Plus the showdown in Hong Kong and lots more. . .
We begin with the Los Angeles Times:
Protests over Ferguson shooting enter third day; arrests in St. Louis
Activists rushed into St. Louis City Hall on Wednesday to protest a grand jury decision not to indict a white police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black man in nearby Ferguson as the region moved into its third day of demonstrations.
Hundreds of people demonstrated in front of the municipal building, shouting “Shame, Shame.” Some then entered the building and police, carrying riot shields, quickly responded.
As many as five people were arrested, officials said.
The Los Angeles Times again, with some numbers:
183 Ferguson protesters arrested in L.A., many more than in other cities
Los Angeles police arrested 183 protesters overnight Tuesday — a much larger number than in other major cities in the nation on the second night of protests over the grand jury decision in the Michael Brown shooting case.
Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck, at a news conference Wednesday morning, said he could not speak to what had occurred in other parts of the country but that the LAPD and CHP had been “extremely generous in allowing the expression of 1st Amendment activities.”
A bulk of the arrests occurred Tuesday night. Of the 183 held, 167 were arrested for disturbing the peace, 15 juveniles for violating curfew, and one person was taken into custody for alleged felony battery after throwing a frozen water bottle at a police officer’s head, Beck said.
And closer to Casa esnl, via the Oakland Tribune:
Ferguson protest: 92 arrests in Oakland during 2nd night of looting, vandalism
Merchants on Wednesday were mopping up after a second night of vandalism and looting in the wake of a Missouri grand jury’s decision not to indict a police officer in the shooting death of Ferguson teenager Michael Brown.
Tuesday night saw 300 march through downtown and North Oakland — vastly reduced from Monday’s estimated crowd of 2,000 — with protesters taking to the freeways two different times to block lanes.
Officials said officers arrested 92 people on Tuesday night, mostly on charges of obstruction and failure to disperse. Police had arrested 43 people the night before.
From BuzzFeed, across the Atlantic:
Ferguson Protest Brings Parts Of Central London To A Standstill
Hundreds of people marched through central London in solidarity with Michael Brown, who was shot dead by police in Ferguson
Hundreds of protestors congregated outside London’s US embassy in the early evening to protest about the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
Brown was shot dead by a police officer earlier this year. On Monday a grand jury decided that no charges would be brought against the officer involved.
Over 500 people were on the protest, which brought one of the capital’s main streets to a standstill.
A video report from RT:
London to Ferguson: Crowd protesting police racism tears down Parliament Square barriers
The McClatchy Washington Bureau makes connections:
Social media help take Ferguson protests national
“When you see people kneeling down on the highway, they’re trained to do that . . . it is just straight-up tactics from the civil rights movement,” James Peterson, director of Africana Studies at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., said in an interview Wednesday. “But social media certainly has been a great tool.”
Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service, has been engorged with Ferguson-related postings. Between Tuesday and Wednesday, 580,000 Tweets citing Ferguson were counted by the analytical service Topsy. One targeted hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter, was included in 72,000 Tweets in just one day.
Underscoring the reach of social media, prisoners at Boston’s South Bay Detention Facility held up signs reading “#BlackLivesMatter” to high-security windows. Other social media venues, such as Facebook, have likewise been aflame with Ferguson news and commentary. One page alone, called Justice for Mike Brown, had accumulated 43,934 “Likes” as of Wednesday.
Rounding out our Ferguson items, a graphic take from Jack Ohman, editorial cartoonist for the Sacramento Bee:
On to the war zones, now with Warthogs, via United Press International:
Air Force to deploy A-10s to combat Islamic State
“They’re going over there because there’s a need,” says the Air Force
A group of A-10 Thunderbolt fighter jets has arrived in the Middle East where they will be used to halt the spread of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
The A-10s, or Warthogs, are currently the center of Washington debate — senior defense officials want to retire the 283 remaining A-10s to save nearly $4 billion, while many feel such a move would cut off one of the military’s more powerful tools.
“They’re going over there because there’s a need … to be postured for a combat rescue mission,” Air Force spokeswoman Jennifer Cassidy explained to Stars and Stripes.
Although slow and low flying, A-10s can transport and deploy massive amounts of fire power to support combat troops on the ground. The planes have armored bellies to protect pilots from ground fire, and can be armed with a 30mm Gatling cannon and a variety of bombs, missiles and other explosives.
The Christian Science Monitor has the hush-hush:
Why US is mum on special ops raid that rescued hostages in Yemen
Eight hostages were brought to safety Tuesday after an intense firefight at the cave in remote eastern Yemen where the hostages were being held by Al Qaeda
There are two good reasons the cover-of-night, US-led commando raid that rescued eight Al Qaeda hostages in Yemen Tuesday received none of the fanfare and public back-slapping of previous successful counterterror operations.
One is obvious: No Americans were among the hostages – six Yemenis, one Saudi, and one Ethiopian – brought to safety after an intense firefight at the cave in remote eastern Yemen where the hostages were being held.
But the other explanation is that the Obama administration is very much interested in seeing the successful operation, which included both US and Yemeni forces, reinforce Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. He is a stalwart US ally in the fight against Al Qaeda in the region, but his grasp on power has been repeatedly shaken over recent months.
Al Jazeera America covers the latest drone attacks:
US drone strike in Pakistan kills five suspected Taliban fighters
Strike follows critical report on number of innocent civilians killed in US drone strikes
A U.S. drone strike on Wednesday killed five suspected militants in northwest Pakistan, a government official said, as an anti-Taliban offensive by the Pakistani military grew in intensity. The deadly strike comes one day after a human rights group issued a report drawing international attention to the number of innocent lives claimed by U.S. drone strikes.
The drone strike on Wednesday targeted a house in Datta Khel near the Afghan border. Pakistani fighters in the area allegedly used the residence as a safe house.
“The Government of Pakistan condemns the drone strike that took place in the early hours of Wednesday, 26 November 2014 at Garga, north of Shawal in North Waziristan Agency,” the government said in a statement.
An update from the Express Tribune in Karachi:
Eight suspected militants killed in North Waziristan drone strike
Eight suspected militants were killed in latest US drone attack in border area of North Waziristan on Wednesday, security officials said.
“The drone fired two missiles, killing at least eight people and injuring two others,” a security official in the area told AFP via phone on condition of anonymity.
“There may be more dead bodies under the rubble,” he said.
The identity of those killed could not be determined immediately, however, few of them are believed to be foreign militants.
The same story as seen by Iran’s PressTV:
US drone attacks kill 11 people in Pakistan, Afghanistan
Program notes:
US assassination drone strikes in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan have killed nearly a dozen people.
A drone attack killed eight people in Pakistan’s tribal region along the Afghan border. The unmanned aircraft fired two missiles at a compound in the town of Dattakhel in North Waziristan. Three Afghans lost their lives in a similar attack in Afghanistan’s Laghman province. The US military conducts deadly drone strikes in several Muslim countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. Washington says the air raids target militants, but a large number of civilians have been killed in the attacks.
Drone coverage from the domestic front from the Washington Post:
Near-collisions between drones, airliners surge, new FAA reports show
Pilots around the United States have reported a surge in near-collisions and other dangerous encounters with small drones in the past six months at a time when the Federal Aviation Administration is gradually opening the nation’s skies to remotely controlled aircraft, according to FAA records.
Since June 1, commercial airlines, private pilots and air-traffic controllers have alerted the FAA about at least 25 episodes in which small drones came within a few seconds or a few feet of crashing into much larger aircraft, the records show. Many of the close calls occurred during takeoffs and landings at the nation’s busiest airports, presenting a new threat to aviation safety after decades of steady improvement in air travel.
Many of the previously unreported incident reports — released Wednesday by the FAA in response to long-standing public-records requests from The Washington Post and other news organizations — occurred near New York and Washington.
The Hill clicks Undelete:
National Archives backs off plan to destroy CIA emails
The National Archives and Records Administration is taking a second look at the CIA’s proposal to delete its employees’ emails after they leave the agency.
The record-keeping agency “intends to reassess” the proposal to destroy old emails of all but 22 top officials at the spy agency, chief records officer Paul Wester wrote to the agency last week.
Citing concerns from top congressional overseers and transparency advocates, “we are concerned about the scope of the proposed schedule and the proposed retention periods,” Wester wrote in the letter, which was unearthed by the Federation of American Scientists’s project on government secrecy on Wednesday.
The National Archives had tentatively backed the agency’s proposal to destroy “non-senior” staffers’ emails three years after they leave the agency “or when no longer needed.” At the time, the records agency said that any important communications will likely exist in other formats, which will be catalogued for a permanent record.
The Intercept spins the spin:
The US/UK Campaign to Demonize Social Media Companies as Terrorist Allies
In May, 2013, a British Army soldier, Lee Rigby, was killed on a suburban London street by two Muslim British citizens, who said they were acting to avenge years of killings of innocent Muslims by the British military in, among other places, Afghanistan and Iraq. One of the attackers, Michael Adebolajo, had also been detained and tortured in 2010 in Kenya with the likely complicity of Her Majesty’s Government. The brutal attack on Rigby was instantly branded “terrorism” (despite its targeting of a soldier of a nation at war) and caused intense and virtually universal indignation in the UK.
In response, the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee resolved to investigate why the attack happened and whether it could have been prevented. Ensuring that nothing undesirable would occur, the investigation was led by the Committee’s chair, the long-time conservative government functionary Sir Malcolm Rifkind. Yesterday, Sir Malcolm’s Committee issued its findings in a 191-page report. It contains some highly predictable conclusions, but also some quite remarkable ones.
Predictably, the report, while offering some criticisms, completely cleared the British intelligence agencies of any responsibility for the attack. It concluded: “we do not consider that any of the Agencies’ errors, when taken individually, were significant enough to have affected the outcome,” and “we do not consider that, given what the Agencies knew at the time, they were in the position to prevent the murder.”
After the jump, the U.N. calls for releasing the CIA torture report, draconian new state security legislation in Old Blighty, France deprivatizes the phone tap, Google European breaking legal questions pondered, ap-tracking Twitter, Hookers in your cell phone, you annual cyberscam warning, China corporateers win disclosure in a U.S. court, Egypt sends children to prison for protesting, the death rattle of the Arab Spring in Cairo, Turkey clamps down on the Fourth Estate, the wrong song sends a Pakistani actress to price for decades, brutality allegations probed in Australian military academies, Hong Kong police mass to block re-Occupation while some of the colleagues are busted for brutality, and tycoons seek their own Hong Kong asylum. . .
Putting the question to putting the question, via the McClatchy Foreign Staff:
UN torture experts weigh in on disputed Senate CIA interrogation report
Seven top United Nations human rights experts on Wednesday urged President Barack Obama “not to yield” to demands from the Central Intelligence Agency that key material be edited out from a Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogation practices.
In an open letter, the experts called on Obama to release the Senate report “in the most complete and comprehensible form possible, allowing the victims and the public to fully understand the facts.”
“Your decision on this issue will have far-reaching consequences for victims of human rights violations everywhere and for the credibility of the United States,” the letter said. Among the signers were Juan E. Mendez, an Argentinian who is the U.N.’s special rapporteur on torture, and Christof Heyns, a South African who is the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions.
Getting draconian in Old Blighty with Homeland Security News Wire:
U.K. government’s sweeping new counterterrorism bill unveiled today
The U.K. government unveils today (Wednesday) sweeping new measures to combat extremism and terrorism, and tackle radicalization, in the United Kingdom. Among other measures, the new counterterrorism bill will require schools and universities to exclude radical speakers from their campuses, and give the home secretary the powers to deny entry (or re-entry) to the United Kingdom to U.K. British citizens suspected of involvement in terrorism-related activity abroad. These citizens’ travel documents will be cancelled and their names placed on no-fly lists for up to two years.
Home Secretary Theresa May said: “We are engaged in a struggle that is fought on many fronts and in many forms. It is a struggle that will go on for many years. And the threat we face right now is perhaps greater than it ever has been. We must have the powers we need to defend ourselves.”
The U.K. home secretary will have new powers to order universities to ban extremist speakers from their campuses – this is one of the features in the new counter-terrorism to be published today (Wednesday).
France deprivatizes the phone tap, from TheLocal.fr:
French crooks boosted as wiretap firms strike
French criminals likely breathed a sigh of relief this week when the four firms that carry out most court-ordered phone wiretaps in France refused to take on any new jobs after a bitter dispute with the justice ministry.
The companies – Foretec, Midi System, SGME and Elektron – currently operate around 90 percent of the 10,000 taps on phone calls and records, text messages and internet activity that take place on an average day.
But their business with the justice ministry is due to end when France launches its National Platform for Judicial Interceptions (PNIJ), which is touted as the biggest electronic surveillance agency in Europe.
Google European breaking legal questions pondered, from the Guardian:
Does Europe have the power to break up Google?
Regulatory matters have become a political issue as members of the European parliament clash with the European commission
MEPs are set to clash with the European commission over whether Google’s dominant search engine should be separated from the rest of the company.
The parliament is poised to call for a break-up of Google in an attempt to drastically escalate Europe’s long-running anti-trust case against the US search giant, according to a draft motion.
The motion, which is expected to be discussed in Strasbourg on Wednesday before a vote on Thursday, forms part of what some commentators have called a politicalisation of a regulatory issue. The motion is expected to pass with the backing of the EPP and the Socialists, the parliament’s two main political groups.
The parliament does not have the power to directly order a breakup of a company in this manner, but can apply pressure to the commission (EC), which has regulatory powers over companies operating in Europe.
AP-trackin’ from the Associated Press:
Twitter now tracks other apps you’ve installed
Twitter said it is now tracking what other apps its users have installed on their mobile devices so it can target content and ads to them better.
Twitter Inc. said Wednesday that users will receive a notification when the setting is turned on and can opt out using settings on their phones. On iPhones, this setting is called “limit ad tracking.” On Android phones, it’s “opt out of interest-based ads.”
San Francisco-based Twitter said it is only collecting the list of apps that users have installed, not any data within the apps. It won’t collect the app lists from people who have previously turned off ad targeting on their phones.
Hookers in your cell phone, via SINA English:
How prostitution rings hijack your cellphone
“Feeling lonely? Chinese and foreign hotties room service is here for you. Students, office ladies, models, flight attendants, foreign girls, including Russians, Americans, French, Japanese and Koreans. Hotels, motels and apartments are all OK. Please call 155 XXXX XXXX.”
Have you ever received this kind of text message? Spam text messages advertising prostitution are a nuisance to many people in the Chinese mainland. Cellphone users may find they receive this kind of text message every day around a similar time, and that they only receive them when they are in certain areas. They have not disclosed their phone number to any strangers, but their phones are still mysteriously reached by unknown people.
If you have also experienced this, then you have been within the range of a fake mobile base station. This is a device that can send out a powerful signal which forces all mobile phones in an area to disconnect from the legitimate base station set up by their mobile service provider and connect to it without the owners’ consent. Sometimes, mobile users may be disconnected from their original service providers for around 10 seconds. Some even have to restart their phones in order to reconnect to their legitimate local base station.
Fake base stations have been growing in popularity in the mobile spam industry in recent years. These devices consist of a computer, a station box and a mast. When these three components are connected, spammers can input the message that they want to send, choose the number of phones they want to interfere with and pick which network they want to connect to.
And then there’s the annual seasonal warning, via The Hill:
Feds warn shoppers of holiday cyber scams
The government is warning shoppers of cyber scams ahead of the Thanksgiving weekend and start of the holiday shopping season.
The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas represents “the biggest weeks for online spammers and scammers,” as 80 percent of annual online sales occur during that period, said Andy Ozment, assistant secretary of cybersecurity for the Department of Homeland Security, in a blog post Wednesday.
Much of the shopping — and scams — go down this weekend.
The National Retail Federation expects 141 million people to make online or in-person purchases between Friday — known as Black Friday — and Sunday.
Chinesea corporateers win disclosure in a U.S. court, via the McClatchy Washington Bureau:
Chinese firm gets big cache of U.S. government documents in unprecedented, court-ordered exchange over wind-farm dispute
The Justice Department has delivered hundreds of previously concealed documents to a Chinese firm that President Obama had blocked from buying Oregon wind farms because they are near a sensitive military base.
The delivery to Chinese-owned Ralls Corp. of 3,487 pages of government material tied to the dispute was completed Friday under a July federal appellate ruling that Obama’s unexplained 2012 rejection of the sale had denied the Chinese-owned company constitutional due process.
Analysts said it was the first time the government had given a foreign purchaser documents underlying the deliberations of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a secretive inter-agency committee, known by its acronym CFIUS, that vets such sales for national security risks.
The death rattle of the Arab Spring from the Guardian:
Egyptian court sentences 78 children to jail for protesting against regime
Authorities said the teenage boys joined Muslim Brotherhood rallies calling for the return of ousted president Mohamed Morsi
An Egyptian court has sentenced 78 children to between two and five years in prison for taking part in demonstrations calling for the return of ousted president Mohamed Morsi, judicial sources said.
The authorities have engaged in a crackdown on Morsi’s supporters since his overthrow by the army last year, with hundreds jailed in mass trials which the United Nations has described as “unprecedented in recent history”.
On Wednesday, a court in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria sentenced 78 teenage boys aged from 13 to 17 for joining Muslim Brotherhood rallies during the past three months, a judicial official said.
Turkey clamps down on the Fourth Estate, from Deutsche Welle:
Turkey bans reporting on parliamentary graft body
A Turkish court has banned reporting on a parliamentary probe into corruption allegations against four ex-ministers in Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s previous cabinet. Turkey’s opposition says the move protects “thieves.”
Turkey’s Supreme Board of Radio and Television (RTUK) told Turkey’s media on Wednesday that they were banned from reporting on a parliamentary inquiry into corruption allegations against four former ministers.
Media were also told that they face penalties for violating the prohibition and that the prohibition remained in place until December 27.
In a statement on its website, the RTUK said the ban was necessary because some media reports had “violated the confidentiality of the investigation and the principle of presumption of innocence.”
From News Corp Australia, out of tune:
Pakistani actress Veena Malik and husband sentenced to 26 years jail
A PAKISTANI actress and her husband have been sentenced to 26 years jail after starring in a mock marriage on a Pakistani television program.
Veena Malik is an actress, model and television presenter and has a significant media profile in Pakistan.
During a live television segment in May, Ms Malik and her real-life husband Asad Bashir Khan Khattak took part in a staged marriage with a religious song about the wedding of the Prophet Muhammad’s daughter playing in the background. This is considered blasphemy according to Pakistan’s laws.
On Tuesday, a Pakistani anti-terror court also sentenced the owner of Pakistan’s biggest media group Geo TV (the channel on which the program aired), Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, and the program’s host to 26 years jail.
Brutality allegations probed in Australian military academies, via BBC News:
Australia defence abuse report calls for royal commission
A report into widespread abuses at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) has said a royal commission should be held to investigate.
The Defence Abuse Response Taskforce’s report said there was a “disturbingly high incidence” of sexual abuse of female cadets at ADFA in the 1990s.
In some cases, appropriate action was not taken against perpetrators.
The report was one of two tabled in parliament by Defence Minister David Johnston on Wednesday.
Hong Kong police mass to block re-Occupation, via South China Morning Post:
Thousands of police stationed in Mong Kok to stop Occupy protesters re-taking the streets
About 6,000 police officers will be assigned to the cleared streets and nearby areas in Mong Kok until Sunday to prevent a reoccupation by protesters angered by removal tactics yesterday, according to a police source.
Clashes erupted again in Mong Kok last night. From 10pm, hundreds of people made repeated attempts to reoccupy roads, hours after traffic on Nathan Road returned to normal following the two-month occupation by pro-democracy activists.
There was pushing and shoving between the crowd and police. One man was left with a bloodied head and several people were subdued and taken away. Police reinforcements were sent in and red flags were raised warning people not to charge.
A total of 148 protesters were arrested during the two-day operation in which the occupied area in nearby Argyle Street was reopened on Tuesday.
And busts for police brutality from BBC News:
Hong Kong protests: Policemen arrested over beating
Seven Hong Kong policemen have been arrested in connection with the beating of a pro-democracy protester.
A police statement said the officers, who had already been suspended, were detained on suspicion of “assault resulting in grievous body harm”.
The incident took place on 15 October during clashes when police cleared an underpass by the Admiralty camp.
Civic Party protester Ken Tsang was filmed being led away in handcuffs and beaten for several minutes.
And from Want China Times, otherwise occupied:
Also Occupying Central: Mainland tycoons wait out graft probes in HK
Many mainland Chinese tycoons are hiding out in a five-star hotel in Hong Kong to avoid being investigated or questioned by officials as part of China’s anti-corruption campaign, according to a finance column featured on Tencent’s news web portal.
The tycoons are bedding down at the Four Seasons, located in the city’s Central district, and are kept informed of the progress of their graft cases by visitors from the mainland. Though they bear little comparison with the democracy protesters currently camped out in the streets outside, they too are “occupying Central” in a manner of speaking.
Many of the businesspeople hiding out in Hong Kong are similar in that they are wealthy but aren’t particularly well known outside of their own industry or region. Many of them fled to Hong Kong after hearing that an official with whom they had some connection being placed under investigation for graft. They are trapped in the city far from their friends and families but can enjoy the hotel’s rooftop swimming pool and its three-star Michelin restaurant. As the authorities open new cases and others blow over, different people come and go. If the situation gets worse for some, they flee somewhere further still from their reach.
