the Democratic National Convention.

Robert Mackey of The Intercept website wrote in August: “The WikiLeaks Twitter feed has started to look more like the stream of an opposition research firm working mainly to undermine Hillary Clinton than the updates of a non-partisan platform for whistleblowers.”

The seeming alliance between Trump and WikiLeaks is an astonishing role reversal. [Continue reading…]

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Berlin, 1945; Grozny, 2000; Aleppo, 2016

 

Michael Kimmelman writes: The destruction is so complete that it obliterates even a sense of time. At a glance, the video could show Berlin in 1945 or Grozny, 2000. Mass death erases all distinctions.

The place is Aleppo, Syria, the al-Mashhad district, or what remains of it after recent attacks by Syrian government forces and their Russian allies. Toppled rooftop satellite dishes, choked by plaster dust, resemble wilted flowers. Figures move through the pulverized rubble but are hard to make out.

“Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?” Harry Lime asked on the Ferris wheel in “The Third Man,” the classic noir film set in postwar Vienna. This is drone footage, after all, shot from the same detached, superior perspective of the bombers who committed this atrocity in the name of fighting non-jihadist rebels. The video was made to document the devastation and bear witness, but it inevitably reduces people on the streets to Lime’s dots. [Continue reading…]

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Aleppo must be ‘cleaned,’ declares Assad, amid outcry over bloody siege

The Guardian reports: Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, has spoken of “cleaning” the besieged city of Aleppo, where a quarter of a million people are caught under heavy bombardment by his government’s forces, and using it as a “springboard” for winning the country’s war.

With Britain leading international outcry over the regime’s campaign against rebels in Aleppo and Russia’s backing for it, Assad declared that victory in the strategic city would allow the Syrian army to liberate other areas of the country from “terrorists”.

Speaking to Russia’s Komsomolskaya Pravda, Assad said Aleppo was effectively no longer Syria’s industrial capital but taking back the city would provide important political and strategic gains for his regime.

“It’s going to be the springboard, as a big city, to move to other areas, to liberate other areas from the terrorists. This is the importance of Aleppo now,” Assad said.

“You have to keep cleaning this area and to push the terrorists to Turkey to go back to where they come from, or to kill them. There’s no other option. But Aleppo is going to be a very important springboard to do this move.” [Continue reading…]

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