Igeldard

Immigration by sea on the rise as temperatures warm

by Zaki Khalid
[Terminal X Desk]

A new report published in May 2013 by the CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service), titled 'The Future of Al Qaeda: Results of a Foresight Project', discusses future predictions and trends in light of existing data apparently available with the organization and its counterparts in the US and elsewhere.

Among other details, the report highlights alleged activities of Al Qaeda in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen and also discusses the adverse effects their movement could have for the operations by allied forces in Afghanistan.

The report discusses three model paths which Al Qaeda might adopt over the next five years: gradual decline, incremental growth and rapid growth.

The most notable allegation that the Canadian secret service has made against Pakistan, is that Al Qaeda Core "seems to enjoy an unmolested existence from authorities in Pakistan" (pg. 22).

Al Qaeda Core is the name given to an alleged group of militants who, according to Guantanamo detainee Saeed al-Shihri of the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, operate in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This was revealed in a statement by the Saudi terrorist in a message released on 8 February 2010.

But the organization does acknowledge, that the influence of Al Qaeda Core is "declining" in Pakistan (pg. 17), thus causing strain to the unity among the various offshoots.

Following are notable extracts from the report which pertain to Pakistan:

• "Al-Qaeda convincingly has the potential to transform toeholds established in the Levant and perhaps in the Sinai and in both North and West Africa into footholds—thus complementing its existing outposts in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia" (pg. 22)
• Allegations that Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born Green Card holder who lived in who attempted to blow up the metropolitan subway system and Faisal Shahzad were "trained in Pakistan" (pg. 25)
• "Perhaps the most remarkable communication, however, is one dated 27 August 2010. In it, bin Laden expresses his concerns for the safety of his fighters and followers in Pakistan: not because they might be arrested or detained by the authorities, but because of the torrential rains and flooding then afflicting that country. The Al-Qaeda leader, accordingly, was more fearful that his men might be affected by the weather than by any effort of the Pakistani government to apprehend them. Th is assertion alone speaks volumes about how amenable he and his minions found their refuge in Pakistan" (pg. 28)
• "There is little in the documents that suggests that it was terribly difficult for Al-Qaeda fighters to travel from Iran to Pakistan—or, for that matter, between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And there is no indication that, once in Pakistan, they had any trouble traversing Baluchistan en route to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas or North-West Frontier Province, two of the movement’s favorite haunts. Given the continuing antipathy between Pakistan and the US and the absence of any indication of a change in this laissez-faire policy of the Pakistani government toward Al-Qaeda since bin Laden’s death, there is no reason to believe that the core’s freedom of movement has been inhibited in any meaningful way" (pg. 28)

The analysts at Canadian intelligence arrive at a conclusion that the Core Al Qaeda has "a well-established sanctuary in Pakistan that functions without great hindrance and that is poised to expand across the border into Afghanistan as the US military and ISAF continue to withdraw from that country, until the complete drawdown set for 2014" (pg.29).

The report also claims that the growing antipathy in Pakistan against Americans has "undermined" (pg. 32) the progress against terrorism and its perpetrators in the South Asian region.

According to the CSIS, Al Qaeda Core maintains key operational environments and sanctuaries in 3 countries: Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia (pg. 38).

Please click here to access the complete report

A secret document obtained by the Washington Post has revealed enormous and costly efforts taken by federal agencies to ensure the safety of the US President on trips abroad. President Obama’s forthcoming tour to sub-Saharan Africa scheduled for the end of June could cost the federal budget up to $100 million, a person familiar with the preparations has told, a huge portion of which likely to be incurred by the military.

By: IrishCentral Staff Writers

This week 92-year-old Phillip Farrington, one of the last surviving Irish soldiers who was granted a pardon after fighting against Nazi Germany, laid a wreath at the Irish National War Memorial to remember his comrades.

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'I was slapped, kicked, stomped, and maced'

More than a decade ago, Ken Clarke and his fellow €urophiles were warning us that unless we joined the €uro, our economy would be wrecked.  Financial services would move en masse to Frankfurt.  Foreign investors would shun us.  We should be left behind.  But he was wrong.  It is the €urozone which is wrecked, with record unemployment, and some southern European countries facing poverty and despair on a scale unseen since the thirties.

But Ken, like the Bourbons of old, has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.  He pops up in the lead story in Tuesday’s Telegraph insisting that “Quitting the EU would wreck the economy”.  OK Ken.  Just like not joining the €uro?

But Ken does raise one important point which we shall hear more and more, and will have to address.  The EU has negotiated free trade deals with many countries, and is currently negotiating many more.   One of the most important is T-TIP, the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership.  This (if completed) will be simply the biggest international trade deal that the world has ever seen (OK, you could argue about the Uruguay Round), and will be a clear net benefit to the USA, and to the EU, including Britain.

Where will Britain be when we leave the EU?  Will we lose the benefit of all those deals?  I think the short answer is this: that it will be hugely to the economic advantage of everyone concerned if a newly independent UK is grandfathered in to these deals on the same terms.  I see no percentage for any trading partner in re-opening these extensive and complex trade deals.  And there would be potential downsides for companies and national economies in any uncertainty that was created around the UK’s status.

More than that: I suspect that the UK would already have negotiated free trade deals, perhaps years ago, with the USA, and with Canada, India, Singapore and other Commonwealth countries, if we hadn’t handed over our trade policy to Brussels in 1973.

Nor is it clear that T-TIP will go ahead.  Already the French have lived up to their stereotype as the continent’s arch-protectionists, demanding the exclusion of audio-visual markets to protect “French culture”.  (Note to Hollande: if French culture and movies were that good, they wouldn’t need protection.  You already have the protection of a minority language).  This is to be the up-front price of French acceptance of the EU’s opening negotiating mandate.

With audio-visual excluded, the Americans may demand the exclusion of public procurement, or aviation, or whatever.  The whole thing could yet break down, which would be very damaging.  Again, we might well be better off negotiating on our own account.

But I really want to challenge one point in Ken’s Telegraph article.  He rightly says that the British are “intrepid, relentlessly outward-facing adventurers”, but adds “not isolationist John Bulls”.  Wrong comparison, Ken.  You should have said “Not inward-looking, self-referential, protectionist Europeans”.

He cites, without comment or justification, the lazy old €urophile canard that outside the EU, the UK “would be forced to trade by EU rules which it has no say in setting” (not that we have much say now).  If challenged, he would no doubt make the clichéd Norway comparison.  But the EU is not Norway.  We are a top-ten global trading nation, somewhere in size between Canada and the USA.  Do Canada and the USA “trade by EU rules?”.  Does Japan?  Or Korea (with which the EU has a free trade deal)?  Of course not.  And nor should we.

As the EU’s largest trading partner (which we will be after independence), we shall trade on very favourable terms indeed.

I shall be writing to Ken to ask why he keeps making this nonsense comparison.  If he replies, I shall share his thoughts with you.  And I only ask because I want to know.

Author: Roger Helmer, Member of the European Parliament for the East Midlands. He tweets @RogerHelmerMEP

Better Off Out is a campaign run by The Freedom Association, a non-partisan pressure group dedicated to principles of freedom and national sovereignty. To keep up to date with the campaign, do follow us on Twitter @BetterOffOut.

By 2020, all units of Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces (SMF) will be equipped with an advanced targeting system capable of guiding ballistic missiles through US missile defenses, a Defense Ministry source said Tuesday.

20-year-old was under investigation for terrorist recruitment

More than 75 percent of the 207 billion euros ($277.58 billion) that has so far come in through two bailouts to prop up Greece’s battered economy isn’t going to social services and citizens, but to banks and wealthy investors, according to a study by the activist group Attac that was published Monday in Suddeutsche Zeitung.

The France-based organization estimates that  160 billion euros ($214.56 billion) has ended up in the pockets of lenders and investors, according to the report. It did not indicated if that, however, included the 74 percent losses imposed on them by former finance minister Evangelos Venizelos to write down the country’s staggering debt.

“Political elites have not been trying to rescue the Greek population, but the finance sector,” Lisa Mittendrein, from the group’s Australian chapter, was quoted by the German newspaper as saying.

“The widespread belief supported by European politicians that the various rescue packages for Greece have helped ordinary people in the country is no longer tenable,” she said according to the report.

Greece is still receiving the rescue monies, which are set to top $325 billion by the time they are done. After that, the government is hoping to be able to return to the private markets.

Workers in Luxor express outrage after politician with links to the group responsible for the 1997 massacre of tourists is appointed governor.

Speaking at the opening of the G8 yesterday, David Cameron talked up the prospect of a new transatlantic trade deal. He is right to do so. The easier it is to trade across the Atlantic, the better for us all. Transatlantic trade underpins much of our prosperity. One of the reasons the world managed to [...]

In order to join the EEC, we had to abandon free trade with a number of English-speaking democracies. As we applied the Common External Tariff in stages in the 1970s, our commerce was artificially redirected towards the European mainland. Glasgow, Liverpool and Bristol found themselves on the wrong side of the country, and went into [...]

It must be time that David Cameron either gave his Minister Without Portfolio, Ken Clarke, a portfolio to keep him out of mischief, or returned him to the back benches. At present, having not got a proper job, he seems to spend his time creating dissent within the Conservative Party. Not only that, but by [...]

Relax, you can still watch porn in the United Kingdom, but it’s about to become a bit harder. As reported in Wired, Internet service providers (ISPs) in the country will “make filtering a standard option across industry.” If you don’t act, parental filters will come “pre-ticked.”

Therefore, if you don’t want your Internet connection to be quite so vanilla, you’ll need to opt-out. ISPs are implementing the filtering system without a legal requirement, so we will not see a law enforcing the new policy.

The kicker to this is that the system will not only be put in place for new accounts, but for existing accounts as well. This is pervasive. Claire Perry, a Member of Parliament, described how one might opt-out of the system: “We will have automatic put on, so if you turn the filter off at 9pm, it turns on again at 7am.”

Thus, even if you turn the damn thing off, it will come back on before your first cuppa.

There are myriad jokes that could be made here, but let’s refrain. Here’s what’s going on: In collaboration with their government, UK Internet providers are deciding to filter the Web connections of their customers. Thus, in the UK by 2014, you will no longer have access to the web unfettered; instead you can, with added effort, remove the blinders and access whatever the hell it is you want, but only for a short period of time before the handcuffs are reattached.

The moral imperative of the issue is lost when filtering is forced; it becomes in this case not a defensive shield for families with inquisitive kids, but a societal-level imposition of one perspective of what’s smut, and what’s just fine.

The censoring of adult content is hard to stand up against, as you sound silly: no porn restrictions! Who wants to be the politician standing before the public advocating for the rights of pornographers? But we know that porn is popular, and why it is popular, and that’s enough.

It’s not the place of a government to decide what form of information isn’t fit for its citizens to consume. While titter-inducing, this blanket filtering undermines free speech, and turns regular folks doing regular things into furtive creatures with something to hide.

The solution to this is to make the system opt-in, and not opt-out. That you can’t opt-out for life adds a level of comically petty censorship to the issue; yes, the government will let you make your own choices, but only for a few hours. That’s as much as you can be trusted. But this is for the kids.

The next question is who decides what constitutes adult content. What counts as porn? Films will too much sexual content? The rape scene in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo may be exceptionally painful to watch, but do we have the right to watch it and the movie it’s contained in at all? Your porn might be my sex, and the other way around. Shall we censor Game of Thrones?

Christopher Hitchens has a decent kick on this precise issue, arguing in Canada against censorship [Bolding: TNW]:

Bear in mind, ladies and gentleman, that every time you violate or propose to violate the free speech of someone else, you’re in potentia, you’re making a rod for your own back, because the other question raised by Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes is simply this, “Who’s going to decide, to whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful, or who is the harmful speaker. Or to determine in advance, what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom you’re going to award the task of being the censor?”

Isn’t it a famous old story that the man who has to read all the pornography, in order to decide what’s fit to be passed and what is not to be, is the man most likely to become debauched. Did you hear any speaker in the opposition to this notion, eloquent as one of them was, to whom you would delegate the task of deciding for you what you could read? Who to me would give the job of deciding for you, relieve you of the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear? Do you know anyone? Hands up. Do you know anyone to whom you’d give this job? Does anyone have a nominee?

You mean, there is no one in Canada good enough to decide what I can read or hear? I had no idea. But there’s a law that says there must be such a person, or there’s sub-section of some piddling law that says it. Well, the hell with that law then. It’s inviting you to be liars and hypocrites and to deny what you evidently know already.

I hate to make a perhaps petty comparison, but the last major country to take a whack at porn, to my knowledge, among its population was China:

Chinese authorities have continued their war against online porn after closing down 225 websites, 4,000 Web channels and columns, and 30,000 blogs and microblogs which stood accused of “disseminating obscene and vulgar information”.

The People’s Daily — one of a number of government-run news outlets —reported the news via a statement released by the State Internet Information Office — although it isn’t quite clear how officials differentiate between websites/channels/blogs, each of which could be considered a website.

This the latest in a long line of government initiatives aimed at cutting down on pornography on the Chinese Web, which have been ongoing since even before 2009. Since China does not permit access to a range of popular Western services — such as Facebook and Twitter — it is hardly surprising that porn is a target for authorities.

The flow of information should be free. And not just from 9 pm until morning.

Top Image Credit: ttarasiuk

Apple has spoken up about the US government’s PRISM program and revealed that between December 2012 and May 2013 the firm received 4,000-5,000 requests for user data from the government .

That data isn’t limited to FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) enquiries, however, and it includes requests for information to help find missing persons or solve crimes.

The disclosure comes after Apple “asked the U.S. government for permission to report how many requests we receive related to national security and how we handle them”, and the company says it has been permitted to share “some of that data” in order to help provide greater transparency with the public.

Apple says that the 4,000-5,000 requests related to 9,000-10,000 accounts or devices. That’s a rough rate of two accounts/devices per request, which is somewhat lower than the figures made public by other tech firms. The details come hot on the heels of Microsoft and Facebook taking similar steps, in the wake of the PRISM scandal.

Microsoft revealed Friday that it received 6,000-7,000 requests implicating 31,000-32,000 accounts in the last six months. Hours earlier, Facebook revealed its FISA numbers, claiming that up to 19,000 user accounts were queried by the US government.

Apple’s statement also reiterates its denial that it gave US authorities “direct access to our servers”. Echoing the comments of other companies named in the NSA slides leaked to the Washington Post and Guardian, the company says that all requests for data from the government require a court order in order to be fulfilled.

Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it.

The company says it doesn’t “collect or maintain a mountain of personal details about our customers”, and further explains that its iMessage and FaceTime services are encrypted from end-to-end, meaning that no-one — Apple included — can access them.

Likewise, it says that it doesn’t store data related to location, Map searches or Siri, meaning that it cannot provide such requests to law enforcement authorities.

Google and Twitter have criticized Microsoft and Facebook’s declarations because they do not distinguish between the types of requests made — and that fact applies to Apple’s numbers too, which do not distinguish the number of requests by type, government department or other variables.

In an open letter to the FBI, Google’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said that government regulations preventing the disclosure of  precise details around FISA requests “fuels” speculation that the company “gives the U.S. government unfettered access to our users’ data”.

Related: PRISM update: Recent reports you definitely shouldn’t miss

You find our full PRISM coverage here

Headline image via nez / Flickr

Apple has released a statement called "Apple’s Commitment to Customer Privacy," claiming it has not been involved in the NSA's PRISM program

Furthermore, Apple claims it does not provide "any government agency" with direct access to its servers, and that "any government agency requesting customer content must get a court order."

That doesn't mean the agencies aren't asking for data. According to Apple, the company has received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from U.S. law enforcement for customer data from December 1, 2012 to May 31 2013

"Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities," claims Apple Read more...

More about Apple, Prism, Business, and Nsa

The huge controversy over the US government’s PRISM program has barely bitten the dust, and now it’s blowing over to the UK and entangling struggling phone maker BlackBerry, threatening to cause severe damage to the company’s reputation.

A report has surfaced alleging that the UK Government Communications Headquarters managed to penetrate the security on delegates’ BlackBerry smartphones while hosting foreign politicians and officials during two Group of 20 summit meetings in London in 2009. The Guardian report says according to “top secret” documents uncovered by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, email messages and phone calls were monitored.

BlackBerry’s claim that its security measures are impenetrable has been a core reason for countless multinational companies and government organizations to use its software and phones. These latest allegations (if proven true), could suggest that BlackBerry was either working with the government or its system had been unknowingly accessed by a third-party. Any of the scenarios, if they had really occurred, would sully the company’s reputation for watertight enterprise security, and could deal a devastating blow to BlackBerry if customers flee from the product due to a fear of security leaks.

Terming the actions as “ground-breaking intelligence capabilities”, the documents in the Guardian report were cited as saying: “New converged events capabilities against BlackBerry provided advance copies of G20 briefings to ministers… Diplomatic targets from all nations have an MO of using smartphones. Exploited this use at the G20 meetings last year.”

Ironically, the GCHQ had in 2011 published guidelines recommending the use of the BlackBerry to keep sensitive data safe.

Some delegates were also reportedly duped into using Internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies that ”were able to extract key logging info, providing creds for delegates, meaning we have sustained intelligence options against them even after conference has finished”.

Last year, BlackBerry confirmed that it set up a dedicated server in India to allow the government to monitor its network, but insisted that the BlackBerry Enterprise Server - which the Guardian report claims were breached - would not be compromised. Back then, BlackBerry had emphasized that it “cannot access, or provide access to information encrypted through BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) given that neither RIM nor the wireless operators are ever in possession of the encryption keys.”

BlackBerry dominated the smartphone market in the past thanks to high usage among enterprises customers. In recent times it has faced fierce competition from the likes of iOS and Android in the consumer market, resulting in a massive drop in overall market share (according to Gartner its share declined to 2.0 percent in 2012 from an already-paltry 2.9 percent in 2011), while it fell out of the NASDAQ-100 late last year.

It has also come under pressure from the BYOD (bring your own device) trend – symbolized by the US Department of Defence’s recent decision to pass security approval for the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Apple iPhone, breaking the BlackBerry’s traditional stronghold.

We have reached out to BlackBerry for comment and will update with any response provided.

You can find our full PRISM coverage here

Image Credit: Kevork Djansezian via Getty Images

President Obama says that the reason he has finally decided to intervene in Syria by providing weaponry to Syrian rebels is because the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons in the conflict. Never mind that Obama has provided no evidence for his claim. Hey, if George W. Bush could get away with a bogus WMD claim for invading Iraq, why can’t Obama do the same with an intervention in Syria?

There’s another possible reason for why Obama has suddenly decided to intervene in Syria. It’s found in the following quote by James Madison:

The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

What Madison is saying is that whenever Roman citizens became disgusted with the machinations of the Roman welfare-warfare state and threatened a revolt against taxes, regulation, and control, Roman officials would simply stir up some sort of foreign crisis. In that way, they could say to the Roman citizenry: “We’re under great danger from foreigners. We need to set aside our domestic differences and come together to defend our nation.”

The idea was that Roman citizens would then dutifully defer to authority, rally to the support of the government, and set aside any critiques until the crisis was over. It’s important to keep in mind that it was the Roman government itself that would incite the crisis.

Isn’t it interesting that Obama’s decision to intervene in Syria occurs at the same time that people are learning about the massive secret surveillance scheme that the U.S. national-security state has had on the American citizenry? While there are, of course, plenty of Americans who love the surveillance and believe that it’s what living in a free society is all about, the fact is that multitudes of Americans are now questioning, discussing, debating, challenging, or opposing what the national-security state apparatus is doing to our country and to the freedom and privacy of the American people and the people of the world.

What a great distraction from all this the Syrian intervention can provide, especially if there is the potential for conflict with Russia, which is providing weaponry to the Syrian regime.

Also, consider the possibility that some Syrian sympathizer retaliates with a terrorist attack against U.S. government personnel or on American citizens. Aren’t we going to hear the same thing that we hear today about anti-American terrorism? “We’ve been attacked! We were just minding our own business. The terrorists just hate us for our freedom and values. This has nothing to do with the fact that we were helping one group of Syrians to kill another group of Syrians. Don’t justify their actions by pointing to our intervention. Be a patriot and rally unconditionally to your government. ”

We will then hear all the standard exhortations in which Americans are called upon to silence their critiques in the interests of the nation, at least until the crisis is over.

Meanwhile, the national-security apparatus will continue to expand its control and domination over the American people. That’s the way the system has worked ever since the national-security state was grafted onto our constitutional order after World War II. Crisis, followed by more domination and control, followed by new crises, and on and on, until we’ve finally gotten to the point where the national-security state—i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA—are effectively the fourth branch of government and the most powerful branch at that.

It’s important that we pay mind to another point that Madison makes in his quote. The means by which the government purports to defend the nation from the foreign danger it has incited becomes the instrument of tyranny at home. It’s an old story, as Madison points out. Enormous standing armies that are maintained under the pretext of keeping the people safe have ended up enslaving them. If Madison could have foreseen the CIA and the NSA, he would have included them as well.

 

 

The post The NSA Scandal and Syrian Intervention appeared first on The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Everyone is wondering (at least I am) who is Ben Rhodes, a 30-something who ascended from literally nowhere to be what seems a main driving force behind Obama's foreign policy. He is credited with convincing the president to embrace the Arab Spring, convincing the president to bomb Libya, and, now, convincing the president to start yet another war, this time against Syria.

Who is he? How did a 24-year old aspiring fiction-writer in 2002 suddenly become one of the drafters of not only the 9/11 Commission report but also the Iraq Study Group Report? Then move on to Obama's presidential campaign as a speechwriter and then to Deputy National Security Advisor, from which he announced the beginning of a US war on Syria while the president met with supporters in the East Room of the White House? Those familiar with Washington know that such miraculous ascents rarely happen on their own and are equally rarely the result of pure, raw talent.

There might be some clues to his brother David's also improbable rise -- from a lowly production assistant at Fox News at the end of the 1990s to covering presidential elections for Fox News (including the one where his brother was writing Obama's speeches) to the lofty position of president of CBS news by 2011!

The excellent Russ Baker was wondering about all this way back in March, when he noticed a typical New York Times gloss-over article on Rhodes.

Aside from his quite unbelievable rise, we do know that he was catastrophically wrong on Libya, where a Time Magazine article pointed out at the time that he was the strong counter-weight to those who argued for more caution on the use of force.

Here is how Time put it back in 2011, when the interventionists were on the verge of their triumph:

Obama and his aides know they are taking a big risk. “It’s a huge gamble,” says the senior administration official. The administration knows, for example, that al Qaeda, which has active cells in Libya, will try to exploit the power vacuum that will come with a weak or ousted Gaddafi. They also know that the U.S. will have to rely on other countries for the crucial task of rebuilding Libya and that the region may in fact be further destabilized by intervention. Outweighing that, the National Security Council’s Ben Rhodes says, are the long-term benefits of saving lives, protecting the possibility of democratic change elsewhere in the region and—tellingly—ensuring “the ability of collective action to be a tool in circumstances like this.”

Rhodes carried the day on Libya and he was completely incorrect in his assessment, his analysis, his prediction, and his prescription. Anyone who bothers to look at Libya today, which is run by gangs of roving extremist death squads would see what a fool Ben Rhodes is for his promise of "democratic change" in Libya -- and how much more foolish is the president for following the advice of such a person.

Rhodes is named as the source of the White House-altered CIA talking points on Benghazi, where references to the Islamist extremist role in the attack on US Ambassador Chris Stevens were erased. It is understandable why the fiction writer Rhodes would want to toss that reference in the circular file: that particular sub-plot did not fit in with the main theme he had already painstakingly written, namely that the US attack on Libya would end the killing, stabilize the country, and bring about a democratic revolution that would continue to spread through the region. Fiction writers understand that a sub-plot could take your readers too far off the main narrative of the story and cause serious structural problems. That is why there are so many rounds of re-writes. The killing of Stevens and the rise of murderous -- and racist -- extremists did not fit the plot, so it had to be deleted.

Being wrong on war when you are on the sending end of death and destruction is less obvious to your countrymen than when you are on the receiving end. But anyone living in Libya after Rhodes' "life-saving" mission knows full well the kind of liberation that comes at the tip of a US missile. And neighboring countries know as well what happens when a nation armed to the teeth with weapons, including chemical weapons, completely implodes after its infrastructure is destroyed by foreign attack.

In Washington, though, being catastrophically wrong on Libya eminently qualifies Ben Rhodes to take the lead on US Syria policy.

On Twitter @DanielLMcAdams

One in three of the British journalists covering the G8 meeting in Northern Ireland is from the BBC.

Ecuador's foreign minister Ricardo Patino and William Hague failed to make any 'substantive progress' in their talks today about the future of the WikiLeaks founder.

ACTA Dead in current form

Today the European Parliament rejected the controversial ACTA treaty by 478 votes to 39, with 165 MEP's abstaining.  Negotiated in secret by the EU, US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Korea, Singapore and Switzerland, ACTA would have imposed draconian restrictions on the freedom of the Internet and access to generic medicines for the world's poorest.

Pirate Party Leader Loz Kaye commented:

"The European Parliament vote is a triumph of democracy over special interests and shady back-room deals. This is a significant victory for digital rights, and it's thanks to the tireless work of activists and grass roots organisations, including the Pirate Party world wide. Without this opposition, our representatives would have waved this agreement through. It is now clear that it is becoming increasingly politically poisonous to be 'anti Internet'."

"I'm pleased the MEPs have listened to the millions of people who contacted them and came out on the streets to protest against ACTA, instead of being misled by the empty promises of industry lobbyists."

"This must signal a start for a new way of doing politics. No more should international agreements be negotiated behind closed doors and simply rubber stamped by parliaments. Policy must become something that happens with the people, not to the people."

"The Pirate Party will continue to oppose treaties such as ACTA that seek to attack our fundamental rights."

Loz Kaye
Party Leader
Pirate Party UK
@lozkaye

campaigns@pirateparty.org.uk

Contact:
press@pirateparty.org.uk
+44 (0) 161 987 7880

I am far from being a pacifist. Indeed, I am a firm believer in intervention when there is a clear case that can be made. But whatever David Cameron says, that case cannot be made in Syria. It is a mystery to most people why Cameron is going out on a limb on Syria. It is not a country which is of great importance to the UK and yet the Prime Minister speaks as if it were. The murderous killings on both sides are truly horrific, and we are right to play a role in providing humanitarian aid, but to go further would be self defeating madness. At the start of the conflict it could have been argued that the rebels needed armed support because they didn’t have any. That is not the case now. Saudi Arabia is supplying all the weapons the rebels need. It is also now clear that even if we did supply them, they might well end up in very undesirable hands indeed. Some might say that is a risk worth taking if it would hasten the end of this bloody conflict. I do not.

Have we learned nothing from Iraq? In any conflict there is an end game. The only endgame here seems to be the end of the Assad regime. But what then? What comes afterwards? That’s the question Bush and Blair failed to answer in Iraq. They imagined democracy could be imposed and Iraq would live happily ever after. It was naive in the extreme. Surely we are not going to make the same mistake here?

It was a dreadful error for Obama to say that a red line would be crossed if chemical weapons were used. It invites the question, why are deaths due to chemical weapons worse than any others? So far more than 90,000 people have died. A few hundred may have been due to chemical weapons.

But Cameron has a much bigger political problem. If rumour is to be believed, despite his public gung-ho statements, William Hague is not the hawk on Syria he makes out. He is doing the Prime Minister’s bidding. In addition Cameron has a cabinet and a parliamentary party which are both deeply divided on the issue. At a guess I’d say both would be 70-30 or 60-40 against arming the Syrian rebels. Cameron must know that, so why on earth is he, at every opportunity, seeming to talk up the prospect? He has already committed himself to holding a parliamentary vote before any such decision is taken. We already know that Labour and the LibDems would vote against any such arming, so how does he think he could ever get a parliamentary majority?

It’s a bit of a mystery.

Stephen Hester, whose departure from the 81 per cent state-owned bank is due before the end of this year, said that privatising RBS was a long-term project.

Via: The Age: The Australian government has been building a state-of-the art, secret data storage facility just outside Canberra to enable intelligence agencies to deal with a ”data deluge” siphoned from the internet and global telecommunications networks. The high-security facility nearing completion at the HMAS Harman communications base will support the operations of Australia’s signals [...]

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - A judge was shot dead outside a court in the eastern Libyan city of Derna on Sunday, an official said, just weeks after courts resumed work there following the 2011 war.

Update to this story. Via AFP: Al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq has defied orders from the group’s global chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to break up his claimed union with a jihadist group in Syria, according to an audio message released Saturday. The purported remarks by Islamic State of Iraq head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the message posted [...]

A crowd of people tried to lynch anti-government protesters in the Central Anatolia Region city of Konya, Hurriyet reports.