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Javier E

Top British Spy Warns of Terrorists' Use of Social Media - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-tech-companies-militants.html

social media terrorism islamist tech spying security

shared by Javier E on 05 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • One of Britain’s highest-ranking intelligence officials on Tuesday castigated the giant American companies that dominate the Internet for providing the “command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals” and challenged the companies to find a better balance between privacy and security.
  • the accusation went beyond what United States officials have said about Apple, Google and others that are now moving toward sophisticated encryption of more and more data on phones and email systems.
  • companies like his “will move to strengthen encryption,” and require governments to get court orders if they want data.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • But the companies, saying they are responding to demand from their users, show no signs of backing down. Recently the chief executive of Apple, Tim Cook, said governments that want data should deal with the users of the technology, not with the providers of the hardware and services.
  • Mr. Hannigan, in an opinion article on Tuesday in The Financial Times, singled out the Islamic State, the radical group also known as ISIS and ISIL, as one “whose members have grown up on the Internet” and are “exploiting the power of the web to create a jihadi threat with near-global reach.”
  • Increasingly encrypted products and services are “a challenge,” Admiral Rogers said. “And we’ll deal with it.”But he also pushed for better sharing of data between the intelligence community and private technology companies. Moves to set up a formal information-sharing system have stalled in Congress in the face of objections from the private sector.
  • But Mr. Hannigan’s comments, calling for “a new deal between democratic governments and the technology companies in the area of protecting our citizens,” seemed to urge a further review of the balance between civil liberties and national security. Britain, like other European nations, has been increasingly concerned about online recruitment of potential fighters from within its borders by radical groups.
  • Facebook said in a company blog post that requests by governments for user information were rising steadily, by about a quarter in the first half of the year over the second half of last year.“In the first six months of 2014, governments around the world made 34,946 requests for data,” the post said. “During the same time, the amount of content restricted because of local laws increased about 19 percent.”
  • Twitter received more than 2,000 requests for information about user accounts from roughly 50 countries in the first six months of 2014, according to a company statement. The number of requests represented a 46 percent increase compared with the same period last year, and more than 60 percent of the requests came from the United States government.
  • In the past, Al Qaeda and its affiliates, which have broken with the Islamic State, “saw the Internet as a place to disseminate material anonymously or meet in ‘dark spaces,’ ” Mr. Hannigan wrote, while the Islamic State “has embraced the web as a noisy channel in which to promote itself, intimidate people and radicalize new recruits.”The opinion article by Mr. Hannigan referred specifically to messaging and social media sites and apps such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp.“There is no need for today’s would-be jihadis to seek out restricted websites with secret passwords: They can follow other young people posting their adventures in Syria as they would anywhere else,” he wrote.
jlessner

French Premier Declares 'War' on Radical Islam as Paris Girds for Rally - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...paris-terrorist-attacks.html

french war radical islam paris rally

shared by jlessner on 10 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • PARIS — Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared Saturday that France was at war with radical Islam after the harrowing sieges that led to the deaths of three gunmen and four hostages the day before. New details emerged about the bloody final confrontations, and security forces remained on high alert.
  • It is a war against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity,”
  • The French government said it would put 500 additional troops on the streets over the weekend amid preparations for a giant unity rally in Paris on Sunday.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The crisis and its aftermath presented a major challenge to President François Hollande and his government, which are facing deep religious and cultural rifts in a nation with a rapidly growing Muslim population while simultaneously coping with the security threats stemming from Islamic extremists. Large numbers of French citizens have been traveling to Syria and Iraq to fight with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
  • Mr. Hollande, appealing for unity, has warned against seeing Muslims as the enemy, and Mr. Valls called again on Saturday for citizens to join the rally planned for Sunday.
Javier E

The Empire Is Striking Back « The Dish - 0 views

dish.andrewsullivan.com/...the-empire-is-striking-back

iraq us foreign policy hilary obama

shared by Javier E on 11 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration is now facing a real test of its resolve in Iraq. The depressing but utterly predictable resurgence of Sunni Jihadism in a country broken in 2003 and never put back together again by the “surge” has been so successful and the Iraqi government so weak that even Kurdistan is now at risk. The policy now is to do enough – but no more – to keep the Kurds in the game, keep the Yazidis on planet earth and push the Iraqis in Baghdad to get real.
  • the greatest throwback to 2003 in this respect is Hillary Clinton. So far as one can tell from her interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, there is no daylight between her and John McCain or even Benjamin Netanyahu – but a hell of a lot of space between her and Barack Obama
  • Obama’s signature achievement so far has been his steadiness in resisting that vortex, in defusing Jihadism rather than giving it yet more reason to be inflamed, in being that rare president capable of internalizing what most Americans want – rather than what Sunday talk show blowhards demand.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Clinton’s position is Netanyahu’s. And that’s important to understand. If you want a United States with no daylight between it and any Israeli government, whatever that government may do, vote for Clinton. If you want someone who believes the Libya intervention was the right thing to do, vote for Clinton. If you think America’s problem is not torture or drones or destabilizing occupations or debt but that we don’t tell the world how great we are enough, then vote for Clinton. If you really long for 2003 again, vote for Clinton.
  • isn’t it amazing that after the catastrophes of the Bush-Cheney era, both parties could effectively be running neocons for the presidency in 2016! Welcome to Washington – where the past is always present, amnesia is a lubricant, and the leading Democrat is running as a neocon.
mollyharper

CENTCOM Twitter account hacked, suspended - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by mollyharper on 12 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • mollyharper on 12 Jan 15
     
    "We can confirm that the U.S. Central Command Twitter account was compromised earlier today. CENTCOM is taking appropriate measure to address the matter," a defense official told CNN. A series of unusual tweets were published with apparent warnings from ISIS, as well as links, images and Pentagon documents that reveal contact information for members of the military.
dpittenger

House law enforcement chief monitoring terror threat - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

law enforcement terror monitoring US politics

shared by dpittenger on 16 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • "The public, and in particular the Congressional community, was never in danger during the investigation. The United States Capitol Police (USCP) remains in close coordination with the FBI and my office continues to monitor the situation," Irving writes.
  • The email comes just the day after the FBI successfully foiled a plot to attack the U.S. Capitol
  • "The real weapons of mass destruction today are unemployed 22-year-olds who fall for this radical ideology and we've got to figure out how to counter that," he said on CNN's "New Day."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Instead, King said the U.S. needs to address what he called a "deeper question": figuring out how the U.S. can combat the radical ideology spread increasingly online by extremists like ISIS and al-Qaeda.
  • "Americans will sleep better knowing that their government is actual doing their constitutional duty,"
sgardner35

More Than a Dozen Detained as Europe Moves to Sweep Up Potential Terrorists - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-arrests-terrorism-links.html

shared by sgardner35 on 16 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • the Belgian police said on Friday that 13 people had been detained in Belgium and two in France after a shootout in which two men believed to be militants were kill
  • the authorities had conducted searches at a dozen locations where the police had found four weapons normally used by the military, including AK-47 assault rifles,
  • did not believe there was a direct connection between the events in Belgium and the carnage in France last week when gunmen conducted a three-day onslaught that left 17 people dead.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • detainees belonged to the “entourage” of Amedy Coulibaly, one of the three gunmen involved in attacks in and near Paris last week.
  • Mr. Coulibaly was accused of shooting dead a police officer on Jan. 8 and taking hostages at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris the next day, killing four of them.
  • In Germany, prosecutors said that 250 officers had raided 11 apartments after months of tracking a group that was said to support the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, with money and the recruitment of combatants.
  • As the waves of alarm spread, the only Orthodox Jewish school in the Netherlands was closed on Friday, Reuters reported, even though there was no specific threat against it.
  • Verviers is home to one of the biggest mosques in French-speaking Belgium, the newspaper report
  • The attacks last week provoked alarm, not simply about terrorism but also about a wider range of issues relating to the balance between liberty and security
  • The editorial director of Charlie Hebdo, Stéphane Charbonnier, who signed his drawings with the name “Charb,” was buried on Friday in Pontoise, near Paris, where he had lived as a child.
qkirkpatrick

'Jihadi John': Islamic State killer is identified as Londoner Mohammed Emwazi - The Was... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...4-bdfa-b8e8f594e6ee_story.html

politics ISIL ISIS Syria

shared by qkirkpatrick on 26 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • qkirkpatrick on 26 Feb 15
     
    Officials have identified "Jihadi John"
Javier E

The Truth About the Wars - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-in-iraq-and-afghanistan.html

mideast war strategy iraq surge obama history

shared by Javier E on 16 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Here’s a legend that’s going around these days. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and toppled a dictator. We botched the follow-through, and a vicious insurgency erupted. Four years later, we surged in fresh troops, adopted improved counterinsurgency tactics and won the war. And then dithering American politicians squandered the gains. It’s a compelling story. But it’s just that — a story.
  • The surge in Iraq did not “win” anything. It bought time. It allowed us to kill some more bad guys and feel better about ourselves. But in the end, shackled to a corrupt, sectarian government in Baghdad and hobbled by our fellow Americans’ unwillingness to commit to a fight lasting decades, the surge just forestalled today’s stalemate. Like a handful of aspirin gobbled by a fevered patient, the surge cooled the symptoms. But the underlying disease didn’t go away. The remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Sunni insurgents we battled for more than eight years simply re-emerged this year as the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
  • As a general, I got it wrong. Like my peers, I argued to stay the course, to persist and persist, to “clear/hold/build” even as the “hold” stage stretched for months, and then years, with decades beckoning. We backed ourselves season by season into a long-term counterinsurgency in Iraq, then compounded it by doing likewise in Afghanistan. The American people had never signed up for that.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • We did not understand the enemy, a guerrilla network embedded in a quarrelsome, suspicious civilian population. We didn’t understand our own forces, which are built for rapid, decisive conventional operations, not lingering, ill-defined counterinsurgencies. We’re made for Desert Storm, not Vietnam.
  • those who served deserve an accounting from the generals. What happened? How? And, especially, why? It has to be a public assessment, nonpartisan and not left to the military. (We tend to grade ourselves on the curve.) Something along the lines of the 9/11 Commission is in order.
  • Today we are hearing some, including those in uniform, argue for a robust ground offensive against the Islamic State in Iraq. Air attacks aren’t enough, we’re told. Our Kurdish and Iraqi Army allies are weak and incompetent. Only another surge can win the fight against this dire threat. Really? If insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, I think we’re there.
  • I’d like to suggest an alternative. Maybe an incomplete and imperfect effort to contain the Islamic State is as good as it gets. Perhaps the best we can or should do is to keep it busy, “degrade” its forces, harry them or kill them, and seek the long game at the lowest possible cost. It’s not a solution that is likely to spawn a legend. But in the real world, it just may well give us something better than another defeat.
jlessner

U.N. Urges Arab World to Denounce Islamic State - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...o-denounce-islamic-state-.html

arab world politics crisis

shared by jlessner on 19 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • His comments come as an American-led coalition expands military action against Islamic State strongholds in Iraq and Syria, but has so far been unable to stop its killing rampage. On Sunday, the Islamic State announced the beheading of an American, Peter Kassig.
  • We are not looking at a collapse of Iraqi state. We’ve turned the tide,” he said.
  • Iraq, however, has paid a heavy price already. Since the beginning of the year, he said, 10,000 civilians have been killed and 20,000 injured.
Javier E

No Escape From History - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...385352

history racism moral equivalence sin American idea morality

shared by Javier E on 12 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Jim Crow and slavery were not merely the sins of Southerners and the religious right, but the sins of America, itself. Enslavement was not merely a boon for the South, but for the country as a whole. (During the Civil War, New York City was a hotbed of secessionist sympathy mostly because of its economic ties to the South.) And there is simply no way to understand segregation in this country without understanding the housing policies of Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt and the G.I. Bill signed by Democratic president Harry Truman.
  • There are now intelligent people going on television to tell us that the president should not use the word "crusade" to describe ... The Crusades.
  • The problem is history. Or rather the problem is that there is no version of history that can award the West a stable moral high-ground.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Some of the most prominent Christian leaders in this country used their authority to burnish the credentials of South Africa's racist regime—not in the 1960s, in the 1980s.
  • In such a world, a certainty about which "side" is always good and which "side" is forever evil doesn't really exist. And in an uncertain world, Obama is making a wise appeal for vigilance—vigilance against the death cult of ISIS, and vigilance against the allure of death cults period—even those inaugurated in the name of one's preferred God.
Javier E

British Prime Minister Suggests Banning Some Online Messaging Apps - NYTimes.com - 0 views

bits.blogs.nytimes.com/...ing-some-online-messaging-apps

cybersecurity terrorism data mining government

shared by Javier E on 15 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • “Are we going to allow a means of communications which it simply isn’t possible to read?” Mr. Cameron said at an event on Monday, in reference to services like WhatsApp, Snapchat and other encrypted online applications. “My answer to that question is: ‘No, we must not.’ ”
  • Mr. Cameron said his first duty was to protect the country against terrorist attacks.
  • “The attacks in Paris demonstrated the scale of the threat that we face and the need to have robust powers through our intelligence and security agencies in order to keep our people safe,”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Mr. Cameron’s comments are part of a growing debate in Europe and the United States over whether Internet companies and telecom providers must cooperate fully with intelligence agencies, who have seen an increased use of social media by groups like the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
  • After the Paris attacks, European leaders, for example, called on Internet service providers to report potentially harmful online material aimed at inciting hatred or terror.
Grace Gannon

FBI 'foils IS-inspired plot to attack on US Capitol' - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-us-canada-30824375

US Capitol FBI ISIS Islam government extremist

shared by Grace Gannon on 15 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Grace Gannon on 15 Jan 15
     
    The FBI has arrested a man in Ohio for allegedly planning to attack the US Capitol in Washington in an Islamic State-inspired attack. Christopher Cornell has been charged with attempting to kill a US government officer, according to court documents. He came to the attention of the FBI after tweeting support for extremist groups like Islamic State.
Emilio Ergueta

BBC News - What's the appeal of a caliphate? - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...magazine-29761018

bbc ISIS history politics crisis

shared by Emilio Ergueta on 27 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • In June the leader of Islamic State declared the creation of a caliphate stretching across parts of Syria and Iraq - Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi named himself the caliph or leader. Edward Stourton examines the historical parallels and asks what is a caliphate, and what is its appeal?
  • The last caliphate - that of the Ottomans - was officially abolished 90 years ago this spring. Yet in a 2006 Gallup survey of Muslims living in Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia and Pakistan, two-thirds of respondents said they supported the goal of "unifying all Islamic countries" into a new caliphate
  • "Seventy years after the Prophet's death, this Muslim world stretched from Spain and Morocco right the way to Central Asia and to the southern bits of Pakistan, so a huge empire that was all… under the control of a single Muslim leader," says historian Prof Hugh Kennedy. "And it's this Muslim unity, the extent of Muslim sovereignty, that people above all look back to."
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The caliphate was finally extinguished by Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, in 1924. He believed the abolition of the institution was essential to his campaign to turn what was left of the empire into a 20th Century secular nation state. The last Ottoman caliph was expelled from Istanbul to live out a life of cultured exile in Paris and on the Cote d'Azur.
  • n the early days of the Arab Spring, the revolutions in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Libya were interpreted in Western capitals as evidence that the Muslim future lay with democracy. Then in Egypt came the overthrow of the democratically-elected Muslim Brotherhood government by the army under General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi - and then came the horrors of Islamic State amid the bloody chaos of civil strife in Syria and Iraq
  • Many classical Sunni scholars challenge the very notion that the caliphate is a political project. Sheikh Ruzwan Mohammed, for example, argues that the key to the caliphate is really spiritual. "I think the Islamic State should come from within," he says. "It should be an Islamic State first and foremost of mind and soul." And the overwhelming majority, even of those who do believe that a new caliphate is a realistic political objective, completely reject the violence espoused by the self-styled Islamic Stat
  • But IS has skilfully exploited the elements in the caliphate's history which best serve its purposes. The historian Hugh Kennedy has pointed out, for example, that their black uniforms and flags deliberately echo the black robes the Abbasids adopted as their court dress in the 8th Century, thus recalling Islam's Golden Age. And their original title - the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - harks back to the days when there was no national border between the two countries, because both territories were part of the great Islamic caliphate.
mollyharper

Officials: 3 Denver girls played hooky from school and tried to join ISIS - 1 views

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/us/colorado-teens-syria-odyssey/index.html?hpt=us_t2

started by mollyharper on 23 Oct 14 no follow-up yet
Javier E

In A Major Reversal, Rand Paul Pushes For Higher Defense Spending - 0 views

talkingpointsmemo.com/...-paul-budget-amendment-defense

hawk foreign policy defense budget GOP

shared by Javier E on 27 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Republican presidential hopeful Rand Paul filed an amendment to the Senate budget on Wednesday calling for a significant boost to defense spending, a reversal for the libertarian senator who has previously called for across-the-board cuts to domestic and military spending.
  • The amendment, filed without public notice and first reported by Time, is the latest of several moves by the Kentucky senator seemingly aimed at placating the GOP's ascendant hawkish wing ahead of a reported campaign announcement next month.
  • One of Paul's signature issues has been a non-interventionist foreign policy and less U.S. military involvement around the world, a philosophy that was gaining traction among some Republicans before the emergence of the Islamic State threat. His budgets in prior years have called for reducing spending on defense.
nolan_delaney

Inside the Air War - CBS News - 0 views

www.cbsnews.com/...ir-war-against-isis-60-minutes

war US bombing aircraft

shared by nolan_delaney on 29 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The air war's been going on for 14 months but this is the first time news cameras have been allowed into its nerve center.
  • "The weapon of choice here is information because the more information we have both about the enemy and about our friendlies, the better we're able to make decisions."
  • From just that one airplane, scheduling-wise, about a three-day process and some of those targets we've looked at for, you know, for days, weeks and sometimes months.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • In the last month and a half, U.S. and allied planes have struck 47 facilities like this one.
  • nolan_delaney on 29 Oct 15
     
    Like how war had changed during WWI (even though it took so long for new effective tactics to be developed), the strategy of war is still changing
johnsonma23

Aaron Rodgers slams alleged anti-Muslim remark during moment of silence | MSNBC - 0 views

www.msnbc.com/...m-remark-during-moment-silence

msnbc crisis muslim attacks

shared by johnsonma23 on 16 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Aaron Rodgers slams alleged anti-Muslim remark during moment of silence
  • A moment was observed before the start of all of Sunday’s NFL games to pay tribute to the memories of the over 100 people killed in terrorist attacks in Paris, France on Friday
  • a fan yelled “Muslims suck” during the moment of silence at the Packers game, which drew an angry reaction from some fans, including one who shouted back: “Have some respect!
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • It’s that kind of prejudicial ideology that I think puts us in the position that we’re in today as a world.”
  • what appears to have been lone fans shouted: “ISIS sucks.”
katyshannon

Abbas Says PA Not Bound by Agreements With Israel - Diplomacy and Defense - Haaretz - 2 views

www.haaretz.com/...1.678271

israel palestine politics crisis history culture policy

shared by katyshannon on 01 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • NEW YORK – The Palestinian Authority will no longer uphold the agreements it has signed with Israel over the last 20 years, PA President Mahmoud Abbas told the UN General Assembly on Wednesday
  • Abbas said Israel “must assume all of its responsibilities as an occupying power
  • The State of Palestine, based on the 4th of June 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, is a state under occupation,” Abbas continued. He urged the United Nations to grant the Palestinians international protection and said any country that hasn’t yet recognized Palestine should do so forthwith.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Abbas used the speech to assail Israel, accusing it of systematically violating all its agreements with the Palestinians and of trying to destroy the two-state solution.
  • A response to the speech issued by the Prime Minister’s Office didn’t relate directly to Abbas’ statement.  
  • “We expect and call on the [Palestinian] Authority and its leader to act responsibly and accede to the proposal of the prime minister of Israel and enter into direct negotiations with Israel without preconditions,” the PMO said. “The fact that he – time and again – has refused to do so is the best possible proof of the fact he does not intend to reach a peace agreement.”
  • Abbas also dwelled at length on hate crimes perpetrated by Jews against Palestinians and accused Israel of protecting the perpetrators rather than catching them. He also accused Israel of establishing an apartheid regime in the West Bank.
  • “How can a state claiming to be an oasis of democracy and claiming that its courts and security apparatus function according to the law accept the existence of so-called ‘price tag’ gangs and other terrorist organizations that terrorize our people, their property and holy sites, all under the sight of the Israeli army and police, which do not deter or punish, but rather provide them with protection?” he demanded.
  • Responding to speeches by other world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, which focused mainly on the battle against ISIS, Abbas declared that any war on terror must begin with solving the Palestinian problem.
  • Immediately after his speech, Abbas attended a festive ceremony in which the Palestinian flag was raised at UN headquarters for the first time.
  • U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told the gathering that he doesn’t consider Israeli-Palestinian peace an “impossible dream” and that Washington remains committed to peace talks.
  • katyshannon on 01 Oct 15
     
    Abbas says Palestine is no longer bound by agreements with Israel
  • horowitzza on 03 Oct 15
     
    This man, Abbas, is an anti-semite, and has made it very clear that he does not want peace: "Every drop of blood that has been spilled in Jerusalem is holy blood as long as it was for Allah," and "The Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours and they (the Jews) have no right to defile it with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem." 'I will never allow a single Israeli to live among us on Palestinian land' "I come before you today from the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him and the birthplace of Jesus Christ peace be upon him, to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people…" He did not even reference the Jewish connection to Israel "In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli-civilian or soldier-in our lands." It is very difficult to believe anything he said in his speech in this article. This kind of article is the propaganda that is spreading anti Israel and anti-semitic views throughout the world.
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