The latest boots hitting Iraqi ground from TheLocal.it:
Isis: Italy to send 280 soldiers to Iraq
Italy will send 280 soldiers to Iraq to train Kurdish forces in their fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (Isis) jihadist group, Italy’s defence minister Roberta Pinotti said.
The country will also dispatch a KC-767 aircraft for in-flight refueling and two Predator drones for regional surveillance, Ansa reported.
In September, Italy said it would send arms and aid to Iraq as part of its involvement in a US-lead coalition fight against the militant group, but that it would not take part in air strikes.
Canadian boots on the ground from the Toronto Globe and Mail:
Mission could involve a year of training Iraqi forces, Canadian general says
Countries intervening in the Iraq conflict will be called upon to conduct large-scale training of Iraqi forces for as long as a year after a U.S.-led coalition succeeds in blunting the attack power of Islamic State jihadists there, top Canadian military commanders say.
This suggests Canada’s military involvement to the Iraq conflict could stretch far beyond the six-month commitment made by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.
General Tom Lawson, chief of the defence staff, said a meeting of coalition countries in Washington earlier this week devoted a lot of time to how to train the Iraqi army. Bagdhad’s existing forces, which benefitted from years of training assistance by the United States, nevertheless fell apart when faced with advancing Islamic State forces earlier this year.
He said Canada right now is part of the emergency response to this jihadist force that has wreaked havoc across parts of Iraq and Syria.
Look, up in the sky! From the Guardian:
Islamic State training pilots to fly MiG fighter planes, says monitoring group
Militants reportedly have three captured jets and witnesses cited as saying they have seen planes flying low over Aleppo
Islamic State (Isis) is takings its first steps towards building an air force by training pilots to fly captured fighter planes, according to a group monitoring the conflict in Syria.
Isis is using lots of tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery and Jeeps taken from the Syrian and Iraqi armies but this is the first report that it has planes in the air.
Isis, which took the US by surprise this year with its rapid territorial expansion in Syria and Iraq, has three Russian-built MiG jets, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which appears to have a good network of observers on the ground and has often proved reliable in the past.
And else in MENA, via the Washington Post:
Libyan general’s forces make major push to oust Islamist militants from Benghazi
A rogue Libyan general waging a months-long campaign against Libya’s Islamists launched a full-blown assault on Benghazi this week, touching off clashes with the militants dominating the city.
More than a dozen people have been killed in the violence, which started Wednesday, raising fears that the battles will evolve into an all-out civil war.
Khalifa Hifter announced in a televised address Tuesday that he intends to “liberate” Benghazi — the epicenter of the 2011 uprising against strongman Moammar Gaddafi — from the Islamist militias that stalk its streets.
A day later, the 71-year-old Hifter launched his effort. His forces — a mixture of former Gaddafi officers, pro-Hifter militias and army troops — stormed Benghazi to oust the militants.
And the corporate silver lining to clouds of war from MintPress News:
ISIS: Military Contractors’ “Gravy Train” To Profits
“Wall Street’s looking ahead and saying, ‘War’s good for business and companies are going to cash in,’” the director of a think tank aimed at addressing war and corruption, among other issues, tells MintPress News
Since the beginning of the year, the defense stocks of America’s top five arms producers — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman — have risen substantially. Last month, Bloomberg reported that “the biggest U.S. defense companies are trading at record prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world.”
These conflicts include the Afghanistan War, NATO’s arms buildup to monitor Russia in Ukraine, military intervention against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and armaments for governments wishing to suppress internal dissent.
Arms contractors are “trying to exploit the crisis,” said William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, a Washington-based think tank aimed at addressing war, corruption, inequality and climate change. It appears they’re succeeding this regard, as investors are greedily buying up stocks of weapons manufacturers. For example, Lockheed Martin’s share prices have risen from $146 a share at the beginning of the year to $174 today.
“Wall Street’s betting that this war’s going to go on for awhile, and that the Pentagon is going to get rid of budget cuts,” Hartung said of the conflict with ISIS. “It’s going to be a gravy train. Companies are sort of saying, ‘I don’t know how much we’re going to make,’ but Wall Street’s looking ahead and saying, ‘War’s good for business and companies are going to cash in.’”
But then there’s that whole question of just whose boots will be meeting Syrian and Iraqi ground. From RT America:
Generals contradict Obama’s “no boots on the ground” ISIS strategy
Program notes:
Mixed messages out of Washington are leaving many wondering who is in control of the US-led war against the Islamic State group. While President Barack Obama reassures the public no American soldiers will be fighting on the ground, repeated comments by top military leaders seemingly contradict, or at least muddy, the commander in chief’s message. RT’s Ben Swann speaks with former high-ranking CIA officer Ray McGovern to get his take.
BBC News covers more blowback:
Terror plot suspects planned to kill police, court hears
Five men have appeared in court charged in connection with a terror plot “to shoot, to kill, police officers or soldiers on the streets of London”.
Tarik Hassane, Suhaib Majeed, Nyall Hamlett, and Momen Motasim, all from London, have been charged with intending to commit acts of terrorism. A fifth man, Nathan Cuffy, 25, from London, faces firearms offences.
All five were remanded in custody until 27 October after the hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
From the McClatchy Washington Bureau, and they’re rethinking that whole blame-Hitler-for-the-Holocaust thing too:
Senate’s inquiry into CIA torture sidesteps blaming Bush, aides
A soon-to-be released Senate report on the CIA doesn’t assess the responsibility of former President George W. Bush or his top aides for any of the abuses of the agency’s detention and interrogation program, avoiding a full public accounting of one of the darkest chapters of the war on terror.
“This report is not about the White House. It’s not about the president. It’s not about criminal liability. It’s about the CIA’s actions or inactions,” said a person familiar with the document, who asked not to be further identified because the executive summary – the only part to that will be made public – still is in the final stages of declassification.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report also didn’t examine the responsibility of top Bush administration lawyers in crafting the legal framework that permitted the CIA to use simulated drowning called waterboarding and other interrogation methods widely described as torture, McClatchy has learned.
On a related note, consider this from the Intercept:
Blowing the Whistle on CIA Torture from Beyond the Grave
In the fall of 2006, Nathaniel Raymond, a researcher with the advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights, got a call from a man professing to be a CIA contractor. Scott Gerwehr was a behavioral science researcher who specialized in “deception detection,” or figuring out when someone was lying. Gerwehr told Raymond “practically in the first five minutes” that he had been at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo in the summer of 2006, but had left after his suggestion to install video-recording equipment in detainee interrogation rooms was rejected. “He said, ‘I wouldn’t operate at a facility that didn’t tape. It protects the interrogators and it protects the detainees,’” Raymond recalls.
Gerwehr also told Raymond that that he had read the CIA inspector general’s report on detainee abuse, which at the time had not been made public. But “he didn’t behave like a traditional white knight,” Raymond told The Intercept. Though he had reached out to Raymond and perhaps others, he didn’t seem like a prototypical whistleblower. He didn’t say what he was trying to do or ask for help; he just dropped the information. Raymond put him in touch with a handful of reporters, and their contact ended in 2007.
In 2008, at the age of 40, Gerwehr died in a motorcycle accident on Sunset Boulevard. Years after Gerwehr died, New York Times reporter James Risen obtained a cache of Gerwehr’s files, including emails that identify him as part of a group of psychologists and researchers with close ties to the national security establishment. Risen’s new book, Pay Any Price, uses Gerwehr’s emails to show close collaboration between staffers at the American Psychological Association (APA) and government officials, collaboration that offered a fig leaf of health-professional legitimacy to the CIA and military’s brutal interrogations of terror suspects.
Reuters covers spooky funny business:
Exclusive: NSA reviewing deal between official, ex-spy agency head
The U.S. National Security Agency has launched an internal review of a senior official’s part-time work for a private venture started by former NSA director Keith Alexander that raises questions over the blurring of lines between government and business.
Under the arrangement, which was confirmed by Alexander and current intelligence officials, NSA’s Chief Technical Officer, Patrick Dowd, is allowed to work up to 20 hours a week at IronNet Cybersecurity Inc, the private firm led by Alexander, a retired Army general and his former boss.
The arrangement was approved by top NSA managers, current and former officials said. It does not appear to break any laws and it could not be determined whether Dowd has actually begun working for Alexander, who retired from the NSA in March.
Hitting that old brick wall, with the Associated Press:
Lawmakers probing NSA face German secrecy hurdles
German lawmakers probing the U.S. National Security Agency following Edward Snowden’s revelations have hit a hurdle: their own government.
Officials have refused to let a parliamentary inquiry see dozens of German intelligence documents detailing the extent to which the country’s spy agencies cooperated with their U.S. counterparts.
A government spokeswoman said Friday that Germany is bound by secrecy accords that give the U.S. the right to review and comment on any documents that affect its interests.
But spokeswoman Christiane Wirtz denied this amounted to a U.S. veto.
A replacement named, via Reuters:
China names new envoy to Iceland after Japan spying report
Chinese President Xi Jinping has appointed China’s new ambassador to Iceland, a month after overseas Chinese media reported that the previous envoy had been arrested for passing secrets to Japan.
The announcement by China’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday was the first official confirmation that Beijing had replaced its previous envoy to Iceland, Ma Jisheng. New York-based Chinese language portal Mingjing News reported in September that Ma and his wife had been taken away by Chinese state security earlier this year.
Zhang Weidong, 57, replaces Ma, who was suspected of having become a Japanese spy while working in the Chinese embassy in Tokyo between 2004 and 2008, according to Mingjing News.
A sub-marine mystery from the Associated Press:
‘Foreign underwater activity’ reported in Sweden
Sweden’s military says it has sent naval vessels, aircraft and home guard forces to investigate reports of “foreign underwater activity” in the Stockholm archipelago.
The Armed Forces say they launched an intelligence operation Friday in the archipelago after receiving information “from a credible source.” Armed Forces spokesman Jesper Tengroth wouldn’t say whether a submarine had been sighted or give any other details.
The announcement was reminiscent of the Cold War, when Sweden’s armed forces routinely hunted for Soviet submarines in its waters.
And from TheLocal.de, drones delayed:
Bundeswehr drones can’t handle Ukraine winter
‘Luna’ drones promised by Germany to monitor the Russian-Ukrainian border may not be sent after all – they can’t handle the bitter cold expected in the Ukrainian winter.
“It’s a technical problem of the Luna system that it can’t be controlled reliably at temperatures below minus 19 degrees [Centigrade, minus two Fahrenheit],” German MP Gernot Erler told public broadcaster Deutsche Rundfunk.
Winter temperatures in the region would often plunge far lower at the drones’ operational heights of 3,000 metres and above, Bild reported, citing a military source.
While MIT Technology Review ponders commercial drones:
Air Traffic Control for Drones
If large numbers of commercial drones are to take to the skies, they’ll need an air traffic control system
How do you keep small drone aircraft safe in the world’s busiest national airspace? One idea is to have them use cellphone networks to feed data back to an air traffic control system made just for drones.
A startup called Airware is working with NASA on a project exploring how to manage the swarms of commercial drones expected to start appearing in U.S. skies. The four-year program will create a series of prototype air traffic management systems and could shape how widely commercial drones can be used. Airware’s main business is selling control software and hardware to drone manufacturers and operators.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has yet to propose rules to govern the use of commercial robotic aircraft in U.S. skies. But it predicts that 7,500 unmanned craft weighing 55 pounds (25 kilograms) or less will be operating in the U.S. by 2018.
Whilst droning on, consider this from Deutsche Welle:
Dancing Drones
Program notes:
Scientists at the Technical University of Zurich have been working with Cirque du Soleil to choreograph ten lampshades fitted with small drones in an aerial dance. The result: a hit video on Youtube.
Back to the serious side with another scoop from the Assange set, via the Guardian:
WikiLeaks’ free trade documents reveal ‘drastic’ Australian concessions
Secret negotiations over the Trans Pacific Partnership have been apparently revealed, and experts are concerned about what they show
Secret negotiations over the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement have apparently been breached by another leak of material which shows Australian consumers could pay more for cancer medicines and face criminal penalties for non-commercial copyright breaches.
The publication on WikiLeaks of the intellectual property (IP) chapter comes on the eve of the latest round of negotiations in Australia between the 12 member countries, Australia, the US, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, Mexico, Vietnam, Peru, Chile, Brunei and New Zealand.
The agreement has the capacity to affect Australian domestic law in many areas, but the secrecy of negotiations means citizens of member countries do not have full access to the Australian government’s preferred outcomes.
Two of the more contentious areas in the IP area relate to copyright and pharmaceuticals.
After the jump, the latest hacking innovation, Microsoft snares ten million spams a minutes, from tracking terrorists to cops and robbers, an L.A.P.D. meltdown, and a pot-robbin’ federal marshal, allegations of massive police corruption in Old Blighty, the latest on those missing Mexican college students disappeared after a police massacre, the missing mayor implicated in the crime sacked, a mysterious banner names names, the latest student protest, and the dirty war waged on the same ground decades earlier, off to India and a terrorism crackdown coming as an olive branch extends to China, a Sino/Vietnamese rapprochement, on to Hong Kong and a crackdown intensified, a Chinese cartoonist seeks Japanese refuge, a strong hint that Socialist Realism is heading for a mainland comeback, and a protest from China aimed at Tokyo, plus a Washington denial of Tokyo’s claims of an early withdrawal from an Okinawa base, and a truly terrifying security threat in France. . .
Network World covers the latest hacking innovation:
New technique allows attackers to hide stealthy Android malware in images
A new technique that allows attackers to hide encrypted malicious Android applications inside images could be used to evade detection by antivirus products and possibly Google Play’s own malware scanner.
The attack was developed by Axelle Apvrille, a researcher at Fortinet, and reverse engineer Ange Albertini, who presented their proof-of-concept at the Black Hat Europe security conference in Amsterdam Thursday.
It’s based on a technique devised by Albertini dubbed AngeCryption that allows controlling both the input and the output of a file encryption operation using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) by taking advantage of the properties of some file formats that allow files to remain valid despite having junk data appended to them.
While TechWeekEurope interferes:
Microsoft “Blocks 10 Million Spam Messages A Minute”
Microsoft’s cloud-based Exchange Online Protection service is the company’s weapon in an escalating arms race with spammers
Each day, Microsoft prevents billions of spam email messages from landing in customer inboxes.
The software giant blocks 10 million such emails each minute on average, revealed the company’s Exchange Online Protection (EOP) team in an Oct. 15 blog post. That adds up to more than 14 billion blocked messages per day.
Spam is more than a nuisance, according to Microsoft program managers Shobhit Sahay, Levon Esibov and Terry Zink. In their jointly authored post, they detailed the dangers of a particularly dangerous form of spam.
“Phishing campaigns … are looking to compromise the credentials of the company employees and take control of the resources of a company,” explained the Microsoft staffers. “A popular type of phishing campaign is spear phishing, which targets the most valuable contacts within an organization.”
From the Guardian, making the Sign of the T:
Australia’s national security laws are ushering in a reign of terror
Only a handful of politicians have resisted Australia’s Brave New World of national security laws
On the night of 25 September 2014, attorney general George Brandis was taking Australia into a reign of terror. There were only a handful of witnesses, even though there were seats for hundreds and cameras covering every angle.
He was shepherding into law a bill that gives our spies and their friends a licence to injure, to embed malware into computers, to break into the houses of people suspected of nothing, and to arm and train rebel groups to overthrow governments in foreign countries.
A bill to jail anyone who reports on past corruption and misconduct in our spy agency. A bill so fuelled by paranoia that it seeks to jail spies who dare to use a photocopier without an explanation.
From Vice News, from tracking terrorists to cops and robbers:
Police in Washington, DC Are Using the Secretive ‘Stingray’ Cell Phone Tracking Tool
Back in 2003, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in Washington, DC was awarded a $260,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to purchase surveillance technology called Stingray — a contraption the size of a suitcase that simulates a cell phone tower and intercepts mobile phone calls and text messages.
The rationale behind the DHS grant to MPD and other law enforcement agencies was to help them secure new antiterrorism technology from private corporations. But the grant fell a little short, because the MPD couldn’t come up with the extra several thousands dollars it needed to train officers how to use and maintain Stingray — so the device sat unused in an “Electronic Surveillance Unit equipment vault” at the department for more than five years.
In 2008, the DC police decided to dust off and upgrade its Stingray tracking device after the department secured another federal grant. But officials appeared to no longer see it as a way to combat terrorism, fears of which had decreased significantly since 2003. Instead, they sought to use it for routine investigations involving drug trafficking and common criminals.
From the Los Angeles Times, an L.A.P.D. meltdown:
Decision on LAPD detective’s discipline poses major test for Beck
The veteran Los Angeles police detective took the floor at a training class for fellow officers and let loose an expletive-laden rant.
Frank Lyga claimed that he drove his Jeep in the carpool lane at 100 mph, called a prominent black civil rights attorney an “ewok,” quipped that a female LAPD captain had been “swapped around a bunch of times” and described a lieutenant as a “moron.”
Then he recalled his fatal 1997 shooting of a fellow officer, an incident that sparked racial tensions within the department because Lyga is white and the slain officer was black.
“I could have killed a whole truckload of them, and I would have been happy doing it,” Lyga recounted telling an attorney representing the officer’s family.
And a pot-robbin’ federal marshal, also from the Los Angeles Times:
U.S. Marshals’ deputy charged with stealing bags of marijuana
A U.S Marshals deputy was charged this week with stealing 24 pounds of marijuana at gunpoint in Northern California, then fleeing from authorities, according to federal court documents.
Clorenzo Griffen, a federal deputy from Miami, and two other men face federal robbery, marijuana possession and weapons charges in connection with the Oct. 11 incident in Yuba City, according to a U.S. District Court criminal complaint filed Wednesday.
Allegations of massive police corruption in Old Blighty, via the Independent:
New investigation after ‘2,000 police officers’ are implicated in corruption
Police corruption is to be investigated by a powerful committee of MPs amid fears of widespread impropriety – as The Independent reveals that thousands of officers are suspected to be crooked.
The Home Affairs Select Committee will launch an inquiry next month into the police’s relationship with organised crime, focusing on the infiltration of forces by criminal networks. The inquiry, which will allow MPs to hear from witnesses under the protection of parliamentary privilege, follows a series of scandals including the inquiries relating to Stephen Lawrence, Daniel Morgan, phone-hacking and Plebgate.
It comes as The Independent can reveal for the first time the Government’s official estimate of how many members of police staff were suspected of being compromised by dealings with criminals.
On to Mexico and the latest on those missing Mexican college students disappeared after a police massacre, first from the Associated Press:
Mexicans protest in Acapulco over missing students
Thousands of protesters marched along the famed coastal boulevard at the Mexican resort of Acapulco to demand the safe return of 43 missing students from a rural teachers’ college .
The government is combing the hills of southern Guerrero state with horseback patrols and is sending divers to look in lakes and dams, but has not found the youths missing since Sept. 26.
Protests hold out hopes they are alive, and have pledged to blockade city halls throughout the state until they are found.
The missing mayor implicated in the crime sacked, via Al Jazeera America:
Mexico mayor sacked in connection to disappearance of 43 students
Protesters in Guerrero state occupied five town halls, vowed more actions calling for students’ safe return
Mexico’s Guerrero state Congress on Friday approved the impeachment of the mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca — accused of ties to organized crime and involvement in last month’s disappearance of 43 students — as protesters occupied five of the state’s town halls calling for justice.
“The evidence provided shows that the mayor, Jose Luis Abarca Velezquez … in charge of public safety and maintaining peace and order did not do so on Sept. 26 and 27 in Iguala,” Omar Jalil Flores, Guerrero’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) deputy told Mexican news website El Universal.
On Thursday, protesters in Guerrero state occupied five town halls and demanded the resignation of state governor Ángel Aguirre Rivero and the safe return of the missing students. The activists vowed to take all 81 municipal buildings unless the students were returned. Thousands have marched in mass protests in Mexico City in the weeks following their disappearance, calling for their safe homecoming.
Borderland Beat covers a mysterious message:
Iguala: Banner Message to President Peña, signed by “El Choky”
A manta was found hanging on display in the city of San Jose, a city in close proximity to Iguala.
The manta was addressed to President Enrique Peña Nieto, in which Mario Casarrubias Salgado (founder of Guerrero Unidos) and brothers along with a gang in Peques as responsible for the normalistas disappearance and killings.
The message is signed by “El Choky”, who authorities identify as the chief of sicarios of the cartel.
“We know who is responsible, it is the Casarrubias Salgado bothers, Adán (El Jitomate), Ángel (El Mochomo), Sidronio (El Chino), together with the Benítez Palacios brothers, Oziel (El Oso), Víctor Hugo (El Tilo), Mateo (El Gordo), Salvador (Chava) Reynaldo (Rey), El Cholo Palacios, also Gil, May, Chente, Popoca and la Veva”,
Mr. President, you want names, here are names;
Taxco: Salomón Majul González and Eruviel Salado Sánchez; Ixtapan de la sal: Ignacio Ávila Navarrete and Efraín Pedroza Flores; Iguala: José Luis Abarca Velazquez and Francisco Valladares; Huitzuco: Héctor Vicario Castrejón, Norberto Figueroa Almozo, Javier Duarte Núñez and Marcelo Villalba Adame; Tepecoacuilco: Antonio Galarza Zavaleta; Cocula: César Miguel Peñaloza; Teloloapan: Ignacio Valladares; Apaxtla: Efraín Peña Damasio. These are those who form the group Guerrero Unidos.”
The manta also charges Hector Castrejon, Sedatu chief (Urban Development) with ties to the Guerreros Unidos cartel and eight mayors.
On October 5th, the atty general for the state of Guerrero, identified “el Choky” as the leader of Guerreros Unidos, and is responsible for ordering the normalista killings. The name of the person behind the moniker is unknown, however people on mainboard have thought it to be Jorge Luis Valencia Arzate, previously identified as a leader for La Familia Michoacana, his role at the time was jefe de plaza of Morelia. The spelling of Valencias moniker was “El Chucky”.
And then there’s this from Frontera NorteSur, covering an earlier era of disappearances in the same troubled Mexican state:
New Report Exposes Mexican Dirty War
After more than two years of painstaking work, a revealing report on the Mexican government’s dirty war against opponents in the state of Guerrero decades ago will be delivered Wednesday, October 15, 2014, even as new human rights and political crises engulf the Pacific coast state.
Authored by the official Guerrero Truth Commission (Comverdad), the report will be presented to government officials at a session in the tense state capital of Chilpancingo.
Based on archival research as well as hundreds of interviews with Dirty War survivors and victims’ relatives, the report names politicians and members of government security forces responsible for extrajudicial murder, torture, forced disappearance, rape, and scorched earth campaigns that displaced entire communities.
The findings document the cases of more than 200 of the estimated 600 individuals in Guerrero forcibly disappeared during a government counter-insurgency campaign against leftist rebels, rural residents and political dissidents during the late 1960s and 1970s. The ultimate fates of the missing have never been fully explained.
And the latest from Fusion:
Mexican Students Hijack Buses, Delivery Trucks Amid Escalating Protests
Program note:
Protests against the disappearance of 43 students in southern Mexico intensified on Saturday when a group of masked youths blocked a main highway and hijacked four trucks and four buses.
Off to India and a terrorism crackdown coming, from the Economic Times:
Home Ministry ready with tough measures to tackle terrorism
Home minister Rajnath Singh has begun work on a doctrine to tackle jihadi terrorism as well as a policy to ensure “integration” of Jammu & Kashmir with the rest of the nation.
This follows a strong policy against Left-wing extremism unveiled by the home ministry on Friday, according to which the government can “use any element of its national power” to resolutely deal with Maoists. Officials said this means the government can use the armed forces as a last resort against Maoists.
Singh’s ministry is now working overtime on a new policy against jihadi terrorism that aims to check indoctrination of Indian youth on the Internet and social networking websites by al-Qaeda and ISIS, a senior government official told ET. The move comes amid an acute feeling in the government that the activities of home-grown terrorist organisations Indian Mujahideen and SIMI need to be closely watched along with those of Pakistan-based terrorist groups for their links with al-Qaeda and ISIS
Building bridges, via Reuters:
After border row, India, China plan counter-terror drills to build trust
India will hold counter-terrorism exercises with China despite a recent face-off on their disputed border, officials said, in a sign the two governments want to manage their deep differences.
India, which under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has struck an assertive national security posture, also agreed to China’s request to move next month’s exercises away from the border with Pakistan with which China shares a close relationship.
The manoeuvres will come just weeks after thousands of Indian and Chinese soldiers confronted each other on their de facto border in the western Himalayas, accusing each other of building roads and observations posts in disputed territory.
And Sino/Vietnamese rapprochement from Global Times:
Chinese, Vietnamese armies agree on proper settlement of maritime row
China and Vietnam reached consensus issues for developing bilateral military relations on Friday, pledging to properly handle their maritime disputes.
The discussion took place between Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan and his Vietnamese counterpart Phung Quang Thanh in Beijing. During the talks, both sides decided to gradually resume and promote the healthy and stable development of bilateral military ties.
Both armed forces should enhance solidarity and provide a strong guarantee for the governing status of the communist party of the two countries and the cause of socialist construction, a statement said.
On to Hong Kong and a crackdown intensified, via CBC News:
Hong Kong protests embroiled in fresh clashes as activists regroup
Police use pepper spray, batons to charge on pro-democracy protestors
Hong Kong riot police used pepper spray and baton charged pro-democracy protesters who mobilized en masse on Friday evening after a pre-dawn clearance of a major protest zone in the Chinese-controlled financial hub.
Over a thousand protesters, some clad in protective goggles and helmets, thronged to the gritty and congested Mong Kok district after work and school on Friday evening to try to reclaim sections of an intersection that police had cleared in a surprise raid early on Friday.
Student leaders urged people via Facebook and social media to retake the area that has been a flash point for ugly street fights between students and mobs, including triads, or local gangsters, intent on breaking up their protracted and unprecedented protest movement.
The latest from South China Morning Post:
Chaos in Mong Kok as police use batons, pepper spray to repel surge of protesters
Clashes between police and protesters continued into the early hours of Saturday morning in multiple locations across Mong Kok, causing a blockade of both Nathan Road and Argyle Street.
By 1am, police had pulled back from the crowd and formed a cordon at the junction of Argyle Street and Nathan Road.
After midnight, police were forced to retreat from Nathan Road northwards, as more protesters flooded into the area – with several picking up metal barriers as they arrived.
Seeking refuge with the Asahi Shimbun:
Political cartoonist fearful of returning to China asks Japan for visa extension
A popular Chinese political cartoonist has asked the Japanese government to extend his visa after authorities in China abruptly closed his social media accounts, sparking fears for his safety.
Wang Liming, 41, who has been in Japan since May, is best known for cartoons posted under his pen name, “Biantai Lajiao” (Perverted Chili Pepper), on the Twitter-like Weibo microblogging website and elsewhere.
In August, Wang’s Weibo accounts were suddenly terminated, which was soon followed by a smear campaign against him on a website affiliated with the Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper. The website accused Wang of being pro-Japan and a traitor. It also demanded he face an “investigation based on the law.”
“China’s situation surrounding freedom of speech has worsened during these six months,” Wang told The Asahi Shimbun in a telephone interview. “I have no idea where the borderline is (between what is permissible and what is not anymore).”
An example of the work presumably leading to the ban:
A cartoon by Wang Liming that satirizes an order from Chinese authorities to display portraits of central leaders in Tibetan Buddhist temples.
And from Global Times, a strong hint that Socialist Realism is heading for a comeback:
Counterculture must not define art market
A symposium on the work of art hosted by President Xi Jinping on Wednesday has had a great impact on the artists, writers as well as the intellectual circles.
People are talking a lot about Xi’s words at the forum, including phrases like that art should serve the people and artists should not “lose themselves in the tide of market economy nor go astray while answering the question of whom to serve, otherwise their works will lack vitality.”
Apparently, Xi’s remarks has touched on the essential question of the work of art, which has long been debated by intellectuals.
Art works should first emphasize social value. A good piece of art work often excels in both social value and market value. However, it has become a hard goal in China in recent years.
The art works seen in China are either poker-faced ones that attempted to lecture the audience, or those which, if successful in the market, often went against mainstream values and used vulgar content to attract people.
A protest from China aimed at Tokyo, via Reuters:
China concerned about Japan shrine actions
China’s foreign ministry expressed serious concern on Friday after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a ritual offering to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine.
“China is seriously concerned about and resolutely opposed to the negative tendencies which have appeared in Japan regarding the Yasukuni Shrine,” the ministry said in a statement in response to a question on Abe’s offering.
And a Washington denial of Tokyo’s claims of an early withdrawal from an Okinawa base, with the Asahi Shimbun:
Washington denies agreement exists to end Futenma operations in 2019
No agreement has been reached between Japan and the United States to end operations at U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma by February 2019, despite recent statements by Japanese officials.
A U.S. Defense Department official said Oct. 15 that the only way forward was the agreement reached in April 2013 to return Futenma in fiscal 2022 or later.
Although the agreement does not specify when Futenma operations will end, Okinawa Governor Hirokazu Nakaima has asked the central government to end operations there within five years.
In September, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told Nakaima that operations at Futenma would end by February 2019.
And we close with a truly terrifying security threat from TheLocal.fr:
Fear of ‘armed clowns’ grips northern France
Between Monday and Wednesday students in the suburbs around the town of Douai, northern France, near the border with Belgium, reported three not very comic incidents in the area involving clowns.
It all started in the town of Sin-le-Noble on Monday when a girl told police she was chased by an armed person in a clown costume. Next on Tuesday in Lambres-lez-Douai a middle school student said she was attacked by a clown.
Finally on Wednesday in Flers-en-Escrebieux a student said he was threatened by a clown with a knife near a primary school.
