And lots more. . .
First up, from the Associated Press:
2 dead in shooting attack at Canada’s Parliament
A gunman with a scarf over his face killed a soldier standing guard at Canada’s war memorial Wednesday, then stormed Parliament in an attack that rocked the building with the boom of gunfire and forced lawmakers to barricade themselves in meeting rooms. The gunman was shot to death by the ceremonial sergeant-at-arms.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the rampage the second deadly terrorist attack on Canadian soil in three days. “This week’s events are a grim reminder that Canada is not immune to the types of terrorist attacks we have seen elsewhere,” Harper said.
He added: “We will not be intimidated. Canada will never be intimidated.”
Canada was already on alert at the time of the shooting rampage because of a deadly hit-and-run assault Monday against two Canadian soldiers by a man Harper described as an “ISIL-inspired terrorist.” ISIL is also known as Islamic State.
More from the Toronto Globe and Mail:
Federal sources have identified the suspected shooter as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a man in his early 30s who was known to Canadian authorities.
Sources told The Globe and Mail that he was recently designated a “high-risk traveller” by the Canadian government and that his passport had been seized – the same circumstances surrounding the case of Martin Rouleau-Couture, the Quebecker who was shot Monday after running down two Canadian Forces soldiers with his car.
Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau has a record in Quebec in the early 2000s for petty crimes such as possession of drugs, credit-card forgery and robbery. He was also charged with robbery in 2011 in Vancouver.
The soldier who was killed was identified as Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, according to his aunt. Cpl. Cirillo, who was a member of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, a regiment of Reserve Forces based in Hamilton, was training to join the Canada Border Services Agency, his aunt told The Globe and Mail.
On to the Mideast with Reuters:
Consumed by Islamic State, Iraq’s Anbar province a key battleground again
In recent weeks, the world has watched the battle to save Syria’s border town of Kobani from Islamic State. But the radical jihadists have for longer been engulfing another strategically more vital target – Iraq’s western Anbar province and its road to Baghdad.
The vast desert region – where Sunni tribes rose up in 2006 and 2007 to drive out al-Qaeda with the Americans – has throughout 2014 been parcelled up, city by military camp, before the Iraqi government and U.S. forces could act.
Now Anbar’s largest airbase Ain al-Asad, the Haditha Dam – a critical piece of infrastructure – and surrounding towns are encircled by Islamic State to the west from the Syrian border and to the east from militant-controlled sections of Ramadi.
Droning on with Old Blighty via the Guardian:
UK to fly military drones over Syria
Government says Reaper drones will be deployed soon to gather intelligence, but insists move is not a military intervention
Britain is to send military drones over Syria to gather intelligence in a move that will deepen its involvement in the campaign against Islamic State (Isis), Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, has revealed.
Downing Street insisted that the flights did not amount to military intervention and said there was a clear legal case for drone surveillance in Syria under the principles of “national and collective defence”.
The Reaper drones have already been active in Iraq, after parliament gave its approval for Britain to take part in air strikes against Isis. However, this will be the first time they will have ventured into Syrian territory, where David Cameron has not sought approval for military action because of fears it would be blocked by Labour and some within the prime minister’s own party.
From the London Daily Mail, that old-time religion:
ISIS releases sickening video clip showing Syrian woman being stoned to death by group of men – including her own father
Shocking footage understood to have been filmed in Syrian city of Hama
Cleric seen ranting at woman and accusing her of committing adultery
Woman told to be ‘content and happy’ at stoning as it is ordered by God
She pleads for her life before asking if her father could ever forgive her
He responds telling her not to call him father, then orders murder to begin
A man was also stoned to death for adultery in a separate incident
From the Guardian, before the fall:
Life inside Kobani before Isis attacked
Program notes:
New video footage filmed inside Kobani shows what life was like for the Kurdish civilians living there just a few days before Islamic State, or Isis, attacked the city.
In footage obtained by the Guardian, local journalist Moustafa Ghaleb records candid interviews with friends and family, as coalition air-strikes buzz overhead and the Isis advance prompts people to evacuate to the Turkish border.
From SciDev.Net, demanding science:
ISIS besieges universities but allows scientists’ return
Scores of students and professors have left Iraqi universities as the militants of the self-styled Islamic State (ISIS) continue to advance in Iraq and Syria — but now the group appears to want the researchers to come back.
“We grant all teachers … whose place of work or residence is within the caliphate [an Islamic state], a maximum period of ten days from the date of this statement to return and resume their work. If they fail to do so, their moveable and immovable property will be confiscated,” reads a leaflet, reportedly distributed by ISIS on 3 October.
Having captured large swathes of Syria and Iraq, in late June ISIS stated it had created a caliphate stretching from Aleppo in Syria to the province of Diyala in Iraq. The group has reportedly replaced the name ‘Republic of Iraq’ on some universities and research institutions with ‘Islamic State — Knowledge Bureau’.
And from MintiPress News, hints of a hidden hand:
Erdogan: The Man Pulling The Strings In A Middle Eastern Puppet Show
Turkey certainly didn’t invent ISIS, but the Turkish government under former Prime Minister, current President Erdogan has been stoking Islamic radicalism to further its own political goals — namely, the fall of Assad and the return of something reminiscent of the Ottomans
As noted by Veli Sirin in a report for the Gatestone Institute, “Turkey under a stronger Erdogan presidency may become more Islamic, more neo-Ottoman, and more directed to the East rather than the West.”
“Neo-Ottoman” and “Islamic” seem very much the order of the day when referring to Turkey and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s foreign agenda, which supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, which later merged with the Nusra Front and ISIS — especially vis-a-vis the rise of ISIS in the greater Levant.
According to many, Erdogan’s alleged shadow games with ISIS represent little more than the manifestations of a desire to see rise a new Ottoman Empire, the impetus of which will be fed by ISIS crusaders. Egypt’s foreign ministry issued a statement in September, slamming Erdogan for his promotion of terror in the region. The statement read, “The Turkish President, who is keen to provoke chaos to sow divisions in the Middle East region through its support for groups and terrorist organizations … Whether political support or funding or accommodation in order to harm the interests of the peoples of the region to achieve personal ambitions for the Turkish president and revive illusions of the past.”
Even more damaging was the April publication of Seymour Hersh’s work, “The Red Line and the Rat Line,” in which the veteran journalist argues Turkey would have orchestrated the Ghouta sarin gas attack in order to drag the United States into a war.
The Christian Science Monitor points to the unseen obvious:
America’s Saudi problem in its anti-IS coalition
Saudi Arabia sentenced dissident Shiite cleric Nimr Baqir al-Nimr to death. That’s trouble for a strategy that rests on ending sectarianism in Iraq
Following two years in jail, most of that time in solitary confinement, Saudi Arabia sentenced dissident Shiite cleric Nimr Baqir al-Nimr to death [15 October] for leading demonstrations and “inciting sectarian strife.” Mr. Nimr’s predicament – and that of at least 5 other Shiite activists Saudi Arabia has sentenced to death this year – illustrates a problem for the US strategy for taking on the so-called Islamic State in Iraq.
The Obama administration believes that a non-sectarian government in Iraq is the key answer to the country’s problems. There’s little doubt that the Shiite dominated politics that emerged after the US invaded Iraq in 2003 has fueled support for IS among the country’s Sunni Arabs.
But with country’s like Saudi Arabia in the coalition the US is trying to build against IS, you have one of the greatest forces for sectarianism in the region. Nimr has long been an influential figure among Saudi Arabia’s repressed Shiite minority, who are concentrated in the country’s oil-rich east.
While the Washington Post covers a problem for the press:
New Afghan government investigates newspaper for ‘blasphemous article’
Top staffers at an Afghan newspaper are being investigated for blasphemy after the publication of an article that questioned whether Muslims should embrace the possibility that more than one God exists.
The investigation, apparently being led by intelligence and cultural affairs officials, came at the request of Afghanistan’s new president and chief executive officer.
Afghan officials stressed Wednesday that no arrests have been made.
More domestic blowback from the Associated Press:
FBI: Denver girls may have tried to join jihadis
The FBI said Tuesday that it’s investigating the possibility that three girls from the Denver area tried to travel to Syria to join Islamic State extremists.
An FBI spokeswoman says agents helped bring the girls back to Denver after stopping them in Germany. Spokeswoman Suzie Payne says they’re safe and have been reunited with their families.
She didn’t identify the girls or provided other details.
The announcement comes one month after 19-year-old Shannon Conley of Arvada, Colorado, pleaded guilty to charges that she conspired to help militants in Syria.
And in Germany, via CNN:
From Jewish football to jihad: German ISIS suspect faces jail
At first Alon Meyer thought it was a bad joke.
When Kreshnik Berisha, the first suspected member of ISIS to stand trial in Germany, was arrested upon his arrival back in Frankfurt in December after spending six months in Syria, youth team football coach Meyer was left shell-shocked.
The coach thought for a while and then it slowly sank in — this was the same boy who had once stood by his side and taken the field in the shirt of Makkabi Frankfurt, Germany’s largest Jewish sports club.
Meyer’s phone began to buzz with journalists trying to ask him whether he remembered Berisha, a 20-year-old born in Frankfurt to Kosovan parents.
And to toss another ingredient into the stew, this from BBC News:
Iraq Blackwater: US jury convicts four of 2007 killings
A US federal jury has found four Blackwater security guards guilty of killing 14 Iraqis in a square in Baghdad in 2007.
One former guard was found guilty of murder with three others guilty of voluntary manslaughter.
A further 17 Iraqis were injured as the private contractors opened fire to clear the way for a US convoy.
The shootings sparked international outrage and a debate over the role of defence contractors in warfare.
From intelNews, interesting:
Iran announces arrest of alleged spies at Bushehr nuclear plant
Senior Iranian government officials have announced the arrest of a group of alleged spies in Iran’s southwestern province of Bushehr, home to the country’s only nuclear energy plant. Iranian Intelligence Minister Seyed Mahmoud Alawi told the semi-official Fars News Agency on Tuesday that the spies had been “identified and sent to justice”.
Located along Iran’s coastal Persian Gulf region, the Bushehr nuclear power plant has a long history. Its construction initially began in the mid-1970s by German engineers. But work on the plant was halted in 1979, immediately following the Islamic Revolution. Iraqi forces repeatedly bombarded the site during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. But the government began to rebuild it in the 1990s with the help of Russian technicians.
In September of 2011, the Bushehr nuclear power plant was inaugurated in a widely publicized ceremony that was attended by several Russian officials, including Minister of Energy Sergei Shmatko. The completion of the facility made it the first civilian nuclear power plant anywhere in the Middle East
A spooky anti-Snowden valedictory from the Guardian:
Outgoing GCHQ boss defends agency activities after Snowden revelations
Sir Iain Lobban uses valedictory address to praise extraordinary job of staff with ‘mission of liberty, not erosion of it’
Sir Iain Lobban, the outgoing director of Britain’s eavesdropping agency GCHQ, has used his valedictory address to deliver a full-throated defence of its activities in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations.
In a speech referencing cryptographer Alan Turing and wartime codebreaking efforts, Lobban praised GCHQ staff as “ordinary people doing an extraordinary job”, and said his agency’s mission was “the protection of liberty, not the erosion of it”.
The usually secretive agency has been under unprecedented scrutiny since June 2013 when the Guardian and other news organisations revealed how it and its US counterpart, the NSA, were scooping up vast quantities of internet and phone traffic.
More from the London Telegraph:
GCHQ chief: Internet has become refuge for plotters
Sir Iain Lobban, the outgoing head of GCHQ, says that the idea the internet doesn’t need policing is a flawed ‘Utopian dream’ as he argues the security services need ‘strong capabilities’ to stop those who want to harm Britain
The Internet has become a refuge for the “worst aspects of human nature” and the security services are making huge sacrifices to protect the public from “plotters, proliferators and paedophiles”, the outgoing head of GCHQ has warned.
In his valedictory speech Sir Iain Lobban said that his staff are “ordinary people doing an extraordinary job” who have been “insulted time and again” by allegations that they carry out mass surveillance.
But he warned that the “Utopian dream” that the Internet should remain a “totally ungoverned space” is “flawed” and said that Britain needs “strong intelligence and cyber capabilities” to identify those who “would do us harm”.
Severance from Reuters:
Exclusive: Ex-spy chief’s private firm ends deal with U.S. official
Former National Security Agency director Keith Alexander has ended a deal with a senior U.S. intelligence official allowing the official to work part-time for his firm, an arrangement current and former officials said risked a conflict of interest.
Reuters reported on Friday that the U.S. National Security Agency had launched an internal review of the arrangement between NSA Chief Technical Officer Patrick Dowd and IronNet Cybersecurity Inc, which is led by Alexander, his former boss.
On Tuesday, Alexander said: “While we understand we did everything right, I think there’s still enough issues out there that create problems for Dr. Dowd, for NSA, for my company,” that it was best for him to terminate the deal.
U.S. intelligence officials past and present said the agreement risked a conflict of interest between sensitive government work and private business, and could be seen as giving favoritism to Alexander’s venture, even if the deal was approved by NSA lawyers and executives.
Vice News makes a telling point:
We Can’t Properly Debate Drone Casualties Without Knowing The Names of Those Killed
The most important question to ask of the Global War on Terror should be the most simple to answer. Instead, it is a perennial shadow cast over US counter-terror operations since 9/11.
We still don’t know, and still must ask: Who exactly is the enemy?
In 2001, the Authorization of Military Force Act told us that the enemy was whoever perpetrated the September 11 attacks and their affiliates. In 2013, President Barack Obama stated that this meant “al Qaeda, the Taliban, and its associated forces.” But associated forces was not defined. Administration officials told the New York Times that Obama’s method for counting combatants “in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone.” A Justice Department memo released this summer told us that US citizens, too, could be legitimate targets. Then, the Islamic State, a terror group actively disaffiliated with al Qaeda and the Taliban, were included as “the enemy.”
“The enemy,” then, is whomever gets targeted as the enemy. The validity and legality of these targets is debated post hoc, often after they are dead. A chilling illustration of this comes in the form of a new report from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a UK-based organization that tracks US drone usage and the victims of drone strikes. The Bureau’s Naming the Dead project makes clear quite how little we know about the casualties of these strikes, which stretch the notion of “targeted” beyond recognition.
The Washington Post gets testy:
Panetta clashed with CIA over memoir, tested agency review process
Former CIA director Leon E. Panetta clashed with the agency over the contents of his recently published memoir and allowed his publisher to begin editing and making copies of the book before he had received final approval from the CIA, according to former U.S. officials and others familiar with the project.
Panetta’s decision appears to have put him in violation of the secrecy agreement that all CIA employees are required to sign, and came amid a showdown with agency reviewers that could have derailed the release of the book this month, people involved in the matter said.
The memoir, which is almost unfailingly complimentary toward the spy service where he served as director from 2009 to 2011, was ultimately approved by the CIA’s Publications Review Board before it reached store shelves.
But preempting that panel — even temporarily — carried legal risks for both Panetta and his publisher. Other former CIA employees have been sued for breach of contract and forced to surrender proceeds from sales of books that ran afoul of CIA rules.
And from the Guardian, a resource chiller:
Russia prepares for ice-cold war with show of military force in the Arctic
Vladimir Putin sends troops and jets to oil- and gas-rich region also coveted by Canada, United States, Norway and Denmark
Yaya is a very small Arctic island, barely one metre above sea level and covering only 500 square metres. Russian pilots discovered it at the beginning of October. With the Admiral Vladimirsky research ship having confirmed its presence in the Laptev Sea, Yaya will soon be added to the map of the Arctic Ocean and will become part of Russian territory, the RIA Novosti state news agency announced. In its determination to defend its interests in this icy waste, Russia is no longer content to leave its mark, as it did in 2007 when it planted a Russian flag, in a titanium capsule, 4,200 metres below the north pole. Now it is engaging in large-scale militarisation of the Arctic, a vast area coveted by itself and its four neighbours: Canada, the United States, Norway and Denmark.
RIA Novosti says that former Soviet bases are being reactivated in response to renewed Nato interest in the region. According to the Russian authorities, the airstrip on Novaya Zemlya can now accommodate fighters and part of the North Fleet is establishing quarters there. A new military group will be formed in the far north consisting of two brigades, totalling 6,000 soldiers, deployed in the Murmansk area and then the Yamal-Nenets autonomous region. Radar and ground guidance systems are also planned for Franz Josef Land (part of Novaya Zemlya), Wrangel Island and at Cape Schmidt. The federal security service plans to increase the number of border guards on Russia’s northern perimeter.
During the recent Vostok 2014 full-scale military exercises – the biggest since the end of the Soviet Union – Russian troops carried out combat missions in the Arctic, using the Pantsir-S and Iskander-M weapon systems. Such moves may bring back the atmosphere of the cold war, when the region was the focus of US and Nato attention, as they were convinced that it would be a launchpad for nuclear strikes.
After the jump, Swedish sub anxieties and a declaration of force and purse strings opening, secret dealings in Germany, Germany arms deal secrecy, unfriending the Feebs, hacking Flash, an epidemic of cybercrime in Old Blighty, posting an award for those missing Mexican students amidst a massive manhunt and a mayor named as the instigator of the disappearances and a human rights chief’s ouster demanded, a Chilean Dirty War murder suspect busted, provocative bluster Down Under, a Malaysian jibe at Canberra, then on to Hong Kong and a frustrating meeting followed by charges and a threat plus a provocative protest, Beijing stakes an insular claim, Japan/South Korean feelers and posturing, agreements and dissent over American military bases on Japanese soil,
Associated Press covers the gap:
Submarine hunt exposes Swedish readiness gap
The search for a foreign underwater craft in waters off Stockholm has brought back memories of Sweden’s submarine hunts during the Cold War — and exposed a key difference.
Back then Sweden actually had a robust anti-submarine force.
Sweden, which is not a NATO member, has downsized its military significantly since the Iron Curtain fell and has scrapped some of the resources it used to hunt for Soviet submarines, including helicopters equipped with sonar and anti-submarine weapons. The military says the helicopters used in the current search don’t have that equipment.
Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said Tuesday that Sweden’s military “needs to improve its capacity.” He cited Russia’s increasing military activity in the region but added that “we do not regard that as an immediate threat to Sweden.”
The Independent ups the ante:
Swedish PM ups defence spending as search for ‘Russian submarine’ continues
The Swedish Prime Minister, Stefan Lofven, has said that the country will increase its spending on defence, following reports that a suspected Russian submarine had been spotted of its coastline.
Restriction from intelNews:
Sweden closes Stockholm airspace in search for mystery submarine
Swedish authorities shut down airspace above Stockholm on Monday, as they continued searching for a mystery foreign vessel that was sighted repeatedly off the coast of the Swedish capital last week.
Forcing the issue with TheLocal.se:
Sweden ready to use force to surface sub
Sweden’s military has announced that if it finds a suspect foreign vessel in the Stockholm archipelago, it is prepared to force it to the surface “with weapons if necessary”.
Battleships, minesweepers, helicopters and more than 200 troops are scouring an area about 30 to 60 kilometres from the Swedish capital after a “man-made” and foreign object was spotted in the waters.
“The most important value of the operation – regardless of whether we find something — is to send a very clear signal that Sweden and its armed forces are acting and are ready to act when we think this kind of activity is violating our borders,” Supreme Commander General Sverker Göranson said.
“Our aim now is to force whatever it is up to the surface… with armed force, if necessary,” he added.
TheLocal.de goes sub rosa:
Court: Germany can keep arms deals secret
The government can keep arms deals secret and only tell the public about them after contracts have been signed, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.
Judges at the court in Karlsruhe found that “parliamentary oversight only extends to measures already taken by the government,” saying that there was no constitutional reason why parliament should be given advance notice of military export deals.
But they said that the government would have to answer factual questions about specific sales, even if they had not yet been allowed to go ahead.
Court president Andreas Voßkuhle noted that “the Supreme Court had not been asked to rule on the legality or the volume of weapons exports.”
From Vice News, unFriending:
Facebook Tells the DEA That Fake Accounts and Covert Ops Are Not Welcome
Undercover police operations run the gamut from Miami Vice-style raids to phone tapping á la The Wire, but last week Facebook told law enforcement agencies that the social media site will not be an option for officers looking to carry out covert operations.
The company reprimanded the Drug Enforcement Administration for creating a fake profile using a real person’s information and personal photos to assist in an “undercover” sting investigation, saying that they found the activity “deeply troubling.”
Facebook’s chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, sent a letter to the agency on October 17 informing them that “the DEA’s deceptive actions violate the terms and policies that govern the use of the Facebook service and undermine the trust in the Facebook community.”
Network World Flashes:
One week after patch, Flash vulnerability already exploited in large-scale attacks
If you haven’t updated your Flash Player with the fixes released on Oct. 14, you may be vulnerable to new attacks using a commercial exploit kit called Fiesta, security researchers warn.
The vulnerability, which is being tracked as CVE-2014-0569 in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database, was fixed in Flash Player updates last week.
The bundling of an exploit for CVE-2014-0569 in an attack tool that’s sold on underground markets is unusual, especially since the vulnerability was privately reported to Adobe through Hewlett-Packard’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) program, meaning its details should not be public.
From TechWeekEurope, victimology:
Half Of Brits Fall Victim To Cybercrime, But Just 32 Percent Report It
Cybercrime is costing the UK economy £670 million a year, says government, but true figure is likely to be higher
New government research claims that half of Brits have fallen victim to cybercrime, with 53 percent viewing online offences as serious as those committed in the physical world, but just 32 percent have reported such incidents to the authorities, masking the true financial impact, which is currently calculated at £670 million a year.
The Cabinet Office, through initiatives like the Get Safe Online and Cyber Streetwise campaigns, wants to raise awareness of cybercrime and the reporting methods available to victims. Of those who said they had suffered at the hands of cyber criminals, only 47 percent knew to report the incident to Action Fraud, the policy body that handles such cases.
Victims fell prey to a number of crimes, including online fraud, IDT heft, hacking and online abuse with half of them saying the experience had left them feeling ‘very or extremely violated’. The government says this demonstrates that cybercrime has not just a financial cost, but an emotional one too.
On to Mexico and those missing students, first with BBC News:
Mexico offers rewards for information on missing students
The Mexican government has offered rewards for information on the whereabouts of 43 students who disappeared more than three weeks ago.
The 43 from a teacher training college in the town of Ayotzinapa went missing after deadly clashes with the police.
In newspaper advertisements the government said it would pay $110,000 (£68,000) for information on each one of the students.
Thirty-six police officers are being questioned over their disappearance.
Next, aerial footage from Agence France-Preesse showing the scale of the massive manhunt underway in Guerrero:
Mexican forces intensify efforts to find missing students
Program notes:
Mexican forces and members of the attorney general’s office, with the help of helicopters, launched on Tuesday a vast search operation in a village in the Mexican state of Guerrero, after 43 students went missing nearly a month ago.
A suspect named with the Associated Press:
Mexico: Mayor linked to deadly attack on students
Mexican authorities say the mayor of a southern town ordered a police attack that resulted in six deaths and the disappearance of 43 students who remain missing weeks later.
Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said Wednesdsay that Iguala city police received an order that they said came from Mayor Jose Luis Abarca to prevent the students from disrupting an event at which Abarca’s wife was presenting a report.
Both the mayor and his wife are now fugitives.
A human rights official’s ouster demanded, via the McClatchy Foreign Staff:
Mexico’s human rights chief faces charges he’s inept, cares little
As Mexico’s national human rights ombudsman, Raul Plascencia Villanueva oversees a sizable corps of investigators who look into the atrocities and massacres that commonly put the country in the headlines.
The job has made Plascencia a raft of enemies, but they are not the crooked cops and corrupt politicians behind some of the abuses currently roiling Mexico. His fiercest foes are human rights monitors, who say he is inept, unconcerned about crime victims and beholden to politicians.
They are battling Plascencia’s attempt to obtain another five-year term to lead the National Human Rights Commission, a semi-autonomous entity that receives its budget equivalent of $115 million entirely from the federal government.
Led by a former Roman Catholic priest, Alberto Athie, some 80 groups advocating for human rights, social justice and more effective government presented Congress with a demand last month that Plascencia be impeached from his post. They accused him of casting a blind eye on “innumerable human rights violations in Mexico.”
The movement against Plascencia began with the failure of the National Human Rights Commission to shed light on the late June killing of 22 civilians southwest of Mexico City that eventually was tied to Mexican soldiers – by the news media. It intensified after the disappearance late last month of 43 student teachers who’d been detained by police in Guerrero state. They remain missing.
A Chilean Dirty War murder suspect busted from BBC News:
Chile arrests ex-Pinochet aide Col Labbe over killings
A former aide to Chile’s ex-military leader General Augusto Pinochet has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the killings of 13 political prisoners in the 1970s.
Col Cristian Labbe was detained with nine others on orders of a judge examining the 1973-1974 deaths.
The victims died at a concentration camp in San Antonio on Chile’s coast.
Col Labbe, who later became mayor of Providencia district in Chile’s capital of Santiago, has denied any wrongdoing.
Fromm BBC News provocative bluster Down Under:
Australian teenager threatens Abbott in IS video
An Australian teenager who joined IS militants in Iraq and Syria has emerged in a video addressing PM Tony Abbott and US president Barack Obama.
The 17-year-old, named as Abdullah Elmir but who calls himself Abu Khaled, said “we will not put down our weapons until we reach your lands”.
He ran away in June with another Australian teenager and it is believed he travelled to Syria via Turkey.
A government spokesman said it showed the threat posed by Islamic State.
And a Malayasian jibe at Canberra from the Guardian:
Malaysian MPs urge Australia to do more to stamp out extremism
Opposition MP Rafizi Ramli warns Julie Bishop that Malaysia’s ruling UMNO party is ignoring radicalism in the country
Malaysian opposition MPs have urged Australia to step up and do more to stamp out extremism in the region, as criticism of the Najib government mounts.
A group of Malaysian parliamentarians met the Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, to discuss Canberra’s role in promoting democracy in the region. They had planned to appear before the foreign affairs Senate estimates committee, but all inquiries were suspended after the death of Gough Whitlam.
The Malaysian opposition treasury spokesman, Rafizi Ramli, who faces the threat of jail time under Malaysia’s Sedition Act for airing allegationsof government corruption, has warned that the ruling UMNO party is ignoring extremism in the country.
On to Hong Kong and a peace feeler from the Guardian:
Hong Kong leader extends olive branch to pro-democracy protesters
Leung Chun-ying says Beijing will not back down on vetting his successor but election committee could be more democratic
Hong Kong’s embattled leader has said he is open to creating a more democratic selection committee before elections in 2017, extending a potential olive branch to democracy protesters as crunch talks to end the demonstrations got under way.
Parts of the Asian financial hub have been paralysed for weeks by rallies calling for the chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, to resign and for China to revoke a ruling in August that candidates for the city’s next election be vetted by a pro-Beijing committee – something protesters have called a “fake democracy”.
In an interview on Tuesday, Leung said that while Beijing would not back down on vetting his successor, the committee tasked with selecting those candidates could become more democratic.
Then an impasse, via Al Jazeera:
Hong Kong talks fail to break impasse
No progress made as student leaders and government officials hold talks aimed at ending street protests
Hong Kong student representatives and government officials have held much-awaited talks to end street protests now in their fourth week, but achieved little progress to defuse the crisis in China’s semi-autonomous city.
In opening remarks, student leader Alex Chow said that an August decision by China’s legislature ruling out direct elections for the city’s chief executive in 2017 had “emasculated” Hong Kong.
“We don’t want anointment,” Chow, secretary-general of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, one of three groups leading the protests, said at the talks on Tuesday.
Government officials stuck to the official position that Hong Kong’s mini-constitution cannot be amended to accommodate protesters’ demands, while also saying that many others do not share their views.
Protest plans from South China Morning Post:
Protesters plan counter action against court injunctions to clear the streets
Protesters to tell court restraining orders barring them from blocking roads in Admiralty and Mong Kok restrict their freedom of speech
Protesters intend to argue in court that injunctions granted to bar them from occupying parts of two sit-in sites restrict their right to free speech.
Protesters said they planned to appear in the High Court on Friday, when a judge will weigh whether to extend three temporary restraining orders granted on Monday barring protesters from blocking portions of Nathan Road in Kowloon and pathways to Citic Tower in Admiralty. The High Court granted the orders to two transport groups and the office tower’s owner. Protesters have remained in the areas.
Yesterday, Ng Ting-pong, 38, who said he quit his job to spend the past 20 days at the Mong Kok protest site, was applying for legal aid with the intention of having lawyers represent him as an interested party in court on Friday. He said he would argue that the injunction violated Hongkongers’ freedom of expression.
And from South China Morning Post again, hints of a heavy hand to come:
Government sources hint at tougher line on Occupy protests if deadlock persists
Hawks may trump doves in debate on tactics to deal with protests if deadlock remains, they say
The government yesterday increased pressure on Occupy protesters, warning that “hawks” favouring tough action to clear sit-in sites would gain the upper hand if the deadlock between officials and student leaders was not resolved soon.
The warning came a day after unprecedented talks between top officials and student leaders failed to persuade the protesters to end the occupation that has paralysed parts of the city for more than three weeks.
“If the conciliatory approach doesn’t work, doves within the government would be sidelined while hawks would gain the upper hand,” one person familiar with the situation said.
“We are worried that the administration would eventually use force to disperse protesters and a certain degree of bloodshed would be unavoidable.”
Followed by provocative protest from the Guardian:
Hong Kong protesters shout ‘shame on you’ outside home of city chief
Ongoing rallies suggest televised dialogue between student leaders and the authorities has failed to ease tensions
About 200 pro-democracy demonstrators have marched to the home of Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing chief executive Leung Chun-ying, chanting slogans decrying his recent suggestion that democratic elections in the city would give too much voice to the poor.
At around the same time on Wednesday afternoon, demonstrators in the gritty district of Mong Kok, the site of violent clashes between police and protesters over the weekend, scuffled with a group of taxi drivers as they attempted to remove barricades blocking a major thoroughfare. In the early evening, one counter-protester attempted to pour paint thinner over the protesters’ supplies and set them alight before he was apprehended by onlookers.
The continuing demonstrations suggest that a televised dialogue between student leaders and government officials on Tuesday failed to ameliorate political tensions drivi
Beijing stakes an insular claim, via Want China Times:
Fiery Cross Reef now largest of Spratlys after PLA land reclamation
China’s ongoing land reclamation activities in the South China Sea have effectively turned Fiery Cross Reef into the largest “island” in the disputed Spratly archipelago, reports our Chinese-language sister paper Want Daily.
Since the end of last year, the People’s Liberation Army has been conducting construction and land reclamation operations on multiple reefs and islets in the Spratly islands, including Fiery Cross Reef (Yongshu Reef in Chinese), which is controlled by China but is also claimed by Vietnam and the Philippines.
Photos of the region taken by US-based commercial space imagery and geospatial content website DigitalGlobe on Sept. 25 revealed that Chinese activities have increased the area of Fiery Cross Reef more than 11-fold from 0.08 square kilometers to 0.96 square kilometers, making the reef even bigger than the Taiwan-controlled Taiping Island, the largest of the Spratlys by land area. Fiery Cross is now also the fifth largest of the South China Sea Islands behind Woody Island, Pratas Island, Lincoln Island and Triton Island.
And a Washington/Tokyo military play with insular ambitions from Reuters:
U.S., Japan to conduct joint military drill for island defense
Japan said on Tuesday it would hold a bilateral military exercise with the United States in November to ensure smooth joint operations between the two countries’ militaries and bolster island defense capabilities.
The field drill, called “Keen Sword”, is held every two years. It comes as Japan is engaged in a bitter island row with China, which is rapidly ramping up military spending, and amid concern over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.
The joint exercise, set to run from Nov. 8 through Nov. 19, is not targeted at any particular country, a Japanese Defence Ministry official said. About 10,000 U.S. troops and 30,700 Japanese service men and women will participate in the drill.
The maritime portion of “Keen Sword” will be held east of Japan’s major southern island of Kyushu, but not in the East China Sea, which lies to the other side of the island, the Defence Ministry said.
While NHK WORLD realizes base desires:
US military strikes deal on Guam troop transfer
The US military has signed a deal on a project related to the transfer of US Marines to Guam from the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa.
The military announced on Tuesday that it had signed a 44.5-million-dollar contract with a construction company to build new facilities at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam.
The project will be financed by funds provided by the Japanese government for the Okinawa-Guam relocation program.
This is the first time since 2011 that the funds will be used, as the US Senate had put a freeze on the money, citing a lack of clarity over the plan.
Though opposition remains, from the Japan Times:
Okinawa candidate vows to block Futenma base transfer at any cost
Former Naha Mayor Takeshi Onaga said Tuesday he will do “whatever it takes” to block the planned transfer of the Futenma U.S. military base in Okinawa Prefecture as he laid out his campaign pledges for the Nov. 16 gubernatorial election.
Onaga, whose major rival will likely be the current governor, Hirokazu Nakaima, said he will “never allow a new military base to be built in Henoko by doing whatever it takes.”
The election could boil down as a referendum on Nakaima’s approval last December to start landfill work off the Henoko district of Nago, a necessary step to build the new base.
The Japan Times covers a call:
S. Korea calls for ‘transparency’ in Japan’s defense revision
South Korea’s top security official told his Japanese counterpart Tuesday that Japan’s ongoing revision of defense cooperation guidelines with the United States “should reflect neighboring countries’ concerns and be carried out in a transparent way,” the South Korean presidential office said.
Kim Kwan-jin, chief of the National Security Office at the presidential office, “conveyed our position once again on Japan’s moves to exercise the right for collective self-defense,” according to a statement after he held with Shotaro Yachi, national security adviser to the Cabinet.
Yachi explained Japan’s policies on defense and national security.
South Korea is generally cautious about any increase in the activities of the Self-Defense Forces.
And JapanToday delivers advice:
Japan security adviser urges thaw in frosty ties with S Korea
Japan’s top security adviser Shotaro Yachi called Tuesday for a thaw in relations with South Korea, which have soured over historical and territorial disputes.
The visiting official also told his South Korean counterpart Kim Kwan-Jin that Tokyo would “closely cooperate” with Seoul in handling North Korea’s nuclear program or in talks with the nuclear-armed country, according to a statement by Kim’s office.
Their meeting is seen as the latest sign that the neighbors are trying to put two years of bitter disputes behind them.
And to close, another uncomfortable reminder of war crimes past from the Mainichi:
Non-Japanese convicted of WWII war crimes demand compensation from gov’t
Taiwanese and Koreans who worked for the former Imperial Japanese Army during World War II and were later convicted of war crimes gathered in Tokyo on Oct. 21 to demand the government take legal steps to restore their honor.
During the war, people from Japan’s former colonial possessions were employed by the Japanese military in the southern reaches of the empire as POW camp guards, among other functions. In the wake of Japan’s defeat, 321 of these civilian employees were convicted of B- and C-class war crimes by Allied military courts for offences including prisoner abuse. Of those, 23 Koreans and 26 Taiwanese were executed.
In 1955, Koreans convicted of war crimes formed a group called “Doshinkai” to press the Japanese government for compensation, and have been demanding legal measures to restore their reputations ever since. Pointing out that his group’s remaining membership is all around 90 years old, Doshinkai chairman Lee Hyok-rae, himself 89, told the Oct. 21 public gathering, “I want to ask that our honor be restored very soon” through legal measures.
