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Running for Cover: A Sham Air Force Summit Can't Fix the Close Air Support Gap Created ... - 0 views

www.pogo.org/...eated-by-Dumping-the-A-10.html war & peace DoD-procurement F35 A10 scandal
shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • “I can’t wait to be relieved of the burdens of close air support,” Major General James Post, the vice commander of Air Combat Command (ACC), allegedly told a collection of officers at a training session in August 2014. As with his now notorious warning that service members would be committing treason if they communicated with Congress about the successes of the A-10, Major General Post seems to speak for the id of Air Force headquarters’ true hostility towards the close air support (CAS) mission. Air Force four-stars are working hard to deny this hostility to the public and Congress, but their abhorrence of the mission has been demonstrated through 70 years of Air Force headquarters’ budget decisions and combat actions that have consistently short-changed close air support. For the third year in a row (many have already forgotten the attempt to retire 102 jets in the Air Force’s FY 2013 proposal), the Air Force has proposed retiring some or all of the A-10s, ostensibly to save money in order to pay for “modernization.” After failing to convince Congress to implement their plan last year (except for a last minute partial capitulation by retiring Senate and House Armed Services Committee chairmen Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) and Representative Buck McKeon (R-CA)) and encountering uncompromising pushback this year, Air Force headquarters has renewed its campaign with more dirty tricks.
  • First, Air Force headquarters tried to fight back against congressional skepticism by releasing cherry-picked data purporting to show that the A-10 kills more friendlies and civilians than any other U.S. Air Force plane, even though it actually has one of the lowest fratricide and civilian casualty rates. With those cooked statistics debunked and rejected by Senate Armed Services Chairman Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Air Force headquarters hastily assembled a joint CAS “Summit” to try to justify dumping the A-10. Notes and documents from the Summit meetings, now widely available throughout the Air Force and shared with the Project On Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information (CDI), reveal that the recommendations of the Summit working groups were altered by senior Air Force leaders to quash any joint service or congressional concerns about the coming gaps in CAS capabilities. Air Force headquarters needed this whitewash to pursue, yet again, its anti-A-10 crusade without congressional or internal-Pentagon opposition.
  • The current A-10 divestment campaign, led by Air Force Chief of Staff Mark Welsh, is only one in a long chain of Air Force headquarters’ attempts by bomber-minded Air Force generals to get rid of the A-10 and the CAS mission. The efforts goes as far back as when the A-10 concept was being designed in the Pentagon, following the unfortunate, bloody lessons learned from the Vietnam War. For example, there was a failed attempt in late-1980s to kill off the A-10 by proposing to replace it with a supposedly CAS-capable version of the F-16 (the A-16). Air Force headquarters tried to keep the A-10s out of the first Gulf War in 1990, except for contingencies. A token number was eventually brought in at the insistence of the theater commander, and the A-10 so vastly outperformed the A-16s that the entire A-16 effort was dismantled. As a reward for these A-10 combat successes, Air Force headquarters tried to starve the program by refusing to give the A-10 any funds for major modifications or programmed depot maintenance during the 1990s. After additional combat successes in the Iraq War, the Air Force then attempted to unload the A-10 fleet in 2004.
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  • To ground troops and the pilots who perform the mission, the A-10 and the CAS mission are essential and crucial components of American airpower. The A-10 saves so many troop lives because it is the only platform with the unique capabilities necessary for effective CAS: highly maneuverable at low speeds, unmatched survivability under ground fire, a longer loiter time, able to fly more sorties per day that last longer, and more lethal cannon passes than any other fighter. These capabilities make the A-10 particularly superior in getting in close enough to support our troops fighting in narrow valleys, under bad weather, toe-to-toe with close-in enemies, and/or facing fast-moving targets. For these reasons, Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno has called the A-10 “the best close air support aircraft.” Other Air Force platforms can perform parts of the mission, though not as well; and none can do all of it. Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) echoed the troops’ combat experience in a recent Senate Armed Services committee hearing: “It's ugly, it's loud, but when it comes in…it just makes a difference.”
  • In 2014, Congress was well on the way to roundly rejecting the Air Force headquarters’ efforts to retire the entire fleet of 350 A-10s. It was a strong, bipartisan demonstration of support for the CAS platform in all four of Congress’s annual defense bills. But in the final days of the 113th Congress, a “compromise” heavily pushed by the Air Force was tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2015. The “compromise” allowed the Air Force to move A-10s into virtually retired “backup status” as long as the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office in DoD certified that the measure was the only option available to protect readiness. CAPE, now led by former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management and Comptroller Jamie Morin, duly issued that assessment—though in classified form, thus making it unavailable to the public. In one of his final acts as Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel then approved moving 18 A-10s to backup status.
  • The Air Force intends to replace the A-10 with the F-35. But despite spending nearly $100 billion and 14 years in development, the plane is still a minimum of six years away from being certified ready for any real—but still extremely limited—form of CAS combat. The A-10, on the other hand, is continuing to perform daily with striking effectiveness in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria—at the insistence of the CENTCOM commander and despite previous false claims from the Air Force that A-10s can’t be sent to Syria. A-10s have also recently been sent to Europe to be available for contingencies in Ukraine—at the insistence of the EUCOM Commander. These demands from active theaters are embarrassing and compelling counterarguments to the Air Force’s plea that the Warthog is no longer relevant or capable and needs to be unloaded to help pay for the new, expensive, more high-tech planes that Air Force headquarters vastly prefers even though the planes are underperforming.
  • So far, Congress has not been any more sympathetic to this year’s continuation of General Welsh’s campaign to retire the A-10. Chairman McCain rejected the Air Force’s contention that the F-35 was ready enough to be a real replacement for the A-10 and vowed to reverse the A-10 retirement process already underway. Senator Ayotte led a letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter with Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), and Richard Burr (R-NC) rebuking Hagel’s decision to place 18 A-10s in backup inventory. Specifically, the Senators called the decision a “back-door” divestment approved by a “disappointing rubber stamp” that guts “the readiness of our nation’s best close air support aircraft.” In the House, Representative Martha McSally (R-AZ) wrote to Secretary Carter stating that she knew from her own experience as a former A-10 pilot and 354th Fighter Squadron commander that the A-10 is uniquely capable for combat search and rescue missions, in addition to CAS, and that the retirement of the A-10 through a classified assessment violated the intent of Congress’s compromise with the Air Force:
  • Some in the press have been similarly skeptical of the Air Force’s intentions, saying that the plan “doesn’t add up,” and more colorfully, calling it “total bullshit and both the American taxpayer and those who bravely fight our wars on the ground should be furious.” Those reports similarly cite the Air Force’s longstanding antagonism to the CAS mission as the chief motive for the A-10’s retirement.
  • By announcing that pilots who spoke to Congress about the A-10 were “committing treason,” ACC Vice Commander Major General James Post sparked an Inspector General investigation and calls for his resignation from POGO and other whistleblower and taxpayer groups. That public relations debacle made it clear that the Air Force needed a new campaign strategy to support its faltering A-10 divestment campaign. On the orders of Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh, General Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle—the head of Air Combat Command—promptly announced a joint CAS Summit, allegedly to determine the future of CAS. It was not the first CAS Summit to be held (the most recent previous Summit was held in 2009), but it was the first to receive so much fanfare. As advertised, the purpose of the Summit was to determine and then mitigate any upcoming risks and gaps in CAS mission capabilities. But notes, documents, and annotated briefing slides reviewed by CDI reveal that what the Air Force publicly released from the Summit is nothing more than a white-washed assessment of the true and substantial operational risks of retiring the A-10.
  • Just prior to the Summit, a working group of approximately 40 people, including CAS-experienced Air Force service members, met for three days at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base to identify potential risks and shortfalls in CAS capabilities. But Air Force headquarters gave them two highly restrictive ground rules: first, assume the A-10s are completely divested, with no partial divestments to be considered; and second, assume the F-35 is fully CAS capable by 2021 (an ambitious assumption at best). The working groups included A-10 pilots, F-16 pilots, and Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (JTACs), all with combat-based knowledge of the CAS platforms and their shortfalls and risks. They summarized their findings with slides stating that the divestment would “cause significant CAS capability and capacity gaps for 10 to 12 years,” create training shortfalls, increase costs per flying hour, and sideline over 200 CAS-experienced pilots due to lack of cockpits for them. Additionally, they found that after the retirement of the A-10 there would be “very limited” CAS capability at low altitudes and in poor weather, “very limited” armor killing capability, and “very limited” ability to operate in the GPS-denied environment that most experts expect when fighting technically competent enemies with jamming technology, an environment that deprives the non-A-10 platforms of their most important CAS-guided munition. They also concluded that even the best mitigation plans they were recommending would not be sufficient to overcome these problems and that significant life-threatening shortfalls would remain.
  • General Carlisle was briefed at Davis-Monthan on these incurable risks and gaps that A-10 divestment would cause. Workshop attendees noted that he understood gaps in capability created by retiring the A-10 could not be solved with the options currently in place. General Carlisle was also briefed on the results of the second task to develop a list of requirements and capabilities for a new A-X CAS aircraft that could succeed the A-10. “These requirements look a lot like the A-10, what are we doing here?” he asked. The slides describing the new A-X requirements disappeared from subsequent Pentagon Summit presentations and were never mentioned in any of the press releases describing the summit.
  • At the four-day Pentagon Summit the next week, the Commander of the 355th Fighter Wing, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Col. James P. Meger, briefed lower level joint representatives from the Army and the Marine Corps about the risks identified by the group at Davis-Monthan. Included in the briefing was the prediction that divestment of the A-10 would result in “significant capability and capacity gaps for the next ten to twelve years” that would require maintaining legacy aircraft until the F-35A was fully operational. After the presentation, an Army civilian representative became concerned. The slides, he told Col. Meger, suggested that the operational dangers of divestment of the A-10 were much greater than had been previously portrayed by the Air Force. Col. Meger attempted to reassure the civilian that the mitigation plan would eliminate the risks. Following the briefing, Col. Meger met with Lt. Gen. Tod D. Wolters, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations for Air Force Headquarters. Notably, the Summit Slide presentation for general officers the next day stripped away any mention of A-10 divestment creating significant capability gaps. Any mention of the need to maintain legacy aircraft, including the A-10, until the F-35A reached full operating capability (FOC) was also removed from the presentation.
  • The next day, Col. Meger delivered the new, sanitized presentation to the Air Force Chief of Staff. There was only muted mention of the risks presented by divestment. There was no mention of the 10- to 12-year estimated capability gap, nor was there any mention whatsoever of the need to maintain legacy aircraft—such as the A-10 or less capable alternatives like the F-16 or F-15E—until the F-35A reached FOC. Other important areas of concern to working group members, but impossible to adequately address within the three days at Davis-Monthan, were the additional costs to convert squadrons from the A-10 to another platform, inevitable training shortfalls that would be created, and how the deployment tempos of ongoing operations would further exacerbate near-term gaps in CAS capability. To our knowledge, none of these concerns surfaced during any part of the Pentagon summit.
  • Inevitably, the Air Force generals leading the ongoing CAS Summit media blitz will point congressional Armed Services and Appropriations committees to the whitewashed results of their sham summit. When they do, Senators and Representatives who care about the lives of American troops in combat need to ask the generals the following questions: Why wasn’t this summit held before the Air Force decided to get rid of A-10s? Why doesn’t the Air Force’s joint CAS summit include any statement of needs from soldiers or Marines who have actually required close air support in combat? What is the Air Force’s contingency plan for minimizing casualties among our troops in combat in the years after 2019, if the F-35 is several years late in achieving its full CAS capabilities? When and how does the Air Force propose to test whether the F-35 can deliver close support at least as combat-effective as the A-10’s present capability? How can that test take place without A-10s? Congress cannot and should not endorse Air Force leadership’s Summit by divesting the A-10s. Instead, the Senate and House Armed Services Committees need to hold hearings that consider the real and looming problems of inadequate close support, the very problems that Air Force headquarters prevented their Summit from addressing. These hearings need to include a close analysis of CAPE’s assessment and whether the decision to classify its report was necessary and appropriate. Most importantly, those hearings must include combat-experienced receivers and providers of close support who have seen the best and worst of that support, not witnesses cherry-picked by Air Force leadership—and the witnesses invited must be free to tell it the way they saw it.
  • If Congress is persuaded by the significant CAS capability risks and gaps originally identified by the Summit’s working groups, they should write and enforce legislation to constrain the Air Force from further eroding the nation’s close air support forces. Finally, if Congress believes that officers have purposely misled them about the true nature of these risks, or attempted to constrain service members’ communications with Congress about those risks, they should hold the officers accountable and remove them from positions of leadership. Congress owes nothing less to the troops they send to fight our wars.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 15
     
     Though not touched on in the article, the real problem is that the A10 has no proponents at the higher ranks of the Air Force because it is already bought and paid for; there's nothing in the A10 for the big Air Force aircraft manufacturing defense contractors. The F35, on the other hand is, is a defense contractor wet dream. It's all pie in the sky and big contracts just to get the first one in the air, let alone outfit it with the gear and programming needed to use it to inflict harm. It's been one cost-overrun after another and delay after delay. It's a national disgrace that has grown to become the most expensive military purchase in history. And it will never match the A10 for the close air support role. It's minimum airspeed is too high and its close-in maneuverability will be horrible. The generals, of course, don't want to poison the well for their post-military careers working for the defense contractors by putting a halt to the boondobble. Their answer: eliminate the close air support mission for at least 10-12 years and then attempt it with the F35.   As a former ground troop, that's grounds for the Air Force generals' court-martial and dishonorable discharge. I would not be alive today were it not for close air support. And there are tens of thousands of veterans who can say that in all truth. The A10 wasn't available back in my day, but by all reports its the best close air support weapons platform ever developed. It's a tank killer and is heavily armored, with redundant systems for pilot and aircraft survivability. The A10 is literally built around a 30 mm rotary cannon that fires at 3,900 rounds per minute. It also carries air to ground rockets and is the only close air support aircraft still in the U.S. arsenal. Fortunately, John McCain "get it" on the close air support mission and has managed to mostly protect the A10 from the generals. If you want to learn  more about the F35 scandal, try this Wikipedia article section; although it's enoug
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Brett Stephens nails it! | The Rugged Individualist - 0 views

theruggedindividualist.wordpress.com/...brett-stephens-nails-it Obammunism
shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Barack Obama told the U.N.’s General Assembly on Monday he’s concerned that “dangerous currents risk pulling us back into a darker, more disordered world.” It’s nice of the president to notice, just don’t expect him to do much about it. Recall that it wasn’t long ago that Mr. Obama took a sunnier view of world affairs. The tide of war was receding. Al Qaeda was on a path to defeat. ISIS was “a jayvee team” in “Lakers uniforms.” Iraq was an Obama administration success story. Bashar Assad’s days were numbered. The Arab Spring was a rejoinder to, rather than an opportunity for, Islamist violence. The intervention in Libya was vindication for the “lead from behind” approach to intervention. The reset with Russia was a success, a position he maintained as late as September 2013. In Latin America, the “trend lines are good.”
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Oct 15
     
    "Barack Obama told the U.N.'s General Assembly on Monday he's concerned that "dangerous currents risk pulling us back into a darker, more disordered world." It's nice of the president to notice, just don't expect him to do much about it. Recall that it wasn't long ago that Mr. Obama took a sunnier view of world affairs. The tide of war was receding. Al Qaeda was on a path to defeat. ISIS was "a jayvee team" in "Lakers uniforms." Iraq was an Obama administration success story. Bashar Assad's days were numbered. The Arab Spring was a rejoinder to, rather than an opportunity for, Islamist violence. The intervention in Libya was vindication for the "lead from behind" approach to intervention. The reset with Russia was a success, a position he maintained as late as September 2013. In Latin America, the "trend lines are good.""
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Judge sticks by decision to release Guantánamo force-feeding videos | Miami H... - 0 views

www.miamiherald.com/...article41626458.html GITMO-detainees force-feeding videos litigation disclosure-order
shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • With some sharp words for the Obama administration, a federal judge on Tuesday declined to second-guess her earlier decision ordering the release of videos of a Guantánamo detainee being force-fed. While acknowledging that more appeals are on the way in the long-running case, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said in her nine-page decision that nothing has happened to change her mind about the videos. She first ordered their release in October 2014.
  • “What the government is really saying is that its classification system trumps the decisions of the federal courts as to the public’s access to official court records,” Kessler wrote. “In other words, the Executive Branch (in this case, the military) purports to be a law unto itself.” 11 hours: the prison camp videos the judge ordered redacted then released, a year ago Kessler added that “the government’s justifications for barring the American public from seeing the videotapes are not sufficiently rational and plausible to justify barring release of the videotapes.” Sixteen media organizations, including the New York Times, Associated Press and McClatchy, have joined in seeking release of the Guantánamo tapes to the public on First Amendment grounds.
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Health ministry: Over 200 IOF assaults on medical teams in Oct. - The Palestinian Infor... - 0 views

english.palinfo.com/...details.aspx war & peace Israel Palestine casualties stats ambulance-crews
shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • The Palestinian ministry of health said that the Palestinian ambulance crews, their vehicles and facilities were exposed to more than 200 violations and attacks by the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) since the beginning of the current month. In a press release on Thursday, health minister Jawad Awad stated that the Israeli army did not respect the sanctity of medical centers and hospitals during its escalation of its recent aggressive practices against the Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Awad added that the IOF recently stormed several Palestinian medical centers and hospitals and assaulted their employees, patients and visitors, including its violent raid on al-Makassed hospital in Jerusalem. He appealed to the international community to intervene to curb Israel's violations against the Palestinian medical facilities and cadres.
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Victory for Users: Librarian of Congress Renews and Expands Protections for Fair Uses |... - 0 views

www.eff.org/...-expands-protections-fair-uses DMCA-exemptions jail-breaking-DRM Library-of-Congress
shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • The new rules for exemptions to copyright's DRM-circumvention laws were issued today, and the Librarian of Congress has granted much of what EFF asked for over the course of months of extensive briefs and hearings. The exemptions we requested—ripping DVDs and Blurays for making fair use remixes and analysis; preserving video games and running multiplayer servers after publishers have abandoned them; jailbreaking cell phones, tablets, and other portable computing devices to run third party software; and security research and modification and repairs on cars—have each been accepted, subject to some important caveats.
  • The exemptions are needed thanks to a fundamentally flawed law that forbids users from breaking DRM, even if the purpose is a clearly lawful fair use. As software has become ubiquitous, so has DRM.  Users often have to circumvent that DRM to make full use of their devices, from DVDs to games to smartphones and cars. The law allows users to request exemptions for such lawful uses—but it doesn’t make it easy. Exemptions are granted through an elaborate rulemaking process that takes place every three years and places a heavy burden on EFF and the many other requesters who take part. Every exemption must be argued anew, even if it was previously granted, and even if there is no opposition. The exemptions that emerge are limited in scope. What is worse, they only apply to end users—the people who are actually doing the ripping, tinkering, jailbreaking, or research—and not to the people who make the tools that facilitate those lawful activities. The section of the law that creates these restrictions—the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's Section 1201—is fundamentally flawed, has resulted in myriad unintended consequences, and is long past due for reform or removal altogether from the statute books. Still, as long as its rulemaking process exists, we're pleased to have secured the following exemptions.
  • The new rules are long and complicated, and we'll be posting more details about each as we get a chance to analyze them. In the meantime, we hope each of these exemptions enable more exciting fair uses that educate, entertain, improve the underlying technology, and keep us safer. A better long-terms solution, though, is to eliminate the need for this onerous rulemaking process. We encourage lawmakers to support efforts like the Unlocking Technology Act, which would limit the scope of Section 1201 to copyright infringements—not fair uses. And as the White House looks for the next Librarian of Congress, who is ultimately responsible for issuing the exemptions, we hope to get a candidate who acts—as a librarian should—in the interest of the public's access to information.
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Ehud Barak served US lawsuit over Gaza flotilla slaying | The Electronic Intifada - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...14978 war & peace Mavi-Marmara litigation Dogan Barak war crimes
shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Ehud Barak is being sued in the United States over his role in the 2010 slaying of Turkish American citizen Furkan Doğan by Israeli commandos who stormed a boat attempting to break the siege on Gaza. The former Israeli prime minister was served court documents when he was in Los Angeles, California, for a speaking event last month. Doğan, 19, was shot multiple times at point-blank range during the raid on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish boat in a flotilla sailing in international waters. His parents, Ahmet and Hikmet Doğan, filed the lawsuit against Barak.
  • Barak was defense minister when Israeli forces shot and killed eight Turkish nationals, in addition to Doğan. A tenth victim died from his injuries in May 2014.
  • Doğan’s family brings the case against Barak under the Alien Tort Statute, which allows foreign nationals to use US courts in cases alleging violations of international law. “Ehud Barak is directly responsible for killing their son,” Hakan Camuz, a spokesperson for the family, told The Electronic Intifada. “Ehud Barak is responsible for killing [Doğan] when he was under the protection of international law when he was doing humanitarian work in the international high seas.”
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  • In September 2010, a United Nations fact-finding mission found that Doğan was not killed instantly, but was “lying on the deck in a conscious, or semi-conscious, state for some time.” In 2013, the International Criminal Court prosecutor conducted a preliminary investigation and found that “there is a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes … were committed on one of the vessels, the Mavi Marmara.” While the prosecutor declined to open a formal investigation, an appeal is currently being considered.
  • Past attempts to sue Israeli leaders have failed to move forward in US courts because of legislation barring lawsuits against foreign states. But Dan Stormer, one of the lawyers representing the Doğan family, told The Electronic Intifada that because Barak is not currently a head of state, he no longer enjoys that protection.
  • The legal team representing Doğan’s parents also includes Geoffrey Nice, who helped prosecute former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević in The Hague, and Rodney Dixon, an international human rights lawyer.
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Secret program at secret Guantánamo prison hears everything | Miami Herald - 0 views

www.miamiherald.com/...article44541324.html surveillance state GITMO-detainees military-tribunal fair-trial
shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • A secret Defense Department program provides unfettered eavesdropping on the accused terrorists imprisoned at Guantánamo’s clandestine Camp 7 lockup, recently released war court documents show.Army Col. James L. Pohl, the judge in 9/11 trial, discovered the existence of the secret surveillance program during a recent war court hearing. Little is publicly known about the program, not even its unclassified two-word nickname.
  • The disclosure of pervasive eavesdropping at Guantánamo’s lockup for 14 former CIA prisoners comes in before-and-after documents released by the court from the recent Oct. 19-30 pretrial hearings in the death-penalty case of five men accused of orchestrating the hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.At issue was accused 9/11 plotter Walid bin Attash’s request for guidance on how he could function as his own attorney. Bin Attash is a Yemeni in his mid-30s who is accused of training some of the hijackers. “You must assume anything you say in Camp 7 is not confidential and will be disclosed to the U.S. Government,” warns an Oct. 23 draft of the advisory, crafted after the judge was informed of the covert program. “Only when you are in Echo 2 will anything you say be covered by the attorney-client privilege.”An Oct. 20 draft of the advisory omits those lines.
  • This is not the first time in the proceedings that a surveillance program caught Pohl by surprise. In January 2013, he ordered the CIA to unplug a button that allowed an unseen observer to cut the court’s audio feed to the public. Perhaps ironically, the lone site the judge considers safe for consultative trial preparation — the Camp Echo compound of wooden huts, each containing a cell — at one time had covert recording devices that looked like smoke detectors. The judge ordered them disabled in February 2013.Attorney Dror Ladin of the American Civil Liberties Union, who was an observer at the Guantánamo hearings last month, said the apparent disclosure of “pervasive surveillance at Camp 7” is the latest issue to challenge the possibility of a fair trial.“It is shocking that for years neither defense counsel nor the judge were made aware that the government was capturing everything said aloud by the detainees there,” he said Thursday. It also adds to mounting questions of “how these military commissions can produce a fair result,” said Ladin, especially if one of the men represents himself. “These are detainees who really can’t see the evidence against them and simultaneously have been provided no rehabilitation services for the torture they suffered for years. It would be astonishing if any of them could craft a fair defense for capital charges.”
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  • A defense attorney in another case said the prosecution wants to use a surreptitiously recorded conversation between two Camp 7 captives against an alleged al-Qaida commander. And in 2012 the journalist Daniel Klaidman wrote in his book “Kill or Capture” that the U.S. government had recordings made in a Guantánamo prison recreation yard of the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed talking about evidence that could be used against him.The latest disclosure comes at a time of decreasing transparency at the war court.On Oct. 29, the judge held a 13-minute secret session without advanced notice to the public. A day later the judge wrote in a three-page ruling that he closed the court at the request of “the Government” — war-court-speak for the prosecution — to protect state secrets whose disclosure “could result in grave danger to national security.”Pohl also ordered the court to issue a censored transcript of the parts the excluded public and accused would be allowed to see. No transcript has been released.Then the next day, Oct. 30, the judge held a daylong, open hearing on a restraining order he issued forbidding female guards from touching the 9/11 accused when they are being taken to court or legal meetings. The judge’s order has outraged members of Congress and the Pentagon brass.
  • In that public court hearing, soldiers called as witnesses from the prison discussed staffing patterns at Camp 7. Normally the Pentagon releases transcripts of open hearings the same day. Unusually, the court has not yet released the Oct. 30 transcript. A Pentagon spokesman suggested Thursday — 13 days after the open court hearing — that somebody was scrubbing the transcript of information already made public. “The security review of the Oct. 30 transcript remains ongoing,” said Navy Cmdr. Gary Ross. “We will provide an update once additional information becomes available.”Much of the October session focused on bin Attash’s question about how he’d act as his own lawyer in a system that does not let the accused terrorist see classified information in the case. The judge and attorneys devoted days to designing a script Pohl would read to any accused 9/11 terrorist who tries to take charge of his defense — and spent a full afternoon huddling in a closed meeting on the secret program.
  • In it, Pohl made clear that he never intended to let bin Attash dismiss his Pentagon-paid defense attorneys — Chicago criminal defense attorney Cheryl Bormann and Air Force Maj. Michael Schwartz. Instead, the script shows Pohl planned to appoint Bormann and Schwartz as “standby counsel” the judge could activate to carry out cross-examination of certain witnesses who might have “particular sensitivities” to being questioned by the alleged terrorist.“If you are represented by lawyers, then it is the lawyers, and not you, who will conduct the defense,” the warning says. “Correspondingly, if you represent yourself, you will be able to perform the lawyer’s core functions, but you will not necessarily be allowed to direct special appearances by counsel when it is convenient to you.”The language suggests a far more limited role by the American lawyers than those carried out in an aborted attempt to hold the Sept. 11 trial during the Bush administration. In those proceedings, alleged 9/11 terrorists serving as their own lawyer regularly had standby counsel write and argue motions in court.The script also envisions a scenario in which an accused 9/11 plotter serving as his own lawyer becomes unruly, disruptive or disobedient rather than respect “the dignity of the courtroom.” In such a case, the judge said he could deal with “obstructionist misconduct” by putting “physical restraints” on bin Attash or ejecting him from the court.Bin Attash, for his part, has not been noticeably disruptive across years of pretrial proceedings. An amputee, he was brought to his May 5, 2012 arraignment in a Guantánamo prison restraint chair routinely used for forced-feeding of hunger strikers — with guards carrying his prosthetic leg separately.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15
     
    It's long past time to recognize that the military cannot provide a fair trial for GITMOI detainees, transfer them to the U.S., and try them in a civilian Article II court. If this kind of crap were going down before an Article II judge, those conducting the surveillance would be sitting in jail. 
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In Egypt, Angry Talk of Western Conspiracy Over Plane Crash - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-egypt-plane-conspiracies.html war & peace Russia airliner bombing ISIL U.S.-foreign-policy Egypt false-flag
shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Egyptian media have reacted with fury as Britain and the United States increasingly point to a bomb as the cause of the Oct. 31 Russian plane crash in Sinai, with many outlets hammering home the same message: Egypt is facing a Western conspiracy that seeks to scare off tourists and destroy the country's economy. The warnings of a plot have been widely promoted by opinion-makers in print, online, and on TV, sometimes hinting and sometimes saying flat-out that the West has restricted flights to Egypt not purely out of safety concerns for its citizens but because it wants to undermine the country or prevent President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi from making Egypt too strong.And though they seem wild, these conspiracy theories have apparently tapped into the Egyptian mindset — so much so that when Russia last Friday grounded all flights to Egypt, some media speculated that Moscow had fallen victim to British pressure and manipulation."The people defy the conspiracy — Egypt will not cave in to pressures," the state-owned Al-Gomhuria newspaper proclaimed in a front-page headline this week. "Egypt stands up to 'the West's terrorism,'" an independent daily, El-Watan, headlined.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Nov 15
     
    Seems as though I'm not the only one who suspects a false flag operation by the U.S.
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NSA Director Finally Admits Encryption Is Needed to Protect Public's Privacy - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...213028 surveillance state encryption NSA Comey
shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • NSA Director Finally Admits Encryption Is Needed to Protect Public’s Privacy The new stance denotes a growing awareness within the government that Americans are not comfortable with the State’s grip on their data. By Carey Wedler | AntiMedia | January 22, 2016 Share this article! https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&to&su=NSA%20Director%20Finally%20Admits%20Encryption%20Is%20Needed%20to%20Protect%20Public%E2%80%99s%20Privacy&body=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mintpress
  • At the same hearing, Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch declined to comment on whether they had proof the Paris attackers used encryption. Even so, Comey recently lobbied for tech companies to do away with end-to-end encryption. However, his crusade has fallen on unsympathetic ears, both from the private companies he seeks to control — and from the NSA. Prior to Rogers’ statements in support of encryption Thursday, former NSA chief Michael Hayden said, “I disagree with Jim Comey. I actually think end-to-end encryption is good for America.” Still another former NSA chair has criticized calls for backdoor access to information. In October, Mike McConnell told a panel at an encryption summit that the United States is “better served by stronger encryption, rather than baking in weaker encryption.” Former Department of Homeland Security chief, Michael Chertoff, has also spoken out against government being able to bypass encryption.
  • Rogers cited the recent Office of Personnel Management hack of over 20 million users as a reason to increase encryption rather than scale it back. “What you saw at OPM, you’re going to see a whole lot more of,” he said, referring to the massive hack that compromised the personal data about 20 million people who obtained background checks. Rogers’ comments, while forward-thinking, signify an about face in his stance on encryption. In February 2015, he said he “shares [FBI] Director [James] Comey’s concern” about cell phone companies’ decision to add encryption features to their products. Comey has been one loudest critics of encryption. However, Rogers’ comments on Thursday now directly conflict with Comey’s stated position. The FBI director has publicly chastised encryption, as well as the companies that provide it. In 2014, he claimed Apple’s then-new encryption feature could lead the world to “a very dark place.” At a Department of Justice hearing in November, Comey testified that “Increasingly, the shadow that is ‘going dark’ is falling across more and more of our work.” Though he claimed, “We support encryption,” he insisted “we have a problem that encryption is crashing into public safety and we have to figure out, as people who care about both, to resolve it. So, I think the conversation’s in a healthier place.”
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  • Regardless of these individual defenses of encryption, the Intercept explained why these statements may be irrelevant: “Left unsaid is the fact that the FBI and NSA have the ability to circumvent encryption and get to the content too — by hacking. Hacking allows law enforcement to plant malicious code on someone’s computer in order to gain access to the photos, messages, and text before they were ever encrypted in the first place, and after they’ve been decrypted. The NSA has an entire team of advanced hackers, possibly as many as 600, camped out at Fort Meade.”
  • Rogers statements, of course, are not a full-fledged endorsement of privacy, nor can the NSA be expected to make it a priority. Even so, his new stance denotes a growing awareness within the government that Americans are not comfortable with the State’s grip on their data. “So spending time arguing about ‘hey, encryption is bad and we ought to do away with it’ … that’s a waste of time to me,” Rogers said Thursday. “So what we’ve got to ask ourselves is, with that foundation, what’s the best way for us to deal with it? And how do we meet those very legitimate concerns from multiple perspectives?”
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Elizabeth Warren Denounces Travesty of Government "Settlement" With Goldman Sachs - 0 views

www.truth-out.org/...elizabeth-warren-denounces banksters regulation Goldman Sachs Warren litigation penalties
shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Criticism of US government leniency on Wall Street legal transgressions is now being covered widely - even by trade publications such as the National Mortgage Professional Magazine. On January 18, the trade publication ran an article about Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) condemning the most recent US government settlement with a "too-big-to-fail" financial firm, in this case Goldman Sachs, for illegal abuse of the mortgage market: Sen. Warren used her Facebook page to denounce the agreement, noting that the settlement sum was “barely a fraction of the billions investors lost” while arguing that Goldman Sachs was not properly penalized for its actions. “That’s not justice – it’s a white flag of surrender,” she wrote. “It’s time to end this farce. These companies think they’re above the law – and too many government officials go along with them. A first step would be to pass the bipartisan Truth in Settlements Act to shine more light on these backroom deals. A second step would be to get government officials who have the backbone to fight back.” Warren’s comments were echoed by the nonprofit U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG).
  • The publication, which is geared toward professionals in the mortgage industry, also tellingly noted, "In announcing the [$5.1 billion] settlement, Goldman Sachs made no admission of guilt or error, and no executive from the New York-based financial giant will face criminal or civil charges."  As we have noted in this space many times, the seemingly large financial penalties levied on Wall Street firms for illegal activity are not so large, in the context of those firms' budgets: The fines are generally less than the revenue that the firms generated by engaging in the often fraudulent practices in the first place. As The Huffington Post noted in a report on the recent settlement,  About $2.4 billion of the settlement is in the form of a government penalty. The bank has said that it securitized about $125 billion of home loans between 2005 and 2008, of which about $23 billion eventually soured. The penalty represents about 10 percent of investors’ losses. Goldman can deduct the rest of the settlement, about $2.7 billion, from its future tax bills, according to a person familiar with the accord. The bank said the settlement will reduce its fourth-quarter profit by about $1.5 billion. It reports earnings next week.
  • Goldman Sachs is being let off the hook for 90 percent of the investor losses for which it was primarily responsible. Furthermore, as is consistent with past settlements with Wall Street firms by the Department of Justice and other executive agencies, much of the fine is tax-deductible. As BuzzFlash has noted before, this rewards Wall Street financial companies by allowing them to factor in settlements with the government for illegal behavior as nothing more than the cost of doing business. Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who left office last year to resume a six-figure-salary partnership at the DC corporate law firm of Covington & Burling (which defends many of the firms that Holder was responsible for prosecuting as attorney general), infamously stated to a US Senate committee in March of 2013: I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute - if we do bring a criminal charge - it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.  Apparently, under current Attorney General Loretta Lynch, that legal exemption for too-big-to-fail financial firms and their executives has not changed.
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Israel: Businesses Should End Settlement Activity « LobeLog - 0 views

lobelog.com/should-end-settlement-activity war & peace Israel Palestine settlements Human-Rights-Watch BDS
shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Businesses should stop operating in, financing, servicing, or trading with Israeli settlements in order to comply with their human rights responsibilities, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Those activities contribute to and benefit from an inherently unlawful and abusive system that violates the rights of Palestinians. The 162-page report, “Occupation, Inc.: How Settlement Businesses Contribute to Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Rights,” documents how settlement businesses facilitate the growth and operations of settlements. These businesses depend on and contribute to the Israeli authorities’ unlawful confiscation of Palestinian land and other resources. They also benefit from these violations, as well as Israel’s discriminatory policies that provide privileges to settlements at the expense of Palestinians, such as access to land and water, government subsidies, and permits for developing land.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Jan 16
     
    This is highly significant because Human Rights Watch functions as a covert arm of the U.S. government.
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Biden suggests 'military solution' to Syrian conflict - 0 views

www.politico.com/...talks-military-solution-218139 war & peace Syria ISIL Al-Nusrah Biden Kerry pace-negotiations
shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Joe Biden signaled a possible new direction for U.S. policy toward Syria in remarks in Turkey on Saturday, where the vice president was meeting with Turkish leaders to discuss the bloody civil war next door. Biden was speaking at Istanbul’s Dolmabahçe Palace, where he held meetings with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.Story Continued Below The U.S. is “neither optimistic nor pessimistic,” but “determined” to reach a political solution to the Syrian conflict, he said. But Biden also seemed to go past Obama administration statements in suggesting the U.S. would be willing to use military means if necessary. “We do know that it would be better if we can reach a political solution, but we are prepared — we are prepared if that’s not possible to make — to have a military solution to this operation in taking out Daesh,” the vice president said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State in the Levant, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Turkey and the U.S. have had intense differences over which of the witches’ brew of militant groups in the region to characterize as terrorist groups, and the meeting seemed intended to close those gaps.
  • Davutoglu said they had agreed on “a united front against terrorism,” mentioning the Islamic State, the PKK and Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. “We believe we should be acting against all these terrorist organizations in harmony,” the Turkish prime minister said. “We are on the same page regarding this as well.” Biden reassured Turkey, which is dealing with a flare-up in its long-running conflict with Kurdish separatist groups led by the PKK. The PKK, Biden said, “is a terrorist group plain and simple” – one he said has defied the Turkish government efforts to make peace. Until that changes, “you must do what you need to protect your people,” Biden said. But Davutoglu also described a Kurdish militia that is reportedly working with U.S. special forces in Syria, the YPG, as a terrorist group, indicating some remaining disagreement between the two allies. “We believe that YPG is a part of the PKK, and it receives open support from the PKK,” he said. Biden, pointedly, did not mention the YPG in his own list of terrorist groups. According to Al Jazeera, the U.S. recently took over a Syrian air base near the Turkish border with the YPG’s help.
  • Biden’s remarks come days ahead of long-anticipated Syria peace talks, which have been in limbo amid a bitter feud between the Middle East’s longtime rivals: Iran and Saudi Arabia. Secretary of State John Kerry is in Riyadh, where he held talks with top Saudi officials — discussions Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir described as “clear and transparent and frank.” Kerry did not announce a date for the Syria talks, which were originally slated for Jan. 25 in Geneva but were delayed amid disagreements over who would represent the Syrian opposition. The discussions will convene “very shortly,” Kerry said, “because we want to keep the process moving and put to full test the readiness and willingness of people to live up to the two communiques and U.N. resolution, and begin the process of bringing the transition council — transition governing process of Syria into a reality.” The National Security Council declined to say whether Biden’s remarks signaled a shift in U.S. strategy, and directed questions to the vice president’s office. But Kerry, in Riyadh, said the goals of the U.S. and its allies hadn’t changed: “a transition governance process, for a new constitution, for elections, and for a ceasefire.” "The vice president was making the point that even as we search for a political solution to the broader Syrian civil war, we are simultaneously pursuing a military solution against Daesh," Biden's office said. "There is no change in U.S. policy."
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Jan 16
     
    But Kerry, in Riyadh, said the goals of the U.S. and its allies hadn't changed: "a transition governance process, for a new constitution, for elections, and for a ceasefire." The key phrase is "a transition governance process." In other words, the U.S. still insists that Bashar al Assad, who polls show would win any election in Syria, must step down as head of government before a new constitution is adopted, and new elections are held." The Syrian opposition, funded and led by Saudi Arabia, has just vetoed participating in the peace process unless Assad agrees to step down as a negotiation pre-condition.  But Assad, Russia, and Iran are adamant that Assad will not step down unless first defeated in an election, in other words, the only transition will be made by elected officials, that the will of the Syrian people runs Syria, not invading mercenaries.    
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Repeating 'neutrality' vow on Israel, Trump surely senses shift in US mood - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...surely-senses-shift-in-us-mood war & peace Auction 2016 Trump Israel public-opinion polls
shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Donald Trump has doubled down on his statement at a town hall last week that he aims to be neutral in his comments on the Israel/Palestine conflict so as not to injure his ability as president to negotiate a deal between the parties. On Meet the Press yesterday he pointedly did not buy into the Republican “orthodoxy” on Israel, saying he’s very pro-Israel but peace there is the “ultimate deal” and he wasn’t going to prejudice matters.
  • Trump surely senses that he can gain by exhibiting independence of the Israel lobby. Here are some other straws in the wind: –A new poll shows that the number of Americans holding a favorable view of Israel has declined 16 percent in the last year, to 59 percent. And in the same interval those holding a favorable view of the Palestinians has surged 42 percent, to 25 percent, and even Iran has had an image-makeover, with 16 percent of Americans regarding the country favorably, up considerably. Grant Smith of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy says the data reveal “a stunning turn in U.S. public opinion.” –The MSM are reflecting the thaw. Last week Newsweek ran a defiant piece by Hanin Zoabi, the Palestinian Israeli legislator who has been suspended from the Knesset as a troublemaker, explaining Palestinian violence as a response to occupation and discrimination. Boldly titled, “Why Israel Is Fighting the Indigenous Palestinians,” it included these lines: “The occupier does not have the right to self-defense. We, the occupied, have the full and only right to fight it, by all means recognized within the framework of international law.”
  • I throw in these stray facts to say that American public opinion is changing (as is Jewish opinion) and there is political hay to be made of the changes. Donald Trump surely senses this, in his populist campaign. And so he is preparing to run against Marco Rubio by saying that Rubio is Sheldon Adelson’s “perfect little puppet”, and preparing to set up a general election campaign against Hillary Clinton in which he can call out her beholdenness to the billionaire Haim Saban. In his reissued autobiography of last fall, Bernie Sanders refers with disdain to Sheldon Adelson and the “Adelson primary” on the very first page. But that’s the last we hear of it: Adelson, who is in bed with Hillary Clinton’s good friend Haim Saban. Sanders is ignoring a populist political opportunity that Donald Trump has seized upon. Go figure
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Judge rules in favor of Apple in key case involving a locked iPhone - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html surveillance state FBI All-Writs-Act Apple iPhone litigation
shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • A federal judge in New York ruled in favor of Apple on Monday, saying that an obscure Colonial-era law did not authorize him to force the firm to lift data from an iPhone at the government’s request. The ruling is not binding in any other court, but it takes on an outsize importance as the U.S. government battles Apple in a separate case in California over whether the tech firm should help unlock a phone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino terrorist attack in December. The two cases involve different versions of iPhone’s operating system and vastly different requests for technical help, but they both turn on whether a law from 1789 known as the All Writs Act can be applied to cases in which the government cannot get at encrypted data stored on suspects’ devices. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein in Brooklyn, who sits in the Eastern District of New York, has become the first federal judge to rule that the act does not permit a court to order companies to pull encrypted data off a customer’s phone or tablet.
  • In a 50-page opinion disdainful of the government’s arguments, Orenstein found that the All Writs Act does not apply in instances where Congress had the opportunity but failed to create an authority for the government to get the type of help it was seeking, such as having firms ensure they have a way to obtain data from encrypted phones.
  • He wrote that the government’s interpretation of the 200-year-old law was “absurd” in that it would authorize what they were seeking even if every member of Congress had voted against granting such authority. It would, he added, undermine “the more general protection against tyranny that the Founders believed required the careful separation of governmental powers.” [Read the magistrate’s order in favor of Apple] He also found that ordering Apple to help the government by extracting data from the iPhone — which belonged to a drug dealer — would place an unreasonable burden on the company. None of the factors he reviewed in the case, Orenstein said, “justifies imposing on Apple the obligation to assist the government’s investigation against its will.”
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Ford White House Altered Rockefeller Commission Report - 0 views

nsarchive.gwu.edu/...-Rockefeller-Commission-Report Dark-State CIA assassinations cover-up
shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Gerald Ford White House Altered Rockefeller Commission Report in 1975; Removed Section on CIA Assassination Plots White House Aide Dick Cheney Spearheaded Editing of Report to Dampen Impact New Documents Cast Further Doubt on Commission’s Investigation, Independence
  • The Gerald Ford White House significantly altered the final report of the supposedly independent 1975 Rockefeller Commission investigating CIA domestic activities, over the objections of senior Commission staff, according to internal White House and Commission documents posted today by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org). The changes included removal of an entire 86-page section on CIA assassination plots and numerous edits to the report by then-deputy White House Chief of Staff Richard Cheney.  Today’s posting includes the entire suppressed section on assassination attempts, Cheney’s handwritten marginal notes, staff memos warning of the fallout of deleting the controversial section, and White House strategies for presenting the edited report to the public. The documents show that the leadership of the presidentially-appointed commission deliberately curtailed the investigation and ceded its independence to White House political operatives. This evidence has been lying ignored in government vaults for decades. Much of the work of securing release of the records was done by the John F. Kennedy Assassinations Records Board in the 1990s, and the documents were located at the National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, Maryland; or at the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Additional mandatory declassification review requests filed by Archive fellow John Prados returned identical versions of documents, indicating the CIA is not willing to permit the public to see any more of the assassinations story than we show here. The documents in this set have yet to be incorporated into standard accounts of the events of this period.
  • Among the highlights of today’s posting: White House officials of the Ford administration attempted to keep a presidential review panel—the Rockefeller Commission—from investigating reports of CIA planning for assassinations abroad. Ford administration officials suppressed the Rockefeller Commission’s actual report on CIA assassination plots. Richard Cheney, then the deputy assistant to the president, edited the report of the Rockefeller Commission from inside the Ford White House, stripping the report of its independent character. The Rockefeller Commission remained silent on this manipulation. Rockefeller Commission lawyers and public relations officials warned of the damage that would be done to the credibility of the entire investigation by avoiding the subject of assassinations. President Ford passed investigative materials concerning assassinations along to the Church Committee of the United States Senate and then attempted—but failed—to suppress the Church Committee’s report as well. The White House markup of the Rockefeller Commission report used the secrecy of the CIA budget as an example of excesses and recommended Congress consider making agency spending public to some degree.
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The Latest European Court of Human Rights Ruling on Accountability for Torture | Just S... - 0 views

www.justsecurity.org/...-ruling-accountability-torture war & peace CIA rendition torture ECHR Nasr
shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • In another important decision on European participation in the US war on terrorism, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued a judgment late last month against Italy for its role in the extraordinary rendition of Egyptian cleric Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, better known as Abu Omar. (An English-language summary of ruling is here; the full decision, presently available only in French, is here.) The ruling not only represents a further contribution to the Strasbourg Court’s growing accountability jurisprudence, but also highlights the United States’ own failure to provide any redress to victims of the torture program that it primarily created and operated. The ECtHR’s decision in Nasr v. Italy concerns one of the most notorious instances of extraordinary rendition (i.e., the extrajudicial transfer of an individual to another country for purposes of abusive interrogation). In 2003, Nasr, who had been granted political asylum in Italy, was abducted in broad daylight from a street in Milan and taken to Aviano air base, which is operated by the US Air Force. Nasr was subsequently taken, by way of the US’s Ramstein air base in Germany, to Cairo where he was interrogated by Egyptian intelligence services. Egyptian authorities held Nasr in secret for more than a year and subjected him to repeated torture before releasing him in April 2004. Approximately 20 days after his release — and after submitting a statement to Milan’s public prosecutor describing his abuse — Nasr was rearrested and detained without charges. He was released in 2007, but prohibited from leaving Egypt.
  • The ECtHR ruling centers on Italy’s role in Nasr’s abduction in Milan, his rendition to Egypt where he faced a real risk of abuse, and its subsequent failure to conduct an effective domestic investigation or to provide any redress. The ECtHR found Italy liable for multiple violations of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), including article 3 (the prohibition on inhuman or degrading treatment), article 5 (the right to liberty and security), and article 13 (the right to an adequate remedy). It ordered Italy to pay €70,000 to Nasr and €15,000 to his wife, Nabila Ghali, for the suffering and anguish caused by her husband’s enforced disappearance. The Milan public prosecutor had previously investigated and prosecuted 25 CIA officers, including the agency’s Milan station chief, Robert Seldon Lady, and seven Italian military intelligence officers, for aiding and abetting in Nasr’s abduction and rendition. The United States strenuously opposed the prosecution, warning that it would harm US-Italian relations, and the Italian government successfully challenged much of the evidence on the grounds it could jeopardize national security. The trial court convicted 22 CIA agents in absentia and gave them prison sentences of between six to nine years; a Milan appeals court upheld the convictions and overturned the acquittals of the other three US defendants. Italy’s highest court, however, overturned the conviction of five of the Italian military intelligence agents based on state secrecy grounds. The Italian government has refused to seek the extradition of the convicted US nationals. (For more details, Human Rights Watch has an excellent summary of the proceedings in Italy here.)
  • The ECtHR’s ruling in Nasr strengthens accountability by reinforcing state responsibility for participation in abuses committed during the war on terrorism. It builds on the Strasbourg Court’s prior decisions in El-Masri v. Macedonia and Al-Nashiri v. Poland/Husayn (Abu Zubaydah) v. Poland, which held Macedonia and Poland, respectively, liable for their role in CIA torture and rendition, including (in the case of Poland) for hosting a CIA black site. Nasr, together with El-Masri and al-Nashiri/Husayn, should help discourage a state’s future participation in cross-border counterterrorism operations conducted in flagrant violation of human rights guarantees. While the deterrent value of legal judgments may be uncertain, the recent line of Strasbourg Court decisions raises the costs of aiding and abetting illegal operations, even in the national security context.
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  • Nasr also advances the jurisprudence surrounding a state’s duty to conduct an effective domestic investigation into torture. The Strasbourg Court noted that Italian courts had conducted a detailed investigation and that the evidence disregarded by Italy’s highest court on grounds of state secrecy had been sufficient to convict the five Italian military intelligence defendants. It further observed that because the evidence inculpating those defendants had been widely available in the press and on the Internet, the court’s invocation of state secrecy doctrine was not only unpersuasive, but designed to grant impunity to the defendants. Further, the Strasbourg Court noted that the Italian government had never sought the extradition of the convicted CIA agents. As result, the court ruled that despite the efforts of Italian investigators and judges, which had identified the responsible individuals and secured their convictions, the domestic proceedings failed to satisfy the procedural requirements of article 3 of the European Convention (prohibiting torture and other ill-treatment), due to the actions of the executive. This ruling is important because it imposes liability not only where a state takes no steps towards a genuine domestic investigation and prosecution (as in El-Masri and Al-Nashiri/Husayn), but also where efforts by a state’s judges and prosecutors are thwarted in the name of state secrecy.
  • The ECtHR’s rulings on the CIA torture program also highlight the continued absence of accountability in the United States. The US has failed both to conduct an effective criminal investigation of those most responsible for CIA torture and to provide any remedies to victims. In fact, the Obama administration has vigorously opposed the latter at every turn, invoking the same sweeping state secrecy doctrines the ECtHR rejected in El-Masri and Nasr. These rulings will likely catalyze future litigation before the Strasbourg Court and in European domestic courts as well. (Recent actions filed against Germany for its participation in US targeted killings through use of the Ramstein Air Base provide one example of such litigation.) While the ECtHR’s rulings may not spur further efforts in the United States, they reinforce the perception of the United States as an outlier on the important question of accountability for human rights violations.
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Turkey could cut off Islamic State's supply lines. So why doesn't it? | David Graeber |... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...tate-supply-lines-erdogan-isis war & peace Turkey ISIL PKK YPG
shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • n the wake of the murderous attacks in Paris, we can expect western heads of state to do what they always do in such circumstances: declare total and unremitting war on those who brought it about. They don’t actually mean it. They’ve had the means to uproot and destroy Islamic State within their hands for over a year now. They’ve simply refused to make use of it. In fact, as the world watched leaders making statements of implacable resolve at the G20 summit in Antalaya, these same leaders are hobnobbing with Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a man whose tacit political, economic, and even military support contributed to Isis’s ability to perpetrate the atrocities in Paris, not to mention an endless stream of atrocities inside the Middle East.
  • How could Isis be eliminated? In the region, everyone knows. All it would really take would be to unleash the largely Kurdish forces of the YPG (Democratic Union party) in Syria, and PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ party) guerillas in Iraq and Turkey. These are, currently, the main forces actually fighting Isis on the ground. They have proved extraordinarily militarily effective and oppose every aspect of Isis’s reactionary ideology. But instead, YPG-controlled territory in Syria finds itself placed under a total embargo by Turkey, and PKK forces are under continual bombardment by the Turkish air force. Not only has Erdoğan done almost everything he can to cripple the forces actually fighting Isis; there is considerable evidence that his government has been at least tacitly aiding Isis itself. It might seem outrageous to suggest that a Nato member like Turkey would in any way support an organisation that murders western civilians in cold blood. That would be like a Nato member supporting al-Qaida. But in fact there is reason to believe that Erdoğan’s government does support the Syrian branch of al-Qaida (Jabhat al-Nusra) too, along with any number of other rebel groups that share its conservative Islamist ideology. The Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University has compiled a long list of evidence of Turkish support for Isis in Syria.
  • And then there are Erdoğan’s actual, stated positions. Back in August, the YPG, fresh from their victories in Kobani and Gire Spi, were poised to seize Jarablus, the last Isis-held town on the Turkish border that the terror organisation had been using to resupply its capital in Raqqa with weapons, materials, and recruits – Isis supply lines pass directly through Turkey. Commentators predicted that with Jarablus gone, Raqqa would soon follow. Erdoğan reacted by declaring Jarablus a “red line”: if the Kurds attacked, his forces would intervene militarily – against the YPG. So Jarablus remains in terrorist hands to this day, under de facto Turkish military protection.
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  • How has Erdoğan got away with this? Mainly by claiming those fighting Isis are “terrorists” themselves. It is true that the PKK did fight a sometimes ugly guerilla war with Turkey in the 1990s, which resulted in it being placed on the international terror list. For the last 10 years, however, it has completely shifted strategy, renouncing separatism and adopting a strict policy of never harming civilians. The PKK was responsible for rescuing thousands of Yazidi civilians threatened with genocide by Isis in 2014, and its sister organisation, the YPG, of protecting Christian communities in Syria as well. Their strategy focuses on pursuing peace talks with the government, while encouraging local democratic autonomy in Kurdish areas under the aegis of the HDP, originally a nationalist political party, which has reinvented itself as a voice of a pan-Turkish democratic left.
  • They have proved extraordinarily militarily effective and with their embrace of grassroots democracy and women’s rights, oppose every aspect of Isis’ reactionary ideology. In June, HDP success at the polls denied Erdoğan his parliamentary majority. Erdoğan’s response was ingenious. He called for new elections, declared he was “going to war” with Isis, made one token symbolic attack on them and then proceeded to unleash the full force of his military against PKK forces in Turkey and Iraq, while denouncing the HDP as “terrorist supporters” for their association with them. There followed a series of increasingly bloody terrorist bombings inside Turkey – in the cities of Diyarbakir, Suruc, and, finally, Ankara – attacks attributed to Isis but which, for some mysterious reason, only ever seemed to target civilian activists associated with the HDP. Victims have repeatedly reported police preventing ambulances evacuating the wounded, or even opening fire on survivors with tear gas.
  • As a result, the HDP gave up even holding political rallies in the weeks leading up to new elections in November for fear of mass murder, and enough HDP voters failed to show up at the polls that Erdoğan’s party secured a majority in parliament. The exact relationship between Erdoğan’s government and Isis may be subject to debate; but of some things we can be relatively certain. Had Turkey placed the same kind of absolute blockade on Isis territories as they did on Kurdish-held parts of Syria, let alone shown the same sort of “benign neglect” towards the PKK and YPG that they have been offering to Isis, that blood-stained “caliphate” would long since have collapsed – and arguably, the Paris attacks may never have happened. And if Turkey were to do the same today, Isis would probably collapse in a matter of months. Yet, has a single western leader called on Erdoğan to do this? The next time you hear one of those politicians declaring the need to crack down on civil liberties or immigrant rights because of the need for absolute “war” against terrorism bear all this in mind. Their resolve is exactly as “absolute” as it is politically convenient. Turkey, after all, is a “strategic ally”. So after their declaration, they are likely to head off to share a friendly cup of tea with the very man who makes it possible for Isis to continue to exist.
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Israeli army launches limited incursion into blockaded Gaza - The Palestinian Informati... - 0 views

english.palinfo.com/...details.aspx war & peace Israel Palestine Gaza invasion
shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The Israeli occupation bulldozers launched on Wednesday morning a limited incursion into Palestinian lands in eastern al-Bureij refugee camp, in central Gaza Strip. Local sources said four Israeli army bulldozers of the D9 brand moved into the border fence in eastern al-Bureij refugee camp. The bulldozers raked through the area and leveled Palestinian lands amid intermittent discharge of gunfire. Two Israeli military jeeps were, meanwhile, deployed in an adjacent area, near the border fence. Earlier, on Tuesday evening, a similar incursion was carried out into northern Gaza Strip. Army bulldozers moved some 100 meters into the Beit Hanun (Erez) border-crossing and leveled Palestinian lands in the western border fence. The incursions are the latest in a series of Israeli violations of the Cairo-brokered ceasefire accord signed in the wake of the 2014 offensive on the besieged coastal enclave.
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100,000 foreign troops incl. Americans to be deployed in Iraq, MP claims - RT News - 0 views

www.rt.com/...325477-arab-army-iraq-plan war & peace Iraq U.S.-foreign-policy boots-on-the-ground McCain
shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The US is to send some 10,000 troops to Iraq to provide support for a 90,000-strong force from the Gulf states, a leading Iraqi opposition MP has warned. The politician said the plan was announced to the Iraqi government during a visit by US Senator John McCain. During a meeting in Baghdad on November 27, McCain told Prime Minister Haider Abadi and a number of senior Iraqi cabinet and military officials that the decision was ‘non-negotiable’, claimed Hanan Fatlawi, the head of the opposition Irada Movement.“A hundred thousand foreign troops, including 90,000 from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Jordan, and 10,000 troops from America will be deployed in western regions of Iraq,” she wrote on her Facebook page.She added that the Iraqi prime minister protested the plan, but was told that “the decision has already been taken.”
  • McCain and fellow hawk Senator Lindsey Graham have both been calling for a tripling in the current number of US troops deployed in Iraq to 10,000, and also advocate sending an equal number of troops to Syria to fight against the terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The Americans would prop up a 90,000-strong international ground force provided by Sunni Arab countries like Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.“The region is ready to fight. The region hates ISIL – they are coming for Sunni Arab nations. Turkey hates ISIL. The entire region wants Assad gone. So there is an opportunity here with some American leadership to do two things: to hit ISIL before we get hit at home and to push Assad out,” Graham argued during the joint visit to Baghdad in November.“Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey – they have regional armies and they would go into the fight if we put [the removal of] Assad on the table. Most of the fight will be done by the region. They will pay for this war,” he added.
  • The US currently has about 3,600 troops in Iraq, including 100 special operations troops deployed last month to take part in combat missions involving hostage rescue and the assassination of IS leaders. The White House is reluctant to commit a large ground force, citing the cost in human lives and money and the possible political ramifications of what will be portrayed by America’s opponents as yet another Western invasion of the Arab world.The McCain-Graham plan also poses the risk of direct confrontation between the proposed coalition force and Russia and Iraq, which are both militarily assisting the Assad government and may not stay out of the fight – something which the hawkish duo have not factored into their plan.This is especially true after Turkey’s downing of a Russian bomber plane on the Turkish-Syrian border, which Moscow considered a stab in the back and which sent relations with Ankara to a low not seen for decades.Baghdad has its own concerns about a Turkish presence on its territory after Ankara sent troops into western Iraq and refused to withdraw them, despite Iraqi protests. Ankara claimed the incursion was made under a 2014 invitation from Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 15
     
    To hell with international law governing warfare. The U.S. is sending in boots on the ground, despite being told "no" by Iraq. 
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This might be the most controversial theory for what's behind the rise of ISIS - The Wa... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-the-rise-of-the-islamic-state war & peace Middle-East income inequality
shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • A year after his 700-page opus "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" stormed to the top of America's best-seller lists, Thomas Piketty is out with a new argument about income inequality. It may prove more controversial than his book, which continues to generate debate in political and economic circles. The new argument, which Piketty spelled out recently in the French newspaper Le Monde, is this: Inequality is a major driver of Middle Eastern terrorism, including the Islamic State attacks on Paris earlier this month — and Western nations have themselves largely to blame for that inequality. Piketty writes that the Middle East's political and social system has been made fragile by the high concentration of oil wealth into a few countries with relatively little population. If you look at the region between Egypt and Iran — which includes Syria — you find several oil monarchies controlling between 60 and 70 percent of wealth, while housing just a bit more than 10 percent of the 300 million people living in that area. (Piketty does not specify which countries he's talking about, but judging from a study he co-authored last year on Middle East inequality, it appears he means Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudia Arabia, Bahrain and Oman. By his numbers, they accounted for 16 percent of the region's population in 2012 and almost 60 percent of its gross domestic product.)
  • This concentration of so much wealth in countries with so small a share of the population, he says, makes the region "the most unequal on the planet." Within those monarchies, he continues, a small slice of people controls most of the wealth, while a large — including women and refugees — are kept in a state of "semi-slavery." Those economic conditions, he says, have become justifications for jihadists, along with the casualties of a series of wars in the region perpetuated by Western powers. His list starts with the first Gulf War, which he says resulted in allied forces returning oil "to the emirs." Though he does not spend much space connecting those ideas, the clear implication is that economic deprivation and the horrors of wars that benefited only a select few of the region's residents have, mixed together, become what he calls a "powder keg" for terrorism across the region.
  • Piketty is particularly scathing when he blames the inequality of the region, and the persistence of oil monarchies that perpetuate it, on the West: "These are the regimes that are militarily and politically supported by Western powers, all too happy to get some crumbs to fund their [soccer] clubs or sell some weapons. No wonder our lessons in social justice and democracy find little welcome among Middle Eastern youth." Terrorism that is rooted in inequality, Piketty continues, is best combated economically. To gain credibility with those who do not share in the region's wealth, Western countries should demonstrate that they are more concerned with the social development of the region than they are with their own financial interests and relationships with ruling families. The way to do this, he says, is to ensure that Middle eastern oil money funds "regional development," including far more education.
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  • He concludes by looking inward, at France, decrying its discrimination in the hiring of immigrants and the high unemployment levels among those populations. He says Europe must turn away from "austerity" and reinvigorate its model of integration and job creation, and notes that the continent accepted a net 1 million immigrants per year before the financial crisis. The argument has not gained much notice in the United States thus far. It rests on some controversial principles, not the least of which is the question of how unequal the Middle East is compared to the rest of the world — a problem rooted in the region's poor quality of economic statistics. In his paper last year, Piketty and a co-author concluded inequality was in fact quite high. "Under plausible assumptions," the paper states in its abstract, "the top 10% income share (for the Middle East) could be well over 60%, and the top 1% share might exceed 25% (vs. 20% in the United States, 11% in Western Europe, and 17% in South Africa)."
  • Those would, indeed, be jarring levels. They are the high end of the scenarios Piketty lays out in the paper. Whether they are a root cause of the Islamic State is a debate that is very likely just beginning.
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