We begin with the never-exacted price of corporate civil disobedience, via the Guardian:
US threatened Yahoo with $250,000 daily fine over NSA data refusal
Company releases 1,500 documents from failed suit against NSA over user data requests and cooperation with Prism compliance
The US government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day if it refused to hand over user data to the National Security Agency, according to court documents unsealed Thursday.
In a blogpost, the company said the 1,500 pages of once-secret documents shine further light on Yahoo previously disclosed clashed with the NSA over access to its users’ data.
The papers outline Yahoo’s secret and ultimately unsuccessful legal battle to resist the government’s demands for the tech firm to cooperate with the NSA’s controversial Prism surveillance program, revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden last year.
The New York Times covers imperial malaise:
New Military Campaign Extends a Legacy of War
In ordering a sustained military campaign against Islamic extremists in Syria and Iraq, President Obama on Wednesday night effectively set a new course for the remainder of his presidency and may have ensured that he would pass his successor a volatile and incomplete war, much as his predecessor left one for him.
It will be a significantly different kind of war — not like Iraq or Afghanistan, where many tens of thousands of American troops were still deployed when Mr. Obama took the oath nearly six years ago. And even though Mr. Obama compared it to the small-scale, sporadic strikes against isolated terrorists in places like Yemen and Somalia, it will not be exactly like those either.
Instead, the widening battle with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria will be the next chapter in a grueling, generational struggle that has kept the United States at war in one form or another since that day 13 years ago on Thursday when hijacked airplanes shattered America’s sense of its own security. Waged by a president with faded public standing, the new phase will not involve many American troops on the ground, but seems certain to require a far more intense American bombing blitz than in Somalia or Yemen.
Scope, from the Los Angeles Times:
Obama vows to hunt Islamic State militants ‘wherever they exist’
President Obama outlined a “steady, relentless” strategy Wednesday to combat Islamic State fighters “wherever they exist,” signaling that he will target the militant group in Iraq and neighboring Syria, where the fighters have captured large swaths of territory.
Nearly six years after he was elected on the promise to end America’s decade of wars, Obama detailed a military campaign that is broader and more complex than any other he has launched.
The president said he will expand U.S. airstrikes against the militants in Iraq to include targets throughout the country, and he left open the option to bomb the group across the rapidly disintegrating border with Syria, where Islamic State harbors its weapons, camps and fighters.
intelNews assesses:
War alone will not defeat Islamists, says US ex-military intel chief
Lieutenant General Michael Flynn led the US Defense Intelligence Agency from July 2012 until August of this year, serving essentially as the most senior intelligence official in the US Armed Forces.
He stepped down amidst rumors that he had been asked to resign because his plans to modernize military intelligence operations were “disruptive”. On Wednesday, while addressing the annual Maneuver Conference at the US Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence in Fort Benning, Georgia, General Flynn addressed the issue of Sunni militancy and how to counter groups like the Islamic State.
Responding to a question from the audience, the former DIA director said “what this audience wants [to hear] is ‘kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out, get the T-shirt [and] go down to Ranger Joe’s” (a military clothing retailer). And he added: “we can kill all day long, but until we understand why there are [such large] numbers of [fundamentalist] believers globally, [groups like the Islamic State] will not be defeated”. Flynn went on to say that America is losing initiative in the war of ideas with Islamic radicalism, as the latter is spreading rapidly across the world, especially in regions such as Africa and South Asia.
Homeland Security News Wire covers cognitive dissonance:
Political traffic by Arabs on social media overwhelmingly hostile to, suspicious of U.S.
Researchers found that a great deal of the political and social traffic by Arabs on social media is deeply hostile to and suspicious of the United States. U.S. officials are concerned that Internet users in the Arab world understand history and current events in ways fundamentally different from the American version. “Suspicion and opposition to U.S. foreign policy appear to be so deep and so widely shared, even by those on opposite sides of other contentious issues, that it’s hard to imagine how the U.S. could begin to rebuild trust,” said one expert.
The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA) Social Media in Strategic Communication program, launched to help the U.S. government identify misinformation or deception campaigns by adversaries, thereby allowing U.S. agencies to counter them with correct information, has been focused on the Internet traffic on Twitter and YouTube stemming from users in Arab states. There are more than 135 million Internet users across twenty-two Arab states, and seventy-one million of them are on social media networks. Saudi Arabia has the highest percentage (41 percent) of its citizens on Twitter compared to any Arab country.
MintPress News recalls another dirty war backed by Washington:
In Chile, A Dictatorship’s Horrors Go On Trial
Former DINA agent Cristián Labbé has been indicted on charges related to his role in Chile’s dictatorship-era torture. With the possibility of his incarceration looming, justice may finally come to those who have suffered through decades of oblivion.
Memory loss in Chile, or oblivion, has ensured that a multitude of crimes committed during the dictatorship era remain unchallenged. Consequently, Chilean society remains shackled within a paradox of alleged democracy and impunity. Torture survivors find themselves living alongside torturers and murderers — many of whom hold influential positions in government and other respected practices.
The trend is set to change for one former Direccion de Inteligencia Nacional (the National Intelligence Directorate or DINA) agent and torture instructor who has evaded justice for decades. Cristián Labbé — lieutenant and torture instructor from the Tejas Verdes brigade, and later, the Mayor of Providencia — has been implicated in dictatorship crimes through the testimony of Harry Cohen Vera, a former detainee and torture survivor who encountered Labbé and his brutal tactics in November 1973.
Early reports in Chilean media state that Labbé was indicted in the Valdivia Court of Appeals by Minister Juan Ignacio Correa for crimes committed in Futrono in 1973. Predictably, the former DINA agent has denied ever participating in “illegal practices” during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973-1990).
More from Vice News:
Classified US Documents Could Set the Record Straight on Chile’s Military Coup
Thousands of documents have been released in the last 15 years as a result of these efforts and a separate special project launched under the Clinton administration. But some of the key details have yet to be declassified and important questions are still unanswered — largely the murky historical ruling over the extent to which the US was actually involved.
“There are still documents out there,” Peter Kornbluh, the director of the Chile Project at the National Security Archives, told VICE News. Specifically, he discussed some of the major documents that remain classified, some concerning US operations against Allende prior to the coup, cooperation with Pinochet’s government, details of the murder of two Americans, and a Chilean secret police head who was on the CIA’s payroll.
Kornbluh and the National Security Archives — along with activists and organizations — were behind the campaign to persuade the Clinton administration to begin declassifying the documents. Further propelled by Pinochet’s arrest in London in 1998, the State Department established the Chile Declassification Project the following year with an initial release of nearly 6,000 documents from the State Department, CIA, National Archives, FBI, and the Department of Defense.
The first of two Reuters stories about African spy chiefs:
Kenya appoints new intelligence chief amid rising Shabaab threat
Kenya on Thursday swore in a new intelligence chief who it hopes will tackle the rising threat from al Shabaab militants in neighboring Somalia bent on retaliation after U.S. missiles last week killed their leader and co-founder Ahmed Godane.
Major-General Philip Kameru’s appointment as the new director general of Kenya’s National Intelligence Service comes nearly a year after al Shabaab gunmen killed 67 people in an attack on Nairobi shopping mall.
Kenyan security bosses were lambasted by the public for failing to prevent the four-day siege and Kameru’s predecessor, retired Major-General Michael Gichangi, resigned in August under pressure over a rise in attacks blamed on al Shabaab.
And the second Reuters offering:
Congo Republic jails ex-intel official for life over gunbattle
A Republic of Congo court convicted former deputy intelligence chief Colonel Marcel Ntsourou to life in prison with forced labor on Thursday for his involvement in a gunbattle that exposed political rifts in the oil-producing nation last year.
At least 22 people were killed during heavy fighting in Brazzaville last December between state security forces and gunmen loyal to Ntsourou, a former ally-turned-critic of President Denis Sassou Nguesso.
Another 59 people were jailed for between five and 15 years after being convicted on charges of rebellion, murder and illegally stocking weapons.
And from RT, that ol’ Cold War 2.0 arms racin’ redux:
‘Deterrence not arms race’: Russia hints it may develop rival to US Prompt Global Strike
A highly-placed Defense Ministry official says that Russia may be forced to match the US Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) doctrine, which prescribes that a non-nuclear US missile must be able to hit any target on Earth within one hour.
“Russia is capable of and will have to develop a similar system,” Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov said during a public discussion of the Russian rearmament program for the decade of 2016 through 2025. “But mostly we will concentrate on countering CPGS, as our military doctrine is a defensive one.”
But the official denied that the Kremlin was setting off for another Cold War-style arms race with the West.
Back home and another shooting from United Press International:
New Michael Brown witnesses: Cop ‘just kept shooting’
“The cop didn’t say get on the ground. He just kept shooting,” one of the witnesses said.
Two witnesses of the police shooting of Michael Brown came forward Wednesday saying they saw Officer Darren Wilson shoot Brown despite his hands being up.
The witnesses were contractors working 50 feet away from where Brown was killed. Both men spoke to CNN under the condition of anonymity. They said they saw Wilson approach Brown, who had his hands held in the air, when he began shooting. The witnesses said there was one shot and then another 30 seconds later.
“The cop didn’t say get on the ground. He just kept shooting,” one of the witnesses said.
Another confrontation, via the New York Times:
35 Arrested as Missouri Police Block Protest on Highway Over Teenager’s Shooting
Demonstrators hoping to block Interstate 70 here on Wednesday to protest the fatal shooting of Michael Brown a month ago were barred by the police from entering the highway. The authorities said 35 people had been arrested, most for unlawful assembly but four for assaulting officers.
As traffic continued to move during the late-afternoon rush, demonstrators and police officers, some in riot gear, faced each other in a standoff, at times tense, on North Hanley Road at Interstate 70 near the St. Louis airport. The several dozen demonstrators were outnumbered by more than 100 officers from three law enforcement agencies.
From USA TODAY, another imbalance in the ranks of the armed-by-the-state:
Army commanders: White men lead a diverse force
Command of the Army’s main combat units — its pipeline to top leadership — is virtually devoid of black officers, according to interviews, documents and data obtained by USA TODAY.
The lack of black officers who lead infantry, armor and field artillery battalions and brigades — there are no black colonels at the brigade level this year — threatens the Army’s effectiveness, disconnects it from American society and deprives black officers of the principal route to top Army posts, according to officers and military sociologists. Fewer than 10% of the active-duty Army’s officers are black compared with 18% of its enlisted men, according to the Army.
The problem is most acute in its main combat units: infantry, armor and artillery. In 2014, there was not a single black colonel among those 25 brigades, the Army’s main fighting unit of about 4,000 soldiers. Brigades consist of three to four battalions of 800 to 1,000 soldiers led by lieutenant colonels. Just one of those 78 battalions is scheduled to be led by a black officer in 2015.
And from the Oakland Tribune, the paramilitary arsenal along the shores of San Francisco Bay:
Bay Area police departments got millions in military surplus, records show
Law enforcement agencies throughout the Bay Area have received more than $14 million dollars worth of decommissioned military equipment, including grenade launchers, armored vehicles, and an 85-foot speed boat armed with machine guns, records show.
The acquisitions by local agencies include a $4.4 million fast patrol boat, given to the Alameda County Sheriff’s office in 2005 to patrol the waterways around the Port of Oakland, a $685,000 mine resistant vehicle for the Antioch Police Department and an armored vehicle known as the MAMBA, which can withstand land mines and IEDs, for the city of Concord.
The acquisitions are part of the Department of Defense’s 1033 Program, which since 1995 has given more than $5 billion worth of military surplus to police agencies across the country. Although the program has been in place for nearly two decades, information about what individual police agencies received was made available for first time last week by the California Office of Emergency Services, which oversees the program in the state.
From the Guardian, security and packin’ heat in the classroom:
Missouri approves concealed guns at schools and open carry in public
Lawmakers supersede the governor’s veto of broad bill that allows concealed guns at schools and drops the required age of permits
Missouri lawmakers expanded the potential for teachers to bring guns to schools and for residents to openly carry firearms, in a vote Thursday that capped a two-year effort by the Republican-led legislature to expand gun rights over the objection of the Democratic governor.
The new law will allow specially trained school employees to carry concealed guns on campuses. It also allows anyone with a concealed weapons permit to carry guns openly, even in cities or towns with bans against the open carrying of firearms. The age to obtain a concealed weapons permit also will drop from 21 to 19.
A more far-reaching measure that sought to nullify federal gun control laws had died in the final hours of the legislative session in May. Governor Jay Nixon had vetoed a similar bill last year that could have subjected federal officers to state criminal charges and lawsuits for attempting to enforce federal gun control laws.
The new regulations, which this time garnered the two-thirds majority needed to override Nixon’s veto, take effect in about a month.
So what could go wrong? From the Associated Press:
Teacher Hurt When Gun Accidentally Shatters Toilet
A Utah elementary school teacher who was carrying a concealed firearm at school was struck by fragments from a bullet and a porcelain toilet when her gun accidentally fired in a faculty bathroom on Thursday, officials said.
The sixth-grade teacher at Westbrook Elementary School, in the Salt Lake City suburb of Taylorsville, was injured when the bullet struck a toilet and caused it to explode, Granite School District spokesman Ben Horsley said.
Authorities initially thought the teacher had accidentally shot herself. They now believe she was injured when the bullet and toilet fragments struck her lower leg.
After the jump, it’s on to Asia, starting with the tragic consequences of the CIA usual a vaccination as cover to get Osama bin Laden, a South Korean spy boss convicted [sort of], Chinese media compliance, a Chinese missile revealed, sneaky Sino/Swedish weaponry dealings, assertive delineation from Tokyo and Manila, and realignments ahead in Europe. . .
From the Express Tribune, disabling blowback from a CIA black op:
Three new polio cases confirmed in Khyber Agency
Three new polio cases were reported from Khyber Agency on Thursday, raising the total number of confirmed cases in Pakistan to 146.
All three cases – all of them polio type-1 – were reported from the war affected Khyber Agency where polio eradication campaigns have been affected by the security situation,
According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), the children affected by polio have been identified as 18 month old Abdul Rauf from Aka Khel, Meri Khel village; eight month old Saliha from the Milward area, Miran Talab village and 11 month old Mohib of the Ghundai area, Karol Khel Bakar Abad village.
The NIH further added that all three children diagnosed with the crippling disease had not received any dose of polio vaccines since campaigns could not be launched due to the bad security situation.
From the New York Times, a man of conviction:
Former South Korean Spy Chief Convicted in Online Campaign Against Liberals
A former South Korean intelligence chief accused of directing agents who posted online criticisms of liberal candidates during the 2012 presidential election campaign was convicted Thursday of violating a law that banned the spy agency from involvement in domestic politics.
Won Sei-hoon, who served as director of the National Intelligence Service under President Park Geun-hye’s predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, but the Seoul Central District Court suspended the sentence. Mr. Won had just been released from prison Tuesday after completing a 14-month sentence stemming from a separate corruption trial.
Prosecutors indicted Mr. Won in June of last year, saying that a secret team of National Intelligence Service agents had posted more than 1.2 million messages on Twitter and other forums in a bid to sway public opinion in favor of the conservative governing party and its leader, Ms. Park, ahead of the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2012.
The Global Times aligns:
Chinese websites commit to public supervision
More than 100 Chinese websites on Thursday publicized hotlines for public reports of online abuse and rumormongering, as authorities ramp up a drive to manage the Internet.
Gathered at a work conference, the heads of the 107 websites, including people.com.cn, xinhuanet.com, sina.com, baidu.com, also signed a letter of commitment, promising to deal in a timely manner with illegal information such as rumors, pornography and violent content.
In cases where web users maliciously spread such information, the websites will report them to law enforcement departments. They also welcome supervision from the public, they agreed.
Peng Bo, deputy director of the State Internet Information Office, said that 680,000 cases of illegal online information have been reported this year to net.china.com.cn, a website mainly for receiving tip-offs, and more than 800 informants have given rewards. Some 9,000 of the cases were related to violence and terrorism.
Want China Times reveals:
‘Guam killer’ missile inadvertently revealed in China: report
China has inadvertently revealed that it is in possession of a DF-26C medium-range intercontinental ballistic missile, informally known as the “Guam killer,” designed to allow China to attack US military facilities in the Pacific in a potential conflict, according to a Sept. 8 article on Strategy Page, a Washington-based website covering global military developments.
The website stated that the DF-26C missile appears to have a range of 3,500 kilometers. It is designed based on the earlier DF-21 missile. The DF-26C is considered a threat to US national security because it is capable of hitting US military facilities in Guam. Even though China has a tradition of keeping its weapons secret, overseas governments and media outlets are able to discover them through satellite photos or curious Chinese military enthusiasts taking cell phone photos and posting them on the internet.
The United States was able to monitor China’s test of the DF-41 ICBM, which can carry multiple warheads, with satellites and other air, land, and sea-based sensors back in 2012. The People’s Liberation Army never displays the DF-41 missiles in public but photos of them have been circulating on the internet.
From Want China Times, curious suspicions:
Swedish institute may have defied sanctions to sell China weapons
A Swedish military research institute has reportedly bypassed sanctions against China and sold weapons that are for both military and civilian uses to the country through middle men, according to Russian military news agency RIA Novosti.
According to Swedish public television reporters who revealed the illegal trade, the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI), which prepared to sell part of a computer program Edge that it developed to test the performance of aircraft and nuclear guided missiles to the Royal Institute of Technology, a public research university in Stockholm. The agency then used the institute as a middle man to sell its technology to foreign countries in certain circumstances when it cannot or is unwilling to sign contracts with certain countries.
The institute has made money through its cooperation with the agency, signing a contract with the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
The Yomiuri Shimbun crosses the line:
Senkaku intrusions continue 2 years on
On the second anniversary of Japan’s nationalization of the Senkaku Islands on Thursday, China remained defiant with its vessels repeatedly entering Japanese waters around the islands.
Alerted that groups of Chinese fishermen known as maritime militias have been spotted recently around the islands in Okinawa Prefecture, the government has strengthened surveillance on Beijing’s attempts to change the status quo by force.
Four Chinese naval ships intruded into Japanese waters off the Senkakus on Wednesday morning, according to the Japan Coast Guard. Eight Chinese government ships had made a similar incursion on Sept. 10 last year. A senior Foreign Ministry official said such actions are aimed to assert China’s sovereignty over the islands ahead of the anniversary of their nationalization by Japan.
While Reuters covers historical delineation:
Philippines displays ancient maps to debunk China’s sea claims
The Philippines on Thursday put on display dozens of ancient maps which officials said showed that China’s territorial claims over the South China Sea did not include a disputed shoal at the centre of an acrimonious standoff.
The Philippines is in dispute with China over parts of the South China Sea, including the Scarborough Shoal, an area believed to be rich in oil and natural gas as well as fisheries resources.
China seized control of the shoal in June 2012 and has prevented Philippine fishermen from getting close to the rocky outcrop, a rich fishing ground.
The Asahi Shimbun covers thje ol’ duck and cover:
LDP trio try to distance themselves from photos taken with neo-Nazi
A newly promoted Cabinet minister and two ruling party lawmakers were left scrambling to explain how they ended up posing for photos with the leader of a Japanese “neo-Nazi” organization.
Particularly embarrassing for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is that Sanae Takaichi was involved. Takaichi, the new internal affairs minister, is one of five women appointed by Abe just over a week ago to give his administration a more modern touch.
The other two were Tomomi Inada, who is also female and chairs the Liberal Democratic Party’s influential Policy Research Council, and Shoji Nishida, an Upper House member.
They were photographed with Kazunari Yamada, whose National Socialist Japanese Workers Party flies a swastika-like flag during its activities.
And for our final item, via the London Telegraph, assertion of delineation struggles elsewhere:
Only Germany is holding together as separatists threaten to rip Europe apart
The increasing predilection for fragmentation across the continent will result in Teutonic political hegemony – if we’re lucky
Europe is disintegrating. Two large and ancient kingdoms are near the point of rupture as Spain follows Britain into constitutional crisis, joined like Siamese twins.
The post-Habsburg order further east is suddenly prey to a corrosive notion that settled borders are up for grabs. “Problems frozen for decades are warming up again,” said Giles Merritt, from Friends of Europe in Brussels.
The best we can hope for – should tribalism prevail – is German political hegemony in Europe. The German people so far remain a bastion of rationalism, holding together as others tear themselves apart. The French are too paralysed by economic depression and the collapse of the Hollande presidency to play any serious role.
