Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

Optimism that the US and world powers can, after all, strike a nuclear deal with Iran by or shortly after the current November 24 deadline appeared to grow here in Washington substantially this week. Such a deal also gained a critical endorsement, one that should provide a lot of political cover to shaky Democrats, as well as voices in the US Jewish community who, in contrast to the right-wing leadership of AIPAC and other “mainstream” Jewish organizations, have long favored President Obama’s diplomatic efforts. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Amb. Stuart Eizenstat, who played a key role in promoting sanctions against Iran under both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and who succeeded Dennis Ross as chairman of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), challenged Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz’s recent claim in a New York Times op-ed that the failure to reach an agreement “can be regarded a qualified success, because it would represent the integrity of an international community adhering to its principles rather than sacrificing the future of global security.”

According to Eizenstat, whose experience in Democratic foreign policy circles was described as “vast” by none other than Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard two years ago: No deal is not a success, because it means an unrestrained use of centrifuges, the Iranian plutonium plant at Arak continuing, no intrusive inspections, no elimination of 20-percent enriched uranium, and less likelihood of eliminating weaponization. …[A deal] would not be a bouquet of roses. It has a lot of thorns in it. But the alternative is nothing but thorns. It would almost force a military reaction, which even under the best circumstances  …would set back Iran two to three years and have ripple effects that would tremendously harm Israel, such as attacks from Hezbollah.

Eizenstat’s remarks came during a week in which, according to the Wall Street Journal’s well-connected Jay Solomon, the administration has begun actively promoting a possible nuclear deal with foreign allies, key members of Congress, and former senior foreign policy officials. While administration officials insist that important gaps between Iran and the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany) remain on some key issues, it appears that last week’s meetings in Vienna made important progress. The Journal also reported that the two sides may be moving toward a compromise on one key issue that has gained a lot of attention here—the number of centrifuges (around 4,000) that Iran could keep spinning to produce low-enriched uranium under an accord.

A petition condemning Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for his support of the Islamic State that was placed on the White House website has received more than 30,000 signatures, its organizer Jim Jatras told Sputnik on Wednesday. “Following Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet striking the Islamic State (IS), it is undeniable that Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan supports jihad terrorism in Syria,” the petition said. “[The] IS exports oil via Turkey and terrorists of IS, al-Qaeda, and other jihad groups transit the border.” The petition has a goal of attracting 100,000 signatories by January 1, 2016. It notes Turkey’s pattern of support for terrorists in other countries including in Russia, China, Israel, Bosnia, Serbia, Georgia and Egypt. “Turkey should be listed as a State Sponsor of Terrorism. The US alliance with Turkey under NATO should be voided,” the petition stated. Jatras is a former veteran staff member of the US Senate and a former Foreign Service officer at the Department of State. He worked for 18 years as a foreign policy advisor to several Republican lawmakers in Congress.

European privacy regulators are putting U.S. surveillance practices under the microscope, this time with a crucial transatlantic data deal hanging in the balance.Legal and privacy advocates say European nations are poised to strike down the deal if they decide the U.S. hasn't done enough to reform its spying programs.The new test comes after the European Commission and the Commerce Department — after months of tense negotiations — reached a deal this week permitting Facebook, Google and thousands of other companies to continue legally handling Europeans’ personal data.ADVERTISEMENTCritics though have long warned that unless the U.S. overhauls its privacy and national security laws, there is no legal framework that can stand up in European court, where privacy is considered a fundamental right under the EU Charter.A working group of 28 EU nations’ data protection authorities — domestic entities separate from the Commission that will be in charge of enforcing the new agreement — may now cast the deciding vote.The group is spending the next few months picking through the so-called Privacy Shield agreement to determine if it adequately protects the personal data of European citizens.

“The Commission has said, ‘We’re satisfied. We believe them. We believe the U.S. has substantially changed its practices,’ and they are no longer going off the [Edward] Snowden revelations in the media,” said Susan Foster, a privacy attorney at Mintz Levin who works in both the EU and the U.S.“Whether the working group will go along with it is another question.”The privacy advocate whose complaint against Facebook brought down the Privacy Shield’s 15-year-old predecessor agreement is already questioning the new deal’s validity.“With all due respect ... a couple of letters by the outgoing Obama administration is by no means a legal basis to guarantee the fundamental rights of 500 million European users in the long run, when there is explicit U.S. law allowing mass surveillance,” Max Schrems of Austria said in a statement Tuesday.The United States has been fighting against the perception that it tramples on civil liberties after ex-National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed the breadth of the agency’s snooping.One sticking point in the Privacy Shield negotiations was over the scope of an exception allowing surveillance for national security purposes.

In announcing the deal, Commission officials insisted that the U.S. had provided “detailed written assurances” that surveillance of Europeans’ data by intelligence agencies would be subject to appropriate limitations.“The U.S. has clarified that they do not carry out indiscriminate surveillance of Europeans,” Andrus Ansip, Vice President for the Digital Single Market on the European Commission, said Tuesday.The U.S. has also agreed to create an office in the State Department, to address complaints from EU citizens who feel their data has been inappropriately accessed by intelligence authorities.Complicating the working group’s approval of the deal is the hodgepodge of competing regulators in Europe. Each nation has an agency in charge of its own country’s regulation. Some countries — such as Germany — are seen as tougher on privacy than others, like France or the U.K.While some countries consider U.S. privacy protections to be satisfactory, in others they are seen as woefully inadequate.

of Press Relations » Daily Press Briefings » 2016 » October » Daily Press Briefing - October 6, 2016John Kirby SpokespersonDaily Press Briefing Washington, DC October 6, 2016

MR KIRBY: Well, again, I think – and I think Mark walked you through this – there were three principal topics that they discussed. One was Syria; one was Ukraine; and the other, of course, was DPRK and our work inside the UN to pursue additional sanctions on the regime. The discussion on Syria focused on two things principally. One was the situation in Aleppo and the Secretary’s obvious and deep concern about the continued siege there and also about the potential to continue multilateral efforts to discuss the way ahead. And that’s – and that’s basically it. We certainly, when we said we were suspending U.S.-Russia bilateral engagement on the cessation of hostilities and the work to that end in Syria, there was never any expectation that the two foreign ministers wouldn’t speak about Syria again. And certainly, if we’re going to continue multilateral efforts, which we fully intend to do, whether it’s with the ISSG or other partners or through the UN, there’s no way you can do that without including Russia in that discussion. QUESTION: So and just – so are you trying to set up a meeting, for example? I mean, you’re talking about bilateral discussions. Are you trying to set up a meeting with other countries including Russia on this? MR KIRBY: I don’t have anything on the schedule to speak to today, but I certainly wouldn’t rule out the fact that there will be attempts and efforts through multi – through a multilateral fora to meet again and to try to work through this. I certainly wouldn’t rule that out. QUESTION: And just one other one. Given the failure of the previous efforts and given the main thing that you guys argued was that the carrot or the leverage you had was Russia’s eagerness for intelligence-sharing cooperation, et cetera, the JIC, what makes you think they’re going to be any more likely to work to halt or reduce the violence in a multilateral context absent those incentives than they were when they had the incentives on the table? MR KIRBY: We don’t know. We don’t know. That’s a call for them to make if they’re interested or willing in participating in a multilateral discussion or not. But speaking for Secretary Kerry, I can tell you that he fully intends to use multilateral efforts available to him, whether it’s the ISSG or the UN or something separate and distinct. Tom Shannon was in Berlin at the invitation of the German Government just yesterday to – a smaller but still multilateral discussion about Syria. The Secretary has every intent to continue to use those vehicles as best he can. But we don’t know whether Russia will come to those sessions. We don’t know whether they will do so --

QUESTION: Yeah, okay. And is there anything that you are doing to try to stop Aleppo from falling to the government, the Russian-backed government offensive, or have you kind of written it off? MR KIRBY: Nobody is writing off Aleppo. I think everybody’s deeply troubled and concerned about what appears to be a very continued, concerted, and if – and increased effort by the regime to conduct a siege and to take Aleppo. But -- QUESTION: Yeah. Are you doing anything to stop it? MR KIRBY: Well, we obviously are continuing – another reason why, as I said, they – Foreign Minister Lavrov and the Secretary spoke yesterday was the Secretary was expressing our concerns about what’s going on in Aleppo. We’re not turning a blind eye to that. And we still want – the short answer to your question is we’re still interested in pursuing a cessation of hostilities that can endure nationwide, and certainly in Aleppo. It’s just that now we’re going to have to pursue that goal through a multilateral effort and not any longer solely through a bilateral effort with Russia.

Russia is ordering all of its officials to fly home any relatives living abroad amid heightened tensions over the prospect of global war, it has been claimed.Politicians and high-ranking figures are said to have received a warning from president Vladimir Putin to bring their loved-ones home to the 'Motherland', according to local media.It comes after Putin cancelled a planned visit to France amid a furious row over Moscow's role in the Syrian conflict and just days after it emerged the Kremlin had moved nuclear-capable missiles near to the Polish border.Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has also warned that the world is at a 'dangerous point' due to rising tensions between Russia and the US.According to the Daily Star, administration staff, regional administrators, lawmakers of all levels and employees of public corporations have been ordered to take their children out of foreign schools immediately.Failure to act will see officials jeopardising their chances of promotion, local media has reported.The exact reason for the order is not yet clear.But Russian political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky is quoted by the Daily Star as saying: 'This is all part of the package of measures to prepare elites to some 'big war'.' Relations between Russia and the US are at their lowest since the Cold War and have soured in recent days after Washington pulled the plug on Syria talks and accused Russia of hacking attacks.

The Kremlin has also suspended a series of nuclear pacts, including a symbolic cooperation deal to cut stocks of weapons-grade plutonium. Just days ago, it was reported that Russia had moved nuclear-capable missiles near to the Polish border as tensions escalated between the world’s largest nation and the West.The Iskander missiles sent to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea between Nato members Poland and Lithuania, are now within range of major Western cities including Berlin.Polish officials – whose capital Warsaw is potentially threatened – have described the move as of the 'highest concern'. Putin's decision to cancel his Paris visit came a day after French President Francois Hollande said Syrian forces had committed a 'war crime' in the battered city of Aleppo with the support of Russian air strikes.Putin had been due in Paris on October 19 to inaugurate a spiritual centre at a new Russian Orthodox church near the Eiffel Tower, but Hollande had insisted his Russian counterpart also took part in talks with him about Syria.The unprecedented cancellation of a visit so close to being finalised is a 'serious step... reminiscent of the Cold War', said Russian foreign policy analyst Fyodor Lukyanov.'This is part of the broader escalation in the tensions between Russia and the West, and Russia and NATO,' he told AFP.The Kremlin has also been angered over the banning of the Russian Paralympic team from the Rio Olympics amid claims of state-sponsored doping of its athletes.

Meanwhile, the top advisor to US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has said the FBI is investigating Russia's possible role in hacking thousands of his personal emails.But Russian officials have vigorously rejected accusations of meddling in the US presidential elections and dismissed allegations that Moscow was behind a series of recent hacks on US institutions. Retired Russian Lt. Gen. Evgeny Buzhinsky told the BBC: 'Of course there is a reaction. As far as Russia sees it, as Putin sees it, it is full-scale confrontation on all fronts. If you want a confrontation, you'll get one.'But it won't be a confrontation that doesn't harm the interests of the United States. You want a confrontation, you'll get one everywhere.'Earlier this week British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson waded into the row, calling for anti-war campaigners to protest outside the Russian embassy in London.Johnson said the 'wells of outrage are growing exhausted' and anti-war groups were not expressing sufficient outrage at the conflict in Aleppo.'Where is the Stop the War Coalition at the moment? Where are they?' he said during a parliamentary debate.

The General Command of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) welcomed operations against ISIL in Mosul, Iraq, but denounced especially the United States in Saudi Arabia for scheming to funnel ISIL terrorists from Mosul into Syria.

The SAA’s General Command stated that “the supporters of international terrorism are trying to secure safe routes and corridors for the ISIS terrorists who are fleeing Iraq’s Mosul to cross into Syria”. The General Command released a statement on Tuesday, stressing that a “malicious scheme” by the backers of international terrorism, mainly the US and Saudi Arabia, is unfolding and becoming clear after military operations were launched by the brotherly Iraqi army and its supporting forces to liberate Mosul city from the gangs of ISIS terrorist organization. The General Command explained that the scheme is to provide safe routes for the groupings of ISIS terrorists who are reeling under the Iraqi army’s strikes in Mosul-Iraq’s second largest city-to cross the border into the Syrian territory. The aim of providing such corridors, it added, is to provide protection to the terrorists on the one hand and boost the terrorist presence inside the Syrian territory on the other hand in a bid to impose a new military reality in the eastern region in the direction of Deir Ezzor, Raqqa and Palmyra.

The Command warned that it would consider any attempt at crossing into its border as “an attack on the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic,” and that those who attempt to do that would be regarded as terrorists and would be dealt with with all the forces and means at its disposal.

Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates decided to sever diplomatic ties with Qatar over Doha’s sponsorship of terrorism and implement a number of sanctions including the closing of land, sea and air routes, and the expulsion of Qatari citizens. The development is consistent with the new U.S. administration’s declared goal to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood.

Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE accuse Qatar of undermining the stability of the region by supporting terrorism, including a number of terrorist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and affiliated group, the Taliban, and others. Authorities in these four countries have also given Qataris living in and visiting their countries two weeks to leave.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, has removed Qatar from the Saudi-led coalition that is fighting Iranian-backed Houthi fighters in neighboring Yemen. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also closed all of its borders “and urged all brotherly countries and companies to do the same.” That said, Saudi Arabia will still allow citizens from Qatar to enter the kingdom to perform the Hajj pilgrimage.

The Russian General Staff announced on Wednesday that a new humanitarian pause in combat activities will be implemented in Aleppo on Friday from 9am to 7pm local time. The pause will give non-combatants a new chance to leave the “rebel-held” pocket in eastern Aleppo and “rebels” to leave the pocket with their weapons and to move to other “rebel-held areas.

It hasn’t been part of the official announcement about the humanitarian pause and the offer that militants could evacuate. However, military logic dictates that this is a last “do or die” ultimatum before the use of decisive military force will be used against those militants who don’t leave the pocket in Aleppo. The offer about the 10-hour-long pause comes as insurgents are engaged in a massive assault against Syrian and Syrian-allied forces west of Aleppo in a desperate attempt to lift the siege. Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia Valery Gerasimov asserted that the decision was approved by Syrian authorities and was meant to “prevent senseless casualties” by allowing civilians and gunmen to leave the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo. Gerasimov said: “All of the militants’ attempts to break through in the city of Aleppo have been unsuccessful. The terrorists suffered heavy losses of manpower, weaponry and military equipment. They have no chance to escape from the city” . He also called upon all terrorist groups’ leaders to get out from Aleppo city in light of Washington’s failure to separate the so-called “moderate opposition” from the terrorists. The latter statement underpins that Syria and Russia have to, and will count on a decisive military confrontation to clear the eastern part of the city from insurgents and to reestablish Syrian sovereignty as well as law and order in the entire city.

One of the corridors for the gunmen leads to the Turkish-Syrian border and another one to Idleb countryside, the General said, adding “During Friday’s pause, six additional corridors will be opened for civilians wishing to leave the city.”

Lt. Gen. Sergey Rudskoy said in his press briefing on Friday that weapons and ammunitions are continuously being delivered to the al-Nusra Front terrorists in Syria, allowing them to engage Syrian government forces and hindering the fight against Daesh in the country. “The never-ending flow of large trucks from Turkey carrying weapons and ammunition crosses the Turkish-Syrian border. This constant feed of live forces and weapons allows terrorists from the Nusra Front to continue their provocative shelling and make advances on Syrian government forces, which diminishes [government military] activity against Islamic State terrorists in other areas,” Rudskoy said during a briefing. Rudskoy also added that the US has acknowledged that the heaviest fighting is centered around areas where the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra Front is most active.

“Everyone knows, and our US partners admit that the biggest hot spots of active military operations are those parts of the Syrian Republic where the al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists from the al-Nusra Front run rampant.” So far, according to Rudskoy, the US has refused to conduct joint operations against terrorist groups in Syria, which has led to an escalation of the conflict. The al-Nusra Front terrorist group hampers the ceasefire efforts in northern areas of Syria, the Russian General Staff said Friday. “It is very clear that the terrorist group Jabhat al-Nusra, active in the regions of Aleppo and Idlib, is the main obstacle to expanding the ceasefire regime to northern areas of Syria,” Sergey Rudskoy, chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Russian General Staff, said. Moreover, the Al-Nusra Front has used the ‘period of silence’ to partly restore its combat capability. Rudskoy told reporters.

Earlier, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu offered to conduct joint air strikes against terrorist groups in Syria, but the Pentagon declined the offer. However, The Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry says Moscow hasn’t ruled out a possible joint operation in the future.

      Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in danger of being brought down, possibly soon, over what initially appears to be little more than an imprudent taste for Cuban cigars and pink champagne. In truth, however, the allegations ensnaring Netanyahu reveal far more than his personal flaws or an infatuation with the high life. They shine a rare light on the corrupt nexus between Israel’s business, political and media worlds, compounded by the perverse influence of overseas Jewish money. Of the two police investigations Netanyahu faces (there are more in the wings), the one known as Case 1000, concerning gifts from businessmen worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, is most likely to lead to his downfall. But it is the second investigation, Case 2000, and the still-murky relationship between the two cases, that more fully exposes the rot at the heart of Israel’s political system. This latter case hinges on a tape recording in which Netanyahu plots with an Israeli newspaper tycoon to rig media coverage in his favor. Leads from both cases suggest that Netanyahu may have been further meddling, together with his billionaire friends, in the shadowy world of international espionage.

Netanyahu’s appetite for a free lunch has been common knowledge in Israel since his first term as prime minister in the late 1990s. Then, he was twice investigated for fraud, though controversially charges were not brought in either case. Police discovered along the way that he and his wife, Sara, had horded many of the gifts he received during state visits. More than 100 were never recovered. The clarifications that were issued more than 15 years ago, as a result of those investigations, make it hard for Netanyahu to claim now that he did not understand the rules. According to justice ministry advice in 2001, government and state officials cannot keep gifts worth more than $100 without risking violating Israeli law. The gifts Netanyahu received from one of the Israeli businessmen involved in Case 1000, Hollywood film producer Arnon Milchan, amounted to as much as $180,000. Netanyahu has argued that these presents, ranging from cigars to jewelry, were expressions of a close friendship rather than bribes to him in his capacity as prime minister. The problem, however, is that Netanyahu appears to have reciprocated by using his position as head of the Israeli government to lobby John Kerry, the then U.S. secretary of state, to gain Milchan a 10-year U.S. residency visa. He may have done more.

Also being investigated are his family’s ties to a friend of Milchan’s, Australian billionaire James Packer, who made his fortune in the media and gambling industries. Packer has similarly lavished gifts on the Netanyahu family, especially Yair, Netanyahu’s eldest son. At the same time, Packer, now a neighbor of the Netanyahus in the coastal town of Caesarea, has been seeking permanent residency and the enormous benefits that would accrue with tax status in Israel. As a non-Jew, Packer should have no hope of being awarded residency. There are suspicions that Netanyahu may have been trying to pull strings on the Australian’s behalf. Many of these gifts were apparently not given freely. The Netanyahus asked for them. Indicating that Netanyahu knew there might be legal concerns, he used code words – “leaves” for cigars and “pinks” for champagne – to disguise his orders to Milchan. Police are reported to be confident, after questioning Netanyahu three times, that they have enough evidence to indict him. If they do, Netanyahu will be under heavy pressure to resign.

Google, which briefly considered moving all of its computer servers out of the United States last year after learning how they had been penetrated by the National Security Agency, was looking for a public assurance from President Obama that the government would no longer secretly suck data from the company’s corner of the Internet cloud.Microsoft was listening to see if Mr. Obama would adopt a recommendation from his advisers that the government stop routinely stockpiling flaws in its Windows operating system, then using them to penetrate some foreign computer systems and, in rare cases, launch cyberattacks.

Intel and computer security companies were eager to hear Mr. Obama embrace a commitment that the United States would never knowingly move to weaken encryption systems. They got none of that.

Perhaps the most striking element of Mr. Obama’s speech on Friday was what it omitted: While he bolstered some protections for citizens who fear the N.S.A. is downloading their every dial, tweet and text message, he did nothing, at least yet, to loosen the agency’s grip on the world’s digital pipelines. White House officials said that Mr. Obama was committed to studying the complaints by American industry that the revelations were costing them billions of dollars in business overseas, by giving everyone from the Germans to the Brazilians to the Chinese an excuse to avoid American hardware and cloud services. “The most interesting part of this speech was not how the president weighed individual privacy against the N.S.A.,” said Fred H. Cate, the director of the Center of Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University, “but that he said little about what to do about the agency’s practice of vacuuming up everything it can get its hands on.”

Any escalation of the Syrian crisis in response to last week's reported chemical weapons attack will aggravate civilian suffering, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday, as UNESCO warned that Syria's rich cultural heritage is being destroyed and archaeological sites looted.

The ICRC, an independent humanitarian agency, said it was appalled by reports of a poison gas attack on Aug. 21 that left hundreds dead -- which the U.S. said was carried out by President Bashar al-Assad's regime. A U.N. investigation at the site of the alleged attack is ongoing. The ICRC urged warring parties in Syria's two-year civil war to respect the absolute ban on chemical weapons use under international law. Magne Barth, head of the ICRC's delegation in Syria, said proposed Western military action would "likely trigger more displacement and add to humanitarian needs, which are already immense." Some 2 million people have already fled Syria, including 1 million children. Human rights groups estimate that 100,000 people have been killed since the war began. Areas plagued by heavy fighting -- including the countryside around Damascus, eastern Aleppo and Deir Ezzor province -- are also reeling from breakdowns of basic services such as water, electricity and garbage collection, the ICRC said in a statement.   "In large parts of rural Damascus for example, people are dying because they lack medical supplies and because there are not enough medical personnel to attend to them," said Magne Barth, head of the ICRC's delegation in the country. "They also go hungry because aid can't get through to them on a regular basis."

America is in the choosing sides phase of the coming civil war. To use a college recruiting phrase, it is accurate to state that the letters of intent to join one side or another have mostly been signed and the commitments offered. However, there is one big uncommitted piece, but very soon the sides will be drawn.

The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials. By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.

According to a top-secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, the NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from internal Yahoo and Google networks to data warehouses at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records — including “metadata,” which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, as well as content such as text, audio and video.The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency’s British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters . From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and the GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information among the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.

The infiltration is especially striking because the NSA, under a separate program known as PRISM, has front-door access to Google and Yahoo user accounts through a court-approved process. The MUSCULAR project appears to be an unusually aggressive use of NSA tradecraft against flagship American companies. The agency is built for high-tech spying, with a wide range of digital tools, but it has not been known to use them routinely against U.S. companies.

A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques. The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document.

“The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives,” said one U.S. official briefed on the report. “Was that actually true? The answer is no.”

Several officials who have read the document said some of its most troubling sections deal not with detainee abuse but with discrepancies between the statements of senior CIA officials in Washington and the details revealed in the written communications of lower-level employees directly involved.Officials said millions of records make clear that the CIA’s ability to obtain the most valuable intelligence against al-Qaeda — including tips that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 — had little, if anything, to do with “enhanced interrogation techniques.”The report is divided into three volumes — one that traces the chronology of interrogation operations, another that assesses intelligence officials’ claims and a third that contains case studies on virtually every prisoner held in CIA custody since the program began in 2001. Officials said the report was stripped of certain details, including the locations of CIA prisons and the names of agency employees who did not hold ­supervisor-level positions.One official said that almost all of the critical threat-related information from Abu Zubaida was obtained during the period when he was questioned by Soufan at a hospital in Pakistan, well before he was interrogated by the CIA and waterboarded 83 times.Information obtained by Soufan, however, was passed up through the ranks of the U.S. intelligence community, the Justice Department and Congress as though it were part of what CIA interrogators had obtained, according to the committee report.

Isolated and discredited by humiliating military defeat, the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is likely to go soon, battered as he is by only slightly veiled demands for his immediate departure from powerful figures who once supported him. Within hours of President Obama making it implicitly clear that he wants a change of political leadership in Baghdad, the spiritual leader of the Iraqi Shia, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was calling for a new and “effective” government that avoided the mistakes of the old. Nobody in Baghdad has any doubts that he wants the Prime Minister gone. The longer Mr Maliki clings on to power the more likely it is that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) will win further victories and the Sunni community will remain united behind the al-Qa’ida-type group. Military sources in Baghdad say Mr Obama’s clear signal that the US was not going to use its air force to preserve the status quo in Baghdad has “damaged the army’s morale and self-confidence”. The army had been hoping somewhat unrealistically for a promise of air strikes to stem the advance of Isis and its allies.

There are other less diplomatic voices demanding that Mr Maliki, who has held office since 2006, should go. Umm Nahid, a resident of Ramadi, the capital of the vast and overwhelmingly Sunni Anbar province, told The Independent that the city had been mostly taken by the Anbar Tribes Revolutionary Council, led by Hatem Suleiman. Suleiman says he is preventing Isis advancing down the road towards Baghdad, but will stop doing this unless the Iraqi army fully withdraws from Ramadi, all prisoners are released (some 100,000 are believed to be in jail) and, above all, “Maliki is removed from power”.

U.S. plans to attack Iran with a mix of nuclear and conventional weapons have been in readiness since June, 2005, according to Michel Chossudovsky. a distinguished authority on international affairs. “Confirmed by military documents as well as official statements, both the U.S. and Israel contemplate the use of nuclear weapons directed against Iran,” writes professor Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal. The plans were formulated in 2004. The previous year, Congress gave the Pentagon the green light to use thermo-nuclear weapons in conventional war theaters in the Middle East and Central Asia, allocating $6 billion in 2004 alone to create the new generation of “defensive” tactical nuclear weapons or “mini-nukes”.

“President Obama has largely endorsed the doctrine of pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons formulated by the previous administration,” Chossudovsky writes in his new book, “Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” (Global Research, 2012). His Administration “has also intimated it will use nukes in the event of an Iran response to an Israeli attack on Iran.”

“What is unfolding (in Iran) is the outright legitimization of war in the name of an illusive notion of global security. America’s mini-nukes, with an explosive capacity of up to six times a Hiroshima bomb, are upheld as a ‘humanitarian’ bomb, whereas Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons are branded as an indisputable threat to global security,” Chossudovsky writes. He points out that a U.S.-Israeli strike against Iran would probably not be limited to Iran’s nuclear facilities but likely would be “an all-out air attack on both military and civilian infrastructure, transport systems, factories and public buildings.”

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Sunday said that he thinks the U.S. may need more than airstrikes to defeat the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria. "If the goal is to destroy ISIS, as the president says it is, I don't believe the strategy that he outlined will accomplish that," the Speaker said on ABC's "This Week." "At the end of the day, I think it's gonna take more than air strikes to drive them outta there. At some point somebody's boots have to be on the ground." Boehner said that President Obama should not have promised that the U.S. would not send troops in to fight ISIL. The Speaker said the U.S. may end up with "no choice" but to send in American troops. "These are barbarians. They intend to kill us. And if we don't destroy them first, we're gonna pay the price," he said. He added that he would bring Congress back from recess to vote on a resolution authorizing military action in Iraq and Syria.

Nearly fifty senior commanders of a major coalition of Islamic 'moderates' opposed to ISIS in Syria have been killed by an explosion at their secret command bunker as they met to discuss strategy against the the Islamic State. The blast in the Northwest region of Idlib, Syria on Tuesday killed senior members of rebel group the Ahrar-al-Sham brigade (AaS), including leader Hassan Abboud and 45 others including senior members from other rebel alliance groups, reports The Times. The Idlib region stands in AaS territory, but it is close to the front-line with ISIS in neighbouring Aleppo. Sources dispute the source of the blast, with it being unclear whether it was an opposition group, suicide bomber, or accidental explosion at a nearby ammunition dump. Regardless, the incident will destabilise and possibly tear apart the AaS group and associated Islamic Front Coalition which was recently described as "the most powerful armed group in Syria". Islamic group Ahrar-al-Sham, whose name translates as 'The Free Men of Syria', is one of many movements competing in the inter-rebel conflict in Syria. A number of rebel groups are presently fighting each other as well as besieged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose power base is in West and South-West, for overall control of the Region.

As the main rival to ISIS for control of Syria, the AaS blast if not orchestrated by the Islamic State will certainly be greatly beneficial to them. The 'decapitation' strategy, targeting Ahrar-al-Sham’s political, military and spiritual leadership is reminiscent of the United States’ targeted strikes against the leadership of Al-Qaeda. The death of Abboud and his followers in Idlib highlights the difficulty of Western involvement in the conflict, where enemies of the apparent first enemy ISIS also make fairly poor potential allies. Many members of AaS have come from groups like Al-Qaeda and would in any other context be considered hard line Islamists. The Ahrar-al-Sham brigade has also been extremely critical of Western involvement in the conflict. In an interview before his death leader Abboud rejected the Geneva peace conference saying: "We see Geneva as a tool of manipulation; to derail the Syrian revolution away from its goals and objectives .... Whatever outcome the conference may yield, will be binding on the Syrian National Coalition only. For us, we will continue to fight for our revolution until we restore our rights”. Ahrar-al-Sham has appointed a new leader, Hashim al-Sheikh, who will attempt to hold together the fragile coalition which has lost most of its senior thinkers and strategists. al-Sheik said the attack "will only make us more resilient to fight and continue the fight until we liberate our homeland" on Wednesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a bill, enabling the designation of foreign and foreign-funded NGOs as undesirables after the bill passed both the Lower and Upper House of Parliament.

The bill authorizes the designation of foreign and foreign funded non-profit as well as for profit NGOs as “undesirables” on grounds of “national security. The bill passed the second reading in Russia’s Lower House of Parliament (State Duma), last week and was approved by the Upper House of Parliament, the Federation Council. The bill had been proposed by legislators of the governing United Russia party of President Vladimir Putin, The passing of the bill in both houses of parliament and the signing of the bill by Putin was no surprise since United Russia has a majority in both chambers. The bill has been heavily criticized by foreign, particularly western media, western politicians and primarily western-based or funded NGOs, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, among many others. One of the NGOs that is certain to fall under the provisions of the bill is USAID.

he new law follows up on a law that was adopted in 2012 that obliged foreign-funded non-governmental organizations to register as “foreign agents”. The law provides for declaring foreigners and foreign-funded NGOs as“undesirable”. Persons who are violating the newly adopted law could face a fine up to 10,000 dollar to be paid in local currency and up to six years imprisonment. Supporters of the bill are referring to the risk that foreign-funded NGOs could pose to the Russian Federation’s national security while critics maintain that the wording of the legislation and especially the term “undesirable” is ambiguous and opens the floodgates for the abuse of the law to crack down on legal and legitimate dissent.