Category Archives: News

Senators push to preserve NSA phone surveillance

The New York Times reports: The Senate Intelligence Committee appears to be moving toward swift passage of a bill that would “change but preserve” the once-secret National Security Agency program that is keeping logs of every American’s phone calls, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the panel, said Thursday.

Ms. Feinstein, speaking at a rare public hearing of the committee, said she and the top Republican on the panel, Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, are drafting a bill that would be marked up — meaning that lawmakers could propose amendments to it before voting it out of committee — as early as next week.

After the existence of the program became public by leaks from the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, critics called for it to be dismantled. Ms. Feinstein said her bill would be aimed at increasing public confidence in the program, which she said she believed was lawful.

The measure would require public reports of how often the N.S.A. had used the calling log database, she said. It would also reduce the number of years — currently five — that the domestic calling log data is kept before it is deleted. It would also require the N.S.A. to send lists of the phone numbers it searches, and its rationale for doing so, to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for review.

By contrast, a rival bill drafted by skeptics of government surveillance, including two members of the committee, Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, would ban the mass call log collection program. [Continue reading…]

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Most of Syria’s toxins can be destroyed more easily than officials initially thought

The Washington Post reports: U.S. and Russian officials now believe that the vast majority of Syria’s nerve agent stockpile consists of “unweaponized” liquid precursors that could be neutralized relatively quickly, lowering the risk that the toxins could be hidden away by the regime or stolen by terrorists.

A confidential assessment by the United States and Russia also concludes that Syria’s entire arsenal could be destroyed in about nine months, assuming that Syrian officials honor promises to cede control of the chemical assets to international inspectors, according to two people briefed on the analysis.

The assessment, thought to be the most authoritative to date, reflects the consensus view of Russian and U.S. analysts who compared their governments’ intelligence on Syria during meetings in Geneva this month. The Obama administration has since briefed independent experts on the key findings.

The insights into Syria’s arsenal have been bolstered further by the Damascus government’s own accounting, which lists the types of chemical agents and delivery systems it possesses, and was presented Saturday to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague. U.S. officials have reviewed the Syrian inventory, which has not been publicly released, and “found it quite good,” a senior State Department official told reporters. [Continue reading…]

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Rouhani says nuclear deal can be reached in ‘months not years’

David Ignatius interviewed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and noted these hightlights:

  • Rouhani stressed that he is “fully empowered to finalize the nuclear talks” by Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, a claim confirmed by Western intelligence reports. Analysts say Khamenei was surprised and rebuffed by the popular wave of support for Rouhani’s moderate policies and has given him a chance to cut a deal.
  • The Iranian president wants to move very quickly to resolve the nuclear issue, through negotiations. Rouhani said his “choice” would be a three-month timetable, and that six months would still be “good,” but this should be a matter of “months, not years.” The speedy timeline may reflect the pressure of sanctions on the Iranian economy or Rouhani’s fear of a political backlash from conservative rivals. Whatever the reason, the time is short.
  • Rouhani said he was prepared to offer extensive “transparency” measures to reassure the West that Iran doesn’t intend to build a bomb. He likened these measures to what Iran allowed from 2003 to 2005, when he was the country’s chief negotiator, including acceptance of intrusive “additional protocols” from the International Atomic Energy Agency, as well as inspections to assess what the IAEA calls “possible military dimensions.”
  • He didn’t discuss the level of uranium enrichment that Iran would adopt as part of a deal. But a knowledgeable Iranian source said this week that he might be willing to cap enrichment at 5 percent and limit Iran’s stockpile of enriched material; those moves would seek to address U.S. and Israeli worries about a future “breakout” capability.
  • Rouhani said Iran wants to join a new round of Geneva negotiations for a political transition in Syria so long as there are no preconditions on Iranian participation. The Obama administration has tentatively decided to offer Iran a seat at these talks, reasoning that a stable political transition would be impossible if the Iranians weren’t a co-guarantor. He said that, in terms of a future government in Damascus, Iran would let Syrians decide at the ballot box; that’s the standard Iranian formula.
  • He stressed his desire to first resolve the nuclear issue, where he has the most expertise and authority from Khamenei. After that, he said, the United States and Iran can discuss broader issues of normalization. “Once the nuclear file is settled, we can turn to other issues,” he said. “We need a beginning point.”
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Assad: chemical weapons arsenal is a ‘burden’ — Syria has much more powerful weapons to defend itself against Israel

The Times of Israel reports: Syria has deterrent weapons, more advanced than anything in its chemical arsenal, that could blindside Israel in mere moments, Syrian President Bashar Assad claimed Thursday.

“Originally, we produced chemical weapons in the 1980s as a deterrent to Israel’s nuclear capabilities,” Assad said in an interview with the Hezbollah-affiliated, Lebanon-based Al-Akhbar newspaper, adding that “today, we have weapons that are far more important and sophisticated and that can blindside Israel in the blink of an eye.”

The Syrian president also charged that the West was not really concerned with stripping Syria of its weapons stockpile in order to safeguard the country’s civilians but, rather, that its goal was to tip the balance of power in the Middle East in Israel’s favor.

“They wanted to change the balance of power to protect Israel, but we turned the table on them and now the ball is in their court,” said Assad.

Referring to his regime’s chemical weapons arsenal, which, under a US-Russian agreement reached earlier this month, is due to be destroyed by mid-2014, Assad said that his stockpile, of about 1,000 tons, is a burden and will be costly and time-consuming to dispose of.

The Syrian president went on to mock President Barack Obama as “hesitant” and “weak.” He called the US administration’s handling of the threat to attack Syria — in response to the regime’s alleged chemical attack in Damascus on August 21 that killed over 1,400 people according to US officials — an “embarrassment.”

“The steps we’ve taken embarrassed the US government in the eyes of the American and European publics. Obama lost in his own home [turf]. where [he] lost the ability to maneuver internally,” Assad added. [Continue reading…]

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Hezbollah’s fight for Assad — and survival

Reuters reports: In the photograph the two robed men stand shoulder-to-shoulder, one tall and erect, the other more heavyset. Both smile for the camera. The picture from Tehran is a rare record of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meeting Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi’ite paramilitary group.

Taken in April during a discreet visit by the Hezbollah chief to his financial and ideological masters, the photograph captured a turning point in Syria’s civil war and the broader struggle between Sunnis and Shi’ites, the two main branches of Islam. It was the moment when Iran made public its desire for Hezbollah to join the battle to help save Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, diplomats said. At the time, Assad and his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, were losing ground to an advancing Sunni insurgency.

Within days of returning home, Nasrallah gave a televised speech making it clear that Hezbollah would fight alongside Assad to prevent Syria falling “into the hands” of Sunni jihadi radicals, the United States and Israel. The very survival of the Shi’ites was at stake, he said.

Soon afterwards, fighters from Hezbollah – which until then had largely stayed out of its neighbour’s civil war – entered Syria. In June they helped Assad’s forces recapture the strategic town of Qusair and other territory, turning the war in Assad’s favour.

Regional security officials told Reuters there are now between 2,000 and 4,000 Hezbollah fighters, experts and reservists in Syria. One Lebanese security official said a central command in Iran led by the Revolutionary Guards directs Hezbollah operations in Syria in close coordination with the Syrian authorities. Another source said Hezbollah had “hit squads” of highly trained fighters in Syria whose task is to assassinate military leaders among the Sunni rebels.

Hezbollah declined to comment for this report on its involvement in Syria. Nasrallah has previously said it is necessary for Hezbollah to fight Sunni radicals allied to al Qaeda.

Officials in Iran did not respond to requests for comment. Last week, Iran’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Marzieh Afkham, said that Iran had no official military presence in Syria, but was providing humanitarian assistance. Last September, Mohammad Ali Jafari, head of the Revolutionary Guards, said some members of Iran’s elite Quds force were in Syria but that it did not constitute “a military presence.”

Hezbollah’s role in Syria has ramifications not just in its home in Lebanon but across the region. If Assad wins, Iran’s influence along the shores of the Mediterranean will grow. If he loses, Hezbollah and Iran’s reach will likely be damaged. For some members of the group, the fight is an existential one. [Continue reading…]

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Pope attacks global economics for worshipping ‘god of money’

Reuters reports: Pope Francis made one of his strongest attacks on the global economic system on Sunday, saying it could no longer be based on a “god called money” and urged the unemployed to fight for work.

Francis, at the start of a day-long trip to the Sardinian capital, Cagliari, put aside his prepared text at a meeting with unemployed workers, including miners in hard hats who told him of their situation, and improvised for nearly 20 minutes.

“I find suffering here … It weakens you and robs you of hope,” he said. “Excuse me if I use strong words, but where there is no work there is no dignity.”

He discarded his prepared speech after listening to Francesco Mattana, a 45-year-old married father of three who lost his job with an alternative energy company four years ago.

Mattana, his voice trembling, told the pope that unemployment “oppresses you and wears you out to the depths of your soul”.

The crowd of about 20,000 people in a square near the city port chanted what Francis called a prayer for “work, work, work”. They cheered each time he spoke of the rights of workers and the personal devastation caused by joblessness.

The pope, who later celebrated Mass for some 300,000 people outside the city’s cathedral, told them: “We don’t want this globalised economic system which does us so much harm. Men and women have to be at the centre (of an economic system) as God wants, not money.”

“The world has become an idolator of this god called money,” he said.

Sardinia’s coast is famous for its idyllic beaches, exclusive resorts and seaside palatial residences of some of the world’s richest people, including former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and a host of Hollywood actors.

But much of the island, particularly its large cities and the vast agricultural and industrial interior, has been blighted by the economic crisis, with factories closed and mines operating at low capacity. [Continue reading…]

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Europe really, really doesn’t trust the NSA

Pacific Standard reports: A few days ago the European Parliament’s Office of Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs released a notably pointed briefing paper arguing for Europe to stop trusting American Internet services. The briefing and the committee are the latest forum to suggest that European states create domestic cloud computing capacities to provide member states legal protection for NSA data surveillance. The report has the not-at-all-subtle title “The US National Security Agency Surveillance Programmes (PRISM) Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Activities and Their Impact on EU Citizens’ Fundamental Rights.” Among the findings:

Prominent notices should be displayed by every US web site offering services in the EU to inform consent to collect data from EU citizens. The users should be made aware that the data may be subject to surveillance (under FISA 702) by the US government for any purpose which furthers US foreign policy.

The argument there being that people will have an incentive to find other websites to use. Particularly for e-commerce. Companies like Amazon, and U.S. airlines and ticketing agencies—Expedia and the like—won’t be pleased, and that in turn will create economic pressure to alter surveillance strategy, the report argues.

A consent requirement will raise EU citizen awareness and favour growth of services solely within EU jurisdiction. This will thus have economic impact on US business and increase pressure on the US government to reach a settlement.

That isn’t all. The report argues for the European Union to simply swear off U.S.-based cloud computing, and to develop local capacity. [Continue reading…]

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A war in which both people and ideas have become casualties

Gabriele Del Grande writes: This is my third visit to Aleppo in the last year, but the first time that I saw fear in the eyes of my Syrian activist friends accompanying me. They are not afraid of Bashar al-Assad’s regime or of bombs or of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Rather, what scares them are the checkpoints manned by fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS — also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), the main al-Qaeda force in Syria. Kidnappings and executions have been steadily increasing.

Hazim al-Azizi, a photographer at the media center in Azaz, was the latest Syrian activist to be killed by al-Qaeda. An ISIS sniper shot him on Sept. 18, when the town of Azaz, 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the border with Turkey, became the scene of two days of heavy fighting between the ISIS and FSA. On the same day, ISIS gunmen kidnapped Mohammed Nur Amuri, director of the Azaz media center, along with nine other activists in his office. One man, Abu Mohammad, managed to save himself.

Abu Mohammad was supposed to go to Azaz to install an aerial for a free radio network, Radio Nevroz, which was to begin broadcasting in Kurdish and Arabic to the opposition-controlled areas of northern Syria. When he heard that the ISIS was involved in fighting there, he canceled everything. In his opinion, the presence of al-Qaeda in Syria poses a serious threat to the entire civilian activist movement.

In an interview in Kilis, a Turkish town on the border with Syria, Abu Mohammad told Al-Monitor, “For us, it is extremely dangerous even just to move around. We are civilians, without any military escort when we travel. The areas in the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib have become a no-man’s-land, and the slightest suspicion is enough to get you killed by the men of ISIS.”

According to Wassim, however, the real problem is not al-Qaeda, but the ever-widening rift with the FSA. An activist living in Aleppo, Wassim explained, “When the revolution started, we used to sing ‘One, one, one. The Syrian people are one.’ Nowadays, the most popular song goes like this: ‘Alawites wait for us! We are coming to slaughter you! We will cut your throats.’ The activists abroad will tell you that it is not true, that we are a moderate people and sectarianism will not prevail. But this is true only of us civilians, not for those who fight. [Continue reading…]

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Journalists in Syria freelance at their own risk

The New York Observer reports: This summer, Francesca Borri, an Italian journalist, wrote an article for The Columbia Journalism Review about the perils that she faces as a freelancer in Syria. Many were stunned that Ms. Borri gets paid $70 per article, which barely covered the $50-per-night mattress on the ground in a rebel base (where Ms. Borri wrote that she got typhoid), let alone insurance.

“The editors are well aware that $70 per piece pushes you to save on everything. They know, too, that if you happen to be seriously wounded, there is a temptation to hope not to survive, because you cannot afford to be wounded,” Ms. Borri wrote. “But they buy your article anyway, even if they would never buy the Nike soccer ball handmade by a Pakistani child.”

Although $70 is on the low end, it’s not that far from major outlet rates. According to journalists we spoke to, most print publications pay in the low hundreds. TV pays more, but not by much.

It’s almost impossible to come out ahead while covering a war zone, with myriad costs including drivers, lodging, plane tickets, safety gear, insurance and so-called fixers, locals who act as translators and guides and charge upwards of $100 per day.

“You have no guarantee of selling of your story to cover the significant expenses you incurred reporting it,” said Ayman Oghana, a freelance photojournalist and reporter based in Istanbul. “Out in the field, that can drive you to stay longer or take greater risks to get something you think may sell. It also means you don’t have an editor to coordinate with on decisions or telling you, for your own safety, enough is enough, pull out and take care of yourself.”

And it isn’t just the cost of covering the war. The new model of relying on freelancers doesn’t take into account the unprecedented dangers in Syria, where journalists are very often targeted from the moment they cross the border. Veteran journalist Marie Colvin died last year during a rocket attack on Homs, after Syrian forces reportedly pledged to kill “any journalist who set foot on Syrian soil.”

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 13 local and international journalists are currently missing in Syria, a number that doesn’t include aid workers, fixers and the cases that are unreported due to the belief that, in some cases, publicizing a kidnaping makes it more difficult to negotiate release. [Continue reading…]

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Israel minister criticizes boycott of Iran speech

The Associated Press reports: A senior Israeli minister Wednesday criticized the prime minister’s instruction to Israel’s U.N. delegation to boycott the Iranian president’s speech at the General Assembly, saying it created the impression that Israel was not interested in encouraging a peaceful solution to Iran’s suspect nuclear program.

In a text message statement sent to reporters, Finance Minister Yair Lapid said Benjamin Netanyahu’s instruction to Israeli delegates to leave the General Assembly during the speech was a “mistake.”

“Israel should not seem as if it is serially opposed to negotiations and as a country that is uninterested in peaceful solutions,” Lapid said. “Leaving the U.N. General Assembly and boycotting is irrelevant in current diplomacy, and is reminiscent of the way Arab countries have acted toward Israel.”

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Pakistani drone victims’ lawyer accuses U.S. of blocking his visit to Congress

The Guardian reports: The US government is being accused of derailing a congressional hearing that would be the first to hear testimony from survivors of an alleged CIA drone strike by failing to grant the family’s lawyer a visa.

Shahzad Akbar, a legal fellow with the British human rights group Reprieve and the director of the Pakistan-based Foundation for Fundamental Rights, says the state department is preventing him from taking his clients to Capitol Hill next week. The hearing would mark the first time US lawmakers heard directly from drone strike survivors.

Akbar’s clients, Rafiq ur-Rehman, his 13-year-old son, Zubair, and his nine-year-old daughter, Nabila, are from the tribal regions of north Waziristan. The children were injured in the alleged US strike on the village of Tappi last year. Their grandmother – Rehman’s mother, Mamana – was killed.

Rehman and his children have spent months making preparations to visit Washington after being invited by US representatives to testify in the ad hoc hearing on drone strikes.

According to Akbar, his clients’ visas for the trip have been approved, but his has not. He believes the hold-up is political.

“It’s not like my name is scratched because there is some sort of confusion. My name is blocked,” Akbar told the Guardian. “Before I started drone investigations I never had an issue with US visa. In fact, I had a US diplomatic visa for two years.” [Continue reading…]

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Return of the Lion: Former warlord prepares for Western withdrawal from Afghanistan

Der Spiegel reports: While the West is trying to extricate itself from the war zone in Afghanistan as quickly as possible, old warlords like Ismail Khan are preparing for a post-withdrawal period that many anticipate will be violent.

Ismail Khan abruptly gets up from his armchair. “I understood the question,” he says. “So you want to know whether now, 12 years after Western troops arrived, every village finally has electricity.” Afghanistan’s minister of water and energy walks over to a map on the wall on which rebuilt hydroelectric power plants, new solar plants and modern wind turbines are marked.

Khan grabs a pointer, taps it onto an area west of Herat and says: “This is where I came across the border from Iran with 17,000 men in 1996, during the Taliban era. Then we continued through Faryab and Mazar to Faizabad and back to Herat.” He drags the pointer to the north and then to the east, sweeping it across all the wind turbines and power plants, as if they were nothing but hindrances. “My militias fought bravely everywhere,” says Khan.

This minister doesn’t want to talk about water and electricity, or about what his ministry has been up to since the Taliban was ousted. All he wants to talk about is the past, about fighting the Soviets, about the regime of former President Mohammad Najibullah and about the Islamists after they assumed power in Afghanistan.

But when he mentions the Taliban, he is also talking about the future. He foresees a return of the fundamentalist Taliban, the collapse of the government in Kabul and the eruption of a new war between ethnic groups. He sees a future in which power is divided between the clans as it was in the past, and in which the mujahedeen, the tribal militias seasoned by battles against the Soviets and later the Taliban, remain the sole governing force. [Continue reading…]

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Mass starvation feared in Syria; ‘We have no food’

The Associated Press reports: Syrian opposition groups and international relief organizations are warning of the risk of mass starvation across the country, especially in the besieged Damascus suburbs where a gas attack killed hundreds last month.

With the world’s attention focused on the regime’s chemical weapons, activists said six people – including an 18-month girl – have died for lack of food in one of the stricken suburbs in recent weeks.

Save the Children said in an appeal Monday that more than 4 million Syrians, more than half of them children, do not have enough to eat. Food shortages have been compounded by an explosion in prices.

“The world has stood and watched as the children of Syria have been shot, shelled and traumatized by the horror of war,” said Roger Hearn, Save the Children’s regional director for the Middle East. “The conflict has already left thousands of children dead, and is now threatening their means of staying alive.”

Thousands of people are believed trapped in suburbs east and west of the capital that have been held for months by rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad. Regime troops are besieging the areas, and residents say food is increasingly had to find. Rebels say they are trying to break the blockade.

The suburbs were the site of the Aug. 21 attack that a U.N. report found included the use of the nerve gas sarin. They were home to more than 2 million people before the war, but it is unclear how many are there now.

In some hard-hit areas such as the western suburb of Moadamiyeh, people are running out of food and are mostly relying on lentils, olives and dried figs, according to residents and activists.

“We have no food, no milk and no medicine,” said a woman from Moadamiyeh, who identified herself by her nickname Um Lujain for fear of government reprisals. “We are surviving on one meal a day”

Um Lujain said her 18-month-old daughter has lost half her weight and spends most of her days sleeping. The woman said her daughter’s diet is based on the liquid she makes by boiling lentils.

“There has been no children formula or bread for about a year,” the woman said. She added that sometimes rebels find expired boxes of powdered milk in abandoned shops or pharmacies, and people still give it to their children for lack of food.

According to the Moadamiyeh Media Center, six people have died of starvation over the past 20 days: two women and four children ages 18 months to 7 years. It added that 15 other children are in intensive care in clinics, suffering from malnutrition.

On Monday, the opposition Syrian National Coalition accused government forces of tightening their months-long siege. “Assad’s forces are starving people to death in those areas,” the coalition claimed. “Famine looms in the horizon.”

Rana Obeid, the 18-month-old girl, was the latest to die on Monday. An amateur video showed her lying on a bed, her ribs visible and her stomach bloated. [Continue reading…]

A malnourished baby in Moadamiyyat Ash Sham, near Damascus: (Video via EA Worldview)

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Brazil speech at U.N. lashes out at U.S. spy program

The Associated Press reports: Brazil’s president delivered a stinging rebuke Tuesday to the United States over its surveillance program that has swept up data from billions of telephone calls and emails that have passed through Brazil —including her own.

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly on the first day of its annual meeting, President Dilma Rousseff accused the U.S. of violating Brazil’s sovereignty with what she called a “grave violation of human rights and of civil liberties.”

“In the absence of the respect for sovereignty, there is no basis for the relationship among nations,” Rousseff said. “Friendly governments and societies that seek to build a true strategic partnership, as in our case, cannot allow recurring illegal actions to take place as if they were normal. They are unacceptable.”

Last week, she shelved an upcoming state trip to the U.S. in a show of anger over the U.S. National Security Agency program.

Brazil is an important hub for trans-Atlantic fiber optic cables. The NSA, tasked with intercepting potential terror communications, also reportedly hacked into the computer network of state-run oil company Petrobras.

Rousseff said the NSA also collected economic and strategic corporate data, as well as messages by Brazilian diplomats, including to the United Nations, and from her own office. [Continue reading…]

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Al Shabaab attack in Kenya

Jamal Osman, a Somali-born reporter for Channel 4 News in the UK says that his sources say that “some or most” of the attackers in this weekend’s attack on Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi are “Western passport holders”.

Channel 4 News reports: Striking at the heart of the capital city and a symbolic place, it is designed to have the maximum effect on the locals.

Kenyans who have generally enjoyed peace will find it hard to go about their daily lives, for some time to come.

It is also going to have an impact on the nation’s economy, a country that prides itself of being a regional hub.

Foreign companies invest in every sector. Tourism makes huge contribution to the local economy.

Many aid organisations including the UN are based there. This attack is likely to scare off foreign tourists, investors and international aid workers.

The al-Qaeda-linked group, which still controls large parts of southern and central Somalia, has been under pressure in the last three years.

A coalition of forces from several African nations, supporting a weak Somali government, is fighting to defeat the militants.

Kenya is part of the alliance that pushed the Islamist from the main cities and its forces captured Kismayo from the group in 2011.

For the Islamists, losing Kismayo was very difficult to swallow.

The port city, third largest in the country, was a strategic place and it generated an enormous source of income.

Therefore, they chose their target and planned the assault carefully. Westgate shopping mall was the perfect place for them.

The centre is popular with westerners, wealthy Kenyans and Somali politicians.

All of them targets for al-Shabaab. More so, it is reportedly owned by Israelis.

Targeting Israeli interests will win al-Shabaab supporters amongst the jihadi community and some in the Arab world.

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Israel steps up campaign against U.S.-Iranian diplomacy

The New York Times reports: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, stepping up his effort to blunt a diplomatic offensive by Iran, plans to warn the United Nations next week that a nuclear deal with the Iranian government could be a trap similar to one set by North Korea eight years ago, according to an Israeli official involved in drafting the speech.

Mr. Netanyahu is scheduled to address the General Assembly next Tuesday, a week after President Obama and Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, are to speak at the United Nations.

But the Israeli government, clearly rattled by the sudden talk of a diplomatic opening, offered a preview Sunday of Mr. Netanyahu’s hard-edged message, in which he will set the terms for what would be acceptable to Israel in any agreement concerning Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“A bad agreement is worse than no agreement at all,” the Israeli official said, reading a statement from the prime minister’s office that he said reflected Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks.

President Rouhani, in advance of his arrival in New York this week, has signaled a willingness to negotiate. The Obama administration, while professing wariness, is clearly intrigued by the possibility of resolving a problem that has bedeviled President Obama as long as he has been in office. And that, in turn, has deeply unsettled the Israelis. [Continue reading…]

BBC Persian’s Bahman Kalbasi writes: The message President Rouhani is trying to convey is clear – that he has “complete authority” and “sufficient political latitude” to engage with the US and its allies on the substance of their concerns.

Gary Sick, a former White House National Security Adviser, told the BBC: “What we have seen already has been such a dramatic shift. Rouhani and his team are the ‘anti-Ahmadinejad’.

“The sound of the rhetoric makes it so much easier for an American president to react positively.

“The positive tone was evident in Obama’s interview with TeleMundo TV. President Rouhani’s overtures are of the kind we have not seen before and we should test it.”

The talk of an “accidental” meeting between the two presidents in the halls of the UN’s headquarters this week has gone from wishful thinking to a real possibility.

The mood in New York is also very different from the previous years.

Gone are the protests and annual adverts on TV and billboards on Times Square with big pictures of Mr Ahmadinejad, denouncing his anti-Israel rhetoric and warning about Iran’s nuclear programme.

Instead, diplomats are waiting with anticipation to see how the new president gets Iran out of the international relations mess he has inherited from Mr Ahmadinejad. [Continue reading…]

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Secret recordings reveal Mubarak’s frank views on the U.S., Israel and the Brotherhood

The New York Times reports: Hosni Mubarak looked like a stalwart American ally but worried for years that Washington was trying to oust him as president of Egypt, he confided to a doctor recently in surreptitiously recorded conversations that came to light here last week.

“How did the revolution start?” Mr. Mubarak mused about his ouster, in early 2011. “The Americans worked on it since 2005, and I had a feeling then.”

The conversations were recorded over a period of months this year and were authenticated over the weekend when the doctor, an ear, nose and throat specialist, was summoned to testify about them. They offer a rare, unadulterated taste of the former president’s attitudes about a host of subjects — Washington, Israel, his Arab neighbors, Jews, the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s new military leaders and most of all himself.

For all the aid the United States gave Egypt during his 30 years in power, his comments suggest that Washington gained little sway over Mr. Mubarak. And he expressed nothing but pride in his rule despite the steady decline of Egypt’s economy and influence.

The Islamists who won power after his removal “blame ‘the former regime’ for everything,” Mr. Mubarak is heard complaining in one recording. Speaking of the Egyptian population, he said, “They lived — they were 43 million when I received them and 90 million when I handed them over.”

The recordings were released last week through the Web site of the newspaper Youm el-Saba, and quickly captivated Egyptians with details like Mr. Mubarak’s boasts of his heroism as a pilot in the 1973 war against Israel, and his shock at the high prices of groceries. “An egg is one pound?” he said in shock, joking, “So let’s eat potato sandwiches!”

Mr. Mubarak apparently did not foresee the ouster in July of his successor, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. In a recording made in the spring, he was asked whether he thinks the military will act to stop the turmoil between Mr. Morsi’s opponents and his supporters; he responded, “What would they do?” He is heard guessing wrongly about Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the head of the military, saying he thought General Sisi supported Mr. Morsi and his Islamist allies: “The defense minister, I think, is to their liking.”

He realized his mistake after General Sisi seized power. In a later recording, someone said the general had turned out not to be a Muslim Brotherhood supporter after all. Mr. Mubarak laughed wryly: “No, no, he turned out to be devious.” [Continue reading…]

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How the NSA is damaging the American economy

Network World reports: The spectacle of National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden exposing the covert spying nature of US federal officials has sent ripple waves through the technology industry — especially in the outsourcing arena.

Experts predict the NSA fiasco could result in the loss of business for some hosting vendors, but it’s hard to say exactly what the impact has been or will be.

The head of a European cloud computing provider said recently though that he’s seen a “measurable impact” from companies looking to use its services to escape what they fear could be the prying eyes of the US NSA.

“It has not been a profound surge, but there is definitely a measureable impact,” says Robert Jenkins, co-founder and CTO of Cloud Sigma, which is headquartered in Switzerland and has data centers across Europe and the United States. “We’ve definitely seen cases where people are turning to us because of this.”

Forrester analyst and cloud tracker James Staten predicted this could happen in a blog post in the summer. Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) estimated in a report that the US cloud computing market could stand to lose up to $35 billion by 2016 because of vendors bypassing US providers and looking to overseas competitors. Staten says that’s the low end of an estimate though. [Continue reading…]

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