And so much more.
First up, Cold War 2.0, from BBC News:
Russian planes to patrol in Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico
Russia has said its air force will conduct regular air patrols from the Arctic Ocean to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. Russia had wound down such long-range missions after the end of the Cold War.
Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said there was a plan to provide long-range aviation maintenance for the flights.
Amid renewed tensions over Ukraine, Western analysts say Russia has been returning to methods used to test Nato defences during the Cold War. On Wednesday, Mr Shoigu said “long-range aviation units” would fly along the borders of the Russian Federation and over the waters of the Arctic Ocean.
More from the Los Angeles Times:
NATO says fresh columns of Russian armor and troops entering Ukraine
NATO’s top commander said Wednesday that the alliance has seen columns of Russian troops, armored vehicles and heavy guns entering eastern Ukraine over the last two days.
U.S. Gen. Philip Breedlove told reporters during a visit to Bulgaria that the border between Ukraine and Russia where Moscow-backed separatists are in control is now “completely wide open” to infusions of foreign fighting power into the conflict area.
“We have seen columns of Russian equipment, primarily Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air-defense systems and Russian combat troops entering Ukraine,” Breedlove said.
He said NATO didn’t have a firm number on the invading vehicles but said they were in “multiple columns.”
Still more Cold War 2.0 hype from News Corp Australia:
Russian warships ‘heading to Australia’
A CONVOY of heavily armed Russian war ships, including at least one high powered missile cruiser, are cruising international waters to Australia’s north, Defence has confirmed.
Defence is monitoring the fleet of four ships, which include a cruiser, a destroyer a tug boat and a refueller, which were believed to be in the Coral Sea, south of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea on Wednesday evening.
Australian ships HMAS Parramatta and HMAS Stuart were ordered to “crash sail” to the Coral Sea earlier this week in a bid to “greet” the Russian fleet. It is believed HMAS Parramatta arrived last night and HMAS Stuart was a day away.
From the New York Times, depends on what the meaning of is is, as in torture:
U.S. Tells U.N. Panel of Steps to Revise Policy on Interrogation
The Obama administration told a United Nations panel in Geneva on Wednesday that the United States had tortured terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11 attacks, but that it had since taken steps to prevent any future use of unlawful, coercive interrogation techniques.
“The United States is proud of its record as a leader in respecting, promoting and defending human rights and the rule of law, both at home and around the world,” Mary McLeod, the acting State Department legal adviser, told the panel. “But in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, we regrettably did not always live up to our values.”
The panel addressed by Ms. McLeod monitors compliance with the United Nations Convention Against Torture. In her testimony, she formally introduced a new position by the United States government on whether a provision of that treaty, which prohibits “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” imposes legal obligations on its conduct abroad. The George W. Bush administration contended that it applied only on American soil.
From the Guardian, sins of omission?:
Doubt cast over US torture investigation as more CIA detainees come forward
Lawyers for men allegedly tortured by the CIA say their clients were never interviewed as part of a major criminal investigation concluded in 2012
More lawyers for men allegedly tortured by the CIA are coming forward to say that the major US criminal investigation into torture never interviewed their clients.
The Justice Department inquiry, concluded in 2012 without charging anyone involved in the CIA’s Bush-era network of secret prisons, is receiving new scrutiny thanks to a United Nations committee hearing in Geneva this week examining US compliance with international anti-torture law.
Looking at US conduct on torture for the first time since 2006, the committee on Wednesday specifically asked a US delegation about the defunct investigation, conducted by John Durham, an assistant US attorney in Connecticut.
The McClatchy Washington Bureau covers an urgent impulse:
Senate to vote on NSA overhaul bill
The Senate could vote as early as Friday on a bill that would revamp the way the National Security Agency collects telephone data in its domestic spying program.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., filed a motion Wednesday to end debate on the USA Freedom Act, a measure authored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vt., that would essentially end the agency’s bulk collection of so-called metadata.
Broad searches, either through a particular service provider or by a broad geographic region or zip code, would be stopped under the bill, Leahy said in an outline of the bill. The government wouldn’t be able to collect all information relating to a particular service provider or broad geographic region under the bill.
From the Guardian, silent but deadly:
Watch out: the US government wants to pass new spying laws behind your back
Dangerous cybersecurity legislation would allow Google and Facebook to hand over even more of your information to the NSA and FBI
Now, as the post-election lame-duck session opens on Wednesday in Washington, the Senate might try to sneak through a “cybersecurity” bill that would, as the ACLU puts it, “create a massive loophole in our existing privacy laws”. The vague and ambiguous law would essentially allow companies like Google and Facebook to hand over even more of your personal information to the US government, all of which could ultimately end up in the hands of the NSA and the FBI.
The House already passed a version of this bill earlier in the year, and the White House, despite vowing to veto earlier versions, told reporters an “information sharing” cybersecurity bill was on its list of priorities for the lame-duck session (while NSA reform is not).
Senate intelligence committee chair Dianne Feinstein says she’s willing to make privacy compromises to get the bill to the floor, but did not elaborate – at all – on what those were. And given the sleazy tactics of House permanent select intelligence committee member Mike Rogers in pretending he had the support of privacy groups when the House passed its version of the bill, it’s hard to take anything the intelligence committees say in the area of privacy on good faith.
The Register Googles irony:
Who will save Europe’s privacy from the NSA? Oh God … it’s Google
Sucking up everyone’s data? That’s our freakin’ job!
A Google lawyer says Europeans spied on by the NSA should get the same rights as Americans – such as the right to sue the US government for privacy invasions.
David Drummond, chief legal officer for the information-harvesting monster (Google), published a blog post on Wednesday titled “It’s time to extend the US Privacy Act to EU citizens.”
The European Commission has been calling for such a move ever since ex-NSA techie Edward Snowden blew the lid off Uncle Sam’s global internet spying last year. New Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova is in Washington this week to try to negotiate such a deal.
According to Drummond, who was in Brussels last week as part of Google’s “right to be forgotten” roadshow, there is an “urgent need for surveillance reform” to repair severely damaged relations between the US and Europe.
From the Intercept, hush money:
Secret Cash Pays for U.S. Drone Mistakes
A Yemeni family was paid $100,000 for the death of relatives in a U.S. drone strike in 2012, according to a remarkable story yesterday from Yahoo News. Faisal bin Ali Jaber, a 56-year-old who works at Yemen’s environmental agency, has been on a mission to find out why his innocent nephew and brother-in-law were killed in a strike that also took out three suspected militants. He made it to Washington D.C. last fall, he told journalist Michael Isikoff, where he met with two White House national security aides. They listened, but said little in response.
Then, this summer, Jaber was given a bag of “freshly minted” bills by a Yemeni security official. The money, he was told, came from the U.S. government.
Jaber’s account adds to the piecemeal picture of how the U.S. responds to wrongful deaths in the remote air war in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. In Afghanistan, the military has set up systems to pay cash to the families of civilians it kills or injures. But when it comes to drone strikes, the administration has been far less open about if and when it compensates civilian casualties.
Hacking above the cloud with the Washington Post:
Chinese hack U.S. weather systems, satellite network
Hackers from China breached the federal weather network recently, forcing cybersecurity teams to seal off data vital to disaster planning, aviation, shipping and scores of other crucial uses, officials said.
The intrusion occurred in late September but officials gave no indication that they had a problem until Oct. 20, according to three people familiar with the hack and the subsequent reaction by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA, which includes the National Weather Service. Even then, NOAA did not say its systems were compromised.
Officials also said that the agency did not notify the proper authorities when it learned of the attack.
From Nextgov, a story with implications for the far-sighted:
DHS Drafts Blueprints for Self-Repairing Networks as Hacks Mount
The Department of Homeland Security is working with industry to automate cyber defenses inside the government, which will ensure operations continue during and after hack attacks, DHS officials said Wednesday.
Enterprise Automated Security Environment, or EASE, could give rise to something like a self-repairing network, Philip Quade, chief operating officer of National Security Agency’s information assurance directorate, told Nextgov last week.
Hacks are inevitable, many security professionals say. Resiliency is the key to preventing the attackers from finding sensitive information or disrupting activities, they add.
So what’s a couple of decades, right? From CBC News:
Microsoft patches ‘significant vulnerability’ in Windows
19-year-old bug lets attacker remotely take over Windows computers
Microsoft Corp issued patches on Tuesday to fix a bug in its Windows operating system that remained undiscovered for 19 years.
The bug, which is present in every version of Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 onward, allows an attacker to remotely take over and control a computer.
IBM Corp’s cybersecurity research team discovered the bug in May, describing it as a “significant vulnerability” in the operating system.
“The buggy code is at least 19 years old and has been remotely exploitable for the past 18 years,” IBM X-Force research team said in its blog on Tuesday.
Cops behaving badly in the Big Easy, from the New York Times:
New Orleans Special Crimes Detectives Routinely Ignored Cases, Report Says
An scathing report on a New Orleans Police Department unit has found that in nearly 1,300 sex crime-related calls fielded by fives detectives over a three-year period, 86 percent showed no record of having been investigated beyond an initial report, with the substantial majority being simply classified as miscellaneous.
The report, compiled by the city’s Office of Inspector General, examined every call that came to the five detectives, in the police department’s special victims unit, between 2011 and 2013. During that time, 1,290 calls for service were assigned to these detectives, who are not named in the report. In only 450 cases did the detectives fill out an initial report, and in 271 of those cases, no further reports were made at all.
Michael Harrison, who was permanently appointed as the city’s new police superintendent last month, said in a news conference that the five detectives and their supervisors had been assigned to other departments and that the department’s public integrity bureau was investigating the officers’ actions and re-examining their caseload. He suggested that some of what the detectives did might go beyond neglect of duty to potential criminal action, such as the altering official paperwork to make it appear that work had been done.
More of the same, this time in Old Blighty, via BBC News:
Police handling of child abuse intelligence to be investigated
Three police forces face an inquiry over alleged failures to act on tip offs about potential paedophiles.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) will examine how Essex, North Wales and North Yorkshire handled information from Canadian police passed to the UK in 2012.
Around 2,000 names were sent by Toronto Police to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).
The three forces referred themselves to the IPCC for investigation.
And from United Press International, oops:
Police mistakenly shoot 911 caller thinking he was gunman
Police in Washington state mistakenly shot a good samaritan who reported suspicious activity on Halloween, thinking he was the gunman they were chasing.
The police mistook him for 59-year-old John Kendall, who allegedly shot his neighbor Abigail Mounce in the face and the drove to the woods where he shot himself in the head. The man who found the car reported it to police and remained at the scene.
The VPD officers reportedly did not know the person who called 911 was there and fired on him, shooting him in the leg.
After the jump, Google battles a Memory Hole mandate, hard times intolerance in Rome, major kidnapping arrests in Mexico, FARC apologies for tribal murders, Israeli cops arrested for killing Palestinian teens, U.S. swabbies attacked in Turkey. Azerbijanis shoot down an Armenian chopper, Nigerian anger at American munitions restraints, on to Hong Kong and more violence at the Occupy camp as the courts refuse to halt a potential eviction, the to Japan and a fatal protest of resurgent militarism and strong political opposition to a military base move. . .
Cyber amnesia contested, via the Guardian:
US appeals court to reconsider whether Google must remove anti-Islam video
Earlier this year, appeals court panel sided with woman who appeared in Innocence of Muslims and ordered Google to take down video which sparked widespread protests
A US appeals court will reconsider whether Google Inc must remove from its YouTube video sharing service an anti-Islamic film that sparked protests across the Muslim world.
Earlier this year a three-judge panel on the ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco sided with a woman who appeared in the film and ordered Google to take it down. An 11-judge panel will now rehear the YouTube case, the court said on Wednesday.
The plaintiff, Cindy Lee Garcia, objected to the film after learning it incorporated a clip she had made for a different movie, which had been partially dubbed and in which she appeared to be asking: “Is your Mohammed a child molester?”
By a 2-1 vote, a ninth Circuit panel rejected Google’s assertion that the removal of the film Innocence of Muslims amounted to a prior restraint of speech that violated the US constitution.
Hard times intolerance in Rome, from the Independent:
Racial tensions in Rome: ‘Long live Il Duce’ chants as locals attack immigrant centre with rocks and petrol bombs
Racial tensions have exploded in Rome’s suburbs after locals chanting pro-Mussolini slogans attacked an immigrant holding centre. Police responded with baton charges and tear gas.
Locals are calling for the building in the Tor Sapienza district to be closed after blaming the migrants it houses for “insupportable” levels of street crime in the area.
But the nastier side of the protests were apparent on Tuesday night with hundreds of people chanting: “The blacks have to go,” and dozens more shouting: “Long live Il Duce (Mussolini)”.
Major kidnapping arrests in Mexico, from the Latin American Herald Tribune:
Police Arrest 22 Suspected Kidnappers in Mexico
Police arrested 22 suspected kidnappers who belong to two different gangs in Ozumba and Nezahualcoyotl, two cities in Mexico state, which surrounds the Federal District and forms part of the Mexico City metropolitan area, officials said.
The suspects were detained in two separate operations, Mexico state Public Safety Secretary Damian Canales and state Attorney General Alejandro Gomez said in a joint press conference.
Police arrested 11 suspects and rescued a female captive in Ozumba, Gomez said, adding that the victim had been abducted on Oct. 28.
An apology for murder from BBC News:
Colombia Farc rebels ‘sorry’ over tribal leaders’ murder
Colombia’s largest left-wing rebel group, the Farc, says it “profoundly laments” killing two members of the Nasa indigenous group on 5 November.
The Farc said the two indigenous guards were killed when a rebel drew his gun after engaging in “hand-to-hand combat” with one of them.
A tribal court has sentenced five rebels to lengthy prison sentences for the murder.
About 220,000 people have died in five decades of armed conflict in Colombia.
Israeli cops arrested for killing Palestinian teens, from the New York Times:
Israeli Officer Arrested in Connection With Killing of 2 Palestinian Teenagers
An Israeli border police officer has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the fatal shooting of two Palestinian teenagers in the West Bank during a protest in May, officials said on Wednesday.
Further charging the atmosphere at a time of heightened Israeli-Palestinian tensions and religious friction, a mosque in a village in the West Bank was damaged overnight in what was said to be an arson attack, and a firebomb was thrown at an old synagogue in an Arab town in northern Israel, the police said. There were no reports of injuries in either attack.
In the May shooting case, video taken from a security camera at a business in Beitunia, a town outside Ramallah, showed that the two youths were knocked down, apparently by gunfire, about an hour apart.
U.S. swabbies attacked in Turkey, via the New York Times:
U.S. Sailors Assaulted by Turkish Nationalists in Istanbul
Members of a Turkish nationalist youth group assaulted three visiting American sailors in Istanbul on Wednesday, hurling balloons filled with red paint at them, putting white sacks over their heads and calling them murderers.
A video posted online by the group, the Turkish Youth Union, or T.G.B., shows a dozen of its members staging an anti-American protest in the touristy Eminonu district and attacking the sailors, who were not in uniform, in broad daylight.
The sailors had just disembarked from the guided missile destroyer Ross, docked in Istanbul for a few days. They escaped and returned to the ship, and all shore leave for the crew was canceled.
The American Embassy called the attack “appalling,” and Turkey, a NATO member that routinely allows such port calls from the United States, promised to investigate.
The video via TGBI.nternet Bürosu:
Program notes via a tweaked Google and Bing translation from the Turkish:
US soldiers in the sack in Eminonu
Our action as the World Anti-Imperialist Youth Union and Martyrs of Middle East. We are dedicated to resisting Oppressor Nations.
A bloody flareup of an old enmity from the London Telegraph:
Azerbaijan shoots down Armenian helicopter
Latest move is a dramatic flare-up in the arch-foes’ longstanding conflict
The armed forces of Azerbaijan shot down and destroyed an Armenian military helicopter in the Nagorno-Karabakh region on Wednesday, the defense ministries of both countries said.
The incident threatened to set off another cycle of violence between the two South Caucasus neighbors over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is part of Azerbaijan but along with some surrounding territory has been under the control of Armenian soldiers and local Armenian forces since a 1994 cease-fire.
“This is an unprecedented escalation, and the consequences for the Azerbaijani side will be painful,” Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Ovannisian told The Associated Press.
Nigerian anger at American munitions restraints, via Punch Nigeria:
US frustrating Nigeria’s war against Boko Haram – FG
The Federal Government has accused the United States of frustrating its efforts in the war against the Boko Haram sect in Nigeria.
The Nigeria’s ambassador to the United States, Prof. Ade Adefuye, blasted the US in a 19-paragraph speech on the Nigeria embassy website on Tuesday.
Adefuye alleged that the US government refused to grant Nigeria’s request to purchase lethal equipment “that would have brought down the terrorists within a short time.”
He said, “Our people are not very happy with the content of America’s support in the struggle against the Boko Harm sect. The terrorists threaten our corporate existence and territorial integrity. There is no use giving us the type of support that enables us to deliver light jabs to the terrorists when what we need to give them is the killer punch. A friend in need is a friend indeed. The true test of friendship is in the times of adversity.”
On to Hong Kong and an Occupy confrontation from the Los Angeles Times:
Fresh clashes break out at Hong Kong protest site
Fresh clashes broke out Wednesday between Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrators and opponents as expectations grew that police were preparing to clear the occupied zones.
Two men were detained by police in the Admiralty district near Hong Kong government headquarters after allegedly throwing animal organs at Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, a protest supporter. A third man, who suffered a wound to his forehead, was taken to a hospital.
Lai, who has shown up regularly in Admiralty since protests began in late September, was attacked while sitting in one of the about 2,000 tents now in the area. Witnesses said the men swore at Lai before they threw several bags of animal organs at his head and arms.
A thumbs down from the South China Morning Post:
High Court rejects appeal against Occupy site clearance order
The High Court today refused to grant leave for protesters to appeal a court injunction that would allow bailiffs to clear sit-in sites in Mong Kok.
At a hearing, Mr Justice Thomas Au Hing-cheung found protesters’ argument for an appeal was unsound. The judge also refused to grant stay to the order.
The High Court permitted police on Monday to move in and make arrests in the event of physical resistance from protesters.
On to Japan and a fatal protest of resurgent militarism from BBC News:
Japan man self-immolates ‘in protest over military shift’
A Japanese man burned himself to death on Tuesday in what appeared to be protest against a shift in military policy, local media said.
The cabinet in July approved a landmark change in security policy allowing the military to fight overseas.
Japan’s post World War Two constitution bars the country from using force in conflicts except for self-defence.
The incident follows another self-immolation in June, in an apparently similar protest. The man survived.
And another military move draws political opposition from Jiji Press:
Futenma Opponent Seen in Lead in Okinawa Governor Race
A candidate who is trying to block the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma air station within Okinawa is believed to leading the closely watched gubernatorial election in the southernmost Japan prefecture, in which the fate of the base is the hottest campaign issue.
The election, scheduled for Sunday, has four candidates but is regarded as an effective one-on-one race between incumbent Okinawa Governor Hirokazu Nakaima and Takeshi Onaga, former mayor of Naha, the capital of the prefecture.
The camps of both candidates believe that Onaga, who opposes the current Futenma relocation plan, is leading the race as it enters the home stretch. The official campaign period for the election started on Oct. 30.
