And lots of bad news for the Fourth Estate.
We open with a fascinating report certain to make a reader more secure, from the Los Angeles Times:
Banking industry culture primes for cheating, study suggests
Is your banker honest? Not if you remind him of where he works, a new study suggests.
Employees of an international bank were more inclined to lie for financial gain if they were thinking about their jobs than if they were thinking about their home life, according to a study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The conclusions imply that cheating propensity is embedded in the business culture of the banking industry, and not in the type of person who goes into banking.
“These are not generally dishonest people,” said University of Chicago behavioral economist Alain Cohn, lead author of the study. “What our results suggest is that current norms in the banking industry tend to favor dishonesty and that the banks should initiate a change in norms.”
Domestic insecurity from Al Jazeera America:
FBI sends in reinforcements ahead of Ferguson grand jury announcement
FBI sends 100 agents to Missouri town that became flashpoint for racial tensions after policemen shot unarmed black teen
Police and protest organizers painstakingly laid the groundwork this weekend to avert street violence in Ferguson, Missouri, and the FBI sent in nearly 100 extra agents as a St. Louis-area grand jury was expected to soon announce its decision on whether to indict the white police officer who fatally shot unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in August.
In a possible sign that an announcement on the grand jury’s decision is imminent, prosecutors told media organizations that they were making plans for a news conference to announce the outcome — but the date, time and location remained undetermined.
Protests on Friday night led to the arrest of three demonstrators as hundreds blocked traffic along South Florissant Road, the main thoroughfare through Ferguson where marchers and police have tangled regularly since the late-summer unrest over the Brown shooting.
Ancillary reinforcements, via Fusion:
Across the tracks from Ferguson, Clayton enlists private army to brace for trouble
The predominantly white residents of Clayton seem convinced that the protesters will take out their anger there, and are hurrying to insulate themselves from the threat with private security firms.
Asymmetric Solutions, a St. Louis-based security and intelligence company that is staffed by U.S. special-operations veterans, has been working with companies around the metropolitan area whose assets are valuable enough to justify the firm’s steep rates. A project manager for the company, who asked not to be named, predicts that outside of Ferguson “most of the difficulty will occur in the Clayton area…the bastions of white wealth and privilege.”
When the grand-jury decision comes down, the firm will deploy its operatives to probable flashpoints. “You’ll never notice any of our people,” he said. “We’re not putting fighters out there—we’re putting thinkers and managers out. Their ability to wage war effectively is simply one more tool in the toolbox.”
From United Press International, war prolonged:
Obama signs secret order expanding U.S. role in Afghanistan
President Obama reportedly signed a classified order authorizing an expanded military mission in Afghanistan in 2015, allowing U.S. forces to carry out missions against the Taliban
President Obama quietly signed a classified executive order authorizing a more expansive role for U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2015, ensuring American troops will be fighting in the country for at least one more year, The New York Times reported.
The order allows American troops to take a direct role in missions against militant groups that include the Taliban.
It’s a broader mission than the president described in a May announcement, when he said the U.S. military would have no combat role in Afghanistan next year and the remaining 9,800 troops would be focusing on training Afghan forces and handling al-Qaida threats.
And a possible stimulus, via the New York Times:
Hour’s Drive Outside Kabul, Taliban Reign
The explosion ripped through the floor of the Humvee, tearing a hole in the armored vehicle and injuring the district governor. The crack of Taliban gunfire followed.
Seeking cover, the Afghan police convoy sped behind a mud compound and unleashed a hail of bullets. Undeterred, the Taliban fighters edged closer. As bullets smacked around his head, an Afghan soldier in a white head scarf crouched behind a waist-high wall trading shots with the insurgents, a cigarette tucked in his lips.
“This is our daily life,” said the police chief of Tagab district, a mostly Taliban-controlled patch of Kapisa Province about an hour from Kabul, as rounds struck the compound’s edges, showering his men with dirt. “Everything is like this — you can see it with your own eyes.”
In areas like this, it is the government that operates in the shadows, following the dictates of the Taliban in order to stay alive. Afghan soldiers in Tagab district will not leave their base except for one hour each day starting at 9 a.m., when the Taliban allow them to visit the bazaar as long as the soldiers remain unarmed.
From Deutsche Welle, terror talk:
Inside IS – The Structure of Terror | Quadriga
Program notes:
After beheading yet another western hostage, the Islamic State terrorist organization is now threatening direct attacks on the US and Britain. Documents that have recently come to light allow some insights into the group’s structure, and reveal an extensive finance network and sophisticated logistics systems for weapons and supplies. Is IS more powerful than experts previously believed?
Guests:
Amir Musawy, Berlin correspondent for Iraqia TV
Asiem El Difraoui, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Media and Communication Policy in Berlin
Antje Bauer, reporter specializing in the Middle East, Turkey and Afghanistan.
Read more: http://www.dw.de/quadriga-inside-is-the-structure-of-terror-2014-11-20/e-18014096-9798
From the New York Times, hardly surprising:
Among Pakistan Militants, Signs of Affinity With ISIS
Across Pakistan, the black standard of the Islamic State has become seemingly ubiquitous.
From urban slums to Taliban strongholds, the militant group’s logo and name have appeared in graffiti, posters and pamphlets. Last month, a cluster of militant commanders declared their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State.
Such is the influence of the Islamic State’s steamroller success in Iraq and Syria that, even thousands of miles away, security officials and militant networks are having to reckon with the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
More Pakistani news from the New York Times:
Eavesdropping on Pakistani Official Led to Inquiry Into Former U.S. Diplomat
American investigators intercepted a conversation this year in which a Pakistani official suggested that his government was receiving American secrets from a prominent former State Department diplomat, officials said, setting off an espionage investigation that has stunned diplomatic circles here.
That conversation led to months of secret surveillance on the former diplomat, Robin L. Raphel, and an F.B.I. raid last month at her home, where agents discovered classified information, the officials said.
The investigation is an unexpected turn in a distinguished career that has spanned four decades. Ms. Raphel (pronounced RAY-full) rose to become one of the highest-ranking female diplomats and a fixture in foreign policy circles, serving as ambassador to Tunisia and as assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs in the Clinton administration.
And from the New York Times once more, tortuous deliberations:
Senate Democrats Clash With White House on C.I.A. Torture Report
In a tense confrontation with President Obama’s closest adviser on Thursday, a group of Senate Democrats accused the White House of trying to censor significant details in a voluminous report on the use of torture by the Central Intelligence Agency.
During a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill with Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff, the senators said that the White House was siding with the C.I.A. and trying to thwart negotiations over the report’s release. The negotiations have dragged on for months because of a dispute over the C.I.A.’s demand that pseudonyms of agency officers be deleted from the report.
The C.I.A., supported by the White House, has argued that even without using the real names of the officers, their identities could still be revealed.
According to several people in attendance, the meeting was civil, but neither side gave ground, and it ended without resolution. The Senate Intelligence Committee spent five years working on the 6,000-page report, which is said to provide grim details about the torture of detainees in C.I.A. prisons during the Bush administration, and describe a persistent effort by C.I.A. officials to mislead the White House and Congress about the efficacy of its interrogation techniques. The committee voted this year to declassify the report’s executive summary, numbering several hundred pages, but the fight over redactions has delayed the release.
From IDG News Service, spooky business as usual:
NSA director: No changes in telephone record collection coming
The U.S. National Security Agency is planning no major changes in its domestic telephone records collection program after a bill to rein in those efforts failed in the Senate this week, the agency’s director said.
The NSA will continue to collect U.S. telephone records in bulk, while operating under some restrictions President Barack Obama put on the program back in January, Admiral Michael Rogers, the NSA’s director, said during a House of Representatives hearing on cybersecurity Thursday. The NSA would rather wait to see what specific changes to the program Congress will require before making major changes, he told the House Intelligence Committee.
The NSA had hoped to get direction from Congress in the short term, but the agency may have to re-evaluate the telephone records program “if we’re unable to gain consensus in the window that we thought,” Rogers said. “I don’t have an answer to that in my own mind.”
The Los Angeles Times covers Fourth Estate outrage in Old Blighty:
British journalists slam police surveillance in lawsuit
British freelance video journalist Jason Parkinson had set his camera on a tripod outside London’s upscale Dorchester Hotel to film a protest against a group of delegates from an arms and defense trade show who were dining inside. He wore a red bandanna on his right wrist, a winter vest, a red-and-white striped shirt and a pair of blue jeans with a tear in the right knee.
The details of his attire are recorded in a 12-page police file Parkinson, 44, obtained through a freedom of information request which makes clear the extent to which British authorities have monitored him and other journalists as they carried out their work.
Britain’s National Union of Journalists, along with Parkinson and five others who obtained their own police intelligence records, filed a lawsuit this week against London’s Metropolitan Police and the British government. The action challenges police surveillance of journalists, including the retention of the information collected on a national database, as a violation of British law and the European Convention of Human Rights.
More Fourth Estate suppression from the Observer:
Media ‘gagged over bid to report MP child sex cases’
Security services accused of aiding Westminster paedophilia cover-up
The security services are facing questions over the cover-up of a Westminster paedophile ring as it emerged that files relating to official requests for media blackouts in the early 1980s were destroyed.
Two newspaper executives have told the Observer that their publications were issued with D-notices – warnings not to publish intelligence that might damage national security – when they sought to report on allegations of a powerful group of men engaging in child sex abuse in 1984. One executive said he had been accosted in his office by 15 uniformed and two non-uniformed police over a dossier on Westminster paedophiles passed to him by the former Labour cabinet minister Barbara Castle.
The other said that his newspaper had received a D-notice when a reporter sought to write about a police investigation into Elm Guest House, in southwest London, where a group of high-profile paedophiles was said to have operated and may have killed a child. Now it has emerged that these claims are impossible to verify or discount because the D-notice archives for that period “are not complete”.
From PCWorld, Windows™ into a corporate soul, eliminating yet more jobs:
Microsoft turns to robotic security guards to watch for trouble
OK, so the robot apocalypse probably won’t happen any time soon, but the new robot sentries guarding Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus seem like something straight out of a futuristic sci-fi movie.
According to ExtremeTech, each of the K5 security guard robots from robotics company Knightscope stands 5 feet tall and weighs 300 pounds, so you probably don’t want to mess with one.
The K5 robots don’t come with any weapons onboard—thankfully—but they use a suite of alarms, sirens, and cameras to monitor and patrol the grounds of Microsoft’s campus. If one spots trouble, it’ll either sound an alarm or dispatch a human security guard to its location.
From the Guardian, another European separatist movement:
European parliament set to call for break-up of Google in antitrust case
Draft motion seeks to serve as solution to Google’s dominance of search markets in Europe and is seen as drastic escalation of running antitrust case
The European parliament is reportedly poised to call for a break-up of Google in a drastic escalation of Europe’s long-running antitrust case against the tech giant.
A draft motion seen by the Financial Times, and expected to be agreed next week, calls for the “unbundling [of] search engines from other commercial services” as a potential solution to Google’s dominance of the search market in Europe.
The European Commission has been investigating concerns that Google has abused its dominant position in search since 2010 and the dispute has become increasingly bitter. In September the EU’s incoming digital commissioner Günther Oettinger warned that any settlement with Google could “cement its strength in the market rather than diluting it”.
After the jump, hackers busted, crime and the power of privilege, dronal decadence, a kidnapped Colombian general’s release promised, Fourth Estate woes in Libya, terrorism leads to call for Nigerian school closures, a split in the Hong Occupy movement, a Fourth Estate prosecution, Chinese journalism woes in the Philippines, a major development in China Seas Game of Zones, China denigrates criticism of its military expansion, Washington calls for settlement of a Seoul/Tokyo insular spat, and yet another delay in settlement of that controversial Okinawa U.S. base relocation. . .
Hackers busted, from BBC News:
Computer hijacking arrests in UK and across Europe
Fifteen people have been arrested, including four in the UK, in connection with the hijacking of computers. The other arrests were made in Estonia, France, Romania, Latvia, Italy, and Norway.
Police say the individuals were using software designed to remotely control computers – allowing for the stealing of information.
The practice, which in some instances can grant access to a victim’s webcam, is known as “Ratting”. he phrase takes its name from the malicious software used to gain control – Remote Access Trojans (Rats).
The power of wealth, via the Associated Press:
Report questions role of wealth in Lanza’s care
A new report asks whether the race and affluence of Adam Lanza’s family influenced decisions about how to care for his mental health problems in the years before he committed the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
Among the findings in the report, which was released Friday by the state office of Child Advocate, is that Lanza’s his parents and educators contributed to his social isolation by accommodating — and not confronting — his difficulties engaging with the world.
The report said recommendations from Yale psychologists that he be medicated and undergo rigorous treatment as a child for anxiety and other conditions were rejected by his mother, who eventually took him out of school.
“Is the community more reluctant to intervene and more likely to provide deference to the parental judgment and decision-making of white, affluent parents than those caregivers who are poor or minority?” the report asks. “Would (Adam Lanza’s) caregivers’ reluctance to maintain him in school or a treatment program have gone under the radar if he were a child of color?
The Washington Post covers dronal decadence:
This biodegradable drone is grown from mushrooms and covered in wasp spit
A group of college students has created an environmentally friendly drone — think veggie leather.
Led by one of NASA’s synthetic biology experts, they made an unmanned aerial vehicle almost entirely out of biodegradable materials. After a crash, these little fliers would basically disappear.
Drones can be a great help in dealing with environmental issues, flying into protected wooded areas to count the surviving population of an endangered animal, or over remote coral reefs to assess their condition.
But sometimes they can turn into litter: If a drone goes down in a protected area, it might not be possible for anyone to retrieve the hunk of metal and plastic.
A kidnapped Colombian general’s release promised BBC News:
Colombia kidnap: Farc to release Gen Alzate ‘next week’
Colombia’s Farc rebels will release five captives, including Gen Ruben Dario Alzate, next week, President Juan Manuel Santos has announced.
Mr Santos said information about their release had been received, but he did not specify when it would happen.
Ruben Dario Alzate is the first Colombian general to be abducted in 50 years of civil conflict.
Peace talks between the two sides were suspended after the men were captured by the left-wing rebels last Sunday.
From the Guardian, Fourth Estate woes in Libya,:
Libyan editor jailed for five years in defamation case
Human rights body protests at prison sentence
A Libyan newspaper editor has been sentenced to five years in jail for allegedly defaming public officials, reports Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Amara al-Khatabi, editor of Al-Ummah, published an article in November 2012 that named 87 judges and prosecutors as having accepted bribes and accused them of loyalty to the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Al-Khatabi was convicted and sentenced in his absence on 17 August. But he did not know about it until 17 November, when a copy of the verdict was deleiverd to his home. He was also ordered to pay heavy damages to each of the five people who brought the case.
He was initially arrested in December 2012 and then spent almost six months in pre-trial detention.
Terrorism leads to call for Nigerian school closures, from the Sun in Lagos:
COEASU threatens to suspend academic activities nationwide
The Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) has made a passionate appeal to the Federal Government to address the security challenges in some colleges of education or it would be forced to suspend academic activities nationwide.
The union explained that the security challenges, particularly in the North have resulted in the death of some COEASU members and students, saying fears have gripped colleges of education in the areas.
The position of COEASU was taken at the Expanded National Executive Council (ENEC) meeting held in Abuja to examine the federal government responss to the outstanding issues and to deliberate on other challenges besetting the nation as they affect the colleges of education.
A split in the Hong Occupy movement, from South China Morning Post:
Split within Occupy deepens as splinter group challenges leadership
The split among pro-democracy protesters deepened last night with radicals confronting the campaign leadership to demand an equal say on the movement.
The drama began as dozens of protesters who answered an internet appeal to confront the leadership marched, some wearing masks, to the main stage of the Admiralty rally site at 8pm.
They carried placards reading “you do not represent us” and shouted at speakers on the stage.
A Fourth Estate prosecution in China from the New York Times:
Chinese Journalist Accused of Stealing State Secrets Affirms Innocence at Trial
Amid heavy security, Gao Yu, a journalist accused of stealing state secrets, went on trial in Beijing on Friday in a closely watched case analysts said was aimed at silencing a voice that gave the world rare glimpses into internal Communist Party politics.
Ms. Gao’s trial at the newly built, high-tech Beijing No. 3 Intermediate People’s Court was closed to observers and lasted four hours, said her lawyer, Mo Shaoping. A verdict had yet to be announced.
“She said she was innocent,” Mr. Mo said in a telephone interview shortly after the trial ended. “And I said that her guilt could not be proven beyond reasonable doubt.” He added that Ms. Gao had called on the judicial authorities to implement the spirit of legal reform that has been promised by China’s leaders and judge her fairly.
Chinese journalism woes in the Philippines, from South China Morning Post:
Hong Kong journalists blacklisted by Philippines after questioning Aquino at Apec summit
Nine journalists who questioned president Benigno Aquino apparently blacklisted by agency, but presidential media office denies it
A ban may have been imposed on nine Hong Kong journalists that would block them from entering the Philippines to report on next year’s Apec summit.
The nine were said to have “heckled” the country’s president at last year’s meeting by asking questions about the 2010 Manila bus hostage tragedy, a Philippine government letter showed.
Six reporters from Now TV, two from Commercial Radio and another from RTHK were “blacklisted”, according to the letter, apparently issued by the country’s National Intelligence Coordinating Agency to its Bureau of Immigration.
A major move in the Game of Zones from Reuters:
China building South China Sea island big enough for airstrip: report
Satellite images show China is building an island on a reef in the disputed Spratly Islands large enough to accommodate what could be its first offshore airstrip in the South China Sea, a leading defense publication said on Friday.
The construction has stoked concern that China may be converting disputed territory in the mineral-rich archipelago into military installations, adding to tensions waters also claimed by Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Brunei.
IHS Jane’s said images it had obtained showed the Chinese-built island on the Fiery Cross Reef to be at least 3,000 meters (1.9 miles) long and 200-300 meters (660-980 ft) wide, which it noted is “large enough to construct a runway and apron.”
The building work flies in the face of U.S. calls for a freeze in provocative activity in the South China Sea, one of Asia’s biggest security issues. Concern is growing about an escalation in disputes even as claimants work to establish a code of conduct to resolve them.
China denigrates criticism of its military expansion, via Channel NewsAsia Singapore:
China defence minister brushes off fears over military growth
General Chang Wanquan said China’s military modernisation is rooted in both past humiliations and a present need to combat threats including terrorism
China’s defence minister on Friday (Nov 21) sought to soothe concerns over the country’s growing armed forces, saying its military modernisation is rooted in both past humiliations and a present need to combat threats including terrorism.
“The remarkable growth of China’s comprehensive national power, and the continued progress in national defence modernisation, have become a focus of international attention in recent years,” General Chang Wanquan said in a speech.
Among the reasons he cited for the makeover were China’s “wretched modern history” as a victim of aggression and the “practical need to secure its own territory”, catch up with other militaries and cooperate internationally to combat “terrorism, extremism and separatism”.
Washington calls for settlement of a Seoul/Tokyo insular spat, from Kyodo News:
U.S. urges Japan, S. Korea to settle islet dispute
The United States urged Japan and South Korea on Friday to settle their dispute over the sovereignty of small South Korean-controlled, Japanese-claimed islands in the Sea of Japan, a problem that has soured ties between the U.S. allies in the region.
The call came in the form of a White House response to two online petitions regarding the dispute over a pair of rocky islets called Takeshima by Tokyo and Dokdo by Seoul, and located roughly halfway between the two countries.
“This is a long-standing dispute that Korea and Japan have handled with restraint in the past. We expect that they will continue to do so. We would welcome any outcome agreed to by both Korea and Japan,” the White House said on its website.
And from NHK WORLD, a delay on contested real estate:
Survey for US base relocation in Okinawa extended
Japanese defense authorities say the deadline to finish an underwater drilling survey will be extended until the end of next March. It is being carried out before the planned construction of a US military facility in Okinawa.
The Okinawa Defense Bureau began the survey in August in the Henoko area of Nago City. It is in preparation for reclamation work to build a replacement facility for the US Marine Corps Futenma Air Station now located in Ginowan City.
Bureau officials have already surveyed 12 of 24 sites. They initially planned to complete the survey by the end of November.
