A power struggle between Jabhat al-Nusra and al Qaeda in Iraq?

Last week’s announcement by the leader of al Qaida in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, that AQI and Jabhat al-Nusra have merged, appeared to be a public confirmation of what was already widely believed: that the two groups were one and the same. But the response from the al-Nusra leader, Abu Muhammad Al-Julani, suggests that the alignment between the two groups might not be so exact. Indeed, al-Nursra’s pledge of allegiance to AQI might be due deference to what it regards as vital support. Whatever AQI’s ambitions might be in terms of creating a joint Iraqi-Syrian Islamic state, al-Nusra seems more concerned about emphasizing its Syrian roots.

Matthew Barber provides translations of the statement from AQI and the response from al-Nusra’s leader, al-Julani:
A number of interesting observations can be made about this statement. First, it is amusing that al-Julani would begin his speech—a response to a speech by a fellow jihadi—by quoting a Qur’anic verse about liars. He clearly states that Jabhat al-Nusra had not been informed that the announcement was forthcoming. Though framed with respectful language, the entire statement represents a veiled rebuke to al-Baghdadi.

Al-Julani discloses the real picture of al-Nusra, revealing that the core of al-Nusra are Syrian jihadis who participated with al-Qaida in Iraq “from the beginning” of the Iraq war, only returning to Syria after the uprising began in order to engage in jihad against the Syrian regime by employing all the experience and tools gained through the long period of fighting in Iraq. And in addition to being the offspring of al-Qaida in Iraq, al-Julani affirms that al-Nusra has been supported by them throughout its tenure in Syria–supported both financially and with fighters. He intentionally downplays the numbers of fighters from Iraq, however; while expressing gratitude for their participation, he endeavors to place distance between the Iraqi and Syrian jihadi groups by framing the role of jihadis from al-Qaida in Iraq as minimal. Even when emphasizing a degree of autonomy from al-Qaida in Iraq, he nevertheless ends up indicating a measure of subordination by saying “he put his complete trust in me to produce policies and plans.”

So if al-Nusra was born of al-Qaida in Iraq, includes Iraqi jihadis, has continually received support from al-Qaida, and willingly affirms allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, what is the rub between al-Julani and al-Baghdadi’s statement? The point of tension seems to center around the declaration of an Islamic state. Though he never denies affiliation with al-Qaida in Iraq, or what he sees as the evolving emergence of an Islamic state in Syria, he seems to have taken offense to the timing and manner of the declaration, and rejects al-Baghdadi’s approach of a single state for Syria and Iraq under a single governing structure. Though he has no problem being under the authority of al-Qaida’s top command, he experiences possible resentment at the suggestion that al-Nusra be subordinate to al-Qaida in Iraq.

Al-Julani therefore rejects al-Baghdadi’s assertion that the two wings will abandon their separate titles and merge into a single unit. He maintains that al-Nusra will continue to use its name and flag. He confirms the declaration of an Islamic state in Syria (saying it is “built” by all parties who participated in the struggle), but he does not link it with that in Iraq: Rather than the “Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham” it is merely “The Islamic State of al-Sham.” Though acknowledging the presence of an Islamic state, he says that declaring statehood is not important, since the state has been coming into being through a process of implementing shari’a to the degree it is possible in the Syrian context. (This process is ongoing, through such projects as the effort to bring shari’a classes to the public.)

These announcements therefore do not represent a “merger of Jabhat al-Nusra with al-Qaida” but the disclosure of their equivalency. While it has long been perceived that ISI and al-Nusra were linked counterparts, this reality is now in the open.

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Obama’s empty rhetoric on climate change

Ryan Lizza writes: The budget released this week by the White House is by far Obama’s most ambitious statement of his legislative priorities since 2009, when, as a newly elected President, he produced a plan brimming over with initiatives like Obamacare, education reform, new spending to aid the depressed economy, and a cap-and-trade régime to curb carbon pollution. Obama’s 2009 budget presaged two years in office that were so legislatively far-reaching that, in Washington policy circles, the document was sometimes called the Big Bang.

This new budget approaches the ambitions of 2009 — with one glaring omission. There are sections aimed at consolidating Obama’s first-term successes: the mundane but crucial details of implementing health-care and Wall Street reforms. He asks Congress to reform immigration, pass gun-control measures, overhaul the tax code, make pre-school universal, boost American manufacturing, and cut defense spending—an aggressive second-term agenda. And in the section of the two-hundred-and-forty-four-page document that has received the most attention, he details his offer — or rather, re-offer — to Republicans of a long-term deficit-reduction deal: cuts to Social Security and Medicare in return for more revenue. Like the 2009 document, the new budget is more or less the prose version of Obama’s campaign poetry.

But the second Big Bang also represents a major dodge on climate change. Over the last two years, Obama has consistently talked about his second term as the time when he would forcefully confront the challenges of a warming planet. As I reported last year, in private conversations he has told people that dealing with climate change is one of the few ways that he believes he could fundamentally improve the world decades after he’s gone from office.

In his three most important speeches of the last year, he promised to confront this threat. In his convention speech in Charlotte, North Carolina, last September, he vowed, “my plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet, because climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They are a threat to our children’s future.”

More powerfully, in his Inaugural Address, on January 21st, he said:

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms.

And in his State of the Union address, on February 12th, he seemed to go beyond the vagueness of his campaign rhetoric and promise action. He pointed out that the last fifteen years have included twelve of the hottest years ever recorded, and he noted that “heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods all are now more frequent and more intense.” He promised he would “act before it’s too late.”

Indeed, he called on Congress to enact a comprehensive plan. The phrase “cap and trade” has become politically poisonous since the death of Obama’s own legislation, in 2010, but there was no mistaking what he meant. Obama demanded a “bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago.”

But the budget released this week makes it clear that Obama’s surprising appeal to Congress was an empty piece of rhetoric. [Continue reading…]

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Who should own DNA? All of us

Marcy Darnovsky and Karuna Jaggar write: Most court cases involving patent law are corporate battles, with one company suing another for infringing on its intellectual property rights and, therefore, profits. Big companies fighting over big money can seem painfully irrelevant, especially when so many of us are simply struggling to get by.

But the case coming before the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday challenging two patents is a different animal, with enormous implications for both our health and shared humanity. The patents in question are on two human genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, commonly referred to as the “breast cancer genes.”

We all have these genes in the cells of our bodies, but certain variants in some people significantly increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Learning whether you have these risk-elevating mutations can be important because it gives you the opportunity to consider increased surveillance (such as cancer screenings and mammography) and even surgery to remove healthy organs.

The patents give one biotechnology company, Myriad Genetics Inc., sweeping control of the two genes. Myriad’s monopoly harms women’s health, impedes cancer research and raises important ethical questions about control over the human genome.

Myriad’s patents cover both the normal versions of the genes and all mutations and rearrangements within them. This monopoly has prevented other scientists and doctors from using the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes in research, medicine, diagnosis and treatment.

With revenue from the patents approaching half a billion dollars a year, Myriad frequently restricts access to these genes. It sends cease-and-desist notices to prevent other researchers from working with them.

Myriad’s strict patent enforcement means its test is the only available one to determine whether a woman has a genetic variant that increases her risk of cancer. Women cannot get a second opinion about the results, even when faced with a decision about removing healthy organs to reduce their cancer risk. And too many women cannot even have the test because it is too expensive.

Furthermore, since Myriad’s test focuses on the variants that have already been identified, some women, especially women of color, are more likely to get ambiguous results. They are told they have a genetic variant but that Myriad doesn’t know whether it increases their risk of cancer.

The lawsuit before the Supreme Court next week has united women’s health organizations, research groups, genetic counselors and breast cancer patients. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation, the lead plaintiffs, make a straightforward argument (full disclosure: Breast Cancer Action is also a plaintiff; Center for Genetics and Society has signed several briefs): U.S. case law and patent statute plainly say that patents can be awarded only for human inventions.

Genes are not inventions but products of nature. You can’t patent the sun; you can’t patent a new species of insect you find in a forest; you can’t patent the speed of light. And you cannot patent human genes. [Continue reading…]

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Reliability of neuroscience research questioned

Bristol University: New research has questioned the reliability of neuroscience studies, saying that conclusions could be misleading due to small sample sizes.

A team led by academics from the University of Bristol reviewed 48 articles on neuroscience meta-analysis which were published in 2011 and concluded that most had an average power of around 20 per cent – a finding which means the chance of the average study discovering the effect being investigated is only one in five.

The paper, being published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience today [10 April], reveals that small, low-powered studies are ‘endemic’ in neuroscience, producing unreliable research which is inefficient and wasteful.

It focuses on how low statistical power – caused by low sample size of studies, small effects being investigated, or both – can be misleading and produce more false scientific claims than high-powered studies.

It also illustrates how low power reduces a study’s ability to detect any effects and shows that when discoveries are claimed, they are more likely to be false or misleading.

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New music ‘rewarding for the brain’

BBC News reports: Listening to new music is rewarding for the brain, a study suggests.

Using MRI scans, a Canadian team of scientists found that areas in the reward centre of the brain became active when people heard a song for the first time.

The more the listener enjoyed what they were hearing, the stronger the connections were in the region of the brain called the nucleus accumbens.

The study is published in the journal Science.

Dr Valorie Salimpoor, from the Rotman Research Institute, in Toronto, told the BBC’s Science in Action programme: “We know that the nucleus accumbens is involved with reward.

“But music is abstract: It’s not like you are really hungry and you are about to get a piece of food and you are really excited about it because you are going to eat it – or the same thing applies to sex or money – that’s when you would normally see activity in the nucleus accumbens.

“But what’s cool is that you’re anticipating and getting excited over something entirely abstract – and that’s the next sound that is coming up.” [Continue reading…]

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U.S. ranks near bottom of UNICEF report on child well-being

Salon: The United States ranked in the bottom four of a United Nations report on child well-being. Among 29 countries, America landed second from the bottom in child poverty and held a similarly dismal position when it came to “child life satisfaction.”

Keeping the U.S. company at the bottom of the report, which gauged material well-being, overall health, access to housing and education, were Lithuania, Latvia and Romania, three of the poorest countries in the survey.

UNICEF said in a statement on the survey that child poverty in countries like the U.S. “is not inevitable but is policy-susceptible” and that there isn’t necessarily a strong relationship between per capita GDP and overall child well-being, explaining: “The Czech Republic is ranked higher than Austria, Slovenia higher than Canada, and Portugal higher than the United States.”

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Mounting tensions escalate into violence during raid at Guantánamo

The New York Times reports: Weeks of mounting tensions between the military and detainees at the wartime prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, escalated into violence on Saturday during a raid in which guards forced prisoners living in communal housing to move to individual cells.

“Some detainees resisted with improvised weapons, and in response, four less-than-lethal rounds were fired,” the military said in a statement. “There were no serious injuries to guards or detainees.”

Capt. Robert Durand, a military spokesman at the base, said the improvised weapons included “batons and broomsticks.” Another military official said that at least one detainee had been hit by a rubber bullet, but that there were no further details about any minor injuries or how the prisoners had resisted.

The raid came shortly after a delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross completed a three-week visit to examine the prisoners and study the circumstances of a hunger strike that has been roiling the camp for weeks. The Red Cross visit concluded on Friday, and most of the delegation left that same day, though a few flew out Saturday morning, said Simon Schorno, a Red Cross spokesman.

Mr. Schorno declined to comment on the raid, saying that no one from the Red Cross delegation had witnessed it. But he did say that the Red Cross believed the hunger strike was the result of how legal uncertainty has affected their mental and emotional health. Most of the detainees have been held without trial for more than a decade, and the outward flow of detainees has essentially ceased amid Congressional restrictions on further transfers. [Continue reading…]

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Where are the Guantanamo legal files?

The Miami Herald reports: Confronted with claims that a portion of the Pentagon computer system used by defense lawyers is not secure, the chief Guantánamo judge Thursday postponed until June next week’s hearings in an ongoing death penalty trial at the war court in Cuba.

Army Col. James L. Pohl, the judge, agreed to delay the proceedings in the USS Cole conspiracy trial “in the interest of justice” hours after the chief defense counsel, Air Force Col. Karen Mayberry, ordered all war court defense counsels to stop using their computers for confidential email and court documents.

At issue has been the disappearance recently of certain defense documents off what was thought to be a secure hard drive at the Office of Military Commissions. Technicians were creating a mirror of the war court’s server, so lawyers could work on their documents between the Pentagon region and the crude war court compound at the remote Navy base in Cuba, and documents on both the Cole and Sept. 11 death penalty cases simply vanished.

“I honestly don’t know how bad it is. All I know is that the information systems have been impacted, corrupted, lost,” Mayberry said, describing the lost work product by 9/11 defense lawyers as of a greater magnitude than the Cole case.

Plus, the information was on a server that held both defense and prosecution documents, Mayberry said, something that in light of the problems can no longer be tolerated. Had Pohl not issued the delay, she added, she was prepared to ask Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to freeze the commissions.

The postponement is the latest blow to the Obama administration’s version of the war court that President George W. Bush created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. The last round of hearings revealed other confidentiality issues, including an eavesdropping system hidden in what looked like a smoke detector at the attorney-client meeting rooms at the prison camps and the existence of an intelligence censor who until recently had the capability to mute conversation at Guantánamo’s maximum-security courtroom.

No evidence had been uncovered that the problem was a result of an unseen intelligence agency interference, Mayberry said, adding “I suppose anything’s possible. I don’t have any reason to think that’s what’s going on. But I know that we didn’t have any reason to think that smoke detectors weren’t smoke detectors.” [Continue reading…]

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United States-Israel Strategic Subservience Act of 2013

Mike Coogan writes: Public differences between members of Congress and AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) have largely been papered over in recent weeks, but there remains a palpable sense of frustration with AIPAC’s legislative policy agenda on Capitol Hill. 



The unprecedented dearth of support for parts of AIPAC’s legislative agenda this year may be a sign the façade of invincibility surrounding the Israel lobby is beginning to erode. In the case of ‘The United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2013’ (S. 462, H.R. 938), members of Congress appear to have defected en masse; weeks after introduction, the Senate version has only 15 cosponsors. 



Numerous public reports and off-the-record accounts from legislators and staff signaled that the brazenness and late release of the Israel lobby’s legislative demands blindsided both individual members and various committees. Provisions appeared tone deaf and legally problematic, even among Israel’s strongest supporters.



One such proposal, buried within AIPAC’s long list of legislative demands, was language proposing that Israel be included in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program. The seemingly innocuous provision is easy to miss among a litany of other alarming proposals, including a tripwire provision to drag the U.S. into an Israeli initiated war with Iran, an exemption of Israel’s annual military aid from sequestration cuts, and a vague but certainly problematic ‘strategic ally’ designation. 



Shortly before its annual policy conference, AIPAC made known that it wanted Israel to be included in the Visa Waiver Program, and officials requested that adjustments be made to the program’s requirement that Israel ‘extend reciprocal privileges to citizens and nationals of the United States.’ 



According to off the record accounts, AIPAC officials told members of Congress that there would need to be flexibility on this legal requirement to accommodate Israel’s ongoing discrimination against Arab- and Muslim-Americans who attempt to travel to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.



Behind closed doors, members of Congress and legal counsel alike balked at the idea that Israel be allowed in the program but remain exempt from the reciprocity requirement. Attorneys for both individual members and committees privately advised that complying with the request would be a flagrant violation of certain U.S. laws barring discrimination, and would undermine the U.S. government’s call for the equal protection of all its citizens traveling abroad. [Continue reading…]

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The end of the Fayyad era?

Matthew Duss writes: Since becoming secretary of State, indeed even during his confirmation hearings, John Kerry has made it clear that he places high priority on achieving a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and has spent the first months of his tenure exploring the possibilities for a reinvigorated peace process, stalled for the last three years.

Speaking Tuesday at a press conference at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, during his third visit to Israel-Palestine in as many weeks, Secretary Kerry confirmed that initiatives aimed at building the Palestinian economy would be a key component of the effort to restart peace talks.

“We are going to engage in new efforts, very specific efforts,” Kerry said, “to promote economic development and to remove some of the bottlenecks and barriers that exist with respect to commerce in the West Bank.” Economic growth, Kerry continued, “will help us be able to provide a climate, if you will, an atmosphere, within which people have greater confidence about moving forward.”

If you think this sounds familiar, you’re right. It’s the approach taken by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad over the past several years. He attempted to reform and develop the Palestinian economy, with a particular focus on greater transparency and accountability, in order create a sense of momentum among Palestinians toward statehood. In one of the surest signs of the Western intelligentsia’s blessing, the doctrine was endowed by The New York Times’ Tom Friedman with its own special title: “Fayyadism … the simple but all-too-rare notion that an Arab leader’s legitimacy should be based not on slogans or rejectionism or personality cults or security services, but on delivering transparent, accountable administration and services.”

Four years later, Fayyadism has foundered on the reality that economic development—genuine, sustainable economic development—is all but impossible amid the conditions of a hostile military occupation that the West Bank continues to experience under Israeli rule. [Continue reading…]

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James Hansen leaves NASA to become a full-time activist fighting climate chaos

Scientific American: Why did James Hansen retire on April 2 after 32 years as director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies? As he told the enterprising students of Columbia University’s Sustainability Media Lab who captured him in the following video, “I want to devote full time to trying to help the public understand the urgency of addressing climate change.”

It’s not exactly the “spend more time with my family” excuse often give by retiring government officials, but his family is nonetheless the reason for this change. He’s worried about preventing “climate chaos” and instead preserving the relatively stable climate of the past 10,000 years—when human civilization developed and flourished—for his five grandchildren.

That means full-time activism for the 72-year-old, and perhaps the risk of getting arrested at more coal-mine or tar-sand protests.

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In letter to Obama, human rights groups question legality and secrecy of drone killings

The New York Times reports: In a letter sent to President Obama this week, the nation’s leading human rights organizations questioned the legal basis for targeted killing and called for an end to the secrecy surrounding the use of drones.

The “statement of shared concern” said the administration should “publicly disclose key targeted killing standards and criteria; ensure that U.S. lethal force operations abroad comply with international law; enable meaningful Congressional oversight and judicial review; and ensure effective investigations, tracking and response to civilian harm.”

The nine-page letter, signed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, the Open Society Foundations and several other groups, is the most significant critique to date by advocacy groups of what has become the centerpiece of the United States’ counterterrorism efforts.

While not directly calling the strikes illegal under international law, the letter lists what it calls troubling reports of the criteria used by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command to select targets and assess results. The reported policies raise “serious questions about whether the U.S. is operating in accordance with international law,” the letter says. It is also signed by the Center for Civilians in Conflict and units of the New York University and Columbia Law Schools. [Continue reading…]

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Maintaining conflict, stopping bloodshed: Lessons from 15 years of peace in Northern Ireland

Haggai Matar writes: Although Republicans and Unionists still have extremely different ideas as to where the country should be heading they still accept each other’s right to imagine opposite identities and futures. Fifteen years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, there is much Israelis and Palestinians can learn from Northern Ireland.

“No two conflicts are alike, and a solution that fits one conflict could never be copied successfully to anywhere else.” The same sentence, in minor variations, was said to me by countless members of the Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly, as well as journalists, academics and political activists during my short visit to Belfast about a month ago (which resulted in a piece published in Haaretz in Hebrew today). Had it not been coming from people who disagree on pretty much everything else and who support rival political parties, one might even assume they were all simply stating the party line.

All of them have a lot of experience talking to people like myself. Over the past couple of years most of them have either hosted or have been hosted by politicians, NGOs and journalists from conflict zones around the world trying to learn something from the model that put an end to the three decades of bloodshed during “The Troubles,” and the hundreds of years of conflict that preceded that period. But while it is true that one cannot simply copy and paste the Good Friday Agreement (signed this week 15 year ago, full text in PDF here) in order to create world peace, there is nothing wrong with tapping into the world of knowledge and experience the people of Northern Ireland have gained in order to try and rethink our own troubles here. [Continue reading…]

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AIPAC supports ethnic discrimination against U.S. citizens visiting Israel

JTA reports: A legislative effort led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to enable Israelis to enter the United States without visas may be stymied by the government – Israel’s government.

The hitch is Israel’s inability or unwillingness to fully reciprocate, something required for visa-free travel to the United States. Israel, citing security concerns, insists on the right to refuse entry to some U.S. citizens.

AIPAC is pushing for an exemption for Israel from this rule. But congressional staffers say Israel is unlikely to get such an exemption, which U.S. lawmakers view as an attempt to bar Arab Americans from freely entering Israel.

“It’s stunning that you would give a green light to another country to violate the civil liberties of Americans traveling abroad,” said a staffer for one leading pro-Israel lawmaker in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The exemption AIPAC is pushing for appears in the Senate version of the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act, one of the key issues for which AIPAC urged supporters to lobby after its policy conference last month.

The language in that bill, proposed by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), requires that the Homeland Security secretary grant Israel visa waiver status after certifying with the secretary of state that Israel “has made every reasonable effort, without jeopardizing the security of the State of Israel, to ensure that reciprocal travel privileges are extended to all United States citizens.”

House staffers say that lawmakers, pro-Israel leaders among them, have raised objections to the clause, “without jeopardizing the security of the State of Israel,” because it appears to validate what they see as Israel’s tendency to turn away Arab Americans without giving a reason.

None of the other 37 countries currently in the visa-free program has such a caveat written into law. [Continue reading…]

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