Beware of small cities

Deen Sharp writes: The physical spaces of the Arab uprisings emerged as powerful political tools in the course of the revolts for both protesters and regimes. Protestors in streets and squares affirmed that power also exists in real exchanges, in real places between real people. Tahrir Square experienced a metamorphosis from a denied political space to a metonym for revolution, a symbol of the Egyptian and Arab uprisings. The spatial dynamics of the uprisings, however, are not only in the streets and public squares of the major metropolises. Indeed, the protests antedate the move to public squares in capital cities.

Despite urban spaces outside the major metropolises remaining almost invisible in discourses surrounding the Arab uprisings, small cities played a critical role in the revolts in 2011, the year that changed the Middle East. Normatively, it is the spaces of the largest cities that are deemed to produce the region’s history. Cairo, Beirut and Baghdad, and their ilk, do not form the realities for the majority of inhabitants in the Arab region, however. Urban morphologies of small cities, such as Sidi Bouzid, Suez and Dera’a, are closer to the everyday spatial realities of the majority of the regions inhabitants. The Arab uprisings have articulated how the neglect of areas outside the major metropolises hindered our understanding of human patterns of social life.

To differentiate and comprehend the morphologies of small cities, towns, peri-urban areas and villages, and thus engage with the daily spatial realities of the majority of inhabitants in the region, a correction to the under theorizing of areas outside big cities needs to be undertaken. The uprisings have brought to the fore the urgency of establishing a small cities research agenda for the region. Engagement with space beyond the metropolis would not only introduce new avenues to analyze the historical contexts and undetermined futures of the Arab uprisings but also engender an improved understanding of social life in the region more broadly. It took a fruit and vegetable vendor to instigate a region-wide revolution and depose the big men – Ben Ali, Mubarak and Saleh. It took small cities to awaken the larger metropolis. [Continue reading…]

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Inequality is still the issue

David Wearing writes: The Centre for Labour and Social Studies (CLASS) has just published a free-to-download, short presentation of the key findings from Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson’s hugely successful book “The Spirit Level”. The pamphlet, entitled “Why Inequality Matters“, also includes a set of proposed measures to decrease the wage gap, reform the tax system, and develop public services. Its aim is to empower and enable a collective effort to push the issue of inequality into the centre of political debate.

Britain, alongside the US, is one of the most unequal countries in the developed world, and as Pickett and Wilkinson showed in The Spirit Level, high levels of inequality are connected to a wide range of social ills, from poor physical and mental health to violent crime and drug abuse. The counter-assertion made by right-wing liberals that equality of opportunity is more important than equality of outcome is shown to be a false dichotomy. Social mobility is actually lowest in the most unequal countries. If you want the American dream, move to Sweden.

It is worth noting that the theory underpinning these findings is essentially drawn from the observation that human beings are deeply social animals, acutely responsive to how they relate to the rest of society. The sense of alienation caused by living in an unequal society is the source of huge anxiety, and debilitating effects on people’s sense of self, which in turn leads to some of the symptoms highlighted above. The detailed explanation of how this works presented in The Spirit Level is extremely illuminating, and I strongly recommend the original book to anyone who has yet to read it.

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U.N. Syria envoy Brahimi to visit Tehran for talks: Iran

Reuters reports: New U.N.-Arab League envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi will visit Iran, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, after a fact-finding trip to Syria itself, an official in the Iranian foreign ministry was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Brahimi, a veteran Algerian diplomat, succeeded Kofi Annan as envoy this month and has said he would talk to Iran as he tries to push forward with his difficult quest to end the 17-month-old conflict in Syria.

He is expected to visit Syria soon though no date has yet been announced. His representatives could not be reached on Sunday to confirm or deny the Iranian report.

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The tragedy of the European Union and how to resolve it

George Soros writes: I have been a fervent supporter of the European Union as the embodiment of an open society—a voluntary association of equal states that surrendered part of their sovereignty for the common good. The euro crisis is now turning the European Union into something fundamentally different. The member countries are divided into two classes—creditors and debtors—with the creditors in charge, Germany foremost among them. Under current policies debtor countries pay substantial risk premiums for financing their government debt, and this is reflected in the cost of financing in general. This has pushed the debtor countries into depression and put them at a substantial competitive disadvantage that threatens to become permanent.

This is the result not of a deliberate plan but of a series of policy mistakes that started when the euro was introduced. It was general knowledge that the euro was an incomplete currency—it had a central bank but did not have a treasury. But member countries did not realize that by giving up the right to print their own money they exposed themselves to the risk of default. Financial markets realized it only at the onset of the Greek crisis. The financial authorities did not understand the problem, let alone see a solution. So they tried to buy time. But instead of improving, the situation deteriorated. This was entirely due to the lack of understanding and the lack of unity.

The course of events could have been arrested and reversed at almost any time but that would have required an agreed-upon plan and ample financial resources to implement it. Germany, as the largest creditor country, was in charge but was reluctant to take on any additional liabilities; as a result every opportunity to resolve the crisis was missed. The crisis spread from Greece to other deficit countries and eventually the very survival of the euro came into question. Since breakup of the euro would cause immense damage to all member countries and particularly to Germany, Germany will continue to do the minimum necessary to hold the euro together.

The policies pursued under German leadership will likely hold the euro together for an indefinite period, but not forever. The permanent division of the European Union into creditor and debtor countries with the creditors dictating terms is politically unacceptable for many Europeans. If and when the euro eventually breaks up it will destroy the common market and the European Union. Europe will be worse off than it was when the effort to unite it began, because the breakup will leave a legacy of mutual mistrust and hostility. The later it happens, the worse the ultimate outcome. That is such a dismal prospect that it is time to consider alternatives that would have been inconceivable until recently. [Continue reading…]

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Eleven years after 9/11, Guantánamo is a political prison

Andy Worthington writes: Eleven years since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the majority of the remaining 168 men in Guantánamo are not held because they constitute an active threat to the United States, but because of inertia, political opportunism and an institutional desire to hide evidence of torture by US forces, sanctioned at the highest levels of government. That they are still held, mostly without charge or trial, is a disgrace that continues to eat away at any notion that the US believes in justice.

It seems like an eternity since there was the briefest of hopes that George W. Bush’s “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo would be shut down. That was in January 2009, but although Barack Obama issued an executive order promising to close Guantánamo within a year, he soon reneged on that promise, failing to stand up to Republican critics, who seized on the fear of terrorism to attack him, and failing to stand up to members of his own party, who were also fearful of the power of black propaganda regarding Guantánamo and the alleged but unsubstantiated dangerousness of its inmates.

The President himself also became fearful when, in January 2010, the Guantánamo Review Task Force, which he himself had appointed, and which consisted of career officials and lawyers from government departments and the intelligence agencies, issued its report based on an analysis of the cases of the 240 prisoners inherited from George W. Bush (PDF). The Task Force recommended that, of the 240 men held when he came to power, only 36 could be prosecuted, but 48 others were regarded as being too dangerous to release, even though insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial.

The rest, the Task Force concluded, should be released, although they also advised that 30 of these 156 men — all Yemenis — should continue to be held in “conditional detention,” dependent on there being a perceived improvement in the security situation in Yemen.

There were severe problems with the Task Force’s recommendations, particularly regarding the 48 prisoners deemed to be too dangerous to release despite the lack of evidence against them, because detention without charge or trial is unacceptable under any circumstances. Also troubling, however, was the Task Force’s decision, without reference to Congress, to designate 30 men for “conditional detention,” as this was a detention category that they invented.

Nevertheless, it was reasonable to assume, when the Task Force’s report was issued, or at the latest in May 2010, when it was made public, that, fairly swiftly, 36 men would be put on trial, and 126 others would be released, allowing the status of the 48 others to be the focus of intense scrutiny.

That, of course, never happened. [Continue reading…]

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A stinging rebuke of the DOJ on access to counsel at Gitmo

Scott Horton writes: The Bush Administration originally created special-detention facilities at Guantánamo on the theory that—given the unique historical provenance of the base, which was secured under a lease at the end of the war with Spain on terms Havana no longer recognizes—no court anywhere in the world would have jurisdiction to deal with the complaints of prisoners held there. Consequently, it would be easier to subject the prisoners to torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment the likes of which America’s prisoners in wartime had never before experienced. The Supreme Court soon put an end to this exercise, and a series of court rulings ensured that indeed there would be a form of court review and that prisoners would have access to counsel.

While Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to end torture and to humanize and then close Guantánamo, this promise has been left unfulfilled, in part because of Obama’s lack of resolve and in part because of the obstructionist games practiced by Republicans. Obama has chosen to disengage from the Guantánamo issue, and in doing so has essentially placed operations there on autopilot. And that has produced a remarkable degree of backsliding to the practices of the Bush era.

A clear-cut example recently emerged when lawyers serving as defense counsel at Guantánamo discovered that they were arbitrarily being denied access to their clients on the orders of a military commandant, despite a series of court orders dating back to 2004 that had guaranteed them access. The Obama Administration had put in place new rules under which only those prisoners who are actively challenging their detention are guaranteed the right to talk to counsel; otherwise the commandant has the right to deny access. Moreover, to have any access to clients at all, the lawyers were being pressed to sign a “Memorandum of Understanding” with the Department of Defense under which they consented to these new rules. [Continue reading…]

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The ‘only in America’ myth

Nima Shirazi writes: “Only in America” is a refrain heard time and again in this country’s political discourse. According to both Democrats and Republicans, the United States is a singular nation: one in which anyone can achieve anything if you have a dream and the will to work hard; a place wherein upward mobility is assumed and someone born into crushing poverty and brutal socioeconomic conditions can reach the highest levels of wealth, success and power by sheer grit and determination.

Obviously the reality in this exceptional nation of ours is quite different.

Nevertheless, an MSNBC montage perfectly illustrates the ubiquity of this mythologized narrative of American up-by-your-bootstrapism at this past week’s Republican National Convention. Watch here:

Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who is worth millions due to investments and inheritance from his wife’s trust fund, spoke of menial labor as a stepping stone for greatness:

When I was waiting tables, washing dishes, or mowing lawns for money, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life. I was on my own path, my own journey, an American journey where I could think for myself, decide for myself, define happiness for myself. That’s what we do in this country. That’s the American Dream.

Only in America. [Continue reading…]

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Designating Haqqanis as terrorists will undermine peace talks, group says

Reuters reports: The United States’ decision to designate the Haqqani network as a terrorist organization shows it is not sincere about peace efforts in Afghanistan, senior commanders of the group said on Friday.

The move will also bring hardship for U.S. Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who is being held by the militants, the commanders told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

The United States is designating the Pakistan-based Haqqani network, accused of high-profile attacks in Afghanistan, as a terrorist organization, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday, in a move that would trigger sanctions against the group and turn up the heat on Pakistan’s government.

US officials have long accused Pakistan of supporting the network, an allegation Islamabad denies.

The Haqqanis, who are allied with the Afghan Taliban, are some of the most experienced fighters in Afghanistan and have carried out several high-profile attacks on Western targets.

Senior commanders from the network said the decision to designate the group as terrorists could endanger efforts to reach a peaceful settlement to the Afghan conflict before most NATO combat troops withdraw by the end of 2014.

“It means the United States is not sincere in their talks. They are on the one hand claiming to look for a political solution to the Afghan issue while on the other they are declaring us terrorists,” said one of the commanders.

“So how can peace talks succeed in bringing peace to Afghanistan?”

Whether or not to brand the group a terrorist organization has been the subject of intense debate within the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, with some officials arguing it would have little real impact, but would risk setting back Afghan reconciliation efforts.

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A looming nuclear arms race between Pakistan and India

Tom Hundley writes: One of the more tenacious conspiracy theories that have taken root in the hothouse of Pakistan’s capital is that Osama bin Laden was not killed in the May 2, 2011, Navy SEAL raid on his compound in Abbottabad — that, in fact, he had already been dead for years, killed in the caves of Tora Bora.

According to this theory, the CIA had been keeping bin Laden’s corpse on ice, literally, ready to be resurrected at a moment when his “death” could better serve U.S. interests. That moment came when the SEALs decided to conduct a dry run of their long-planned operation to snatch Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Bin Laden’s thawing corpse was brought along as cover in case the exercise blew up — and as a devious bit of political theater to besmirch Pakistan’s reputation if all went well.

What keep conspiracy theories like this alive are bits and pieces of half-baked evidence that could be construed to support a deeply held belief. In this case, it is the belief — accepted across the board in Pakistan, from the top brass of its military down to the dusty gaggle of taxi drivers who awaited me each morning outside my Islamabad hotel — that the United States has a not-so-secret plan to snatch Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

The United States, which is duly concerned that Pakistan’s nukes could fall into the wrong hands, almost certainly does have a plan to neutralize those weapons in the event of a coup or total state collapse. When the question was put to Condoleezza Rice during her 2005 confirmation hearings to become secretary of state, she replied, “We have noted this problem, and we are prepared to try to deal with it.”

“Try” is the key word. Military experts — American, Pakistani, and Indian — agree that grabbing or disarming all of Pakistan’s nukes at this stage would be something close to mission impossible. As one senior Pakistani general told me, “We look at the stories in the U.S. media about taking away our nuclear weapons and this definitely concerns us, so countermeasures have been developed accordingly.” Such steps have included building more warheads and spreading them out over a larger number of heavily guarded locations. This, of course, also makes the logistics of securing them against theft by homegrown terrorists that much more complicated.

Fears of that terrifying possibility were heightened in August, when a group of militants assaulted a Pakistani base that some believe houses nuclear weapons components. Nine militants and one soldier were killed in a two-hour firefight at the Kamra air force base. The local media immediately floated the theory that this, too, was part of the American plot to steal Pakistan’s nukes. But more disturbing than any conspiracy theory is the reality that this was the fourth attack in five years on the Kamra base, just 20 miles from the capital. At least five other sensitive military installations have also come under attack by militants since 2007.

Yet, though the danger of a loose Pakistani nuke certainly deserves scrupulous attention, it may not be the severest nuclear threat emanating from South Asia, as I came to realize after interviewing more than a dozen experts in Pakistan, India, and the United States this summer. Since the 9/11 attacks, preventing the world’s most dangerous weapons from falling into the hands of the world’s most dangerous actors — whether al Qaeda terrorists or Iranian mullahs — has understandably been America’s stated priority. Yet the gravest danger — not only for the region, but for the United States itself — may be the South Asian incarnation of a Cold War phenomenon: a nuclear arms race.

Pakistan, with an estimated 90 to 120 warheads, is now believed to be churning out more plutonium than any other country on the planet — thanks to two Chinese-built reactors that are now online, a third that is undergoing trials, and a fourth that is scheduled to become operational by 2016. It has already passed India in total number of warheads and is on course to overtake Britain as the world’s No. 5 nuclear power. Pakistan could end up in third place, behind Russia and the United States, within a decade. [Continue reading…]

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The formation of Alawite militias in the Kassab region in Syria

At Syria Comment, Mohammad D. writes: There are important new developments in Lattakia and its surrounding recently. The violence that started a few months back in the East and North of the city itself has not subsided. Yesterday a rumor spread that the FSA had shelled al-Qurdaha, something its leaders have been wishing to do from day one. I think it is just a rumor, but, the big news is that the Alawis have started to form armed groups in some of the villages which are in direct contact with the Sunni villages.

The Alawis in areas that are not near the front lines have also begun amassing small arms. They have also begun to form similar groups. One of these groups appeared in the area of Jabal al-Turkman (North of Lattakia). These new fighters are known locally as al-Lijan al-Sha’biyah (اللجان الشعبية). So far they have light arms only. The Assad regular troops are doing the heavy bombing and own the heavy arms. Here is a link to their facebook page, which lists them as al-Muqawamah al-Suriyah (The Syrian Resistance).

In this Facebook page, one can see that the newly formed group has been engaging in military action against the Sunnis from that area. The Sunnis (Turkmen) had formed their own brigade, which is fighting under the banner of the Free Syria Army (FSA). The FSA has attacked the nearby Alawi villages on many occasions. One Alawi village; al-Sarayah, has been emptied of its inhabitants, except the men who are armed and fighting along side others in al-Lijan al-Sha’biyah. The Sunnis have also left their villages and gone to either Turkey or Lattakia city. Lattakia is now overflowing with refugees and villagers escaping violence. There are lots of people from Allepo there also. The sports complex is packed with the poor refugees, The rich ones are renting apartments or rooms. Also, to the East of Lattakia in al-Haffe region, fighting is still raging on. The sound of artillery and explosions can be heard in Lattakia. The situation on the coast is explosive and growing more dangerous every week. [Continue reading…]

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Are Chinese banks hiding ‘the mother of all debt bombs’?

Minxin Pei writes: Financial collapses may have different immediate triggers, but they all originate from the same cause: an explosion of credit. This iron law of financial calamity should make us very worried about the consequences of easy credit in China in recent years. From the beginning of 2009 to the end of June this year, Chinese banks have issued roughly 35 trillion yuan ($5.4 trillion) in new loans, equal to 73 percent of China’s GDP in 2011. About two-thirds of these loans were made in 2009 and 2010, as part of Beijing’s stimulus package. Unlike deficit-financed stimulus packages in the West, China’s colossal stimulus package of 2009 was funded mainly by bank credit (at least 60 percent, to be exact), not government borrowing.

Flooding the economy with trillions of yuan in new loans did accomplish the principal objective of the Chinese government — maintaining high economic growth in the midst of a global recession. While Beijing earned plaudits around the world for its decisiveness and economic success, excessive loose credit was fueling a property bubble, funding the profligacy of state-owned enterprises, and underwriting ill-conceived infrastructure investments by local governments. The result was predictable: years of painstaking efforts to strengthen the Chinese banking system were undone by a spate of careless lending as new bad loans began to build up inside the financial sector.

When the Chinese Central Bank (the People’s Bank of China) and banking regulators sounded the alarm in late 2010, it was already too late. By that time, local governments had taken advantage of loose credit to amass a mountain of debt, most of it squandered on prestige projects or economically wasteful investments. The National Audit Office of China acknowledged in June 2011 that local government debt totaled 10.7 trillion yuan (U.S. $1.7 trillion) at the end of 2010. However, Professor Victor Shih of Northwestern University has estimated that the real amount of local government debt was between 15.4 and 20.1 trillion yuan, or between 40 and 50% of China’s GDP. Of this amount, he further estimated, the local government financing vehicles (LGFVs), which are financial entities established by local governments to invest in infrastructure and other projects, owed between 9.7 and 14.4 trillion yuan at the end of 2010.

Anybody with some knowledge of the state of health of LGFVs would shudder at these numbers. If anything, Chinese LGFVs are known mainly for their unique ability to sink perfectly good money into bottomless holes in the ground. So taking on such a huge mountain of debt can mean only one thing — a future wave of default when the projects into which LGFVs have piled funds fail to yield viable returns to service the debt. If 10 percent of these loans turn bad, a very conservative estimate, we are talking about total bad loans in the range of 1 to 1.4 trillion yuan. If the share of dud loans should reach 20 percent, a far more likely scenario, Chinese banks would have to write down 2 to 2.8 trillion yuan, a move sure to destroy their balance sheets. [Continue reading…]

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How Google builds its maps — and what it means for the future of everything

Alexis Madrigal writes: Behind every Google Map, there is a much more complex map that’s the key to your queries but hidden from your view. The deep map contains the logic of places: their no-left-turns and freeway on-ramps, speed limits and traffic conditions. This is the data that you’re drawing from when you ask Google to navigate you from point A to point B — and last week, Google showed me the internal map and demonstrated how it was built. It’s the first time the company has let anyone watch how the project it calls GT, or “Ground Truth,” actually works.

The company opened up at a key moment in its evolution. The company began as an online search company that made money almost exclusively from selling ads based on what you were querying for. But then the mobile world exploded. Where you’re searching has become almost important as what you’re searching. Google responded by creating an operating system, brand, and ecosystem in Android that has become the only significant rival to Apple’s iOS.

And for good reason. If Google’s mission is to organize all the world’s information, the most important challenge — far larger than indexing the web — is to take the world’s physical information and make it accessible and useful.

“If you look at the offline world, the real world in which we live, that information is not entirely online,” Manik Gupta, the senior product manager for Google Maps, told me. “Increasingly as we go about our lives, we are trying to bridge that gap between what we see in the real world and [the online world], and Maps really plays that part.”

This is not just a theoretical concern. Mapping systems matter on phones precisely because they are the interface between the offline and online worlds. If you’re at all like me, you use mapping more than any other application except for the communications suite (phone, email, social networks, and text messaging).

Google is locked in a battle with the world’s largest company, Apple, about who will control the future of mobile phones. Whereas Apple’s strengths are in product design, supply chain management, and retail marketing, Google’s most obvious realm of competitive advantage is in information. Geo data — and the apps built to use it — are where Google can win just by being Google. That didn’t matter on previous generations of iPhones because they used Google Maps, but now Apple’s created its own service. How the two operating systems incorporate geo data and present it to users could become a key battleground in the phone wars.

But that would entail actually building a better map. [Continue reading…]

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Unspoken Israeli-Saudi alliance targets Iran

Chris Zambelis writes: The machinations surrounding Iran’s nuclear program continue to dominate international headlines. A closer look at the atmospherics in play indicates the presence of a web of competing narratives that seek to delineate the threats Iran allegedly poses to its neighbors and global security.

The boilerplate rhetoric out of Washington and US media regarding Iran is well known. But sorting through the cacophony of public threats of war, psychological operations, and propaganda broadcast by Israel and Saudi Arabia – Iran’s primary regional adversaries – is equally crucial toward understanding the geopolitics surrounding the Iranian nuclear question and, in a broader sense, Iran’s place in the region.

Alongside the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia have taken the lead in articulating a litany of purported threats emanating from the Islamic Republic. On May 21, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated the long-standing position held by Israel that views Iran as an existential threat: “Iran wants to destroy Israel and it is developing nuclear weapons to fulfill that goal.”

Relying on a sectarian discourse, Saudi Arabia has also defined its fears of Iran in existential terms. A special series published by the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah just days before the Kingdom dispatched its security forces to Bahrain to suppress democratic opposition protests led largely by Bahrain’s oppressed Shi’ite majority reflects Riyadh’s deep-seated antipathy for the Iran. The inflammatory title of the series, “Safavid Iran’s plans for the destruction of the Gulf States”, is of particular importance. The reference to Iran’s Safavid legacy draws attention to the Persian Empire’s adoption of Shi’ite Islam as its official religion. By highlighting Iran’s Shi’ite character, Saudi Arabia is able to define the perceived threat from the republic in territorial as well as ideological and theological terms.

Paradoxically, Israel and Saudi Arabia are officially enemies. Yet they appear to be acting in lockstep – almost in a perfect symbiosis – when it comes to undermining and attacking Iran and painting it as a threat to regional and world peace. A sampling of the collective responses of both countries to matters related to Iran and other areas of mutual concern, such as the course of the uprisings in the Arab world, suggests that the Israeli-Saudi interface represents more than a temporary pact of convenience. Indeed, the convergence of their interests over Iran constitutes an unspoken strategic alliance that runs deeper than either side cares to admit. [Continue reading…]

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Insiders suspected in Saudi cyber attack

Reuters reports: One or more insiders with high-level access are suspected of assisting the hackers who damaged some 30,000 computers at Saudi Arabia’s national oil company last month, sources familiar with the company’s investigation say.

The attack using a computer virus known as Shamoon against Saudi Aramco – the world’s biggest oil company – is one of the most destructive cyber strikes conducted against a single business.

Shamoon spread through the company’s network and wiped computers’ hard drives clean. Saudi Aramco says damage was limited to office computers and did not affect systems software that might hurt technical operations.

The hackers’ apparent access to a mole, willing to take personal risk to help, is an extraordinary development in a country where open dissent is banned.

“It was someone who had inside knowledge and inside privileges within the company,” said a source familiar with the ongoing forensic examination.

Hackers from a group called “The Cutting Sword of Justice” claimed responsibility for the attack. They say the computer virus gave them access to documents from Aramco’s computers, and have threatened to release secrets. No documents have so far been published.

Reports of similar attacks on other oil and gas firms in the Middle East, including in neighboring Qatar, suggest there may be similar activity elsewhere in the region, although the attacks have not been linked.

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Many children among 61 dead as boat carrying migrants sinks off Turkey

Reuters reports: At least 61 migrants, most of them Palestinian and more than half of them children, died after their overcrowded boat sank less than a hundred metres off Turkey’s western Aegean coast on Thursday, a district official has said.

Tahsin Kurtbeyoglu, governor of the coastal district of Menderes in Izmir province, said an initial investigation showed the small vessel sank around dawn as a result of overcrowding. Its destination was unclear but the small Turkish town of Ahmetbeyli, from which it had left, is only a few kilometres from the Greek island of Samos, and Greece is a common entry point for migrants trying to get into the European Union.

“The latest death toll we have is 61 people, including 12 men, 18 women and 31 children, including three babies,” Kurtbeyoglu said. Turkish media said the reason the death toll was so high was that women and children were in a locked compartment in the lower section of the vessel, although there was no official confirmation of this.

Hürriyet Daily News adds: The survivors, who were Iraqi, Palestinian and Syrian citizens, were interrogated with the help of Kurdish-speaking security personnel. They said they stayed in hotels in İzmir’s Basmane district for a while and then contacted human traffickers to go to the United Kingdom. The traffickers then leased the boat from Istanbul and sailed to İzmir.

Menderes District Gov. Tahsin Kurtbeyoğlu said, “We have determined that the boat sank after sailing at 5:20 a.m. this morning. There are occasional illegal immigrants in this region. But we did not have a tip off about this incident. The investigation is ongoing.”

The İzmir-based Immigrant Solidarity Association president, Taner Kılıç, told CNNTürk the attempts of Syrian immigrants to pass to Greek islands had increased in the past two months. The camps that were set up in Turkey’s border regions in 2011 for Syrian immigrants were in good condition compared to other camps but still inadequate, Kılıç said, adding, “People are staying in those camps for one year. We can’t just say the circumstances are good compared to other camps because they cannot have any education; they cannot be involved in social life.”

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