October 27, 2015

China Looks at Syria, Sees $$$

Russia is betting its geopolitical future in the Middle East on a military intervention to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad. But one of the biggest companies from another rising power, China, is betting that when the long civil war in Syria is over, the country will be a good place to do business.

Huawei, one of China’s richest companies and the largest telecommunications equipment maker in the world, has signed an agreement with Syria to design a “national strategy for information and communication technology,” including the construction of a broadband network for Internet service, the company announced earlier this month.

This isn’t the first time Huawei has gone to work for an authoritarian Middle Eastern regime. In 2011, the company signed a contract to install equipment for Iran’s largest mobile phone company as part of a system to track people’s locations via their cell phone signals. And U.S. intelligence officials have long suspected that the company gives the Chinese government and its security services access to the equipment that it installs, effectively acting as an arm of the Chinese surveillance apparatus.

The Syria deal won’t alleviate those concerns. It runs until 2020 and covers both a short and long-term plan to repair and develop Syria’s telecom infrastructure, which has been badly damaged by five years of civil war, and says that Huawei will advise the country’s communications and technology ministry.

That assumes, of course, that there still is a ministry, or a government at all for Huawei to work with. The future of Syria and its embattled dictator is very much in doubt, despite Vladimir Putin’s best efforts. So, why would a massive Chinese firm, with longstanding and deep ties to the government, take such a risk?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/27/china-looks-at-syria-sees.html


Fun with archives...Look at all these DUers rushing to defend a telecom giant that's a front for Chinese intelligence all because Snowden said they were getting spied on by the big, bad, NSA: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014762667

There are plenty other threads about that "expose" to peruse, I just chose the first one...

October 27, 2015

Russia Bombs Hospitals. Lefties Shrug.

Earlier this month in the Afghan city of Kunduz, the U.S. committed an apparent war crime. At some point in the early hours of October 3, a U.S. gunship fired on a hospital run by Medicins Sans Frontieres, destroying the facility, killing 22 people and injuring over 30. There is no doubt of the criminality of this act—even if, as the U.S. and Afghani governments have suggested, the attack occurred due to Taliban militants having some presence within the hospital compound (a claim vigorously denied by eyewitnesses and victims), it was still a crime.

In the hours following the attack, many people of all political persuasions from around the world rightfully condemned it, but perhaps most vocal were those on the political left. Public outrage over war crimes is of course not just to be welcomed passively, but it can be actively useful in terms of demanding accountability from those who committed the crimes, while giving a voice to its victims. All too often, when it comes to activity against these acts of criminality, it is organizations, political parties, and individuals who identify with the left that lead the charge on these matters—the consequences of this can be impressive.

And the left are no longer marginal. The so-called ‘alternative media’ is catching up with the mainstream media in terms of its reach, while political forces that identify as left-wing are now once again in the mainstream of politics, whether it’s forces like SYRIZA in Greece or Jeremy Corbyn’s new role as the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition in the UK. What these people do and say now matters on a global scale. Millions of politically-aware people from around the world hang on every word that prominent leftists write and say, whether it’s a figure such as Glenn Greenwald, whose news site The Intercept has become the go-to place for so-called “anti-imperialists,” or a leading politician such as Corbyn.

For a self-identified leftist like me, you might think I’d be over the moon at the way things were steadily—or exponentially, if you consider the rise of the left in this era relative to its fate in the past two decades—developing for the global left, but you’d be wrong. For there’s a bitter catch to all this. While today’s left is more than willing to speak about perceived Western crimes, it is all too often caught up in a type of politics that not only makes a virtue out of not condemning crimes committed by powerful non-western actors, namely Russia, China and Iran, but that often explicitly or implicitly supports such crimes.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/27/russia-bombs-hospitals-lefties-shrug.html

You all make it too easy for me... I love the smell of hypocrisy in the afternoon -- It smells like new car smell...

And for the record, if "war crimes" outrage you and you want to see justice, start an investigation of Assad, who has probably committed thousands of them by now...

October 27, 2015

Violence in Syria Spurs a Huge Surge in Civilian Flight

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A tenuous truce in the Syrian countryside north of the city of Homs was shattered this month when Russian warplanes attacked the village of Ter Ma’aleh, killing at least a dozen people and sending most of the residents into hurried exile.

The assault on the village was part of a wider escalation of violence across the country that has displaced tens of thousands of people in just weeks and led relief workers to warn that Syria is facing one of its most serious humanitarian crises of the civil war.

The intensity of the fighting, they say, is fueling increased desperation as a growing number of Syrians are fleeing to neighboring countries and, especially, to Europe. More than 9,000 migrants a day crossed into Greece last week, according to the International Organization for Migration, the most since the beginning of the year.

The influx has overwhelmed the authorities in Greece and the northern European countries where most asylum seekers aim to settle. The leaders of those countries moved late Sunday to deal with the increasing flow of tens of thousands of people escaping the war in Syria and elsewhere. European Union leaders in Brussels agreed to establish reception centers in Greece and along the so-called Balkan route in Europe to process and hold up to 100,000 asylum seekers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/world/middleeast/syria-russian-air-strike-refugees.html?_r=0

Maybe Russia could make room for these refugees...It's not like they don't have the space...

October 27, 2015

Russia Now the Leading Killer of Syrian Civilians

Russian airstrikes are now the leading killer of Syrian civilians, accounting for more than half of all civilian deaths. In a letter to the UN Security Council delivered on 26 October, the Special Representative of the Syrian National Coalition, Dr. Najib Ghadbian, called on Member States to stop the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians through the enforcement of a no-bombing zone, calling Russian claims that its airstrikes targeted ISIS a “fallacy”.

Citing data from the Syrian Civil Defence (“White Helmets”), the Syrian National Coalition’s letter outlined the alarming human toll of Russian airstrikes and warned that Russia’s actions were war crimes. Analysis of Russian airstrikes conducted between 30 September and 17 October revealed:

Russia conducted 297 air airstrikes across North West Syria, in Homs, Idlib, Aleppo, the Damascus countryside, Hama and Deraa

231 civilian deaths due to Russian airstrikes in Syria, including 38 women, 34 children and 3 Syrian Civil Defence (“White Helmets”) rescue workers.

Russian airstrikes accounted for 53 percent of all civilian deaths in Syria.

Only 7 percent of Russian airstrikes targeted ISIS.

Since the start of Russian strikes, ISIS has made significant advances, including in Aleppo.

As many as 85,000 people fled Hama and the southwestern districts of Aleppo city after Russian and regime forces launched a co-offensive in opposition-held areas.

Russian airstrikes have overwhelmingly targeted civilian objects, including civilian homes, bread distribution points, IDP camps, farms and fields.


https://twitter.com/KenRoth/status/658764442600083460
http://www.etilaf.us/oct_humanitarian_letter?utm_campaign=oct_2139_un&utm_medium=email&utm_source=etilaf
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/etilaf/pages/265/attachments/original/1445882355/2015.10.22_Syria_2139_Humanitarian.pdf?1445882355

October 26, 2015

Snowden and Greenwald were unavailable for comment:

Russia 'tried to hack MH17 inquiry system'

The Hague (AFP) - Russian spies likely tried to hack into the Dutch Safety Board's computer systems to access a sensitive final report into the shooting down of flight MH17 over Ukraine, experts said Friday.

The cyberattacks were revealed by security experts Trend Micro which blamed a shadowy group dubbed Operation Pawn Storm, "an active economic and political cyber-espionage operation" that has targeted the White House and NATO in the past.

A spokeswoman for the Dutch board, which led the investigation into how Malaysia Airlines flight came down in July 2014 over war-torn Ukraine, confirmed the board had detected the attacks.

But there was "no evidence" that anyone "was successful in the attempt," spokeswoman Sara Vernooij told AFP.

She declined however to reveal "how and by whom" the attacks were carried out.

Trend Micro Friday blamed Operation Pawn Storm for a "cyber-espionage operation before and after" the publication on October 13 of the board's detailed report.

The "coordinated attack from several sides was launched to gain unauthorised access to sensitive material of the investigation conducted by Dutch, Malaysian, Australian, Belgian, and Ukrainian authorities," the Tokyo-based company said in a statement.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/russia-tried-hack-mh17-inquiry-system-143651319.html


I'm old enough to remember when Robert Parry was constantly accusing the U.S. of trying to subvert the investigation

October 26, 2015

OK, Assange is going way off the deep end now...

Want to thwart govt spies? Use snail mail, Assange says

https://www.rt.com/news/319616-assange-snail-mail-spies/

October 22, 2015

Wikileaks Doxxes CIA Chief’s Wife and Daughters

The anti-secrecy outfit once known for exposing potential war crimes is now publishing the personal information of civilians instead.
It will go down as one of Wikileaks’ more astonishing achievements that it managed to turn the director of the CIA—a man who some have vilified as the architect of the drone wars and an endorser of torture—into a sympathetic character.

But that’s what happened on Wednesday when the Web site devoted to transparency and government accountability published loads of personal information about John Brennan, his wife and children, and other people close to him that had no obvious connection to his work as the CIA chief or his earlier role as President Obama’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser.

Wikileaks said the documents it published, which include a lengthy background check form that Brennan was filling out before joining the Obama administration in 2009, were obtained by a hacker who broke into Brennan’s personal email account. Readers hoping to see inside details of Brennan’s role in covert intelligence program were instead shown the names and birth dates of his two daughters, as well as Brennan’s parents’ dates of birth and their home address. Also the same information for his brother. And his sister.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/21/wikileaks-doxxes-cia-chief-s-wife-and-daughters.html

Glad to see others are starting to see through the veneer...

October 22, 2015

Question submitted by Blue_tires

I humbly submit this as exhibit #1 to illustrate why the jury system is a joke.... Jury decisions are solely based on whether or not they like/agree with the poster in question, instead of the content of the actual post...

THIS: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=7274934

--Should be a cut-and dried, textbook hide... I've had less egregious stuff than this hidden on several occasions.















On Wed Oct 21, 2015, 06:03 PM you sent an alert on the following post:

Fight for what? For whom?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=7274934

REASON FOR ALERT

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

YOUR COMMENTS

He asked for it...

JURY RESULTS

A randomly-selected Jury of DU members completed their review of this alert at Wed Oct 21, 2015, 06:06 PM, and voted 3-4 to LEAVE IT ALONE.

Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #2 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Would have been OK but you had to add the fuck you. Try acting like a grown up sometime.
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #5 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Obvious hide is obvious.
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #7 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: A little harsh, but I agree with the principle.

Thank you.

October 21, 2015

Ah, yes...More "whistleblowing" in the public interest:

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/656864290033504256


The best way to promote online privacy is to air everyone's dirty laundry...First Sony, and now this...

At what point do people start to ask who the hell WL are, and exactly what they are trying to accomplish? Asking for a friend... Because they're acting more and more like a spy agency themselves...

October 21, 2015

Mother Nature said "Take that drone and jam it up yer ass!"

https://twitter.com/MaxVenator/status/656829565562699777