Category Archives: News

Scientists confirm their fears about West Antarctica — that it’s inherently unstable

The Washington Post reports: It may be the biggest climate change story of the last two years.

In 2014, several research groups suggested that the oceanfront glaciers in the Amundsen Sea region of West Antarctica may have reached a point of “unstoppable” retreat due to warm ocean waters melting them from below. There’s a great deal at stake — West Antarctica is estimated to contain enough ice to raise global sea levels by 3.3 meters, or well over 10 feet, were it all to melt.

The urgency may now increase further in light of just published research suggesting that destabilization of the Amundsen sea’s glaciers would indeed undermine the entirety of West Antarctica, as has long been feared.

In a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Johannes Feldmann and Anders Levermann of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research use a sophisticated climate model to study what will happen if these glaciers are, indeed, fully destabilized. And in essence, they find that the process of retreat doesn’t end with the region currently up against the ocean. [Continue reading…]

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Beheadings trigger largest demonstration Kabul may have seen this century

Yesterday, BBC News reported: About 2,000 people have protested in the eastern Afghan city of Ghazni against the killing of seven civilians by militants.

The murdered Hazaras included four men, one woman and two girls. Some had their throats slit – it is not clear by whom.

Their bodies were found at the weekend in southern Zabul province where fighting between rival Taliban factions has escalated over the last few days.

The seven Hazaras were killed after fighting erupted between two factions of the Taliban. It is not clear who murdered the abductees.

Some reports point the finger at foreign fighters, possibly from Uzbekistan, who are said to have joined a Taliban splinter group. But the deputy head of the breakaway faction denied any involvement in a phone call to the BBC.

However two days after the killings, eight other Hazara hostages were freed.

One of those released told the BBC that they had been held by foreign fighters who were speaking Uzbek. [Continue reading…]

TOLOnews reports: Thousands of women joined the protest march in the streets of Kabul on Wednesday morning which saw numbers swell by mid-morning to around 20,000.

Despite the cold and rain, demonstrators took to the streets over the beheading of seven Zabul residents who were kidnapped last month and killed by alleged Daesh militants a few days ago. [Continue reading…]

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The Taliban turn on each other, but that may not be good news

The Daily Beast reports: Fierce fighting reportedly broke out over the weekend between rival Taliban groups, raising concerns that no faction will be strong enough to make a peace deal, even if it were inclined to do so, and possibly opening the way to more recruitment by the growing forces in Afghanistan of the so-called Islamic State.

While the United States and the Kabul government previously sought to “divide and conquer” the group, under the current circumstances in Afghanistan, this latest development may only heighten the fracturing of society and the chaos of war.

Throughout most of the two decades the group has existed, under the leadership of the one-eyed Mullah Omar the Taliban showed remarkable unity. They took power in the mid-1990s, then were ousted by the American-led invasion in 2001 for protecting Osama bin Laden, and in the years since they’ve struggled to retake the government — but, still, they stuck together.

Almost as soon as the death of Mullah Omar was confirmed last July — and revealed to have taken place two years earlier — the cracks began to show. [Continue reading…]

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Why Iran and Russia aren’t as closely aligned on Syria as you might think

Saheb Sadeghi writes: Common and immediate objectives have united Iran and Russia on Syria in the short run, and this unity will probably be flexed against the West’s influence in the long term. However, when it comes to some key aspects of Syria’s future — including the nature of the government and the rebuilding of the Syrian military — differences between Tehran and Moscow are bound to come to the surface.

In broad terms, Iran and Russia have embarked on the same path and entered a new phase of the geopolitical game in Syria. A major power, Russia is trying to redefine its role in the world, as evidenced by its actions in Ukraine and Syria. After 40 years, Moscow has returned to the Middle East to prove that today’s world is different — and multipolar. Iran’s strategy also revolves around redefining its geopolitical role. Iran’s game in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and even Yemen shouldn’t be considered only from an ideological point of view, but rather as the Islamic Republic seeking what can be defined as living space.

In the short run, both Iran and Russia will attempt to preserve Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s position, help him maintain the territory his government now controls and retake territories that the Syrian army has recently lost. There is also the consideration of Russia seeking to test its new weapons and air force. In sum, the obvious aim is to weaken the position of Assad’s opponents in Syria as much as possible, and this short-term objective will ensure the current Iranian-Russian unity. [Continue reading…]

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Geolocation once again disproves Russia’s targeting claims in Syria

Bellingcat reports: In just three days, Russian aircraft have carried out 137 sorties, targeting 448 “terrorist objects” throughout Syria, according to a Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) press briefing held by spokesperson Igor Konashenkov on 9 November 2015. Three airstrikes previously posted on the MoD’s YouTube page were singled out by Konashenkov for closer examination. Given the Russian MoD’s well-documented propensity for fabricating information, it’s a worthwhile endeavor to verify the Russian MoD’s version of events.

The first video purports to show an airstrike on an “ammunition depot” in the governorate of Raqqa. According to Konashenkov, the depot contained “anti-tank systems, grenade launchers, and small arms,” and heavy vehicles were seen being loaded with weapons, which were “delivered to terrorist groups of the region.” Highlighting that the bombed depot was indeed located in Raqqa, the MoD presentation transitions to the video by having it zoom out from the approximate location where the strike allegedly took place: [Continue reading…]

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In a major breakthrough, Syrian army frees Aleppo air base from ISIS control

The National reports: Syria’s army broke ISIL’s siege on a military air base in northern Aleppo province on Tuesday, scoring its first major breakthrough since Russia’s air campaign began.

Troops, backed by pro-government militia, broke through the extremist group’s more than year-long siege of the Kweyris military airport in the country’s north.

A group of soldiers penetrated ISIL lines west of the airport and reached government troops inside the base, firing into the air in celebration.

Experts said the base could be used by Russian planes in their air war against rebels fighting the regime of president Bashar al-Assad, aiding their efforts to retake Syria’s second city of Aleppo. [Continue reading…]

Aron Lund writes: Assad has long claimed that he is an indispensible ally for any state seeking to contain international terrorism. The growth of Sunni-sectarian radicalism within the Syrian opposition and the Islamic State’s near-destruction of the Iraqi state in 2014 have been of great help to him. For the first time in years, there now exists a sizeable Western political constituency advocating resumed cooperation with Assad. Not only on the hard-right and hard-left fringes of politics, these whispers are increasingly heard among security officials and diplomats too. There’s a long way to go still, but that sort of international shift represents the Assad regime’s only real chance of longtime survival, if not exactly victory.

By helping Assad score points against the Islamic State in places like Kweiris, the Russian government hasachieved a dual goal: it makes Assad’s government appear more viable and useful as an ally, and it lets Russia boast of progress against the Islamic State after weeks of having to explain its choice to bomb other groups instead. [Continue reading…]

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Iran has stopped dismantling nuclear centrifuges, state media reports

Reuters reports: Iran has stopped dismantling centrifuges in two uranium enrichment plants, state media reported on Tuesday, days after conservative lawmakers complained to President Hassan Rouhani that the process was too rushed.

Last week, Iran announced it had begun shutting down inactive centrifuges at the Natanz and Fordow plants under the terms of a deal struck with world powers in July that limits its nuclear program in exchange for easing sanctions.

Iran’s hardliners continue to resist and undermine the nuclear deal, which was forged by moderates they oppose and which they see as a capitulation to the West.

“The (dismantling) process stopped with a warning,” Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of the National Security Council, was quoted as saying by the ISNA student news agency. [Continue reading…]

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Calls for investigation into Saudi Arabia’s actions in Yemen

The Guardian reports: There must be “proper investigations” to ensure that Saudi Arabia has not breached international humanitarian law in the war in Yemen, according to Britain’s foreign secretary, who said that shipments of UK-supplied weapons would be halted if the Saudis fell foul of those probes.

Philip Hammond’s comments came as Britain is being urged to halt the supply of weapons to Riyadh in the light of evidence that civilians are being killed in Saudi-led attacks on rebel forces in Yemen.

Amnesty International has warned that “damning evidence of war crimes” highlights the urgent need for an independent investigation of violations and for the suspension of transfer of arms used in the attacks.

Speaking during a visit to the US, Hammond told BBC’s Newsnight on Tuesday that he had discussed the use of the weapons in Yemen when he visited Saudi Arabia recently.

“The Saudis deny that there have been any breaches of international humanitarian law,” he said. “Obviously that denial alone is not enough. We need to see proper investigations. We need to work with the Saudis to establish that international humanitarian law has been complied with. We have an export licensing system that responds if we find that it is not. We will then find that we cannot licence additional shipments of weapons.” [Continue reading…]

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Suspects in jet bombing expose their ISIS allies in Syria to a backlash from Russia

The New York Times reports from Cairo: Within months of the military takeover here two years ago, a little-known group calling itself Ansar Beit al-Maqdis managed to penetrate rings of checkpoints and heavy security to carry out a string of startling attacks, assassinating a senior police official at his home near here and blowing up a security headquarters here and in Mansoura, Egypt.

They were inside jobs. The Egyptian authorities concluded that the group had received crucial advice from two policemen, Lt. Mohamed Eweis and Col. Sameh el-Azizi, who were among a series of military and security officers the group eventually recruited.

Now the same group, operating as the Sinai Province of the Islamic State, is the prime suspect in yet another inside job: The bombing of the Russian charter jet that exploded last week in midair over the desert north of Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, which killed all 224 people aboard. British and American officials say they believe it increasingly likely that the group planted the bomb before takeoff.

No government has confirmed that the Sinai Province has taken responsibility. But the group has eagerly claimed it and others in the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, have celebrated — positions that reflect drastic changes in both the Islamic State and the Sinai Province since the Egyptian unit first pledged its allegiance one year ago. Attacks by the Sinai Province, previously a mostly Bedouin group that focused mainly on fighting the Egyptian security forces, have quickly grown in sophistication and bloodshed. If its role in bringing down the plane is confirmed, the Sinai Province may have even momentarily surprised and surpassed its vicious parent, and, some analysts said, risked a broad backlash against the Islamic State itself.

If the militants in the Sinai found an inside man who could help bring down a Russia-bound jet, “did the ISIS guys in Syria say, ‘Sure, why not? The more enemies the merrier?’ ” asked William McCants, a researcher at the Brookings Institution and the author of “The ISIS Apocalypse,” a study of the group. “Or are they just celebrating it after the fact, so they don’t look out of the loop on such a major attack?”

The parent group, based in Raqqa, Syria, has much to lose by approving or even embracing the apparent bombing, he argued. Although supporters of the Islamic State are calling the jet’s crash retribution against Russia for its intervention in Syria to prop up President Bashar al-Assad, Mr. McCants noted that the Russians had mostly attacked Western-backed rebel groups that were foes of the Islamic State.

“Russia has been hitting their enemies for them,” Mr. McCants argued. “I can’t imagine the guys in Raqqa want Russia to go all in against them.” [Continue reading…]

TASS reports: Russian Aerospace Forces have made 137 sorties over last three days and delivered airstrikes at 448 infrastructure facilities of terrorists in Syria, Russian Defense Ministry official spokesman Igor Konashenkov told journalists on Monday.

“Over the last three days, Russian jets made 137 sorties in the Syrian Arab Republic and destroyed 448 facilities of terrorist infrastructure in the provinces of Aleppo, Damascus, Idlib, Latakia, Raqqa, Hama and Homs,” Konashenkov said. [Continue reading…]

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‘High probability’ Russian flight was bombed, says UK foreign secretary

The Guardian reports: There is a “high probability” that a bomb planted by an Islamic State supporter brought down the Russian airliner which crashed over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula just over a week ago, according to Britain’s foreign secretary.

Drawing one of the most explicit links yet between Isis and the incident, Philip Hammond said that this did not necessarily mean that the attack was directed from the group’s headquarters in Syria.

Rather, he said: “It may have been an individual who was inspired by Isis who was self-radicalised by looking at Isis propaganda and was acting in the name of Isis without necessarily being directed.” [Continue reading…]

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Russia says bomb may have caused plane crash in Egypt

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia’s prime minister said Monday that a bomb may have downed the passenger jet that crashed in Egypt, Moscow’s strongest acknowledgment yet that it may have been a terrorist attack.

Russia’s shift in tone followed assertions by British and American officials that terrorism was the likely cause of the Oct. 31 crash of a Russian-operated Airbus A321 in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. All 224 people on board died.

“The probability of a terrorist act, of course, is held as a cause of what happened,” Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in an excerpt of a forthcoming interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta, according to state news agency TASS.

The Kremlin’s spokesman added that the U.K. shared some intelligence with Russia regarding the crash, but didn’t comment on the nature of that information. [Continue reading…]

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Hossam Bahgat, journalist and advocate, is released by Egypt’s military

The New York Times reports: The Egyptian military on Tuesday released the journalist Hossam Bahgat, hours before planned demonstrations in Cairo, London and other cities to call for his freedom.

Mr. Bahgat, 36, founded a highly respected human rights advocacy group, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, in 2002. Over the last two years, he has become a leading investigative journalist in Egypt, writing in English and Arabic for the online news organization Mada Masr. [Continue reading…]

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Divide in Tehran grows over crackdown by Revolutionary Guards

EA Worldview reports: Tension is continuing to build within Iran’s regime over the crackdown by the Revolutionary Guards, with arrests of journalists and businessmen, following President Rouhani’s criticism of hardliners on Sunday.

Rouhani said at the Tehran Press Fair:

It is not tolerable that some media are permanently immune from the threat of closure and banning and enjoy permanent security [services] support. So they not only write whatever they please, but also play the role of the secret police in such a way that by reading certain newspapers, one finds out who will be arrested tomorrow, which [newspaper] will be banned and whose honor will be done away with.

Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the chair of Parliament’s National Security Commission, defended the Guards by saying that “one of [its] missions and responsibilities is to protect the country’s security”. He said the arrests of journalists, including five in the past two weeks, was “not without reason”: “The speculations being uttered that these arrests are political and connected to the JCPOA [the July 14 nuclear deal with the 5+1 Powers] are not fair and realistic.”

Others hit back at the President. Head of judiciary Sadegh Larijani accused Rouhani of “insulting” the judicial authorities by claiming that some media enjoy “immunity” against bans and closure. [Continue reading…]

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Classified report on the CIA’s secret prisons is caught in limbo

The New York Times reports: A Senate security officer stepped out of the December chill last year and delivered envelopes marked “Top Secret” to the Pentagon, the C.I.A., the State Department and the Justice Department. Inside each packet was a disc containing a 6,700-page classified report on the C.I.A.’s secret prison program and a letter from Senator Dianne Feinstein, urging officials to read the report to ensure that the lessons were not lost to time.

Today, those discs sit untouched in vaults across Washington, still in their original envelopes. The F.B.I. has not retrieved a copy held for it in the Justice Department’s safe. State Department officials, who locked up their copy and marked it “Congressional Record — Do Not Open, Do Not Access” as soon as it arrived, have not read it either.

Nearly a year after the Senate released a declassified 500-page summary of the report, the fate of the entire document remains in limbo, the subject of battles in the courts and in Congress. Until those disputes are resolved, the Justice Department has prohibited officials from the government agencies that possess it from even opening the report, effectively keeping the people in charge of America’s counterterrorism future from reading about its past. There is also the possibility that the documents could remain locked in a Senate vault for good. [Continue reading…]

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Judge deals a blow to NSA data collection program

The New York Times reports: A federal judge on Monday partly blocked the National Security Agency’s program that systematically collects Americans’ domestic phone records in bulk just weeks before the agency was scheduled to shut it down and replace it. The judge said the program was most likely unconstitutional.

In a separate case challenging the program, a federal appeals court in New York on Oct. 30 had declined to weigh in on the constitutional issues, saying it would be imprudent to interfere with an orderly transition to a replacement system after Nov. 29.

But on Monday, in a 43-page ruling, Judge Richard J. Leon of United States District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the constitutional issues were too important to leave unanswered in the history of the program, which traces back to after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and came to light in 2013 in leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor. [Continue reading…]

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How Sinai became a launchpad for Egypt’s deadly ISIS affiliate

The Guardian reports: Grey jeans, black trainers and a surface-to-air missile were all that could be seen of the man waiting under a tree for an Egyptian military helicopter to fly past in early January 2014. He fired and the aircraft tumbled to the ground, a moment captured on video by the group that would become Isis Sinai Province, and released in triumph soon after.

The attack served notice to the Egyptian military and the rest of the world that Sinai’s Islamist insurgents had stepped up their ambitions and their capacities, drawing weapons and inspiration from the region’s other spiralling conflicts. If last week’s explosion on board a Russian Metrojet flight from Sharm el-Sheikh proves also to have been their work, those ambitions have reached a new level.

Cairo has long struggled to control the sparsely populated expanses of the Sinai Peninsula, where Islamists have found refuge with smugglers, criminals and others keen to escape too much official scrutiny. But until little over a decade ago, it was a place militants went to hide, train and plot, not somewhere they carried out attacks.

A shift in ideology, the fallout from a government crackdown, and chaos in neighbouring states have transformed the area from dangerous haven to conflict zone. Factions have united into a group with unprecedented access to funds and weapons, and which has become the most ambitious Isis franchise outside Syria or Iraq. [Continue reading…]

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Egyptian military arrests investigative journalist who exposed recent coup plot

The New York Times reports: Egyptian military intelligence on Sunday detained an investigative journalist who is also the founder of Egypt’s premier human rights group on charges of publishing false news, raising alarms about attempts to suppress domestic dissent as the government grapples with questions about the crash of a Russian passenger jet.

The journalist, Hossam Bahgat, 36, founded the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a highly regarded rights organization, in 2002. Since the military takeover in 2013, however, he has distinguished himself as a unique voice in the Egyptian news media by writing a series of painstakingly researched investigative reports that have called into question government statements.

Mr. Bahgat was summoned to military intelligence on Sunday and interrogated for hours before he was allowed to meet with lawyers. He was ordered to spend the night in detention, with his lawyers saying that military prosecutors would most likely decide on Monday whether to formally send him to trial. He also faces charges of insulting the military, his lawyers said.

Mr. Bahgat’s most recent report — and apparently the one that set off the ire of the military — investigated the low-key convictions of 26 military officers accused of having plotted a coup against the current government. The report raised questions about possible dissent in the ranks and about potential retribution against officers who had crossed the secret police. The article was the focus of questions by the prosecutor, according to Ragia Omran, a human rights lawyer who attended the interrogation in support of Mr. Bahgat. [Continue reading…]

Here is Bahgat speaking in Brazil two years ago:

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A strike on a vital artery of Egypt’s economy

Emad Mostaque writes: In the 14 years since 9/11, the “War on Terror” has been unsuccessful, with near $2tn spent, hundreds of thousands if not millions of civilians killed and the number of jihadists in the world up from under 1,000 to over 100,000, with these groups becoming more sophisticated and learning from their mistakes.

Unlike Algeria in the 90s, where terrorists had to hide in mountainous terrain and among underprivileged communities, new, un-decryptable communication technologies and regional chaos allow for distributed terror groups with access to powerful explosives and munitions. This presents a severe challenge when a group like Isis, whose message is designed to appeal to a limited group – primarily disillusioned Islamists, oppressed sectarians and easily malleable westerners – does not care about winning “hearts and minds”.

Even if Isis were not behind the attack (we believe it was), it has dominated the media after this event and the results of any investigation are likely to take many months, again showing its mastery of social leverage.

Just the fear of security lapses in Egypt, which are unlikely to be fixed any time soon, has led to the UK stopping flights and other airlines banning hold luggage. It is difficult to see what will reverse this. There is a key difference between this and even an attack on a hotel, a localised event that typically hits tourism for a while before it recovers, whereas hitting a key transportation mechanism is a far more profound act. [Continue reading…]

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