Category Archives: Lands

Why Vladimir Putin might want to interfere in the U.S. presidential elections

Fiona Hill writes: Whatever his personal preferences, … Putin cannot reasonably expect to influence the outcome of the US presidential election. The best he can hope for is to reduce the ability of whoever comes into the Oval Office to pursue policies that are detrimental to Putin’s and Russia’s interests.

Right now, Putin wants the US to remove sanctions imposed on Russia after its annexation of Crimea in March 2014. Perhaps even more importantly, Russia has parliamentary elections this September, and presidential elections again in 2018, when Putin is expected to run for a fourth term. The Kremlin does not want a repeat of the protests of 2011-’12, and certainly no pronouncements from the US about whether the elections are free and fair or whether Putin has a genuine popular mandate for his next presidency.

Against this backdrop, the information from the DNC files underscores for the Russian public, and the outside world, that US party politics is just as dirty as in Russia or anywhere else. The US looks a lot less credible as the moral authority on the conduct of elections.

Irrespective of whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton is elected, from Moscow’s perspective, at the end of this ruinous political campaign, the new US president will look as wounded as Putin did when he took office again in 2012. A US president who is elected amid controversy and recrimination, reviled by a large segment of the electorate, and mired in domestic crises will be hard-pressed to forge a coherent foreign policy and challenge Russia. [Continue reading…]

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DNC hacking puts Obama in tough spot with Russia

The Hill reports: Pressure is growing on the White House to respond to Russia’s apparent hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), placing President Obama in a delicate political position.

Evidence has mounted that the Russian government was behind the theft of tens of thousands of damaging internal emails from the DNC, leading prominent lawmakers from both sides of aisle to call for some form of response.

The ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence committees and the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee have all issued calls for Obama to “seek justice” for the alleged attack.

But should Obama publicly point the finger at the Kremlin, it could expose covert intelligence capabilities and damage already touchy discussions over Russia’s behavior in Syria and Ukraine, experts say.

That dynamic reflects one the central challenges the White House faces in responding to cyberattacks. Without any international rules of engagement, officials must weigh a response to each attack individually.

The FBI has opened an investigation into the hack, but because of the risks, experts say, the public is unlikely to ever know the results, even if it is able to prove Russia’s guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Obama has a slate of possible responses at his disposal, but each carries its own set of problems.

“They are really in between a rock and a hard place. Everything they do has a downside,” said Herb Lin, a senior research scholar who studies cyber policy and security at Stanford. [Continue reading…]

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Can we trust Julian Assange and WikiLeaks?

Alex Gibney writes: I’ve had my own run-ins with Mr. Assange. During the making of my 2013 film, “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,” I spent an agonizing six hours with him, when he was living in an English country house while out on bail. I was struck by how insistently he steered the conversation away from matters of principle to personal slights against him, and his plans for payback. He demanded personal “intel” on others I had interviewed, and dismissed questions about the organization by saying, “I am WikiLeaks” repeatedly. (Later, Mr. Assange and his followers attacked both me and my film.)

Even given that history, I believe that WikiLeaks was fully justified in publishing the D.N.C. emails, which provided proof that members of the D.N.C., in a hotly contested primary, discussed how to undermine the campaign of Bernie Sanders. They are clearly in the public interest.

As for Mr. Assange’s animus against Hillary Clinton — he has written that she “lacks judgment and will push the United States into endless, stupid wars which spread terrorism” — that is evidence of bias, but no more than that. After all, many news outlets are clearly, and sometimes proudly, biased.

We still don’t know who leaked the D.N.C. archive, but given Mr. Assange’s past association with Russia, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that it was a Russian agent or an intermediary. Mr. Assange insists this is a mere distraction from the issue of D.N.C. interference, but the answer is also in the public interest. We should all be concerned (although hardly surprised) if it is that easy for the Russians to break into the D.N.C. and possibly United States government networks. [Continue reading…]

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Syria’s civil war: Rebels push to take all of Aleppo

Al Jazeera reports: A Syrian rebel alliance has announced the start of a battle to recapture the whole of Aleppo, a day after it broke a government siege on the rebel-held half of the city.

The Army of Conquest, a coalition of rebel groups including Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly the al-Nusra Front), said in a statement on Sunday that it would “double the number of fighters for this next battle”.

“We announce the start of a new phase to liberate all of Aleppo,” the group said. “We will not rest until we raise the flag of the conquest over Aleppo’s citadel.”

Footage obtained by Al Jazeera showed rebel fighters at government checkpoints on Saturday after breaking the month-long siege on the rebel-held eastern neighbourhoods of the city in a major setback for the forces of President Bashar al-Assad. [Continue reading…]

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Israel seen as a ‘pariah state,’ says top strategy official

The Times of Israel reports: A top official engaged in the campaign to improve Israel’s international standing said Sunday the Jewish state is seen as an apartheid “pariah state” abroad, while expressing the hope that by 2025, no one will question Israel’s right to exist.

Director-General of the Strategic Affairs Ministry Sima Vaknin-Gil also told the Knesset Special Committee for the Transparency and Accessibility of Government Information that Israel is making progress against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the Haaretz newspaper reported.

“Today, among the countries of the world, Israel is a pariah state,” she said. “Our objective is that in 2025 nobody in the world will raise the question ‘does Israel have the right to exist?’” [Continue reading…]

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Syria’s rebels unite to break Assad’s siege of Aleppo

The Guardian reports: A Syrian military academy in the heart of Aleppo made for a bold, even reckless target for opposition forces trying to break a devastating siege, but the rebels gambled on a double advantage: surprise and suicide bombers.

Soon the rebels were sharing pictures of abandoned artillery and a smashed portrait of President Bashar al-Assad on Twitter, flaunted as triumphant proof that the army was routed and opposition forces were within a few hundred metres of their besieged comrades.

Hours later, the people of east Aleppo were dancing in the street, as rebels and activists confirmed that the month-long siege of the area had been broken. The fate of the opposition-held city was back in play. “Morale is very high now,” said activist and poet Mahmoud Rashwani, who had been living largely underground to avoid airstrikes, eking out his supplies of canned food.

The victory is a fragile one. The area is still a conflict zone and it may be some time before a secure corridor for food and medical supplies can be set up, and the regime has called in reinforcements.

“We expect revenge bombing by the regime, including, possibly, chemical weapons,” said Zaher Sahloul, a Syrian-American doctor who coordinates medical aid in the city.

Still, for the rebels, it has been a remarkable triumph against the odds. After months of retreat under pressure from government forces and Russian airstrikes, they have not only broken the siege, but overrun a key base the regime had used to enforce it and apparently taken possession of a large cache of weapons and artillery. [Continue reading…]

Middle East Eye reports: Fighting on the southern edges of Aleppo continued into Sunday morning, hours after rebels said they had broken a three-week government siege of the Syrian city.

Rebels spearheading the push to seize control of Syria’s most populous city released a statement on Sunday morning confirming that the fight was ongoing and pledging to protect civilians.

“Anyone who heads to rebel-held areas will be safe, and we will continue to protect the lives of all Syrians, no matter what your affiliation or background,” the branch of the Free Syrian Army active in Aleppo said.

The alliance of rebels said late on Saturday that they had opened a new route into Aleppo’s eastern neighbourhoods, home to some 250,000 people.

But the road, which passes through southern edges of the city, remains too dangerous for civilians to use, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday. [Continue reading…]

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Middle East bishops say U.S. has ‘moral responsibility’ to help Christians

Crux reports: Catholic leaders in the Middle East say that the United Sates has the “moral responsibility” to help stop the savagery against Christians in the region, and to provide assistance to help them stay in the region, because it was the U.S. that unleashed the chaos in the first place.

“They were the ones who invaded [Iraq] in 2003 and changed the whole region, and they had the moral responsibility to fix the situation before leaving the country,” said the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Erbil, Iraq, Bashar Matti Warda.

Jean-Clément Jeanbart, Greek Melkite Archbishop of Aleppo, the “martyred city” of Syria, said that the U.S. has a two-fold responsibility. On the one hand, he asked the U.S. government to ensure that the aid being sent to the region is also distributed among Christians, which, he said, means entrusting a portion of it to the churches.

As the system is set up, he said, all the aid goes to the refugee camps. Yet Christians see their lives at risk there, so they generally choose to seek shelter at churches and convents instead.

“If the help went to the churches, it wouldn’t mean that they’re giving special rights to Christians, but that they’re actually helping everyone,”Jeanbart said at a press conference held on Wednesday during the Knights of Columbus’s 134th Supreme Convention, which took place in Toronto, Canada.

The many Christian churches in the region – in Syria, there are six different Catholic rites alone – fund schools, hospitals, and provide shelter to all refugees, without distinguishing between Muslims, Yazidis or Christians, he said. [Continue reading…]

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What’s really behind Israel’s attack on Christian charity World Vision?

Ali Abunimah writes: Israel grabbed global headlines on Thursday with sensational allegations that tens of millions of dollars from the Christian relief and advocacy organization World Vision had been diverted to the military wing of the resistance group Hamas in Gaza.

But a day later, the Israeli claims look more than ever like sloppy propaganda. A World Vision official says Israel’s sums don’t add up and it has also emerged that a Mossad-linked Israeli group has been stoking allegations against the charity for years.

An Israeli general has said that Israel is relying on a “confession” extracted by an intelligence agency which is notorious for using torture.

Israel has also instructed its diplomats to smear World Vision, especially among Christian communities around the world.

But if Israel’s intention was to damage international humanitarian efforts in Gaza, it can chalk up a success, at least for now. [Continue reading…]

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Iran says it executed nuclear scientist for spying

The Washington Post reports: Iran has executed a nuclear scientist who mysteriously turned up in the United States six years ago and returned to Tehran a few months later, authorities said Sunday, in the first official confirmation of the researcher’s fate since he arrived back in his homeland.

Iranian officials offered no details about the charges against Shahram Amiri, whose case has left unanswered questions about whether he voluntarily defected to the United States or — as he claimed — was abducted by agents while on a religious pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in 2009.

Amiri surfaced in 2010 in videos posted online from an undisclosed location in the United States. Later that year, he arrived unannounced at the Iranian interests section at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington and demanded to be sent home. [Continue reading…]

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Against all odds: #TeamRefugees at Rio

The Guardian reports: For the first time in Olympic history, 10 athletes will compete at Rio 2016 for the Refugee Olympic Team in a move designed to bring global attention to the magnitude of the worldwide refugee crisis.

After the International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, announced in March that a team would be selected, 43 were identified as candidates and 10, displaced from South Sudan, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, have since been picked in three sports – athletics, swimming and judo. The athletes will march with the Olympic flag immediately before host nation Brazil at Friday’s opening ceremony.

Bach said: “These refugees have no home, no team, no flag, no national anthem. We will offer them a home in the Olympic Village together with all the athletes of the world. The Olympic anthem will be played in their honour and the Olympic flag will lead them into the Olympic Stadium.

“This will be a symbol of hope for all the refugees in our world, and will make the world better aware of the magnitude of this crisis. It is also a signal to the international community that refugees are our fellow human beings and are an enrichment to society. These refugee athletes will show the world that, despite the unimaginable tragedies they have faced, anyone can contribute to society through their talent, skills and strength of the human spirit.” [Continue reading…]

UNHCR – The UN Refugee Agency: Each day war forces thousands of families to flee their homes. People like you, people like me.

To escape the violence, they leave everything behind – everything except their hopes and dreams for a safer future. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency believes that all refugees deserve to live in safety.

Add your name to the #WithRefugees petition to send a clear message to governments that they must act with solidarity and shared responsibility.

 

 

 

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For Putin, disinformation is power

Arkady Ostrovsky writes: Fifteen years ago, a few months into his presidency, Vladimir V. Putin told Larry King on CNN that his previous job as a K.G.B. officer had been like that of a journalist. “They have the same purpose of gathering information, synthesizing it and presenting it for the consumption of decision makers,” he said. Since then, he has excelled at using the media to consolidate power inside Russia and, increasingly, to wage an information war against the West.

So the apparent hacking by Russian security services of the Democratic National Committee emails, followed by their publication by WikiLeaks, should come as no great surprise to Americans. It is only the latest example of how Mr. Putin uses information as a weapon. And the Kremlin has cultivated ties with WikiLeaks for years.

It has also used disinformation in its annexation of Crimea and in its war in Ukraine, launched cyberattacks on Finland and the Baltic States, and planted hoax stories in Germany to embarrass Angela Merkel. During the Cold War, the Kremlin interfered in American politics for decades. The K.G.B.’s so-called active measures — subversion, media manipulations, forgery and the financing of some “peace” organizations — lay at the heart of Soviet intelligence.

Then as now, Russia exploited real grievances in the West — discontent with the war in Vietnam and racial tensions in the 1960s; anxiety and fear of Muslim immigrants today. Nevertheless, Mr. Putin’s support of the likes of Donald Trump in America, Brexiters in Britain or the right-wing Marine Le Pen in France does not mean they are his creations. [Continue reading…]

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How Russia dominates your Twitter feed to promote lies (and, Trump, too)

The Daily Beast reports: “Ladies and Gentlemen, We have a situation in #Turkey #Incirlik” the cry went out on Twitter last Saturday night, as news spread of the Turkish forces surrounding the U.S. airbase in Incirlik.

Thousands of armed police had reportedly surrounded the airbase amid swirling rumors of another coup attempt, according to stories tweeted within two minutes of each other on RT.com and Sputnik, the two biggest Russian state-controlled media organizations publishing in English. The stories were instantly picked up by a popular online aggregator of breaking news and prompted hours-long storm of activity from a small, vocal circle of users.

In English, the tweets soon grouped into certain patterns of similar (and sometimes identical) content. The first were panicky expressions of concern about nuclear weapons allegedly stored at Incirlik: [Continue reading…]

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In Aleppo, the West has once again failed to prevent what it vowed to stop

Julian Reichelt writes: Over the past four years, the Aleppo I fell in love with has ceased to exist, its slow and painful four-year-long death now dramatically accelerated by Russian‎ smart bombs and Syrian regime dumb bombs.

If Aleppo were a person, this would be the point where we would pray for a swift end to their suffering. But Aleppo isn’t only one person, it’s a besieged town of 300,000, a disgrace to the conscience of the civilized world. Doctors are working in conditions resembling a slaughterhouse more than a hospital, but still saving lives. Children are burning tires to cloud the skies with smoke and obstruct the vision of Putin’s relentless jets and their soulless pilots. While they — eight-year-old kids — stand up to Putin’s air force and their crimes against humanity, the Western world — once again — has done nothing.

“We had gotten used to hell on earth,” one friend inside the city texted me two days ago. “Now they’re even bombing our hell to pieces.”

In the past days, while bombs were raining on the ruins of Aleppo, I have called, emailed or otherwise contacted every person in politics I know to voice not my concern, as our diplomats would say, but my outrage over what is happening — or, more accurately, what is not happening. [Continue reading…]

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How hackers could destroy election day

Shane Harris writes: Stealing and leaking emails from the Democratic National Committee could be just the start. Hacking the presidential election itself could be next, a bipartisan group of former intelligence and security officials recently warned. Whoever was behind the DNC hack also could target voting machines and the systems for tabulating votes, which are dangerously insecure.

“Election officials at every level of government should take this lesson to heart: our electoral process could be a target for reckless foreign governments and terrorist groups,” wrote 31 members of the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group, which includes a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a former secretary of Homeland Security.

That echoes warnings computer security experts have been sounding for more than a decade: that the system for casting and counting votes in this country is also ripe for mischief. [Continue reading…]

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Britain fails to understand the nature of globalisation at its peril

By Jennifer Johns, University of Liverpool

There remains great uncertainty in the aftermath of the UK vote to leave the European Union. Few seem to have a plan for what Brexit will look like and how the UK’s relationship with the outside world will take shape.

But while the desire for sovereignty and to “take back control” were top of many voters’ list of reasons to vote to leave, the fact that we live in a globalised world where economies and trade supersede national boundaries cannot be ignored.

Much of the confusion about how Brexit will affect the British economy has resulted from the inability of those for and against it to acknowledge the realities of the position of the UK in the contemporary global economy. This failure to understand the realities of globalisation is partly why there is such confusion about how to deliver the kind of post-Brexit UK demanded by those who voted leave. But regaining national sovereignty is extremely difficult, if not impossible, in today’s global economy.

The interconnected world

The recent global financial crisis should have sent a powerful message. The degree of interconnection between places in the global economy has reached unprecedented levels and attempts to “unpick” these interconnections are highly problematic.

Globalisation is complex. It is no longer a case of “us” and “them”. Capital, goods and services flow within, between and across national borders – and the flow is uneven. It is often directed through key cities. So when we talk about flows of foreign direct investment between the UK and Germany, we are actually discussing flows of people and money between cities such as London and Berlin.

In fact, cities are the key drivers in trade. It is no surprise therefore that there were significantly higher votes to remain in the EU in cities such as London and Manchester. This is because these cities are points in the global economy through which trade, services and people flow. It is in these locations that we can most easily see the benefits of interconnection with cities in the EU and beyond.

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Syria: UN considers role in Russia’s ‘deeply flawed’ humanitarian corridors plan

The Guardian reports: The United Nations is considering overseeing a Russian proposal to create humanitarian corridors for civilians who wish to leave besieged Aleppo, despite strong opposition from aid organisations.

Confidential documents seen by the Guardian detailing internal UN deliberations on the Kremlin’s proposal, described as “deeply flawed” by humanitarian agencies, reveal the contours of a debate inside an organisation that wants to provide assistance to suffering civilians in Aleppo but fears being seen as an accomplice in an onslaught that has left a quarter of a million civilians under siege.

A UN document outlining its position on the humanitarian corridors proposal says it will only implement the overseeing initiative if the warring sides agree to a ceasefire or pause in fighting. [Continue reading…]

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American trained and armed Syrian rebels find Russian offers of support enticing

Michael Weiss writes: The Russian government is trying to poach Syrian rebels trained and equipped by the United States for the war against ISIS, according to the political leader of a prominent Pentagon-backed brigade in Aleppo — and the rebels are strongly considering Russia’s offer.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Mustafa Sejry of the Liwa al-Mu’tasim Brigade said that he met personally with a Moscow representative the Syrian-Turkish border 10 days ago and was offered “unlimited amounts of weaponry and close air support” to fight both ISIS and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, the rebranded al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, in exchange for the Mu’tasim Brigade’s transfer of loyalties from Washington to Moscow.

Sejry clearly wants to use the offer to leverage more and better support from the Americans if he can, but that may not be forthcoming. (The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command did not respond to requests for comment from The Daily Beast.) And the Russians, meanwhile, are whispering a lot of sweet nothings in the rebels’ ears. [Continue reading…]

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Putin biographer, Masha Gessen, talks about Russia, Trump and WikiLeaks

Patt Morrison spoke to Masha Gessen, a Russian American journalist and author of a critical biography of Vladimir Putin, The Man Without a Face, the Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin:

Patt Morrison: Software analysts say Russian intelligence or Russian intelligence-related somebodies hacked Democratic emails. What’s going on?

Masha Gessen: Russia is a disruptive force on the world stage, and that’s actually what it aims to be. And I think this is where a very important distinction comes in that people tend to miss:

There is no doubt that various Russian intelligence services, and in this particular case we’re talking about two different intelligence services that apparently weren’t aware of each other while they were hacking the Democratic National Committee’s emails.

Russian intelligence services hack what they can and aim to create as much havoc, both in Western Europe and in the United States, especially around election time.

That’s quite different from saying, as some people have said, “Oh, they’re trying to throw the election to [Donald] Trump.” I don’t think that’s what’s going on.

It actually doesn’t work out chronologically either. But they are trying to cause trouble.

Would this hacking be meant to be directed at just destabilizing, just causing trouble, or is there a goal, an outcome that they might have in mind?

That’s the really important question. I don’t think there’s a goal that they have in mind. And there are several things that point in that direction. One is that Russia doesn’t usually have a goal in mind. It’s that the Putin government and Putin himself are not known for creating strategy. What they are known for is creating havoc.

The other thing is that talk of the chronology: Both of these actual hacking attacks by the two different agencies occurred in 2015, long before — one occurred earlier — long before it was even clear that Trump had a shot at the nomination. I think the goal was very much just to create trouble, which is what Russia is known for.

The other thing is, of course, that Putin hates Hillary Clinton. This is very personal for him. He has accused Hillary Clinton personally of having inspired and funded the protests in Russia in 2011, 2012. So imagining that Putin wants to do anything possible to prevent the election of Hillary Clinton, that is easy to imagine. [Continue reading…]

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