We begin with the New York Times:
Governor Activates Missouri National Guard
Anticipating protests after the grand jury’s decision in the death of Michael Brown, Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri activated the National Guard on Monday.
The governor said the National Guard will play a limited role as it did during protests in August, providing security at command posts, fire stations and other locations.
“As part of our ongoing efforts to plan and be prepared for any contingency, it is necessary to have these resources in place in advance of any announcement of the grand jury’s decision,” Governor Nixon said in a statement.
Under the executive order, the Missouri State Highway Patrol, St. Louis County Police Department and St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department will operate as a unified command, with the St. Louis County police responsible for security in Ferguson.
And then there’s this from the Independent:
Terrorism fuelled by state violence, extra-judicial killings and ethnic tensions
Terrorism has become dramatically more deadly and more widespread across the globe with a 60 per cent rise in the number of deaths and countries affected by major attacks, a study has found.
Fatalities from terrorist incidents rose from just over 11,000 in 2012 to nearly 18,000 last year, while the number of countries which experienced more than 50 deaths from terror attacks rose from 15 to 24, according to the Global Terrorism Index (GTI).
The authors of the comprehensive annual survey of terrorist incidents and trends said that the vast majority of the bloodshed was restricted to five countries – Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria – where groups such as Isis (also known as Islamic State or Isil) adhering to extreme Wahhabist interpretations of Islam are leading attacks.
From the Los Angeles Times:
CIA intelligence gap hinders counter-terrorism efforts in Syria, Iraq
“It’s a black hole,” one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in discussing intelligence, on the challenge of tracking terrorists and assessing casualties in a war zone that is in effect off-limits to U.S. personnel.
U.S. counter-terrorism officials have identified about a dozen Americans fighting with militants in Syria or Iraq, for example, including some who have joined Islamic State. But U.S. intelligence analysts have struggled to develop a complete picture of their movements or what roles they play in the militant groups.
U.S. intelligence agencies have poured resources into the war since the spring, and the CIA has set up a training camp in Jordan for Syrian fighters. They also rely on information gathered from U.S.-backed rebel groups, including the Free Syrian Army.
Nordic suspicions from TheLocal.se:
Isis sleeper cells suspected in Sweden
A defector from the rebel group Isis has told a Scandinavian broadcaster that his former organization has terrorist sleeper cells in Sweden awaiting orders.
The man told Norwegian news network NRK: “There are cells awaiting orders, and there is more than one group.” NRK met the defector at a secret location in Turkey, near the border to Syria.
The man claimed to have a background as a special soldier for Isis (also known as the Islamic State or IS) and said he had defected from the terror group a few months ago.
From Homeland Security News Wire:
Terror financiers operate freely in Qatar: U.S.
Qatar’s massive financial support of the most extreme Jihadist movements in the Middle East and North Africa is not exactly a secret – notwithstanding the sheikhdom rulers’ half-hearted denials, and the nominal membership of Qatar in the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition.
Qatar, with a small territory, about 250,000 citizens, and a lot of oil money – some derisively call it “a bank, not a country” — some years ago made the strategic decision that, in order be taken seriously as a regional actor, it had to do things differently. It could not compete with regional power-houses such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, so it decided to undermine and weaken both countries by undermining and weakening their rulers and their allies in the region.
Qatar has been doing so in two ways.
In November 1996 Qatar has launched Al Jazeera, which, in addition to some mainstream news reporting and relatively open studio debates and call-in shows, has been a tool of the Qatari government in its propaganda and disinformation campaign to undermine the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, other Gulf Sheikhdoms, and other moderate states in the region (note that this applies to Al Jazeera in Arabic. The English-language Al Jazeera operates in a manner which is largely similar to Western news outlets).
The other way Qatar has sought to weaken moderate government in the region is by providing massive financial aid to Jihadist groups in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and the Palestinian Territories.
Notable, from the Los Angeles Times:
Putin vows to protect Ukraine separatists from defeat
Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to prevent the defeat of allied separatists in eastern Ukraine while clinging to his insistence that Russia hasn’t been involved in the deadly, 7-month-old conflict.
In an interview with Germany’s ARD television, Putin repeated his claim that ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers in Ukraine are in danger of repression by a Kiev leadership he suggested was plotting to oust them en route to creating a fascist state.
“We are very concerned about any possible ethnic cleansings and Ukraine ending up as a neo-Nazi state,” Putin said, according to the Kremlin news service account of the interview. “What are we supposed to think if people are bearing swastikas on their sleeves? Or what about the SS emblems that we see on the helmets of some military units now fighting in eastern Ukraine?”
A shotgun wedding from Taiwan’s Want China Times:
US makes ‘fatal mistake’ driving China and Russia closer: Duowei
The United States is making a “fatal mistake” by antagonizing both China and Russia and forcing the two primary opponents closer together, says Duowei News, a US-based Chinese political news website.
Washington turned against Moscow following the start of the Ukraine crisis in February this year, leading the European Union and Japan in imposing heavy sanctions against Russia. The increasing distrust between the two countries has been apparent, with Russian president Vladimir Putin and US president Barack Obama coming into contact for only 20-30 minutes during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders summit in Beijing last week, with neither leader having much to say to the other.
Putin also berated the US shortly before the ensuing G20 in Australia, accusing Washington of undermining the very trade institutions it created by imposing sanctions on Russia, a “mistake” that it said went against international law and trade agreements.
Trackin’ pistol-packin’, from MIT Technology Review:
Police in California and Texas Test Networked Guns
A chip that tracks how a police officer’s gun is being used could prove useful in investigations and court cases
When a police officer draws a firearm he or she often doesn’t have an opportunity to radio for backup.
YardArm, a California-based company, is building technology that will automatically alert headquarters in such situations. The company makes a chip that goes into the handle of a regular firearm and transmits data over a cell-phone network connection. The data transmitted includes the location of a gun and whether it has been unholstered or discharged. The company is also working to track the direction in which a gun is pointing. The data can be fed to a police dispatch system or viewed on a smartphone.
Founded in 2013, YardArm started out making a consumer product for monitoring a firearm’s location. But since many American gun owners object to technology or policies aimed at regulating firearms, it did not find many customers.
The despicable, enabling the despicable, via the New York Times:
Indictment of Ex-Official Raises Questions on Mississippi’s Private Prisons
In 1982, Christopher B. Epps, a young schoolteacher, took a second job as a guard at the facility known as Parchman Farm, the only prison operated at the time by the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Eventually he had to choose a path. “It worked out that I was making more as a correctional officer than as a teacher,” Mr. Epps would later recall in an interview for a corrections newsletter.
By the time he spoke those words in 2009, Mr. Epps was being feted as Mississippi’s longest-serving corrections commissioner. The state inmate population had quadrupled, five private prisons had been built to help house them, and, according to a federal grand jury indictment, Mr. Epps had found a new, secretive way to bolster his income.
The 49-count indictment, unsealed last week, accuses Mr. Epps of receiving more than $1 million in bribes from a former Mississippi lawmaker named Cecil McCrory, beginning in 2007. In exchange, the indictment charges, Mr. Epps helped secure lucrative corrections department contracts for private prison companies owned or represented by Mr. McCrory.
More penal despicability, via the Miami Herald:
Detention at Guantánamo grinds on: 13 years and counting, 148 captives remain
It’s the first Tuesday in November, just another day as Guantánamo grinds on toward the detention center’s 14th year as the most expensive prison on earth with no end in sight. President Barack Obama ordered it emptied in 2009, on his second day in office, and people here are dubious that it will be done before his last.
It will close “a year from now, six months from now, 10 years from now — I don’t know,” says Zak, a Pentagon employee who has served as the prison’s Muslim cultural adviser since 2005.
“My focus is to ensure that I have operationally effective and safe facilities for a mission with an indeterminate end date,” says Rear Adm. Kyle Cozad, the 14th commander of the prison operation.
Bobby despicability, via the London Telegraph:
A million crimes reported by public left out of police figures
Watchdog warns that police are failing to record one in five crimes because of the ‘target culture’ in forces
Almost a million crimes a year are disappearing from official figures as chief constables attempt to meet targets, a study by the police watchdog has disclosed.
Its report exposed “indefensible” failures by forces to record crime accurately, and said that in some areas up to a third of crimes are being struck out of official records.
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary said violent crimes and sex attacks were particularly vulnerable to being deleted under “inexcusably poor” systems.
Although the report stopped short of accusing police of widespread “fiddling” it said there was an “undercurrent of pressure not to record a crime across some forces” and “wrongful pressure” by managers.
From Network World, a criminal marketing twist:
New ransomware CoinVault allows users to decrypt one file for free
Cybercriminals behind a new ransomware program called CoinVault are trying out a new psychological tactic to convince users to pay up—freebies.
The new threat was discovered by security researchers from Webroot and is similar in functionality to more prevalent ransomware programs like CryptoWall. It uses strong 256-bit AES encryption with keys stored on a remote server, it kills the Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service so that users can’t use it to recover their files and only supports Bitcoin as a payment method.
Users are asked to pay 0.5 bitcoins—around $200 at the current exchange rate—in order to receive the key that decrypts their files, but the cost increases every 24 hours.
One aspect that sets CoinVault apart from other file-encrypting ransomware programs is that it allows users to see a list of encrypted files on their computer and choose one they can decrypt for free.
SecurityWeek covers more criminal despicability:
Research Finds 1 Percent of Online Ads Malicious
One percent does not sound like a lot, but multiple it by the right number, and it can be.
Such is the case when it comes to malicious advertising. In research recently presented at the 2014 Internet Measurement Conference in Vancouver, a team of security experts from Ruhr-University Bochum, University College London and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) examined more than 600,000 online advertisements on 40,000 websites over a three-month period and used multiple detection systems to assess whether they were good or bad. The end result: one percent of the ads were found to be involved in suspicious or malicious activity such as drive-by downloads and link hijacking.
“While this is bad news for the advertising networks, advertisers and Internet users who are all under attack from the malware producers, the good news is there are several things available today that can stop malvertising,” said Giovanni Vigna, co-founder and CTO of Lastline, one of the members of the team that worked on the research. “One of these is the use of the sandboxing attribute in iframes within HTML5. None of the 40,000 websites we observed leveraged this mechanism, even though it could stop the link-hijacking that is by far the most prevalent method by which miscreants are getting past other security measures in order to distribute malware through advertisements.”
After the jump, hard times intolerance in Britain, attacks on immigrant housing in Germany, a Columbian general captured by rebels and a massive manhunt ensues, a disillusioned Mossad agent speaks out, Pakistani police thuggery, a killer Indian medical mob, illegal student protests in Myanmar, a crackdown on Hong Kong Occupy camp nears, more repercussions from the election of an Okianawa govenor opposed to a U.S. base move as activists work to expose the toxic legacy of Vietnam War-era Agent Orange exposures on the island, and a unique Californian match made in prison. . .
That ol’ hard times intolerance from Al Jazeera English:
Rising tide of UK anti-immigrant sentiment
Swathes of the British electorate continue to show discontent with all things European, including immigration
Few political issues have stirred the 21st century British state like immigration.
As the country continues to wrestle with its place within the European Union, the influx of EU migrants to UK shores has become one of the most controversial – and thorny – topics of discussion in recent years.
Earlier this month, a European Court of Justice ruling backing German moves to restrict unemployed migrants’ rights to welfare was welcomed by British Prime Minister David Cameron, who, himself under pressure to reduce EU migration, has promised Britain an in-out EU referendum by 2017 if returned to power in next May’s UK general election.
Such a proposition, combined with the rise of the anti-EU and anti-immigration United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), has for many observers made immigration a politically charged issue with few to rival it.
More of the same from Germany, via TheLocal.de:
2014 sees jump in refugee home attacks
Federal investigators said on Sunday that attacks against refugee housing had increased dramatically in 2014, but refugee organizations warned against panic.
Police recorded 86 separate incidents, from graffitied swastikas to broken windows and arson attempts, between January and September.
As many attacks were recorded in the first nine months of the year as in 2012 and 2013 put together, federal criminal investigators (BKA) told Spiegel.
And there were over 200 demonstrations against refugees in the first 10 months of the year, refugee organizations Pro Asyl and the Amadeu Antonio Foundation reported.
A Columbian general captured by rebels, via the Guardian:
Colombian president halts Farc talks after general kidnapped
Efforts to end 50 years of war in crisis after Ruben Dario Alzate captured along with military official and lawyer
The Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, has suspended peace talks with Marxist Farc rebels following the kidnapping of an army general, throwing into crisis the nation’s efforts to end 50 years of war.
General Ruben Dario Alzate, who heads the Titan task force in the Pacific department of Choco, was captured on Sunday afternoon by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), along with another military official and a civilian.
“Tomorrow negotiators were to travel to another round of talks in Havana,” Santos said early on Monday. “I will tell them not to go and that the talks are suspended until these people are released.”
More from BBC News:
Colombia Farc: Huge search for abducted general
The Colombian authorities have begun a huge search operation to find a general abducted by left-wing Farc rebels on Sunday. The abduction of Ruben Dario Alzate marks the first time in 50 years of conflict that a general has been taken.
Brig Gen Alzate was travelling along the Atrato river in the northern province of Choco by boat.
He stopped at a village called Las Mercedes, about 15km (10 miles) from the provincial capital Quibdo to talk to the local community. Rebels thought to belong to the 34th division of the Farc met him there, reports say.
The rebels searched him and took him and two other people – lawyer Gloria Urrego and Capt Jorge Rodriguez Contreras – captive, the army says. A spokesman for the Farc in Havana declined to comment, saying the rebels’ negotiators were still investigating the incident.
A disillusioned Mossad agent speaks out, from intelNews:
Mossad’s top agent in Lebanon speaks publicly for first time
A spy for Israel, who is described as one of the Jewish state’s most valuable intelligence assets in the Middle East, has broken his 30-year silence and has accused his Israeli handlers of having “thrown him to the dogs”. Amin al-Hajj was born in 1955 into one of the Lebanese Shia community’s wealthiest and most powerful clans.
In the early 1970s, al-Hajj entered the inner circle of former Lebanese President Camille Chamoun, an outspoken leader of the country’s Christian community, who subsequently played an instrumental role in Lebanon’s civil war. Al-Hajj shared Chamoun’s detestation of Lebanon’s Palestinian community, which he held as responsible for sparking the civil war that lasted from 1975 to 1990 and destroyed the country.
He helped direct and train Chamoun’s bodyguards and regularly represented the Christian politician in secret meetings with officials from Israel. The latter supported Chamoun’s pro-Phalangist Tigers Militia during the civil war. It was during those meetings that the Israelis sensed al-Hajj’s hatred for the Palestinians and gradually recruited him as an asset. He went on to serve the Mossad as one of its most effective agents in the Middle East.
Pakistani police thuggery, via the Guardian:
Pakistan police take harsh justice to the streets: ‘Mostly we get the right people’
Death by police encounter is on the rise in Karachi as officers attempt to crack down on gangs and Taliban-affiliated terrorists
Death by police encounter is a nationwide phenomenon, but has become more common in Karachi, where police are under pressure to crack down on criminal gangs, street toughs controlled by political parties and Taliban-affiliated terrorists who have made Pakistan’s economic capital one of the most turbulent cities in Asia.
One of the measures of success used by police is how many terrorists they claim to have killed, which was more than 200 in September.
According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), 267 people died in police encounters between September 2013 and this June.
“Everyone knows most of these encounters are fake,” said Akhtar Baloch, a Karachi-based member of the HRCP. “It is always the same – the victims are picked up by ununiformed men, tortured for information and then killed in an encounter.”
Medical mayhem from BBC News:
India Calcutta doctors ‘kill suspected thief’
A group of junior doctors beat a suspected thief to death at a medical college in the eastern Indian city of Calcutta, police say.
The man was tied to a pillar, beaten with bamboo sticks and his penis slashed with a razor.
Police say he was accused of stealing mobile phones. Two people have been detained and an investigation ordered.
Correspondents say the killing highlights the widespread problem of mob lynching in India.
Students protest in Myanmar, from Channel NewsAsia Singapore:
Myanmar students stage illegal education protest in Yangon
Scores of Myanmar students rallied illegally in Yangon Monday against a new education bill they describe as undemocratic, the latest in a series of protests that began during a visit by US President Barack Obama.
Young activists, some holding banners reading “We need Academic Freedom” and “Fight for Democratic Education”, staged a peaceful march across the city centre to call for the education system to be reformed. The protest was held without official permission – an arrestable offence in the former junta-run nation.
“Education is very important to our country’s future. Schools need to be democratic if we are to become a democratic country,” said Phyo Phyo Aung, secretary of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions. She said the group had not applied for official permission to protest.
A crackdown on Hong Kong Occupy camp nears, from South China Morning Post:
Bailiffs warn students to leave area outside Citic Tower ahead of clearance operation
Student protesters pre-empted an operation to clear a section of the Occupy Central camp in Admiralty this morning, packing up their tents before bailiffs moved to tear down barricades blocking access to Citic Tower.
Bailiffs announced that they would begin clearing barriers at around 10am, enacting a court order authorising removal, which also permits police to assist in the clearance.
A bailiff and a representative from Citic took to Lung Wui Road to tell protesters to go and take their belongings with them.
“People should immediately pack their stuff and leave,” the bailiff said, via megaphone.
More repercussions from the election of an Okianawa govenor opposed to a U.S. base move, from JapanToday:
Okinawa vote a blow to Japan-U.S. ties, say analysts
Voters in Okinawa have thrown a spanner into Japan’s relations with the United States after electing a governor who wants the American military to downsize its presence at a time of alarm over China’s territorial ambitions.
Takeshi Onaga rode a wave of anti-U.S. resentment to pummel two-term incumbent Hirokazu Nakaima in a weekend poll widely seen as a referendum on the deal he struck to move an American air base from a crowded city center to a pristine bit of coast.
While most Japanese value the protection the U.S. military alliance gives them, especially in the context of Beijing’s growing assertiveness in its numerous regional disputes, a sizable proportion of Okinawans want them to leave the island.
“I will firmly implement my campaign pledge of seeking to remove the Futenma airbase outside Okinawa and never allow a new base in Henoko,” Onaga said, referring to the agreed site of the proposed relocation.
From the Diplomat, a toxic legacy:
Agent Orange in Okinawa
Determined citizens are working to uncover “one of the best kept secrets of the Cold War era.”
While the ongoing debate over the heavy presence of U.S. military forces in the southern Japanese prefecture of Okinawa continues to make international headlines – including the decades-long struggle of residents to protect their island region from unsafe aircraft, sexual assaults, and the extinction of a local sea mammal – there is another story that until now has remained almost completely untold: the use of Agent Orange and other chemical defoliants in Okinawa.
Determined to end this silence, a group of Japan-based citizens including journalists, professors, and environmental activists have been gathering evidence and speaking out regarding the existence of toxic substances, including Agent Orange, that were found to have been stored, sprayed, buried and dumped in and around Okinawa by U.S. military forces during the Vietnam War era.
Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo on October 30, 2014, just ahead of a November 1-2 symposium at Okinawa Christian University titled “Agent Orange and the Politics of Poisons,” three of the symposium’s presenters outlined the journey to begin telling this story – and to attain justice for those who have been impacted by its legacy.
And from the Guardian, another eligible bachelor to cross off the list:
Mass murderer Charles Manson obtains marriage license
The 80-year-old would be allowed to wed in prison a 26-year-old woman who visits him and maintains several websites advocating for his innocence
Mass murderer Charles Manson has gotten a license to marry a 26-year-old woman who visits him in prison.
The marriage license obtained Monday by the Associated Press was issued 7 November for the 80-year-old Manson and Afton Elaine Burton, who left her Midwestern home nine years ago and moved to Corcoran, California, the site of the prison, to be near Manson. She maintains several websites advocating for Manson’s innocence.
The license does not specify a wedding date and indicates the couple has 90 days to get married or they will have to reapply. Burton, who goes by the name “Star”, told the AP that she and Manson will be married next month.
