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Pedro Gonçalves

Diplomatic Memo - Leadership Mystery Amid N. Korea's Nuclear Work - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...27nuke.html

Bader James James Steinberg Jeffrey Kim Jong-il Kim Jong-un Kurt Campbell North Korea Stephen Bosworth US Wendy Sherman

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 27 May 09 - Cached
  • American officials say they believe that Mr. Kim, in rapidly declining health, is maneuvering to make his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, his successor, perhaps after a period in which his brother-in-law, Jang Seong-taek, would serve as a regent.
  • The nuclear test and the test-firing of six short-range missiles, the American officials said, must be understood within the context of this internal struggle to extend the Kim dynasty’s rule for another generation.
  • “The North Korean leadership cares about internal matters, not external matters,” said Wendy R. Sherman, who coordinated North Korea policy in the Clinton administration. “They care about external matters only insofar as it helps ensure the survival of the regime.”Under those circumstances, she said, North Korea is not likely to be receptive to incentives. And it may have concluded that having nuclear weapons is a necessity for its own preservation.
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  • The special representative for North Korea policy, Stephen W. Bosworth, is a well-regarded diplomat and a former ambassador to South Korea. But he divides his time between this assignment and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he is dean.
  • Kurt M. Campbell, an Asia security expert nominated to become the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, is likely to play a significant role. But he has not yet been confirmed.
  • Among the other influential players on North Korea policy, officials said, are James B. Steinberg, deputy secretary of state, and Jeffrey A. Bader, senior director for Asian affairs on the National Security Council.
Argos Media

Veterans of U.S. Diplomacy Try to Revive Nuclear Arms Talks With Russia - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...20russia.html

Russia US Henry Kissinger James Baker Start I George Schultz William Perry Sam Nunn

shared by Argos Media on 20 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Three former American secretaries of state and a former secretary of defense were in Moscow on Thursday for informal meetings with top Russian officials in an attempt to pull relations between the United States and Russia out of a tailspin before the countries’ presidents meet for the first time next month. The flurry of so-called track two diplomacy by figures outside government was another gesture of outreach to Russia. A month ago, the Obama administration sent a letter proposing a dialogue on curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions that could diminish American needs for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.
  • Henry A. Kissinger, who is now 85, the architect of the original détente policy with the Soviet Union in the 1970s, led one group of three former American officials on a visit to the Russian capital. They are advocating a new round of international arms-reductions talks intended to eliminate all nuclear weapons. Separately, James A. Baker III, who was secretary of state when the Berlin Wall fell, was in Moscow for a conference on the politics of Caspian Sea oil and natural gas riches that both Russia and the West are maneuvering to obtain access to.
  • The visits by the former warhorses of American diplomacy toward Russia were seen as testing the waters for President Obama’s intention to, as Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. put it, “press the reset button” on bilateral relations.
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  • Russia has declared a sphere of privileged interest over Ukraine and Georgia, former Soviet states America would like to see admitted to NATO. Russia is considering opening long-range bomber bases in Venezuela. That, in turn, is seen as a response to American plans to position antimissile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.
  • No replacement has been negotiated for Start I, and Russia’s support for Iran’s civilian nuclear industry is thwarting Western efforts to dissuade that country from enriching uranium that could also be used in a bomb.
  • Along with Mr. Kissinger, former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, former Secretary of Defense William Perry and Sam Nunn, a retired Democratic senator from Georgia, were scheduled to meet the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, on Friday.
  • Mr. Baker said the United States should show a new humility in international relations.“We ought to be big enough on both sides to admit that blame can be directed at both countries for this deterioration in Russian-U.S. relations,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with doing whatever we can to get this relationship back on the track it was on up until the last few years.”
Argos Media

World Watches for U.S. Shift on Mideast - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...17prexy.html

US Israel Obama Rashid Khalidi Robert Malley Hamas Zbigniew Brzezinski Charles Freeman James Jones George Mitchell

shared by Argos Media on 17 May 09 - Cached
  • As a state senator in Chicago, Mr. Obama cultivated friendships with Arab-Americans, including Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American scholar and a critic of Israel. Mr. Obama and Mr. Khalidi had many dinners together, friends said, in which they discussed Palestinian issues.
  • Mr. Obama’s predecessors, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, came of age politically with the American-Israeli viewpoint of the Middle East conflict as their primary tutor, said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator. While each often expressed concern and empathy for the Palestinians — with Mr. Clinton, in particular, pushing hard for Middle East peace during the last months of his presidency — their early perspectives were shaped more by Israelis and American Jews than by Muslims, Mr. Levy said. “I think that Barack Obama, on this issue as well as many other issues, brings a fresh approach and a fresh background,” Mr. Levy said. “He’s certainly familiar with Israel’s concerns and with the closeness of the Israel-America relationship and with that narrative. But what I think might be different is a familiarity that I think President Obama almost certainly has with where the Palestinian grievance narrative is coming from.”
  • None of this necessarily means that Mr. Obama will chart a course that is different from his predecessors’. During the campaign he struck a position on Israel that was indistinguishable from those of his rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain, going so far as to say in 2008 that he supported Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. (He later attributed that statement to “poor phrasing in the speech,” telling Fareed Zakaria of CNN that he meant to say he did not want barbed wire running through Jerusalem.)
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  • Last year, for instance, Mr. Obama was quick to distance himself from Robert Malley, an informal adviser to his campaign, when reports arose that Mr. Malley, a special adviser to Mr. Clinton, had had direct contacts with Hamas, the militant Islamist organization that won the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and that controls Gaza. Similarly, he distanced himself from Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser who was often critical of Israel, after complaints from some pro-Israel groups.
  • And Mr. Obama offered no public support for the appointment of Mr. Freeman to a top intelligence post in March after several congressional representatives and lobbyists complained that Mr. Freeman had an irrational hatred of Israel. Mr. Freeman angrily withdrew from consideration for the post.
  • But Mr. Freeman, in a telephone interview last week, said he still believed that Mr. Obama would go where his predecessors did not on Israel. Mr. Obama’s appointment of Gen. James L. Jones as his national security adviser — a man who has worked with Palestinians and Israelis to try to open up movement for Palestinians on the ground and who has sometimes irritated Israeli military officials — could foreshadow friction between the Obama administration and the Israeli government, several Middle East experts said.
  • The same is true for the appointment of George J. Mitchell as Mr. Obama’s special envoy to the region; Mr. Mitchell, who helped negotiate peace in Northern Ireland, has already hinted privately that the administration may have to look for ways to include Hamas, in some fashion, in a unity Palestinian government.
Pedro Gonçalves

U.S. Weighs Intercepting North Korean Shipments - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...08korea.html

North Korea US China Terrorism Proliferation Security Initiative Obama Hillary Clinton Robert Gates

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 09 Jun 09 - Cached
  • The Obama administration signaled Sunday that it was seeking a way to interdict, possibly with China’s help, North Korean sea and air shipments suspected of carrying weapons or nuclear technology.
  • The administration also said it was examining whether there was a legal basis to reverse former President George W. Bush’s decision last year to remove the North from a list of states that sponsor terrorism.
  • So far it is not clear how far the Chinese are willing to go to aid the United States in stopping North Korea’s profitable trade in arms, the isolated country’s most profitable export. But the American focus on interdiction demonstrates a new and potentially far tougher approach to North Korea than both President Clinton and Mr. Bush, in his second term, took as they tried unsuccessfully to reach deals that would ultimately lead North Korea to dismantle its nuclear arsenal. Mr. Obama, aides say, has decided that he will not offer North Korea new incentives to dismantle the nuclear complex at Yongbyon that the North previously promised to abandon.
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  • “I’m tired of buying the same horse twice,” Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said last week while touring an antimissile site in Alaska that the Bush administration built to demonstrate its preparedness to destroy North Korean missiles headed toward the United States. (So far, the North Koreans have not successfully tested a missile of sufficient range to reach the United States, though there is evidence that they may be preparing for another test of their long-range Taepodong-2 missile.)
  • In France on Saturday, Mr. Obama referred to the same string of broken deals, telling reporters, “I don’t think there should be an assumption that we will simply continue down a path in which North Korea is constantly destabilizing the region and we just react in the same ways.” He added, “We are not intending to continue a policy of rewarding provocation.”
  • While Mr. Obama was in the Middle East and Europe last week, several senior officials said the president’s national security team had all but set aside the central assumption that guided American policy toward North Korea over the past 16 years and two presidencies: that the North would be willing to ultimately abandon its small arsenal of nuclear weapons in return for some combination of oil, nuclear power plants, money, food and guarantees that the United States would not topple its government, the world’s last Stalinesque regime.
  • Now, after examining the still-inconclusive evidence about the results of North Korea’s second nuclear test, the administration has come to different conclusions: that Pyonyang’s top priority is to be recognized as a nuclear state, that it is unwilling to bargain away its weapons and that it sees tests as a way to help sell its nuclear technology.
  • While Mr. Obama is willing to reopen the six-party talks that Mr. Bush began — the other participants are Japan, South Korea, Russia and China — he has no intention, aides say, of offering new incentives to get the North to fulfill agreements from 1994, 2005 and 2008; all were recently renounced.
  • While some officials privately acknowledged that they would still like to roll back what one called North Korea’s “rudimentary” nuclear capacity, a more realistic goal is to stop the country from devising a small weapon deliverable on a short-, medium- or long-range missile.
  • In conducting any interdictions, the United States could risk open confrontation with North Korea. That prospect — and the likelihood of escalating conflict if the North resisted an inspection — is why China has balked at American proposals for a resolution by the United Nations Security Council that would explicitly allow interceptions at sea. A previous Security Council resolution, passed after the North’s first nuclear test, in 2006, allowed interdictions “consistent with international law.” But that term was never defined, and few of the provisions were enforced.
  • North Korea has repeatedly said it would regard any interdiction as an act of war, and officials in Washington have been trying to find ways to stop the shipments without a conflict. Late last week, James B. Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, visited Beijing with a delegation of American officials, seeking ideas from China about sanctions, including financial pressure, that might force North Korea to change direction.
  • “The Chinese face a dilemma that they have always faced,” a senior administration official said. “They don’t want North Korea to become a full nuclear weapons state. But they don’t want to cause the state to collapse.”
  • To counter the Chinese concern, Mr. Steinberg and his delegation argued to the Chinese that failing to crack down on North Korea would prompt reactions that Beijing would find deeply unsettling, including a greater American military presence in the region and more calls in Japan for that country to develop its own weapons.
  • North Korea’s restoration to the list would be largely symbolic, because it already faces numerous economic sanctions.
Pedro Gonçalves

2 Chinese Schools Said to Be Linked to Online Attacks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...19china.html

China US Cyber Warfare

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 20 Feb 10 - Cached
  • A series of online attacks on Google and dozens of other American corporations have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military, say people involved in the investigation.
  • the attacks, aimed at stealing trade secrets and computer codes and capturing e-mail of Chinese human rights activists, may have begun as early as April, months earlier than previously believed.
  • Computer security experts, including investigators from the National Security Agency, have been working since then to pinpoint the source of the attacks. Until recently, the trail had led only to servers in Taiwan.
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  • The Chinese schools involved are Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School
  • Lanxiang, in east China’s Shandong Province, is a huge vocational school that was established with military support and trains some computer scientists for the military. The school’s computer network is operated by a company with close ties to Baidu, the dominant search engine in China and a competitor of Google.
  • Within the computer security industry and the Obama administration, analysts differ over how to interpret the finding that the intrusions appear to come from schools instead of Chinese military installations or government agencies. Some analysts have privately circulated a document asserting that the vocational school is being used as camouflage for government operations. But other computer industry executives and former government officials said it was possible that the schools were cover for a “false flag” intelligence operation being run by a third country. Some have also speculated that the hacking could be a giant example of criminal industrial espionage, aimed at stealing intellectual property from American technology firms.
  • Independent researchers who monitor Chinese information warfare caution that the Chinese have adopted a highly distributed approach to online espionage, making it almost impossible to prove where an attack originated. “We have to understand that they have a different model for computer network exploit operations,” said James C. Mulvenon, a Chinese military specialist and a director at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis in Washington. Rather than tightly compartmentalizing online espionage within agencies as the United States does, he said, the Chinese government often involves volunteer “patriotic hackers” to support its policies.
  • Google’s decision to step forward and challenge China over the intrusions has created a highly sensitive issue for the United States government. Shortly after the company went public with its accusations, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton challenged the Chinese in a speech on Internet censors, suggesting that the country’s efforts to control open access to the Internet were in effect an information-age Berlin Wall.
  • A report on Chinese online warfare prepared for the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission in October 2009 by Northrop Grumman identified six regions in China with military efforts to engage in such attacks. Jinan, site of the vocational school, was one of the regions.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC News - China demands Iran nuclear talks, despite US pressure - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8544931.stm

China Iran Russia Nuclear Proliferation

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 02 Mar 10 - Cached
  • China says diplomacy should be given further time in the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme, as US officials press for new sanctions on Tehran.
  • China's latest statement came as a senior US diplomat, James Steinberg, arrived in Beijing on the highest level visit since a series of bilateral rows. On Monday, Moscow signalled it would consider new sanctions against Tehran. And Iran rejected a UN International Atomic Energy Agency claim it was not co-operating with its investigation.
  • Asked about Moscow's statement, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said: "We call for a resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomatic means.
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  • "We believe there is still room for diplomatic efforts and the parties concerned should intensify those efforts."
  • Speaking in Paris on Monday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said he was open to the idea of sanctions - as a last resort. "Russia is ready, together with our other partners, to consider introducing sanctions" if there is no breakthrough in the negotiations, he told a news conference after talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. "These sanctions should be calibrated and smart. These sanctions should not target the civilian population," the Russian leader was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.
Pedro Gonçalves

Obama's Nuclear Plans Face Daunting Obstacles - Council on Foreign Relations - 0 views

www.cfr.org/...s_face_daunting_obstacles.html

US Nuclear Proliferation Nuclear Weapons

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 06 Apr 10 - Cached
  • In the case of the CTBT, he needs the consent of countries like India, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, Egypt, Brazil, Mexico, and any number of other countries who, historically, have lots of questions and concerns that make ratification less than a sure thing. I would guess it would be a long, long time, even if the United States got these agreements ratified--and in the case of Fissile Material Cutoff treaty, drafted--before they would ever come into force. And some people think never.
  • The Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty is supposed to be negotiated in Geneva at the Comprehensive Disarmament Talks. The Pakistanis are refusing to allow the matter to be brought up. And in the case of the Comprehensive Test Ban, you certainly have countries like Egypt that say, "We will approve but only if Israel joins the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as a non-weapon state."
  • Critics of the CTBT claim that the Russians have a more liberal view as to what the ban prohibits. These critics fear that Russia thinks that you can have low-level nuclear tests and still be compliant with the CTBT. Well, the Congressional Commission report that was produced by former Defense secretaries James R. Schlesinger and William J. Perry said that this in fact was a serious enough concern that the five recognized states that have nuclear weapons--the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China--needed to reach an agreement not only on what was allowed but what was clearly prohibited under the treaty
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  • In the FMCT you have another oddity. It only bans the production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for military weapons. That means that you could still make those materials if you claimed they were for civil purposes.
  • It [the Fissile Material Treaty] only bans states that are non-weapons states from continuing to make materials. The problem is that if you are Iran and you're a non-weapons state, and you see weapons states being able to continue to make nuclear fuel for civil purposes under loose inspection procedures, you've got to raise your voice and say, "I don't even have weapons, why can't I make enriched uranium for civil purposes like the weapons states under the loose inspection procedures that they are obligated to? Why are you picking on me?"
  • There are three concerns raised by critics, and those are the three concerns that Republicans are going to focus on. The first is that the law currently requires the administration to lay out a ten-year plan with budget estimates about how they intend to keep our nuclear weapons reliable, safe, and up to date. The administration has not yet done this, as I understand it. So the Senate is going to ask for that almost certainly. Second, the numbers permitted are lower than what some people wanted them to be. The critics of this agreement are not happy that the numbers went a little bit lower than were forecast initially.
  • what you see in the press is that the number of warheads should be no more than 1,550, but they should be on delivery systems that when deployed are no more than seven hundred. You can have another hundred that are not operationally deployed. But we're told the counting rules for what constitutes a weapon are a little complex. A bomber, for example, carrying many bombs would only count as one weapon
  • both sides can engage in "limited missile defenses." The words "limited missile defenses" would be consistent with this treaty, and if one goes beyond limited missile defenses, [the other] would have the right to leave. So, first question is, "What is a limited defense program consistent with this treaty?"
Argos Media

U.S., Russian Scientists Say Missile Shield Wouldn't Protect Europe From Iran - washing... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2009051803055.html

US Iran Russia Missile Defense Shield

shared by Argos Media on 20 May 09 - Cached
  • A planned U.S. missile shield to protect Europe from a possible Iranian attack would be ineffective against the kinds of missiles Iran is likely to deploy, according to a joint analysis by top U.S. and Russian scientists.
  • The U.S.-Russian team also judged that it would be more than five years before Iran is capable of building both a nuclear warhead and a missile capable of carrying it over long distances. And if Iran attempted such an attack, the experts say, it would ensure its own destruction.
  • "The missile threat from Iran to Europe is thus not imminent," the 12-member technical panel concludes in a report produced by the EastWest Institute, an independent think tank based in Moscow, New York and Belgium.
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  • The year-long study brought together six senior technical experts from both the United States and Russia to assess the military threat to Europe from Iran's nuclear and missile programs. The report's conclusions were reviewed by former defense secretary William J. Perry, among others, before being presented to national security adviser James L. Jones and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
  • The report acknowledges dramatic technological gains by Iran, and it predicts that the country could probably build a simple nuclear device in one to three years, if it kicked out U.N. inspectors and retooled its uranium-processing plants to make weapons-grade enriched uranium. Another five years would be needed to build a warhead that would fit on one of Iran's missiles, the panel says. U.S. intelligence agencies have made similar predictions; Israel maintains that Iran could build a bomb in as little as eight months.
  • The U.S.-Russian experts say Iran faces limits in developing ballistic missiles that could someday carry nuclear warheads. Its current arsenal is derived from relatively unsophisticated North Korean missiles, which in turn are modified versions of a Russian submarine-launched missile that dates from the 1950s. "We believe that these components were likely transferred to North Korea illegally in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Russia was experiencing major political and economic chaos," one of the U.S. team members said in a separate commentary.
  • the country lacks "the infrastructure of research institutions, industrial plants, or the scientists and engineers that are needed to make substantial improvements."
  • They conclude that it would take Iran at least another six to eight years to produce a missile with enough range to reach Southern Europe and that only illicit foreign assistance or a concerted and highly visible, decade-long effort might produce the breakthroughs needed for a nuclear-tipped missile to threaten the United States.
  • Moreover, if Iran were to build a nuclear-capable missile that could strike Europe, the defense shield proposed by the United States "could not engage that missile," the report says. The missile interceptors could also be easily fooled by decoys and other simple countermeasures, the report concludes.
Argos Media

A Low-Profile Approach by Jones as the National Security Adviser - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...07jones.html

US National Security Council James Jones

shared by Argos Media on 07 May 09 - Cached
  • During a National Security Council meeting in March on Mr. Obama’s new Afghanistan strategy, General Jones, although seated next to the president, seldom voiced his own opinions, according to officials in the room. Instead, he preferred to go around the table collecting the views of others.He has also kept a low profile with the news media; he first addressed a White House news conference on Wednesday.
  • General Jones’s style suits Mr. Obama, close aides and friends of the president said. To the general’s credit, there has so far been no evidence of serious clashes on a team that includes not only Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton but also Robert M. Gates, the defense secretary, and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., both national security experts in their own right
Argos Media

US pro-Israeli group attempts to stop shift in White House Middle East policy | World n... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...srael-palestinians-middle-east

US Israel AIPAC J-Street Steny Hoyer Eric Cantor Israel Lobby

shared by Argos Media on 07 May 09 - Cached
  • US congressional leaders and the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in the US are attempting to forestall a significant shift in the White House's Middle East policy.The move comes amid growing signs that the US president, Barack Obama, intends to press for urgent efforts to be made towards the creation of a Palestinian state.
  • he Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is visiting Washington later this month amid growing expectations that Obama is preparing to take a tougher line over Israel's reluctance to actively seek a two-state solution to its conflict with the Palestinians.
  • The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) this week sent hundreds of lobbyists to urge members of Congress to sign a letter to Obama.The letter, written by two House of Representatives leaders, calls for Israel to be allowed to set the pace of negotiations.
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  • The letter calls for the maintenance of the status quo, with an emphasis on Palestinian institution-building before there can be an end to Israeli occupation.It says the US "must be both a trusted mediator and devoted friend of Israel".
  • Aipac's move to put pressure on members of Congress came at the end of its annual conference in Washington this week.Some of the loudest applause at the gathering came in response to calls for military attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities – something Netanyahu has attempted to portray as a more urgent issue than the Palestinian question.
  • But Aipac delegates were told by the US vice-president, Joe Biden, that the administration favours "mutual respect" in dealing with Iran.Biden said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict strengthened Iran's strategic position and Israel must take concrete steps – including fulfilling often-broken commitments to stop the expansion of Jewish settlements – towards the creation of a Palestinian state.
  • Last week, General James Jones, Obama's national security adviser, told a European foreign minister that the new administration would be "forceful" with Israel, according to a classified Israeli memo reported by the Ha'aretz newspaper.
  • Jones was quoted as saying that Obama believes Washington, the EU and moderate Arab states must define "a satisfactory endgame solution"."The new administration will convince Israel to compromise on the Palestinian question," he was quoted as saying. "We will not push Israel under the wheels of a bus, but we will be more forceful toward Israel than we have been under Bush."
  • During his election campaign, Obama alarmed Israel's hardline supporters by saying he regarded the lack of a resolution to the conflict as a "constant sore" that "infect[s] all of our foreign policy".
  • Aipac has moved to counter any new White House initiative by trying to mobilise Congress against it through the letter, written by two people seen as extremely close to the lobby group – Steny Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader in the House of Representatives, and Eric Cantor, the Republican whip.
  • The two men addressed an Aipac banquet attended by more than half the members of Congress on Monday, each standing in turn at a "roll call" of support for Israel.On the face of it, the letter is a call for a peace, but its specifics urge Obama to maintain years of US policy that has tacitly accepted Israeli stalling of peace negotiations.The letter says that "the best way to achieve future success between Israelis and Palestinians will be by adhering to basic principles that have undergirded our policy".These include "acceptance that the parties themselves must negotiate the details of any agreement" as well as demanding that the Palestinians first "build the institutions necessary for a viable state" before gaining independence.
Argos Media

US teacher broke law by describing creationism as 'superstitious nonsense' | World news... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ionism-teacher-first-amendment

US Religion Creationism Chad Farnan

shared by Argos Media on 06 May 09 - Cached
  • A US teenager has successfully won a lawsuit against a teacher who described creationism as "superstitious nonsense".Chad Farnan, a devout Christian studying at California's Capistrano Valley high school, persuaded a judge that his European history teacher, James Corbett, violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which courts interpret as banning government employees from promoting, or displaying hostility towards, religion.
  • Farnan claimed Corbett made comments that were "derogatory, disparaging and belittling regarding religion and Christianity in particular". In legal documents submitted to the US district court, he said he was uncomfortable going to class and felt as though Corbett had created an atmosphere in which he could not effectively learn "both because and regardless of his religious beliefs".
  • Farnan's lawyer, Jennifer Monk, who works for a not-for-profit Christian law firm, Advocates for Faith and Freedom, told the Guardian yesterday that Farnan's victory was the first of its kind, proving that the establishment clause applied equally to the disapproval of religion as it did to the promotion of religion."It is the first case of its kind where a court has held a teacher responsible for the disapproval of Christianity. It's common for lawsuits to be brought against teachers promoting religion. In general, for years, religion has been taken out of the classroom. I don't agree with that, but if it's going to be taken out, at the very minimum you can't go to the other extreme.
Argos Media

Torture-tape Gulf prince accused of 25 other attacks | World news | The Observer - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...sheikh-accusation-assualt-tape

Torture Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan UAE Abu Dhabi Bassam Nabulsi US Nuclear Power

shared by Argos Media on 03 May 09 - Cached
  • The wealthy Gulf prince at the centre of a "torture tape" scandal has been accused of attacking at least 25 other people in incidents that have also been caught on film, it has been claimed.Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan is now under investigation in the United Arab Emirates after the shocking tape showed him beating a man with a nailed plank, setting him on fire, attacking him with a cattle prod and running him over.
  • But now lawyers for American businessman Bassam Nabulsi, who smuggled the tape out of the UAE, have written to the justice minister of Abu Dhabi - the most powerful of the emirates that make up the UAE - claiming to have considerably more evidence against Issa. "I have more than two hours of video footage showing Sheikh Issa's involvement in the torture of more than 25 people," wrote Texas-based lawyer Anthony Buzbee in a letter obtained by the Observer.
  • now it appears the initial tape could just be the beginning of the problem. The new tapes apparently also involve police officers taking part in Issa's attacks, and some of his victims in the as-yet-unseen videos are believed to be Sudanese immigrants.
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  • The fresh revelations about Issa's actions will add further doubt to a pending nuclear energy deal between the UAE and the US. The deal, signed in the final days of George W Bush, is seen as vital for the UAE. It will see the US share nuclear energy expertise, fuel and technology in return for a promise to abide by non-proliferation agreements. But the deal needs to be recertified by the Obama administration and there is growing outrage in America over the tapes. Congressman James McGovern, a senior Democrat, has demanded that Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, investigate the matter and find out why US officials initially appeared to play down its significance.
  • The tape emerged from a court case brought in America by Nabulsi. The American citizen is a former business partner of Sheikh Issa, and claims he, too, was tortured in the UAE after the pair fell out. Nabulsi said the first tape was shot by his brother on the orders of Sheikh Issa, who liked to view them later for his own pleasure.
Pedro Gonçalves

Al Jazeera English - Asia-Pacific - N Korea 'ready to launch missile' - 0 views

english.aljazeera.net/...2009653491731578.html

North Korea South Korea Kaesong

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 05 Jun 09 - No Cached
  • There is growing speculation that North Korea may be preparing to launch another new medium or long-range missile.Satellite images from the GlobalSecurity website show the new Tongchang-ni launch site in the North's west coast near China and is reportedly ready for use after nearly a decade of construction.
  • The news of the suspected launch preparation came as South Korean media reported on Friday of US intentions to implement financial sanctions on Pyongyang in an effort to punish the country over its weapons trading and counterfeit activities.
  • Warning the North that its actions will "no longer be rewarded", James Steinberg, the US deputy secretary of state,  told Lee Myung-bak, the South Korean president, that "North Korea would be mistaken if it thinks it can make provocations and then get what it wants through negotiation as it did in the past. The US won't repeat the same mistake again".
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  • As international pressure heightens, tensions continue to rise on the Korean peninsula, and on Thursday, South Korean officials said a patrol boat from the North  entered its waters around their disputed maritime border, but backed off after nearly an hour following repeated warnings.
Pedro Gonçalves

UK envoy quits after sex video surfaces on Russia website | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...uk-russia-envoy-sex-tape

Russia UK Spying

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 10 Jul 09 - Cached
  • A British diplomat in Russia has resigned after allegedly being filmed having sex with two prostitutes, in a classic sting operation apparently masterminded by the country's security services.
  • James Hudson quit as deputy consul general in Yekaterinburg after the video – entitled Adventures of Mr Hudson in Russia – mysteriously surfaced on a local website (www.informacia.ru).The film, lasting four minutes and 18 seconds, appears to show Hudson entering a brothel. He lies down on a sofa, opens a bottle of champagne and cavorts with two blonde women in their underwear. The video then shows him having sex with both women. As well as prostitutes, the website accused the 37-year-old diplomat of gambling and taking "light drugs" – hinting it had further damaging material.The high quality of the video suggests that this was the work of professionals, and not amateurs. The security services have a track record of such endeavours.
Pedro Gonçalves

Cyber Blitz Hits U.S., Korea - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...SB124701806176209691.html

US South Korea North Korea Cyber Security Cyber Warfare

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 09 Jul 09 - Cached
  • U.S. and South Korean computer networks were besieged for days by a series of relatively unsophisticated attacks, possibly from North Korea, that were among the broadest and longest-lasting assaults perpetrated on government and commercial Web sites in both countries.
  • South Korean officials are investigating whether the attacks originated in North Korea, and a senior U.S. official said the U.S. also is probing North Korea's possible role. U.S. officials noted that the attacks, which appear to have started primarily in South Korea on July 4, coincided with North Korea's latest missile launches and followed a United Nations decision to impose new sanctions.
  • The senior U.S. official said the attacks seemed to have come from South Korea, but it was possible Pyongyang was using sympathizers there. "We're trying to assess whether this is some random attack or the North Koreans might be working through a proxy," said the official.
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  • If a North Korea link is found, it would mark a new turn in Pyongyang's attempts to lash out at the U.S. North Korea has been building up its capability for cyberattacks in the past couple of years, computer security specialists said. North Korea recently increased the number of people in a cyber-warfare unit, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported last month.
  • U.S. government Web sites attacked included those of the Defense Department, National Security Agency, Treasury Department, Secret Service, State Department, Federal Trade Commission and Federal Aviation Administration, according to the cyber-security unit of VeriSign Inc., a computer-security company, and others familiar with the attacks. The attacks appear to have occurred roughly from Saturday to Tuesday.
  • Private sites attacked, according to a cyber-security specialist who has been tracking the incidents, included those run by the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, the Washington Post, Amazon.com and MarketWatch.
  • Most U.S. federal Web sites appeared to be running properly Wednesday. In South Korea, several government sites were down late Tuesday and early Wednesday but many were back to normal by Wednesday afternoon. "There is a connection between what is going on here in the states and what is going on in [South] Korea," said Richard Howard, director of intelligence at VeriSign's iDefense cyber-security unit.
  • Those responsible used a method similar to attacks in recent years on the governments of Estonia and Georgia, called a "distributed denial of service" attack. It is a maneuver in which many computers act in concert to overwhelm Web sites.
  • At the White House, spokesman Nicholas Shapiro said the attacks over the weekend "had absolutely no effect on the White House's day-to-day operations." The only effect, he said, was that some Internet users in Asia may not have been able to access the White House's Web site for a time.
  • President Barack Obama has made bolstering cyber-security a priority. He said in May he would create a new White House cyber-security post, though it hasn't yet been staffed. People familiar with the process say the White House has had difficulty finding someone to take the job.
  • Defense officials confirmed Pentagon networks were struck but said the intrusions were detected quickly and did no real damage. Adm. Mike Mullen, the nation's top military officer, said Pentagon networks are under near-constant attack. "I grow increasingly concerned about the cyber-world and the attacks," he said.
  • James Lewis, a cyber-security specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of the attack, "It's really a test of which U.S. agencies are ready and which aren't."
  • The New York Stock Exchange's parent company, NYSE Euronext, announced at 12:35 p.m. Wednesday that its Web site, but not its trading systems, had been targeted. Exchange officials weren't aware of the attack until notified by the government on Tuesday, said a person familiar with the events. An NYSE spokesman said the exchange's systems detected zero impact either on the Web site or on the separate trading operations. An official of Nasdaq said there wasn't any impact on its business.
  • North Korea turned more antagonistic after the illness of dictator Kim Jong Il last August and September. The country had done little to prepare for a successor, and Mr. Kim's illness triggered an internal shuffle that apparently raised the influence of hard-line military figures.
  • The cyberattacks came as Washington's point man on North Korea sanctions, Ambassador Philip Goldberg, concluded a weeklong trip to China and Malaysia aimed at tightening the financial screws on Pyongyang. Last week, the Obama administration announced sanctions on two North Korea-linked arms companies. The U.S. Treasury last month listed 17 North Korean banks and businesses that it is seeking to constrict financially.
Argos Media

Torture tape delays U.S.-UAE nuclear deal, say U.S. officials - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

UAE Abu Dhabi Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan Torture Nuclear Proliferation US

shared by Argos Media on 30 Apr 09 - Cached
  • A videotape of a heinous torture session is delaying the ratification of a civil nuclear deal between the United Arab Emirates and the United States, senior U.S. officials familiar with the case said.
  • In the tape, an Afghan grain dealer is seen being tortured by a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi, one of the UAE's seven emirates.
  • The senior U.S. officials said the administration has held off on the ratification process because it believes sensitivities over the story can hurt its passage. The tape emerged in a federal civil lawsuit filed in Houston, Texas, by Bassam Nabulsi, a U.S. citizen, against Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan. Former business partners, the men had a falling out, in part over the tape. In a statement to CNN, the sheikh's U.S. attorney said Nabulsi is using the videotape to influence the court over a business dispute.
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  • Under the "1-2-3 deal," similar to one the United States signed last year with India, Washington would share nuclear technology, expertise and fuel. In exchange, the UAE commits to abide by the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. The small oil-rich Gulf nation promises not to enrich uranium or to reprocess spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium, which can be used to make nuclear bombs.
  • "It's being temporarily held up because of that tape," one senior official said.
  • The State Department had little to say publicly on the torture tape incident, but its 2008 human rights report about the United Arab Emirates refers to "reports that a royal family member tortured a foreign national who had allegedly overcharged him in a grain deal."
  • U.S. Rep. James McGovern -- the Massachusetts Democrat who co-chairs the congressional Human Rights Commission
  • McGovern asked Clinton to "place a temporary hold on further U.S. expenditures of funds, training, sales or transfers of equipment or technology, including nuclear until a full review of this matter and its policy implications can be completed." He also asked that the United States deny any visa for travel to the United States by Sheikh Issa or his immediate family, including his 18 brothers, several of whom are ruling members of the UAE government.
  • UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a half-brother of Sheikh Issa, is expected to visit Washington sometime next month.
  • The civil nuclear agreement was signed in January between the United Arab Emirates and the Bush administration, but after the new administration took office, the deal had to be recertified
  • The deal is part of a major UAE investment in nuclear, and it has already signed deals to build several nuclear power plants. The United States already has similar nuclear cooperation agreements with Egypt and Morocco, and U.S. officials said Washington is working on similar pacts with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Jordan.
  • When the Bush administration signed the deal in January, it stressed the UAE's role in global nonproliferation initiatives, including a donation of $10 million to establish an International Atomic Energy Agency international fuel bank.
  • Congressional critics fear the deal could spark an arms race and proliferation in the region, and the UAE's ties to Iran also have caused concern.
  • Iran is among the UAE's largest trading partners. In the past, the port city of Dubai, one of the UAE's seven emirates, has been used as a transit point for sensitive technology bound for Iran.
  • Dubai was also one of the major hubs for the nuclear trafficking network run by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who admitted to spreading nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya up until the year 2000.
  • Such ties contributed to stiff opposition in Congress to the failed deal for Dubai Ports World to manage U.S. ports.
  • Officials said they expect the deal to be sent up to the Hill for ratification within the next few weeks, given that there has been little blowback from the publication of the tape, except for McGovern's letter to Clinton. "It will be sent very soon," one official said.
  • UAE Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba told CNN his government always expected the deal to be sent to the Senate in early May, regardless of the controversy surrounding the tape. "As far as we are concerned, the deal is on track and this has not affected the timing," he said.
Argos Media

Interrogation Memos Detail Psychologists' Involvement; Ethicists Outraged - washingtonp... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2009041703690_2.html

US Torture CIA SERE Abu Zubaydah ICRC

shared by Argos Media on 18 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The ICRC, which conducted the first independent interviews of CIA detainees in 2006, said the prisoners were told they would not be killed during interrogations, though one was warned that he would be brought to "the verge of death and back again," according to a confidential ICRC report leaked to the New York Review of Books last month.
  • "The interrogation process is contrary to international law and the participation of health personnel in such a process is contrary to international standards of medical ethics," the ICRC report concluded.
  • An Aug. 1, 2002, memo said the CIA relied on its "on-site psychologists" for help in designing an interrogation program for Abu Zubaida and ultimately came up with a list of 10 methods drawn from a U.S. military training program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE. That program, used to help prepare pilots to endure torture in the event they are captured, is loosely based on techniques that were used by the Communist Chinese to torture American prisoners of war.
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  • The role played by psychologists in adapting SERE methods for interrogation has been described in books and news articles, including some in The Washington Post. Author Jane Mayer and journalist Katherine Eban separately identified as key figures James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, two psychologists in Washington state who worked as CIA contractors after 2001 and had extensive experience in SERE training.
  • The CIA psychologists had personal experience with SERE and helped convince CIA officials that harsh tactics would coerce confessions from Abu Zubaida without inflicting permanent harm. Waterboarding was touted as particularly useful because it was "reported to be almost 100 percent effective in producing cooperation," the memo said.
  • The agency then used a psychological assessment of Abu Zubaida to find his vulnerable points. One of them, it turns out, was a severe aversion to bugs. "He appears to have a fear of insects," states the memo, which describes a plan to place a caterpillar or similar creature inside a tiny wooden crate in which Abu Zubaida was confined. CIA officials say the plan was never carried out.
  • Former intelligence officials contend that Abu Zubaida was found to have played a less important role in al-Qaeda than initially believed and that under harsh interrogation he provided little useful information about the organization's plans.
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