US missile defense system proves to be useless after $40 bln spent
RT | June 17, 2014
Despite a decade of testing and tens of billions of dollars’ worth of research, a major missile defense program in the United States has proven to be anything but successful, a new investigation suggests.
Nevertheless, the Missile Defense Agency, or MDA, plans on conducting next week its ninth exercise of that costly system since 2004, and the outcome of the drill is expected to influence whether or not more than a dozen new interceptors are added to the United States’ arsenal.
According to a recent investigation by the Los Angeles Times, however, that system has so far been marred by mistakes that raise questions about its ability to thwart any major attack and the cost incurred during the last decade.
The results of the Times probe, published by the paper on Sunday this week, show that Pentagon officials with inside knowledge of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, or GMD, say the program has suffered from mishaps more often than the US government would have expected.
“[A] decade after it was declared operational, and after $40 billion in spending, the missile shield cannot be relied on, even in carefully scripted tests that are much less challenging than an actual attack would be,” David Willman wrote for the Times over the weekend.
“Official pronouncements about the GMD system, The Times found, have overstated its reliability.”
Results have been mixed to say the least since as far as 1999 when GMD testing first began — half of the first 16 tests of the system’s ability to intercept a mock enemy warhead failed, the Times acknowledged. The system was finally upgraded to “operational” in 2004, but five of the eight tests held in the last decade have failed as well.
The GMD system is expected to intercept incoming missiles, like hypothetical attacks waged by adversaries such as Iran or North Korea. Even when US officials have scripted test drills to try out this ability, however, the GMD program has hardly acted as expected. The last successful intercept occurred five-and-a-half years ago, and the last three attempts — two in 2010 and one last July — all were unsuccessful.
“The tests are scripted for success,” Philip E. Coyle III, a former director of operational testing and evaluation for the Pentagon, told the Times. “What’s amazing to me is that they still fail.”
Because of this tainted track record, all eyes are expected to be on a drill later this month on June 22. MDA Director Navy Vice Adm. James Syring told Congress recently that the upcoming intercept flight test remains his “highest priority,” and with good reason:14 new intercepts could be added to a MDA system currently composed of 30 if the upcoming test is a success, but Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel hinted that failure would mean a halt in funding.
Speaking before Congress, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) said “not just friends of the United States but even our enemies” will monitor the next round of testing in order to gauge the current abilities of the MDA program.
“I’m also optimistic we have identified the cause of the intercept failure involving our first-generation EKV last July when the CE-1 failed to separate from the booster’s third stage,” Syring said. “We have accounted for this issue in the upcoming flight test and we are working toward a correction for the entire fleet before the end of the year.”
Regardless, Syring is appealing to Congress for $99.5 million to begin what he described Wednesday to the Times as “redesign improvement” that would stop short of a complete overhaul, sources familiar with the matter told the paper.
The Presbyterian Church’s Tough Love Of Israel
By Sam Bahour | TPM | June 14, 2014
The 2 million-member Presbyterian Church (USA) is about to make history in the Middle East, yet again. In the coming days, local delegates from the Church will travel to Detroit to attend the 221st Presbyterian General Assembly to consider a set of eight overtures that ask church leaders to review support of two states for Palestine and Israel in light of unfolding facts on the ground. Other issues to be considered are backing of equal rights and unblocked economic development for all inhabitants of Israel, and divesting from the likes of Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola Solutions. The Church is clearly stepping up to the plate and realigning its policies with its values.
Political America and Corporate America should be taking note.
Reminiscent of the struggle against Apartheid South Africa, the Church is poised to step in where successive US administrations have failed to hold Israel accountable to international and humanitarian law, not to mention sheer common sense.
The U.S. has paid never-ending lip service to the need to end Israel’s 47-year military occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. During the past two decades, the U.S. has coupled lip service with the monopolizing of a peace process that has led the international community to a dead end; not to mention leaving Muslim and Christian Palestinians on the ground, in the occupied territory as well as in Israel, standing naked in front of a state bent on militarily controlling another people and discriminating against over 20 percent of their own non-Jewish population. Presbyterians have had enough and are taking the lead to change the equation and stop the damage being perpetrated by Israel.
Political America should not take lightly the new reality that mainstream churches and civil society have reached a point where they can no longer blindly repeat calls for a resolution based on “two states” when Israeli actions on the ground, by way of continued illegal settlement building and much more, have created a single state reality between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River. Secretary of State John Kerry alluded to exactly this at the outset of the last failed round of U.S.-led negotiations when he testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in April 2013 and noted, “I believe the window for a two-state solution is shutting, I think we have some period of time – a year to year-and-a-half to two years, or it’s over.” The Presbyterian Church is crying out from the highest mountain it can that for a two-state solution not to be “over” immediate action must be taken. They are calling for the Church to review this core issue over the next two years.
Corporate America should also be closely following the Presbyterian General Assembly’s proceedings.
In the 2012 Assembly, delegates addressed the issue of divesting from firms that benefit from or contribute to Israel’s military occupation by attempting to pass a resolution calling for divestment from Israel. When the so-called pro-Israel lobby got word of this, they mobilized to introduce and pass a counter overture that promotes “positive investment” instead of divestment. In a perfected Orwellian move, these lobbyists publicly promote investment in Palestine, while simultaneously turning a blind eye to the systematic Israeli polices strangling the Palestinian economy.
Investment in Palestine — without divestment from the Israeli occupation — only continues to underwrite the status quo of military occupation. For investment to be successful occupation must be dismantled and sovereign control of Palestine’s economic resources passed to the Palestinians.
In this month’s Assembly, the divestment resolution will be brought to the floor once again for a vote. Now it comes at the heels of Secretary Kerry’s failed blitz to resolve the conflict and a momentous trip by the Pope to Bethlehem where he prayed at the illegal Separation Wall. The US-based organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, recently noted that the Israel lobby’s efforts have included offering Presbyterian leaders all-expenses-paid trips to Israel. Presbyterians can use this opportunity to straighten the White House’s spine based on what the administration already knows: Israel is intentionally blocking progress in the peace talks while jeopardizing US strategic interests in the region, not to mention the fate of Palestinians and Israelis alike.
Palestinian civil society and Palestinians — Christians and Muslims — have urged everyone interested in seeing peace with justice to divest from the occupation and to invest only where the occupation does not benefit. We struggle to remain hopeful while a cement wall as high as 24 feet tall snakes through our homeland. After all, we do not seek a beautified prison. We want the prison walls dividing Palestinians from Palestinians to come tumbling down, and that will not happen unless economic pressure is placed on Israel to end the occupation. Thus, the upcoming Assembly’s overture that calls for divestment from firms benefiting from the occupation, while affirming “Occupation-Free Investment in Palestine,” is spot on.
Palestinians did not invent the non-violent tool of divestment. After unsuccessfully trying to secure their rights using a multitude of other means, Palestinians have focused their efforts on non-violent methods of resisting military occupation that have been used throughout history by others: boycott, divestment, sanction, international law, civil disobedience, diplomatic efforts, economic resistance, and the like. Supporting these tools is supporting non-violence; the alternative is to push Palestinians into using violent means of resistance. If nonviolence is deemed unacceptable then violence becomes that much more likely.
The upcoming Presbyterian vote provides an important opportunity to say yes to nonviolence as the means to overcoming Israeli occupation and discrimination.
Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American business consultant in Ramallah, the West Bank, and blogs at epalestine.com.
Judge Finds Courts Cannot Protect US Citizens Tortured by US Government Officials Abroad
By Kevin Gosztola | Firedoglake | June 17, 2014
A federal district court dismissed a case that was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a United States citizen and against US government officials who allegedly tortured, abused and subjected him to rendition and incommunicado detention in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia. The dismissal was another stark example of how it is nearly impossible for torture victims to push for justice in an American court of law.
Amir Meshal was in the Horn of Africa when, on January 24, 2007, Kenyan soldiers captured and interrogated him. He was “hooded, handcuffed and flown to Nairobi, where he was taken to the Ruai Police Station and questioned by an officer of Kenya’s Criminal Investigation Department” and was told that the police had to “find out what the United States wanted to do with him before he could send him back to the United States.” He remained in detention without access to a telephone or his attorney for a week, according to the US District Court of the District of Columbia’s decision [PDF].
On February 3, “three Americans,” who turned out to be FBI agents, interrogated Meshal and told him he would be handed over to the Kenyans and remain stuck in a “lawless country” if he did not cooperate. The agents also accused him of “having received weapons and interrogation resistance training in an al Qaeda camp.” Supervising Special Agent Chris Higgenbotham, one of the officials sued, threatened Meshal with being transferred to Israel where the Israelis would “make him disappear.” Meshal was informed that another US citizen he had met in Kenya, Daniel Maldonado, who was also seized by Kenyan soldiers, “had a lot to say about” him and his story “would have to match.”
Meshal was flown by Kenyan officials to Somalia with twelve others on February 9. He was “detained in handcuffs in an underground room with no windows or toilets,” which was referred to as “the cave.” This was allegedly to prevent pressure from Kenyan courts to halt his detention and interrogation by FBI agents.
About a week later, Meshal was transported in handcuffs and a blindfold to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He was held there in incommunicado detention for a week before Ethiopian officials started \regularly transporting him to a villa with other prisoners where he could be interrogated by FBI agents. He remained in detention for three months and was moved into solitary confinement twice.
Finally, on May 24, he was taken to the US Embassy in Addis Ababa and flown back to the US. He was detained for four months and lost eighty pounds. US officials never charged him with a crime.
Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, wrote in the decision, “The facts alleged in this case and the legal questions presented are deeply troubling.” But, he added, “Although Congress has legislated with respect to detainee rights, it has provided no civil remedies for US citizens subject to the appalling mistreatment Mr. Meshal has alleged against officials of his own government.”
In the past couple of years, Sullivan acknowledged, three federal appeals courts, including the appeals court for the DC Circuit, had rejected cases brought by citizens, including military contractors, who alleged they had been tortured or abused by US government officials. He claimed, “Only the legislative branch can provide United States citizens with a remedy for mistreatment by the United States government on foreign soil; this court cannot.”
ACLU National Security Project Director Hina Shamsi reacted, “While we appreciate the court’s outrage at the appalling mistreatment Mr. Meshal suffered at the hands of his own government, we are deeply disappointed at the court’s conclusion that it does not have the power to provide him a remedy.
“It is a sad day for Mr. Meshal and for all Americans, who have a right to expect better of their government and their courts than immunity for terrible government misconduct,” Shamsi added.
The judge’s decision “sends a deeply troubling and negative signal,” Shamsi told Firedoglake. “We’re considering our next steps in this case.”
Meshal was only seeking to hold particular US government officials responsible for the torture and abuse he had experienced. Nonetheless, Sullivan essentially accepted the government’s “national security” argument—that Meshal was “attacking the nation’s foreign policy, specifically joint operations in the Horn of Africa and executive policies which permit FBI agents to conduct and participate in investigations abroad.”
“As the government points out, these claims have the potential to implicate ‘national security threats in the Horn of Africa region; substance and sources of intelligence; the extent to which each government in the region participates in or cooperates with U.S. operations to identify, apprehend, detain, and question suspected terrorists on their soil; [and] the actions taken by each government as part of any participation or cooperation with U.S. operations.’”
In other words, allowing Meshal to sue US government officials would interfere with affairs that were entirely in the control of the Executive Branch and violate separation of powers. US government officials can engage in all manner of conduct against an individual so long as he or she is in the custody of a foreign government.
Jose Padilla, a US citizen who was detained as an enemy combatant and allegedly tortured for three years while he was in US military custody on the mainland, had his case dismissed. A US citizen and government contractor who alleged he had been “illegally detained, interrogated and tortured for nearly ten months on a US military base in Iraq” had his case dismissed. And US citizens Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, who were US government contractors allegedly detained, arrested and tortured by the US military in Iraq, had their case dismissed.
These were the cases that Sullivan believed were “binding precedent” he had to follow yet he noted that a dissenting opinion in Vance’s case had warned that the judicial branch was “creating a doctrine of constitutional triviality where private actions are permitted only if they cannot possibly offend anyone anywhere.”
Judge Ann Claire Williams added, “That approach undermines our essential constitutional protections in the circumstances when they are often most necessary.” Sullivan added that the court feared this prediction was “arguably correct.”
FBI Supervising Special Agent Chris Higgenbotham forced Meshal to sign forms and told Meshal when he did not want to sign, “If you want to go home, this will help you get there. If you don’t cooperate with us, you’ll be in the hands of the Kenyans, and they don’t want you.”
Another Supervising Special Agent, Steve Hersem, told Meshal if he “confessed his connection to al Qaeda” only then would he be granted due process in a civilian court. Otherwise, if he didn’t “confess” he would be transferred to Somalia. Hersem also told Meshal he would “send him to Egypt, where he would be imprisoned and tortured if he did not cooperate and admit his connection with al Qaeda, and told him ‘you made it so that even your grand-kids are going to be affected by what you did.’”
While in Ethiopia, an unidentified FBI agent said he would only be sent home if he was “truthful.” Meshal repeatedly ask to speak to his lawyer but agents denied his requests.
The reality is that covert operations in America’s dirty wars are now more sacrosanct to the US government than the rights US citizens are supposed to enjoy.
US government officials deliberately refused to provide Meshal with a probable cause hearing or some form of due process. In fact, one of the only reasons the US Embassy got involved and he was eventually transported back to the US is because McClatchy Newspapers became aware of his detention and published a story under the headline, “American’s rendition may have broken international, US laws.”
If a US media organization had not found out about his mistreatment, how much longer would he have been held and interrogated by FBI agents who were threatening him daily?
French arms sales rise by 42%
MEMO | June 17, 2014
Defence Minister Jean-Yves Lodrian said on Monday that French arms sales increased by 42 per cent or €6.7 billion in 2013 compared to 2012 and are expected to exceed seven billion Euros this year. Lodrian was speaking during the opening of the Eurosatory 2014 arms fair in the Paris suburb of Villepinte.
France recorded a strong comeback in the Middle East market, said Lodrian. The region is responsible for generating 40 per cent of France’s total exports and it has also increased its presence in the Asia and Latin America markets.
In 2013, France’s biggest contract was an agreement to renew the Saudi Arabian navy’s fleet of ships, worth €500 million; a contract to sell a communication satellite to Brazil is worth €300 million.
The minister pointed out that French exports of munitions for use by armoured vehicles grew by 5 per cent in 2013. He noted that the Scorpion programme to update light weapons will soon be launched at the cost of five billion Euros over ten years.
“This means that future equipment will include more than 2,500 armoured vehicles connected to each other by sophisticated electronic systems,” said Lodrian. “The Scorpion programme will allow the Leclerc tank to be in use until 2040.”
Eurosatory 2014 will enable French industrialists “to improve their exports”, the minister added. Nearly 1,500 exhibitors from 58 countries are taking part in the arms fair, which lasts until Friday.
Now it is official: Israeli campaign to control Wikipedia content
By Brenda Heard | Friends of Lebanon | June 16, 2014
Wikimedia has struck a deal with Israeli officials to promote students’ multi-lingual writing and re-writing of history, geography and science topics in Wikipedia. Unwitting readers of Wikipedia likely take accounts of Middle Eastern history at face value, not realising the extent of manipulation occurring behind the seemingly authoritative guise of an encyclopaedia. From word choice, to basic information given or omitted, to biased sources cited, Wikipedia is devolving into a completely untrustworthy source.
Of course there has been an Annual Wikipedia Academy Conference since 2009, where Israelis receive Wikipedia training and encouragement. And of course groups such as CAMERA, a pro-Zionist Israel public relations organisation, have been actively editing Wikipedia since at least 2008. And of course Israel has been actively funding hasbara on the internet for years and isn’t shy about its “digital diplomacy.” There’s even a “Jewish Internet Defense League” that claims to be the “cutting edge of pro-Israel digital online advocacy.” After all, the professed need for incessant national promotion campaigns fits into the “we are the ones under attack” theme.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has twice participated in the Israeli Presidential Conference. As he said at the 2011 Wikimania conference held in Haifa, “I love coming to Israel.” But it is Wales’ exchange with a Lebanese blogger that strongly calls into question Wikipedia’s public goal of offering a credible, neutral “sum of all human knowledge.” When the blogger asked Wales about his participation in the 2011 Israeli Presidential Conference, Wales snubbed the inquiry outright. Wales responded with trite, vacuous remarks in defence of Israel and then refused to communicate further. (An unripened e-conversation that amused several pro-Zionists.)
Surely Wikipedia management is aware that Israel is one of the most controversial topics in Wikipedia. One academic study determined that the “Israel” page was rivalled only by the “Adolf Hitler” page as being the most highly contested page contained in all of the study’s three language sets. From a researcher’s point of view, then, it is illogical to encourage additional bias in the most contentious topic. Yet that is precisely what Jimmy Wales has done and what this newly announced partnership does.
It can be very valuable to research Israeli sources—from newspapers to government agencies. But we should assess these sources with the knowledge that the information provided is filtered by an Israeli perspective, most likely Zionist. We should balance those sources with a variety of views from numerous perspectives. The key problem with anonymous, reference style sources like Wikipedia is that we might assume the neutrality they claim. Has Wikipedia offered similar partnerships with countries worldwide? Why not involve students in China, Peru, India, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Ethiopia, Vietnam, or the many other countries who might like a say in how the world is depicted? We have to wonder why favourtism has been allowed by Wikipedia and whether it will be openly revealed in its pages. Naturally, non-governmental Israelis should participate in building Wikipedia, but on equal terms with any other Wikipedian. Otherwise, Wikipedia is not what it pretends to be.
Additional Resources:
“The most controversial topics in Wikipedia: A multilingual and geographical analysis” (Yasseri T., Spoerri A., Graham M., and Kertész J., 2014)
Israel’s Ministry of Education & Wikimedia Israel Agree On New, Unique Initiative (Wikimedia Foundation, 10 June 2014)
“Initiative: Teachers, Students to Write for Wikipedia” (Israeli National News, 10 June 2014)
“Public schools to integrate Wikipedia into curriculum” (Israel Hayom News, 10 June 2014)
“Education Ministry and Wikipedia collaborate to write content for the internet site” (Jerusalem Post, 10 June 2014)
“EI exclusive: a pro-Israel group’s plan to rewrite history on Wikipedia” (The Electronic Intifada, 21 April 2008)
“The Mideast Editing Wars” (Gershom Gorenberg, 1 May 2008)
“Israel’s cyber warriors” (Lucy Tobin, 12 February 2009)
“Israel deploys cyber team to spread positive spin” (Jonathan Cook, 21 July 2009)
“Positive Views of Israel, Brought to You by Israelis” (Ethan Bronner, 17 February 2010)
“Israeli students to get $2,000 to spread state propaganda on Facebook” (Ali Abunimah, 1 April 2012)
“Jimmy Wales and Palestine” (Joey Ayoub, 12 January 2012)
“Israel to pay students to defend it online” (AP, 14 August 2013)
“Haifa University launches course in pro-Israel propaganda” (Ben White, 15 April 2014)
“University of Haifa’s ‘Cyber Warriors’ will help fight the delegitimization of Israel using new media” (U of Haifa, 30 March 2014)
Zvezda TV crew freed after harsh interrogation, ransom demands by Ukraine radicals
RT | June 17, 2014
Zvezda TV channel correspondent Evgeny Davydov, left, and sound engineer Nikita Konashenkov who were detained in Dnepropetrovsk are welcomed on their arrival at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport after their release. (RIA Novosti/Alexey Kudenko)
Reporters from Russia’s Zvezda TV channel have been freed from captivity in Ukraine, where Right Sector fighters detained, interrogated, and beat them for ransom. Risking their lives, they didn’t turn off their phones, which was crucial for their release.
A plane carrying Evgeny Davydov and Nikita Konashenkov landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport at 15:44 GMT on Monday. A few hours before their arrival in the Russian capital, the two journalists were handed over to Russian naval attaché Eduard Belashev in the city of Dnepropetrovsk.
The journalists spent two days in captivity, and were subjected to long questioning, intimidation, and beatings.
Recent images of the two men show the areas around their eyes covered in bruises. Their colleagues say that Davydov has complained of pain in his ear and partial hearing loss.
Zvezda TV channel has shared details of the reporters’ detention and release. The channel’s head, Aleksey Pimanov, said that Davydov and Konashenkov were freed due to “diplomatic efforts.” The station’s management sent pleas to new Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and the Ukrainian judiciary demanding the journalists’ immediate release.
The Russian Foreign Ministry called the release “good news” and the “result of persistent work of all of our structures with the active participation and support of the Russian media.” Moscow says the “illegal practice of detaining journalists in Ukraine” must stop, and that the right to peaceful and objective press coverage of events in Ukraine must be safeguarded.
Zvezda TV channel correspondent Evgeny Davydov, center, with his family and sound engineer Nikita Konashenkov on their arrival at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. (RIA Novosti/Alexey Kudenko)
The reporters were detained on June 14 while on their way to the airport. Saturday was meant to be the last day of their business trip in turbulent Ukraine and they were expected to fly home. They had been in Ukraine for over a month.
Constantly on the phone with Zvezda TV channel’s editors, Evgeny and Nikita successfully passed several checkpoints. However, they were stopped and detained at a post of the Ukrainian National Guard near Pokrovskoye, and the connection with the reporters was temporarily lost.
Zvezda journalists in Moscow launched a massive operation trying to find their colleagues. Both the Right Sector and the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) refused to comment on the detentions.
Eventually, the channel managed to determine the address of where Evgeny and Nikita were being held. This finding showed that Right Sector fighters were behind the detention – the building is shared by the SBU and the radical group. As Zvezda journalists found out later, the man who interrogated their detained colleagues was Maksim Miroshnichenko, the Right Sector’s press secretary in Dnepropetrovsk.
During the interrogation process, the journalists kept one of their phones constantly connected to the channel’s headquarters. The recording will now be transferred to authorities, who will launch a torture case. The use of force against the reporters can be heard on the recording.
Throughout the questioning, which was full of cursing, Miroshnichenko reportedly tried to force the journalists to admit they lied about the true purpose of their visit. Under pressure, the interrogators forced the Russian crew to denounce their reporting on the use of white phosphorus by the Ukrainian military in an aerial assault on the outskirts of Slavyansk on Thursday.
After the channel managed to determine the journalists’ whereabouts, representatives of the Right Sector contacted Zvezda demanding a US$200,000 ransom for the reporters, who they called “scum.” Failure to provide the money would result in consequences, with the captors sending a message to family members that the journalists would be “kept for some 10 years.”
On Monday, a YouTube video surfaced showing Davydov and Konashenkov with bruises on their faces. In the footage, the two are seemingly being forced to say they have “no complaints” about their treatment by the Right Sector, and that the visible hemorrhages on their bodies were caused by a fight with a colleague.
Their documents also surfaced on the internet, showing they were accredited by the Central Election Commission of Ukraine. But, in violation of all norms of international law and the Geneva Convention, the reporters were forced to sign statements which falsely declared their lack of professional ethics.
“Everything is done on the orders of the Kremlin in order to use this information in international politics to the detriment of Ukraine,” Davydov’s forced statement allegedly read.
Konashenkov’s written testament apparently claimed that they covered Ukrainian roadblocks, “also on Moscow’s orders,” in order to make “untrue photographs.”
Upon their safe return to Russia, the journalists were taken to hospital for treatment. Before they boarded the ambulance, they gave a few comments to the press crew that greeted them at the airport. They thanked the Russian authorities and media channels for helping secure their release. They also briefly shared the details of their abduction.
“We were traveling from Donetsk to Dnepropetrovsk. We had a direct return flight from Dnepropetrovsk to Moscow on Saturday. About 120 km from Dnepropetrovsk, we were stopped at a roadblock. This was the National Guard’s checkpoint. They stopped us, asked us for our documents, checked all our personal possessions, examining everything,” the duo told journalists.
“Seeing our Russian passports and that we are Zvezda TV staff, their face expressions changed. They smirked and said that they have a jackpot in their hands. They abducted us, blindfolded us, and placed us in a car, before driving us somewhere to a field, then to some base. They threw us in a cellar.”
A press conference with Konashenkov and Davydov is scheduled to take place later on Tuesday.
Russian journalists from a range of media outlets have been repeatedly detained during the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Another set of Zvezda crew members were abducted two weeks ago and released after several days of interrogation on accusations of espionage. RT contributor and UK national Graham Phillips was detained for over 36 hours by Kiev military forces back in May. Earlier, two Russian journalists working for LifeNews TV channel were also captured by Kiev forces, forced on their knees at gunpoint and taken to Kiev for interrogations which lasted almost one week.
In Search of a Wild Flower
In this short video, Al-Haq presents the case of Yousef Shawamreh’s death.
From 1/1/2014 — 31/03/2014, Al-Haq documentation indicates that Israeli forces killed around 16 Palestinians across the Occupied Palestinian Territory. This is a sharp increase in the number of killings as compared to the previous years and the number continues to rise with Three more Palestinians having been killed by Israeli forces from 1/4/2014 — 15/5/2014.
No Iran-US talks over Iraq crisis: Diplomat
Press TV – June 16, 2014
A senior Iranian diplomat has rejected reports about negotiations between Iran and the US over the ongoing crisis in Iraq.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran has had no negotiations with the Americans over mutual cooperation in Iraq,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Monday.
We believe that the Iraqi people and armed forces are capable of handling the crisis in their country on their own, he added.
The Iranian diplomat also dismissed the likelihood of the spillover of the crisis into Iran, saying, “There is no threat against the geographical borders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but necessary precautions have been taken in this regard.”
Commenting on the quality of Iran’s cooperation with Iraq in fighting terrorism, Amir-Abdollahian rejected any direct military intervention, but noted that the Islamic Republic will assist Iraq through consultations or any other measures which can enable the Iraqi army in its counter-terrorism campaign.
On Sunday, a senior US official said the administration of President Barack Obama is considering the situation to hold talks with Iran over the Iraqi crisis.
Takfiri militants from the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have recently been carrying out acts of terror in Iraq, taking over a number of cities and committing atrocities against the people.
IRS Claims Two Years Of Emails Were Destroyed In A ‘Computer Crash;’ Congressman Asks The NSA To Supply ‘Missing’ Email Metadata
By Tim Cushing | Techdirt | June 16, 2014
The IRS is currently being investigated by Congress for some possibly politically-motivated “attention” it directed towards “Tea Party” and other conservative groups that operated as tax-exempt entities. Along the way, IRS official Lois Lerner, who was the first to publicly disclose the inappropriate targeting, was also one of the first government officials to plead the Fifth (twice) in government hearings.
The Congressional investigation demanded copies of Lois Lerner’s emails from the IRS. Some were turned over to the House Ways and Means Committee, but not everything it sought. Now, the IRS is telling the committee that it’s not going to get everything it asked for.
The IRS has told Congress that it lost more than two years’ worth of emails involving former IRS official Lois Lerner, due to a computer crash.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) on Friday said it was “unacceptable” that he was just learning of this problem now, after a lengthy investigation into Lerner’s involvement in the IRS targeting scandal.
Camp points out that the IRS withheld these emails for over a year before suddenly “discovering” they were unavailable. The IRS says it can find everything Lerner sent to and received from other IRS employees but nothing containing correspondence with those outside the agency.
Obviously, this convenient “computer crash” has generated a lot of skepticism. For one thing, a “computer crash” doesn’t really have the power to destroy electronic communications. Email is almost always stored somewhere else other than the local user’s computer. And even if the IRS meant a “server crash” instead of a “computer crash,” any decent server system contains multiple levels of redundancy.
The Blaze sought input from Norman Cillo, a former Microsoft project manager, who presented six reasons why he believes the IRS is lying about its inability to recover these emails. Number one on the list seems to be the most applicable.
I believe the government uses Microsoft Exchange for their email servers. They have built-in exchange mail database redundancy. So, unless they did not follow Microsoft’s recommendations they are telling a falsehood.
The IRS’s own policies on email state that its employees use both Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, which means it should have some form of backup available.
Secure Messaging enrollment is an automated process for all LAN accounts with an Exchange mailbox in IRS. You can find the instructions for configuring the Outlook client to use the certificates at the Secure Enterprise Messaging Systems (SEMS) web site: http://documentation.sems.enterprise.irs.gov/.
According to Cillo, the only other explanation for the IRS’s inability to recover these emails is that the agency is “totally mismanaged and has the worst IT department ever.” Unfortunately, the government seems to have a lot of mismanaged and terrible IT departments, so this may be closer to the truth than anyone would really like to admit. Perhaps the general ineptitude of large government agencies is behind the Treasury Department’s policy that all email sent to or from IRS employees be “archived” via hard copy printouts.
If you create or receive email messages during the course of your daily work, you are responsible for ensuring that you manage them properly. The Treasury Department’s current email policy requires emails and attachments that meet the definition of a federal record be added to the organization’s files by printing them (including the essential transmission data) and filing them with related paper records. If transmission and receipt data are not printed by the email system, annotate the paper copy.
There’s more information here, citing the IRS’s own internal guidelines on tape backups, etc., that suggest further levels of redundancy, as well as the commissioner of the IRS testifying that the agency stores its emails on servers.
Critics believe the IRS has simply “vanished” the crucial emails in order to cut Lerner adrift and make it appear she acted alone. Any evidence that would tie outside government agencies (including the administration itself) into this situation has been deemed unrecoverable. Supposedly, there should be paper copies of the missing emails, but no one in Congress has requested these and the IRS certainly isn’t offering to look.
But one Congressman thinks he has a solution to the missing email dilemma. Steve Stockman (last seen here threatening to bring a defamation lawsuit against someone who uttered true facts about his criminal past) knows some people who have a whole lot of email data just laying around.
“I have asked NSA Director Rogers to send me all metadata his agency has collected on Lois Lerner’s email accounts for the period which the House sought records,” said Stockman. “The metadata will establish who Lerner contacted and when, which helps investigators determine the extent of illegal activity by the IRS.”
Yeah, let me know how that works out for you, Steve. The NSA can’t even confirm or deny its monthly water usage at its Utah data site, much less that it has metadata pertaining to Americans’ communications.
[Sidebar: I do really love the fact that this sort of thing is becoming increasingly common — the use of the NSA as the backup-of-last-resort for phone/email/internet communications data. If anyone claims it can’t find email X or phone record Y, someone’s going to say, “Hey, I’ll bet the NSA has a copy!” Hilarious. The NSA will never again be allowed to pretend it doesn’t harvest data on American citizens.]
The whole letter, which begins with some light ass-kissing of new NSA director Michael Rogers (“thank you for your 33 years of, and continued service to, our country...”) and closes with a bit of grandstanding, surreally asking “the Agency” to send all relevant metadata on the missing Lerner emails to “Donny@mail.house.gov.” All in all, probably one of the most incongruous demands the NSA has ever received, a letter which conjures up the image of a late-night meeting in an underground parking garage, with sunglassed NSA liaisons handing over a briefcase full of metadata to a 19-year-old intern dressed in his dad’s suit.
It’s pretty hard to shake the impression that this is a coverup. As always, the specter of pure ineptitude lurks in the background, as it often does when large bureaucracies tangle with technology. But until the IRS presents further evidence detailing how exactly these emails went missing, it’s safe to assume there’s been an active effort made to cover up government impropriety.
‘Welcome to Police Industrial Complex’ – former Philly commissioner
RT | June 16, 2014
Dangerous, alienating, and sociopathic: the policy of arming police to the teeth with military-grade gear shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how crime is solved and what it means for a cop to walk the beat, former Captain Ray Lewis told RT.
Nine-foot tall, 55,000 pound, Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) armored-fighting vehicles rolling through the streets of America.
Millions of dollars’ worth of military gear being distributed to local police forces on an annual basis.
Drones, M-16s and so many other hand-me-downs from over a decade of war making their way from US forces abroad to a local police force near you.
If you really believe any of this is making you safer, Lewis, who spent 24 years on the force, says you should think again. Endangering lives, alienating communities, turning minority neighborhoods into occupied territory and compromising the very ability for police to do their jobs; these are just a few of the reasons the former commissioner believes main street is being sold down the river for power-hungry cops and ruthless corporate interest.
RT: Why is this considered to be a good idea, bringing these high caliber weapons into US streets?
Ray Lewis: I don’t think it’s a good idea. High caliber weapons are extremely dangerous. They have a very high ricocheting velocity, and that means that innocent people are going to get killed and injured. They can go through doors, they can go through cinder block, they can go through metal car doors, and this type of velocity is not necessary. I spent 24 years in the Philadelphia Police Department.We upgraded our Smith and Wessons to Glocks, which are a very powerful pistol that work very well. There is no reason to have anything stronger than that, except in exigent circumstances, in which your SWAT team does have that type of weapon. For anyone else, they’re not necessary and they’re dangerous.
RT: You know Captain, one might ask, will this equipment not obscure the line between soldier and police officers, especially in those small communities where they’re already being distributed?
RL: Yes, it will obviously obscure the line between the military and the police. But I’m not at all concerned with small communities that you mentioned. I’m concerned with the large cities, where you have large minority populations living in economically depressed areas. That’s where you’re going to have problems. You bring this type of equipment into a minority area, you are going to make those people feel as if they are living in an occupied territory. You’re going to alienate them.
What happens is, you get a halo effect. A halo effect means that that alienation transfers to all the other officers in that department. That alienation transfers to the officers in the patrol cars, the officer on the foot beat, the officers in the community relations division. So bringing that type of equipment is going to alienate people from all parts of the police department. What people don’t know is that input from community members is one of the most important ways crimes are solved. They know the bad guys in the area, they hear the rumors, they hear the gossip, they know what’s going on in their communities. Too many people think that crime is solved through high-tech forensic labs or exemplary investigative work. Not true, although these two come in very handy in many cases, most of your information about crimes comes from the community. You bring this military type of mindset into the community, you’re not going to get the interaction from the members of that community.
RT: Some police officers have said it is necessary to have this type of equipment, especially if you’re covering a protest and it gets out of hand, where police officers can get injured or shot. Isn’t it a good idea, in some ways, to have such equipment at your disposal?
RL: That is the worst idea I could think of, to have high caliber weapons at a protest. Think of Kent State, where they shot and killed so many innocent people. And they were not high caliber weapons. Can you imagine the massacre that would take place if officers had high caliber weapons? I spent a year in New York City supporting the Occupy [Wall Street] message. I was arrested down there for civil disobedience and never did I see any type of behavior from those protesters that would ever need any type of weapon, let alone high caliber. If anything, it was the protesters that would have needed high caliber weapons.
RT: Let me talk about the gear itself. It’s been used in certain war zones and then come back home, as there’s no longer any need for it there. What should they do with this type of equipment if they can’t distribute it to local police forces? What happens if people come out and say, ‘actually, we don’t want these types of vehicles on our streets. We have kids, we can’t have them here, we’d much rather go back to a much more local form of policing that we’re more comfortable with?’
RL: Obviously, you have to listen to the community. The police serve the community; they don’t serve us, we serve them. If they want to go back to a more conventional police force that they feel comfortable with, then that’s what has to be done. It’s imperative.
RT: So what happens to the equipment then, at that point?
RL: It can be sold to other countries or destroyed. I’d have no problem with them destroying that equipment whatsoever instead of using it in this country. See, that equipment can be very dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands. Let me explain.
There are three types of people who join the police department, basically: one joins because of a need for a job that can give him or her a comfortable lifestyle; the second person joins because they want to serve and protect the public; the third type of person joins because they love the power and the control. When you have a person that joins because they love the power and control, how do they get more power and control? They move up the chain of command until they reach police commissioner. Now once they reach police commissioner, how do they gain more power and control? And this is a sociopathic tendency by the way. It’s insatiable; they can never get enough power and control, just like a billionaire can never get enough money.
So, you reach the top rung of the ladder, you’re a police commissioner, and you want to gain more power. How do you do it? You acquire all of this military weaponry, the semi-tanks, the MRAPs, the spy drones, and what not. And I guarantee you, once you purchase them, they’re not going to sit in a warehouse. That police commissioner is going to use them. And I’m very fearful of these types of police commissioners using that equipment. Let me give you the perfect example of what I’m talking about.
The Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, he was not commissioner when I worked there, but when I attended the Occupy movement and was arrested for civil disobedience, several days later I received an unbelievably threatening letter from him. He told me, he informed me to stop wearing my uniform. It was an order. I’d retired 10 years previously; he had no power over me. Yet he was so power and control hungry, he tried to order me to stop wearing that uniform. What was most egregious about this letter, I have it for proof, is he informed me that if I continued to wear the uniform, he would take any and all necessary action to stop me. That is the epitome of a sociopath whose desire for power and control is insatiable. I am fearful of this type of police chief getting this type of equipment.
RT: Okay Captain, last question. Shootings at schools, shopping malls, movie theatres, we’ve seen those headlines all around America and internationally. Will this type of equipment be able to stop such crimes from taking place?
RL: Absolutely not. These crimes are committed by people who never would think, ‘oh wait, should I not do this because the police have high caliber weapons?’ No. That doesn’t stop those mass killings at all. Number one, they know most likely they will be killed by the police, or they take their own lives. So this type of equipment will never stop that. Lastly, I want you to know that corporate America is involved in this. This is a major money market that will sell this high (grade) equipment, repair and maintenance for it will come from taxpayers’ money. Corporate America will make billions off of this equipment. You’ve heard of the prison industrial complex, you’ve heard of the military industrial complex, corporate America now wants to make a police industrial complex, where they’ll makes billions off of police departments.
Violence in Iraq Means Profits for Beechcraft, Lockheed, Raytheon and other Weapons Makers
By Steve Straehley | AllGov | June 16, 2014
U.S. companies are reaping big benefits from the Iraqi government’s battle with ISIS militias. Three sales, including some big-ticket items, announced last month will put nearly $1 billion in the pockets of American defense contractors if Congress approves the sales.
- Beechcraft Defense Co. and eight other contractors are selling 24 AT-6C Texan II aircraft, plus spares and other equipment to Iraq. That deal is worth about $790 million. The plane is used for “light attack and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.”
- AM General has a deal to send 200 of its venerable Humvees to help guard oil installations. The contract, which includes spares and equipment such as radios and machine gun mounts, is worth $101 million.
- Raytheon has a $90-million deal for seven aerostats along with 14 Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment (RAID) Tower systems to be used for command and control by the Iraqi military.
These are just the latest in a string of sales of military equipment to the Iraqi government. Others have included Stinger missiles, C-130J cargo planes, drones and patrol boats.
Since 2005, the U.S. government has provided more than $14 billion in military hardware, services and training to Iraq, according to Global Post. The Iraqi government is now requesting more equipment to battle the Sunni militias, which have taken over large swaths of the country, and American contractors stand to make even more money as the fighting progresses.
To Learn More:
Pentagon Plans To Deliver $1B In Weapons Systems To Iraq. Even Blimps. (by Jill R. Aitoro, Washington Business Journal )
These Are The 9 Weapons The U.S. Is Selling Iraq (by Allison Jackson, Global Post )
Forgotten by Most Americans, Iraq is Still a Source of Profits for U.S. Weapons Makers (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov )
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By Thomas S. Harrington | CounterPunch | August 19, 2016
… What will almost never be talked about are the many very good reasons a person from the vast region stretching from Morrocco in the west, to Pakistan in the east, have to be very angry at, and to feel highly vengeful toward, the US, its strategic puppeteer Israel, and their slavishly loyal European compadres like France, Germany and Great Britain. … Read full article
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