Category Archives: News

Obama to send 1,500 more troops to Iraq as campaign expands

Reuters reports: President Barack Obama has approved sending up to 1,500 more troops to Iraq, roughly doubling the number of U.S. forces on the ground helping Iraqi and Kurdish forces battle the militant group Islamic State, U.S. officials said on Friday.

Obama’s decision greatly expands the scope of the U.S. campaign and the geographic distribution of American forces, some of whom will head into Iraq’s fiercely contested western Anbar province for the first time to act as advisers.

It also raises the stakes in Obama’s first interactions with Congress after his Democratic Party was thumped by Republicans in mid-term elections this week. The White House said it would ask Congress for $1.6 billion for a new “Iraq Train and Equip Fund” and billions more for operations to battle the group. [Continue reading…]

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The Senate report on CIA interrogation is about to reignite debate over the killing of Osama Bin Laden

Jason Leopold writes: A few days before the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, then President George W. Bush gave a speech in the East Room of the White House where, for the first time, he acknowledged that the CIA had been holding more than a dozen “high-value” detainees who were subjected to “tough” interrogation methods at secret prisons “outside of the United States.”

Bush cited a number of terrorist plots that were thwarted after high-value captives were subjected to the CIA’s interrogation regimen. One was an attempt in 2003 by al Qaeda terrorists to attack the US consulate in Karachi, Pakistan “using car bombs and motorcycle bombs.”

In a long-awaited summary of a report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program, the Senate Committee on Intelligence dissects Bush’s September 6, 2006 speech and reveals that the intelligence provided to Bush by the CIA about the Karachi operation was overstated. Interrogators, the summary asserts, could have obtained details about it without resorting to so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs).

That’s just one example contained in the summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report that Democrats say proves the CIA’s interrogation program was a failure and did not produce “unique” and “valuable” intelligence. That’s according to a half-dozen people familiar with the document who spoke to VICE News over the past three weeks on the condition of anonymity because the summary is still undergoing a final declassification review. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. military chief praises Israel for limiting civilian casualties in recent war on Gaza

Reuters reports: The highest-ranking U.S. military officer said on Thursday that Israel went to “extraordinary lengths” to limit civilian casualties in the recent war in Gaza and that the Pentagon had sent a team to see what lessons could be learned from the operation.

Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged recent reports criticizing civilian deaths during the 50-day Gaza war this year but told an audience in New York he thought the Israel Defense Forces “did what they could” to avoid civilian casualties.

Israel was criticized for civilian deaths during the conflict, including by the White House. More than 2,100 Palestinians were killed during the fighting, most of them civilians and many of them children, according to U.N. and Palestinian figures.

A Human Rights Watch report in September accused Israel of committing war crimes by attacking three U.N.-run schools in the enclave, while Amnesty International said in a report released on Wednesday that Israel showed “callous indifference” to the carnage caused by attacks on civilian targets. [Continue reading…]

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Hamas announces ‘popular army’ after al-Aqsa clash

AFP reports: Hamas announced the creation of a “popular army” in the Gaza Strip on Friday, saying it was ready for any future conflict with Israel, particularly over the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound.

At a ceremony at the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the devastated Palestinian territory, a spokesman for the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades — the military arm of the Islamist Hamas movement — said 2,500 recruits would form “the first section of the popular army for the liberation of al-Aqsa and of Palestine”.

Mohammed Abu Askar, a Hamas official, said those older than 20 could sign up “to be prepared for any confrontation” with Israel.

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EU foreign chief calls for statehood on Gaza visit

AFP reports: The European Union’s new foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini Saturday appealed for the establishment of a Palestinian state, saying the world “cannot afford” another war in Gaza.

“We need a Palestinian state – that is the ultimate goal and this is the position of all the European Union,” Mogherini said during a trip to Gaza, devastated by its third conflict in six years.

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Houthi expansion puts Yemen on edge of civil war

Reuters reports: An advance into Yemen’s Sunni Muslim heartland by Shi’ite Houthi fighters has galvanised support for al Qaeda among some Sunnis, deepening the religious hue of the country’s many conflicts, with potential consequences well beyond its borders.

Yemen’s tribal, regional and political divisions were widened by the rapid fall of the capital Sanaa to Houthi fighters on Sept. 21 after weeks of protests against the government and its decision to cut fuel subsidies.

“The Houthi expansion has created a sectarian problem,” said Bassam al-Barq, a Sunni Muslim resident of the religiously mixed Sanaa, attending a protest by local activists held every week to demand the Houthis quit the capital.

“It has created sympathy with al Qaeda, as we see in Ibb and al-Baydah,” Barq said, referring to two provinces in central Yemen where some local tribes have allied themselves with al Qaeda’s local wing, Ansar al-Sharia. [Continue reading…]

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The life cycles of flowers and bees are getting thrown out of balance by climate change

bee-pollination

The Guardian reports: Sexual deceit, pressed flowers and Victorian bee collectors are combined in new scientific research which demonstrates for the first time that climate change threatens flower pollination, which underpins much of the world’s food production.

The work used museum records stretching back to 1848 to show that the early spider orchid and the miner bee on which it depends for reproduction have become increasingly out of sync as spring temperatures rise due to global warming.

The orchid resembles a female miner bee and exudes the same sex pheromone to seduce the male bee into “pseudocopulation” with the flower, an act which also achieves pollination. The orchids have evolved to flower at the same time as the bee emerges.

But while rising temperatures cause both the orchid and the bee to flower or fly earlier in the spring, the bees are affected much more, which leads to a mismatch.

“We have shown that plants and their pollinators show different responses to climate change and that warming will widen the timeline between bees and flowers emerging,” said Dr Karen Robbirt, at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the University of East Anglia (UEA). “If replicated in less specific systems, this could have severe implications for crop productivity.”

She said the research, published in Current Biology on Thursday, is “the first clear example, supported by long-term data, of the potential for climate change to disrupt critical [pollination] relationships between species.” [Continue reading…]

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‘ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks’

Newsweek reports: A former member of ISIS has revealed the extent to which the cooperation of the Turkish military and border forces allows the terrorist group, who now control large parts of Iraq and Syria, to travel through Turkish territory to reinforce fighters battling Kurdish forces.

A reluctant former communications technician working for Islamic State, going by the pseudonym ‘Sherko Omer’, who managed to escape the group, told Newsweek that he travelled in a convoy of trucks as part of an ISIS unit from their stronghold in Raqqa, across Turkish border, through Turkey and then back across the border to attack Syrian Kurds in the city of Serekaniye in northern Syria in February, in order to bypass their defences.

“ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks,” said Omer of crossing the border into Turkey, “and they reassured us that nothing will happen, especially when that is how they regularly travel from Raqqa and Aleppo to the Kurdish areas further northeast of Syria because it was impossible to travel through Syria as YPG controlled most parts of the Kurdish region.”

Until last month, NATO member Turkey had blocked Kurdish fighters from crossing the border into Syria to aid their Syrian counterparts in defending the border town of Kobane. Speaking to Newsweek, Kurds in Kobane said that people attempting to carry supplies across the border were often shot at.

National Army of Syrian Kurdistan (YPG) spokesman Polat Can went even further, saying that Turkish forces were actively aiding ISIS. “There is more than enough evidence with us now proving that the Turkish army gives ISIS terrorists weapons, ammunitions and allows them to cross the Turkish official border crossings in order for ISIS terrorists to initiate inhumane attacks against the Kurdish people in Rojava [north-eastern Syria].”

Omer explained that during his time with ISIS, Turkey had been seen as an ally against the Kurds. “ISIS saw the Turkish army as its ally especially when it came to attacking the Kurds in Syria. The Kurds were the common enemy for both ISIS and Turkey. Also, ISIS had to be a Turkish ally because only through Turkey they were able to deploy ISIS fighters to northern parts of the Kurdish cities and towns in Syria.”

“ISIS and Turkey cooperate together on the ground on the basis that they have a common enemy to destroy, the Kurds,” he added. [Continue reading…]

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Obama promised Iran’s Khamenei that U.S. campaign against ISIS poses no threat to Assad

The Wall Street Journal reports: President Barack Obama secretly wrote to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the middle of last month and described a shared interest in fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, according to people briefed on the correspondence.

The letter appeared aimed both at buttressing the campaign against Islamic State and nudging Iran’s religious leader closer to a nuclear deal.

Mr. Obama stressed to Mr. Khamenei that any cooperation on Islamic State was largely contingent on Iran reaching a comprehensive agreement with global powers on the future of Tehran’s nuclear program by a Nov. 24 diplomatic deadline, the same people say.

The October letter marked at least the fourth time Mr. Obama has written Iran’s most powerful political and religious leader since taking office in 2009 and pledging to engage with Tehran’s Islamist government.

The correspondence underscores that Mr. Obama views Iran as important—whether in a potentially constructive or negative role—to his emerging military and diplomatic campaign to push Islamic State from the territories it has gained over the past six months.

Mr. Obama’s letter also sought to assuage Iran’s concerns about the future of its close ally, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, according to another person briefed on the letter. It states that the U.S.’s military operations inside Syria aren’t targeted at Mr. Assad or his security forces. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. airstrikes on Jabhat al Nusra undermine opposition to Assad

The Daily Beast reports: It’s the clearest signal yet that the U.S.-led military campaign in Syria is widening: American warplanes on Thursday struck at al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists who attacked two groups of Western-backed rebels — fighters that the Obama administration is counting on to battle ISIS.

In an apparently improvised effort to relieve the rebels and prevent the loss of more of their strongholds close to the Turkish border, the U.S. bombed positions of Jabhat al Nusra, Al Qaeda’s Syria branch. It was a remarkable turnaround, because previously the administration had said it was avoiding attacks on the group, which used to occasionally fight alongside the American-supported rebels.

But it’s a turnaround the White House should have seen coming. In meetings of senior Obama administration officials before the first airstrikes began in Syria on Sept. 22, which hit both ISIS and al Qaeda positions, U.S. intelligence officials warned that any additional American attacks against al Nusra could drive a wedge between the group and their erstwhile allies in the American-backed, moderate opposition.

The U.S. intelligence community’s fear, according to individuals involved in the discussions, was that hitting al Nusra could draw a giant target on the rebels’ backs — which is precisely what appears to have happened. In the initial round of airstrikes in late September, the U.S. struck targets occupied both by al Nusra and a third group, an al Qaeda unit known Khorasan that U.S. intelligence agencies believed was plotting attacks against commercial airliners. Khorasan may have been the target, but Nusra was hit, too, and the impression on the ground was that the U.S. had meant to go after al Nusra all along. (Some Syrian rebel groups maintain that the Americans invented Khorasan as a pretext for the attack.) Soon after, al Nusra turned on U.S.-backed rebels, labeling them in official statements last week as “corrupt” lackeys of the Obama administration.

The administration now finds itself in the very position it had hoped to avoid, fighting a broader war against al Nusra forces and risking further alienation of Syrian civilians.

“The goal of the airstrikes has evolved from combatting ISIS in Iraq to combating ISIS and Al Nusra in Syria, because they pose an increasing threat to the opposition,” said a former U.S. official.

It’s those rebel forces that the Obama administration wanted to train and equip to help destroy ISIS. And it’s those forces that the U.S. military is now trying to save with these latest bombing raids against al Nusra.

“If the U.S. attacks Nusra without attacking Assad, all the average Syrian sees is that the U.S. is enabling, emboldening, and strengthening the Assad regime,” said Christopher Harmer, a former Navy officer and an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, which monitors developments in Syria. “It’s not that the Syrian people love Nusra; it’s that Nusra has been in the fight against Assad, and the U.S. has looked for every excuse to stay out of the fight against Assad.” [Continue reading…]

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Obama to seek new authorization for fight against ISIS

The Washington Post reports: President Obama said Wednesday that he will ask Congress for new authority to combat the Islamic State, replacing the administration’s reliance on laws passed more than a decade ago to justify its current military operations against the militants in Syria and Iraq.

“The idea is to right-size and update whatever authorization Congress provides to suit the current fight rather than previous fights,” the president said at a White House news conference.

“We now have a different type of enemy; the strategy is different,” Obama said. “It makes sense for us to make sure that the authorization . . . reflects what we perceive to be not just our strategy over the next two or three months, but our strategy going forward.”

Obama pledged nearly 18 months ago to work with lawmakers to “refine and ultimately repeal” what he said were the outdated 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or AUMF, against al-Qaeda and the 2002 authority against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Since then, White House engagement with Congress on the issue has been minimal. [Continue reading…]

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Turkish soldiers kill activist Kader Ortakaya at Kobane border

Firat News Agency reports: It came out that the woman killed in the attack by Turkish troops at Suruç-Kobanê border today is 28-year-old Kader Ortakaya, an activist from the Collective Freedom Platform and post-graduate at Marmara University.

Kader Ortakaya has lost her life after being shot on the head as Turkish troops fired real bullets and intense tear gas on artists affiliated to the Initiative for Free Art who formed a human chain at Suruç-Kobanê border today.

Soldiers also fired tear gas and real bullets on the people at the Kobanê side of the border.

The young woman’s body has been taken to the hospital in Kobanê and will reportedly be transferred to the Forensic Medicine Institution in Urfa via the Mürşitpınar border crossing.

Kader Ortakaya was from Siverek district of Urfa and doing master degree at Marmara University in Istanbul after graduating from the department of sociology. Ortakaya was joining the resistance vigil in the villages of Mehser and Miseynter for around 25 days. She had also taken part in the works of women’s academy in Amed, Gezi protests of last year, as a person known to be sensitive towards social events.

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Pope Francis: ‘The Vatican is with the Kurdish people’

Kurdish Question reports: In a gathering of the Global Meeting of Popular Movements hosted by the Vatican in Rome between the dates of 27-29 October, Pope Francis met with Kurdish activists from Kurdish Network.

The event was attended by trade unions, women’s movements and land movements from 50 countries. The discussions revolved around struggling against the structural causes of inequality and how the struggles of the people should unify in order to bring about change that transcends national, continental and religious boundaries.

Pope Francis met with several delegations from different countries. Members of the Kurdish Network based in Rome met with Pope Francis to discuss the situation in Kobane and ask for support for the Kurdish people’s resistance against ISIS. The Pope stated that he was following the situation closely and that the “Vatican is with the Kurdish people”.

The Kobane resistance was included in the final resolution of the meeting. The resolution stated that a corridor must be opened to Kobane, support for ISIS — both financial and logistical — should be ceased and the Rojava autonomous region must be recognised by the international community.

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Latest U.S. airstrikes in Syria target groups fighting against Assad regime

The Associated Press reports: U.S. aircraft bombed al-Qaida’s Syrian branch as well as another hard-line rebel faction in northwestern Syria early on Thursday, activists said, in an apparent widening of targets of the American-led coalition against the Islamic State extremist group.

The series of airstrikes overnight targeted three different areas near the Turkish border, hitting a headquarters and a vehicle belonging to the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front as well as a compound of the deeply conservative Ahrar al-Sham rebel group. It marked only the second time the United States had expanded its aerial campaign against Islamic State militants to hit other extremists in Syria.

There was no immediate confirmation from U.S. officials, but the apparent strikes took place amid a Nusra Front offensive that has routed Western-backed rebel groups from their strongholds in Syria’s Idlib province near the Turkish border. The timing suggests that Washington could be trying to curb the militant assault and destroy weapons supplies of hard-line rebels and al-Qaida fighters.

But by striking groups whose primary focus is fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad, the U.S. risks further enraging many Syrians in opposition-held areas who believe Washington is aiding Assad in his struggle to hold onto power in the country’s 3 ½-year-old civil war. Purported civilian casualties have only compounded those frustrations, and activists said Thursday that at least two children were killed in the overnight strikes. [Continue reading…]

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Government requests for Facebook user data are up 24% in six months

The Los Angeles Times reports: Government requests for Facebook data increased 24% in just six months, the social media giant said Tuesday, and nearly half of those requests came from the United States.

Between January and June, governments across the globe made 34,946 requests for data, according to the Menlo Park, Calif., company’s latest transparency report. The United States was responsible for 15,433 of those requests, spanning 23,667 accounts.

Facebook turned over data in about 80% of the cases; many of the requests were parts of search warrants or subpoenas, the report shows. The amount of content restricted or removed because of local laws increased about 19% since the end of 2013.

The world’s largest social network began releasing transparency reports in June 2013, after revelations that the company shared user data with the National Security Agency’s secret Internet surveillance program, Prism.

“We scrutinize every government request we receive for legal sufficiency under our terms and the strict letter of the law, and push back hard when we find deficiencies or are served with overly broad requests,” Facebook’s deputy general counsel, Chris Sonderby, said in a statement.

Over the same period, Twitter received 2,058 government requests, 1,257 of which were from the U.S. government, according to its September transparency report. It shared data in 73% of those cases.

Google has seen a 15% increase in requests since the second half of last year, and a 150% jump since the company began publishing such data in 2009. In the United States, requests have hiked 19% and 250%, respectively.

The PR departments inside the social media giants must love reports like this. Facebook, Twitter et al, get to play victims of government power and cast themselves as heroic defenders of public interest, dedicated to transparency and strict compliance with the law.

What gets glossed over is the fact that the data buccaneer, the NSA, that would have no data to plunder if it wasn’t being gathered by the internet companies in the first place.

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Inside Kobane

Ersin Caksu reports: Kobane is imbued with a tremendous spirit of solidarity.

Travelling around the city by day is simple because the first vehicle you meet on the street will stop and the driver will offer you a lift.

Maybe that solidarity helps explain why Kobane has held out for so long.

Very few people are still living in their own houses. When necessary, the doors of empty properties are opened and needy people are relocated.

Those still in their homes share the cheese, pickles, jams and dried vegetables they have stocked for the winter with those in need.

Although people have few belongings left, they get by through sharing what they have.

For example, if a car is needed, the YPG unlock a garage, put the owner’s name and the car’s number plate on record so that they can be compensated, and the vehicle is used.

There is no commercial activity in the city. The only business still open is the bakery.

The bread produced here is distributed free among the people.

Other food, which is mainly canned food from the stocks and from the humanitarian aid sent to Kobane, is distributed on certain days of the week as equally as possible.

Water is distributed by tankers. The local administration also distributes flour once every three days. Five households share a 50kg (110lb) sack of flour.

Those civilians who can provide voluntary help behind the frontline.

They repair vehicles, guns and generators, in a city that has had no electricity for the past 18 months.

They help doctors tend to the wounded, carry arms and ammunition to the frontline, cook for fighters and repair their clothes. [Continue reading…]

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Kobane official calls for more outside help to defeat ISIS

Rudaw reports: Anwar Muslim, president of the Syrian Kurdish canton of Kobane, appealed for more international support and weapons to defeat Islamic State militants.

He thanked the United States, which has air dropped weapons, and the Iraqi Peshmerga, who crossed the Turkish border into Kobane last Friday and where they appear to have helped to halt ISIS attacks.

Muslim, who travelled from Kobane to Erbil for a conference, said the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian Kurdish militia, now considered itself part of the international coalition battling ISIS.

The town of Kobane and the surrounding canton had been under pressure from ISIS for months with no outside assistance to its defenders. Thanks to US air support and Peshmerga reinforcements, the town has now held out for more than 50 days.

Some 30 per cent of the canton was now out of the control of ISIS, Muslim told the second day of the Middle East Research Institute conference.

“ISIS is a disease just like cancer,” he said. “We acknowledge the help of all international forces and the giving of weapons in particular.”

ISIS had to be “killed” because of its savagery and opposition to humanitarian values and he hailed the YPG as “heroes”.

The co-operation between the US and Peshmerga with the YPG of recent weeks marks a significant shift in Washington’s attitude towards a group previously ostracised because of its links to the Turkish Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), considered a terrorist organisation by Washington and Ankara.

The apparent political settlement or “marriage of convenience” between the US and the YPG could prove a model as Washington sought to create partnerships with other Syrian opposition groups, Max Hoffman of the Centre for American Progress, told the forum. [Continue reading…]

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Slaughter of Anbar tribesmen shows weakness in U.S. plan to beat ISIS

McClatchy reports: For four grueling months, Naim al Goud, his kinsmen and the local police fought off an Islamic State offensive against his town near Hit, a key city in Iraq’s war-torn Anbar province. In his telling, their constant pleas for Iraqi army intervention and U.S. airstrikes were ignored.

“Nobody gave us any kind of help,” said al Goud, a sheikh of the Albu Nimr, one of Anbar’s largest Sunni Muslim tribes. He said he texted target locations to Iraqi commanders to relay to their U.S counterparts, with no response. “We saw American fighters flying overhead. Maybe they hit somewhere else, but not the places we wanted them to attack.”

Exhausted, hungry and low on ammunition, al Goud and hundreds of his tribesmen ceased firing on Oct. 22 in return for a pledge from the Islamic State that civilians wouldn’t be harmed. They then set out on a 15-hour overnight drive through the desert, leaving behind families and associates and nursing another in a long list of Sunni tribal grievances that are hindering reconciliation with the Shiite-led government and threatening to derail President Barack Obama’s plan to crush the Islamic State.

“They did nothing for us,” al Goud said in an interview last week in a rented house in Baghdad. “It’s all killing and disaster.”

A week later, the Islamic State executed more than 40 Albu Nimr captives on a Hit street and drove thousands of Albu Nimr civilians into the desert, where hundreds have been slaughtered – more than 400 by Monday. Tribal leaders’ calls for help from the Iraqi army and for U.S. airstrikes again went unanswered. [Continue reading…]

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