FBI chief expected to testify in House Russia hearing

The Hill reports: FBI Director James Comey is expected to testify before the House Intelligence Committee in its March 20 hearing on Russian interference in the U.S. election, a senior bureau official tells The Hill.

“That’s the plan — we’re still working out the details and the ground rules with the committee, but we expect that we will be able to accommodate that date,” said Greg Brower, assistant director for the FBI’s Office of Congressional Affairs.

The hearing — just announced this week — is the first public hearing in the committee’s contentious probe.

It is unclear whether Comey will appear during the public component or in a closed-door session. A committee aide said that while there will probably be a closed component to the hearing, it likely won’t be on March 20. [Continue reading…]

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FBI Counterintelligence Division in charge of the Russia investigation

CNN reports: One source familiar with the Russia investigation resorted to a mathematical equation to divulge — sort of — the number of agents assigned to the matter.

It’s five to 10 fewer than were assigned to the Hillary Clinton email investigation, said the source, who is not authorized to speak publicly and did so on the condition of anonymity. There were about two dozen dedicated to that case, so that makes 15 to 20 on the Russia investigation.

The resources assigned to the Clinton investigation were in response to agents having to sort through a vast amount of electronic data in a finite period of time before the then-looming presidential election, the source said. With the Russia probe, there is no such time pressure and efforts are more focused on interviews with human sources.

The smaller number of agents assigned to the case should not be interpreted as a lack of interest, the source said. Developments in the case are sent up the chain to the highest levels on a regular basis.

Known simply as CD within the bureau, the Counterintelligence Division is responsible for protecting the secrets of the US intelligence community, the advanced technologies of American institutions both public and private, keeping weapons of mass destruction away from US enemies and countering the activities of foreign spies, including cyberintrusions. [Continue reading…]

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New Hamas charter would name ‘occupiers,’ not ‘Jews,’ as the enemy

The New York Times reports: Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that has governed the Gaza Strip for a decade, is drafting a new platform to present a more pragmatic and cooperative face to the world, Hamas officials confirmed on Thursday.

The document would represent a departure from the group’s contentious 1988 charter, in which it promised to “obliterate” Israel and characterized its struggle as specifically against Jews. The new document defines Hamas’s enemies as “occupiers.”

“It means that we don’t fight Jews because they are Jews,” said Taher el-Nounou, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza. “Our struggle is only against those who occupied our lands.”

The new document would accept borders of the territory captured by Israel in the 1967 war as the basis for a Palestinian state. It would not recognize Israel, however, nor would it give up future claims to all of what Hamas considers Palestinian lands.

Mr. Nounou said the document, the result of four years of work, is not yet final and has not yet been approved by Hamas’s governing bodies. Nor are its contents wholly new, even though they seem now to carry both practical and symbolic weight, particularly in Hamas’s relations with Egypt. [Continue reading…]

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Who are the Sufis and why does ISIS see them as threatening?

By Peter Gottschalk, Wesleyan University

On Feb. 16, 2017, a bomb ripped through a crowd assembled at the tomb of a Sufi saint, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, in southeastern Pakistan. Soon thereafter, the so-called Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. The Conversation

In recent times, such attacks have targeted a variety of cherished sites and individuals in Pakistan. These have ranged from the 2010 bombing of the tomb of another Sufi saint, Data Ganj Bakhsh, to the murder of a popular Sufi singer, Amjad Sabri, in 2016.

As a scholar of Muslim and Hindu traditions, I’ve long appreciated the various and influential roles that Sufis and their tombs play in South Asian communities. From my perspective, the repercussions of such violence go far beyond the scores of bodies strewn around the damaged shrine and the devastated families in one geographical region.

Many Muslims and non-Muslims around the globe celebrate Sufi saints and gather together for worship in their shrines. Such practices, however, do not conform to the Islamic ideologies of intolerant revivalist groups such as the Islamic State.

Here’s why they find them threatening.

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Carbon dioxide could reach 410 ppm this month

Climate Central reports: A never-ending stream of carbon pollution ensures that each year the world continues to break records for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This year will be no different.

Like a rite of spring, carbon dioxide is poised to cruise pass the previous mark set last year and reach heights unseen in human history. In the coming weeks, carbon dioxide will start to breach the 410 parts per million threshold on a daily basis at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. The monthly average for May could come close to topping 410 ppm, too, according to the U.K. Met Office’s inaugural carbon dioxide forecast, released last week.

Richard Betts, a climate scientist who helped create the forecast, said we should pass last year’s record-setting monthly peak by April or even as soon as this month. It’s not a question of if but rather when depending on wind patterns and other factors that influence daily measurements. [Continue reading…]

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When Earth became a ‘mote of dust’

Shannon Stirone writes: We glimpsed Earth’s curvature in 1946, via a repurposed German V-2 rocket that flew 65 miles above the surface. Year-by-year, we climbed a little higher, engineering a means to comprehend the magnitude of our home.

In 1968, Apollo 8 lunar module pilot William Anders captured the iconic Earthrise photo. We contemplated the beauty of our home.

But on Valentine’s Day 27 years ago, Voyager 1, from 4 billion miles away, took one final picture before switching off its camera forever. In the image, Earth, Carl Sagan said, was merely “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” So we pondered the insignificance of our home. The image inspired Sagan to write his book “The Pale Blue Dot,” and it continues to cripple human grandiosity. [Continue reading…]

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Kim Jong-un knows what he is doing and his policies are working

Andrei Lankov writes: Kim Jong-un’s administration continues to implement economic reforms, even though, unlike missile tests and overseas assassinations, these reforms seldom attract the attention of the world media.

In essence, these reforms are strikingly similar to what China did in the late 1970s. In North Korea, the Soviet-style command economy is gradually dismantled, while market economy and private entrepreneurship is increasingly accepted and encouraged.

For example, the state-run and state-owned farms have been largely disbanded in recent years, and family farms gradually became the country’s major agricultural production units. The results were predictable: a significant increase in food production.

These events demonstrate the three major dimensions of Kim Jong-un’s policy: he is strengthening his ability to deter a foreign attack, he is eliminating possible rivals in the country elite, and he is speeding up market-oriented – and rather successful – economic reforms.

These three policies serve one overriding goal: to keep Kim in power. The hereditary leader of North Korea wants to stay in power indefinitely, and thus he is trying to deal with the three major threats which he thinks might bring him and his regime down. [Continue reading…]

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Russian ambassador denied meeting with Trump or campaign officials in October speech

CNN reports: In an October speech to the Detroit Economic Club, Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States, denied meeting with Donald Trump or campaign officials during the course of 2016 presidential election, but acknowledged that he met with members of Congress and others who approached him at events.

Kislyak spoke to the Detroit Economic Club on Oct. 27th of last year. CNN’s KFile obtained a DVD of his speech from Lawrence Technological University.

Contact between Russian officials and members of the Trump team have come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks as the FBI investigates Russia’s suspected interference in the 2016 election.

Kislyak was asked in Detroit whether his embassy had met with either of the political campaigns during the course of the election.

“What do you call campaign?” he answered. “I was invited for example to both conventions. I was, uh the first, that was the Republican convention, but then unexpectedly while being there, I was called back to Moscow for reason that has nothing to do with the elections. So I wasn’t there, but we had invitations to both.”

Kislyak was then asked specifically if he had met with any Trump advisers or Trump himself at the convention in Cleveland.
“No, but we met those people who came to see all the ambassadors who were sitting in a special lounge there specifically reserved for the diplomatic corp. and I was among those who were there talking to members of the Congress, to all the peoples who cared to come to us and talk to us,” he answered.

Kislyak is considered by US intelligence officials as a top Russian spy recruiter in Washington, a claim Russian officials deny. [Continue reading…]

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State Dept. approves renewal of arms sales to Saudis as they continue bombing famine-stricken Yemen

The Washington Post reports: The State Department has approved a resumption of weapons sales that critics have linked to Saudi Arabia’s bombing of civilians in Yemen, a potential sign of reinvigorated U.S. support for the kingdom’s involvement in its neighbor’s ongoing civil war.

The proposal from the State Department would reverse a decision made late in the Obama administration to suspend the sale of precision guided munitions to Riyadh, which leads a mostly Arab coalition conducting airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s approval this week of the measure, which officials say needs White House backing to go into effect, provides an early indication of the new administration’s more Saudi-friendly approach to the conflict in Yemen and a sign of its more hawkish stance on Iran.

It also signals a break with an approach the previous administration hoped would limit civilian deaths in a conflict that has pushed Yemen to the brink of widespread famine but that Persian Gulf ally Saudi Arabia has cast as a battle against the spread of Iranian influence across the Middle East. [Continue reading…]

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If Tillerson doesn’t raise his profile, Bannon will control foreign policy

David Ignatius writes: Rex Tillerson is off to an agonizingly slow start as secretary of state. That matters, because if Tillerson doesn’t develop a stronger voice, control of foreign policy is likely to move increasingly toward Stephen K. Bannon, the insurgent populist who is chief White House strategist.

Tillerson’s State Department has been in idle gear these past two months. He doesn’t have a deputy or other top aides. His spokesman can’t give guidance on key issues, because decisions haven’t yet been made. Tillerson didn’t attend important meetings with foreign leaders.

As a former chief executive of ExxonMobil, Tillerson is accustomed to a world where a visible display of power is unnecessary, corporate planning is meticulous and office politics are suppressed. But this is Washington.

“I am an engineer by training. I seek to understand the facts,” Tillerson said at his confirmation hearing. That sounds reassuring, but it doesn’t fit the glitzy, backstabbing capital that spawned the television series “House of Cards.” [Continue reading…]

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Marines have battled misogyny for years. Will it be different this time?

Marine Times reports: Although the Marine Corps was quick to condemn the secretive “Marines United” Facebook group, the Corps’ leadership has known for years about websites that encourage misogyny and cyber bullying of female Marines, veterans and other women.

Four years ago, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., warned then-Commandant Gen. James Amos that male Marines were harassing their female counterparts on Facebook pages.

“Back in 2013 then-Commandant Gen. Amos wrote to me saying, ‘We share your indignation,’ regarding deplorable images on social media that denigrate women in the United States Marine Corps,” Speier said in a Wednesday speech on the House floor.

“They were words — just words. I fear military leadership will say anything to placate Congress and an outraged public but then do nothing.”

While the Marine Corps is moving rapidly to deal with the fallout from the scandal, it is unclear whether the Corps will have any more success than it has in the past in stopping cyber bullying and online harassment.

The latest revelations have sparked a criminal investigation amid allegations that Marines and others were posting “revenge porn” and encouraging sexual assault, potential violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The potential crimes were first reported by Marine Corps veteran Thomas Brennan and published by the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal on March 4.

Speier is now calling on Defense Secretary James Mattis, a retired Marine general, to ensure that the Marines involved with “Marines United” face consequences for their actions.

“That means heads should roll,” she said. “Talk is cheap. Action is what is needed for the integrity of the military. Survivors must be supported, and that will only happen if those bad Marines are drummed out of the Corps — with no exceptions.” [Continue reading…]

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With Trump in White House, his golf properties prosper

The New York Times reports: It is a golden age for golf — at least as far as the Trump Organization is concerned.

On Memorial Day weekend, the Senior P.G.A. Championship will be held at the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Washington. In July, the company’s course in Bedminster, N.J., is hosting another major event, the United States Women’s Open. The company is also bidding to host the Scottish Open or a half-dozen other possible professional tournaments at courses it owns in spots around the world from Miami to Dubai.

“The stars have all aligned,” Eric Trump, who as executive vice president of the Trump Organization oversees all its golf properties, said on Thursday morning, while sipping an iced tea at the restaurant inside the Trump International Hotel before appearing at a promotional event for the Memorial Day tournament. “I think our brand is the hottest it has ever been.”

What he did not mention at the news conference, while the cameras were rolling, is the product placement of incalculable value that is helping boost the Trump Organization’s golf courses: his father.

President Trump has given the family’s global inventory of golf courses — 15 that it owns, one that it manages in Dubai and three others under construction — a new level of international attention. He has returned to his home at Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., for four out of the last five weekends in office to play golf at two of his nearby courses, including rounds with the prime minister of Japan. Before he was sworn in, Mr. Trump spent days interviewing potential cabinet members at his Bedminster course. In total, Mr. Trump has played golf at least seven times since he was inaugurated — each time at his family’s own courses. [Continue reading…]

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With a show of Stars and Stripes, U.S. forces in Syria try to keep warring allies apart

The Washington Post reports: The U.S. military is getting drawn into a deepening struggle for control over areas liberated from the Islamic State that risks prolonging American involvement in wars in Syria and Iraq long after the militants are defeated.

In their first diversion from the task of fighting the Islamic State since the U.S. military’s involvement began in 2014, U.S. troops dispatched to Syria have headed in recent days to the northern town of Manbij, 85 miles northwest of the extremists’ capital, Raqqa, to protect their Kurdish and Arab allies against a threatened assault by other U.S. allies in a Turkish-backed force.

Russian troops have also shown up in Manbij under a separate deal that was negotiated without the input of the United States, according to U.S. officials. Under the deal, Syrian troops are to be deployed in the area, also in some form of peacekeeping role, setting up what is effectively a scramble by the armies of four nations to carve up a collection of mostly empty villages in a remote corner of Syria. [Continue reading…]

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This climate lawsuit could change everything. No wonder the Trump administration doesn’t want it going to trial

Chelsea Harvey reports: A groundbreaking climate lawsuit, brought against the federal government by 21 children, has been hailed by environmentalists as a bold new strategy to press for climate action in the United States. But the Trump administration, which has pledged to undo Barack Obama’s climate regulations, is doing its best to make sure the case doesn’t get far.

The Trump administration this week filed a motion to overturn a ruling by a federal judge back in November that cleared the lawsuit for trial — and filed a separate motion to delay trial preparation until that appeal is considered.

The lawsuit — the first of its kind — argues the federal government has violated the constitutional right of the 21 plaintiffs to a healthy climate system.

Environmental groups say the case — if it’s successful — could force even a reluctant government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and take other measures to counter warming.

“It would be huge,” said Pat Gallagher, legal director at the Sierra Club, who is not involved in the case. “It would upend climate litigation, climate law, as we know it.” [Continue reading…]

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Arctic sea ice continues its astonishing streak of lows

Climate Central reports: Here’s your monthly reminder: something just isn’t right in the Arctic. February continued a string of record or near-record monthly sea ice lows.

Warm weather ensured Arctic sea ice hit its lowest extent ever recorded for February. Sea ice covered 5.51 million square miles, which is 455,600 square miles below average or a chunk of missing sea ice four times the size of Italy. That just isn’t normal.

Parts of the region averaged up to 9°F above normal, according to new data released by the National Snow and Ice Data Center. In what’s been a recurring theme this winter in the Arctic, incursion after incursion of warm air has kept the region astonishingly mild for this time of year. [Continue reading…]

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The truth about the WikiLeaks CIA cache

Zeynep Tufekci writes: On Tuesday morning, WikiLeaks released an enormous cache of documents that it claimed detailed “C.I.A. hacking tools.” Immediately afterward, it posted two startling tweets asserting that “C.I.A. hacker malware” posed a threat to journalists and others who require secure communication by infecting iPhone and Android devices and “bypassing” encrypted message apps such as Signal and WhatsApp.

This appeared to be a bombshell. Signal is considered the gold standard for secure communication. WhatsApp has a billion users. The C.I.A., it seemed, had the capacity to conduct sweeping surveillance on what we had previously assumed were our safest and most private digital conversations.

In their haste to post articles about the release, almost all the leading news organizations took the WikiLeaks tweets at face value. Their initial accounts mentioned Signal, WhatsApp and other encrypted apps by name, and described them as “bypassed” or otherwise compromised by the C.I.A.’s cyberspying tools.

Yet on closer inspection, this turned out to be misleading. Neither Signal nor WhatsApp, for example, appears by name in any of the alleged C.I.A. files in the cache. (Using automated tools to search the whole database, as security researchers subsequently did, turned up no hits.) More important, the hacking methods described in the documents do not, in fact, include the ability to bypass such encrypted apps — at least not in the sense of “bypass” that had seemed so alarming. Indeed, if anything, the C.I.A. documents in the cache confirm the strength of encryption technologies. [Continue reading…]

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Trump unaware that Michael Flynn was a ‘foreign agent’, Sean Spicer says

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump was unaware his former national security adviser Michael Flynn was working as a “foreign agent” when he gave him the job, according to his press secretary.

“I don’t believe that was known,” said Sean Spicer, when asked by reporters at his regular press briefing on Thursday.

Flynn resigned in February after just four weeks as national security adviser when it came to light that he had misled the vice-president, Mike Pence, about phone conversations with the Russian ambassador about sanctions in December. The resignation came after a flow of intelligence leaks revealed that he had secretly discussed sanctions with the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, and then tried to cover up the conversations.

On Wednesday, it was revealed that from September to November last year, while he was working as a top adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign, Flynn was lobbying for a firm linked to the Turkish government, earning $530,000. He and his company Flynn Intel Group Inc filed retroactive documents with the Department of Justice two days ago to register as a foreign agent. [Continue reading…]

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