Category Archives: News

An ISIS plot to blow up Notre Dame cathedral — and rule the world?

Michael Weiss writes: Abu Muhammed al-Adnani’s last communique as ISIS’s spokesman and overseer of international operations came in late May of this year. Anticipating the further loss of cities and villages, he cautioned the faithful not to despair and again emphasized the exportation of holy war as an obligation of all Muslims, a motif that has been serially mischaracterized in the media as a shift or pivot in ISIS’s long-term strategy.

In reality, it is the culmination of a long-held fever-dream of world domination, one that began in the late 1990s and was intermittently implemented, mainly in Mesopotamia and the Levant, under the guidance of the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founding father of ISIS’s first incarnation, al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Zarqawi’s expansionism was ultimately apocalyptic: he was fond of citing a hadith, or saying attributable to the Prophet Muhammed, that foretold the inevitable clash between the Armies of Rome and the Armies of Islam in a scruffy little town in the Syrian province of Aleppo known as Dabiq, now also the name of ISIS’s two year-old propaganda magazine. “The spark has been lit here in Iraq,” Zarqawi said, in one of his own sayings that has furnished the epigraph of every issue of this grim periodical, “and its heat will continue to intensify — by Allah’s permission — until it burns the crusader armies in Dabiq.” (ISIS currently holds Dabiq, although in the coming weeks it will likely lose it either to American-backed Kurdish guerrillas or Turkish-backed Arabs rebels, assuming they’re not too busy fighting each other.)

Lately, Zarqawi’s fever-dream has been reified as a declaration of total war against disbelievers wherever they may be. Does this mean, in the near term, that ISIS envisages driving Abrams tanks and Humvees down Pennsylvania Avenue or the Champs-Élysées the way it drove them into Mosul two years ago? No. It means sowing mayhem and destruction in the Land of Disbelievers and watching these societies cannibalize themselves in advance of the future Islamic conquest. The sequence of war was written up centuries ago. [Continue reading…]

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Trump turns defense hawk

Politico reports: For months, Donald Trump has blasted Congress for excessive defense spending, calling for buying fewer of the newest fighter jets and scaling back weapons purchases pushed by “special interests.”

But on Wednesday, he was singing from the traditional GOP national security hymnal, calling for billions of additional dollars for a bigger Army and Marine Corps, missile defense systems and more ships and fighter jets. He also advocated an end to mandatory budget caps — the same ones he used to criticize as too loose.

It is the latest sign that a candidate who has alienated many bedrock Republican voters is trying to steer toward a more mainstream message that can resonate with party stalwarts and independent voters concerned about an erosion of American security and credibility on the world stage.

While many of Trump’s proposals would be difficult, if not impossible, to execute, the blueprint — drawn heavily from the conservative Heritage Foundation that provided much of the intellectual underpinning of Ronald Reagan’s arms buildup in the 1980s — signals he is hewing much closer to Republican orthodoxy on military issues as he enters the final stretch of the White House race. [Continue reading…]

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Saudi Arabia and Iran accuse each other of not really being Muslim

Ishaan Tharoor writes: The Middle East’s two great geopolitical adversaries entered into a war of words ahead of the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, which starts this weekend. Their rivalry, shaped by sectarian Sunni-Shia divisions, can be seen in numerous bloody proxy conflicts across the region. But it also flares up in heated rhetorical broadsides.

The latest round began with comments from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in full bluster condemned the Saudis for prohibiting Iranian pilgrims from joining the hajj after talks about security and logistics collapsed. Last year’s pilgrimage was marred by the deaths of hundreds of pilgrims caught in a stampede with more than 2,000 killed, according to one unofficial tally, although the Saudis say the death toll is lower.

Khamenei ventured that the slain devotees, including many Iranian nationals, lost their lives either because of Saudi complicity or incompetence. (He errs toward the former.) [Continue reading…]

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Russia’s Trump, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, wants to build a wall, ban Muslims, and nuke the White House

Anna Nemtsova writes: Vladimir Zhirinovsky recently boasted of taking a DNA test to prove that he’s related to Donald Trump. The 70-year-old Russian right-wing nationalist and populist who founded the (not very) Liberal Democratic Party often is compared to the 70-year-old American populist now slightly ahead in the contest to win presidency of the United States. Zhirinovsky is called a “Russian Trump” and Trump, at least in Russia, is labeled an “American Zhirinovsky.”

What similarities do Russians see in them? It could be their brash, fiery rhetoric, the roughness of their style, the way their faces distort with anger, or, as one Russian pointed out, the way that spittle tends to build on the corners of their mouths.

Certainly they share an ability to feed the public with fury, and change their message as they find convenient. Depending on what tune he needed at any given moment in the political arena, Zhirnovsky can act as the Kremlin’s clown or as a calm, even cold, opposition leader.

Now he is in this second mode.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Zhirinovsky described his plan to fight organized crime in Russia. He describes it as a web that’s penetrated all law enforcement agencies and regional administrations, reaching all the way to the highest echelons of the Kremlin’s leadership. [Continue reading…]

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Soviet document suggests Mahmoud Abbas was a KGB spy in the 1980s

The New York Times reports: Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia may have more in common than an interest in Middle East peace talks. According to a newly discovered Soviet document, Mr. Abbas may have once worked for the K.G.B., too.

The possibility, trumpeted by the Israeli media on Wednesday night and just as quickly dismissed by Palestinian officials, emerged from a document in a British archive listing Soviet agents from 1983. A reference to Mr. Abbas is tantalizing but cryptic, just two lines identifying him by the code name “Mole.” At the end of his entry are two words: “K.G.B. agent.”

The suggestion that Mr. Abbas may have been on Moscow’s roster more than three decades ago might have been just a historical curiosity but for the fact that it comes at the same time that Mr. Putin has been trying to organize new talks between Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. A Russian envoy was in Jerusalem this week to meet with Mr. Netanyahu, but the Israeli and Palestinian leaders remain at odds and no direct talks appear imminent.

“We thought it was important now in the context of the Russian attempt to arrange a summit between Abbas and Netanyahu, particularly because of Abbas’s joint K.G.B. past with Putin,” said Gideon Remez, one of two researchers at the Truman Institute at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who found and disclosed the Soviet document to Israel’s Channel 1. (At the end of the Soviet era, Mr. Putin was a K.G.B. lieutenant colonel.)

Mr. Remez’ research partner, Isabella Ginor, said Mr. Abbas’s past was relevant because of Russia’s possible continuing influence on him. “We don’t know what happened later on and if Abu Mazen went on with his service or work for the Soviets,” she said, using another name for Mr. Abbas. “But now that he is head of the Palestinian Authority, this can be a lever on him.” [Continue reading…]

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Some see anti-women backlash in ouster of Brazil’s president

The New York Times reports: At one heated moment in the impeachment trial of Dilma Rousseff, a powerful senator pushing for her ouster decided that some of his outspoken female colleagues in the chamber needed scolding.

“Calm down, girls,” the senator, Cássio Cunha Lima, part of a political dynasty from northeastern Brazil, told Senators Vanessa Grazziotin and Gleisi Hoffmann, both supporters of Ms. Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president. His remark drew sharp rebukes from the two women.

“Men believe they are the owners of this space, as if we’re just here by chance,” said Ms. Grazziotin, 55, a prominent leftist senator from Amazonas State.

For senators like Ms. Grazziotin, the episode reflected the emboldening of conservative voices after the impeachment of Ms. Rousseff, who argued that she had been the target of misogynistic attacks by opponents. Female politicians across Brazil are debating what her downfall means in a political realm dominated by men.

Despite the inroads made by Ms. Rousseff and others, Brazil ranks remarkably low in the representation of women in politics. Of the 513 members of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Brazilian Congress, 51 are women, placing the country 155th in the world in the percentage of women elected to the lower house of a national legislature, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. It trails places like Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. investigating potential covert Russian plan to disrupt November elections

The Washington Post reports: U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating what they see as a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions, intelligence and congressional officials said.

The aim is to understand the scope and intent of the Russian campaign, which incorporates cyber-tools to hack systems used in the political process, enhancing Russia’s ability to spread disinformation.

The effort to better understand Russia’s covert influence operations is being coordinated by James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence. “This is something of concern for the DNI,” said Charles Allen, a former longtime CIA officer who has been briefed on some of these issues. “It is being addressed.”

A Russian influence operation in the United States “is something we’re looking very closely at,” said one senior intelligence official who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. Officials also are examining potential disruptions to the election process, and the FBI has alerted state and local officials to potential cyberthreats.

The official cautioned that the intelligence community is not saying it has “definitive proof” of such tampering, or any Russian plans to do so. “But even the hint of something impacting the security of our election system would be of significant concern,” the official said. “It’s the key to our democracy, that people have confidence in the election system.”

The Kremlin’s intent may not be to sway the election in one direction or another, officials said, but to cause chaos and provide propaganda fodder to attack U.S. democracy-building policies around the world, particularly in the countries of the former Soviet Union. [Continue reading…]

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Will Israel be put on trial for war crimes?

Al Jazeera reports: Israel has agreed to allow the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to send a delegation to Israel and the occupied territories. It was revealed over the weekend in a step that could dramatically increase the risk of Israeli officials being tried for war crimes.

Emmanuel Nahshon, a foreign ministry spokesman, confirmed to Al Jazeera on Sunday that Israel had agreed to the visit in principle, though the “when and how” were still under discussion.

The ICC’s move comes as human rights groups have harshly criticised Israel for closing investigations into dozens of allegations that its military has broken the laws of war during an attack on Gaza in the summer of 2014.

The Hague prosecutors are reportedly interested in examining how effective Israel’s legal mechanisms are in investigating allegations of war crimes.

Under the terms of its founding statute, the ICC could take over jurisdiction of such probes if it is persuaded that Israel is unable or unwilling to conduct credible investigations itself. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS loses all territory along Syria-Turkey border

The Associated Press reports: Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels expelled the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria group from the last strip of territory it controlled along the Syrian-Turkish border on Sunday, effectively sealing the extremists’ self-styled caliphate off from the outside world, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported.

Also on Sunday, Syrian pro-government forces backed by airstrikes launched a wide offensive in the northern city of Aleppo, capturing areas they lost last month and besieging rebel-held neighbourhoods, state media and opposition activists said.

Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army rebels have cleared the area between the northern Syrian border towns of Azaz and Jarablus, the Anadolu news agency reported. It said the advance “has removed terror organization Daesh’s physical contact with the Turkish border in northern Syria.” Daesh is an Arabic acronym for ISIS.

The FSA’s advance shut down key supply lines used by ISIS to bring in foreign fighters, weapons and ammunition. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian government ‘drops chlorine gas’ on rebel-held part of Aleppo

The Guardian reports: Syrian activists and rescue workers in the rebel-held part of the contested city of Aleppo said that government warplanes dropped suspected chlorine bombs on Tuesday on a crowded neighborhood, injuring dozens.

The report could not be independently verified and it was not clear how it was determined that chlorine gas was released.

Accusations involving use of chlorine and other poisonous gases are not uncommon in Syria’s civil war, and both sides have denied using them while blaming the other for using it as a weapon of war. Last month, there were at least two reports of suspected chlorine attacks in Aleppo, while the Syrian government also blamed the opposition for using the gas.[Continue reading…]

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Syria: Southern Front rebels are at risk of disintegrating

Hassan Hassan writes: Reports emerged last Friday that a leader of one of the largest factions in southern Syria had been ousted by his comrades. The episode is part of a broader campaign that could unravel what is often cited as the most successful model for the rebels across the country.

According to reports from Deraa, the leader of the Syrian Revolutionary Front was pushed aside and replaced by Major Qassem Najm, a military defector.

A source close to the ousted commander confirmed the news and accused Ahrar Al Sham and its regional backers of engineering the move. Last Tuesday, six sub-factions of the revolutionary front issued statements declaring allegiance to Major Najm.

The Southern Front is a rare model for the Syrian rebels. Local groups generally lack a unified command centre, although they collaborate on the front lines throughout the country. Numerous social, political and military factions enabled the groups in the south to coalesce and work towards a relatively moderate and nationalist model under a joint command. Extremist groups largely failed to outperform nationalist forces there, as they did in the north. [Continue reading…]

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BuzzFeed regroups as media turns from words to pictures and from news to entertainment

The New York Times reports: Staff meetings at BuzzFeed are not uncommon. Jonah H. Peretti, the site’s founder and chief executive, who is based in Los Angeles, travels to the New York offices regularly and often meets with employees to answer questions or outline strategy.

But two recent meetings took on greater import, after BuzzFeed told employees two weeks ago that it was formally dividing its news and entertainment divisions. The day the reorganization was announced, Ben Smith, the editor in chief, met with the news staff to reassure them that the company was committed to its news operations. And last Wednesday, Mr. Peretti held a question-and-answer session and vowed that the company was not planning to sell its news division.

Staff members at BuzzFeed said the overhaul provoked curiosity rather than deep anxiety. Still, BuzzFeed’s reorganization seemed a transformative moment for a company staking a big bet on the future of video and entertainment.

Already, video represents more than 50 percent of BuzzFeed’s total revenue, compared with 15 percent at the end of 2014. In the next two years, BuzzFeed expects that video will generate up to 75 percent of its advertising revenue, according to a person briefed on the company’s operations.

The move also reflects a broader shift at media companies that are increasingly turning to video and entertainment news to lure a younger generation and attract online advertising dollars. In April, the website Mashable made a round of job cuts as it moved away from covering world and political news, and Mic, a site aimed at a young audience, hopes to have 60 percent of the company focused on video by year’s end. [Continue reading…]

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Facebook’s satellite went up in smoke, but its developing world land grab goes on

Emily Reynolds writes: A rocket crashing into a satellite and cutting off the internet may sound somewhat like the start of an end-of-the-world blockbuster; surely such destruction, and lack of Wi-Fi, could only be a harbinger of doom?

Fortunately, the scenario that played out last week was slightly less portentous. A SpaceX rocket, part of Elon Musk’s fevered attempts to eventually colonise Mars, exploded on Thursday as part of a failed pre-launch test fire, destroying a Facebook-owned satellite in the process.

The satellite, which cost the company around £150m, was due to be used as part of Internet.org, a project designed to bring web connectivity to areas of the world with limited internet access. Free Basics, a program developed by Facebook with six internet service providers, is an “onramp to the internet”, designed to help those without the internet get online. Its latest iteration, in Nigeria, saw the launch of 85 free online services including healthcare offerings, job listings, education portals and, of course, Facebook itself.

So far so good, right? Well, kind of. Providing access to the internet is a noble cause, particularly in parts of the world where it is severely limited or even non-existent. But should this infrastructure belong to a private company like Facebook, or should it be state-owned and maintained? Far be it from me to question the true nature of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropy, but no matter how charitable a cause Facebook is championing, its primary aim is to make money – often from monetising its users’ data. [Continue reading…]

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‘Gaps of trust’ with Russia bar a Syrian truce, Obama says

The New York Times reports: The Obama administration’s latest effort to broker a cease-fire in Syria’s civil war fell short on Monday, after a 90-minute meeting between President Obama and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia failed to resolve problems between them.

“Given the gaps of trust that exist, that’s a tough negotiation, and we haven’t yet closed the gaps in a way where we think it would actually work,” Mr. Obama declared at a news conference at the end of a Group of 20 summit meeting in Hangzhou, China.

He did not describe the points of contention. Other officials have said they involve technical issues like how to staff checkpoints in combat areas. But the checkered history of Syrian cease-fires — the United States agreed to one with Russia in February, only to watch it unravel weeks later — has left the president deeply leery. [Continue reading…]

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Russian independent pollster is declared a ‘foreign agent’ before elections

The New York Times reports: Russian officials declared the Levada Center, the country’s only major independent pollster, a “foreign agent” on Monday, two weeks before nationwide parliamentary elections and days after a poll showed sliding support for the governing party, United Russia.

The decision, announced by the Justice Ministry, means the Levada Center will probably shut down its polling operations, which it has been conducting since the late 1980s.

“This manifests the increase in internal repressions carried out by the country’s leadership,” the center’s chief, Lev D. Gudkov, said in an interview broadcast by Dozhd, Russia’s only liberal independent news station. “If they won’t cancel this decision, it will mean that the Levada Center will have to stop working, because you cannot conduct polls with such a stigma put on you.”

A law signed by President Vladimir V. Putin in 2012 requires all nonprofit organizations that receive foreign funding and are engaged in loosely defined political activity to register and declare themselves as foreign agents, a term widely associated with spying in Russia. Rights activists have criticized the law as an instrument to marginalize independent civil society groups. [Continue reading…]

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Philippine president regrets calling Obama a ‘son of a bitch’

The Associated Press reported: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte warned President Barack Obama on Monday not to question him about extrajudicial killings, or “son of a bitch I will swear at you” when they meet in Laos during a regional summit.

Duterte said before flying to Laos that he is a leader of a sovereign country and is answerable only to the Filipino people. He was answering a reporter’s question about how he intends to explain the extrajudicial killings to Obama. More than 2,000 suspected drug pushers and users have been killed since Duterte launched a war on drugs after taking office on June 30.

In his typical foul-mouthed style, Duterte responded: “I am a president of a sovereign state and we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody. You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions. Putang ina I will swear at you in that forum,” he said, using the Tagalog phrase for son of a bitch. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press now reports: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte expressed regret Tuesday over his “son of a bitch” remark while referring to President Barack Obama, in a rare display of contrition by a politician whose wide arc of profanities has unabashedly targeted world figures including the pope and the U.N. chief.

In a statement read out by his spokesman, Duterte said that while his “strong comments” in response to certain questions by a reporter “elicited concern and distress, we also regret it came across as a personal attack on the U.S. president.”

Duterte had made the intemperate remarks Monday before flying to Laos, where he is attending a regional summit. He had been scheduled to meet Obama separately, but Obama indicated he had second thoughts.

On Tuesday, Duterte said both sides mutually agreed to postpone the meeting.

Even though Duterte’s latest comment does not amount to an apology, the expression of regret is unusual for the tough-talking former mayor, who is unapologetic about his manner of speech and liberally peppers his casual statements with profanities such as “son of a bitch” and “son of a whore.”

But perhaps Duterte’s aides realized it would be unwise to take on the most powerful official in the world, and there would be a price to pay for insulting the president of the United States. [Continue reading…]

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Remember the 3 Americans kidnapped in Iraq? Here’s the real story

McClatchy reports: January 15 was a relatively quiet day for Baghdad, the bomb-battered capital where Waiel El-Maadawy, an Army veteran and former Florida sheriff’s deputy, had spent years as a contractor for the U.S.-led effort to train Iraqi security forces.

El-Maadawy was feeling relieved. He’d just hired an Iraqi he knew, a man nicknamed Abu Marina, as an interpreter to help with the urgent task of training Iraqi commandos to fight Islamic State jihadists. He and two fellow contractors – his cousin, Amr Mohamed, of Bullhead City, Arizona, and Russell Frost, of Wichita, Kansas, sealed the deal over tea at Abu Marina’s apartment in southeastern Baghdad.

About half an hour into their visit, the commander of a Shiite Muslim militia showed up, demanding to know who the Americans were and ordering them to stay put. At first, the contractors scoffed at the intrusion – they had pistols on their hips and Iraqi Special Forces authorization in their pockets.

“We walk outside and he was right – we can’t leave. There were 40 guys there with heavy weapons,” El-Maadawy recalled. “That’s when everything went downhill. We realized we were going to be taken.”

That was the beginning of a 31-day ordeal the Obama administration has never explained, and which is described in detail here for the first time, through a series of interviews with El-Maadawy, a phone interview with Frost, and with the cooperation of Mohamed, who is currently out of the country. [Continue reading…]

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Lebanon indicts Syrian officers for twin 2013 mosque bombings

Reuters reports: Lebanon indicted two Syrian intelligence officers on Friday in connection with twin bombings at mosques in Tripoli in 2013, state media said, the deadliest attack in the city since the end of Lebanon’s civil war in 1990.

The two blasts, at the Sunni Muslim Taqwa and al-Salam mosques in the northern Lebanese city, happened within minutes of each other in August 2013 and killed more than 40 people and injured hundreds.

A Lebanese military court accused Syrian intelligence officers Muhammad Ali Ali, of the “Palestine Branch”, and Nasser Jubaan, of the “Political Security Directorate,” of planning and overseeing the attacks, Lebanon’s National News Agency said.

The court ruling announcing the indictment said investigators were still trying to uncover the names of the officials responsible for giving the two officers their orders.

According to NNA, the ruling said “the order was issued from a high-level security body within the Syrian intelligence service”. [Continue reading…]

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