Category Archives: News

Richest 1% soon to own 50% of global wealth

The New York Times reports: The richest 1 percent are likely to control more than half of the globe’s total wealth by next year, the charity Oxfam reported in a study released on Monday. The warning about deepening global inequality comes just as the world’s business elite prepare to meet this week at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The 80 wealthiest people in the world altogether own $1.9 trillion, the report found, nearly the same amount shared by the 3.5 billion people who occupy the bottom half of the world’s income scale. (Last year, it took 85 billionaires to equal that figure.) And the richest 1 percent of the population, who number in the millions, control nearly half of the world’s total wealth, a share that is also increasing.

The type of inequality that currently characterizes the world’s economies is unlike anything seen in recent years, the report explained. “Between 2002 and 2010 the total wealth of the poorest half of the world in current U.S. dollars had been increasing more or less at the same rate as that of billionaires,” it said. “However since 2010, it has been decreasing over that time.”

Winnie Byanyima, the charity’s executive director, noted in a statement that more than a billion people lived on less than $1.25 a day.

“Do we really want to live in a world where the 1 percent own more than the rest of us combined?” Ms. Byanyima said. “The scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering.” [Continue reading…]

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The CIA officer who got jailed for blowing the whistle on torture while the torturers remain free

The Intercept: You don’t have access to the internet in prison, so have you been able to see just one page of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report?

John Kiriakou: Well, my cousin ended up printing the entire thing and sent it to me. Yeah, he sent it to me in five different envelopes.

So was there anything in the report that surprised you? Did you feel even more despair at being the only CIA officer jailed since the program came into existence?

One thing that I think most everybody has missed is, we knew about the waterboarding, we knew about the cold cells, we knew about the loud music and the sleep deprivation. We knew about all the things that have been ‘approved’ by the Justice Department. But what we didn’t know was what individual CIA officers were doing on their own without any authorization. And I would like to know why those officers aren’t being prosecuted when clearly they’ve committed crimes and those crimes were well documented by both the CIA and the Senate Committee of Intelligence. [Continue reading…]

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Did Iran murder Argentina’s crusading prosecutor Alberto Nisman?

Christopher Dickey reports: Since 2005 Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman has been crusading for his vision of justice in the horrific 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and injured hundreds more. He claimed that Iran was behind it and, more recently, that the Argentine government was trying to block his efforts to prove that.

On Sunday night, Nisman was found dead in his apartment, only hours before he was set to testify before an Argentine parliamentary commission about his allegations.

The circumstances revealed thus far by the police suggest a suicide. The history of Iran’s operations overseas inevitably suggest otherwise. And there are disturbing echoes of the world 20 or 30 years ago when Tehran, often in league with its clients in Hezbollah, waged a global war on the enemies of the Islamic Republic, deploying hit teams second only to the Israelis in their skill at assassination. [Continue reading…]

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Yemen truce after Shiite rebels battle troops, seize media

The Associated Press reports: A cease-fire halted intense clashes near the presidential palace in Yemen’s capital Sanaa on Monday after Shiite rebels seized control of state-run media in a move that one official called “a step toward a coup.”

The fighting, centered on the palace and a military area south of it, marked the biggest challenge yet to President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi by the rebels, known as Houthis, who swept down from their northern strongholds last year and captured the capital in September.

The violence has plunged the Arab world’s poorest country further into chaos and could complicate U.S. efforts to battle al-Qaida’s Yemeni affiliate, which claimed responsibility for the attack on a Paris satirical magazine this month and which Washington has long viewed as the global network’s most dangerous branch.

The Houthis are seen by their critics as a proxy of Shiite Iran — charges they deny — and are believed to be allied with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, ousted in a 2012 deal after Arab Spring protests. They have vowed to eradicate al-Qaida, but are also hostile to the U.S. Their slogan is “Death to Israel. Death to America.” [Continue reading…]

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Europe’s ‘Minority Report’ raids on future terrorists

Christopher Dickey reports: In a stunning wave of arrests, the security forces of France, Belgium, and Germany are rounding up suspected jihadis all over the map, especially those who have returned from the Syrian and Iraqi war zones.

In one case, in the small Belgian town of Verviers near the German border, two alleged jihadis were shot dead and one was wounded in a Thursday night firefight.

A spokesperson for the Belgian prosecutor’s office, Eric van der Sypt, said Friday that the Verviers suspects were believed to be on the verge of launching an attack. Four Kalashnikov automatic rifles were found in their possession along with bomb-making materials. Tellingly, they also had police uniforms. Phone taps of conversations among the suspects reportedly indicated the assault was only hours away.

“They had the intention to kill police, targeting them in the streets and at their offices,” van der Sypt said in Brussels on Friday. “We had been following the cell for a while but decided to intervene because the threat seemed imminent.”

He said this was a strictly Belgian cell, but all of this is taking place in the aftermath of the terror attacks in Paris last week, when known jihadis who had been under surveillance in the past somehow slipped the attention of law enforcement, acquired weapons of war (reportedly in Belgium), and launched a killing spree that took the lives of 17 victims, including journalists at the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, police, and Jewish shoppers at a kosher grocery.

What is clear is that the authorities in Europe now believe it is too dangerous to let potential terrorists who have fought and trained abroad continue to roam the streets. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, in the aftermath of last week’s attacks, said flatly that his nation is in a state of war. [Continue reading…]

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3,000 in Turkey linked to ISIS, police intelligence report says

Hurriyet Daily News: There are around 3,000 people linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in Turkey, a police intelligence report has alleged, raising a red alert over the possible future actions of “sleeping cells” of the jihadist group, sources have told Hürriyet.

The number is in addition between 700 and 1,000 Turkish fighters in the group, whose potential return has concerned Turkey, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said earlier this week.

Turkey has so far deported 1,165 people and placed an entry ban on 7,250 more, Çavuşoğlu also said.

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Turkey threatens to block social media over released documents

The New York Times reports: Turkish officials threatened to shut down Twitter in the country unless the social-media company blocked the account of a left-wing newspaper that had circulated documents about a military police raid on Turkish Intelligence Agency trucks that were traveling to Syria last January.

The demand came on Thursday, a day after a local court in Adana, a southern Turkish province, issued an order barring coverage of the investigation, hinting at the possibility of an overall ban on social media networks where documents on legal proceedings of the raid have been circulated.

The court argued that publication of the information violated national security and interfered with a continuing inquiry. Turkish government officials strongly denied opposition claims that the intelligence agency’s trucks had carried weapons for extremists fighting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Instead, the trucks were trying to deliver humanitarian aid for the Turkmen minority in Syria, who had been stranded in the conflict since 2011, officials said.

Networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus complied with the court order on Wednesday, removing content from accounts to avert a shutdown, Turkish news outlets reported.

But the BirGun newspaper, as well as other Twitter users, continued to challenge the ban by posting new messages. Twitter refused to block the newspaper’s account but did block specific messages that BirGun had posted showing images of leaked documents in which the military police were said to have confirmed that the trucks contained weapons and explosives. The documents also said the weapons were destined for Al Qaeda. [Continue reading…]

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ICC opens examination of Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Reuters: The International Criminal Court has launched an inquiry into possible war crimes in the Palestinian territories, opening a path to possible charges against Israelis or Palestinians.

In a statement on Friday, prosecutors said they would examine “in full independence and impartiality” crimes that may have occurred since June 13 last year. This allows the court to delve into the war between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza in July-August 2014 during which more than 2,100 Palestinians and 73 Israelis were killed.

The U.S. State Department said it strongly disagreed with the move. The United States has argued that Palestine is not a state and therefore not eligible to join the ICC.

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John McAfee: ‘I know who hacked Sony Pictures – and it wasn’t North Korea’

IBT: Anti-virus pioneer John McAfee claims to have been in contact with the group of hackers behind the devastating cyber-attack against Sony Pictures and guarantees they are not from North Korea.

Speaking to IBTimes UK about his current roster of security startups under his Future Tense brand – including secure messaging app Chadder – McAfee spoke about working with the FBI previously but said that, in this case, the agency was “wrong”.

“I can guarantee they are wrong. It has to do with a group of hackers – I will not name them – who are civil libertarians and who hate the confinement the restrictions the music industry and the movie industry has placed on art and so they are behind it.”

Sounds plausible — even more so if it was coming from a different source.

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Turkey seeks prison for TV presenter over tweet

The Associated Press: A local news agency says Turkish prosecutors are seeking up to five years in prison for a former television presenter who was detained last month for posting a tweet suggesting a cover-up in a government corruption scandal.

Private Dogan news agency reported Friday that Sedef Kabas was charged with “targeting public servants tasked with fighting against terrorism.”

She was questioned after telling her Twitter followers not to forget the name of a prosecutor who dropped a corruption and bribery probe earlier this year that implicated people close to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

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Turkish military says Turkey’s intelligence service shipped weapons to al Qaeda

Fehim Taştekin reports: Secret official documents about the searching of three trucks belonging to Turkey’s national intelligence service (MIT) have been leaked online, once again corroborating suspicions that Ankara has not been playing a clean game in Syria. According to the authenticated documents, the trucks were found to be transporting missiles, mortars and anti-aircraft ammunition. The Gendarmerie General Command, which authored the reports, alleged, “The trucks were carrying weapons and supplies to the al-Qaeda terror organization.” But Turkish readers could not see the documents in the news bulletins and newspapers that shared them, because the government immediately obtained a court injunction banning all reporting about the affair.

When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was prime minister, he had said, “You cannot stop the MIT truck. You cannot search it. You don’t have the authority. These trucks were taking humanitarian assistance to Turkmens.”

Since then, Erdogan and his hand-picked new Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu have repeated at every opportunity that the trucks were carrying assistance to Turkmens. Public prosecutor Aziz Takci, who had ordered the trucks to be searched, was removed from his post and 13 soldiers involved in the search were taken to court on charges of espionage. Their indictments call for prison terms of up to 20 years. [Continue reading…]

In order to circumvent the ban imposed on the publication of the leaked MIT documents they have been posted by Anonymous.

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Charlie Hebdo founder says slain editor ‘dragged’ team to their deaths

The Telegraph reports: One of the founding members of Charlie Hebdo has accused its slain editor, Patrick Charbonnier, or Charb, of “dragging the team” to their deaths by releasing increasingly provocative cartoons, as five million copies of the “survivors’ edition” went on sale.

Henri Roussel, 80, who contributed to the first issue of the satirical weekly in 1970, wrote to the murdered editor, saying: “I really hold it against you.”

In this week’s Left-leaning magazine Nouvel Obs, Mr Roussel, who publishes under the pen name Delfeil de Ton, wrote: “I know it’s not done”, but proceeds to criticise the former “boss” of the magazine.

Calling Charb an “amazing lad”, he said he was also a stubborn “block head”.

“What made him feel the need to drag the team into overdoing it,” he said, referring to Charb’s decision to post a Mohammed character on the magazine’s front page in 2011. Soon afterwards, the magazine’s offices were burned down by unknown arsonists.

Delfeil adds: “He shouldn’t have done it, but Charb did it again a year later, in September 2012.”

The accusation sparked a furious reaction from Richard Malka, Charlie Hebdo’s lawyer for the past 22 years, who sent an angry message to Mathieu Pigasse, one of the owners of Nouvel Obs and Le Monde. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS gaining ground in Syria, despite U.S. strikes

The Daily Beast reports: ISIS continues to gain substantial ground in Syria, despite nearly 800 airstrikes in the American-led campaign to break its grip there.

At least one-third of the country’s territory is now under ISIS influence, with recent gains in rural areas that can serve as a conduit to major cities that the so-called Islamic State hopes to eventually claim as part of its caliphate. Meanwhile, the Islamic extremist group does not appear to have suffered any major ground losses since the strikes began. The result is a net ground gain for ISIS, according to information compiled by two groups with on-the-ground sources.

In Syria, ISIS “has not any lost any key terrain,” Jennifer Cafarella, a fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War who studies the Syrian conflict, explained to The Daily Beast.

Even U.S. military officials privately conceded to The Daily Beast that ISIS has gained ground in some areas, even as the Pentagon claims its seized territory elsewhere, largely around the northern city of Kobani. That’s been the focus of the U.S.-led campaign, and ISIS has not been able to take the town, despite its best efforts. [Continue reading…]

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Paris gunman’s safe house could hold clues to 4th attacker

The Associated Press reports: Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who killed four hostages at a Paris kosher supermarket, rented a small suburban house the week before and filled it with an impressive arsenal of late-model weapons, police said Wednesday.

A published report said a search of the house has enabled police to identity a potential fourth attacker as investigators follow the money and supply systems for the three known killers, all of whom died in police raids. Police told The Associated Press as many as six members of the same radical Islamic terror cell may be at large.

“We have put our finger on some extremely dangerous people, men and women,” French police union spokesman Christophe Crepin said. “We are really in a war.”

Of special interest is the small attached house on a quiet street in the town of Gentilly south of Paris that Coulibaly rented about two weeks ago. French police officials refused to say what has been discovered inside the dwelling, but the newspaper Le Parisien reported detectives from the Paris Criminal Brigade and a special police anti-terrorism unit seized a scooter there that allowed them to identity “a fourth man” who acted as Coulibaly’s accomplice.

The newspaper did not identify the man by name, but said he may have shot and seriously wounded a jogger in nearby Fontenay-aux-Roses on Jan. 7, the same day two friends of Coulibaly, brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, killed 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo.

“The fourth man,” who has a lengthy criminal record, may have been involved in that attack, the newspaper reported, adding that he may have already escaped to Syria.

When an AP reporter visited the Gentilly house this week, neighbors said they had noticed nothing out of the ordinary, with one saying the muscular, 5-foot-5 (165 cm) Coulibaly had been a regular at the local weight room.

Officials said the attackers accumulated a veritable arsenal that included three late-model Kalashnikov assault rifles, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a machine pistol, smoke grenades and bombs, fragmentation grenades, handguns and industrial explosives.

In addition to the weapons, investigators are painstakingly following the money trail. Former drug-dealing associates of Coulibaly told AP he was selling marijuana and hashish in the Paris suburbs as recently as a month ago. Multiple French news accounts have said the Kouachi brothers sold knockoff sporting goods made in China. [Continue reading…]

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Rebirth of the Ottoman Empire?

Today’s Zaman reports: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan greeted Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Thursday in a historic welcome ceremony involving 16 soldiers wearing ceremonial clothes and the “Resurrection Anthem,” a theme song of a TV serial featuring the establishment of the Ottoman Empire.

As Erdoğan walked to greet Aliyev, the presidency’s band played “Resurrection Anthem,” the theme song of the show “Diriliş-Ertuğrul” (Resurrection-Ertuğrul), which is about the establishment of the Ottoman Empire. The song is a slightly altered version of “Dombra,” a Turkish nationalist song that was used by Erdoğan in his campaign for the March 30, 2014, local elections.

Army soldiers stood on one side of the president while 16 soldiers dressed up in ceremonial clothes representing each of the 16 states established by Turkic people throughout history were standing on his other side. [Continue reading…]

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Role of FBI informant in eco-terrorism case probed after documents hint at entrapment

The Guardian reports: On the surface, she blended in very well. With a skull tattooed on her shoulder, a black-and-white keffiyeh around her neck, a shock of bright pink hair and her standard-issue dress of camouflage skirt and heavy boots, the energetic 17-year-old looked every bit the radical eco-activist she worked so hard to imitate.

But “Anna”, as she called herself, was no ordinary eco-protester. Really, she wasn’t one at all. She was an FBI informant under instructions to infiltrate fringe green groups and anti-capitalist networks and report back on their activities to the US government.

Now “Anna”, in her role at the center of a high-profile prosecution of alleged eco-terrorists in 2006-7, has been put under the spotlight following the embarrassing admission by the US Department of Justice that it failed to disclose crucial documents to defence attorneys at trial.

On Thursday, Eric McDavid, a radical green activist aged 37, was allowed to walk free after having served nine years of a 19-year federal prison sentence. Prosecutors had alleged that he was the ringleader in a small cell of eco-terrorists connected to the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) conspiring to bomb the Nimbus Dam in California, cellphone towers, science labs and other targets.

Last week’s dramatic scenes in a courtroom in Sacramento, California, have focused attention on the FBI’s use of undercover informants and prompted claims that the agency lured unsuspecting activists into criminal activity through blatant entrapment. [Continue reading…]

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More reasons to question AQAP’s claims about the Paris attacks

Haaretz reports: The terrorists who perpetrated the attacks in Paris last week got their weapons from an arms dealer in Brussels.

The dealer, a known figure in Brussels’ underworld, turned himself in to local police on Tuesday, according to Belgian media.

Federal police, who searched the suspect’s apartment, found papers linking him to a transaction with Amedy Coulibaly, the jihadist who murdered four Jewish men and held others hostage at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in east Paris on Friday.

According to the local press, the man sold Coulibaly the Skorpion submachine guns he used in the attack, as well as the rocket propelled grenade launcher and the Kalashnikov automatic assault rifles that Said and Cherif Kouachi used to perpetrate the massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo. The weapons were purchased near the Midi railway station in downtown Brussels for less than 5,000 euros, according to the reports.

French media reports Wednesday morning said that the funding for the arms purchase was simply a standard loan of 6,000 euros ($7,050) that Coulibaly took out on December 4 from the French financial-services firm Cofidis. He used his real name but falsely stated his monthly income on the loan declaration, a statement the company didn’t bother to check, the reports say. [Continue reading…]

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Al Qaeda claims French attack, derides Paris rally

Reuters reports: Al Qaeda in Yemen claimed responsibility for the attack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, saying it was ordered by the Islamist militant group’s leadership for insulting the Prophet Mohammad, according to a video posted on YouTube.

Gunmen killed a total of 17 people in three days of violence that began when they opened fire at Charlie Hebdo last week in revenge for publication of satirical images of the Prophet.

This was the first time that a group officially claimed responsibility for the attack, led by two brothers who had visited the poor Arabian peninsula country in 2011.

“As for the blessed Battle of Paris, we … claim responsibility for this operation as vengeance for the Messenger of God,” said Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, a leader of the Yemeni branch of al Qaeda (AQAP) in the recording.

Ansi, an AQAP ideologue, said the “one who chose the target, laid the plan and financed the operation is the leadership of the organisation”, without naming an individual.

He added without elaborating that the strike was carried out in “implementation” of the order of overall al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, who has called for strikes by Muslims in the West using any means they can find.

Ansi also gave credit for the operation to slain AQAP propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, a preacher cited by one of the gunmen in remarks to French media as a financer of the attack.

It was not clear how Awlaki, killed by a U.S. drone in 2011, had a direct link to the Paris assault, but he inspired several militants in the United States and Britain to acts of violence. [Continue reading…]

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