Category Archives: News

Nice attacker was radicalised within months and sent £84,000 to his Tunisian family days before attack

The Telegraph reports: he terrorist behind the Bastille Day atrocity was radicalised within months and sent his Tunisian family £84,000 just days before the massacre, it was claimed on Saturday.

Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s brother in Tunisia described receiving the fortune in cash as police swooped to arrest five suspected associates across the city of Nice

The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said the attacker “appears to have become radicalised very quickly” as one neighbour of his estranged wife added: “Mohamed only started visiting a mosque in April.”

Investigators examining Bouhlel’s phone records found evidence that he was in contact with known Islamic radicals.

However, an intelligence source cautioned: “That could just be a coincidence, given the neighbourhood where he lived. Everyone knows everyone there. He seems to have known people who knew Omar Diaby (a known local Islamist believed to be linked with the Al Nusra group close to Al Qaeda).”

Relatives have reportedly claimed Bouhlel, in the days before the attack, persuaded friends to smuggle the bundles of cash back to his family in their hometown of Msaken, Tunisia.

His brother Jaber also said he had not seen his brother for several years and the money had come as a complete surprise. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: The Tunisian delivery driver who killed 84 people on Thursday when he drove a truck at high-speed into a crowd watching Bastille Day fireworks in Nice sent a text message just before the attack about his supply of weapons.

Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, wrote of his “satisfaction at having obtained a 7.65mm pistol” and discussed “the supply of other weapons,” a police source confirmed to AFP. Two replica assault rifles and a dummy grenade were also found in the truck.

It also emerged that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel took pictures of himself at the wheel of the truck before the fatal attack, and shared them by text message. Over 200 investigators are working on identifying the recipients of the messages. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Erdogan sees attempted coup as ‘gift from God’

erdogan

I don’t have much patience for conspiracy theories, but the one incontrovertible fact about all coups is that, by definition, coups involve conspiracies.

A conspiracy of some kind has been unfolding in Turkey over the last 24 hours. What is unclear is who was involved, what exactly they had planned, and what was the basis of their expectations.

President Tayyip Erdogan now says: “This uprising is a gift from God to us because this will be a reason to cleanse our army.”

Indeed. Turkey’s president comes out of this event the big winner. He can present himself as a man of the people strong enough to withstand any domestic challengers.

The Telegraph reports:

When he arrived in Istanbul in the early hours of the morning, Mr Erdogan, grave and ashen-faced, warned that his foes would “pay a heavy price” for their “treason and rebellion”.

The deputy leader of his AK party demanded the return of the death penalty so that putschists could be “executed”. Meanwhile, the deputy prime minister promised to rid the government of all enemies. “Even if they went into the tiniest veins of the state, they will be purged,” he declared.

Whatever steps he now takes to consolidate and expand his power, he can do so in the name of defending peace and stability — Erdogan, the guardian of democracy, dedicated to preventing Turkey ever again coming under military rule.

As soon as news broke about the coup attempt, the first question everyone had was about the president’s whereabouts. In any coup, typically one of the first steps is to kill or capture the head of state. In this case, Erdogan was away on vacation in the resort town of Marmaris, but he claims to have eluded several assassination attempts last night.

When Erdogan made his first television appearance via Facetime, it would be hard to say he looked presidential, but then again, he didn’t have a gun pointed at his head.


Meanwhile, shutting down some bridges and sending some tanks into the streets is an effective way of creating news footage for television and social media, but it would have taken a much larger show of force to convince the residents of any of Turkey’s major cities that the military had really taken control. There’s a big difference between ordering a curfew and having the ability to impose one.

If the plan devised for carrying out this coup seems to have been poorly conceived and poorly executed, the plan for handling the outcome seems stunningly detailed and is being implemented faster than the coup itself.

2,839 soldiers, including high-ranking officers, have been arrested and 2,745 judges have also been dismissed today.

The investigative procedures in Turkey are either extraordinarily efficient, or, more likely, a lot of decisions about how to deal with this coup were made well before the coup itself took place.

The purge of Ergodan’s enemies hasn’t just begun, but it will now move forward with a dramatic advance in pace.

Facebooktwittermail

For Turkey’s sake, Erdoğan should resist desire for revenge

Simon Tisdall writes: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a man of choleric disposition. The Turkish president has a track record of ruthlessness in dealing with opponents and critics and, thus, his response to Friday’s attempted coup by sections of the Turkish military can be expected to be fierce and brutal..

Erdogan’s combative outlook is the result, at least in part, of his experiences as a poor child growing up in a working-class Istanbul neighbourhood, and of the tough treatment handed out to him when, as mayor of the city and a rising opposition star prior to 2003, he was hounded, persecuted and sentenced to jail along with many of his supporters.

But his tough-guy stance is also the result of his determination to have his own way; his paternalistic conviction that he knows what’s best for Turkey.

Since becoming prime minister and now president, Erdoğan has frequently claimed to be the target and victim of murky conspiracies designed to depose him and destroy his neo-Islamist ruling party, the Justice and Development party (AKP). Usually, in his mind, these supposed plots are directed by hidden enemies based abroad. His particular bête noir is Fethullah Gülen, a former ally now exiled in the US. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Donald Trump just turned a key moment into a complete mess (once again)

Philip Bump writes: Just as the Indianapolis Star reported on Thursday afternoon, Donald Trump has selected Gov. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) as his running mate. But between the Star’s report and Trump’s confirmation of it, Trump managed to do just about everything possible to draw attention away from the assets that Pence provides to his campaign and, instead, to make his campaign look like a mess.

It is always the case that the vice-presidential pick is made at the discretion of the person at the top of the ticket. Usually, though, that pick is a function of a coordinated effort by the upper-echelon campaign staff, the party backing that candidate and a team of people assigned with screening and assessing the various possibilities. The announcement of a vice-presidential choice is a guaranteed moment of media attention, and so campaigns do their best to manage how the announcement is made. Location and timing are set, the program itself is carefully planned. To the best of its ability, the campaign tries to keep the pick quiet until they’re ready to release it, since that’s the news. If it leaks early, fewer people will tune in to hear the announcement — and fewer people will hear the speeches arguing for why the ticket is preferable to the alternative.

That’s not how the Trump process went. On Thursday morning, the Pence story broke and the campaign denied that a decision had been made, which isn’t uncommon. But for once, it seems as though a decision maybe hadn’t been made — or, worse, that it had been made and then Trump pulled back. Newt Gingrich, one of the two other primary contenders for the position, hadn’t been contacted by the campaign by the time the Star was running its story; it’s not clear when or if Trump contacted him at all. (Update: Apparently he didn’t get a call before Trump’s tweet.) NBC reports that Trump called Gov. Chris Christie — the other contender — Thursday afternoon, but didn’t tell him yes or no. Was Trump keeping his options open? He said last night that he hadn’t made a “final, final decision” — but Pence had already set off for his hotel in New York for the campaign kickoff. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. reveals ISIS ‘minister of war’ was not killed in March airstrike

The Guardian reports: The Pentagon has admitted it did not kill a senior Islamic State operative in a March airstrike that the Obama administration made a talking point for success in the two-year war in Iraq and Syria.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters on Thursday that Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvili, also known as Abu Omar al-Shishani or Omar the Chechen, is now believed to have attended a 10 July meeting of Isis officials near Mosul, the jihadist army’s Iraqi capital, that was targeted in a US airstrike.

Cook said he was “not able to confirm” that Shishani was killed this time, although on Wednesday Isis announced through its propaganda agency that Shishani was dead.

“Indications [are] he was present” at the targeted 10 July meeting, Cook said, adding that earlier intelligence “led us to believe he had been killed” in March. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Climate change department shut down by Theresa May in ‘plain stupid’ and ‘deeply worrying’ move

The Independent reports: The decision to abolish the Department for Energy and Climate Change has been variously condemned as “plain stupid”, “deeply worrying” and “terrible” by politicians, campaigners and experts.

One of Theresa May’s first acts as Prime Minister was to move responsibility for climate change to a new Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.

Only on Monday, Government advisers had warned of the need to take urgent action to prepare the UK for floods, droughts, heatwaves and food shortages caused by climate change.

The news came after the appointment of Andrea Leadsom – who revealed her first question to officials when she became Energy Minister last year was “Is climate change real? – was appointed as the new Environment Secretary.

And, after former Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd announced in November that Britain was going to “close coal” by 2025, Ms Leadsom later asked the coal industry to help define what this actually meant.

Former Labour leader Ed Miliband tweeted: “DECC abolition just plain stupid. Climate not even mentioned in new deptartment title. Matters because departments shape priorities, shape outcomes.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

‘Trapped by all the sides’ in Yemen’s largely ignored war

The Washington Post reports: The streets are eerily ­silent in this front-line enclave near Taiz’s Freedom Square, where thousands of protesters rose up against Yemen’s government five years ago.

The presidential palace nearby survived the demonstrations but not the war that followed. It is now a concrete carcass, pummeled by airstrikes. Shops are shuttered and homes are empty. The only people who remain cannot afford to go anywhere else.

By day, snipers strike down residents. At night, the gunfire and artillery shelling start.

“We’re trapped by all the sides,” said Ghulam Sayed, a former bus driver.

For weeks, Yemen’s warring factions have held peace talks to end their 16-month civil war, bringing a sense of calm to much of the country. But in the southwestern city of Taiz the conflict rages on, defying a U.N.-backed cease-fire. Civilians are indiscriminately killed or wounded daily. Thousands languish in ragged displacement camps. Humanitarian groups are blocked from adequately helping victims.

On one side of the war is an alliance of Shiite Houthi rebels and loyalists of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. They have seized the capital, Sanaa, and control the northern half of the country.

On the other side is the government, backed by the United States, Saudi Arabia and other regional powers. It controls only portions of the south, including the port of Aden. The rest is lawless or ruled by radical Islamists. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

9/11 report’s classified ’28 pages’ about potential Saudi Arabia ties released

The Guardian reports: The Obama administration has released the long-classified 28 pages of the official congressional report on the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, which concerned the alleged ties of the Saudi Arabian government to the 9/11 hijackers.

Publishing the long-awaited pages 13 years after they were first classified, the White House insisted they show no link between Saudi Arabia and the hijackers who carried out the terrorist attacks. The pages put into the public domain the remaining unseen section of the 2002 report, from the joint congressional inquiry into intelligence community activities before and after the 9/11 attacks.

“This information does not change the assessment of the US government that there’s no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi individuals funded al-Qaida,” said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary. “The number one takeaway from this should be that this administration is committed to transparency even when it comes to sensitive information related to national security.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Egypt’s Brotherhood, Sisi both put out feelers for reconciliation

Abdelrahman Youssef writes: The word “reconciliation” has been dominating the Egyptian political scene for almost two weeks. Talk has revolved around the future of the relationship between the regime and the Muslim Brotherhood, which is facing the worst crackdown since its establishment.

Political discussions in Egypt are not what brought about this prevalent idea; rather, it emerged due to a number of coalesced factors, notably the statement of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Magdy al-Agaty, who said in an interview, “We can reconcile with a member of the Brotherhood as long as his hands are not stained with blood. [Brotherhood members] are Egyptians in the first place. Why don’t we make peace with them and integrate them into the fabric of the Egyptian people if they did not commit any crime?”

However, it was not long before this controversial issue came to the surface again when Mohamed Fayek, head of the National Council for Human Rights, said July 3, “There will be a presidential pardon soon for all the detained young people who were not involved in armed activities.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Boris Johnson and diplomacy are not synonymous

Patrick Wintour writes: Boris Johnson’s surprise appointment as foreign secretary is as much about the dismemberment of the foreign office as the sudden resurrection of the Conservative party’s favourite loveable rogue. It is also the first confirmation that Theresa May is going to be prepared to take risks in government.

For diplomacy and Boris Johnson are not, after all, exactly synonymous. Any cursory reading of his regular Daily Telegraph columns reveals praise of Vladimir Putin, calls to accommodate Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and indiscretions about the president of the United States. The Germans have previously singled out Johnson for causing Brexit with “a diet of lies”.

So even though Johnson had played a dominant role in the leave campaign, few thought May would regard it as politically necessary to bring him back into the fold. He may remain hugely popular in the Tory constituencies and large parts of the country but he was always assumed to be too big a risk and someone who might outshine the comparatively dour prime minister.

Margaret Thatcher for instance tended to favour the duller end of the foreign secretaryship, choosing figures such as Geoffrey Howe, Francis Pym or Douglas Hurd.

But the foreign secretaryship may not turn out to be one of the great offices of state in a May government. Much of the heavy lifting on Brexit is going to be taken up by a new Brexit department, and to be conducted by David Davis, a former shadow home secretary and Europe minister in the Major government. Davis had no role in the Cameron government and was untrusted by the Cameron team, but now faces one of the toughest jobs in government. It will be his task to disentangle the UK from the European Union, including when to trigger article 50. Johnson – who has in the past likened the EU to ill-fitting underwear – will be kept away. [Continue reading…]

Polly Toynbee writes: The Boris shock appointment looks strangely out of kilter with May’s “safe pair of hands”. It may please her to see appalled faces in the Foreign Office, but this feels like an isolationist insult to the world. His first global tour will need to be on his knees.

How will the “special relationship” fare when he meets Hillary Clinton, whom he calls “a sadistic nurse”? Or the touchy, but geopolitically pivotal, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, about whom he has only just written an obscene limerick rhyming Ankara with wankerer. Funny? Not so much in a foreign secretary.

Racist pro-colonial “jokes” will precede him wherever he goes – “piccaninnies” and “natives” with “watermelon” smiles – a whole back catalogue of deliberate offence.

Those who feel ashamed already at how the world sees our xenophobic referendum will have a lot more to blush about as Boris brags and blusters his self-obsessed way through diplomatic etiquette. The Middle East? He praises Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Europe? He compared the EU to Hitler. This man, unconnected to notions of truth, is in charge of MI6. What kind of negotiator will he be on anything sensitive (and everything is)?

Maybe May hopes he’ll crash and burn, but he can do great damage wherever he goes. The joke will be on us, for letting him treat the rest of the world as his playground. [Continue reading…]

 

Facebooktwittermail

What’s the best Brexit Theresa May could get for Britain?

Patrick Wintour writes: Theresa May’s mantra “Brexit means Brexit” is designed to reassure. Suspicious leavers are being told by their new prime minister that there will be no reversal, slippery evasions or procrastination on her watch.

In the referendum campaign she may have been a reluctant remainer, but the message – with Brexiters taking the three top foreign policy jobs in cabinet – is that she will now abide by the people’s instructions. In the best Thatcherite tradition there will be no turning back.

Yet “Brexit means Brexit” means next to nothing since there are so many ways for the UK to leave the European Union, and so many different kinds of new relationship with the EU on offer, each with their own balance of advantage and disadvantage. Indeed few made a more careful attempt to weigh those risks than May herself in a lengthy speech on 25 April.

May is a stickler for detail and doubtless will be alarmed by the absence of a coherent plan for Brexit in Whitehall. If preparation is a prerequisite for successful Brexit, the omens are poor. The official leave campaign, focused on victory and avoiding internal division, drew up only the flimsiest plan for what Brexit would look like, pointing vaguely at the exit door, but with little idea of what lay the other side. Foreign Office diplomats were instructed to draw up no contingency plans whatsoever, supposedly for fear they might leak. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Obama’s Syria plan teams up American and Russian forces

Josh Rogin writes: The Obama administration’s new proposal to Russia on Syria is more extensive than previously known. It would open the way for deep cooperation between U.S. and Russian military and intelligence agencies and coordinated air attacks by American and Russian planes on Syrian rebels deemed to be terrorists, according to the text of the proposal I obtained.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry plans to discuss the plan with top Russian officials in a visit to Moscow on Thursday. As I first reported last month, the administration is proposing joining with Russia in a ramped-up bombing campaign against Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syria branch, which is also known as the Nusrah Front. What hasn’t been previously reported is that the United States is suggesting a new military command-and-control headquarters to coordinate the air campaign that would house U.S. and Russian military officers, intelligence officials and subject-matter experts.

Overall, the proposal would dramatically shift the United States’ Syria policy by directing more American military power against Jabhat al-Nusra, which unlike the Islamic State is focused on fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. While this would expand the U.S. counterterrorism mission in Syria, it would also be a boon for the Assad regime, which could see the forces it is fighting dramatically weakened. The plan also represents a big change in U.S.-Russia policy. It would give Russian President Vladi­mir Putin something he has long wanted: closer military relations with the United States and a thawing of his international isolation. That’s why the Pentagon was initially opposed to the plan.

Yet for all this, it’s not at all clear that the plan will be accepted by Putin — or that Russia will fulfill its terms if he does. Administration officials caution that no final decisions have been made and that no formal agreement has been reached between the two countries. Negotiations over the text are ongoing ahead of Kerry’s arrival in Russia. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Assad tightens his stranglehold on Aleppo

The Daily Beast reports: Moving in for the kill, the Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian backers have taken control of the last supply route into rebel-held Aleppo in a combined air and ground campaign that has left well over 100 dead.

It was a major setback for the Syrian opposition, which has tenaciously held the eastern districts of Syria’s most populous city in the face of a far better armed government. Defeat in Aleppo would devastate the five-year-old rebellion, but it is not clear how they can lift the siege in the absence of foreign help.

Even before the latest government offensive, which commenced Thursday, the burned-out hulks of cars, buses and trucks littered the Castello Road, destroyed by artillery, shells and airstrikes over the past two months. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

How a modest contract for ‘applied research’ morphed into the CIA’s brutal interrogation program

The Washington Post reports: The architect of the CIA’s brutal interrogation program was hired for the job through a secret contract in late 2001 that outlined the assignment with Orwellian euphemism.

The agency “has the need for someone familiar with conducting applied research in high-risk operational settings,” the document said. The consultant would be in a unique position to “help guide and shape the future” of a vaguely described research project “in the area of counter-terrorism and special operations.”

In fact, the CIA already had a specific consultant in mind, and the agreement to pay $1,000 a day to psychologist James E. Mitchell subsequently expanded into an $81 million arrangement to oversee the use of waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other harrowing techniques against al-Qaeda suspects in secret agency prisons overseas.

The abuses of that program have been documented extensively over the past decade, but the initial contracts between the CIA and the psychologists it hired to design the torturous interrogation regimen were surrendered by the agency for the first time earlier this month as part of an ACLU lawsuit. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. launches quiet diplomacy to ease South China Sea tensions

Reuters reports: The United States is using quiet diplomacy to persuade the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam and other Asian nations not to move aggressively to capitalize on an international court ruling that denied China’s claims to the South China Sea, several U.S. administration officials said on Wednesday.

“What we want is to quiet things down so these issues can be addressed rationally instead of emotionally,” said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private diplomatic messages.

Some were sent through U.S. embassies abroad and foreign missions in Washington, while others were conveyed directly to top officials by Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Secretary of State John Kerry and other senior officials, the sources said.

“This is a blanket call for quiet, not some attempt to rally the region against China, which would play into a false narrative that the U.S. is leading a coalition to contain China,” the official added. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Biodiversity is below safe levels across more than half of world’s land, say scientists

wheat

The Guardian reports: The variety of animals and plants has fallen to dangerous levels across more than half of the world’s landmass due to humanity destroying habitats to use as farmland, scientists have estimated.

The unchecked loss of biodiversity is akin to playing ecological roulette and will set back efforts to bring people out of poverty in the long term, they warned.

Analysing 1.8m records from 39,123 sites across Earth, the international study found that a measure of the intactness of biodiversity at sites has fallen below a safety limit across 58.1% of the world’s land.

Under a proposal put forward by experts last year, a site losing more than 10% of its biodiversity is considered to have passed a precautionary threshold, beyond which the ecosystem’s ability to function could be compromised.

“It’s worrying that land use has already pushed biodiversity below the level proposed as a safe limit,” said Prof Andy Purvis, of the Natural History Museum, and one of the authors. “Until and unless we can bring biodiversity back up, we’re playing ecological roulette.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Theresa May promises ‘union of all citizens’ in first speech as prime minister

The Guardian reports: Theresa May promised to fight “burning injustice” in British society, govern for the poor and marginalised, and create a union “between all of our citizens” in her first remarks as the UK’s prime minister.

Standing outside No 10 Downing Street after visiting the Queen in Buckingham Palace to “kiss hands” and be formally anointed as Britain’s second female prime minister, May made a bold grab for the political centre ground.

The former home secretary looked directly into the waiting television cameras, and said she would make decisions based on the interests of struggling families, not the rich.

“If you’re one of those families, if you’re just managing, I want to address you directly. I know you’re working around the clock. I know you’re doing your best. I know that sometimes life can be a struggle.

“The government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours. We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives,” she said.

“When we take the big calls, we’ll think not of the powerful, but you. When we pass new laws we’ll listen not to the mighty, but to you. When it comes to taxes we’ll prioritise not the wealthy but you.

“When it comes to opportunity we won’t entrench the advantages of the fortunate few. We will do everything we can to help anybody, whatever your background, to go as far as your talents will take you.”

May said she would follow in David Cameron’s footsteps as a “one nation” prime minister, but her emphasis on social injustice suggested a shift of tone. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail