Category Archives: News

Nearly half of Syria’s chemical arms supply removed

n13-iconThe New York Times reports: Nearly half of Syria’s chemical stockpile for weapons use has now been removed from the war-ravaged country, the organization helping to oversee the elimination of the deadly arsenal reported on Wednesday.

The organization said in a statement that two shipments, including some of the most lethal chemicals from the stockpile, were delivered on March 14 and 17 to the Syrian port of Latakia, where they were transferred to cargo ships, making a total of 10 exported shipments so far.

“The latest movements increased the portion of chemicals that have now been removed from Syria for destruction outside the country to more than 45 percent,” said the statement, issued by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the Hague-based group that is collaborating with the United Nations to ensure the arsenal’s destruction.

The statement was the first progress report on the Syrian government’s commitment to getting rid of the chemicals since the Syrians proposed a revised timetable for exporting them early this month. The timetable’s revision, which calls for the job to be finished by the end of April instead of Feb. 6 as originally planned, came after Syria missed deadlines in the destruction effort and was widely criticized internationally.

The statement also appeared to suggest that Russia and the United States were continuing to cooperate in pressuring Syria to comply with its pledges on chemical weapons, despite the crisis in Ukraine, which has deeply chilled relations between Moscow and Washington. [Continue reading…]

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Sen. Ron Wyden scorches senior CIA and NSA officials and their ‘pattern of deception’

n13-iconThe Oregonian reports: U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden scorched senior CIA and NSA officials, the secret doings inside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and a controversial section of the USA Patriot ACT on Tuesday night during a lecture in downtown Portland.

The senior senator from Oregon performed perhaps the most skillful dodge yet – by any politician – of a question nagging many Americans: is former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden a hero, a traitor, or something in between?

Wyden declined to comment about a case now before a criminal court (Snowden faces spy charges). But he said senior intelligence officials should have told the public that the National Security Agency had collected the phone records of millions of ordinary Americans, rather than having them learn about it through Snowden’s leaks of classified files to journalists.

“This is a debate that shouldn’t have been started this way,” said Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who sits in on classified briefings of national security operations.

Wyden called for more vigorous oversight of U.S. spy agencies. He called on senior intelligence officials to end what he described variously as their “pattern of deception,” “incredibly misleading statements,” and “culture of misinformation.” [Continue reading…]

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Crimean militias storm bases, arrest Ukraine navy chief

n13-iconAFP reports: Pro-Russian forces seized two Crimean navy bases and captured Ukraine’s naval chief on Wednesday as Moscow tightened its grip on the flashpoint peninsula despite Western warnings its “annexation” would not go unpunished.

Dozens of despondent Ukrainian soldiers — one of them in tears — filed out of the Ukraine’s main navy headquarters in the historic Black Sea port city of Sevastopol after it was stormed by hundreds of pro-Kremlin protesters and masked Russian troops.

“We have been temporarily disbanded,” a Ukrainian lieutenant who identified himself only as Vlad told AFP.

“I was born here and I grew up here and I have been serving for 20 years,” he said as a Russian flag went up over the base without a single shot being fired in its defence. “Where am I going to go?”

A Russian forces’ representative said that Ukraine’s navy commander Sergiy Gayduk — appointed after his predecessor switched allegiance in favour of Crimea’s pro-Kremlin authorities at the start of the month — had been detained.

A regional prosecutor’s statement said Gayduk was suspected of “ordering Ukrainian military units… to open fire on peaceful civilians”.

Defence ministry officials said Russian forces also seized a military base in Crimea’s western port town of Novoozerne after using a tractor to ram open its main gate.

An AFP reporter saw about 50 Ukrainian servicemen file out of the base under the watchful eye of Russian soldiers while pro-Moscow militias lowered the Ukrainian flag. [Continue reading…]

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Hamas’ ‘unfortunate’ disagreement on Syria is on the road to being resolved

n13-icon“I salute all people of the Arab Spring, or Islamic winter, and I salute the heroic people of Syria who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform,” head of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, told worshippers at a mosque in Cairo on February 24, 2012.

Two days later Abu Marzouk, Hamas’ deputy political leader, told the Associated Press: “Our position on Syria is that we are not with the regime in its security solution, and we respect the will of the people.”

In an interview with Britain’s Channel 4 News in May 2013, the leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, said: “After the start of the crisis I said to all Syrian political, security and military leaders in very clear words, the demands of your people for freedom, democracy and reform are legitimate. The military approach is wrong. It makes the crisis worse.”

Ali Hashem, a columnist for Al-Monitor, now writes that Hamas appears ready to patch up its differences with the Assad regime, and Meshaal will soon be visiting Syria’s closest ally, Iran.

A senior Hamas official who met with Al-Monitor in Tehran last week confirmed that the visit is indeed on the agenda. He asserted, “Our relationship with Iran is back as it was, and maybe better. Enemies who are betting on the end of the resistance bloc should know that this bloc is getting bigger and stronger, from North Africa to Tehran.”

Osama Hamdan, Hamas’ international relations officer, explained that the “unfortunate” disagreement on Syria is on the road to being resolved and that positive options are on the table with respect to his organization’s relations with Damascus. Hamdan added that ties with Hezbollah are good and that he continues to carry out his work from his office in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold.

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NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls

n13-iconThe Washington Post reports: The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording “100 percent” of a foreign country’s telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place, according to people with direct knowledge of the effort and documents supplied by former contractor Edward Snowden.

A senior manager for the program compares it to a time machine — one that can replay the voices from any call without requiring that a person be identified in advance for surveillance.

The voice interception program, called MYSTIC, began in 2009. Its RETRO tool, short for “retrospective retrieval,” and related projects reached full capacity against the first target nation in 2011. Planning documents two years later anticipated similar operations elsewhere.

In the initial deployment, collection systems are recording “every single” conversation nationwide, storing billions of them in a 30-day rolling buffer that clears the oldest calls as new ones arrive, according to a classified summary. [Continue reading…]

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Sevastopol voters turned out in record numbers — not a single complaint was registered

Voter turnout in Sevastopol, Crimea, yesterday was a whopping 123%! It’s hard to understand why the referendum fell short of 100% support for joining Russia when there were so many “surplus” votes floating around.

But seriously, given that Tartars, who make up slightly more than 10% of the population were expected to boycott the vote, and a portion of the rest of Crimea’s pro-Ukrainian population probably did likewise, this “landslide” clearly had the assistance of Russian bulldozers.

What the outcome might have been of a free and fair (even though unconstitutional) vote with real choices for or against secession, we’ll never know.

The Associated Press reports: Final results of the referendum in Crimea show that 97 percent of voters have supported leaving Ukraine to join Russia, the head of the referendum election commission said Monday.

Mikhail Malyshev told a televised news conference that the final tally from Sunday’s vote was 96.8 percent in favor of splitting from Ukraine. He also said that the commission has not registered a single complaint about the vote.

The referendum was widely condemned by Western leaders who were planning to discuss economic sanctions to punish Russia on Monday. Ukraine’s new government in Kiev called the referendum a “circus” directed at gunpoint by Moscow.

But Valery Ryazantsev, head of Russia’s observer mission in Crimea and a lawmaker from the upper house of the Russian parliament, said Monday that the results are beyond dispute. He told the Interfax news agency that there are “absolutely no reasons to consider the vote results illegitimate.” [Continue reading…]

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U.S. steps up sanctions on Russian officials

n13-iconThe New York Times reports: The United States, working in coordination with Europe, imposed a new round of sanctions on prominent Russian officials on Monday as the showdown over Ukraine reached a new stage of confrontation between East and West.

President Obama signed an executive order freezing the assets and banning visas for a number of Russians deemed to be responsible for the seizing of Crimea or otherwise interfering in Ukrainian sovereignty. Among those targeted were several officials in President Vladimir V. Putin’s inner circle, and the White House threatened to go after more if Russia did not back down.

“We have fashioned these sanctions to impose costs on named individuals who wield influence in the Russian government and those responsible for the deteriorating situation in Ukraine,” the White House said in a statement. “We stand ready to use these authorities in a direct and targeted fashion as events warrant.”

In a conference call briefing reporters, a senior administration official who was not permitted to be named under the ground rules said, “These are by far the most comprehensive sanctions applied to Russia since the end of the Cold War — far and away so.” [Continue reading…]

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Promising to be the most transparent administration, Obama’s turns out to be the most secretive

n13-iconThe Associated Press reports: The Obama administration has a way to go to fulfill its promises from Day 1 to become the most transparent administration in history.

More often than ever, the administration censored government files or outright denied access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, cited more legal exceptions it said justified withholding materials and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

Most agencies also took longer to answer records requests.

The government’s own figures from 99 federal agencies covering six years show that halfway through its second term, the administration has made few meaningful improvements in the way it releases records. In category after category — except for reducing numbers of old requests and a slight increase in how often it waived copying fees — the government’s efforts to be more open about its activities last year were their worst since President Barack Obama took office.

In a year of intense public interest over the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, the government cited national security to withhold information a record 8,496 times — a 57 percent increase over a year earlier and more than double Obama’s first year, when it cited that reason 3,658 times. The Defense Department, including the NSA, and the CIA accounted for nearly all those. The Agriculture Department’s Farm Service Agency cited national security six times, the Environmental Protection Agency did twice and the National Park Service once.

And five years after Obama directed agencies to less frequently invoke a “deliberative process” exception to withhold materials describing decision-making behind the scenes, the government did it anyway, a record 81,752 times. [Continue reading…]

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Don’t put Syria aside, Brahimi says amid Ukraine crisis

n13-iconBloomberg reports: More than 350,000 people will have died in Syria’s civil war by next year if peace talks don’t restart, United Nations mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said in an effort to keep an international spotlight on the conflict.

“I told the Security Council that Syria cannot be placed on a back burner,” Brahimi told the UN General Assembly yesterday, according to a transcript. “A crisis of this magnitude needs the full attention of this organization.”

With the Security Council set to take up a resolution today on Russia’s move into Ukraine, Brahimi sought to underscore the continuing human and economic costs of Syria’s civil war, which entered its fourth year this week with more than 130,000 people killed. He said more than 300 Syrians flee their homes every hour. [Continue reading…]

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CIA suspends chief of Iran operations over workplace issues

n13-iconThe Los Angeles Times reports: The CIA’s chief of Iran operations was placed on paid administrative leave and sent home from agency headquarters after an internal investigation found he had created an abusive and hostile work environment that put a crucial division in disarray, according to current and former officials.

Officers and analysts in the Iran operations division, which coordinates spying on Iran and its nuclear program, were informed at a meeting last week at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., of the decision to suspend Jonathan Bank, a veteran officer and member of the senior intelligence service.

Three former officials said the Iran operations division was in open rebellion to Bank’s management style, with several key employees demanding transfers.

“Iran is one of most important targets, and the place was not functioning,” one of the former officials said.

In 2010, Bank was pulled out as CIA station chief in Islamabad after newspapers in Pakistan, India, England and elsewhere published his name in connection with a court case, and the agency said he had received death threats. U.S. officials believe Pakistan’s intelligence service leaked the name in a dispute over CIA drone attacks in the country’s tribal belt.

Bank, now 46, previously served at CIA stations in the Balkans, Moscow and Baghdad, former agency officials said. He also was a top assistant to James Pavitt, who from 1999 to 2004 headed the CIA’s operations arm, now known as the National Clandestine Service.

The former CIA officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter. Bank is technically undercover, but his name has been public since the 2010 incident. He did not respond to email messages requesting comment. [Continue reading…]

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Navy Seals take over oil tanker seized by Libyan rebels

n13-iconThe Guardian reports: American Navy Seals have seized a North Korea-flagged tanker which had been loaded with crude oil at a rebel-held port in eastern Libya, the Pentagon said on Monday.

The operation to take control of the Morning Glory came a week after Libya failed to prevent the tanker from leaving the rebel-controlled eastern port of Es Sider loaded with an estimated $20m cargo, in a crisis that has brought the country to the brink of civil war.

“The Morning Glory is carrying a cargo of oil owned by the Libyan government’s National Oil Company,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. “The ship and its cargo were illicitly obtained from the Libyan port of Es Sider.”

There were no casualties in the operation, which took place in international waters off the coast of Cyprus late on Sunday night. The raid was authorised by the US president, Barack Obama, after receiving a request for assistance from Tripoli. The Seals boarded the 21,000-tonne tanker using helicopters and fast boats from a warship, the USS Roosevelt.

The Pentagon said a US navy crew was now piloting the tanker towards an unnamed Libyan port where it will be handed to government control. [Continue reading…]

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50,000 rally in Moscow against Putin’s intervention in Ukraine

moscow-antiwar

AFP reports: Around 50,000 people rallied in central Moscow Saturday in protest at Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, a day before the Crimean peninsula votes on switching to Kremlin rule.

Waving both Ukrainian and Russian flags and shouting slogans heard during the anti-government protests in Kiev, the demonstrators urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to pull troops back from a Cold War-style confrontation.

Marchers carried placards reading “Putin, get out of Ukraine” and others comparing Russia’s move on Crimea with the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland as Europe rushed headlong into World War II.

Many of the protesters adopted the chants and slogans of Ukraine’s popular uprising that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych last month.

University professor Yelena Orlova, 47, whose sign read “Ukraine is a sovereign state”, said she did not expect the rally would change her government’s position, but believed it was her duty to speak out.

“I don’t agree with the policy of Putin,” she told AFP. “I am against the annexation of Crimea. I think Russia should respect the borders of Ukraine.” [Continue reading…]

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Russia preparing for full-scale invasion of Ukraine

n13-iconThe Interpreter: Russia now has a massive force of tanks, troops, artillery, aircraft, and naval forces in position to potentially invade mainland Ukraine from Crimea in the south, but also from positions east and north of Ukraine. However, today reports are pouring in from across Russia of even more firepower on the move:

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Former Egyptian general calls promise of free elections a ‘farce’

n13-iconThe New York Times reports: Critics of the military takeover here often say the generals’ promise of free elections is little more than a bad joke. Now a prominent former military man who cheered the takeover seems to agree: Ahmed Shafik, a former general and prime minister and the runner-up in the last presidential election, has called it a “farce.”

Mr. Shafik had not planned on making his opinion quite so public. But these days in Egypt, conversations are often not as private as they seem.

“I know very well they will fix all the ballot boxes,” Mr. Shafik said in a leaked recording of a private conversation that he authenticated Thursday. He said in the recording that he would not run because the new government was rigging the race in favor of Field Marshal Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, who led the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood last summer and is expected to enter and win the election to succeed him.

“I have taken myself out of this loop because the election is going to be a farce,” Mr. Shafik said, adding that “they will fix everything for him” and “this is going to be a comedy show.”

His comments stunned Egypt because Mr. Shafik comes from the same military elite as Field Marshal Sisi. Questioning the field marshal’s candidacy is almost heretical in the pro-military and anti-Islamist circles both officers represent, and Mr. Shafik’s comments were a rare hint of possible dissent among the business and military elite. [Continue reading…]

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U.N. refugee chief warns world powers not to forget Syria conflict

n13-iconn13-iconReuters reports: The head of the United Nation’s refugee agency said on Tuesday it must be ready in case Ukraine’s crisis causes refugees to flee Crimea, but his biggest worry is that “a total disaster” could occur if the international community diverts its attention away from Syria’s conflict.

Antonio Guterres, the head of the U.N.’s High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), said in an interview that little progress was being made in efforts by the United States and Russia, now at loggerheads over Ukraine, to bring Syria’s warring sides together after the collapse of talks in Geneva last month.

“In the moment in which we need the most relevant countries in the world to be able to come together to narrow their differences and to try to find a way to move into peace for Syria, this tension around Ukraine will obviously not help,” Guterres told Reuters while visiting Washington to discuss Syria’s refugee crisis.

“I hope that those that have the most important responsibility in world affairs will be able to understand that forgetting Syria will be a total disaster,” he said. [Continue reading…]

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Editor of independent Russian news site replaced with pro-Kremlin figure

n13-iconThe Guardian reports: In what appears to be part of a growing state crackdown on liberal media, the editor of a major independent Russian news website has been replaced by a Kremlin-friendly editor after running an interview with a controversial Ukrainian nationalist.

Lenta.ru announced on its site on Wednesday that Galina Timchenko, who had worked there since its founding in 1999, would immediately be replaced by Alexei Goreslavsky, the former editor of the pro-Kremlin internet publication Vzglyad. Goreslavsky is currently deputy general director for external communications at the Afisha-Rambler-SUP media holding that owns Lenta.ru.

The news came only hours after the state communications watchdog issued a warning to Lenta.ru over a recent interview with Dmytro Yarosh, leader of the Ukrainian ultranationalist paramilitary group Right Sector, which played a key role in the protests that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych. The Investigative Committee of Russia, the country’s main federal investigator, has charged Yarosh, who recently announced he would run for president in Ukraine’s May elections, with inciting terrorism over a post on a Right Sector social network page that called on Russia’s most-wanted terrorist, Doku Umarov, to “activate his struggle.”

But a letter posted on Lenta.ru and signed by 69 employees and correspondents said Goreslavsky’s appointment amounted to “direct pressure on the Lenta.ru editorial staff” and a violation of censorship laws. Lenta.ru’s editorial policy, which embraced controversial topics and was often critical of the Kremlin, won the site a wide readership, including 13.6 million unique visitors last month, according to Rambler.ru rankings.

“This is absolutely a political situation,” said Lenta.ru’s night editor, Pavel Borisov. “Galina Timchenko was the best editor-in-chief I ever had. I don’t plan to work with Goreslavsky.” The change in editor came with no warning, he added. [Continue reading…]

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Across Turkey, new unrest as Berkin Elvan is buried

Berkin-Elvan

The New York Times reports: An enormous outpouring of grief and antigovernment rage during the funeral procession for a teenage boy felled by a police tear-gas canister turned into another mass confrontation with the Turkish authorities on Wednesday as mourners clashed with antiriot squads in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. At least one person was killed.

The new unrest came a day after protesters battled with police officers in at least 15 cities over news that the boy, Berkin Elvan, 15, had died. He had been comatose with head trauma since June, when Turkey was first engulfed with antigovernment protests against the decade-old tenure of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is seen as increasingly authoritarian.

The boy, who was struck by a tear-gas canister while buying bread, has become the newest symbol of simmering anger at Mr. Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party, known as AKP, and over the tough police repression of political dissent and a recent corruption scandal that has entangled the top echelons of the ruling party.

“Here’s a thief! Here’s a murderer!” and “Mothers’ anger will strangle murderers!” funeral marchers screamed as they walked, blowing whistles. “Berkin’s murderer is AKP’s police!”

More than 100,000 people converged in Istanbul to participate in the boy’s funeral procession to a cemetery. The burial itself was peaceful as hundreds of riot police were deployed nearby.

“He was our hope, he was our miracle, he was our son, brother, everything. We were waiting for him to wake up but we unfortunately lost him,” said Damla Atalay, 32, a lawyer, who marched in a convoy behind the coffin. “We are here because this little boy is part of us, it could happen to any of us, to our son, brother.” [Continue reading…]

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