Category Archives: News

Putin’s latest Crimean gambit

Adrian Karatnycky writes: Curiously, it took Russia four full days after an alleged attack by Ukrainian special forces in Crimea to make a public statement about the event.

On August 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin took to the airwaves to denounce “tactics of terrorism.” He stated the alleged killings of a soldier and an FSB security agency operative “will not pass idly by,” intimating a Russian military response, and he called on the United States and the European Union to rein in Kiev.

Russian news sources report that a unit of 20 Ukrainian soldiers engaged in the attack on August 6 after their plot to sabotage a Crimean highway was foiled; seven “saboteurs” are reported to have been apprehended. But the delay in reporting the event raises the question of why authorities did not make an effort to inform Crimeans of the potential danger or urge them to be on the lookout for a large number of armed men on the run.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has called the accusations a “fantasy that serves as a pretext for the latest round of military threats against Ukraine.” Logic suggests that he is being truthful.

To begin with, it would be foolish for Ukraine to launch a violent attack, given the vast superiority of Russian military power. It would be even more foolish to provoke Russia at a time when its forces are mobilizing for massive military maneuvers along Ukraine’s eastern border and in Crimea.

Indeed, Ukraine is already on edge over signs of increased Russian military deployments near its eastern border and increased attacks on Ukrainian positions by fighters from the breakaway enclaves of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Last week, Ukraine placed its armed forces on a state of heightened readiness. On Thursday, President Poroshenko ordered these forces to be on “combat alert.” [Continue reading…]

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U.S. considers sanctions against Russia in response to hacks of Democratic groups

The Wall Street Journal reports: U.S. officials are discussing whether to respond to computer breaches of Democratic Party organizations with economic sanctions against Russia, but they haven’t reached a decision about how to proceed, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Levying sanctions would require the White House to publicly accuse Russia, or Russian-backed hackers, of committing the breach and then leaking embarrassing information. The U.S. has frequently opted not to publicly release attribution for cyber-assaults, though Washington did openly accuse North Korea of carrying out an embarrassing breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. in 2014.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. intelligence agencies have been studying the Democratic hacks, and several officials have signaled it was almost certainly carried out by Russian-affiliated hackers. Russia has denied any involvement, but several cybersecurity companies have also released reports tying the breach to Russian hackers.

On Thursday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) told reporters, regarding a breach of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which spearheads the Democratic House campaigns: “I know for sure it is the Russians” and “we are assessing the damage.”

She added, “This is an electronic Watergate…The Russians broke in. Who did they give the information to? I don’t know. Who dumped it? I don’t know.” [Continue reading…]

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Lopsided peace talks collapse, Saudis resume bombing Yemen and U.S. sells more weapons

The Intercept reports: The Pentagon announced an additional $1.15 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia this week, even as a three-month cease-fire collapsed and the Saudi-led coalition resumed its brutal bombing campaign of the Yemen capital Sana.

The U.S. has already sold more than $20 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia since the war began in March 2015, defying calls from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to cut off support. The Saudi-led coalition is responsible for the majority of the 7,000 deaths in the conflict, which has left more than 21 million people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance. Saudi Arabia has been accused of intentionally targeting homes, factories, schools, markets, and hospitals.

On Tuesday, the coalition targeted and destroyed a potato chip factory, killing 14 people. The Yemeni press has since reported that coalition has conducted hundreds more airstrikes across the country, killing dozens of people. [Continue reading…]

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Battle for Aleppo may be the most crucial of the Syrian civil war

The Washington Post reports: A fast-moving cataclysm underway in and around Aleppo has brought together all the major actors in Syria’s civil war for what may be the most crucial battle of the five-year conflict, and it is testing whether U.S.-Russian cooperation to end it is a pipe dream.

North of the city — in which the government holds the western side and U.S.-backed moderate opposition forces have occupied the east since 2012 — the opposition has lost control of its only lifeline for resupply under relentless pummeling by Russian and Syrian aircraft and artillery.

The road to Turkey also provided the only path for humanitarian aid or an escape route for at least a quarter-million civilians trapped inside Aleppo, who the United Nations said this week have been left without food, medical supplies or running water.

So dire is their situation that talks initiated by the Obama administration with Russia this summer about coordinating their Syria counterterrorism efforts have been put on the back burner, superseded by urgent negotiations with Moscow over reopening the road to Turkey, according to U.S. officials. [Continue reading…]

In the video below, Charles Lister discusses the siege of Aleppo and the dynamics within Syrian opposition groups:

 

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Another Trump adviser with deep ties to Russia

Businessman and investor, Howard Lorber, who has various business interests in Russia and has been called one of Donald Trump’s “best friends,” is now one of his economic advisers. Josh Rogin writes: Trump’s visits to Russia began in 1987 and lasted until 2013, when he brought the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow and famously wondered on Twitter about Vladimir Putin, “will he become my best friend?” Trump was also deeply involved in discussions to work on the reconstruction of the Moskva and Rossiya hotels in Moscow’s city center. He has bragged about his ties to Russian businessmen connected to the Kremlin.

“The Russian market is attracted to me,” Trump told Real Estate Weekly in 2013. “I have a great relationship with many Russians, and almost all of the oligarchs were in the room.”

In November 1996, Trump spent three days in Moscow with Lorber and visited Ducat Place, a site being developed by Liggett-Ducat Ltd., a cigarette company that was owned by Lorber’s Vector Group at the time.

“We’re looking at building a super-luxury residential tower … which I think Moscow desperately wants and needs,’ Trump told the Moscow Times at the time.

Lorber’s business partner Ben LeBow was also involved in arranging Trump’s trip to Moscow. He bragged about bringing the Trump Organization to Russia in a 1996 interview with the Moscow Times.

“Donald is the preeminent marketeer and developer in the world,” said LeBow. “We want the best for Moscow — and Donald’s it.”

Trump’s plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow and reconstruct the Moscow hotels eventually fizzled out. But 15 years later, Trump was still at it. In 2013, while he was organizing the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, Trump tried to restart the Moscow Trump Tower project. He entered talks with Russian billionaire Araz Agalarov, who happened to own the Crocus City Hall, where the Miss Universe finals were held.

Lorber is only the latest Trump adviser to have long ties to Russia and a financial stake there. Campaign chairman Paul Manafort was a paid adviser to Russia’s client Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych for more than a decade. Foreign policy adviser Carter Page is a consultant for Russian state-owned energy firm Gazprom.

Donald Trump Jr. has been a huge proponent of expanding the family business to Russia, making half a dozen trips there on behalf of the Trump Organization during the latest U.S. financial crisis. [Continue reading…]

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Hack of Democrats’ accounts was wider than believed, officials say

The New York Times reports: A Russian cyberattack that targeted Democratic politicians was bigger than it first appeared and breached the private email accounts of more than 100 party officials and groups, officials with knowledge of the case said Wednesday.

The widening scope of the attack has prompted the F.B.I. to broaden its investigation, and agents have begun notifying a long list of Democratic officials that the Russians may have breached their personal accounts.

The main targets appear to have been the personal email accounts of Hillary Clinton’s campaign officials and party operatives, along with a number of party organizations.

Officials have acknowledged that the Russian hackers gained access to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is the fund-raising arm for House Democrats, and to the Democratic National Committee, including a D.N.C. voter analytics program used by Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.

But the hack now appears to have extended well beyond those groups, and organizations like the Democratic Governors’ Association may also have been affected, according to Democrats involved in the investigation. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS and its allies were responsible for a quarter of terrorism deaths in 13 years

The Washington Post reports: Between 2002 and 2015, the Islamic State was either directly or indirectly responsible for terrorist attacks that killed more than 33,000 people and wounded 41,000 more, according to a new analysis from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism.

It’s a startling figure. If attacks with unknown perpetrators are excluded, this means that the Islamic State bore responsibility for 13 percent of terrorist attacks globally during that period, with 26 percent of all terrorist attack deaths, 28 percent of injuries and a further 24 percent of kidnap victims.

These figures include not only acts committed by the core Islamic State group, but also the precursor groups that came before it was officially founded — primarily al-Qaeda in Iraq — as well as the affiliates and individuals inspired by the Islamic State who came after. [Continue reading…]

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45,000 ISIS fighters killed in past two years, says U.S. general

AFP reports: About 45,000 militants have been killed in Iraq and Syria since the US-led operation to defeat the ISIS group began two years ago, a top general said Wednesday.

“We estimate that over the past 11 months, we’ve killed about 25,000 enemy fighters. When you add that to the 20,000 estimated killed (previously), that’s 45,000 enemy (fighters) taken off the battlefield,” said Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland, who commands the US-led coalition campaign against ISIS.

MacFarland said estimates for the overall remaining strength of ISIS vary from about 15,000 to 30,000 but said the jihadists are having increasing difficulties replenishing their ranks. [Continue reading…]

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Julian Assange to be questioned by Sweden over rape claim, Ecuador says

The New York Times reports: Ecuador and Sweden have agreed to allow Julian Assange to be questioned by Swedish prosecutors inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, in a possible breakthrough to a four-year impasse, Ecuador said on Thursday, but no date for the interview was announced.

The Ecuadorean attorney general delivered a document agreeing to a request by the Swedish prosecutor to question Mr. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who is wanted by Sweden for questioning to respond to allegations of rape made against him, accusations he denies.

Karin Rosander, a spokeswoman for the Swedish prosecutor’s office, said that the investigation was almost finished but that “the interview with the suspect has been missing all the time.”

Mr. Assange was granted political asylum by Ecuador in 2012 after his appeal against extradition to Sweden was denied, and he has been confined to the embassy ever since.

He says he fears that if he is sent to Sweden, he will then be shipped to the United States, where he could be charged with espionage offenses.

WikiLeaks has published damaging and confidential information from the United States and many other governments, and although there is no open indictment against Mr. Assange in Washington, he and his organization are the subject of an investigation. [Continue reading…]

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Trump’s assassination dog whistle was an act of stochastic terrorism

David S. Cohen writes: One day after his widely discussed “reboot” in which he did nothing more than read basic Republican economic talking points from a teleprompter, Donald Trump uttered perhaps his most outrageous – and dangerous – ad-lib yet. And that’s saying something for a campaign in which he’s criticized John McCain for being a prisoner of war, characterized Mexicans as rapists, called for banning Muslims from coming into the country, picked a fight with a Gold Star family and urged Russia to hack his political opponent.

Speaking to a crowd in Wilmington, North Carolina, Tuesday, Trump expressed concern about Hillary Clinton possibly picking Supreme Court justices and other judges. He then said, “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don’t know.”

Let that soak in for a second. One of the two major-party nominees for president just called for “Second Amendment people” to “do” something about his political opponent’s judges. According to the Trump campaign’s rapid response team, he was talking about those “Second Amendment people” coming together politically – “unification,” as they called it. The Clinton campaign, and pretty much the entire Internet, saw it differently: as a clear suggestion of violence against a political opponent.

It’s hard not to side with the Clinton campaign here. What Trump said was that a particular group – those who are defined by rallying around guns – should do something about Clinton and her judicial nominees. What can people who rally around guns do that’s different than others? Use those guns.

But it’s really irrelevant what Trump actually meant, because enough people will hear Trump’s comments and think he’s calling for people to take up arms against Clinton, her judges or both. Though most of the people hearing that call may claim he was joking, given what we know about people taking up arms in this country, there will undoubtedly be some people who think he was serious and consider the possibility.

In other words, what Trump just did is engage in so-called stochastic terrorism. This is an obscure and non-legal term that has been occasionally discussed in the academic world for the past decade and a half, and it applies with precision here. Stochastic terrorism, as described by a blogger who summarized the concept several years back, means using language and other forms of communication “to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.”

Let’s break that down in the context of what Trump said. Predicting any one particular individual following his call to use violence against Clinton or her judges is statistically impossible. But we can predict that there could be a presently unknown lone wolf who hears his call and takes action in the future.

Stated differently: Trump puts out the dog whistle knowing that some dog will hear it, even though he doesn’t know which dog. [Continue reading…]

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One-in-five U.S. Republicans want Trump to drop out

Reuters reports: Nearly one-fifth of registered Republicans want Donald Trump to drop out of the race for the White House, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday, reflecting the turmoil his candidacy has sown within his party.

Some 19 percent think the New York real estate magnate should drop out, 70 percent think he should stay in and 10 percent say they “don’t know,” according to the Aug. 5-8 poll of 396 registered Republicans. The poll has a confidence interval of six percentage points.

Among all registered voters, some 44 percent want Trump to drop out. That is based on a survey of 1,162 registered voters, with a confidence interval of 3 percentage points. That is 9 points higher than his support for the presidency in the latest Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll registered on Monday. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. Special Operations troops aiding Libyan forces in major battle against ISIS

The Washington Post reports: U.S. Special Operations forces are providing direct, on-the-ground support for the first time to fighters battling the Islamic State in Libya, U.S. and Libyan officials said, coordinating American airstrikes and providing intelligence information in an effort to oust the group from a militant stronghold.

The positioning of a small number of elite U.S. personnel, operating alongside British troops, in the coastal city of Sirte deepens the involvement of Western nations against the Islamic State’s most powerful affiliate.

U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a mission that has not been announced publicly, said the American troops were operating out of a joint operations center on the city’s outskirts and that their role was limited to supporting forces loyal to the country’s fragile unity government. [Continue reading…]

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Human brain mapped in unprecedented detail

The Human Connectome Project

Nature reports: Think of a spinning globe and the patchwork of countries it depicts: such maps help us to understand where we are, and that nations differ from one another. Now, neuroscientists have charted an equivalent map of the brain’s outermost layer — the cerebral cortex — subdividing each hemisphere’s mountain- and valley-like folds into 180 separate parcels.

Ninety-seven of these areas have never previously been described, despite showing clear differences in structure, function and connectivity from their neighbours. The new brain map is published today in Nature.

Each discrete area on the map contains cells with similar structure, function and connectivity. But these areas differ from each other, just as different countries have well-defined borders and unique cultures, says David Van Essen, a neuroscientist at Washington University Medical School in St Louis, Missouri, who supervised the study.

Neuroscientists have long sought to divide the brain into smaller pieces to better appreciate how it works as a whole. One of the best-known brain maps chops the cerebral cortex into 52 areas based on the arrangement of cells in the tissue. More recently, maps have been constructed using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques — such as functional MRI, which measures the flow of blood in response to different mental tasks.

Yet until now, most such maps have been based on a single type of measurement. That can provide an incomplete or even misleading view of the brain’s inner workings, says Thomas Yeo, a computational neuroscientist at the National University of Singapore. The new map is based on multiple MRI measurements, which Yeo says “greatly increases confidence that they are producing the best in vivo estimates of cortical areas”. [Continue reading…]

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Fears of full-scale war return as casualties mount in Ukraine

RFE/RL reports: Framed by a tiny cutout in the fortified bunker, this particular piece of no-man’s land is tinted a blood-reddish orange by the setting summer sun.

It’s hot as hell, and it’s about to get hotter. When the sun goes down, the guns start blazing. And all that separates the men at their triggers is a grassy patch of land the size of a soccer field that is heavily mined. If you’re a Ukrainian soldier here, you don’t need binoculars to observe the enemy — you just look in his direction.

It starts with a single shot from a Kalashnikov: Ziiip. Then another: Ziiip. And three more: Ziiip. Ziiip. Ziiip. Each shot whizzes dangerously closer. In the time it takes to boil an egg, the situation escalates as the rifles are joined by .50-caliber machine guns, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades that explode with hollow thuds against the earth or cottages where the soldiers eat and sleep, showering everything with shrapnel. Within an hour, shells from howitzers and tanks — and eventually surface-to-surface Grad missiles, whose name is Russian for “hail” — begin pummeling the scarred steppe.

The “disco,” as the soldiers and the few residents left in this forsaken town call it, is in full effect. The relative calm that dawn brings seems a lifetime away. All are at the mercy of the darkness.

This is eastern Ukraine 28 months after the start of a conflict that once seemed unthinkable, and a year and a half after the signing of a second cease-fire deal, known as Minsk 2, that was supposed to bring lasting peace to this war-torn edge of Europe and reintegrate it with the rest of Ukraine.

But the armistice is unraveling fast as fighting between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists has escalated to levels not seen since more furious phases of the conflict in the Donbas — where the separatists hold parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions — in 2014 and 2015. Casualties, both civilian and military, are mounting. [Continue reading…]

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50 GOP national security officials warn Trump ‘would be the most reckless president in American history’

The New York Times reports: Fifty of the nation’s most senior Republican national security officials, many of them former top aides or cabinet members for President George W. Bush, have signed a letter declaring that Donald J. Trump “lacks the character, values and experience” to be president and “would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”

Mr. Trump, the officials warn, “would be the most reckless president in American history.”

The letter says Mr. Trump would weaken the United States’ moral authority and questions his knowledge of and belief in the Constitution. It says he has “demonstrated repeatedly that he has little understanding” of the nation’s “vital national interests, its complex diplomatic challenges, its indispensable alliances and the democratic values” on which American policy should be based. And it laments that “Mr. Trump has shown no interest in educating himself.”

“None of us will vote for Donald Trump,” the letter states, though it notes later that many Americans “have doubts about Hillary Clinton, as do many of us.”

Among the most prominent signatories are Michael V. Hayden, a former director of both the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency; John D. Negroponte, who served as the first director of national intelligence and then deputy secretary of state; and Robert B. Zoellick, another former deputy secretary of state, United States trade representive and, until 2012, president of the World Bank. Two former secretaries of homeland security, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, also signed, as did Eric S. Edelman, who served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security adviser and as a top aide to Robert M. Gates when he was secretary of defense. [Continue reading…]

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Battles rage across Aleppo as Assad regime fights to quell rebels

The Guardian reports: Rebels in Syria’s second largest city were on Monday coming under intense aerial bombardment from forces loyal to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, less than two days after they fought through regime lines to break the siege of rebel-held east Aleppo.

Activists say intense airstrikes have continued unabated after rebels seized Ramouseh, a district in south-west Aleppo, allowing them to open a corridor into the besieged areas.

“We are in our trenches but there are insane airstrikes of unprecedented ferociousness,” a commander in the rebel coalition told Reuters. “The regime is using cluster and vacuum bombs.”

Over the weekend, rebels in a coalition known as Jaish al-Fatah launched a lightning advance that sealed the conquest of Ramouseh, a key district through which supplies flow to government forces in west Aleppo. The advance followed a rare show of unity among the opposition, which began a campaign a week ago involving thousands of fighters working to break the siege. [Continue reading…]

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British special forces operating inside Syria

 

BBC News reports: The BBC has obtained exclusive pictures showing for the first time British special forces operating on the ground in Syria.

It is the vehicles that first stand out. The open air, Thalab long range patrol vehicles are built for harsh terrain and are favoured by special forces.

In this case it is British special forces, seen for the first time on the ground, inside Syria, in photographs obtained by the BBC.

The pictures, which date from June, follow an attack by the so-called Islamic State (IS) on the moderate rebel New Syrian Army base of Al Tanaf on the Syria-Iraq border. The British soldiers appear to be securing the base’s perimeter.

According to eyewitnesses, they were there in a defensive role. But they are carrying an arsenal of equipment including sniper rifles, heavy machine guns and anti-tank missiles. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. military intelligence contractors being hired to operate in Syria

The Daily Beast reports: Every day at 5 p.m., the Pentagon releases a list of that day’s contracts worth more than $7 million. On July 27, buried in the daily email was an eye-catching detail: Military contractors would be working inside Syria alongside the roughly 300 U.S. troops already deployed there.

This appears to be the first time the Pentagon has publicly acknowledged that private contractors are also playing a role in the fight against the so-called Islamic State inside Syria, and it’s one more signal that the U.S. military is deepening its involvement in the fate of the country.

The contract announcement said Six3 Intelligence Solutions — a private intelligence company recently acquired by CACI International — won a $10 million no-bid Army contract to provide “intelligence analysis services.” According to the Pentagon, the work will be completed over the next year in Germany, Italy and, most notably, Syria. [Continue reading…]

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